1941 GC Luftwaffe fighter escorts

[Jango32]

I am in desperate need of help in figuring out why most of the time there are very few Axis fighters escorting bombers in offensive ground support, and why very few times they fly out in force. This is something I have noticed across multiple games and multiple patches.

I have deleted all starting air directives at the start of the game, I altered the air doctrine and explicitly put 300 escort pts for ground support for every Luftflotte in an attempt to ensure the entire air group flies out because 100 was not working out for that purpose.

Loehr (Luftflotte 4) has an air rating of 7, he is the second best Luftflotte leader on scenario start if air rating matters at all. In addition his initiative is 7 and his morale is 8. Hostynne (JG 3 base) is not overburdened with planes, it is fully supplied, it has plentiful ammunition and it is drowning in fuel. The air groups of the JG 3 AOG that are set to daytime operations both have 3% and 5% traveled values. They are both in range of the hex.

In T1_policemen_south_2, you will see that in the battle between the 213th Security Division (6th Army) and the 98th NKVD border guard very few fighters (18) joined the battle, despite around 60 being eligible by all accounts. Doing the attack over and over again using T1_policemen_south_1 should yield similar numbers of Bf 109s entering.

In T1_policemen_south_3, suddenly there are 52 fighters joining the battle of 213th Security Division vs 47th/9th FR MG-Artillery Battalion right below the NKVD engagement. I did not change any settings whatsoever. If you look around the map (north and center) it can be readily observed that most of the time few fighters entered the air battles.

Is everything working correctly or could there be something beyond RNG that prevents fighters from escorting offensive ground support bombers?

T1_policemen_south.zip

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[Jango32]

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[Joel Billings]

Are you accounting for escort range being shorter than combat range? What about distance to the stage base?

[Jango32]

Well, it's ground support, so I can't exactly set the staging base per attack without constantly rebasing the planes (and even then I am not sure if it's possible to truly control the staging base).

I have just tried with fuel tanks for I./JG 3 and II./JG 3, they aren't flying out in the expected numbers - still only 18 fighters escorting. KG 54 is the bomber AOG and it's stationed like 6 hexes away from where this battle takes place.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Is this what you are trying to do?

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[HardLuckYetAgain]

Battle #2

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[Jango32]

What I am trying to do is ensure that most if not the entire fighter air group flies as it should to escort bombers in offensive ground support missions. At the moment it seems to be quite random whether you even get at least 50% of the fighter air group escorting the bombers.

This is not auto-interception.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

What I am trying to do is ensure that most if not the entire fighter air group flies as it should to escort bombers in offensive ground support missions. At the moment it seems to be quite random whether you even get at least 50% of the fighter air group escorting the bombers.

This is not auto-interception.

Just to be clear, my photos are not "auto-interception" but "Ground support". I have 2 to 1 in escorts to bombers.

[Jango32]

Yes, that would be grand.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Yes, that would be grand.

In a nutshell you have to get away from AOG assignment using Air Directive percentage. There is an anomaly there and could be because of the AI is deciding on what it "thinks" is sufficient for the fight per this manual rule. (the other anomaly is the Air Directive percentage may not be working correctly and the Devs would have to answer that)

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Just take AOG assignment out of the equation and hard set your Air Directives with the Air Groups themselves and NOT using AOG's. Using the AOG's will let the AI decide and with you setting the Air Groups "you" decide by setting the minimum and maximum number. I hope that makes sense.


Now having said that you will notice that many times you will see "patrol" instead of "escort" on a battle. Seeing "patrol", even when the Air Group is set to escort, to me that is a good thing. Remember if you follow the basic interception routine that there is a patrol phase (number 3 on the snapshot below) where the AI will execute these patrols.

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Then before the Air execution there is another patrol determination(normally 10-20 aircraft on these rolls for patrol by the way and what you are seeing in your photos) and finally escort allocation of those that did not go on patrol. Thus you will get results like this with patrol & escort allocation. In this photo I had all of JG3(except III/JG3 which far to the SW of the battle hex) on escort and JG51 as basic auto-interception. You will see that Stab JG3, I JG3, and II JG3 were on their toes and auto intercepted to patrol with the green arrows with good rolls along with JG51 to this battle. At the end of these reaction phases the others that were unfortunate in their rolls still proceeded with their escort duties.

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At the end of the day any Air Group assigned to Ground Support will fly with GS button activated 100% of the time as Patrol or escort. So careful execution of that button during the turn is of utmost importance along with keeping an eye on fatigue, air miles, and etc that could hamper allocation to that GS mission.

[Jango32]

So if you want to increase the chances of always flying out in numbers, you need to switch to air groups when creating the ground support directive. So that would mean assigning every fighter & bomber air group instead of the whole AOGs as required.


Surely something weird is going on that may be unintended with AOG assignment and its relationship with fighters flying out to escort... Especially because it's not consistent, sometimes it flies out in few numbers, sometimes it doesn't.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

So if you want to increase the chances of always flying out in numbers, you need to switch to air groups when creating the ground support directive. So that would mean assigning every fighter & bomber air group instead of the whole AOGs as required.


Surely something weird is going on that may be unintended with AOG assignment and its relationship with fighters flying out to escort... Especially because it's not consistent, sometimes it flies out in few numbers, sometimes it doesn't.

I have found idiosyncrasies with AOG assignments. I stopped using them a long time ago and only do "air groups"(and Stabs) in my Air directives by selection to gain maximum benefit. Which works terrific but more time consuming.

As for the 2nd paragraph that is only something that Joel and the Dev team can answer. I noticed it a long time ago with AOG assignments and stopped using them altogether to alleviate the situation from my air game. I can go further into detail on what I found(part of some of it is in my previous post in this thread) but for this discussion I will not delve any further into those findings instead leaving the 2nd paragraph to be addressed by Joel and the Dev team.

[Joel Billings]

A few things going on here. I do not think that that air doctrine percentages are something that works well (or in any understandable way) in the ground phase. I don't think Gary ever synced in with Pavel's air doctrine percentages for ground support, so until Pavel tries to figure out Gary's code in this area, I would advise against trying to get the air doctrine percentage to impact either escorts or bombers flown. Gary uses his own methods to determine what should fly and they are out of player control. That's my understanding after looking at this hard over a year ago, and speaking with Gary about it. I could be remembering things incorrectly, but that's where I remember ending up.

As for AOG versus group assignments, I think you lose some control when you assign AOGs to lots of different ADs. If you assign individual groups, they only have one AD to work on, so their participation is more assured. If you assign an AOG to 1 AD, it should be no different that had you assigned the individual groups to that AD. If you assign an AOG to 11 different ADs (which is what Jango has done in the saves he attached), it's gets a lot more difficult to understand exactly why someone isn't flying. Using Jango's first save in the ground phase, I can repeat not getting escorts in many of the 6th Army attacks (including the one with the hex shown in the screenshot 183,174, where I never got escorts using that save). Some get escorts, others don't, but they all get some CAP. One reason Gary puts up a small amount of auto CAP over ground battles is he wanted to make sure some fighters flew over battles in case escorts don't appear, or auto-intercepts don't show up. Because there are lots of reasons in the system for those things not to happen. Even if it is possible for them to appear, they may not for legitimate reasons. I tried a few tests that I can't say are positively valid, but seeing as I didn't have an air planning save to work from, I tried anyway. I have a way to take a save, bring it to the editor, turn it into a scenario, then load it in as a scenario and run it. I used Jango's save to remove JG3 from the other ADs and had it only in the ground support AD. I loaded this in and had it run through the air phase again, at which point I ran the attack on the hex where no escorts ever show up. I got escorts. So I assume that it is possible for the escorts to fly into this battle if the AOG is not overloaded with ADs. I ran two other tests, and in a case where I thought I ran the 2 tests in the same way, once I got escorts flying, and another time I didn't. However, I wasn't perfect in keeping track of what I was doing so it's possible I ran two different kinds of tests. It's also possible I was running the same test, but die rolls ended up with the escorts not showing up in one run but showing up in the other.

I think it's worth exploring whether AOGs that are overloaded with many air directives have a harder time getting included in a mission. I have Jango's save where escorts don't appear to fly into that one hex every time I run it, so it's possible Pavel might be able to learn something if he were to try running it. But Gary always tells me it's very hard to figure out why something is not happening (much easier to figure out why something happens). Since it looks like this save is just a slightly modified turn 1, do you have a save in the air planning phase after you made your mods? If so, any chance you can try reducing the number of ADs that JG 3 is flying, in order to see if it is having an impact on the escorts? Also, in your save, a lot of units are already set to rest (although not the 2 key JG 3 units). Not sure if that confuses the issue.

There could be a bug of some kind in the way air units participate when in multiple ADs, or it could be a somewhat intended issue of trying to do to many things causes friction that causes problems getting the results you want. Or it could be something else entirely. I just ran another set of tests with only individual groups from JG3 and KG 54 assigned to a GS mission, and no other ADs of any kind. When I ran some attacks, I got some bombers, and tons of Patrol fighters, but no escorts (of course like many of these battles, there are enemy a/c in the battle). I kept attacking more, and got some escorts in some of the battles, but not others. My conclusion? I haven't got a clue now, other than that there's a lot of randomness in whether fighters show up as escorts in ground support, but if there are fighters around, some will show up as either Patrol (cap) or Patrol (auto-interceptors). Wish I could give you a more satisfying answer.

[Jango32]

I can email you over 40 save files from this game if need be. Thanks for looking into it.

[Stamb]

I think it's worth exploring whether AOGs that are overloaded with many air directives have a harder time getting included in a mission.

It is. I remember when i healed Jango's depression because of no bombers flying during GS on t1 by deleting all GA directives that he had. And once i deleted all of them - planes started to fly. So i try to apply KISS principle to an air war(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle)

Somehow GA directives were effecting GS directive.

[Jango32]

It is. I remember when i healed Jango's depression because of no bombers flying during GS on t1 by deleting all GA directives that he had. And once i deleted all of them - planes started to fly. So i try to apply KISS principle to an air war(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle)

Somehow GA directives were effecting GS directive.

I did just try to delete the ground attack directives to see if that had any effect, but only 20 fighters flew after setting two air groups of JG 3 to daytime operations while the whole bomber KG (I think I set 54) flew with all its planes.

[ToxicThug11]

I'm also not getting adequate fighter support despite being at Pskov and having 90% supply. No idea what possesses my BF109s to fly out in groups of 30 against 200 Soviet fighters but hey, atleast I have SOME fighter support.

(I have no complaints about the battle or the air losses, rather the commitment of a mere 7% of my planes to a battle)