Correct Soviet Air Doctrine

[matt.buttsworth]

Very interesting.

The German airforce should reign supreme at least until Citadel in 1943.

MB

[kfmiller41]

I am playing as the Soviet in 2 games and I NR all my planes after turn one and then gradually put them back in in various areas, I do minimal damage against the Germans but I need some recon and want to at least contest the air. I have not attacked german bases but I plan to in the winter. If it turns out to be gamey I will dial it back

[heliodorus04]

Air base attacks, not counting turn 1, are broken - don't fly those missions - they don't work as intended.

[Ametysth]

I like to put my Soviet LR bombers on Night Missions (TB-3, DB-3, IL-4) and use them against Axis fighter fields, especially those that are near front or next to some Stuka fields. Then I send my LB types (SB-2, Pe-3 etc.) against Axis front line support airfields, knocking out as many Fighter, TacB and FB fields as I can during day missions. This allows my TacB support to operate relatively un-opposed and I tend to switch most of the I-15/-153's and I-16's to bomber roles to make most of the advantage in tactical air support. They sometimes get lucky and manage to catch some Axis unit moving during German turn and can do a quite a dent even on Pz Divisions.

Any LB units who has missions left go after Axis Recon fields as those type of planes have low build rates, so Germans are bound to run out of Rec types sometimes.

This works both ways, so protecting SB-2(recon) models is one of main tasks as well. If pool runs empty with that particular aircraft model, recon range will drop seriously. I fly as many recon missions as possible with other (R-10, U-2 etc) models, only using SB's when I feel there is something I really need to know.

[randallw]

Air units, for either side, train up to 40 experience; beyond that they must fly, fly, and fly, to get experience up.  For the Sovs that means earning it the hard way, facing a lot of fighters better than theirs ( unless you can somehow go after the Fins and Axis minors massively ).

[heliodorus04]

I'm confused.  I thought several aerial warfare functions of the game were known to be 'buggy', including air-to-air combat and some others?  I thought I read that here, am I mistaken?

[randallw]

Yes, some people complain how the combat results work out:
 
Disappointment that airfield attacks don't kill a lot of planes, after the Axis attacks on turn 1
 
Recon planes are hard to shoot down with fighters
 
Sometimes too many planes, or too little, show up for ground support

[Blind Sniper]

Air to air combat, air base bombings and AA damage are currently broken to the extend that the VVS bombing Luftwaffe bases will quickly cause significant losses the Luftwaffe can't take whilst the Soviets take minimal losses. notenome and me have agreed not to do so until it's fixed, as it's just too gamey currently.

Interesting, what do you think about ground support?

In my last turn I made several attacks with aircrafts in ground support and the enemy losses were very few.
With a German infantry division I attacked a Russian tank unit (another one in reserve joined the battle) and about 60-80 aircrafts (bombers) provided ground support, running the game with Combat Resolution Message Level 4 I noticed that they destroyed/disrupted about 40 men and a couple of tanks. Clear terrain, clear weather, turn 1 Road to Dnepropetrovsk.

Of course I'm not saying nothing, I'm just reporting what I'm seeing playing the game.
Can you give me more details?

[Blind Sniper]

Sorry to bump but can ComradeP or whoever know how the air system works help me?

I was not able to find other topic correlated to ground support.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: Blind Sniper
Sorry to bump but can ComradeP or whoever know how the air system works help me?

I was not able to find other topic correlated to ground support.

I think ComradeP is referring to air base attacks. There were some thread or other complaining about 1943 scenarios where German armor was being butchered by hordes of Shturmoviks and U-2s, but I can't remember any follow-up to that.

Regarding the topic of retreating the VVS to the "hills" (i.e National Reserve) and leaving them there until one gets the best planes, my opinion that it's not a wise move in the long-term. Morale is bad, very bad actually, but you need the pilots to fly missions - recon, air transport, ground support - and fight it out nonetheless. Soviet air production is huge, so VVS will recover. I usually lose something like 5:1 in fighters against the Luftwaffe in 1941, but that's not so much of a problem, the bulk of the losses I-16s, I-153s and MiG-3s. I've been also prioritizing the allocation of new LaGG-3 and Yak-1 against the Finns and the Romanians and while they get heavy losses they also shoot down some planes.

That 1941 and 1942 air battles should leave you with a cadre of experienced, battle-hardened air formations which will be unvaluable, while inflicting some damage on the Luftwaffe, even if limited.

[FredSanford3]

Actually I believe ComradeP was referring to Soviet AF on airbase bombing missions in 1941 being too effective (or really, I think, CAP is NOT effective). I played a Road to Moscow as the Soviets recently, and pretty much managed to knock the Luftwaffe out of the war. I stumbled upon that in the last 4-5 turns of that scenario. The Germans were driving on Moscow, and I figure it was 'now or never' with what I had assumed would be virtual suicide missions, and just started flinging everything that would fly at the German airbases. Turned out it worked, and I had a roughly 1:1 loss ratio. Which, when the SU has ~2,000 a/c vs. ~600 for the Germans, is sure domination. After about 4 turns of steady airbase bombing, the Germans were down to less than 200 a/c, and those were almost all recon planes (which I didn't go after).

[Blind Sniper]

Thanks Bletchley_Geek and Franklin Nimitz but I just wondering how the ground support works given that seems almost useless looking the combat report (maybe under the hood it works properly).