Been thinking about this some more. Driving is good for this kind of thing apparently.
On UK1, the India factory can produce five units. This can’t be stopped by Japan.
On UK2, the India factory could protentially produce eight units IF on UK1 UK Pacific is at war with Japan, occupied Sumatra or Java, and has all its territories and consequently collects it’s NO on UK1. Realistically, six units is more likely unless Japan did a J1 attack, in which case UK Pacific realistically collected no more than 10 IPCs (making it three units, not five or six, produced at the India factory).
After UK2 depends on the status of war – with a J2 declaration, UK Pacific is collecting on the order of 10 IPCs or less, so again three units.
UK4 and beyond, assuming Japan did not wait til J4, UK Pacific is capable of producing two units per round ballpark.
If Japan plans to kill India on J5, strategic bombing basically can deprive India of about two units over multiple rounds of strategic bombing. During this time, there is around a 55% chance of loosing a 12 IPC bomber on J3/J4 to cause effectively 6 IPCs in lost unit production. The risk only gets worse strat bombing on J6 and beyond.
There is some value in the threat of strategic bombing, but frankly if Japan is making a play for India the risk of strat bombing at best equals the damage done over two rounds of strat bombing.
If not, I posit that if you’re running the Allies and someone strat bombs your India IC, you should only intercept if A) the damage from the strat bombing will cost you the opportunity to build any units at all or B) you outnumber the attackers. If you are running the Axis, there is some psychological advantage to be gained from strat bombing perhaps, but realistically it’s probably slightly better on average to not strat bomb at all IF you are planning to kill India.
Assuming that position is true, then the number of times when strat bombing India makes sense drops to when you are planning to take other victory cities than Calcutta. At that point, you might consider strat bombing to keep UK Pacific from getting “uppity” while you are off killing other VCs.
So I put it to you – is there value in strat bombing India that outweights the risk IF your plan as Japan is to kill India?
Marsh