Bridge Tracking
All road and rail bridges in SEOW are tracked automatically. This means that every undestroyed bridge is always a live target in every mission, regardless of whether any flight has it listed as a GATTACK point or not. At the end of each mission, any bridge destruction events listed in the logfile are extracted and those bridges are marked as destroyed. In the next mission, the bridge will appear as destroyed in-game (see image below) and, over time, the bridge will be repaired according to the Bridge Repair settings in the DCS. Whilst destroyed or under repair, SEOW will ensure that ground units will not be able to cross the bridge. Repair can be carried out either automatically, or by using the Engineer Repair option which requires undestroyed engineer units to be within the control radious of the destroyed bridge.
Industrial Tracking
Factories and fuel dumps are not tracked automatically by SEOW (since there is no support within IL-2 like there is for bridges). Instead, SEOW supports two different methods to make factories and fuel dumps live targets in any mission. First, we note that industrial installations are grouped into industrial areas. There may be zero, one or more industrial areas in each town, e.g. "Stalingrad North", "Stalingrad Central", "Stalingrad South". If any installation is targeted for a GATTACK mission, then all installations in the same industrial area become live targets for that mission.
The first method is to use conventional bomber flights.
To target an industrial area using bomber flights, simply place a GATTACK point over the area and select a specific factory or fuel dump in the target selector drop-down box. Using "local search" or selecting a nearby military unit is not sufficient to make the whole industrial area live - you MUST target at least one factory or fuel dump directly. Subsequent bomber flights can use "local search", as long as at least one flight targets a factory or fuel dump in the area.
The second method is to use rocket barrages.
To target an industrial area using rocket barrages, simply target your long-range rocket unit to attack any location within 10 km of the industrial area. SEOW automatically makes live all industrial areas within 10 km of a rocket barrage target.
Once targeted, SEOW places small vehicles inside each major fuel dump (usually 6 fuel tanks or more) and factory (usually 3 chimneys or more) in the live industrial area. The nationality of each vehicle is determined by the controlling nation of the industrial facility. This allows AI bombers to "see" and attack enemy-controlled facilities. Neutral facilities still have target vehicles emplaced and can be destroyed, but AI bombers will not target them. You will see a list of confirmed target installations at the top of the briefing screen in-game.
Bombed installations are only registered as destroyed by SEOW if the internal target vehicle is destroyed. Machine-gunning fuel tanks will not destroy the target vehicle even though the tanks visually explode in-game. You MUST get a strong hit with bombs to register the kill. If successful, the installations will be registered as destroyed automatically by SEOW and will appear as such in the next mission (see image below). In some cases neighbouring installations will also be destroyed by SEOW's "wildfire" feature. All destroyed installations will be repaired automatically over time according to the industrial repair settings in the DCS.
So you see that SEOW supports strategic bombing in a very detailed way. If the new factory production feature is used, by destroying factories you can interrupt enemy reinforcements and by destroying bridges you can halt enemy ground movement. As was found in WWII, disrupting enemy supply lines and transportation is a very effective way of achieving victory, often much easier than killing heavy tanks and enemy fighters.
Cheers,
4Shades
