Will there be improvements to the Air War component?

[FM WarB]

When I get a new computer, I would really like to have this game.

From following this forum, my biggest reservation so far concerns the air war component. It does not seem as intuitive as it could be to manage manually, requiring certain mouse click intensive tricks to get it to work well. I had hoped to enjoymanaging the air war.

The AI does not seem to handle the air war very well if you choose to let it, without mouse click intensive help.

Are there any improvements to this aspect of the game in the pipeline?

Of course, I could be wrong with these impressions,,,,Am I?

[CarnageINC]

I think the air war is a little vague in over all content but its not a game breaker.  The AI isn't so bad at remedial functions such as recon and it rocks the first turn of the game when you attack soviet airbases.  The doctrine has different levels of settings for a multitude of different missions, support, interception, interdiction, ground attack, airbase attack to name some off the top of my head.  If you launch a attack you can choose what squadrons to use by using a certain key function, i don't know off the top of my head but I read it somewhere in the forums.  It mostly is a all or nothing factor in AI that I find annoying, but as I said its not a game breaker and even if you could micromanage it more it really wouldn't make that big of a difference in the outcome of 99% of actions IMO.

[Speedysteve]

I do think the air war can be improved and tweaked. Know I've mentioned these before but the more experience I have in the game the more I see it. For example:

1.) Still bugs that after the first day of the war it's almost pointless bombing AF's. Doesn't make sense and feel right since historical AF raids could and were useful throughout the war not just on the first day of conflict.

2.) The proficiency of soviet fighters early on in the war seems a bit too high. For exampel these are the losses of recon and fighters after my recon phase. Would not expect many GE a2a losses at this stage of the war

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

We have plans regarding improvements on WitE's "Air War" component in due time (because it is no trivial matter - it is quite complex)... this is something Pavel (i.e. "Helpless") wrote about several time here at the public forum...

Thus don't worry guys (and gals)! [:)]


Leo "Apollo11"

[Speedysteve]

Milli grazzi Leo. If you guys want/need someone to test/help work on the air component let me know

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: Speedy

1.) Still bugs that after the first day of the war it's almost pointless bombing AF's. Doesn't make sense and feel right since historical AF raids could and were useful throughout the war not just on the first day of conflict.

But after the first day your enemy is not going to leave aircraft lined up to be blasted to bits, you can still attack airfields later in the game, but you won't get the same results as the first suprise attack. [:)]

[Speedysteve]

Of course they won't be lined up but you wouldn't also expect to only get no more than 10 planes out of 200 destroyed on the ground....especially when (take Turn 2 for example) there'll be 100's of damaged planes lining the runways and in hangars unable to move and waiting to be smacked by a follow up......

[ComradeP]

Speedy: when you check the recon mission in high detail, are the planes actually being shot down by fighters? The vast majority of my early war Axis losses are either directly due to AA fire, or due to planes representing a flying colander after a mission and being unrepairable/crashing on landing.

[blastpop]

So far playing scenarios I am having a hard understanding the proper use of my air forces. As mentioned things are a bit vague. Consequently there is some difficulty feeling comfortable that I am making reasonable moves with my air missions. It seems like I may be missing something important or vital. Mind you this is just a feeling...

Otherwise I like the game quite a bit.

Maybe we need someone in the know to write an advanced air tutorial.

[Wild]

I agree that the airwar feels a little vague. It is a little hard to get my head around it. I really loved the simplicity of the airwar in War in Russia.

[Speedysteve]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Speedy: when you check the recon mission in high detail, are the planes actually being shot down by fighters? The vast majority of my early war Axis losses are either directly due to AA fire, or due to planes representing a flying colander after a mission and being unrepairable/crashing on landing.

I'll have a look when I next run recon's

[FredSanford3]

For ground support, aerial resupply and tactical-level recon and interdiction missions, why not allow the allocation of air units to support specific units/HQ's? For many armies/airforces in WW2, that's how it was done I believe- forward air controllers were assigned to a ground unit, and they were in communications with the assigned air group. That way, your priority units will have dedicated air support until you re-assign them. It's a similar approach to the ground support unit system you have now.

For strategic level recon, fighter intercept and distant interdiction missions, I'd suggest a zone approach. Have a zone comprised of player selected groups of continuous hexes, and the assigned air assets will perform their missions within these zones. That way, you could select a 'recon zone' of say 5 hex rows by 5 hex columns, and assign a number of squadrons/groups. The AI would then fly missions in that zone based upon the doctrine settings.

City, ground attack, and airfield attacks would be left pretty much as-is, and the player could conduct these manually, since much of the tedium associated with the other missions is handled automatically.

[notenome]

I've actually pissed and moaned about the Air system, but after much tweaking (and manual reading) Im finally getting the hang of things. First off is that those percentages below the % to fly mean what proportion of aircraft you want to fly in a typical mission, based on what the AI would use. So if the AI is sending 70 bombers on a ground attack mission, drop that down to 10-15% and you should see a much more reasonable 15-20 bombers. Also, if you drop it down to zero, no mission of that type will be flown, so normally I cancel ground attack on the the first attacks, shoot down a bunch of soviet aircraft (as fighter intercept is a separate mission) and then let my bombers fly unhindered afterwards.
 
Second thing I started doing is setting the airbase range (below commitment) to less than twenty, which helps keep my aircraft focused where they are put and prevents aircraft from AGC going down to the Ukraine.
 
Now things I would like to see:
 
-First of all I miss the TOAW air screen where I could just see all my air squads where I could assign functions, rest squads etc all from one screen. Being able to delegate missions from a single screen would really help.
-More options for National Reserve. For example, being able to set something like 'if squad has FAT more than 70%, automatically send it to the National Reserve' and 'if FAT less than 20%, send it back to the airbase'
-The abolishment of the whole first air mission thing. Why? It so easy to have your bombers fly one mission (since you cant choose who flies ground support), basically guarantees that in most situations you wont be able to run ground attack missions etc. Don't get it, don't like it.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Speedy

Milli grazzi Leo. If you guys want/need someone to test/help work on the air component let me know

No problemo! [:D]


Leo "Apollo11"

[gris]

hello all
advance and I ask your indulgence for
my English very shabby

I followed the tutorial that talks about the first round of aerial
to do my first round against German ia.
resulted them and my students are a little less
I am a 160 losses for German
which over half AA
and 4700 losses to the Russian
 
 think we need refine% in air doctrine
in each type of flight
 
and in fact I had a question:
the list that you see when you right clik on
an enemy base, is the complete list
air group that are within distance
maximum a go?
So the groups that do not appear in this list
are those that have already reached 100% of their capacity for flight
and those who are not a target range?
again sorry for my bad English [8|]  fortunately google is my friend [:D]
 

[elmo3]

Not at all sure I understand your question, but when you mouse over an airbase it shows ready aircraft.  Hope that answers your question.

[Speedysteve]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Speedy: when you check the recon mission in high detail, are the planes actually being shot down by fighters? The vast majority of my early war Axis losses are either directly due to AA fire, or due to planes representing a flying colander after a mission and being unrepairable/crashing on landing.

Hi Comrade.

Here's some test info from my latest turn.

90 Recon missions flown.

I was surprised by the results!

24 escorting fighters were lost! The surprising thing for me was that 90% of them were from AA (like on the attached).

6 Recon were lost. 4 of these shot down by Soviets.

As an FYI in return 9 Soviet fighters were shot down.

IMO this heavy loss of fighters from AA is not right. Escorting fighters should be patrolling up high not flying around waiting to get shot down by AA whilst the recon does it's job.

Hope it helps......

[karonagames]

24 escorting fighters were lost! The surprising thing for me was that 90% of them were from AA (like on the attached).

We are currently testing a hot fix that reduces fighter losses to flak quite significantly - I can't tell you the actual number as we are still tweaking.

[ComradeP]

I'm also seeing fairly high fighter losses to AA fire, in any kind of mission, so it will be interesting to see how seriously the losses will be reduced.

[Speedysteve]

Okey dokey. Let me know if you want anymore tests on it etc