Increasing Air Interdiction

[KWG]

i can get high interdiction levels in four hexes. A 4 hex wall is not enough so i spread them , its filling in the inbetweens that difficult.

how are you doing in the interdiction? on ether side.

[Chuske]

What priorities are you using (railway vs interdict etc) as you seem to be getting high values mainly on rail hexes? I've also noticed that in the area covered by an AD the hexes at the very edge that are 0 seem to be "spill over" from adjacent hexes and not directly attacked.

If flak is in a hex then that seems to reduce the interdiction a bit.

You need to look at your priorities and how many raids you are getting in total. If you don't have enough raids you can't cover all the hexes. The effect per raid will depend on how many sorties you get over a hex and the quality of your recon and the level of enemy fighters and flak.

So maybe post a picture of shift-O (ie flak) and a picture of the battles to see how many raids are going into each hex will give us a clearer picture.

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I'm writing a doctrine and interdiction guide so I'll put the first part here to see if that helps and to get feedback and any errors ironed out.

Doctrine:-

Doctrine in effect is like a template for your ADs. Every time you create a new AD its values will be filled out with those in the doctrine of that Air HQ for that AD type.

Firstly you can set which days you'll fly during that week, more days will if enough planes and pilots are fit to fly mean more sorties and more interdiction.

Then you have intensity which is the number of raids you will mount per day. That is set to preset values for each AD type and for the size of the AD (ie the bigger the area of your AD the higher the intensity).

Then you have Mis Pct which defines the size of each raid. Each AD type has a pre-defined number of mission (bomber or recon) aircraft. You can set here a % of this value. 100% uses the default and you can set smaller sizes or larger up to 300% (3 times bigger than normal)

So if you fly all 7 days at high intensity with 300% you'll put out a lot of sorties over those hexes.

The downside will be your losses and fatigue will go up and your morale may go down. So ideally you need the lowest settings that get the job done.

[Chuske]

AD Settings

The AD will be pre-filled with values according to your doctrine settings. So useful to make sure your doctrine settings use the most common settings you'll be using and update them as your needs change.

Once you create an AD then you can modify further.

If you don't open the advanced settings then all you can modify here related to number of sorties is the intensity setting (and area setting, you fly higher intensity for larger AD areas). Changing this will override the doctrine setting in this AD only and not change the doctrine.

The advanced settings allow even finer control of your raids and sorties.

Firstly you can override the days you fly on (again just for this AD)

You can then adjust the intensity with Strike Num setting. When set on auto this follows the default for the AD type and intensity setting. If you edit it you set the number of raids you'd like per day from 0-999 (notice the intensity setting above changes to display custom).

You might not actually see your airgroups fly this number though particularly if you set it high as you just won't have the aircraft to do it, instead you 'll get the most raids you can. So setting 999 will always maximize the number of raids you get per day.

The Min AC and Req AC settings allow you set min and maximum size of the raids flying this AD. Req AC on auto corresponds to your doctrine Mis Pct and Esc Pct settings. If you enter a value the Air HQ will try and fly as many aircraft as it can up to the Req AC value.


Hopefully this will make a little sense. More sorties means more interdiction/bomb damage/recon but will result in more losses, fatigue and possibly morale loss.

[KWG]

hey, thanks

Clear and complete explanation.

What priorities are you using (railway vs interdict etc) as you seem to be getting high values mainly on rail hexes?

its 100% interdiction, i put them on rails to slow any unit unloading from the rail.

flak is low.

using the variables you explained i can interdict at high levels 4 hexes. everytime i expand the area the levels drop to below 5 average.
a higher intensity doesn't always produce a increase in interdiction. it seems to me.


ive been experimenting with the patterns of interdiction.

"Matryoshka" Russian dolls... Air Directive inside Air Directive inside Air Directives....etc.

Overlapping Zones... Air Directives overlap at a common point. like the petals of a flower.

Overlay Zones... Air Directives overlap completely. like a layer cake. common center

Fence Post... 1 Air directive per 10 miles. then spread out. i can get 4 high level hexes every time.



"More sorties means more interdiction/bomb damage/recon but will result in more losses, fatigue and possibly morale loss."
The ingredients.

Its like a recipe that changes a little every time.

[KWG]

".... the bigger the area of your AD the higher the intensity)"

is that "the bigger the area of your AD the higher the intensity" needed.?

[KWG]

This is getting somewhere now!

[Chuske]

Here I show (in table below) values I got from the game for Interdiction AD. I did this simply by setting an AD and then changing its radius and intensity. Then in the advanced settings in the row NumStrike I'd see Auto and then a number in brackets which is the raids per day for that that intensity and radius.

So you can see that the bigger the area the less raids you will get per hex. This assumes though that you are attacking all hexes in the area which is not always true if you AD is partly over water or if you are just attacking railways or ports.

So in theory to get a high sortie count per hex you either need lots of small ADs or very high number of strikes.

Thing I don't know is how the game picks which hex to hit on what day. It could be this thats causing you issues, if it is then only have to hope Helpless can post here and explain how the air HQ picks which hexes it hits.

Things to try:-

Try setting Mis Pct to 300% in all your Doctrines for interdiction and change the ADs Strike Num to 999 which will mean you get max number of raids per day.
Start with 1 AD hitting 1 hex and then increase your radius until you get some hexes not getting interdicted or the overall interdiction has dropped below what you want.

Will be an interesting experiment, i started doing something similar yesterday and increased my understanding a lot but still didn't always get sensible results so I thing there is some extra factors missing I still don't yet understand.

Can then try your overlapping ADs and see if that is better than one AD set to the max.

[Chuske]

ORIGINAL: KWG

This is getting somewhere now!

Nice! Looks like we were writing our posts at the same time.

What settings did you use to get that (ie intensities, mission pct)? Was it your russian doll pattern of ADs?

[Chuske]

Other factors I'm finding are terrain, open is easier to interdict and also fighter-bombers seem more effective which makes sense as they can strafe as well as bomb.

[KWG]

like the chart, saved. provides a average to go by. still will have good and bad days, hopefully no one setting will "always" provide high interdiction.

"Start with 1 AD hitting 1 hex and then increase your radius until you get some hexes not getting interdicted or the overall interdiction has dropped below what you want."

been doing that too. seeing the effects of changes made.

"What settings did you use to get that (ie intensities, mission pct)? Was it your russian doll pattern of ADs? "

high intensity, 100%mission%, strike number set by AI, 1 recon AD, 4 ground attack AD, 6 days
I let the AI divide about 700 fb/bombers between each AD.
Pattern was the Flower petals overlapping zones.

terrain and weather ....wild cards..[:)]

[Zenra]

Nice analysis and good advice here. It certainly makes sense that interdiction attacks should be more effective in open terrain, and the fighter-bomber types should be more effective than level bombers.

I find myself wondering if detection level / recon plays a role. The "Michelin Guide to Where to Bomb in Italy" should provide a reasonable idea of where the road, rail and important intersections are, but flying effective recon missions is needed to identify where the enemy is actually on the move. I am away from the game for a couple of days but will have to experiment some. Any experience, anecdotal or otherwise, to suggest whether recon helps with interdiction?

[marion61]

ORIGINAL: KWG

ive been experimenting with the patterns of interdiction.

"Matryoshka" Russian dolls... Air Directive inside Air Directive inside Air Directives....etc.

Overlapping Zones... Air Directives overlap at a common point.

That's how you do interdiction. You need to overlap your AD's to maximize your intent. I normally use the heavy bombers to rail way interdiction, and have my tactical air do the actual ground interdiction. The more target priorities you use, the less they can concentrate on one priority. Also remember that you can assign specific groups to an air directive. If you assign specific groups, you don't have to worry about them trying to fly the same planes on the same days. And Mitchell mentioned recon, and recon is very essential to getting those results.

[Chuske]

Recon definitely helps a lot with any other mission. Some situations I've noticed dramatic results when comparing interdiction over recon'd areas vs with no recon. So always recon your targets.

ORIGINAL: Mitchell

Nice analysis and good advice here. It certainly makes sense that interdiction attacks should be more effective in open terrain, and the fighter-bomber types should be more effective than level bombers.

I find myself wondering if detection level / recon plays a role. The "Michelin Guide to Where to Bomb in Italy" should provide a reasonable idea of where the road, rail and important intersections are, but flying effective recon missions is needed to identify where the enemy is actually on the move. I am away from the game for a couple of days but will have to experiment some. Any experience, anecdotal or otherwise, to suggest whether recon helps with interdiction?

[KWG]

recon with only interdiction as a highest priority and all others none. although a low unit recon in the same mission as the interdiction recon may help.

[Belphegor]

ORIGINAL: KWG

This is getting somewhere now!

total number of bombers used to achieve this?

[AnonK2]

Hello mates,

thx for this impressive way to show how to interdict. I would like to turn the question around.

How to deal with such heavy interdiction as Axis player?

Thats what I do now:

1. "Delay" ground strategy
1.A. "hold at all cost" order - no moving for all units within the box
1.B. setting up a new defence line where it makes sense outside of the box and let new brought in divisions dig in there
1.C. when the frontline gets critical i fall back and let the Allies hit the fresh troop at the second line
1.D. refit the exhausted units which made it out of the interdiction zone

2. air strategy
2.A. Bringing in Jagdgeschwader and place them on airfield just a next to the interdiction kill zone to increase intercepts
2.B. placing FlaK at key cities or using the chessboard placement, but only if I think that the frontline will hold a while

The problem is, delay works and it costs the Allies precious time. But I cant do anything offensive - like bringing in a Panzerkorps to cut a breaktrough. The Panzerdivisions loose so many equipment and men when marching /or railtransport them where they would be needed.

Anyone has a better idead, how to cope with interdiction?

[KWG]

"total number of bombers used to achieve this?"

high end of 700 fb/f. number of assigned aircraft is lower in inner patrol zone and goes up as you move out.

i dont use many escorts to walk the FIGHTER-bombers through the bad neighborhood.
yes i know you were trained as a fighter pilot, look on the bright side you only have to fly with the bomb half way.