Victory Possible With Axis?

[raizer]

course it was Manstein that insisted that the Kursk attack could still succeed despite the delays in finally starting the attack

[Grouchy]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

IIRC the IL-2 has a lot of weapons on it, but the U-2 baffles me. It would be interesting to have some tests run to see just exactly what it can do relative to other planes.

And thanks for the help on finding and fixing the bug. IIRC Pieter (ComradeP) was the tester that first reported it during testing and it was fixed, but somehow the fix was deleted.

Did some testruns by editing the Velikie Luki'42 tutorial (first turn, clear weather).

First i edited the german 8th panzer div. to 100% TOE & ready and 55 experience.
Then i cloned it 3 times and placed it in clear terrain.


For the soviets i cloned the AB 3 times and made:
3 strike groups with 40 experience and 3 different plane types:
200 U2-VS
200 JU87 D
200 IL-2

Finally the german airforce was edited out.
100 AC would attack & bomb the german 8th panzer div. each run unopposed.

Typical results:

U2-VS: 0 damage done
Average reported Lost bmr 15-17 (Flak)


JU87 D: 0 damage done
Average reported Lost bmr 15-17 (Flak)


IL-2: 0 damage done to sometimes results like: men 13, art 0, afv 1 damage done
Average reported Lost bmr 15-17 (Flak)


Just for fun all 300 planes together vs 8th pz.:

8th pz Lost: men 34, art 0, afv 0

Soviet forces Lost: ftr 0, bmr 44, utl 0

Edit: Done with Beta 4

[Gandalf]

ORIGINAL: raizer

course it was Manstein that insisted that the Kursk attack could still succeed despite the delays in finally starting the attack

You're leaving out the fact that his opinion was formed AFTER he (commander of the southern pincer) managed to achieve most of his initial goals, inflicting far more casualties than he sustained. But due to the almost complete failure of the northern sector's pincer led by Günther von Kluge and Walther Model, chronic lack of infantry support and an operational reserve, as well as Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, Hitler called off the offensive. Von Manstein protested, asserting that the victory was almost at hand as he felt he had achieved local superiority, and that with a little more effort, he could crack the Soviet defenses before they could bring up their reserves.

[Flaviusx]

Manstein was almost certainly wrong thinking he could win since very substantial Soviet reserves remained uncommitted even after Prokorovka. (He would compound this erroneous assumption later on by responding to a diversionary Soviet offensive on the Mius.)

This was one of the rare occassion where Hitler was actually right and Manstein wrong. But there's plenty of blame to go around here. (Zietzler, among others.)

Only Guderian and Model really figured it out and took a consistently negative line against the whole offensive.

[Speedysteve]

Agree with you here Flavius 100%

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: Grouchy

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

IIRC the IL-2 has a lot of weapons on it, but the U-2 baffles me. It would be interesting to have some tests run to see just exactly what it can do relative to other planes.

And thanks for the help on finding and fixing the bug. IIRC Pieter (ComradeP) was the tester that first reported it during testing and it was fixed, but somehow the fix was deleted.

Did some testruns by editing the Velikie Luki'42 tutorial (first turn, clear weather).

First i edited the german 8th panzer div. to 100% TOE & ready and 55 experience.
Then i cloned it 3 times and placed it in clear terrain.


For the soviets i cloned the AB 3 times and made:
3 strike groups with 40 experience and 3 different plane types:
200 U2-VS
200 JU87 D
200 IL-2

Finally the german airforce was edited out.
100 AC would attack & bomb the german 8th panzer div. each run unopposed.

Typical results:

U2-VS: 0 damage done
Average reported Lost bmr 15-17 (Flak)


JU87 D: 0 damage done
Average reported Lost bmr 15-17 (Flak)


IL-2: 0 damage done to sometimes results like: men 13, art 0, afv 1 damage done
Average reported Lost bmr 15-17 (Flak)


Just for fun all 300 planes together vs 8th pz.:

8th pz Lost: men 34, art 0, afv 0

Soviet forces Lost: ftr 0, bmr 44, utl 0

Edit: Done with Beta 4

Defending units suffer much less from air attack than attacking units. I haven't played around to see if bombing a unit has different loss routines to ground support against a defending unit, but judging from the above result, this is definitely the case.

I suggest you retry, but this time have one type on ground support, attack with the 8th Pz and record the number of damaged or destroyed messages after the end of the air phase. This is the only way to isolate how many attacks actually take place, since damaged units only show up as partial man power losses.

Tedious, but the only way to make any meaningful comparison.

[Grouchy]

I have to disagree, did several of those test already after they patched it, with comparable results after the air phase.

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: raizer

course it was Manstein that insisted that the Kursk attack could still succeed despite the delays in finally starting the attack

Manstein didn't want to attack unless it was done much earlier in the year, he was initially proposing a strategy of letting the Russians attack first, rolling with the punch and hitting them as they get stretched. Which is certainly better than attacking a well prepared line, but he was also trying to do the best with the plan that Hitler had insisted on. [:)]

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Manstein was almost certainly wrong thinking he could win since very substantial Soviet reserves remained uncommitted even after Prokorovka. (He would compound this erroneous assumption later on by responding to a diversionary Soviet offensive on the Mius.)

This was one of the rare occassion where Hitler was actually right and Manstein wrong. But there's plenty of blame to go around here. (Zietzler, among others.)

Only Guderian and Model really figured it out and took a consistently negative line against the whole offensive.

My point is that it was stupid to give your enemy months to prepare the ground and then attack when he is strongest, better to pull back and wait for the Russians to come out of their defences, which they must do if they want to free their country. I am saying that German chances would be improved by changing several strategies and Kursk is one of them. [:)]

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: Grouchy

I have to disagree, did several of those test already after they patched it, with comparable results after the air phase.

Well, screenshots speak louder than words...





This is just after all U2's have finished their attacks. 70+ planes managed to outright kill 5% of an infantry division plus destroy outright nearly 30% of it's artillery. This isn't counting damaged guns so the actual damage inflicted is higher.

In one attack run.

They seem to be getting 1 - 1.5 "hits" per aircraft.

Modern airforces would love this kind of kill/mission ratio.

[MechFO]

This is after all the IL2 just finished their attack runs.






About 15 casualties, so 1.5 full squads, destroyed outright per aircraft. They were a bit unlucky with the gun targets by getting a lot of damage events, so a lot of the damage doesen't show up in the statistic.

If anything, IL2 seem to be getting 1.5 - 2 attacks per aircraft, even more than the U2's.

"Normal" tac aircraft seem to be lucky if they get 0.5 attacks per aircraft.

To recap, a not particularly large mixed bag of tac aircraft managed to outright kill more than 10% of an Infantry Divs manpower and for all practical purposes obliterate it's artillery (remember, damaged pieces don't count as lost, and there were many such messages). In one attack run....think about that for a moment.

If these kind of discrepancies aren't showing up in your test runs, we aren't playing the same WITE.

[MechFO]

As a comparison, 160 IL4's have also just finished their attack runs against an attacking Inf Div..





160 heavy bombers inflict relatively a bit more damage than 70 UV2. Most of the IL4 hits were on Support and Rifle squads with very little artillery damaged or destroyed, hence the relatively heavy manpower losses even though relatively fewer hits were achieved. Though CV drop is considerable, probably due to the Rifle Squad hits?

Hits per plane per attack run varied widely, from .2 to nearly 1, with most groups having about .5-.7 hits per plane.

Clearly a relatively expensive and ineffective tac bomber compared to the U2/IL2 combo.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

As said: I'm fine with the IL-2 being a good tactical bomber, but the numbers in which it appears could use some finetuning. 500 IL-2's supporting two corps is a big number, not to mention even more than that supporting one or two divisions.

That's another worthwhile discussion, but probably best left for another time.

Probably best modelled by giving Soviet Air tac units low experience, lots of planes, but relatively fewer "hits".

I can't think of any other way to model the lack of Soviet Forward Air Controllers.

[karonagames]

@MechFO. I have the day off tomorrow, and I am going to test the 1943 Air Model to see if the bug fix for interception, and a "standard" axis superiority campaign, can get the SU airforce under control, and less able to carry out the size and lethality of the attacks you have been seeing.

I may need a couple of days, but I will report my findings to Joel to see if we can get to the bottom of this.

[MechFO]

For completeness sake, here are some Ju87's at work....





Impressive number of attacks, definitely more than 1 per plane. As their Soviet brethren they also managed to single handedly smash a divisional attack, though they didn't kill any tanks, something that IL2's do very well.

While they should be relatively better than the Soviets, which they are, here too the end damage is IMO way too high.

[karonagames]

Thanks for this data; I will cross reference this with my tests. Can you tell me what the turn number is?

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

@MechFO. I have the day off tomorrow, and I am going to test the 1943 Air Model to see if the bug fix for interception, and a "standard" axis superiority campaign, can get the SU airforce under control, and less able to carry out the size and lethality of the attacks you have been seeing.

I may need a couple of days, but I will report my findings to Joel to see if we can get to the bottom of this.

Considering the Ju87's seem to be pulling similar tricks, I guess the problem is that air support with tac aircraft is too effective at smashing attacks. While this balance might work out with the low number of German tac aircraft, things IMO break down with the vast hordes the Soviets can deploy.

I'll run some more tests over the weekend.

Regarding the 43 GC, the best I've been able to do in the Air is to smash the IL4 force and barely shoot down each turns IL2 production of 200. Though at the expense of heavy attrition, especially the FW190F which I converted to fighter duty, so I don't know how long I can keep that up.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

Thanks for this data; I will cross reference this with my tests. Can you tell me what the turn number is?

All screenshots except for the first one in this thread are from turn 1.

[Flaviusx]

In the bad old days, Bob used to be able to smash the Red Air Force on the very first turn and leave it crippled for the rest of the 43 campaign. I had to get by on scraps in our last 43 AAR. Happily, I discovered the magic of artillery divisions and forgot all about the silly Red Air Force.

Anyways, those extreme air losses have since been fixed, but this business with the tac bombers started happening after that.

[Grouchy]

Hmmm, that doesn't seem to be right. The tests i was running where all set in 1942. Those are run in 1943. If it has something today with the year, I'm afraid of the 1944-'45 results.