Is air combat now TOO deadly?

[BK6583]

Somewhere in a previous post Cap and Gown asked how the Japanese can reinforce Lae with fighters [and bombers?] w/o stirring a strong Allied fighter escort and bomber airfield attack there. After reading Mike's excellent post above I still have the same question. My mind reading Allied opponent (probably more like he just used consistent recon over Lae and Buna) would constantly attack my airbase at Lae, never giving my fighters there a real chance to rest - I've read previous tactisc posts before about how Jap fighters flying escort and CAP from Lae to PM greatly reduces their acuumulated turn by turn fatigue, but I've never had a chance to put this to my own test because of those Allied [counter] strikes on Lae. Comments?

[HARD_SARGE]

HI BK6583
interesting, I was thinking that yesterday myself

I just started up a IJN side game to see what they were like with the heavy combat losses going on, I moved two Zero units down to Lea after seeing the heavy Fat levels after the first raid on PM, the next day a sweep hit the base, but my little cap beat them off, the next day, 9 B-17's came over, and I have not been able to take off or leave the field since !

9 B-17's totalled the field ?, greeesh, in my Allied games, I can do over 170 runway hits on a base and not shut it down (FOW is on, so maybe not as many hits as I am seeing, but still)

I have hit Shortlands, with 50 B-17's and 70 B-26's, keep that up till the recon reports show 95 + damage, and still the JP can get it's fighters up (or should I say AI can)

{oops, my bad, I am comparing 1.40 vs 2.0 vs 2.10 vs 2.11, so not really fair to say this happens here, but may be 2 or 3 patches ago}

oops, but still, I agree, how do you keep your fighters/bombers on the ground long enough to get any rest with a war on ?

as the Allies, I try to get around 4 or 5 bases all with in range of a target, and then attack around the clock from all the bases, this way, you can shut one or two bases down for rest, and the others keep the pressure on (okay talking Dec/Jan 43 in Scen 14 here)

maybe they got nicer bad guys then we face ?

HARD_Sarge

[Nikademus]

great post Mike. Fully agree. one reason I was very happy with 2.11 Since i was playing SC19, i knew the AI-IJN had a different OOB and thus had the capability to differ from the historical outcome by being able to conduct mass fighter sweeps and heavily escorted raids.

Coupled with my deliberate decision to try to contest these agressive moves with every fighter i could lay a finger on, the resultant bloody attrtion over a month's period was to me, a very logical outcome.

(Like too how the AI is playing smarter or at least appears to be in this SC......it's resting it's airgroups and launching periodic night raids, keeping me guessing to a degree)

Never saw the mass attrtion in single battles reported by others, though for some of them, still didn't seem out of wack when one considers FOW. "claims" on both sides tend to go up preportionately in relation to the size and intensity of the air battles. This is why you can often seem X planes "damaged" outnumbering the actual # that attacked....partly because of FOW but also because the game tallies each report of "damage" as a seperate event....even if the same plane is being damaged over and over. It does the same for destroyed as well.

If you learn from history and try not to repeat the mistakes of the past....your going to get a different result....thats the whole point of wargaming after all...to try to get a different result, hopefully more favorable to the side your playing.

[Erik Rutins]

I always make it a priority to first send some large engineer units and a few extra base units to Lae, escorted and with CAP, of course. Once they are unloaded, the field becomes much more difficult for the allies to shut down. If Lae is not shut down, the Japanese can pretty much always win superiority over PM.

Regards,

- Erik

[HARD_SARGE]

Hi Erik

okay I can buy that based on what I have seen, the bases I can not shut down should have tons of eng's in place, and in my case, what I seen with the JP side, I was not able to get any more troops to the base then what it had to start with

HARD_Sarge