Strategic or Tactical

[Monsieur Toasteur]

I'm probably about to spark a war in the steam forums but I want to ask anyway. Do you prefer strategic or tactical bombers? I'm a new player who is leaning towards tactical, but could be convinced otherwise.

[HappySack]

Strategic are better but more expensive, tactical are the opposite but can still do ground support.

[1997]

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I can't find a real use for strat bombing because once I'm putting air somewhere my troops are going in anyway. I usually make around 300-500.

[Big [REDACTED] Marty]

strat bombers drop nukes, and if used to target infrastructure can wreck havoc on rails/hubs/ports

tac bombers suck at strat bombing, but can be very potent on close air support/logistics bombing

use tactical bombers for your support role, only use strats for nukes

small frame cas is much cheaper and still okay, but when it comes to raw damage, tactical is the way to go

[MonkeysAndDogs]

I use tactical bombers for close air support as the actual close air support planes have terrible range. I don't usually bomb strategically.

[Code]

Want to bomb industry? Build large-air-frames for bombing, don't even bother with medium air frames. Compare and contrast the damage a full medium bomb bay to a large bomb bay bomber, and tell me why you are even considering medium airframe bombers?

Not to say medium air frames aren't good, they are great for naval bombing since you can put 2 naval torpedoes on them, with a decent production cost. But for bombing, large air frames don't even come close. A inter-war-large air frame will cause more damage than ANY kind of medium air frame - even jets.

[EthanT]

CAS is best, tactical is basically heavy CAS, strats are worthless outside of nukes. No amount of infrastructure damage makes up for their cost/effectiveness. Theres never a single moment where that strat production wouldnt have been better on more CAS. If you have to use one or the other, use tactical because theyre semi redeemable in SP, but strat is a waste of production.

[SMS König Albert]

If you're a major industrial country like Germany and USA, just use strategic bombers, let the CAS do their job as ground support. Not to mention if you're planning to bomb the UK, the air-defence in southern England will tear those tactical bombers to shreds. But if you're an half-assed industrial countries like Italy and Japan, made tactical bombers instead. Though I never do this as Japan/Italy, instead I just produce fighters and carrier dive/torpedo bombers.

[mk11]

The only countries that significantly invested in strategic bombers were the UK and USA because that was the only way they could strike back. (USSR also had a strategic bomber force but it was quite small in comparison to the rest of the airforce.) I think the same applies in game, only invest in strategic bombers if you can't make much use of CAS.

[Furball]

This is one of those games where the answer often 'depends'.

First of all strategic bombing is actually a huge waste of resources. The general consensus is you need at least 1000 bombers to start making any noticable difference and honestly the factories and resources needed to build and maintain at least 1000 bombers in the air can be much better spent elsewhere.

If your looking for ground support for your armies then your go to type should be CAS...As your new it can be tempting to do interesting thinkgs like make hybrid planes but don't, specialise each aircraft type to do a specific role as best it can so make CAS with the highest amount of ground attack as possible.

Now CAS are perfect in densly populated areas like Europe but if you move to places like Russia, Africa and particularly Asia airfields are often few and far between which means quite often your CAS won't have the range to offer support so you will want a longer range option and that is where tactical bombers come in to play. Again you should focus on making them the best possible at ground support but the best ground support modules can also allow other missions.e.g. small bomb bays also allow the port strike mission which can be useful sometimes. While your tactical bombers won't do much damage with a port strike, any damage at all will keep ships in dock being repaired rather than out at sea adding naval power which can mean the difference between being able to undertake a naval invasion or not.

Large airframes are only good for two things, dropping nukes and long range naval patrols. Dropping nukes is extreme late game and you may even have won by the time you get the option to do so or again as building strategic bombers as well as nuclear bombs takes to much time and resources (and they are actually relatively weak) you may find nukes just aren't worth investing in unless you have a vast glut of factories. If you have a large excess of factories then TBH you don't need nukes and are probably just winding up your game so don't need the help of nukes and there isn't even any flashy graphics from droping them...I used them once to try them out and never bothered since then. The enemy dropping nukes can be annoying but just make sure you have air superiority and they can't drop them. If your struggling for air superiority at the point nukes are around then TBH you have bigger issues then having or not having nukes.

Long rang naval patrols can make a huge difference in the Pacific and Atlantic with the combined effect that air superiority (which you usually get due to being able to fly long range planes in areas where there are no airfields) and their ability to carry multiple torpedo modules means they have a strong naval/port strike ability which can help you dominate sea zone you would otherwise be unable to or stuggle to dominate. Obviously being large airframes they have a large production cost but as you are building them to fly in deep ocean patrols where there is likely little or no enemy airfield or AA coverage, once you have them built you only need a few factories dedicated to building replacements.