New House Rule Idea for PBEM

[CarnageINC]

The air war is totally screwed on this game...but its being fix so I will wait until then. However I was thinking of starting a pbem game and thought that putting all aircraft except recon and transports in national reserve. I think it will help address the issue until the developers can give us something to use. What you think of the idea?

[Scotters1]

Is it really that bad?

[CarnageINC]

I feel it is, the Luftwaffe isn't getting near enough kills versus antique Soviet aircraft since there is no air superiority phase in the game.  Where are the 100+ kills that the German aces had going to come from with the current situation.  As you get deeper into the campaign it starts to feel more and more unbalanced with the old Soviet aircraft making more and more of a large impact on ground operations.  Over 10-20% losses to air seems to me overkill IMO.  This idea keeps the focus on the ground war and helps even things out for the underdog...the Germans.

[Great_Ajax]

I ran 9 AI vs AI tests before release running from Jun 41 - Jan 42. The results on air losses were:

Average Axis Air losses: 1,828 - Historical Losses: 2,626

Average Soviet Air losses: 11,045 - Historical Losses: 11,230

The reason for less than historical air losses for the Axis is that not enough planes are becoming damaged and destroyed through non-combat incidents.

Trey

[CarnageINC]

Wow, thats spot on.  Have you tried one in the later stages of the war?

[Ametysth]

But it does remove the Red Army "And the kitchen sink"- doctrine.
If you remove Shturmovik, which was pretty much only plane in entire war (of any side) that was by design meant to take part in ongoing ground battles, you remove part of those ground battles you want to concentrate on. They were such of important part of the ground war that their production priority was about the same as T-34 tanks.

Couldn't the house rule be like "Air Doctrine Soviet fighter escort max 30%"? Wouldn't it result the same, by giving Germans numerical superiority?

Besides, it wasn't old designs that hampered Russian aviation, it was poor tactical doctrine in Air-to-Air combat. They were just as bad in dogfights flying Hurricanes, Spitfires, P-40's and P-39's as they were with I-153's and -16's.

[jjdenver]

ORIGINAL: CarnageINC
Wow, thats spot on.  Have you tried one in the later stages of the war?

Practically speaking I think the patch will be out before you go past Jan 42. PBEM might go at one week per day if it's a fast game (check the pace in the AAR's if you doubt it - I think the fastest has gone about 8 turns in 12 days) so that's something like 27 RL (real life) days before you hit Jan 42 and probably we'll see a patch by then. 4 weeks.

Cheers

[raizer]

are AI vs AI test results the same as a test btwn 2 multiplayers?

[ComradeP]

No, which is why I don't think the AI results are representative for a human game.

Take my game with notenome for example. The Soviets are essentially not flying ground support missions, so I can't touch them there. Air base bombing isn't worth it for the Germans, there's no air superiority phase so I can't touch his planes there. I then open a new turn and see that he has bombed my air bases. Finally, I say, my fighters can do some damage to him. I then notice that dozens of my fighters and between 100 and 200 AA guns shoot down, at best, 1 enemy plane in most of the battles, resulting in a loss ratio of aircraft of about 1:1 and a total loss for both sides of about 70 planes a week. I also got an attack where 13 IL-2's killed over 200 men, 20 guns and some AFV's, all with around 30 Luftwaffe fighters in the area that didn't do anything about it at all.

The Luftwaffe can currently be gamed into a pulp by those minor air base bombardments (a 1:1 air loss ratio is completely absurd in July 1941) without the Axis being able to do anything about it. CAP doesn't seem to do anything, AA doesn't seem to be too effective at preventing damage to the area it's protecting.

So yes, the air model is broken in multiplayer games.

[Klydon]

I suspect the AI is not doing what players are doing with the representative air forces. Russian players are bombing the crap out of German Panzer HQs and units and are pretty much unmolested in doing so. (See some of the AAR's between players). The overall losses might be close, but I suspect HOW they are happening is not. A lot of Soviet casualties should be air to air losses and my guess is that is not the case. It gives the Germans a big feeling of helplessness when they should have the ability to dictate where the Red Airforce can't attack. The Luftwaffe can't cover the entire front/theater, but the Germans should be able to control several sectors and make any Russian air attacks be extremely costly for little results. As time goes along, the Red Airforce can better oppose Luftwaffe control, but this never really took place until Stalingrad. The Red Airforce showed up for the Battle of Moscow and had some successes, but this was more of a result that the Luftwaffe aircraft were suffering from the weather and basically not available or available in only small numbers. Kursk was another huge battle where the Red Airforce was finally to openly oppose the Luftwaffe with success although neither side really had control of the airspace there during most of the battle.

[raizer]

I had a feeling russian pbem can really punish the german players with the air force in summer/fall 41- after turn 1 and your movements all you need to do is set your stuff on 110% then at the start of your following turns-bomb german hqs/airbases and gladly take the 1:1 loss ratio...then turn your doctrine back up to 110% rinse and repeat. Come the summer of 42 and you own the skies

[Great_Ajax]

Ack. Sorry, I referenced the wrong numbers on the table. The Soviets actually lost 21,200 aircraft in this time period. 10,300 of them were through combat and the rest through non-combat. The issue that was brought up was though the combat losses were close, obviously not enough planes are being lost through operational losses such as non-combat crashes, etc.

In me and Bob's PBEM game, I lost 11,230 aicraft as the Soviets and Bob lost 1,808 as the Germans.

Trey

[ComradeP]

Indeed, that's why this issue annoys me so much. What use is carefully husbanding my air force as the Axis if the Soviets can bomb it at their leisure with me being powerless to stop them as both CAP and AA don't really work?

Pavel correctly called my posts on the tester forum "emotional", but I was really tired of the "over 30 fighters committed, only a single Soviet plane shot down, compared to the number of bombers involved heavy damage to the Luftwaffe" results I was seeing.

[FredSanford3]

I just finished Road to Moscow as the Soviets w/ AI on Challenging. The Germans ended turn 16 with 300 aircraft, only 195 seviceable, and those were mainly recon aircraft. They ended the scenario with slightly more, because I didn't bother doing anything on the last turn. I was bombing his airfields like crazy for the previous 4-5 turns. Had the game continued, I'm quite sure I would have knocked the Luftwaffe out of the war. In 1941.

At the start of each turn, I'd send air units with low #'s of available aircraft to the national reserve, and bring in replacement air groups that had been in the national reserve rehabbing previously. Then I'd set minimum 'to fly %' to 20%, airfield attack level at 100%, and shift+right click on an enemy airfield>select all>launch>repeat until no more available. Other than a few recon missions, those were the only air missions I conducted during my little bombing campaign.

[Redmarkus5]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Indeed, that's why this issue annoys me so much. What use is carefully husbanding my air force as the Axis if the Soviets can bomb it at their leisure with me being powerless to stop them as both CAP and AA don't really work?

Pavel correctly called my posts on the tester forum "emotional", but I was really tired of the "over 30 fighters committed, only a single Soviet plane shot down, compared to the number of bombers involved heavy damage to the Luftwaffe" results I was seeing.

A great game is a work of art. "Emotional" is a good thing, even a compliment

[mmarquo]

I suspect that the air doctrine settings are very important in this regard, very important. I have been fine tuning the percentages for the Axis and Su - and it makes a huge difference as to what happens. If you play against the Soviet AI and want to have a robust air war, then increase the percentages to force the Soviet AI to commit more and then watch the losses skyrocket (on both sides [:)]). For a Soviet suicidal air defense, set the percentage needed to fly very low, and the percent of the nominal value needed to commit very high... 
 
If a Soviet human wants none of the air war - then so be it; unimpeded Axis ground support, ground attacks and interdiction will take a toll. As for marauding Soviets attacking HQs, there are wayas to adjust the Axis percentages to handle it - and also antiaircraft units, properly deployed are efficacious.
 
The main thing which annoys me is more that I can't get upgraded FWs into action...
 
Marquo

[ComradeP]

The main problem with tweaking the air doctrine setting is that the setting you need to intercept the mission, interception, also influences how many planes fly to intercept recon mission. The average recon interception seems to go like this: about 10 planes scramble to intercept 2 recon planes. They never seem to find them and then for some random reason one of the fighters crashes. You'll appreciate the problem when the Soviets are flying LOTS of recon missions. Let's say your opponent flies 100 recon missions, and half of your interceptions result in a fighter casualty. You're losing 50 fighters each turn for 0 gain.

If notenome continues to bomb my air bases, and we don't agree on some sort of house rule not to do so, I guess I'll just set my 110% required to fly and just take the bomber losses. As I correctly estimated, the losses from air base bombardment at a 110% setting are lower than when my planes do try to intercept something. Try is the key word here, hardly a plane seems to be shot down by those ~70-80 experience pilots, whilst a dozen ~50 experience IL-2's bomb my air base and inflict substantial losses compared to both the size of their payload (small) and the number of bombers involved (minimal).

[mmarquo]

"set stuff on 110% then at the start of your following turns-bomb german hqs/airbases and gladly take the 1:1 loss ratio...then turn your doctrine back up to 110% rinse and repeat," 
 
What about trying to fiddle with fighter intercept percentage rather than the percent needed to fly? 
 
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[ComradeP]

In a real air battle, the Soviets are going to lose badly, so tweaking the Soviet fighter intercept percentages doesn't help them much in 1941 provided the Germans can put a fair amount of planes up in the air to counter them.

[mmarquo]

I have the Soviet AI percentage to fly at 5%, the human Axis percent to fly at 20% and the Axis intercept at 50% and it is a blast to watch. To increase the Soviet committment one has to also increase the escort level - the AI Soviet levels are at 100% of the nominal value. I lowered the Soviet percent to fly when I noted that the Soviet national Reserve was bloated with most of the Soviet Airforce and the Airbases were all but full.
 
Honestly I am not seeing the Axis fighter losses against recon missions - I just checked the last AI move - it did well over 100 recon missions and not one Axis fighter was lost - and not one Soviet recon plane was lost, either.
 
Marquo