Any tips or guides for 1943 campaign as Allies?

[palioboy2]

I haven't had any issues escorting raids, my bomber loses are actually quite low. I hit every high capacity target in the Low Countries and Paris by the end of August with really reasonable loses and I am still floating around -800 points. Is there just no way you can into the black with Industry score without hitting the Rurh valley? My night raids have been crushing the Rurh valley I am already up to like 9700 points. Though I seem to be stuck at 60 urban damage at Essen, I have launched a few other raids at it to try to top it up but even in clear weather with tons of hits registering at game speed 1 it just stays at 60.

Also I can't see to shoot anything down at night. My NF that I send in my bomber stream register lots of EA found on radar but have only attacked once so far. And my caps over airfields haven't been very effective at all, maybe 1 or 2 down EA a night on average even though I am saturating 3+ airfields a night that I know have NF's operating out of them.

[mark dolby]

If you look at the '44 campaign scores to start at 20/2/44 they are 3 on superiority, 9 on terror and 4 on industry, try to make that 16 points in any form for historical comparison.

[JeffroK]

Yep, at mid Jan44 I am at 2,0,10, though Air Superiority wobbles between 2&3.

A terrible winter where I was too conservative about flying in 50% weather.

I would accept 65% as my limit now, and keep hitting radar & airfields to keep the Luftwaffe
in the air.

[palioboy2]

Thank you JeffroK and Mark Dolby for the info that does help a lot. I have heard the try to have 16 points before winter theory but giving a break down target helps a lot. I wasn't sure if I was so far behind in my industry score that I wouldn't be able to make it up in the other areas before the bad weather set in.

[simovitch]

ORIGINAL: mark dolby

If you look at the '44 campaign scores to start at 20/2/44 they are 3 on superiority, 9 on terror and 4 on industry, try to make that 16 points in any form for historical comparison.

Ever since 1.04 the extent of urban and industrial damage undergoes a minor, random adjustment at the beginning of each campaign so the starting score of every game will be a little different.

[palioboy2]

I've kind of just adopted this as my help thread haha.

Question, as the Allies will I get more airfields in Italy as time passes? It's Sept 18th and so far I am showing no AF's in the Foggia area other then Amendola. Obviously there are lots more in the area before the invasion. Do these come back at some point or am I SOL? If they do come back and this is supposed to represent some sort of operation delay while the AF's are being set up, is there anywhere one can see a list of what future AF's are on the way and a timetable for their completion?

[mark dolby]

They come back and then some. Lots are built in the Normandy area after the invasion as well. Some more appear on the way up Italy after the Gustav line breaks. I can't give you dates except by feb '44 there are over a dozen around Naples and two dozen around Foggia. Most of these are built before the new year.

[palioboy2]

Awesome, I assume that was the case but wanted to get a little more info before I started moving units around.

[palioboy2]

How do you guys like using your Typhoons in 43 and early 44. I started by hitting radar stations early in the campaign just to get them airborne with fighters to try to draw up the LW, but it hasn't been working great. I have been thinking I will just start hammering the units around the coasts in hopes of destroying equipment and putting pressure on industry that way. Is it worth it to hit rail areas near the coast? they largely seem to be heavily covered by flak so I have been avoiding that. Any suggestions on what others do?

[Pete McCullagh]

Try working them in conjunction with airfield recon. Dive Bombing raids don't cost as many losses as sweeps but gain your units experience. Use IXCs as high escorts for the same reason. Forcing LW to move bases costs them Morale and prevents heavy losses to your bombers. This also provides diversion for your heavy raids.(if they are going after your fighters, they aren't after your bombers). Play with timing to see what works for you. Have fun!

[palioboy2]

Yeah I was using them on AF raids when I could but it seems that the Germans have pulled most of their fighters our of France and the Netherlands by Oct where I now am. Enough so that I'm not consistently finding and being able to hit them day to day. On days when I don't have a viable AF to hit are the raids on enemy ground units worth it at this point, will the effects overtime add up to anything useful or does this not result on a drag on the German economy at all?

[Pete McCullagh]

You will have plenty of time to go after ground units during mandatory Overlord targeting. Trust me LW is still in France, they just keep moving units, so recon, recon and recon some more. Then recon again, you will find targets. I try to get typhoon and spitfire experience to at least 75. It won't be easy, but will pay off when you get better aircraft. LW has a nasty habit of parking a me410 outfit right where you don't want them.

[palioboy2]

Yeah I run a 3 day rotation of recon that covers more or less all of northern France and the Low countries. I haven't seen many occupied AF's that I am willing to strike out against consistently. They are either deep enough into France that the Typhoons become to vulnerable to being ganged up on, or the AF's that are occupied closer are saturated with LAA. Like I said I try to launch those AF attacks everyday its an options but there are lots of days when there isn't really a viable target.

I'm not so much interested in creating disruption for the ground units. I am more interested in, is there a pool of AFV, Art, Inf simulated in the game? If I constantly hit units with AFV present and drive those numbers down will it eventually create a situation were I can overwhelm the German industries ability to replace those units?

[SagarenHunter]

Theoretically? Yes, Armaments factories at least produce a set amount of military equipment, so if you can keep the pool of equipment low you can eventually drive down the overall combat value of the german ground units as they run out of Artillery, AFVs, etc. But you really have to work at it over time. I find for the first part of the game Italy is good for this as you have a lot of units, particularly panzer units, that you can hit with heavy bombers easily for significant casualties, especially if you're willing to go in around 12-15K for accurate targetting.

[palioboy2]

Anybody have any tips on how to rebuild a units moral? I am in mid November and I just made my first push past the Rurh Valley. I thought it went well, loses were around 3.3% for the bombers and like 2-2.5% for the fighters, mean while we gave the LW a thrashing and hammered the Rubber plant I sent the boys after. But when I checked my units the next day a bunch of my bombers units had moral in the 40s or even lower, these in units that lost 1 or 2 bombers on the raid. I know damages and action can both effect unit moral so I assume they had a pretty nerve racking mission even if loses were light. That being said all the shaken units have had 6 days off (about half the 8th) and their moral is all still quite low. I sent some of them on a milk run with a super heavy escort yesterday thinking maybe an easy mission would help to boost moral but that didn't seem to help at all.

I have managed to build up a score of 2/6/13 by mid Nov while husbanding my force pretty well. I have been consistently hitting the Rurh valley in a way that's allowing me to maintain good unit moral (my units rarely dipped below 60-65 before this raid.) and this raid didn't seem much worse other then the longer length (as in loses weren't noticeably higher).

Any suggestions on how to rebuild unit moral? Any suggestions on how to minimize moral loses on longer missions other then obvious things like making sure to avoid flak belts when possible and ensuring good escort coverage?

[simovitch]

In 1.05 and later versions the best way to rebuild morale is rest. It's still a slow process but it's a long war.

[palioboy2]

Roger, I figured that was the case but wanted to know if there was anything else you could do to benefit those units.

[palioboy2]

So I have managed to drive German rubber production to sub 500. I know this is supposed to effect their armaments' industry. When I went to check to see how much the effect was I was surprised to see that it is at 0! Is this working at designed? What does a production of 0 even mean? Will they be producing no AFV or artillery etc. until they are able to get it back above 500? Will they start to disperse their rubber production now that I have driven it down so much? If they do disperse industry do I automatically learn where production has moved?

[simovitch]

I was surprised to see that it is at 0

you need to recon all the dependent industries; steel, rubber, and ball bearings to get a better idea of what the armaments industry is doing. This is a good application for the 'recon all - target type' functions.

Maybe we should color code these values to tell the allies that intel is insufficient to display.

[palioboy2]

Ahhh that makes sense. I'm guessing that means it was at zero before I pushed rubber below 500 and just didn't notice.