How to Set a Recon Directive For Spotting Units

[K62_]

recon directive.png (180.64 KiB) Viewed 906 times

Always select the "Area = 1" option and cover larger areas by using multiple directives. Normally, assign one directive for every 20 available recon planes, although this limit can be exceeded occasionally. For example, if your Air HQ has 85 recon planes within range, you can safely assign 4 recon directives and sometimes even 5.

If the area has fewer than 9 hexes, such as when it borders sea hexes or your own territory, adjust the strike number accordingly. For instance, if it displays "Area: 1(7)" then set the "Strike num: 7."

When playing Germany, doing only two days per week and one directive for every 15 planes is feasible, but be aware that you may occasionally fail to spot an enemy unit.

You might want to set fighters within range of the target area to rest or reassign them to a different Air HQ temporarily. It's not possible to tell the engine to execute missions without an escort, leading to unnecessary fighter operational losses and also increasing the risk of interception.

[CaedusZ]

Learned something today. Thank you so much for explaning this.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

recon directive.png

Always select the "Area = 1" option and cover larger areas by using multiple directives. Normally, assign one directive for every 20 available recon planes, although this limit can be exceeded occasionally. For example, if your Air HQ has 85 recon planes within range, you can safely assign 4 recon directives and sometimes even 5.

If the area has fewer than 9 hexes, such as when it borders sea hexes or your own territory, adjust the strike number accordingly. For instance, if it displays "Area: 1(7)" then set the "Strike num: 7."

When playing Germany, doing only two days per week and one directive for every 15 planes is feasible, but be aware that you may occasionally fail to spot an enemy unit.

You might want to set fighters within range of the target area to rest or reassign them to a different Air HQ temporarily. It's not possible to tell the engine to execute missions without an escort, leading to unnecessary fighter operational losses and also increasing the risk of interception.

The engine loves to assign fighters to fly escort even if you tell it not to ;-P

[K62_]

The engine loves to assign fighters to fly escort even if you tell it not to ;-P

Indeed.

Another frequent problem with Recon directives is the overlap of target priorities with Ground Attack missions. For example, following Axis T1, your Ground Attack doctrine may resemble this:

recon doctrine.png (16.61 KiB) Viewed 782 times

The problem is that these settings apply to both Ground Attack and Recon missions. Consequently, your Recon directives will default to targeting airports, which isn't always optimal. So, you must either be vigilant and always manually adjust the reconnaissance priorities to Interdiction or change the Ground Attack directive to prioritize Interdiction.

[Joch1955]

Another thing to tweak is the intensity. “medium” or “high” will generate too many missions and too many losses (operational as well as combat) relative to the spotting results. Flying missions twice a day, I.e. “custom” intensity of 6 with a 3 day-per-week schedule or 4 with a 2 day-per-week schedule seems to be the sweet spot.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Another thing to tweak is the intensity. “medium” or “high” will generate too many missions and too many losses (operational as well as combat) relative to the spotting results. Flying missions twice a day, I.e. “custom” intensity of 6 with a 3 day-per-week schedule or 4 with a 2 day-per-week schedule seems to be the sweet spot.

Operational losess are not even remotely close to the insane ludicrous numbers when the game was first released. Range is the killer along with supplies that I look for. Cranking down how many per day, or up, is justified if needed.

[Lurberri]

You might want to set fighters within range of the target area to rest or reassign them to a different Air HQ temporarily. It's not possible to tell the engine to execute missions without an escort, leading to unnecessary fighter operational losses and also increasing the risk of interception.

The best and simplest way to solve this problem is to directly select reconnaissance AOGs (Koluft in the German case) when the Recon ADs are created, so there is no problem with them flying fighters... because these units do not have any assigned.