The Screams of the deceased Soldiers, HLYA(G) vs Gunnulf(S)

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

North

First attack across the Velikaya River. I have decided to use Ground Support this game to bring out Soviet Fighters. None of my bombers flew on this one so not what I 100% wanted. But I get across the river.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

North

20th PZ across the river for 2nd attack. This time my bombers flew and drew out those pesky Soviet Fighters. Yak's and Migs come in fast & I lose 8 fighters for the worst combat on all the fronts for my fighters this turn

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

North

3rd attack by 20 PZ clears the road for the rest of the crew to cross. Yaks and I-16 this time.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn (no delay on the AAR at the moment)

North

Pskov is squished in but not surrounded.

[Repsol]

will all those A2A kills improve your airunits any ? or are they already to good to improve much ?

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

North

Absolute "madness" in the Gulf of Riga. I flew 3 Superiority mission & 3 escorted naval missions in the Gulf. I seem to have it open but boy there are a ton of aircraft at the bottom of the sea now.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

North

I did find this combat a bit odd. Maybe someone can explain what happened here.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: Repsol

will all those A2A kills improve your airunits any ? or are they already to good to improve much ?

My air units kills are improving my units Morale and experience. There is room to improve for sure.

[Nix77]

The MBRs are flying as utility in naval interdiction, so their losses are shown as utility for some reason?

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

North

This is the best non "stab" fighter squadron I have at the moment. You can see the exp & Morale along with the aircraft kills for the unit.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: Nix77

The MBRs are flying as utility in naval interdiction, so their losses are shown as utility for some reason?

ya, may be a bug???

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

North

I did "not" finish all the pockets in the North this time I had my head up my arse on some of the moves and when I realized I had to improvise.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

North

The rest of the pockets I was able to finish off in the north.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

Stavka

I found this one interesting.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

Center

Center pockets removed. I hope there is no Cav unit lurking in the darkness this time. In my other game I missed it and and hurt my rail. .

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

South

Form a few more pockets. Boy the south is a royal pain. Met some very heavy Soviet pipe hitter defenders when I was trying to cut this off. One of my PZ Divisions is down to 50% TOE because of it, another at 65%. GAH.

[Repsol]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

Turn 2 End German turn

North

This is the best non "stab" fighter squadron I have at the moment. You can see the exp & Morale along with the aircraft kills for the unit.

Nice !
They start as 86(75)

Thats a decent increase in moral [:)] (unless the german moral-start is randomized and they started higher in this game).

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

Rumania

Form a few more pockets with the Rumanians.

[M60A3TTS]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

Won't lie, your method is clearly yielding superior results to the conventional opening. Whether that triggers a future patch or not remains to be seen.

Now the comment of 10 weeks of experienced pilots taken out might benefit from some context. With the conventional approach, you're still killing pilots. The question is that with this method, how many fewer losses do you take and how many more do you inflict? In my own HvH game, I suffered 1,795 pilots KIA with the conventional opening and considerably more Axis air losses. You had 2,383 Soviet KIA. That's +588 which is a little over two weeks worth of experienced pilots in the early training cycle.

The losses from turn 2 are interesting, but your opponent clearly is bold enough that the I-I53 biplanes along with their pilots are being thrown into the furnace. You may not see future opponents quite so eager to hurl these planes into battle.

Bottom line, no reason not to keep doing what you're doing until someone says you can't or they develop the more perfect mousetrap.

Thank you for the nice write up I just don't know how much of a difference this will make over the long term game. A few extra turns worth of trained pilots on the first turn may end up being just a spit in the bucket over 200+ turns. I guess it all boils down to how the Soviet reacts to this. Time will tell.

Well there's a little more to it, and it's to your benefit. The definition of a trained Soviet pilot puts it in an experience range as low as 35. It's really way too low, IMHO, it should be around 50. Pilots with levels below 50 shoot down only a small fraction of Axis aircraft among those involved in A2A combat.

In your case, you aren't just eliminating trained pilots, you're eliminating pilots, among them many with 60+ experience who are a legitimate threat to your aircraft. Those kind of pilots don't appear again in numbers until 1944. So getting rid of a bigger group of them will save some of your own right from the beginning.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Turn 2 End German turn

Air Losses

Here are the air losses up to the end of the German Turn. Seems ok so far.