Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

General discussion related to the game goes here.

Moderators: Balthagor, Legend, Moderators

Post Reply
anash
Sergeant
Posts: 21
Joined: Mar 04 2017
Human: Yes

Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by anash »

I have noticed throughout my years of playing SR, that the late World War II bombers such as the Tu-4, and the Amerika Bomber do not have a large enough missile deck to hold the initial design for the 10KT atomic bomb. This is especially aggravating if I am playing as the USSR in 1949 and am not able to use my nuclear arsenal until I develop planes that have the ability to handle size 10 missiles. If something could be done about this it would make the game much more enjoyable.
GIJoe597
Board Admin
Posts: 2918
Joined: Sep 29 2008
Human: Yes
Contact:

Re: Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by GIJoe597 »

I was looking at this earlier today. I "think" the 10t nuke is supposed to be 4t. The 20t nuke is 6t and the 100t nuke is 8t. Seems odd the smallest is the largest. Maybe they were trying to show advances in technology which allowed smaller delivery "packages".

While the USA does have a Strategic Bomber able to handle 10t I agree it is an oversight or typo for the Soviets to not have one.
https://www.youtube.com/user/GIJoe597


Older/retired gamers, who do not tolerate foolishness.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/USARG
User avatar
Zuikaku
General
Posts: 2394
Joined: Feb 10 2012
Human: Yes

Re: Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by Zuikaku »

I'm sure I corrected this in my mod along with weird tech prereqs for nuke freefall bombs (like guided bomb design and rocket techs). Actually, there were 2 indentical 10kt nukes and one had excessive weight.
Please teach AI everything!
Nerei
General
Posts: 1354
Joined: Jan 11 2016
Human: Yes

Re: Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by Nerei »

The 20Kt and 100Kt being lighter than the 10Kt is not odd at all. The weapons are of later designs (higher tech level) and thus have been subject to miniaturisation.

Not entirely accurate in terms of introduction date but the 20Kt could represent something like the US MK 8 bomb from 1952 that is comparable to the MK 3 (Fatman) but is 1/3 the weight and a far less bulky design. Hard to find an exact design for a US 100Kt pure fission design (sorry not that good at Soviet bombs) but the MK 18 is comparable in terms of introduction date to the tech level of the 100Kt bomb, is comparable in weight to the MK 1 (Little Boy) and has a yield of around.500KT. It is actually around 20% lighter than the MK 3.

Compared to the 10Kt weapon that probably represents MK 1 by 1960 you should be able to manufacture weapons like the MK 43 that is 1/4 the weight but has a yield upwards of 1Mt or the MK 41 which has a similar weight but has a yield approaching 25Mt. Both are US thermonuclear implosion devices.


The smallest nuclear device I can remember is the US Mk54 warhead (also from around 1960) that has upwards of 1/10 the yield of the MK 1 but only weigh about 25Kg and can fit in a rucksack.

A modern MIRV warhead would typically be in the 100-300Kg range but can have a yield of 500Kt or more.

Weight and yield really does not have to have much in common. Many devices have variable yield so your 10Kt and 200Kt weapons could basically be the same weapon. Some can even be adjusted during flight.


The max missile size and capacity of the 1949 start is fairly broken though. The monstrous B-36 has lower max missile size (and capacity) than the by comparison puny B-29 (size comparison). For those of you curious the B-36 was the main delivery platform of early US thermonuclear devices such as the 21000kg MK 17 bomb. That bomb is more than 4 times heavier than Little Boy.
The Tu-4 is basically a Soviet copy of the B-29 so in terms of stats it should pretty much be identical.
lorddrakenwode
Warrant Officer
Posts: 28
Joined: Sep 14 2010
Human: Yes

Re: Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by lorddrakenwode »

Excellent information, and agreed on almost all points.

One little thing, though. If memory serves, though the Tu-4 was a rivet-for-rivet copy of the B-29, the Soviets had a little problem: Their rivets (and aircraft skin, and everything else, for that matter) came in metric sizes, rather than the inches used by Boeing. Having to choose between taking a partial step up, or a partial step down, they decided to take a partial step up, so as not to lose structural integrity. This led to an aircraft with significantly greater empty weight than the B-29, and so the Tu-4 saw noticeably poorer performance, and payload capacity, than the genuine article.

It should also be noted that the Soviets never captured any of the Silverplate planes, as far as I know, which had been modified from the base B-29 model to accommodate the dimensions and weights of the very large and heavy (for their yield) Little Boy and Fat Man bombs. Though I don't know if the weight differences in the copy would have been enough to reduce the payload enough to make a difference, I do know that only the Silverplate B-29s were capable of carrying either of America's first nuclear bombs. Therefore, I can see logic in a smaller max missile size for the Tu-4, that would prohibit it from carrying a first-generation nuclear bomb.
GIJoe597
Board Admin
Posts: 2918
Joined: Sep 29 2008
Human: Yes
Contact:

Re: Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by GIJoe597 »

For game play reasons, it makes no sense for the USSR to have the ability to build Nukes, but not the ability to deliver them.
https://www.youtube.com/user/GIJoe597


Older/retired gamers, who do not tolerate foolishness.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/USARG
Nerei
General
Posts: 1354
Joined: Jan 11 2016
Human: Yes

Re: Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by Nerei »

While the Tu-4 is not a perfect copy it is however not that far off on many points. Half the problem for the aircraft though was a way too strict adherence to copying the original US aircraft instead of just using it as a template. It is to the point where they at times made inferior versions of US components despite having as good domestic alternatives.

Going by wikipedia it appears the for the game relevant differences are in speed, range and different weaponry. Their typical weight of the payload appear to have been roughly the same so I would keep attack capabilities similar. Range should probably be a bit shorter and speed lower.
The heavier defensive armament certainly should be considered as it used 23mm cannons with HE ammunition instead of 12.7mm HMG's. Not that this is amazingly important for a bomber.

I am also fairly sure you are right in that the USSR only acquired regular bomber variants of the B-29. All of them where planes forced to land in the USSR after suffering damage over Japan after all.
However I do consider Tupolev capable of making such a modification on their own especially considering that it was capable of dropping the first soviet nuclear bomb the RDS-1 which is based on and from what I can find roughly the same size and weight as the US Mk 3 nuclear bomb.

The closest representation for the RDS-1 or Mk 3 would probably be the 10Kt despite the RDS-1 being a 22Kt weapon so it definitely should be capable of delivering it (basically the yield is the only thing the in-game 20Kt weapon and the RDS-1 has in common as it most definitely is a very early nuclear weapon).
Really we do need more freefall nuclear bombs. The replacement system should do well to represent miniaturisation of the weapons without the list being too cluttered with normal view settings.
There is basically nothing in freefall hydrogen bombs such as the Mk-17 or Mk-24 either. We get a puny 100Kt bomb and then we largely swap to missiles.
SGTscuba
General
Posts: 2544
Joined: Dec 08 2007
Location: Tipton, UK

Re: Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by SGTscuba »

More Nuclear bomb designs perhaps? I don't think models would be too important but it would help.
My SR:U Model Project, get the latest and post suggestions here:

http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... 79&t=28040
Nerei
General
Posts: 1354
Joined: Jan 11 2016
Human: Yes

Re: Late World War II Era Strategic Bombers

Post by Nerei »

I was mainly just thinking new designs although making models to go along with them would not be that hard really.

I did some time ago consider how to get stats for non-MIRV nuclear weapons (MIRV would be far more tricky) I ended up playing with the radius at which 20 PSI overpressure is achieved when detonated at optimal height as that should be enough to cause near total destruction even to heavily reinforced concrete structures.
The in-game numbers for the 20 and 100kt is actually not that far off from what I get using that equation. ICBM's drop off quite a bit though as the most destructive ICBM the SS-18 Satan/R-36 in my equation should be roughly 200-250% higher in attack values compared to the in-game version.

Using the 10kt to represent a 15Kt US Mk 1 nuclear bomb as reference I ended up with a SS-18 Satan (assuming a 25Mt warhead) or US Mk 41 bomb scoring 35K fort, 17K soft and 6K hard and surface attack. a 15Mt Mk 17/24 thermonuclear bomb would be around 29K, 14.5K, 4.9K and 4.9K.

The 50Mt An602 is about 43K, 17K, 7K and 7K.

These weapons would probably more or less destroy everything in a hex but then again they probably would in real life too. A hex is 16Km and the 20PSI overpressure is achieved pretty much over the entire hex with a 25Mt weapon.
Soft, hard and surface attack might have to be adjusted though but then again the shockwave might kill the crew even if the vehicle itself survives.


I went with radius over surface area to prevent the numbers from getting too extreme. They get quite high already.
Using surface area instead of radius a 25Mt weapon (again could be the Mk 41 bomb or SS-18 Satan) would have around 400K fort attack.



Here is a quick take on a Mk 17 15Mt thermonuclear bomb. It should be ready for conversion. For an entire days work of doing nothing but bombs I could probably make somewhere around 5-10 of them. Research might actually be more time-consuming than actually building them in many cases.

Image
Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion - SRUltimate”