Meagre first turn bombing results

[moose1999]

I've just done my bombing for the first turn of the Road to Leningrad scenario.
I lost 11 planes and destroyed 119 (only 9 of which were level bombers).
I was expecting much higher numbers - the russian losses in the Operational Bottcamp that I'm following are 4 times higher.
I bombed mostly Kaunas and Siauliai and I haven't touched the initial air doctrine settings and I reconed both airfields first.
So why are my numbers so low - obviously I have missed something.
Or has the first turn surprise bonus been altered after the Bootcamp was written?

[Tazak]

Been a while since I played that scenario but here's what I do for the first turn of a GC (someone did post this in a ARR but cant remember which one and works very well even even after recent patches), and during the surprise turn you dont really need the ground support

In the air doctrine screen
1. Turn off ground support
2. set air intercept and fighter cover to 200% (I set ground attack to 100%)
at this point dont bomb anything as bombers can only use their first 33% of airmiles for airfield attacks
carry out your ground assaults but dont overrun/attack airfields
just before overrunning/attacking a airfield use your aircraft to bomb it once or twice to personal tastes (this increases enemy damaged aircraft which are then destroyed during the overrun/ground attack)
after you have carried out all ground movement then switch over to airfield attacks and bomb them as much as you can

this squence of events has the following effect
your fighters get more air-air kills (increases experince/moral) and less enemy fighters for intercepting your bombers
your overrun/ground attacks cause as many aircraft kills as your airforce
leaves your airforce in a much better state with less enemy intercepts

[henri51]

IIRC you should get good results by first doing an air recon run on automatic then a bombing run on automatic.Temporarily turning up the number of planes involved can also help - but don't forget to turn it back down.

Henri

[moose1999]

Hi - thanks for the input!
What is the effect of turning off ground support?
Will that free up more planes for airfield attack?
Very nice to know about the 33% rule - I wasn't thinking of that, though I'm sure I should have been
I did do the airfield attaacks first, though.
How would I turn up the number of planes involved in airfiled attacks (the arrows are greyed out in my air doctrine screen) - perhaps Percentage to fly?

[Tazak]

Yes turning off ground support turns off bombing during a ground attack, saves the bombers air miles hence more bombes for airfield attacks when you want them
you need to set the AD's at the start of a turn, if you fly a single air mission you cant change it until the start of the next turn (or something like this anyway)

Yes turn the % to fly at the top to 0%, but watch your aircraft numbers, if they start getting low then increase it, I like 30-40% as long as you dont lose too many figthers

[moose1999]

Good details, thanks!
One more question - is there any penalty involved in moving air units around?
In other words, should I fly my air missions before I start moving the air units/bases forward?

[Denniss]

AFAIR You can't move them once they have flown in the turn.

[Joel Billings]

You can't transfer an air unit to another base after flying any missions, so that has to be done up front. Moving the airbases does use up some of the capacity of the air groups on the base to fly missions (basically adds to their miles flown so far in the turn, making them less likely to fly combat missions).

[inscrutible]

ORIGINAL: briny_norman

I've just done my bombing for the first turn of the Road to Leningrad scenario.
I lost 11 planes and destroyed 119 (only 9 of which were level bombers).
I was expecting much higher numbers - the russian losses in the Operational Bottcamp that I'm following are 4 times higher.
I bombed mostly Kaunas and Siauliai and I haven't touched the initial air doctrine settings and I reconed both airfields first.
So why are my numbers so low - obviously I have missed something.
Or has the first turn surprise bonus been altered after the Bootcamp was written?

I've just noticed a similar thing on the Campaign scenario - the latest version really scales back the amount of damage that the Germans can do on the first turn. I eventually managed to knock the air bases down to less than 70 planes (mostly the bombers survived which was weird) by flying repeatedly.

[moose1999]

ORIGINAL: inscrutible

ORIGINAL: briny_norman

I've just done my bombing for the first turn of the Road to Leningrad scenario.
I lost 11 planes and destroyed 119 (only 9 of which were level bombers).
I was expecting much higher numbers - the russian losses in the Operational Bottcamp that I'm following are 4 times higher.
I bombed mostly Kaunas and Siauliai and I haven't touched the initial air doctrine settings and I reconed both airfields first.
So why are my numbers so low - obviously I have missed something.
Or has the first turn surprise bonus been altered after the Bootcamp was written?

I've just noticed a similar thing on the Campaign scenario - the latest version really scales back the amount of damage that the Germans can do on the first turn. I eventually managed to knock the air bases down to less than 70 planes (mostly the bombers survived which was weird) by flying repeatedly.

Yes, exactly.
The experience continues in the following turns as I am almost unable to destroy any Russian planes on the ground in airfield attacks.
Lots of bombers in the attack, but no destruction.
Instead, I've upped the escort and that gave me more fighter kills, but they are air-to-air, not ground kills.
And I'm not destroying any bombers at all.

[Joel Billings]

Yes, it's much harder to destroy planes on the ground in later versions. The opening turn is also lower than what it was back in the early versions after release.

[marcpennington]

Given that the air engine is still a bit rough, and that the first turn historically represented unusual surprise conditions and chaos in Soviet CnC, would it make more sense to start turn 1 with the Soviet losses having already occurred? I imagine this would allow much easier tinkering with the air engine for more "normal" turns--- tinkering which I agree was highly needed given such exploits as the former Soviet mass number of small raids and the such. But it does seem like the pendulum has swung a bit too far against the Luftwaffe or turn 1. And I imagine implementing set losses for the Soviets on turn 1 would be easier then developing special surprise rules for the Luftwaffe.

[LiquidSky]

The first turn losses are not really as important as people are making it out to be. Most of the aircraft are obsolete biplanes or early monoplanes, and are only good for increasing the morale of your fighter squadrons. The trick is to destroy the aircraft that really matter...like the TB3's and IL-4's in the back. To reach them, you do your ground attacks first, which will shoot down about 500 of his fighters, then move one of your fighter bases up to the front, protected by your panzer divisions.

Now you can reach those meddlesome bombers in the back by staging.

Destroying all those obsolete aircraft at the front is just helping the Russians with their aircraft modernization program.

[moose1999]

ORIGINAL: map66

Given that the air engine is still a bit rough, and that the first turn historically represented unusual surprise conditions and chaos in Soviet CnC, would it make more sense to start turn 1 with the Soviet losses having already occurred? I imagine this would allow much easier tinkering with the air engine for more "normal" turns--- tinkering which I agree was highly needed given such exploits as the former Soviet mass number of small raids and the such. But it does seem like the pendulum has swung a bit too far against the Luftwaffe or turn 1. And I imagine implementing set losses for the Soviets on turn 1 would be easier then developing special surprise rules for the Luftwaffe.

This actually sounds very sensible to me.
Good idea.

[moose1999]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



The first turn losses are not really as important as people are making it out to be. Most of the aircraft are obsolete biplanes or early monoplanes, and are only good for increasing the morale of your fighter squadrons. The trick is to destroy the aircraft that really matter...like the TB3's and IL-4's in the back. To reach them, you do your ground attacks first, which will shoot down about 500 of his fighters, then move one of your fighter bases up to the front, protected by your panzer divisions.

Now you can reach those meddlesome bombers in the back by staging.

Destroying all those obsolete aircraft at the front is just helping the Russians with their aircraft modernization program.

Very interesting idea.
You say "staging" - what tactic are you refering to here?