Air Superiority Missions vs Enemy Naval Interdiction

[Harrybanana]

To further prove my point (and because I am an anal retentive dick with nothing better to do) I ran 2 more tests. In both tests I had 200 German bombers executing Naval Patrol missions in the sea North of Normandy which flew a total of about 1300 sorties. In the first test I did not fly any Air Superiority Missions. In the second test I used just about every FB-F in England in the summer of 1944 to fly approximately 4300 Air Superiority sorties over the same area as the German bombers. The two maps below show the Naval Interdiction values for both tests. As you can see there is virtually no difference.

On the one hand it is surprising that no one noticed this until now. On the other hand it is perhaps not surprising as few people play the style of game that Liquid Sky plays. Also, it has only been relatively recently that players were given the option of flying certain air missions in just one air phase (friendly or enemy). Finally, this only proves that Air Superiority missions are ineffective against enemy Naval Patrols flown in the friendly air phase. It could be that AS is effective against enemy Naval Patrols flown in the enemy air phase.

[LiquidSky]

I am glad we got that all sorted out. I am a bit bemused that it always seems to be the Luftwaffe bombers that get away with the exploits. First they were missing (most) of your fighters by flying under 10,000 feet.....and then they figured out how to fly underwater to avoid aerial detection. [:'(]

Its a shame that I am going to be losing most of my planes over the summer....it would have been interesting to see what else they come up with [:D]

[Joel Billings]

Save that test and run it on the next update. Will be interesting to see how it differs. I would expect you'll see more Germans a/c going down and lower NI values based on other tests.

[Joel Billings]

Yes, it would be fun to see what you could cook up next for those usually underutilized LW bombers. [:)]

[LiquidSky]

Actually..I have another cunning plan...a plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel.

It's a shame though that I couldn't have discovered it (naval bombing) when he invaded in front of Rome...that would have bought me enough time to keep him from taking it.

Or the interception bug...I could have freely dropped paratroopers on England when most of his army was fighting in Italy. Ahh...the long ranged forecasting of hindsight.

EDIT: It's a server game, so we will just continue on...no saving

[Helpless]

No need to wait for the next update. Just lower NP Ad priority and bump AS priority.

[LiquidSky]

Ahhh....I see. If I run my Naval Patrol at a lower priority...say NORM instead of V. High...then my mission will go before his....resulting in the death of my poor under worked bombers.

Lets try it and see...


Well...that was interesting. A fair number of bombers shot down, but some of them still managed to drop their bombs. This is more what I was expecting when I came up with the idea of trying to block potential invasion sites with naval bombers.

I guess the easiest way to fix it is to prevent naval patrol from going higher then HIGH priority. Maybe even having only Air Superiority be allowed V. HIGH

I will be able to fly my missions after all...I will just adjust my Priority down. I doubt anybody would adjust Air superiority down, and it defaults at V. High.

[whoofe]

nice testing harry and LS!

it does bring up a question for me however. I rarely change the priority. is there an advantage to doing so? (I mean, beyond the exploit that was found and will be fixed)

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

No need to wait for the next update. Just lower NP Ad priority and bump AS priority.

Thanks Pavel I did just that. Ran the same test I ran the first time with 800 German bombers flying NP over the Normandy sea hexes but changed their priority to "Normal". I opposed them with 300+ fighters with "Very High" priority. The good news is that I did shoot down 69 bombers (8.6%). The bad news is that it didn't have any effect on the NI Values, still all 8's and 7's as shown in my 4th screenshot above. I thought that fighters were supposed to reduce enemy NI values, but you did say that with high numbers of bombers they may not. So my question is: Will the patch just increase the number of bombers being shot down by Air Superiority missions, or will it also reduce the enemy NI values (even if very heavy naval patrols)?

[Joel Billings]

I bet you could shoot down a lot more if you crank up your AS mission pct or change setting to request more a/c per mission. I suppose you will wear out your pilots this way, but heck, they will be having so much fun downing German bombers that they might not care. It's the Gulf of Saint-Malo Turkey Shoot.

[Helpless]

yes, I was able to shot 400-500 bombers.

The thing is that AS flights which engaged in the battle do not reduce AS, so LW still able to get quite high NI, but Allies are in position to place at least as much to deny control.

In any case I think fighter ability to reduce NI is quite adequate, but LB's with lots of GP bombs are way to efficient. So I made some extra tweaks how NI is generated:

- Reduced efficiency of GP bombs
- Increased efficiency of mines/torpedoes/ASW weapons
- Improved automatic naval load out selection
- Made it easier to reach lower NI and harder higher NI values

One thing to remember that one of the best naval tools allies have is a Amphib HQ. LW should have very little chance to gain control when several AHQs are in the area.

[Helpless]

it does bring up a question for me however. I rarely change the priority. is there an advantage to doing so?

Priority is designed to control air asset sharing between several ADs.

It also can be used to sync recon-bomb flights.

[LiquidSky]

I believe that AD's go off in the order you make them when the priority is the same.

So if you routinely do your AS and RECON missions first, you wouldn't notice.

I use to use it to tweak my bombing streams, so that heavily escorted missions would fly first.....ending with the least escorted ones, in the hopes that they wouldn't encounter any enemy interceptions.