I hadn't played Call of War for quite a while, but came back to it after Tesla Wars was discontinued.
Now I've always thought bombers were overpowered in Call of War, but usually it's me with the bombers systematically destroying the enemy. This time though, I'm facing an enemy who has also built a lot of bombers, and it's really driven home to me just how overpowered bombers are in this game.
Small stacks of ground units are easily destroyed by even as little a stack of five tac bombers, in just two or three passes. Even a medium sized stack of 10 or so units, with AA, can be quickly wiped out with a modest bomber force. This would be problematic even in a game where it was relatively easy to build units, but the severe resource restrictions in this game make it virtually impossible to build large numbers of units, which means that many days of unit construction can just be wiped out in the blink of an eye by a few bombers.
Adding to the problem, I am finding, is the lack of control of air units. Time and again in my current game, I have made a tiny adjustment to my fighters' patrol area within its "cone" of operations, and regardless, the fighter wing decides to fly back to the airbase and take off again, leaving my ground units vulnerable for half an hour or more. As I understand it, this is not supposed to occur when making such adjustments, but it's happening every time in the current game.
Now as I said, I had been playing Tesla Wars before coming back to this game, and I thought the air-to-ground combat system was much more realistic in that losses to both planes and ground units are incremental rather than devastating. The losses are still big enough to be significant, but not so large that you can see entire fronts quickly destroyed by a handful of bombers. In any case, small groups of ground units should not be more easily destroyed than large stacks, if anything, larger stacks should take more losses due to the abundance of targets. In general I'd love to see the Tesla Wars combat system adopted for this game, because IMO it is much more realistic and enjoyable than the current one.
7 Replies
10 Jul 2021, 21:57
Joe Bentleigh wrote:
Small stacks of ground units are easily destroyed by even as little a stack of five tac bombers, in just two or three passes. Even a medium sized stack of 10 or so units, with AA, can be quickly wiped out with a modest bomber force.
Well, the purpose of TBs (tactical bombers) is to find and wipe out small stacks of poorly defended units, that's why they are "tactical".
I don't know the full details of that unit with AAs getting wiped out by a modest air force, but a few weeks ago a stack of 20-25 units with 7-8 AAs (i knew that TBs were his main attacking force) from my army was attacked by 20 TBs and 40 fighters and i destroyer around 15 planes from him and i took some damage but no losses.
Probably the lvl os those AAs that you say was quite low, AAs are really strong
Joe Bentleigh wrote:
Now as I said, I had been playing Tesla Wars before coming back to this game, and I thought the air-to-ground combat system was much more realistic in that losses to both planes and ground units are incremental rather than devastating. The losses are still big enough to be significant, but not so large that you can see entire fronts quickly destroyed by a handful of bombers. In any case, small groups of ground units should not be more easily destroyed than large stacks, if anything, larger stacks should take more losses due to the abundance of targets. In general I'd love to see the Tesla Wars combat system adopted for this game, because IMO it is much more realistic and enjoyable than the current one.
If you like Tesla wars then play it, this is another Game.
How on earth is it more realistic to see greater groups getting destroyed easier compared to small groups? Just imagine hopping into a plane and having to destroy a full tank división instead of a simple convoy
Most likely you are a "land doctrine" person, that's fine, but don't forget that CoW is a WWII themed strategy game, were air and anti-air warfare was a key aspect of WWII (simply Google "air warfare of WWII" or "air superiority of WWII") so keep in mind those downsides.
If You don't like planes being so powerfull you can play Tesla wars or the WWI themed game that bytro has (can't remember the name)
10 Jul 2021, 21:59
Bombers are tricky, they are either useless or overpowered, if you are prepared with interceptors or AA, sending bombers its not woth it, but if you are not prepared, even interceptors can be very useful againt ground units if you know how to use them.
"Si crees que esto tendrá un final feliz, es que no has estado prestando atención"
11 Jul 2021, 03:45
And here's another problem - bombers attacking multiple stacks!
There was a fleet of five bombers heading toward a scout car of mine. It had 26 bombing factors in total against an armour-type unit, so naturally I expected to lose roughly 26 hitpoints, because that's how combat works in this game.
Well I did cop a loss of about 26 hitpoints - to that unit. But then I realized that two infantry units nearby had also been hit by the attack. They had a combined loss of about 30 hitpoints. So, one attack by five tac bombers, and three of my units lose a combined total of about 50 hitpoints or about half their total strength. And this from a tac bomber stack with an attack rating of just 26!
I confirmed the same phenomenon later. A single tac bomber attacked a disembarking unit of mine. The bomber only had an attack rating of 1.5 against ships, so I figured I'd only lose one hitpoint. And indeed I did lose just one hitpoint from that unit. But three other units also disembarking in the same place were also hit with full strength and lost about four hitpoints in total. So a bomber with a mere 1.5 attack rating somehow kills five hitpoints.
If all these units were in the same stack, they wouldn't lose more than the total amount of hitpoints equivalent to the bomber's attack rating. But because they are in three different stacks close together, the bomber somehow manages to attack all three stacks with its full attack factor. That's just insanity. Either it should hit just one stack with its full attack factor, or it should hit all three with an average of one third of its attack factor against each.
20 Jul 2021, 19:29
So why don't you also use bombers if they are so overpowered?
Build interceptors and more AA. Get good. People have always been complaing bombers r OP.
22 Jul 2021, 11:49
Bombers are not op as much ppl dont know how to counter them. You cant expect to win if you dont control the skys.
22 Jul 2021, 21:38
Bombers aren't op. They are useful. That's about the extent of it. They require air superiority (or at least for the most part) and will take pretty decent losses from a 10-stack with 2 spaa in it. They also require airbases near the front, which factor into the cost of the units and can be destroyed in their own right.
