Nerfing the LW fuel drops.

[Great_Ajax]

Agreed. Effectiveness of a tactical air force should not be measured in number of kills. IMO there are a number of intangibles (that are difficult to translate into a game) in which tactical air forces play a dominant role.

The first being the psychological impact of being a ground soldier and being unable to fight an aerial enemy moving at a high rate of speed, pop up immediately with little time to react, and deliver heavy firepower. The psychological effect has a greater impact than the actual damage caused by the aircraft. As such having air support is a significant morale boost to the friendly troops while the inverse is true as well. You can see the psychological impact just by our own perceptions based on our readings of WW2 accounts. I have assumed in the past that close air support have devastating results based on soldier accounts and their overwhelming fear of aerial attacks. The actual results of these attacks are underwhelming based on post war research as to which Rasmus has already pointed out. You can see numerous examples in 1941 in which German forces were significantly delayed and one of the major reasons for this was because the Soviets had achieved local air superiority. Some examples include the Luga battles near Leningrad, the advance on the Crimea in the Autum of 41, and some of the Dnepr River crossings. The Luftwaffe could simply not be present everywhere. Additionally, you can see numerous examples of Soviet divisions holding out while surrounded for a week or two even after numerous German ground attacks. Once the Germans diverted Luftwaffe ground attack assets on these pockets is when the Soviets began to break en masse. This happened during the Smolensk encirclement battles.

The second significant impact is that close air support airpower desynchronizes (spelling?) ground operations. A carefully planned offensive ends up being piecemealed because of air attacks. Even though the actual losses to aerial attacks are light, the attacks cause certain maneuever elements to lag behind in their advances and this exposes other ground elements that are advancing on schedule to be subjected to more ground attacks. This allows the defender to more effectively mass defensive firepower on uncoordinated assaults. You can see examples of these in the Mortain assaults in 1944 and the Soviet counterattacks around Smolensk in 1941.

Possible WitE system suggestions (If Trey had his way:

1. Actual damage due to air attacks should be light. (System seems about right now)

2. The side with overwhelming air support should receive a significant morale boost while the defending side receives a significant degradation of morale. If air superiority is contested then they should even each other out.

3. Areas in which the enemy has local air superiority should result in ground units having significanly reduced MPs (This is coming in WitW).

4. The real physical impact of air support on ground operations should be disruption to ground operations. I know WitE has it but I am unsure of its actual effect on the ground combat result. The side with the overhwhelming close air support should get a significant CV shift and vice versa.

5. Remove the rule in which an isolated unit automatically losses CV/morale. Make isolated CV loss a function of supply (a starved unit should suffer morale loss) and lack of air support in ground combats. Properly supplied isolated units with air support should be able to perform as well as they could if they were un-isolated.

6. Have a system to organize a tactical air force to support specific ground elements (Coming in WitW).

7. Remove the HQ Build Up completely but replace it with a priority supply system. The player could designate which HQs (Army Groups, Armies, and Corps) would receive higher or lesser priority and then the build up of these supplies would be within the normal constraints. (Also coming in WitW). The magical press button and I recieve max supplies is not good for the game.

Possible WitE System Impacts (and why this relates to the original thread):

1. Discourage players from using bombers as fuelers if they could see a noticeable impact of air support on ground operations.

2. It would give the Soviets an ability to counterattack with local air superiority.

3. Attacking isolated pockets without close air support should be more difficult with more casualties. This would raise the Germans casualty rate since it is already very low in the early game. It would have a delay impact on German operations in 1941. It would also cause more casualties for the Soviets in the late war and delay their advance as well.

4. Force players to deal with the reality that they will have to focus on a limited number of priority efforts ie "I cannot be strong everywhere".

5. Close air support would have more of an obvious impact on ground operations.


Trey




[/quote]

I would go futher and say u should rely much more than currently on GS in combat to be succesfull than as is now. U as attacker in my experience dont really need it in many situasion. IMO u should much more rarely been succesfull with out it than currently. This to both sides and through out the war.


Kind regards,

Rasmus
[/quote]

[Peltonx]

The planes don't fully fuel a unit, they top them off.

Normal supply gets you to 18-35(depending on distance to RH) then bombers and transports top off divisions.

Corps are set-up as all PZ or all Mot.

This tactic is not a total game changer vs someone that knows how to set-up a with drawing checker board. You can still get out all industry, rail out good units to north/center and still have a 4 or 5 deep checker board.

Sure the south will be completely lost, but North and Center will hold and hold in 42.

The issue then becomes can SHC get to Berlin without the lost manpower centers in south? I think it depends onSHC blizzard O, pocketed units in 42, GHC infantry moral by late 42 and then the SHC players skill at building the 2.0 machine.

[Peltonx]

Tactical ground support was how Germany cleaned house in 1939-1941.

Germany had less of everything and the enemy had better equipment and more of it in most cases.

The allies tried to do what the Germans did, but were not very good at it.

Basicly Germany used a sharp knife to quickly kill things and the allies used a 50 pound mace to bludgeon things slowly to death.

[Walloc]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

The planes don't fully fuel a unit, they top them off.

Normal supply gets you to 18-35(depending on distance to RH) then bombers and transports top off divisions.

Non of us are saying it fully supplies a unit, but it makes all the difference whether u have 20-25 MP or 45+MPs semi constandly in the mobile/ part of the mobile forces.

This tactic is not a total game changer vs someone that knows how to set-up a with drawing checker board. You can still get out all industry, rail out good units to north/center and still have a 4 or 5 deep checker board.

Sure the south will be completely lost, but North and Center will hold and hold in 42.

The issue then becomes can SHC get to Berlin without the lost manpower centers in south? I think it depends onSHC blizzard O, pocketed units in 42, GHC infantry moral by late 42 and then the SHC players skill at building the 2.0 machine.

Maybe u should ask Calkay58 about that. Is not that every thing u say is wrong, but when germans arrive near Kharkov at turn 3 and near D town at turn 4, as i understod it, i dont think ur impressions is true. No not saying its happening every game atm, but ofc as things are shown by pioneers more will learn and follow.

Kind regards,

Rasmus

[Iota]

Taking a pass on bombing the airfields on turn 1 is a good idea, yeah. The Soviet air force is going to be mostly useless anyways for quite some time almost regardless of what the Luftwaffe does to it on the surprise turn, and blowing up a bunch of obsolete airframes is of questionable utility. (Which is why I always shrugged at those 5000+ plane losses on turn 1 the Axis could do in the old days. This stuff just didn't matter very much.) But I'm also wondering if the mobile divisions really need the extra fuel on turn 2, it seems to me that they only start running into fuel issues from turn 3 onwards.

Well, what to do with the german LW in T1?

ground support/my experience:
A well prepared attack in T1 without ground support is successfull in 10/10 and maybe 19/20 attemps
A well prepared attack in T1 with ground support is successfull in 9/10 and maybe 18/20 attemps
I dont know exactly why and I have no statistic, but that is my feeling/experience.
My Conclusion: Using ground support means the result is more unpredictable.

unit bombing:
in T1 not really necessary and the effectiveness is still a secret?

airfield bombing ... as Flaviusx said

So u can do nothing or drop supply.
To drop supply is not really necessary but gives a better feeling than doing nothing [8|]

Greetings

[janh]

ORIGINAL: el hefe
Agreed. Effectiveness of a tactical air force should not be measured in number of kills. IMO there are a number of intangibles (that are difficult to translate into a game) in which tactical air forces play a dominant role.
...

Possible WitE system suggestions (If Trey had his way:

1. Actual damage due to air attacks should be light. (System seems about right now)

2. The side with overwhelming air support should receive a significant morale boost while the defending side receives a significant degradation of morale. If air superiority is contested then they should even each other out.

3. Areas in which the enemy has local air superiority should result in ground units having significanly reduced MPs (This is coming in WitW).

4. The real physical impact of air support on ground operations should be disruption to ground operations. I know WitE has it but I am unsure of its actual effect on the ground combat result. The side with the overhwhelming close air support should get a significant CV shift and vice versa.

5. Remove the rule in which an isolated unit automatically losses CV/morale. Make isolated CV loss a function of supply (a starved unit should suffer morale loss) and lack of air support in ground combats. Properly supplied isolated units with air support should be able to perform as well as they could if they were un-isolated.

6. Have a system to organize a tactical air force to support specific ground elements (Coming in WitW).

7. Remove the HQ Build Up completely but replace it with a priority supply system. The player could designate which HQs (Army Groups, Armies, and Corps) would receive higher or lesser priority and then the build up of these supplies would be within the normal constraints. (Also coming in WitW). The magical press button and I recieve max supplies is not good for the game.

Trey

Well said, Trey and Rasmus. My impression also was that air losses were rather ok, at least for what I know. Pavel gave some sources back then if I remember correctly, and it was pretty evident he had done some serious research on that part of the model. Generally it seems that a lot of research went into many aspects of WitE, from rail cap to anything. Air support and preliminary bombardment cause disruption just like in AE, but whether this is equivalent or effective enough to cause a clear shift in combat odds or something that would mimic a "desynchronisation" of operations in the end result I wouldn't be sure. Although in 41 it is not really needed to test this, but when entering LG or breaching some fortified hexes upon a river crossing it appears LW does make its presence felt. Especially in 43 or later, whenever I get chances for some Wehrmacht counterattacks against a more evenly footed Red Army, LW CAS appears to be much more important. It can shifts odds, not dramatically in my experience, but the bit that it sometimes requires to get 2:1 or better odds.

Reducing the isolation penalties or making them depended on their true cause, aka supply level, might already force a rethinking of LW usage in 41. And as you say, it will slow Wehrmacht progress, increase losses and give the Soviet units more chance for fighting. It would even limit the impact of the Lvov pocket, though not solve the issue really.

[turtlefang]

The actual studies I've seen on CAS for AFV and soft vehicle kills in WWII match Walloc observations very closely. A quick summary of the US & British Army reports on the Falaise pocket show that:

- Air kills on tanks were over reported by a factor of 10 to 15

- Soft vehicle kills were over reported by a factor of 5 to 10

Based on interviews with German prisoners during the war, the primary impact of air power interdiction was, in order:

- Forcing larger unit dispersal to minimize losses
- Decreasing movement rates as movement needed to be conducted in batches and jumps rather as continuous modes
- Destroying a fuel dump that would occasionally cause refueling problems
- Congestion from striking critical bottlenecks
- Mistiming of attacks or disjointed attacks due to units getting to the jump off points late
- Stringing a unit out as different elements were delayed by different amount of time resulting in piecemeal commitment to combat

Tactically, air power resulted in the following issues:

- Observation/Fwd Observer from low flying aircraft (the Number One cited item)
- Loss of surprise due to aerial scouting
- Loss of tactical flexibility to change position in certain types of ground
- Artillery suppression
- Disjointed efforts on both the offensive and defensive due to suppression fire/bombing

Finally, the one thing that was noted was that if a convoy was caught on the road in the open in line, an aircraft could shoot it to pieces in one to three passes. Especially if operating in pairs.

Kills weren't mentioned very high on the list.

The proposed "fixes" in WITW look like that address most of the issues.

As far as the JU88 flying fuel goes, you could do it but you really need to ramp up the losses due to wear and tear on the air frame. No manner how you store it or ship it, gasoline fumes really tear up the inside of an air frame (exception is specially build fuel tankers) - which is really thin to begin with anyway. I've seen it happen when shipped in the rural parts of Asia using DC-10-10s. And BG William Tunner "Willie the Whip" - who commanded the air forces shipping supplies over the Hump to China - estimated that air frames shipping gasoline lasted only 1/3 as long as those shipping non-toxic supplies.

So I have a hard time seeing the German bomber command saying "Sure, stick that gas on my expensive air frames so we can cart it around for your panzers, we don't care that it will eat up the air frames and make us infantry replacements in a month or so".

Non-toxic supplies, on the other hand, were carried all the time by bombers by everybody. However, not many spearheads were kept supplied by these bombers.

On the other hand, if its a game balancing issue, then so be. That's just the way it is.

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: Walloc

ORIGINAL: Pelton

The planes don't fully fuel a unit, they top them off.

Normal supply gets you to 18-35(depending on distance to RH) then bombers and transports top off divisions.

Non of us are saying it fully supplies a unit, but it makes all the difference whether u have 20-25 MP or 45+MPs semi constandly in the mobile/ part of the mobile forces.

This tactic is not a total game changer vs someone that knows how to set-up a with drawing checker board. You can still get out all industry, rail out good units to north/center and still have a 4 or 5 deep checker board.

Sure the south will be completely lost, but North and Center will hold and hold in 42.

The issue then becomes can SHC get to Berlin without the lost manpower centers in south? I think it depends onSHC blizzard O, pocketed units in 42, GHC infantry moral by late 42 and then the SHC players skill at building the 2.0 machine.

Maybe u should ask Calkay58 about that. Is not that every thing u say is wrong, but when germans arrive near Kharkov at turn 3 and near D town at turn 4, as i understod it, i dont think ur impressions is true. No not saying its happening every game atm, but ofc as things are shown by pioneers more will learn and follow.

Kind regards,

Rasmus

Back in the day when we all could mule ect Flaviusx/Kamil/Hoooper/MT/Katza and TDV had no problem stopping it.

This is no wheres near as powerful, but vs average to poor SHC players it can easly smokem and make someone look better then they really are.

Sapper cant keep all 3 PG's at 45+ only 6-8 mot units in south and 3 or 4 in north. He cant get to Leningrad on turn 4, Moscow or Rostov on turn 7 and Stalingrad on turn 11. MT, myself and a few others did that alrdy back in the day.

Whats going on now is 1/4 of that.

I have only played one game as SHC and I could stop Sapper, so I am dam sure Flaviusx/Kamil/Hoooper/MT/Katza and TDV would be able to stop Sapper, when and if he desides to play a game on the server.

We all "look" uber until we play a player of equal or better skills.

[Joel Billings]

I find myself agreeing with Pelton (and many others here). Basically, things are what they are and we're not looking to change them. Players are free to use a house rule to limit bombers and air transport. I expect WitW will be nothing like WitE when we are finished with air transport (logistics is different, air system is different, and we have known for a long time that we had to deal with bomber transport issue when balancing WitW). Trey has pointed out that air is important, and some of the current WitW system has incorporated impact of interdiction on movement/supplies/disruption. Exactly how this might impact isolated units is still to be developed in WitW. My impression has been that ground support can have a substantial, if somewhat hidden impact on combat through the disruption it causes to ground units (as opposed to outright losses). I don't have enough data to know yet if it is felt more in WitW than WitE. We have not yet moved the air transport and paradrop system into the air resolution phase in WitW so I can't speak to how they will differ (although paradrop system is already quite different as you can drop on enemy units and can scatter), but I can tell you that the other air missions are very different in how they work in WitW compared to WitE (and they are still changing).

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Pelton

Back in the day when we all could mule ect Flaviusx/Kamil/Hoooper/MT/Katza and TDV had no problem stopping it.

This is no wheres near as powerful, but vs average to poor SHC players it can easly smokem and make someone look better then they really are.

Sapper cant keep all 3 PG's at 45+ only 6-8 mot units in south and 3 or 4 in north. He cant get to Leningrad on turn 4, Moscow or Rostov on turn 7 and Stalingrad on turn 11. MT, myself and a few others did that alrdy back in the day.

Whats going on now is 1/4 of that.

I have only played one game as SHC and I could stop Sapper, so I am dam sure Flaviusx/Kamil/Hoooper/MT/Katza and TDV would be able to stop Sapper, when and if he desides to play a game on the server.

We all "look" uber until we play a player of equal or better skills.

Well actually Saper has already defeated Kamil and that was before he really learned how to use air resupply. I believe Saper is now willing and able to play server games and I would love to see an AAR of a game against yourself, MT or Flavius.

[Flaviusx]

There's really only one way to defend against this sort thing, Harry. Run like hell in the south once you've got the factories out. Separate the the handful of well supplied mobile units from their support until any further advance leaves them exposed to a counterstroke, where they can be cut off and routed. Don't even try to get anything evacuated west of the Dnepr, either. Just get the big stuff out east of there.

You won't stabilize the situation until you get to Rostov and Voronezh. And then mostly because by the time you get there, the mud hits. Those two cities can still fall during the snow turns.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

There's really only one way to defend against this sort thing, Harry. Run like hell in the south once you've got the factories out. Separate the the handful of well supplied mobile units from their support until any further advance leaves them exposed to a counterstroke, where they can be cut off and routed. Don't even try to get anything evacuated west of the Dnepr, either. Just get the big stuff out east of there.

You won't stabilize the situation until you get to Rostov and Voronezh. And then mostly because by the time you get there, the mud hits. Those two cities can still fall during the snow turns.

I agree FlaviusX. If Saper and I did play a rematch and he played it the same as our current game I would do a much better job moving the Southern Factories. With one mistake I thinK I did a pretty good job of running in the south though. Attacking and/or isolating his motorized units was always tough as after converting hexes Saper tended to pull them back a hex or two. In any event this is probably irrelevant as according to Carlkay he is no longer playing the same as he did against me. He is playing a much improved version. If he is reaching Kharkov and the Dnepr bend by turns 3 or 4 then even abandoning all of the factories West of the Dnepr will not, I think, allow you to evacuate the ones East of the river in time. But again, I would love to see you or some other elite player show me how it is done.

[SigUp]

Kharkov by turn 3 or 4 [X(]

Wow, as impressive as that is, that should not be possible.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang
As far as the JU88 flying fuel goes, you could do it but you really need to ramp up the losses due to wear and tear on the air frame.

To be honest, even if you upped the wear and tear losses for the bombers by 30%, it wouldn't be much of a problem until 1942 , when I'd start to regularly use the bombers in their original role. In my last GCs due to completely shutting off bombing missions with a few exceptions, losses are so low that my pools remain well filled.

Might be that the amount of fuel dropped could use a further "decreasing odds" modifier. Someone above mentioned that fuel drops were usually performed as stop-gap measure to retain tactical movability, and ability to defend -- and not to make another 200 miles progress. So what would seem right is what Trey implied, much less penalties if isolated or in poor supply state (mud), but with a minimum fuel amount. That would also give pocketed Soviets more stiffness, and hence more need to use air support to reduce pockets. WitE2...

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
... Trey has pointed out that air is important, and some of the current WitW system has incorporated impact of interdiction on movement/supplies/disruption. Exactly how this might impact isolated units is still to be developed in WitW. My impression has been that ground support can have a substantial, if somewhat hidden impact on combat through the disruption it causes to ground units (as opposed to outright losses). ...

The words "somewhat hidden" caught my attention. Maybe just my opinion, but a lot of confusion seen on this board in the past year or two stemmed from factors that were actually accounted for by the engine, but were "(somewhat) hidden". Maybe the casual gamer would like it better that way, less cluttering with details and such, but hiding too much seems to be as much a source of confusion as showing every little detail?

I would have especially one example, where I would favor the game to "speak" a little more to the player: combats. It would be great to have combat reports, like in AE exported to a txt file, or maybe to look up after turn resolution with a button, that would give the full combat messages as if you watched on highest detail levels. I often watch them on level 2, that takes long enough for a turn -- but sometimes results are so odd in the end, that I would wish that I could rewind and watch that specific one unfold with all details. Just a thought...

Another thing I would advocate is making these details more "human readable", aka not have a decimal fatigue, disruption, experience or leader skills scale, but actually attributes a human would use if he'd view a strung out unit and needed to report back: sort of "low, medium, high, very high" disruption, etc. Would change the feel of control somewhat.

ORIGINAL: turtlefang
- Air kills on tanks were over reported by a factor of 10 to 15
- Soft vehicle kills were over reported by a factor of 5 to 10

That brings up an interesting point: FoW. Actually a lot of things were done they were because people missed the hindsight we have 70 years later. A lot, there have been so many examples here or over at the AE boards now where one wonders why people did so apparently foolish or inefficient things.

Ideally, without hindsight, this would mean FoW on combat resolution with air support could easily overstate losses that amount (not sure what the FoW contribution is now, but I think is it much smaller, right?). We'd probably use it extensively then. Likely in 41 the true losses "apparently" inflicted by Luftwaffe are indeed higher in comparison to those in 43 or 44, because as someone mentioned above also damaged and on the retreat abandoned tanks might count in as well etc. So there is a discrepancy, but also a success rate. I'll speculate a bit now, but I'd guess what also happened in the East was the following: Over time one did change faster than the other: reports remained overstated by pilots, a bit like during the transition from France to the Battle of Britain. But losses for the Soviets probably went down a lot once the situation stabilized. Even if the officers and staff reading the reports were surely aware of the exaggeration, they probably couldn't catch that change and the true size of this problem. Else, I would think, the Battle of Britain hadn't been fought the way it was, and half the Luftwaffe had been on fuel transport duty by September 41... Anyway, without our hindsight and such a FoW implying high enemy losses, we'd also keep using LW in CAS missions later. But unfortunately we have that knowledge now, and even if one upped FoW in WitW or WitE, we'd still not fall for the trick. However, back then this was probably one reason why Luftwaffe could never have been transformed in a flying supply train -- "reportedly" inflicted damage surely was a good reason to back up privileges and position (the effect of disruption aside).

I suspect it is somewhat similar with ground combat. Pelton and MT are presently doing the exact opposite, number crunching for victory. With a greater FoW (esp. no accurate view of enemy total strength every turn!), and an FoW that would have an own dynamic over time, it would take you longer to realize whether the true losses are still following that typical FoW factor and whether it is time to stop attacking... A little more FoW wouldn't do harm, and FoW that may in size also change over time... I can't say whether Officers back then had this timely and accurate information on own losses and also rather accurate information on the enemy losses and captured stuff, but my impression from reading is that there was a lot more lag than "<7 days max", one turn before the numbers converged on something more accurate. It took them at least 2 weeks after Kiev's pocket faltered to come up with a good total. Then add on top that all those losses and gain today are much debated, and often overstated by the reporting side, I feel the game could use more Fow even on own figures.

[Klydon]

I have long used the Luftwaffe as a flying gas can. (I pretty much shut off ground support from the start; it simply isn't needed in most cases). The only time GS comes on is for say the reduction of the Leningrad area. Other than that, it is flying fuel to the front.

The Germans did a lot of fuel flying during the war, including the advance into the Caucasus, but not on the level the players are doing.

One thing I would caution is not to just focus on the Germans (some mention of the Allies for WitW has happen, which is good). I am finishing up a Russian game and once again, GS is off for the most part and every available plane is flying gas to mostly tank corps (Mech corps are the biggest gas hogs I have ever seen). This helps give them some extra mobility to advance more.

The key difference between the Germans and the Russians is the Germans have far more bombers (HE-111/JU-88) than attack planes (Ju-87) while the Russians typically have far more attack planes (IL-2) than bombers (Pe-2, etc). In addition, the fuel carried by a Pe-2 is very small compared to their German counterparts. Attack planes don't fly fuel, bombers do, although I don't think Ju-88's really did that much while the HE-111 was used in the transport role in several instances. (He-111 was originally designed as a transport that could be converted to a bomber easily, so maybe that had something to do with it).

I think one of the reasons that refueling is so effective is that most players fly it to a specific unit. Perhaps making it so that it has to go to either a airfield or a HQ unit may help quite a bit in the mean time rather than direct drops.

[Denniss]

Maybe there's a quick for this - cut fuel dropped on units by at least 1/3 but no change if it's delivered to an airfield (maybe even HQ). Drops on divisions/combat units are to be considered a from of para drops (or medium/lightly loaded a/c for landing on forward/unprepared strips) while airfields (maybe even HQ) are considered to have prepared landing strips and personnell to unload a/c.

[barkman44]

just my 2 cents but to the disruptive effectiveness of interviction of airpower behind enemy lines I know it can't be modeled game wise but what of the lone spitefires strafing attack against a command car containing Rommel?If you believe the stories of his invovlement in the 20 july conspirace it had a major impact.I'm curious if that pilots name has been discovered.sorry if this is ot.

[Joel Billings]

We actually account for leader casualties in the rear, as seen by many posts over the past 2 years of people losing leaders in the rear far from visible combat. In fact, people found that bombing HQs could be too effective killing leaders, IIRC. There are so many ways that players push a game system. We cannot account for every factor, nor should we, although a game like WitP or WitE makes people think we can. But that's all philosophy (something my mother actually taught in school but I could never quite deal with). So practically speaking, yes, interdiction is not handled well in WitE, but in WitW it is a major component of the air/ground game. Absolutely now that we have airbases in WtiW we should make it much more efficient to fly supplies to airbases where they can then be disseminated, as opposed to flying cargo directly to units. I expect this will happen in WitW and WitE 2.0. As for WitE, it is what it is. We feel the game is reaching stasis (with large amounts of air transport, although I think you are minimizing the value of ground support). Wish we could do more, but further efforts are really going to have little return, and will only delay WitW and WitE 2.0. We feel that anyone coming into WitE now can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment from it, and those playing it have hopefully already had hundreds of hours of enjoyment and there have been many changes over the past 1-2 years to learn and absorb. As we've always said, the game is not perfect, but we feel it is pretty darn good and we've tried to support it as best we could (and probably more than we could afford to). Those wanting to see the next evolution of WitE will have to wait for WitE 2.0 which has to wait for WitW. We do appreciate your support as we move forward.

[barkman44]

I guess what i was trying to bring up was the abrasive affect interdictive air attacks had on units moving towards a combat area.
The losses may be light but the call of"achtung jabo"had a major effect on forward movement ie 2ss das reich advance to normandy

[carlkay58]

I have no problem with what Saper is doing to me. It is an 'over-the-top' tactic, as mentioned above, but probably MUCH more effective than it should be. It sounds like the entire air game is changing for WitW and will probably fix this problem at that time. In the meantime, we just have to suck it up.

Pelton, I have used several depths of checkerboard vs Saper and he can still blow through it fairly fast. He has posted for an experienced Soviet opponent over in the Opponents Wanted and it appears that he and TDV will be playing soon. I am just getting over a few days spent with my youngest son and daughter-in-law who presented the family with two new grandsons this week. So time to catch up in my games.