formation bombing help please!

[chuckpolzin]

could you fill me in with the formation level bombing technique with the heavy bombers, im trying to do the memphis belle missions and all i can get my wing to do is down to about 40 percent of the goal consistently , i dont understand what i should be doing , other planes in my wing are apparently dropping bombs but do little damage, i designate the targets with yellow and tell them to attack and press it a bunch of times and change up the target location to really cover the whole area but it just doesnt do much damage, should i just focus on that big sub pen in mission one and send em all on that or take out the small buildings and stuff too, wheni pass over it looks like everything is in rubble and nothing left to bomb, im dying here so please help, thanks

chuck

[Scott - A2A]

Chuck,

I just remembered our mission guy is out of town right now. I will try this tomorrow, but please give me the most specific thing to try.

Also, please verify you are on the 1.07 update.

Scott.

[chuckpolzin]

Okay I am trying the first memphis belle mission, I get to the target and usually assign the attack command to like every corner of the main base and then i usually go for the middle and that big sub pen thats on the water. I usually get the goal to display 40 percent by time the runs over, i keep assigning the attack command to make sure no other guys in my wing have bombs to drop but i mean it seems rather rediculous to me that i have failed 40 times to get that goal completed, what is the deal here, does another formation come in later or something or what or do you have to take it out with your 8 planes, Im never this bad at a game and my bombs are going right where i want them, please, i love this game but im too frustrated to keep playing the same mission over and over, i can pass the level bombing training mission with ease but what the heck, please help, and yes I bought the us cd version and it automatically updated me to 1.07 and thats what it shows when the splash screen comes up,

[Scott - A2A]

Chuck,

I will give this a shot tomorrow, but the first thing that comes to mind is the FirePower environment makes all of these targets and weapons quite real. In reality, these sub pens had to be re-visited several times, and were still not 100% destroyed.

I have a feeling that may it., but I'll find out for sure tomorrow.

Scott.

[AC]

Chuck are you flying with Squadron members in your formation on multiplayer or are you flying cingle player with AI?

If the latter, your problem is that they are flying in fingrtip formation rather than V of V's as was actually flown for tight bombing patterns.

If in multiplayer with human squadmates , V of V's can be described as follows...

12 ship formation with positions numvbered from 1 to twelve......

#1, leader,#2 deputy leader on 1's right wing w /#3 on 1's left wing.(1st element)

2nd Element is a V with #4-leader... positioned to right of #2 , witth #5 & #6 in a v on his wings .

3rd element is V of #s 7,8&9 with 7 the element leader positioned on # 3's left wing. and 8 and 9 on his wings

4th element is tail end charlie element with #10 leading it , positioned at the bottom of the "Diamond" , in line with #1 but trailing aft of #, 8 &9.. #11 &#12 on his wings.

They are stackled aeway from the sun . That is, if the sun is to the right of the formation, then the second element is lower than the lead element ; the third element is higher than the lead and tail end charlie is level but out of propwash ( for if he was lower he could run into hung bombs and if he is higher he can't see the leadeer or the low elemenrt.

If the sun is on the left, element 3 is the low element.

That is a squadron formation , Group formations were similar but the Squadron formations were stacked in a v of v's on the lead squadron..

B29's went in as separate squadron formations, often on different axes of attack, rather than a bomber stream if all were going for the same target area.; They were separated by an interval of time to avoid a chinese fire drill over the target.

A word of warning: choose your waypoints and I.P. so that you don't have to make a huge formation turn to line up for the next leg or for the target ... else you will have a very loose formation when you level out on the new heading ... so loose that you may get lonely.

The above is for a daylight raid from high altitude.

Night , Low level firebombing raids done by B29's were single ship bomber stream with each plane departing at a briefed time separated by a one minute interval from the planes before and after it.

Hope this helps.,

To Scott: recommend you make this available to your programmers to get rid of that finger tip formation for bombers.in single player.

[chuckpolzin]

thanks for the continued help guys i am playing in single player but my question to you is regardless of the formation type when i designate a target two ships break off and line up to hit that so its not really a problem of a weak spread im just not wracking up damage when i do this, does anybody know what you have to really concentrate on in this mission to get the 100 percent, or is the object of this mission just to get it down because you revisit it later, can you beat the mission without doing 100 percent damage? Could anyone give specifics for this mission because the sub pens come into play very often and if i can get one hopefully it will work for all, i keep trying to hit various parts of the base, should i just assign all pairs to one specific part like the main building or do you have to destroy like the smoke stacks and barracks as well, thanks guys

[46th_Terror]

One thing I have started doing is this. I keep all bombers in formation and practice targeting with the intention of all my bombers dropping at the same time I do. Eg if in a box formation most planes in my formation are to my right. So I aim my bombs to the left far side of the target. Or the upper left side. With some practice you can get most if not all bombs of the flight to land on the target. when you drop your bombs the AI in your flight will drop theirs also. Plus it looks really great seeing all those bomb hits at the same time. Also keep in mind that Firepower has redone all the damage profiles. It takes a lot more to do the same job compared to stock CFS3. The main thing to keep in mind when bombing like this is that you are level bombing. This means you are bombing as a group. Your accuracy is not as ????? as the accuracy of the group as a whole. Hope this helps some.

[chuckpolzin]

is there a way to change formation types from box to V etc. , keep in mind i am playing the single player version, could any of you from experience tell me how you beat the memphis belle mission, i find it unrealistic that you need to get 100 percent of the goal to suceed, i mean the place looke demolished at 50 percent done but alas in debriefing i got a response like you barely scratched them, what give, thanks

[Snuffy]

Chuck, I'd say if you're flying the canned missions from Firepower, unless you go in and edit the mission via notepad, or if you have the mission editor, there is no known way of changing a formation in a mission once written.

I've often found that I have to issue the "A" command several times to my squadron behind me, and I also have to circle the target at least once, in order for all the members of the squad to release their loads.

Maybe things in that regard have changed in FP add-on, but the stock version did not seem to understand the concept of level mass bombing.

And again as others have said. The damage modeling as well as ordinance models have changed, in FP add-on ... just because you use to TD a target in stock does not mean that you can carry it through with this add-on apparently.

And as Scott has said, These sub pens were never TD on any given mission as flown by the 8th/9th/or 15th. Sub pens were visited and visited and visited.

You may have to adjust your thinking concept of not being able to TD as you use to in the stock version of the sim. Sorry.

I might suggest you accept your score for what it is and move on to the next following mission. You may find that going back to the pens they are already rated at the percentage that you left them in the last trip. I don't know myself as I just got the Add-on this last sunday and am experiencing problems of my own unrelated to yours.

:salute:

[chuckpolzin]

cool guys, i have yet to totally demolish the target goal i actually got it down to 20 percent via the 17's but i also got frustrated and loaded up with nukes, that took care of it, but yeah im beginning to think its near impossible to consistently get the sub pens fully 100% of the mission goal, it just seems that the inherint inaccuracy of level bombing would not allow for such a high demand in the briefing. IF i am wrong about this please correct me but i dont get why they would set a goal so high, maybe set it so that the typical damage done during the first raid was say 30 percent of the base , that way you could get that mission goal suceeded in the debriefing, its rather unsatisfying to return to base and have that mission parameter failed . god what an awesome game but im so frustrated,

p.s I would want nothing more than the old p-61 black widow, if theres one in the making let me know,

[Scott - A2A]

Chuck,

You definately found something, but I'm not sure how to correct it. There is a number in the mission XDP, but for some reason it does not have an effect on my system. I want to wait until Sean, our mission designer gets back from vacation and looks at this.

One thing for sure, in real life if you managed to take out 50% of a sub pen in one mission, that was a success. Some of the buildings could take repeated direct hits from a 2000lb bomb, and still survive. All I want to happen is for the success missioin to trigger if that is the case, or even at only 33% damage.

Scott.

[chuckpolzin]

scott i totally agree, i think if there is a problem it lies withing the mission sucess trigger, unless your mission designers intented that 100 percent goal to be the goal for the first run but i doubt it as it is extremely difficult to get it to even 20 percent, has anyone tried this mission and got the goal down to 0 percent using the standard bomb load and mission parameters, etc. It seems like if the goal was reduced to zero percent the place would be nothing but a rubble pile, because i have done low passes over it at 50 percent damage and the main buildings where trashed and only small barracks' etc were left, i hope somebody can back me up on this , i doubt i will ever get that down to zero percent

[Snuffy]

I think last night when I did the Brest sub pens and was able to do a successful mission, that I took out 70% I failed to finish the mission completely due to other complications with my system.

But to honest I'm with Scott on this one. A book I have that you may be interested in reading is titled "Diary of an Air War." This author has gone through all the records of the 8th, & 9th USAAFs and did a day by day account of the air war, targets visited and the number of times they visited those targets, as well as the extent of some of the damage reports.

When I go to the index of this book and look up Brest, there are 17 pages listed where Brest is mentioned as a target. Just as an example. Granted there were more than just sub pens at Brest, but you can rest assured that the sub pens got the majority of the activity.

[AC]

The sub pens had re-inforced concrete roofs that were 12 to 20 feet thick . It took more than a couple of direct hits with 500# GPs or armor piercing to even put a dimple in them.

[chuckpolzin]

snuffy how did you sucessfully compete the bombing part of the mission goal if you only got it to 70 percent, did the display say 70 percent , as in there was 70 percent "health" left or did it say 30 percent as you say you did 70 percent damage , i got mine to display 20 percent once but did not complete the mission goal