@Cmdr:
Yoshi,
The bombers cost nothing because they can be used as bombers each round.
As I said, I agree that this bombers are usefull. But some other use of the 15 IPC could be more usefull in such situation. What I want to say is that building a bomber has a cost: 15 IPC. This is not zero IPC. Then, of course, the bomber is used, so that you do not lose your money : this money is a usefull investment. But you cannot say “the bomber has no cost ; they make russia lose IPC ; thus the axis win” (I do not say that these words are precisely yours, but this is the way I understand what you mean when I read your posts). Indeed, you can loose the bombers, such that you are trading money between Axis and Russia (if making SBR campaign against this country). This is not useless, and can be very good. But this is not unbeatable. It depends of what happens in the other points of the game, and also of the dice (for instance, if you are quite unlucky with AAguns, you can be in trouble, and on the other side if your bombers are never killed, Russia will be in a very bad position ^^ ), more than in classical battles I think (since each plane killed is 15 IPC lost, and not 3 IPC when you took one more defense it than the average in ground combat for instance)
@Cmdr:
For instance, the bombers are used passively as a deterrent to allied naval shipping in the Atlantic forcing them to consolidate their fleets and buy more units to defend American transports from attack. The best part is, they pretty much have to do this even if you never intend to attack their fleets because they don’t know your intentions!
I totally agree with this point. This is one of the interest to invest in planes with germans. But in practice, it will make the Allies buy a carrier for UK and US, what they often do. And then, to force them to buy more naval units, you will have limited movement with your plane. Thus, you force them to buy these carriers, but you cannot say that this is 32 IPC spent for nothing for the Allies : first, they often buy it, and secondly this enable them more flexibility for their plane also.
But on an other hand, the first bomber bougth by german is very usefull to protect Algeria in the first trun (and so to gain one turn on the classical Africa reconquest of the Allies).
To conclude this point, I would say that bombers are very interesting for this point, but it is difficult to conclude that it cost money to the Allies…
@Cmdr:
They are used aggressively in a myriad of ways:
1) They can attack Russia’s or England’s Industrial Complexes. Russia can try to counter with AA Guns, but I’ve pretty much shredded anyone’s hopes and dreams that would ever be cost effective for Russia. England does not have that option being on an island.
without talking of buying more AA guns for Russia (which I think need a lot more of details to understand all the problem), attacking industrial complexes has a cost : the price of the bombers you can lose. In average (and to look this point we need to consider the average), you loose 15/6=2.5 IPC, and you win 5/6*3.5=2.91 IPC, that I will round to 3 (which is better for your strategy). Thus, you gain only 0.5 IPC buy bombers. And this is for one bomber, which can make 6 IPC damage (for instance, this change when you attack Caucas or when you have two bombers on Russia, since when the two bombers are not killed by AA Gun, you are limited to 8 on your damage). But anyway, I think that we can assume the following : you do not gain money when you attack russian industrial complexes, and you do not loose money (I can make the all average computations if you want to be more precise, but I do not think that we need more mathematics in this discussion. The aim is not to see if you win 0.1 IPC or 0.3 IPC, at least this is my opinion: I make enough mathmatics at work :) ).
This said, I think that even if you do not gain money by bombing the Russian Factories, it is still interesting: as Germany and Japan make this, they each loose a part of their money where as the Russia loose most of its own. And this is an oter interesting point of this strategy. What I want to say is that bombers have a cost: precisely this money that you invest to make Russia loose money.
@Cmdr:
2) They have massive range allowing Germans to trade territories much farther away without having to move their fighters, this allows them to defend western territories with less men and in turn allows them to bring more cannon-fodder to bear on Russia. (Because the fighters can stay in Western and 1 fighter can replace - in my opinion - 3 to 4 infantry on defense. That means those guys can move to the front lines.)
If you replace fighters by bombers to trade territories, when you are not applying your original strategy. Thus here you do not gain really something from your bomber. I mean, let say that you can keep 2 more fighters in France because you have two more bombers. Assume that this 2 fighters enable you to send 7 more guys to the east then if you needed your fighters (and this is I think a lot, or only when you already have a very big number of infantry in France, that means not a the beginning). The two bombers you bought cost you 30 IPC, that is 10 infantry, less than 7.
But I agree that this may be a usefull use of your bombers, especially to force allies to invest in navy if they want to attack for instance from SZ 5 (since the fighters in france are more agressive on the UK or US navy). One more, UK can go via SZ 4 to deal with such fighters agression.
To conclude, this can be interesting, but not more (in my opinion of course, I do not claim anything more than my opinion ;) ). Only in special situation I think.
@Cmdr:
3) They CAN go attack America’s transports if you chose to send them there.
Once more, a AC buy from the US, added to its initial boats (1 BB and two destroyers, added to 2 planes an a carrier, and say 5 trannies, you need a very big number of planes to attack that), can cancel that. And this is when you want to go close to the German planes. Otherwise, you can for instance go to SZ4 with the UK, and do not have to consider any defense against Germans planes, since you will have the two Allies fleets together)
@Cmdr:
Because of these 4 reasons, a bomber has either no cost, or a negative cost to Germany.
As already said, I considered that they have a cost. This cost is an investment that you will get back during the game. But it include the Allies losses from your bombers.
So you can say that it has no cost if you include money lost by the Allies from that bomber, and I will agree with that. But then, you cannot say “they have no cost and then they make Allies losses”: the Allies losses have already been counted to say that the bombers have no cost.
@Cmdr:
Do note, however, I did assign a cost to Japan’s extra bombers due to their lack of utility. They either go SBR Russia or they go SBR America, they really serve no other purpose at all and they cannot shift from one to the other like Germany can without downtime in between.
For Japan bombers, I think it depends: if US goes KJF, then you will have more power to fight against the US navy and may appreciate these bombers. Thus, in such case, we can say that this is usefull (but as said a44bigdog, I think that a 8 bid for a japan tranny is required such that you can send some troops in Asia at the begginning).
Otherwise, if US goes KGF, I think that Japan can buy bombers, since he will become rich quite fast. Thus, the trade of money between Japan and Russia is clearly an advantage for Japan.
To conclude, I think that this strategy is interesting. I see here an other way to defeat Russia. But how Germans will defend against a KGF strategy with a two bombers buy at the beginning, I do not know how it will conclude for the germans. I would say that it would conclude with a fall of Russia an Germany, as quite often in KGF games, but then… too much difficult to say what would appear ^^
