Naval bombers are designed to fight submarines and unescorted troops. They are not fit to attack ships, I mean they can but only when the Naval bombers have more knowledge and are in a stack of 7 together with 7 interceptors. The interceptors will help to absorb the damage. If you only had Naval bombers attacking then it's over fast.

Destroyer level 1 has 2 Anti Air, 3 of them makes 6
Transport ship level 1 has 0.3 Anti Air, times 50 that makes 15

So the total Anti Air value was 21.

That's right, but the attack from your planes is distributed on 53 units with 340 HP, while the AA of the ships distributed on only 9 units with 215 HP ..

Nevertheless, a bad result, but also the X-factor must be considered, which often turns out clearly in favor of the defender ..
.. but still not a satisfactory explanation, why you have lost all your planes but so few ships are sunken ..
.. presumably you attacked directly and not by patrol mode? Could be another partial explanation ..
.. possibly also submarines were in the attacked stack? Also another, if not the most illuminating explanation ..

Sometimes one can not really understand the combat results -- are there maybe any extraterrestrial powers involved..?



All in all a black day for your airforce -- condolence ..

And maybe there were some fighters in the near patrolling above that convoy... it would explain your heavy losses.

patrol does continues damage while attack does short burst of damage.

it is like pounding a nail into a wall. you can either constantly pound it or you can pound it once, wait 3o sec. pound it again and continue that. patrolling will give you faster results.

in theory you are right, but in case enemys defending valu divided by4 is less than 1, than you may have a chance to attack those units, without getting damage at all. Of course subject to the random factor.

The speed is dependent on the lvl of the starting airport and the distance to the target.

Third and maybe biggest difference that in case of direct attack, enemy can send some fighters and patroll above land units and so your direct attacking airforce is killed very soon.

As Szinisa hinted:

The notorious X-Factor ..

.. nobody knows how it works, least of all myself.
But supposedly he can vary the damage by up to +100% or -100%.

In direct attack you have only 1 X-factor -- and in worst case with this X-factor your attack can be completely shitty >> if you get -100% and your opponent +100%.
Comparative patrol, on the other hand, gives you 4 chances to get a good X-Factor.

So if one has the better combat values anyway, I recommend allways patrol, which although takes longer, but is much more gentle to the own planes so to speak.

If an attack instead has to go fast and you're willing to put up with more own losses, or if you're inferior in the combat values, you may also choice direct attack and hope for a good x-factor.

I strongly doubt that any amount of bad luck can explain this result. The only real explanation is patrolling interceptors.

X-factor can change slightly the results, but it cannot easily transform an easily won battle to a badly lost one.

True, as I already described earlier far above -- that with the 100% plus or minus is, as extra explained, simply an example for a certainly very very rare but at least possible worst case.

Easyer and more likely solution.. >> ..I assume that in the convoy attacked by Machiavelli there were some submarines, what he had certainly not checked before.

The biggest advantage of patrolling is that you can change the location of your planes within the red triangle without refulling. This way you can attack different targets without refulling which is way faster. Another important advantage about not having to refuel is that planes are very weak during refulling and can get killed easily by enemy artillery or planes. The health is only 25% (if i'm correct) during refulling so they take four times more damage. Patrolling is usually the fastest and safest way to deal with the enemy.

I have always had the idea that patroling gives major advantages. The way I see it, you can attack with 100% damage output and received once per (depends on distance from target and refuel time) or 25% damage output and received every quarter hour. Damage received is also 100% or 25%. So after an hour results are not equal.

To me it seems that if you patrol, and attack with 25% damage, your enemy suffers damage from the patrol. So the next patrol does not receive damage from the troops killed by the previous patrol. So the 4th patrol tick in an hour does not receive damage from the troops killed by the 3 patrols that preceided it. Meaning that when you compare hourly damage received, you are always better of using patrol.

Example: a stack of units has 100HP. Since HP relates to power output I will just use the HP to illustrate my point. Say the whole stack consists of light tanks to make it easier if you will.

Direct attack: 5 tacs and 5 int direct attack enemy unit stack X with 100HP. They attack directly and do 20HP damage. So the enemy has stack X with 80HP left to defend for the next attack. Meaning the enemy defended with the 100HP on the attack.

Patrol: The planes now do 20 damage, divided in 4 patrols. Doing 5HP damage every time. The enemy defends with 100HP initially, 95HP on the second time, 90HP on the third and 85 on the last patrol.

Average this out and you get that the patrol defends against 90HP and the direct attackers defend against 100HP.

I know the numbers are incorrect because I took out a lot of variables. But I hope the point does come across. Doing patrol means you do not have to defend against the units that the previous patrol took out. So you are better of patroling. Thats the point. Or am I completely wrong about this?

I think you are right.

But the efficiency of 7 is not 100%. You would not have much more than 40 attack points is my guess, without actually checking. 40 points would be 8 convoy units at 5 points each, although some damage would be distributed to the destroyers and submarines in the group.

Of your potential 8 enemy units that you could destroy, there is an X-factor that means an attack might do from zero to 100 percent of the listed damage. In this case 63% of your ammunition hit the target and did damage, and 37% missed.


There is a limit to how many units of each type are most effective per group, called the State Based Damage Efficiency.
Forum thread on SBDE



As far as the damage done to your airforce, it seems likely that there were either some cruisers or submarines with the group or within 5 km in order to strengthen the return fire.

Should have carried more torpedos lol