Eagle Day 1 Day - Newb German versus AI UK

[Graymane]

[center]Introducing Myself[/center]

Hi everyone. This is my attempt as a complete newb to continue on with the first tutorial. I've played it through a few times, but I figure it would be best to ask for comments and ask my questions in this kind of format so you can see what I'm doing. I'm just sort of writing my thoughts down as I go along. It isn't edited (ok, it is, I noticed my horrible spelling after I submitted it), it is just what is going through my head as I play the first turn.

My goals for this game are not to win, but to play a turn as if it were the first turn of a long campaign. To start out, I read the manual, played the tutorial, read some AARs (most important thing to do with a new game), read the war room threads (Don't take this too much the wrong way, but the war room here is a bit sparser than some of the others, but since this is a newer release, hopefully it will get better!) and read through the general forum.


[center]Strategy or Dissing the WITP-AE UI?[/center]

The next thing I do in a new game is try to stick to the principles of warfare that might apply to this game that I've learned from other, similar games. I've never played a game completely focused on the air war before. The only games that have a strong air component in them that I regularly play are the HOI series and the WITP series. So, for better or worse, those experiences will guide me until I learn better ones.

What that means for me is that I think in terms of campaigns rather than missions and battles. I also need to consider my force composition, the enemy's force composition, the terrain/weather, what I'm supposed to accomplish and how long I have. In this case, my mission and time limit don't matter since I'm pretending to be playing a longer game, but we can assume it is to destroy the industrial capacity of SE England. After hunting around a bit, I can see my force composition. I had to go to the Campaign Summary and click the little Order of Battle button in the top right. The nice thing is that I can click on something like the I. Fliegerkorps of Luftflotte 2 and it will show all the groups and airfields where they are on the map. Holy Crap that is nice!!! Compared to a UI like WITP, it is heaven =)

By the way, to the reviewers that complained so much about the UI in this game, I'd like to give you a virtual pat on the head and say "aw, your so cute sweetie, but if you want to see a REAL UI, open up WITP or WITP-AE".



At any rate, it makes life a lot easier (you don't even want to know what you have to go through in something like WITP-AE to look at your OOB. You have to use a lot of 3rd party tools, spreadsheets, database dumps, a few voodoo incantations, sacrifice your first born, etc to do it right). I also want to give honorable mention to "List Planes" and "List Targets" as well. While they show 0's for now, the target list seems to be able to hold info such as forces there based on your intel effort.

[center]Planning or Did he just diss the South???[/center]

Next, I want to know what I'm facing. There doesn't seem to be any kind of enemy OOB listing and its status based on the results of intel/recon. I realize I can see raw numbers in "List Targets" but as many other games, this just confuses data with intel. I like to keep score as far as percentages when looking at enemy formations and units (100 BG of 8th AF is at 60% strength, for example, all based on intel/recon/FOW). So not knowing my enemy as far as even a guess in aircraft, I have no idea how to escort or plan my missions other than guessing. I realize after I play a few times, I'll "just know".

Finally, I look at the terrain. The map is nice in that I have lots of filters to see where targets are. I can see air avenues and target rich kinds of places. The main thing I'm looking for at this level are attacking/defending postures and interior lines. I'm attacking, the UK is defending and the UK has interior lines. This means bad things for me if I'm not careful. So I know right away that I can't simply try to punch through in one spot. He can respond to me quickly from all over while I have to converge from far away. His aircraft will be able to stay in the air longer.

When attacking interior lines, it is very important to have superiority in forces because you have to attack on multiple fronts at once. The American civil war is a great example of overcoming interior lines even when the other side has equal or superior quality in troops and leadership. Some call Lee one of the greatest generals of all time. At an operational level, that may be true. I'd give him and the rest of the South a strong "F" in strategic thinking, however. The south could never figure out it wasn't about the army or the men or the leaders, it was about having a plan and carrying it out and expending maximal effort in achieving it. Even with all the bumbling and incompetence of the leadership in the east, the AOP kept the South engaged and focused on the east, while the entire war was won and lost along the Mississippi.

The same thing occurs to me in playing war in the pacific. Japan has interior lines but in this case they squandered in the jungles of the SW pacific. The allies cracked that nut with 2 different axes of advance along with an effort in the CBI to keep the Japs tied down there as well.

It does occur to me that interior lines is also the same kind of thing that happens with your first girlfriend as you try to distract her with the yawn and arm stretch before moving onto the higher ground with the other arm.

[center]Air Planning or Fumbling with the bra strap for the first time[/center]

So, what does that mean for my planning? I want to have a focused effort with my units. I need to keep constant pressure on a variety of points and always have enough reserves that I can keep attacking/harassing. How can I do that? I don't really know yet how long my units can fly for example. Can I fly a unit every day? every 2 days? Does it matter if they win or not? I think it does. Not knowing that, I have to be conservative until I figure it out. I see that for the most part, I have a lead unit and 2 or 3 groups for each formation. Each korps has 3 or more formations. I generally like to fight with 1/3 reserve. This tells me something along the lines of either 2 formations attacking with 1 in reserve and rotation or do it at the level of a single formation with 2 groups flying and one group resting. I'm not sure which to do because there might be bonuses from the game involved in each case. My thought is to always fly the entire formation together and rotate formations within the korps.

So, for my first attempt at force allocations, excluding Norway. I have 15 KG of bombers, 8 JG and 2 ZG. 1 have one ErprGrp and some DBs. I also have a bunch of recon planes. My numbers might be off a little, but I think that is close. This tells me that I will have roughly 10 KG and 3-4 JG/ZG flying on any given day.

That is enough for my long-winded first post. I will have to think about what those numbers mean next!

[Graymane]

[center]Air Planning Continued or Still fumbling with the bra strap for the first time[/center]

So now we get down to the nuts and bolts of planning missions for the first turn. I've already decided (unless someone posts before I've finished the turn telling me I'm crazy) to send all the bombers in the same formation to a target(s) and rotate entire formations for rest/reserve at the korps level. Next thing I have to do is look at targets and missions. The missions are bombing, sweeps and recon. There are also night missions. I would also include feints and decoys (not sure if that is two missions or one =).

According the manual, it would appear that recon is important. Looking at my targets, most are at the 30+ day for last photo. My first question is should I recon before the raid or after? I think I will recon early in the morning where I want to attack as well as some decoy areas to not give away my main effort. I have recon planes, I have the recon missions, seems simple no? I will probably have the AI do it and then just adjust the missions to what I actually want reconned. Now, my little problem is how long after that should I send my next mission?

[center]Recon Wins Battles Or What general Custer didn't know did hurt him[/center]

In the other games that I play with a decent air focus (HOI, WITP-AE), intel is important. In HOI, it tells you where stuff is, it WITP-AE, it knocks the detection levels up and helps you figure out what is there and increases your chance of hitting the target. I think it is the same here. We are expending lots of money and lives, so lets give ourselves the best chance.

My next thought is that if flying a lot reduces readiness (or whatever it is called in this game), how can I get the bad guys to fly when they don't really need to? I'm thinking I could use my low experience and/or resting units to perform feint missions early in the morning to get the UK to scramble their fighters. I'm hoping if I set a target over the water, it will actually not bomb. I will probably have to do some research to see if I can just send planes toward the coast and then turn them back. I'm also not sure if this matters for fatigue. If I'm resting units but flying a feint/decoy is as fatiquing as a real mission, then I'll have to think of something else.

This whole "foreplay" before the main even is similar to SPWAW I find. There you have recon battles to limit your opponents knowledge of your intentions. The person that wins the recon battle almost always wins the main battle.

So, I know I'm going to recon and I'm going to feint. The feints are to get fighters up and running. I will use the word decoy for when I carry out a similar mission at the same time as the main effort and feint for doing it long before.

[center]Fighter Sweeps[/center]

Next, I think about what else I do in my other games in the air war. In both HOI and WITP-AE, I run missions over enemy air space and air fields to gain superiority. They have different names and mechanics in those games, but the idea is to kill the fighters or at least keep them from the area. That seems to be fighter sweeps in this game. What I'm wondering, and I'm sure it is in the manual and mentioned but I've forgotten, is if there is a difference in alt for sweeps when over an AF. i.e., if the target is an AF, will it always strafe regardless of alt or do I have to set it? If it is NOT over an AF, will enemy fighters even engage it? Oh well, back to the search tool. My biggest problem is lack of intel. I have no idea if I need to sweep or not cause I have no idea on numbers. I also don't know how many fighters I need for a sweep. When I select the mission, I pick a lead group but what if I want more to go? Do I need a new mission or can I just use "Add Escorts"? Finally, why should I sweep instead of just escort? In other games, you get various stacking penalties under various different names/guises, so by sweeping, you can get a ton of fighters into the area and fight it out.

So given all that, I still don't know whether to sweep or not.

[center]Bombing Targets or What was the point of playing this again?[/center]

So next we have to bomb stuff. I'm sure that is a technical term somewhere. My problem is, there is a lot of stuff to bomb and a lot of different kinds of stuff. More stuff than the other games where I've bombed stuff. Of course, that is to be expected from a bombing stuff game. For my purposes, I'm going to say you can bomb factories (including ports/RR), AFs, and radar sites. I'll skip troops for now. We need to bomb industry without losing our entire AF. To do that, we need to win AS. To do that, we need to kill his fighters or render them less effective. We can render them less effective by bombing AFs to reduce service and comm. We can also render them less effective by bombing radar sites. This makes him react more slowly and keep more aircraft in a higher state of readiness. All-in-all, it allows us to get inside his command loop to where he won't be able to react effective.

So, for this effort, I would first want to win AS. To do that, I need a combination of fighter sweeps and AF/Radar attacks. Long term, damaging industry will also reduce his ability to have effective fighters, but for now, this is the quickest way. Clearly, the main effort is going to be London and the surrounding vicinity. Special care, however, must be taken to not damage Upton Park this time around, or there will be consequences.

Generally, when I'm faced with a really big map and a lot of units, I find it helps to have a routine for moving around the map and units. I haven't discovered it yet for this game, but for now, I'll start at the edges and work my way in. The reason being is that there are fewer target choices for units in Norway, for example. So planning those is going to be easier. Then by the time I get to the middle, I will have more manageable choices.

So, for my overall plan, my main effort will be from the Dover to London area for now targeting energy and dock facilities at first. Why? because energy seems to have the most impact on stuff and docks are close by for secondary targets. Secondary efforts with be Southampton and Ipswich areas as they will be close enough (I hope) to draw fighter cover from the main area. In Norway, it will be whatever I can reach from there, I haven't checked yet. Probably that area of Northern England called Scotland ([:D] if that doesn't get a response nothing will). Aberdeen? Edinburgh?

So, for force allocations, if you will recall, I have roughly 10 KG and 3-4 JG/ZG to allocate for missions. Assuming (because I haven't actually checked locations on everything) 2 raids per secondary target, that leaves about 6 for the main effort. Assuming at least 1 JG/ZG per secondary area, that leaves 2 for the main effort. Already if feels like I'm spread too thin [;)]

[K.Pooley]

Good to hear from you, it's interesting to read about the game from your perspective as a newcomer. Something you wrote...

In this case, my mission and time limit don't matter since I'm pretending to be playing a longer game, but we can assume it is to destroy the industrial capacity of SE England.

...set me thinking. Part of the problem, as you know, is that Britain's industrial capacity was concentrated in the North and Midlands, South Wales and Scotland. As these are the harder-to-reach parts of the kingdom a central focus of the game for the LW (IMO) is how to reach the targets without exposing yourself to crippling losses. For an example of how not to do this see my AAR thread. As you can see I have gone for the approach of mainly hitting the closer targets, not that it's working so far...[:(]

Kevin

[Graymane]

Hi Kevin, good to hear from you. It is a problem that doesn't have a solution I think [:)]. At least in real terms, not sure about the game itself. I think attacking industry anywhere other than the SE was not sustainable by the LW without an invasion first. Without winning the BoB, there can be no invasion and hence no bombing further north. My impression of the BoB (and I'm not expert) was that the LW lost, in practical terms, as soon as they stopped bombing AFs and stopped trying to attrit the UK FGs before the job was done. Timetables and all that I suppose.

I'm not sure there was a solution for the allies either. How successful was the allied bombing campaign before the advent of better, longer range fighters and better tactics and aircraft?

[Graymane]

Before planning my own turn, I decided to give the AI a go first. I let it first plan recon missions for the 3 areas. Next I let it plan sweep missions and finally I let it plan bombing runs. Of course I won a resounding victory but the logic of the AI was utterly inexplicable to me. It sent stuff all over the place and only actually ran a couple of bomber raids and a lot of sweeps. I had the AI set to primary AFs, by the way. It is 10 damage to one and 25 to the other, but I only lost a few planes. It was doing recon way up in the north. I'm wondering if just looks for the place with the longest delay from the last recon photo?

When I ran a practice turn the other day, I took out 5 radar sites and 2 AFs on turn 1, but then I was flying at 5000 feet to the radar sites [:D] and suffered a bit from flack. On the other hand, I took out a lot of AA. Does it "grow" back?

[Rob Brennan UK]

Hi Graymane , didn't take you long to start an AAR [;)].. Hope your happy with it too. This is actually a v v good AAR/thread for all new players imo, thank you.

[Dobey455]

Hi Graymane,

I'll start be letting you know most of my experience has been with BTR (both the original and this new version) although I've dabbled in BOB as well. I think for now I'll just respond by throwing out a few thoughts and responses to what you have outlined above.

Your overall plan

Playing a 1 day scenario as if it were a longer campaign sounds like a really good way to get yor bearings regarding setting up missions. [:)]
My advice here though would be not to allow yourself to get too fixated on JUST the small scale results. You won't win or loose the war in a day or a week.
Always try to keep an eye on the bigger picture as well.
EXAMPLE: As the LW you can basically "loose" every engagement (ie loose more AC than you kill) and as the attacker you often will. However you can still win the campaign while taking 2:1 casualties on a day to day basis if need be.

I wouldn't send your recon out followed by your bombers, he'll just wax your recon planes. I'd tend to throw recon missions in simultaneously with raids, the more radar clutter he has the more confusion. In the morning you can recon for afternoon raids and in the afternoon recon for tommorrow mornings raids.
Option B would be to mix it up a bit, do your recon before the bombing raids on some days, after on others and during the raids on other days.

Rotations

I rotate my units as whole in much the same way, however you will find that you tend to have "star performers" that can seem to just keep going and going and going while other units will have one bad day and need a week off to recover. Leaders play a huge part in this.

Targets

BOB is much more a tactical campaign than a strategic one.
Personally I have never made any concerted effort to take out radar sites other than perhaps a few costal one to reduce the enemies reaction time in the hope of catching him on the climb.

I would think that AF would be your primary targets and in longer campaigns you'd probably want to pay some attention to AC plants (at the very least the Spit plants around South Hampton should be do-able).

I don't know how viable fuel is as a target in this campaign, but it can also be a factor in gaining air superiority.

Sweeps are vital! (IMHO)

a) it keeps him reacting to you (you maintain the initiative).
b) He is forced up into the air (or to loose planes on the ground). Force him to scramble and engage a sweep then follow with your raid while his fighters are back on the ground re-fuelling.
c) Properly timed you can catch him landing and low on fuel....this will be VERY good for you and make him have to think much harder about how, where and when to scramble.
d) In BTR a very significant portion of my A/C kills are enemy AC straffed on the ground. In BOB it is equally important to kill AC any which way you can.
e) Use patrols as a barrier between your raids and his likely approach routes. If you can force him to engage before reaching your bombers he will burn off most of his fuel fighting your sweep and have less time to engage your raid. This position will also alow you to bounce fighters returning to base low on fuel after having broken off there attack on your bombers.
f) If you are going to sweep an AF, for the love of God, get up-to-date (and prefferably low level) recon before hand so you know what to expect in terms of flak. I would think the Bf-100 recon birds would be good for the low level stuff.

[Graymane]

[center]Recon Missions[/center]

The screenshots show my recon missions. I didn't really look at what kind of recon plane I was sending and I didn't look at altitude or anything like that. Probably a mistake. When I'm planning my mission, there seems to be no way to tell where the recon plane is flying from other than the name of the base. So when click "Select Lead Unit" and I see the group is based at Le Bourget but that raid is leaving from Dieppe, well I have a problem. I have no freaking idea where Le Bourget is [:)] Is the distance show from Dieppe to the target or Le Bourget to Dieppe or some combo of that? I know I can get out and go back to the OOB and click on the unit and it will take me right to Le Bourget, but it would be nice if there was a visual indicator where I am doing the selection. Maybe there is one that I'm missing?

P.S. I didn't read Dobey's post before I did all this, so I will go back and adjust some of these missions. Seems I can only post 1 pic per post.

[Graymane]

Recon in the South.

[Graymane]

Recon Missions

[Graymane]

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions and take a look at what I'm doing! I've added some more comments and questions on what you wrote.

ORIGINAL: Dobey

Hi Graymane,

I'll start be letting you know most of my experience has been with BTR (both the original and this new version) although I've dabbled in BOB as well. I think for now I'll just respond by throwing out a few thoughts and responses to what you have outlined above.

Your overall plan

Playing a 1 day scenario as if it were a longer campaign sounds like a really good way to get yor bearings regarding setting up missions. [:)]
My advice here though would be not to allow yourself to get too fixated on JUST the small scale results. You won't win or loose the war in a day or a week.
Always try to keep an eye on the bigger picture as well.
EXAMPLE: As the LW you can basically "loose" every engagement (ie loose more AC than you kill) and as the attacker you often will. However you can still win the campaign while taking 2:1 casualties on a day to day basis if need be.

I wouldn't send your recon out followed by your bombers, he'll just wax your recon planes. I'd tend to throw recon missions in simultaneously with raids, the more radar clutter he has the more confusion. In the morning you can recon for afternoon raids and in the afternoon recon for tommorrow mornings raids.
Option B would be to mix it up a bit, do your recon before the bombing raids on some days, after on others and during the raids on other days.

I hadn't realized that recon was so vulnerable, make sense what you say though. I will mix it up a bit. The default range seems to be 5k, so I be flying higher or is that fine?

Rotations

I rotate my units as whole in much the same way, however you will find that you tend to have "star performers" that can seem to just keep going and going and going while other units will have one bad day and need a week off to recover. Leaders play a huge part in this.

Targets

BOB is much more a tactical campaign than a strategic one.
Personally I have never made any concerted effort to take out radar sites other than perhaps a few costal one to reduce the enemies reaction time in the hope of catching him on the climb.

I would think that AF would be your primary targets and in longer campaigns you'd probably want to pay some attention to AC plants (at the very least the Spit plants around South Hampton should be do-able).

I don't know how viable fuel is as a target in this campaign, but it can also be a factor in gaining air superiority.

Very useful information! This is the kind of stuff newbs like me need. It is hard to gauge the relative worth of targets without taking lots of time playing.

Sweeps are vital! (IMHO)

a) it keeps him reacting to you (you maintain the initiative).
b) He is forced up into the air (or to loose planes on the ground). Force him to scramble and engage a sweep then follow with your raid while his fighters are back on the ground re-fuelling.
c) Properly timed you can catch him landing and low on fuel....this will be VERY good for you and make him have to think much harder about how, where and when to scramble.
d) In BTR a very significant portion of my A/C kills are enemy AC straffed on the ground. In BOB it is equally important to kill AC any which way you can.
e) Use patrols as a barrier between your raids and his likely approach routes. If you can force him to engage before reaching your bombers he will burn off most of his fuel fighting your sweep and have less time to engage your raid. This position will also alow you to bounce fighters returning to base low on fuel after having broken off there attack on your bombers.
f) If you are going to sweep an AF, for the love of God, get up-to-date (and prefferably low level) recon before hand so you know what to expect in terms of flak. I would think the Bf-100 recon birds would be good for the low level stuff.

How do I gage thinks like fuel when the game is going? Should I have my messages set at some level that helps me tell why units move away from combat? Is it low fuel, mission finished, low morale?

[Graymane]

ORIGINAL: Rob Brennan UK

Hi Graymane , didn't take you long to start an AAR [;)].. Hope your happy with it too. This is actually a v v good AAR/thread for all new players imo, thank you.

Yah, I figured I read and comment from the peanut gallery on enough of the others that I should stick my toe in and try the water [:D]

[K.Pooley]

ORIGINAL: Graymane

... the logic of the AI was utterly inexplicable to me.

Are you sure you're new to this game...? [;)]

[Graymane]

I've redone the recon to target AFs for the most part. I prioritized BF-110C-5, J-88D-1 and DO 215B-1 to the AFs and the rest to other stuff. I have not changed the flight times yet. I will do that once I get the rest of my missions planned. While I could go back and edit my old posts to change the screen shots, I hope it is more instructive for newbs like me to see what I changed and why. I also took into account where the groups were located. I cut and pasted some pictures together to reduce the number of posts.

[Graymane]

Target list.

[simovitch]

Graymane, I enjoyed your read - it reflects how I felt when I started as Germans in BoB like you are.[:)]

You should know that several of your PRI AF targets will not provide any AS points in the 1940 campaigns if they are 13th Group, Bomber Command, and Coastal Command airfields. Use your limited resources on the 10th 11th and 12th Group AF's.

Also, The JU86 at max altitude is nearly untouchable as a recon. The 110C5's are fast enough to usually stay out of trouble if you don't send them too deep. The rest are easy prey unless you fly them in around the same time as your main raids.

[sven6345789]

actually, if you play against the AI, it is good to send the recons out a while after your main raids are through. I send my raids out early, and my recons in the afternoon. Since radio messages doesn't go up for recon missions, most of them got through. had higher losses when i send them out with the main raids.

[Graymane]

A couple of more questions based on the sven and simovitch. If I assume that I will be playing against humans rather than the AI, does that change your evaluations? I realize that targeting 13 Group and the bomber command fields won't give me AS points, but shouldn't I attack them if fighters are based there or will I simply not have enough resources to go around?

[Dobey455]

ORIGINAL: Graymane

I realize that targeting 13 Group and the bomber command fields won't give me AS points, but shouldn't I attack them if fighters are based there or will I simply not have enough resources to go around?

And right there is the million dollar question!

Here is where your strategy will kick in.....If your goal is to decimate the RAF then I would personally say "Yes" Forget the points and go for the fighter kills. But then, your strategy might be to go for a points win, or alternatively you might even have a strategic bombing strategy and want to try to win by destroying industry. In that case you will probably make more of an effort on Radar and try to AVOID interception rather than encourage it.

[sven6345789]

human opponents probably adapt to your tactics and strategy faster. they might set traps. so, against a human opponent, you will have to change your tactic once in a while.

regarding overall strategy
in the 1940 campaign, you can either go after the main airfields of 10th and 11th group (check wikipedia for the ones that matter). Damaging them will get air superiority up and just might be enough to get you past the magical 8 (or 12 in the new version). Or you go after the industry and hope to defeat the RAF in the air. Either way, the Luftwaffe is not well equipped for the task.
in the 1941 campaign, it gets easier (more time, better planes, more long-range escorts).