Bomber Intercept missions

[JonRedcorn]

Not sure if this is the right section to post this. If it's not please move it.

 

Two things, for the advanced quick mission maker, which is great by the way gives a lot more versatility to quick missions, I was wondering if we could get the ability to set the enemy numbers, and the altitude at which the fights going to take place, I am desperately trying to do high flying bomber intercept missions but its always at like 1500m max. We have all these badass high altitude planes that we never get to use at high altitude. I was stoked to finally jump back on and check out the new mission editor but was disappointed we couldnt set the target height. I want to intercept big flights of like 20 b-26's or A-20s I understand we don't have b-17's and big 4 engine bombers to intercept yet but I am sure b-26's flew higher than 5k feet along with a-20's. The sweet thing about the old 1946 was how easy it was to setup a quick bomber intercept mission to play, you just picked the enemy squadrons could have a hundred planes if you wanted, picked the flight path and altitude and went on your way to a sweet intercept mission.

 

Maybe it will come here in the future. Especially for normandy. Part two of this basically ties into part one, in the pilot careers in the ardennes I get bomber intercepts and most of the times its like tempests and stuff, would be cool to get some high altitude bomber intercept missions where you gotta take off in a hurry and rush up to 6500-7k km and get on top of these incoming bombers to stop them from destroying the homeland. The g-14, k-4 and FW-190D9 were literally made for this. I haven't done many missions so maybe there will be some and I just haven't seen them. I know on the eastern front stuff was done at much lower altitudes due to terrible weather and the russian planes not being good at high altitudes, but we're on the western front now baby and we need to get up to speed and height.

 

So yeah basically just suggesting to A be able to adjust altitude in the advanced battle maker and B get some more high altitude bomber intercepts especially for the german side on the pilot career.

 

Thanks!

Edited July 16, 2022 by JonRedcorn

[LukeFF]

I agree - even with medium bombers, the average bombing altitude was 12-13,000 feet in the West. The altitudes being generated right now are about half of what they should be. 

[ShamrockOneFive]

Noted the same with the AQMB scenarios. Hopefully they can be adjusted for Western Front scenarios so that they are distinct from the East. I wonder if the option for a larger bomber raid intercept (as opposed to a smaller group as we have now) might also be added to the mix. Understanding that the bigger raid may not work as well on lower spec systems.

[JonRedcorn]

12 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

I agree - even with medium bombers, the average bombing altitude was 12-13,000 feet in the West. The altitudes being generated right now are about half of what they should be. 

I am sure because the missions are just using the same generation from the eastern front so it ends up with all low altitude stuff. All the fights for bodenplatte are too low really and I am assuming normandy will be the same. You should see if you can get them to figure out a way to make the western front stuff generate higher altitude missions pretty much across the board.

 

When the bombers came across the channel they weren't flying at 7k ft.

 

It's probably as easy as making an exception for the two addons or its going to be insanely complicated and never happen. And hopefully adding altitude adjustment to the advanced battle generator won't be too hard. Would be great things to add. It's the small detail stuff like this that makes a huge difference. Right now it just feels like I am playing eastern front with western planes.

2 minutes ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

Noted the same with the AQMB scenarios. Hopefully they can be adjusted for Western Front scenarios so that they are distinct from the East. I wonder if the option for a larger bomber raid intercept (as opposed to a smaller group as we have now) might also be added to the mix. Understanding that the bigger raid may not work as well on lower spec systems.

Yeah I was really excited to try it out and ended up bummed out with 4 bombers coming at me and like two times they were just a5's... It's like 4 bombers and then 10 fighter planes... I want to intercept a massive like 20 bomber formation.

 

I know it's possible there's quick missions for battle of kuban that have like 20 a20's you can attack with the g6 over a river. It's like the funnest quick mission in the game and I use to love playing it in VR.

 

Really hope they can work on this. There's some great missions for DCS ww2 with massive bomber formations at high altitudes crossing the channels and stuff.

Edited July 6, 2022 by JonRedcorn

[ShamrockOneFive]

Seems like it should be possible. We've seen some slightly larger formations in single missions. I can understand wanting to keep the AQMB experience streamlined so there's obviously some limits but yeah I think a separate mission type with a larger formation could be a way to manage that.

[JonRedcorn]

25 minutes ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

Seems like it should be possible. We've seen some slightly larger formations in single missions. I can understand wanting to keep the AQMB experience streamlined so there's obviously some limits but yeah I think a separate mission type with a larger formation could be a way to manage that.

Could put a warning that it may stress your computer, but at this point people should have decent enough computers to run this game no problem. I could see maybe 5 yeasr ago. But the graphics cards that are out now should have no issue running this game. I am still on a 1080ti and it runs the game just fine.

 

I spent like months modding 1946 to make the perfect channel crossing missions to intercept huge bombing formations It's one of my favorite things to do in this games. Ripping up to 20k ft in a d9 and unleashing hell on a pack of bombers there aint a whole lot better. You could make an entire campaign out of the germans trying to push back against massive bomber formations. If i had any idea how to create a campaign I'd try to do it. It's not easy like it was in the old games.

[Mtnbiker1998]

Probably not the answer you're looking for, but Vander's Easy Mission Generator Can do pretty good bomber intercepts. Limited to only 10 bombers I think, and they'll be flying in one big ole' V formation but its better than nothing and they can be as high as you want them!

 

pro tip; helps to do Air Starts for those missions as the bombers will take awhile to climb up there otherwise (Probably won't even make it up there by the time they're over the target.)

[JonRedcorn]

I almost wish they would of stuck with the old il2 engine when they made this game, cliffs of dover is based off of it, and it can look pretty good. I was just flying a quick mission in cliffs the tobruk expansion and there was a good 100 planes on the mission and it ran great. Just don't get all the cool ass planes we get in box. Plus they feel better in box.

Edited July 6, 2022 by JonRedcorn

[357th_KW]

Recently people have put together some MP events with 20+ AI bombers.  Your hardware will likely become a limiting factor at some point, but you can make these sort of missions.  There's definitely a learning curve to the mission editor, but some amazing things are possible.

[LukeFF]

I'm seeing larger number of planes on bomber intercept missions in career mode. For instance, an Me 262 bomber intercept mission will typically involve the player targeting a stack of Mitchells or Marauders flying in a group of 12 planes divided into sections of 3 planes each - so, a full squadron. These are typically covered by 4-8 fighters, not counting the other fighters in the area flying low-level ground attack, which are also typically countered by fighters from the other side. 

 

It all adds up 12 bombers plus about 8 or so fighters per side. So, the numbers for a typical tactical, 2nd TAF or 9th AF mission are starting to really get there now. ??

Edited July 6, 2022 by LukeFF

[PatrickAWlson]

8 hours ago, LukeFF said:

I'm seeing larger number of planes on bomber intercept missions in career mode. For instance, an Me 262 bomber intercept mission will typically involve the player targeting a stack of Mitchells or Marauders flying in a group of 12 planes divided into sections of 3 planes each - so, a full squadron. These are typically covered by 4-8 fighters, not counting the other fighters in the area flying low-level ground attack, which are also typically countered by fighters from the other side. 

 

It all adds up 12 bombers plus about 8 or so fighters per side. So, the numbers for a typical tactical, 2nd TAF or 9th AF mission are starting to really get there now. ??

 

Been doing similar numbers in PWCG for awhile.  I try to compensate by eliminating other flights and limiting ground units.  Everything is focused on the bomber unit.  Seems to work reasonably well.  Appreciate the info on average altitude.  I think mine are actually too high.

[LukeFF]

4 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

Appreciate the info on average altitude.  I think mine are actually too high.

 

No problem!

 

Yeah, the average was in that range I listed up above. 15,000 feet was about the upper limit, and 10,000 was as low as they'd go - and even then that was really rare.

[IckyATLAS]

Who will be the first to design a mission with 1'000 bombers?

I am ready to test it ?

 

[PatrickAWlson]

41 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

Who will be the first to design a mission with 1'000 bombers?

I am ready to test it ?

 

 

You might be, but your computer is probably thinking Nooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[40plus]

21 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

Who will be the first to design a mission with 1'000 bombers?

I am ready to test it ?

 

See here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/Renzic/videos

 

Not a thousand but some huge formations

[IckyATLAS]

17 hours ago, 40plus said:

See here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/Renzic/videos

 

Not a thousand but some huge formations

By looking at one ov the Renzic video with a huge bomber formation bombing an airfield, one can see that it is not the number of airplanes that bog down the system in terms of frame rates or FPS, it will impact time dilation much more (CPU load) but this is not visible in cinematic videos.

What does impact heavily the frame rate and can bring it down to a slideshow are the explosion effects. When there 50 to a 100 explosions visible on the screen, these are GPU hungry and will bring any GPU even a 3090 Ti down to its knees. What is at the moment the worst visual effect is that after such a massive carpet bombing the surface is clean and pristine. Only 4 craters will remain visible. This ridiculous situation, and this limitation that is still there since the beginning nearly 9 years ago, I hope will be corrected with BoN. Todays CPUs and GPUs can very well handle this. I have in my campaign and missions hundreds of craters put all over bombed regions (this is done manually with ground elements) and it has zero impact on time dilation and FPS. 

[R33GZ]

I have had a few intercept missions in the AQMG where I was intercepting a flight of 8 A20s at 4k. This was a while back, so may have changed with updates. From memory, the cloud setting seemed to have an affect on their mission altitude ie, the cloud base had to be high so the target wasn't obscured. Will see if I can replicate tonight

 

[EDIT] was curious so jumped on just to see if I could replicate. On kuban summer map, clouds base at 1500m strato cumulus and set to few I get bomber intercept at 4500m... Quite a race too as my airfeild was anapa and the intercept was just 25km north east of home base. With same settings. But clouds set to broken, I get a 2000m intercept. I Interpreted this as bombers flying below cloud.... But the intercept height was 500m above cloud base. So maybe just coincidence? I dont own BoBp yet so can't comment on that map

Edited July 14, 2022 by R33GZ

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

Kind of related to the topic, why are missions in BoBP almost always at low alt? Around 2000m or lower most of the times, with a few missions around here and there around 3500-4000 max.

 

Free hunt, bomber intercept, bomber escort; no love for high alt still. Always at low, estern front type alt no matter what.

 

[tattywelshie]

I was thinking of this before, maybe there could be an option in the career mode, to sort of specify the amount of aircraft, based on your PC specs. That way if folks are running older systems they aren't hamstrung by poor performance and vice versa. Similar to PWCG really in terms of density, but a bit more specific in terms of enemy formations. I mean really a formation of say 20 bombers should have an escort of around 100 fighters, which was the case during the war. To have that would be absolutely amazing! 

[JonRedcorn]

19 hours ago, I./JG52_Woutwocampe said:

Kind of related to the topic, why are missions in BoBP almost always at low alt? Around 2000m or lower most of the times, with a few missions around here and there around 3500-4000 max.

 

Free hunt, bomber intercept, bomber escort; no love for high alt still. Always at low, estern front type alt no matter what.

 

Exactly!! They need to differentiate between the modules. We can't have low alt forever. We have all these high altitude fighters designed to fly high and we gotta be stuck at russian early war altitude levels. Would really make the game come alive IMO. I want to fly high!

 

On 7/13/2022 at 8:33 PM, R33GZ said:

I have had a few intercept missions in the AQMG where I was intercepting a flight of 8 A20s at 4k. This was a while back, so may have changed with updates. From memory, the cloud setting seemed to have an affect on their mission altitude ie, the cloud base had to be high so the target wasn't obscured. Will see if I can replicate tonight

 

[EDIT] was curious so jumped on just to see if I could replicate. On kuban summer map, clouds base at 1500m strato cumulus and set to few I get bomber intercept at 4500m... Quite a race too as my airfeild was anapa and the intercept was just 25km north east of home base. With same settings. But clouds set to broken, I get a 2000m intercept. I Interpreted this as bombers flying below cloud.... But the intercept height was 500m above cloud base. So maybe just coincidence? I dont own BoBp yet so can't comment on that map

Thanks for testing this I will check it out myself. If we could just get an option to set engagement height that would alleviate all the problems in the AQM... But career mode definitely needs to have specific generation settings depending on which front you are playing on. Keep it low on the earlier russian careers and jack it up for bodenplatte and normandy. I really don't want to be flying across the channel at 5k ft... Should be more like 25k ft. Make using the P-47 actually useful.

[IckyATLAS]

I have one mission in my campaigh the Kuban Wall that is a scramble to intercept bombers. This means that from detection of the bombers at sea and you scrambling, it is not easy to catch and get the bombers. You fly a P47 which is heavy and does not have the best climb rate, so it is a challenge depending on how much time you have to scramble and intercept. You do not need to have the bombers at 7'000 or 8'000mt to have it challenging. 

[jollyjack]

Curious about the AQMB and the active MCUs present, especially Ai behavior and settings,  i created a few Bomber Intercept missions on Rheinland.

 

Comparing them: there seems to be always the same blocks and bridges present,

some grouped, besides airfields and added arf blocks as a lot of added static planes etc.

Alas a lot is thus not grouped.  Tried to clear up the mess a bit with Search and Select, but it's a nearly impossible job.

But the missions created are great and f.i. a replay of one especially seems to be different each time.

 

Apart from the same scenery i still like the AQMB, hope they will expand this feature further.

Edited July 24, 2022 by jollyjack

[JonRedcorn]

7 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

I have one mission in my campaigh the Kuban Wall that is a scramble to intercept bombers. This means that from detection of the bombers at sea and you scrambling, it is not easy to catch and get the bombers. You fly a P47 which is heavy and does not have the best climb rate, so it is a challenge depending on how much time you have to scramble and intercept. You do not need to have the bombers at 7'000 or 8'000mt to have it challenging. 

Not about the challenge, I am saying it'd be fun to have engagements at 25k ft instead of on the deck. Having all these high altitude airplanes and no missions to use them with is my complaint.

[jollyjack]

Make one? Maybe SynVander's EMB can do it ...

Edited July 25, 2022 by jollyjack

[IckyATLAS]

I think the QMB is not bad at all to have this kind of high altitude action

I have used the QMB to make a mission with the following parameters:

 

Intercept Zone : Bruxelles

Allies 4 x P51D, 4 x P38

Axis 8 x HE111-H16 with 8 x 250Kg bombs

 

P51 and P38 Flying at 9500

HE111 Flying at their limit 8'500-9'000

 

Mode: Face to face

Distance 10'000 mt

 

Clouds Cumuls Mediocris level 2'000 - Broken

Time 15:00

 

Here some pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

[Russkly]

On 7/15/2022 at 4:14 AM, I./JG52_Woutwocampe said:

Kind of related to the topic, why are missions in BoBP almost always at low alt? Around 2000m or lower most of the times, with a few missions around here and there around 3500-4000 max.

 

Free hunt, bomber intercept, bomber escort; no love for high alt still. Always at low, estern front type alt no matter what.

 

Agree.

 

For that reasons I've switched away from BoBP Career Mode to PWCG.

 

Now I'm intercepting bombers over the Rheinland at 8K (possibly a bit too high for B-26s, B-25s and A-20s, but certainly more realistic than 2K), and it's good.

[tattywelshie]

2 hours ago, Russkly said:

Agree.

 

For that reasons I've switched away from BoBP Career Mode to PWCG.

 

Now I'm intercepting bombers over the Rheinland at 8K (possibly a bit too high for B-26s, B-25s and A-20s, but certainly more realistic than 2K), and it's good.

Same here, I had a lovely 8k intercept of some LA5's over Kuban in my FW190 the other day, was awesome! 

[BlitzPig_EL]

Would La5s ever be flying at 8K meters in the real conflict?

 

That is far above their effective performance envelope.

[tattywelshie]

1 hour ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Would La5s ever be flying at 8K meters in the real conflict?

 

That is far above their effective performance envelope.

To be fair, it was probably more like 6k the engagement took place at, started off at 8k. 

[jollyjack]

AQMB generated, modded slightly changing waypoinnts and adding more bombers.

(Rheinland and BoN needed for an occasional B26, Bf109G14 player).

Great daybreak scenery, but maxes around 4500 meter altitude indeed.

 

Bf109G14_Intercept Bombers v1a.zip

Edited July 25, 2022 by jollyjack

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

12 hours ago, tattywelshie said:

To be fair, it was probably more like 6k the engagement took place at, started off at 8k. 

 

Well, I'm looking for a more realistic experience, not only a different experience.

 

A group of La5s has nothing to do at 6000m above Kuban, let alone 8000m.

[Feldgrun]

Instead of bigger bomber formations, how about bigger bombers.

[tattywelshie]

5 hours ago, I./JG52_Woutwocampe said:

 

Well, I'm looking for a more realistic experience, not only a different experience.

 

A group of La5s has nothing to do at 6000m above Kuban, let alone 8000m.

Apart from trying to intercept a flight of 190s who are in tern trying to intercept a flight of PE2s?

[PatrickAWlson]

9 hours ago, tattywelshie said:

Apart from trying to intercept a flight of 190s who are in tern trying to intercept a flight of PE2s?

 

In a different thread I have acknowledged the need to drop the altitude of those bombing raids.  Probably 4K-6K meters.  6K is still too high but it's fun.

[tattywelshie]

3 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

In a different thread I have acknowledged the need to drop the altitude of those bombing raids.  Probably 4K-6K meters.  6K is still too high but it's fun.

Oh it was fab, something special about dog fighting through the vapour trails 

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

I dont remember ever seeing a formation of Peshkas at 6000m or above in Kuban. Or any other campaign.

 

The only high alt missions I've ever seen in any campaign are solo scrambles to shoot down a recon plane.

 

 

[tattywelshie]

4 hours ago, I./JG52_Woutwocampe said:

I dont remember ever seeing a formation of Peshkas at 6000m or above in Kuban. Or any other campaign.

 

The only high alt missions I've ever seen in any campaign are solo scrambles to shoot down a recon plane.

 

 

This is in PWCG i would add and not the ingame career mode. 

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

4 hours ago, tattywelshie said:

This is in PWCG i would add and not the ingame career mode. 

 

Ahhh ok.

[Zooropa_Fly]

 

Notifying anyone here interested in bomber intercept missions.

 

S!

ZF.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Thank you sir, will give it a try later.