Strategic Bombers shouldn't be able to patrol

Full agreement on this.

Threesocks wrote:

Strategic Bombers aren't made to patrol over enemy land. Ever heard of 10 b-17s circle over Dresden? Nah.

It's to powerful. I had a game where my 10 fighters (lvl 3) didn't destroy the 10 (lvl 4) strategic Bombers. After attacking, my fighters went back to base to refuel. The strategic Bombers just followed and patrolled over my province destroying the airstrip and my planes.

Strategic Bombers should only be able to attack and then retreat to refuel.

If you'r offline for a few hours and have no anti air in a city the enemy can just patrol over the city and destroy everything. The player doesn't even have to come online to start the attack again.

Nuke bombers can't patrol so there's precedence for a specific plane getting that ability removed. I'd be open to something like this, though idk what other balancing changes would be necessary to make it work. I don't think strats need to be made stronger but otherwise this would be a pretty big nerf.

This game is very good for achieving as much realism as possible.

So fine tuning a few of the units for accuracy makes sense.

Otherwise, why not make tanks air transportable....lol

Also, since some units in the game are classed as 1952...Korean war...where are the helicopter units which could air lift arty and motorised inf.

A stretch, yes...just saying

You’ll need an alternative or you’ll make this unit seem to be completely useless. It’s already not used very often, and that’s not saying it’s a bad unit, just a niche. This would basically kill that unit and send it into the heavy tank/commandos realm.

I understand Carking.

But I use strats all the time. people just don't know how to use them and their real purpose.

You have enemy bombers hitting you? Send in the strats to knock out air strips.

Bomb cities to stop the industry and production plants as well as driving down the morale resulting in rebellion.

Smashing bunkers.

And long range scouting

Eliminating the patrol aspect will not diminish it's value. Just learn how to use them.

I mean for one thing newer players would use them less. And why make them weaker? They don’t feel too overpowered, right now. I gotta agree with @_Pyth0n_ in that I am not sure that the devs or many players would like the status quo changed.

Carking the 6th wrote:

I mean for one thing newer players would use them less. And why make them weaker? They don’t feel too overpowered, right now. I gotta agree with @_Pyth0n_ in that I am not sure that the devs or many players would like the status quo changed.

I had a player try that with me once. Ended up nuking their stacks in oblivion! rocket fighters are also an option if needed. They can be countered. Allied doctrine is already seen as weak enough, why weaken it more?

Carking the 6th wrote:

I had a player try that with me once. Ended up nuking their stacks in oblivion! rocket fighters are also an option if needed. They can be countered. Allied doctrine is already seen as weak enough, why weaken it more?

They struck in full force when I was asleep and removed a few cities. Still nuked them. Won that game!

Removing patrol command from them would indeed be possible and rather easy to do, since nuke bombers have that functionality. So question is rather if players want that?

I can understand the reasoning behind it and think that it would be realistic and less OP when they cant patrol. But I also know that there will be quite some players who would cry out lout if we remove one of their tools?

The thing is are they overpowered? I don’t see them used as the meta these days, and they do have quite a few counters… I just don’t yet see a need to weaken them, unless I’m wrong here and they were better than RRG’s this whole time.

I mean, they could always get stats buffs in tandem with removing the patrol command, to not weaken them overall but just change how they are used. But yeah I think the change would be controversial so players should discuss among themselves first if they really want that or not.

Well, I for one would rather keep the current system for now. These units are just not Overpowered enough to justify a balance shift IMO.

The patrol system is OP in every respect.

Patrols should be limited to interceptors defending an area from air attack. Bombers should no be able to patrol at all. Or there should be some kind of limit to the patrol duration.

Another issue with patrols is they avoid all consequences from airfield loss. The patrol will simply rebase to the nearest friendly airfield. On the other hand, a returning attack flight will get stuck on the damaged airfield and then blasted into oblivion.

Then you have the patrol defense. You notice the enemy sending an air attack at one of your stacks. Send any number of air stacks to patrol over the target. Before the enemy can hit the target, all of your planes take a free shot at the attacker before it can touch the target. This even works for bombers. Since the defense has a free shot, there is no risk to the defending patrol. You can use any all all airplane types and they all shoot without taking any damage in return.

Should I go on? The patrol mechanic is insanely OP and it dominates all game play at higher skill levels.

Well that would kinda ruin planes and completely shift the game… either way I like to think of them as bomber sorties, where the enemy was constantly bombarded by small chunks of the full force to hit them around the clock. They are definitely realistic with historical precedent, and I dissagree that it is overpowered. It has counters and weaknesses, with multiple potent units that can easily make it not cost efficient to use bombers.

I've wondered what things would look like if patrol was something like 40% instead of 50%. Nerf it a bit but keep the mechanic.

Nostroma wrote:

Also, since some units in the game are classed as 1952...Korean war...where are the helicopter units which could air lift arty and motorised inf.

A stretch, yes...just saying

In any case, I support the original point of this thread. Patrolling in general is a super powerful ability that already adds a lot of utility to already ultra-flexible units.