Questions Ground Attack / Ground Support

[AbeMuc]

Hi there,
after finishing my first playthrough in WitE2 with over 400 episodes on YT I try to start a new grand campaign in WitW as Allies.
I really need to finally understand the air war side of the game. I've grasped about 50% of how the air war works in War in the East 2 (WitE2) and used a mix of manual and automatic air directives. That was sufficient for WitE2. But in War in the West (WitW), I’d like to handle almost everything manually.

And I hope to find some answers here.

I generally understand what Ground Attack and Ground Support are. Since I want to assign my squadrons manually: do I need to assign different squadrons for Ground Support missions and Ground Attack missions?

Hypothetical example: If I assign all FB (fighter-bomber) squadrons to Ground Attack missions, then there’s nothing left for Ground Support, right? So does that mean I need to assign different squadrons for Ground Attack and Ground Support missions? Or, if Ground Support is set to auto, will it just use whatever capacity is left over?

It's a bit hard for me to explain what I mean — I hope someone understands me

[hadjimj]

Hi, this is my understanding of the system, someone can correct me if I get anything wrong.

If you manually assign a squadron to an Air directive then it will only fly as part of that directive and not fly any other missions. So in order to get a squadron to fly both ground attack and ground support missions both air directives must be set to auto.

So if both directives are set to auto group slection any spare air miles not spent on ground attack during the air execution phase (because that phase happens first) can be used during the gorund movement phase to conduct ground support missions.

Bear in mind that if the squadrons are low morale/experience and/or at long range they might use up all available air miles on the ground attack directive and not be available to fly ground support. This shouldn't matter too much if the combat is occurring in a hex with interdiction generated by the ground attack mission as the interdiction will create damage/disruption to ground units with an effect similar to if the planes were doing ground support.