Air Superiority

[decourcy2]

I am having to unlearn everything from BtR.
I am finding that superiority is often doing nothing. If i run superiority on a 3 or 4 hex grid around a one hex airfield strike, on the same days, maybe the fighters at 15,000ft, i generally find that i lose 0-1 aircraft and kill 0-1 aircraft. Woot! While 12 Tiffies are shot down by German fighters.

Or, in the Med i run Air Superiority over areas that the Germans are naval striking. Because of the effect happening the next turn, i am unsure if my superiority mission or just general interceptions are killing 15 or so German aircraft.

Could one of you kind sirs explain what i am doing wrong? Should i put Malta's fighters on naval strike where the Germans are naval striking?
Thanks,
Mike

[LiquidSky]

I find that putting fighters in airfields right near where the enemy is trying to fly his missions is good enough. The fighters will intercept anything that flies near them. It won't stop the naval air, but it will attrition them for doing it.

[carlkay58]

Superiority missions are kind of so so. It is hard to really tell if they are doing anything or not. I use them as the Western Allies to project an interception zone where I do not have any airbases yet. Once you have airbases in the area, it is best to just allow those squadrons intercept automatically. The Superiority missions do appear to help combat enemy naval patrols - not great but at least something.

[Seminole]

Superiority missions are kind of so so. It is hard to really tell if they are doing anything or not. I use them as the Western Allies to project an interception zone where I do not have any airbases yet. Once you have airbases in the area, it is best to just allow those squadrons intercept automatically. The Superiority missions do appear to help combat enemy naval patrols - not great but at least something.

I reached the same opinion after the first week in the Battle Ground Italy scenario server game I started last night.
I setup Tactical Air to run air superiority over the US beaches' naval approach and Malta Air Cmd to do the same over the British beaches.
It seemed on day 1 like the Luftwaffe threw the kitchen sink at both locations.
I was running my own naval patrols from groups in Strategic Air, with some support from Tactical Air over the US naval approaches.

I noticed later in the week lots of air superiority missions where no planes from either side appeared to show up. It is as if their presence simply drove off (disrupted?) the patrol attempts entirely.
The Luftwaffe made drops over both zones because I saw the large day 1 naval interdiction numbers (+900, etc.) that normally show up with the Ju88s from their attacks, but I guess since they didn't get many if any attacks through the later part of the week I completely owned the seas. There weren't even German interdiction values where I expected after seeing the day 1 results.
My assumption is that the interdiction effect incrementally dwindles over the week, and since it wasn't being added to over the following days completely melted away.

I think the key to this is being pro-active. Don't wait for a week to be wasted not getting supplies (and thus replacements!) through to your beaches. You have to dedicate the proper assets (units and concentration, not mass and volume) initially, or else you end up chasing.

[Helpless]

Superiority missions are kind of so so. It is hard to really tell if they are doing anything or not.

AS is very mutirole mission, so it could happen that you just don't assign enough resources to see the effect, especially if area is too big.

AS flights can get intercepted by the enemy auto interception and enemy AS in the area. The bigger intersection area the more chances that you will has AS vs AS combat.

It can join escorts to defend friendly raid against enemy intercepts.

It can intercept enemy AS flights and raids. Last one is tricky as you need to have good detection in order to intercept enemy raids, so if you are doing very distant patrols, usually you lack of early awareness info. It makes it not so probable to intercept enemy while it is very far away from your air bases (land radars).

AS plots fighter values over the water hexes and generates enemy naval patrol losses.

Planes which flew AS logging extra miles, which can be "spend" during them ground support strikes.

We also planning to add night intruder missions as part of AS AD.

[decourcy2]

Thank you for replying, but i guess my issue is the info black hole. I have an idea what my bombers are doing, maybe to much of an idea, i know interdiction numbers, but i have no way of knowing anything about air superiority. It could be doing, and appears to be doing, nothing.

[Helpless]

All battles of AS flights take part in should be listed on the AD summary screen (even if they happened during enemy turn). And some activity is not so obvious. I can't comment much without looking at the save.

Btw, if they just fly and don't meet any opposition, it could mean that all goals are achieved and you got air superiority in the area.

[gmsitton]

You can also use the F11 Show Battle Sites key to see where air battles took place, then check the battle detail screen. It will also show where naval interdiction attacks occurred.

[JocMeister]

Helpless,

Are there any plans to incorporate something that can combat enemy naval interdiction? Like an "anti naval interdiction" mission? Or "Fleet CAP" or something. In the current system you can only combat enemy naval interdiction with your own interdiction. But you can never lower enemy interdiction numbers and it seems very easy to max both sides at 99 over a beachhead.

[LiquidSky]

Perhaps Axis naval interdiction should suffer higher operational losses due to the many ways ships are protected from air. In the pacific, it took a lot of dead aircraft to get any hits on ships due to AA from escorts, CAP. And invasions used barrage balloons to help protect their shipping.

But then it is fairly easy to avoid excessive losses in troop transports. Just move your units a hex or two at a time. The algorithm only calculates at the end of each hop for losses.

[Helpless]

Are there any plans to incorporate something that can combat enemy naval interdiction? Like an "anti naval interdiction" mission? Or "Fleet CAP" or something. In the current system you can only combat enemy naval interdiction with your own interdiction. But you can never lower enemy interdiction numbers and it seems very easy to max both sides at 99 over a beachhead.

Fighters on automatic naval patrol, AS missions and amphib HQs should reduce enemy naval interdiction values. I'll try to make it more visible.

[Seminole]

Are there any plans to incorporate something that can combat enemy naval interdiction? Like an "anti naval interdiction" mission? Or "Fleet CAP" or something. In the current system you can only combat enemy naval interdiction with your own interdiction. But you can never lower enemy interdiction numbers and it seems very easy to max both sides at 99 over a beachhead.

As I said above, I've seen the Luftwaffe send their He-111s and Ju-88s against my landing areas.
I used B-25s (without escorts - a mistake!) on the American beaches and B-24s on the British beaches (2xgrps each beach) for my own naval interdiction.
Additional naval patrol directive from Tactical Air over the American beaches included lots of escorts, and I also had air superiority missions with the Malta Air Cmd and Tactical Air short legged fighters on that island to the south.
It was a server game, so I don't have access to the save, but I know the He111s and Ju88s showed up on the first day, there is just no sign of it after a week.
Like I said lots of screens came up for 'air combat' without showing planes for either side. Helpless saying he'll try to make it more visible makes me think that was the air superiority missions driving off enemy naval interdiction (or perhaps the fighter grps on naval patrol/escort).




Something I noticed in looking at (WA) opponent's battles (ground interdiction efforts in particular) is that they'll have a very disparate mix of aircraft, and after a day and a half of bombing they quit showing up. I wonder if the short range groups are burning up their weekly miles hopping to the target staging base, and then their absence drops the mission capable rate low enough the flight is cancelled (mandatory escorts, maybe?).