Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW?

[Nicholas Bell]

You know, I never realized you could get the detailed unit review through the OOB summary. Well, that certainly is a method of getting your units to stand down and jump into the trenches. [:D]

[Hard Sarge]

you do know that if the aircraft is not flyable, it does not have a pilot in it ?

hmmm, Harley was talking about making sure that explot was cut out, quess he didn't get to it

[Tuk]

I hope he does get round to it but that some provision is made to reduce pilot deaths on the ground too. Countering gameyness with gameyness tends to multiply the bad rather than cancel one out with the other.

[Rusty1961]

Agreed. They need to change this so we don't lose that many German pilots while being straffed.

[Hard Sarge]

Harley has already lowered the loses

if the pilots are locked into there planes, they take the chance of getting killed/wounded if they are in the planes when they get attacked, don't leave them on the ground

if you are at cockpit readyness, shame on you, if they are still sitting there

take them off of cockpit readyness, or take off

[Nicholas Bell]

take them off of cockpit readyness, or take off

Except there is no way to take them off cockpit readiness in the game - other than Derfel's workaround.

Currently the only "legal" way to get a unit to stand down is to move them in the planning phase to some airfield far, far away <g> so they do not become fatigued because they go on alert status.&nbsp; This is counter-productive however, because when you move the unit back to the front, you have to wait for the planes to become available.&nbsp; Furthermore, as one or two do become ready, they are manned and the pilots start gaining fatigue again because their alert status goes up.

Not that the Allied player needs anymore help, but it makes sense even on no-fly days to fly a non-aggressive sweep or two just to keep the Axis on alert and accumulating fatigue.

[fbs]

Just found a similar technique today, and when I came to post I found it is already being discussed here.

Just park a lot of fighters on top of the German bases, say 400 through 1-2 hours. Set them to sweep somewhere, with a patrol point on top of the enemy airfields, to prevent them falling into enemy flak. Then entice the enemy fighters to fly somewhere, and watch them fall like flies when trying to land.

First try in Italy, at a single location : 5 of my fighters lost, 70 enemies shot down (out of 84 that flew); no bomber was even attacked. I'd say Elmer could try harder to keep his fighters out of range of mine, specially when I can park 400 fighters on top of his airfields for 1-2 hours.

[vimconfused]

2 February 1944. Today I had 3 pilots killed in action. Quite a modest number... except thatI didn't fly a single sortie today. They were lost to strafing even though the whole Luftwaffe was effectively stood down the whole day. Seems they spend their days off sitting in the cockpit waiting to be shot at. Dedicated chaps indeed.

I "only" lost 3 but it underlines the ridiculousness of the situation. If the Allies had applied their whole fighter and escort force to strafing today it could have been a slaughter, even though the pilots should have been down the beer keller! The idea that I can avoid this by never having my planes on the ground and/or rotating to other airfields is equally mad. As if I don't put enough hours into the game already!

Edit: Incidentally, the three pilots I lost all had 90+ experience, had flown 139 missions between them and had 9 kills. I also had 3 pilots wounded and lost 9 aircraft. Of course I could just as easily have lost my best or my worst pilots.

[Golden Bear]

I don't know how to evaluate Nick's original complaint. First of all, I don't play HTH but have played oodles of SP BTR as Allied.

If I catch everything just right I can devastate a LW unit coming in to land. Usually, though, this only happens once and then a bunch of AA gets moved in and there are diminishing returns. The AI seems to do OK at covering AFs with AA. Also, FSs over AFs work better early and get progressively more difficult and costly as the AA builds up. It seems the LW side has a constant steady accumulation of AA and things get harder and harder for the Allied player because of this.

Thus, I am not certain that it is an exploit or an "earlier in game" and hit or miss kind of thing. As the Allied player I track AFs with LW aircraft on a piece of scratch paper. But I don't strafe every turn necessarily or at least I alternate targets. Getting a FG going to a well defended AF is as much a disaster to the Allied player as what Nick complains about for the LW player.

Given the give and take on this, according to my own observations, I think that it might actually be working out pretty well.

From pilot's reports and histories, the sweeps over AFs were an enormous strain for the LW. Always tough with alerts like this to figure out whether they are observer-side biased or whether there is balance.

Carlos

[invernomuto]

My first experiences with sweeping missions aren't so great.
Yesterday I saw my spits strafing an airport in south italy.
3 Axis plane lost, but spits got mauled by AAs&nbsp;(5 Spits downed).&nbsp;&nbsp;
Lesson learned: I'll stay away from AAs with my fighters...
&nbsp;

[Rainerle]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

Harley has already lowered the loses

if the pilots are locked into there planes, they take the chance of getting killed/wounded if they are in the planes when they get attacked, don't leave them on the ground

if you are at cockpit readyness, shame on you, if they are still sitting there

take them off of cockpit readyness, or take off

But Hard Sarge, it takes 63 minutes for a NJG to take off, so no way to scramble them when a sweep heads their way. And all this time a NJG pilot is sitting in the plane because the plane is 'ready'?

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[morganbj]

So, if the German should pull his planes back to avoid the sweeps, why can't the British player do the same thing to avoid the 110's in BOB? It seems that the 110 is such a poor dog fighter that the Brit player could find a way to set a few traps and really take out a lot of 110's.

[HansHafen]

Wouldn't the 110's get mauled if they were just hanging around England looking for a fight? I think they would only be effective at surprising aircraft taking off or landing, or hitting bombers. I imagine almost all Allied fighters would run circles around them in a dogfight. So, they couldn't really hang around waiting too long or allied fighters would come along. I'm not an air guy but I don't think the 110's were overpowering any Allied fighters iirc. (Correct me if I am wrong.)  Did the Germans do this in the war? How could it be a game changer here?

[Erkki]

They shouldn't lose to RAF fighters any more than Mosquitos do to Luftwaffe in BTR. Because the flak doesnt fire at aircraft that attack planes in landing pattern, and because the aircraft in landing pattern dont evade, they would would sometime massacre the enemy, sometimes take huge losses themselves. Also the sweeping planes can do their attack from ceiling, without losing altitude, to completely avoid the flak.

In this regard the game needs some development.

[Turner]

ORIGINAL: Erkki
In this regard the game needs some development.

Agreed. As long as the sweeps function this way it must be imho considered a exploit to sweep the Luftwaffe to death by a human player. Fighter sweeps were effective yes, but not to the extent possible in the game. So it must be considered a exploit unless done in some other manner to give the axis player a fighting chance.

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[lastdingo]

ORIGINAL: Lanconic

ORIGINAL: HMSWarspite

I think you may be missing the point. Reading between the lines, the implication is that they break the game... maybe because of the 'planes wont divert issue'. Although I am surprised, because a guaranteed 110 cap over an airfield sounds like points on a stick to me:). Thus I suspect they took it out cos it is a game breaker...

That is not the only change...try this.....

Use the American escorts to strafe a LW airfield at say 5k
Now use the ME109 to do the same to say Biggin Hill.

I can tell you right now, there is no comparison. None at all.
And yet its the same mission, w the same tactics.

A bit odd I should say

I actually do it. My Lw ruined on average one major airfield complement (two to three squadrons) a day by staggering 109 patrols per day once I was finished with my industry demolishing plan.
The losses were minimal.

1. Recce all airfields in range
2. Choose a few (where many fighters have been spotted)
3. look at when they have sorties on the next day (and which type of aircraft), especially delay (in minutes) in comparison to your bomber waves.
4. Set up next day's bomber waves with moderate fighter escort (especially all 109E-1s).
5. Set up fighter sweeps (= permanent presence of about 30 fighters at IIRC about 7k ft).
6. Observe the massacre.
7. Have fun; once the reserves are depleted, Fighter Command ready fighters strength will drop quickly (for my primary industry targets were ball bearings and engines).

Sure, it takes about 200-300 fighter sorties, but you get about 20-30 kills/day including aircraft destroyed on the ground (+ aircraft damaged) for it. That's a very fine ratio.

[lastdingo]

ORIGINAL: HansHafen

Wouldn't the 110's get mauled if they were just hanging around England looking for a fight? I think they would only be effective at surprising aircraft taking off or landing, or hitting bombers. I imagine almost all Allied fighters would run circles around them in a dogfight. So, they couldn't really hang around waiting too long or allied fighters would come along. I'm not an air guy but I don't think the 110's were overpowering any Allied fighters iirc. (Correct me if I am wrong.)  Did the Germans do this in the war? How could it be a game changer here?

I used them a lot to hit fighters on the ground in the original game.
It was the single best mission for 110Ds, for example.

Their endurance, sturdiness and firepower are way superior to 109s. Plus you can assign 109s on a higher altitude in a FS for cover.


The historical performance of the 110 wasn't so terribly bad as people today talk about it.

It was inefficient - you could get two 109s for one 110. That was the problem.

The average 110 pilot was better than the average 109 pilot, for many of the better ones were sent to the ZG.

110s could not be surprised (surprise = main killer in fighter-on-fighter combat), but in exchange they depended a lot on team support to survive (for they lacked defensive manoeuvrability).

Their offensive strength was fine. They were easier to see and thus a bit less likely to surprise the enemy, but their firepower was great and concentrated, their speed was good and they were steady gun platforms (easy aiming on a surprised0steady target).

In case of troubles they could fly in a circle. It wasn't until 1941/42 that fighter pilots in Europe figured out how to defeat a defensive ring of fighters (see Joachim Marseille), and the tactic against such a circle formation required great pilot skill.

[lastdingo]

ORIGINAL: invernomuto

My first experiences with sweeping missions aren't so great.
Yesterday I saw my spits strafing an airport in south italy.
3 Axis plane lost, but spits got mauled by AAs (5 Spits downed).
Lesson learned: I'll stay away from AAs with my fighters...

a) Don't. the exchange ratio is good. You get much more aircraft production.

b) Use sturdier fighters. P-40s, P-47s, Typhoons.