Setting Minimum Requirements for AD's

[Joel Billings]

My daughter's going to the JC now and enjoying it. We just got to Santa Rosa in 2009, but I'd been through it a few times in the 80s when we were in the south bay. I'm sure it was different then, but we love it now as it has a lot less traffic than LA, SV or SD (where we've lived or have kids).

As for the drop tanks, if you have an AD selected, and look at the air units listed on the right by left clicking on it, you see your range circle on the map. You double click on it to see the detail screen and change the load out and then close the detail window and see the new range. I realize that's a lot of clicks, but honestly I have played the game (and WitE2 in testing) a lot and I have yet to change load outs. I rely on the auto settings. I realize this is not ideal, but I am more interested in the ground game, so there's a lot that I leave on auto in the air game. I do set and adjust ADs, I just haven't gotten into load outs. Someone else may be able to point out a better way to see what you want to see.

As for the engineers, you have picked up on a bug that was created in one of the recent updates. It will be fixed in the next update that should be out in a few weeks. The auto rail repair won't work (or at least each engineer won't do it after it does something else). You can use the manual rail repair units ok and this is one of the manual functions that you have to learn to play decently. Auto rail repair is mostly of value when capturing a lot of territory at once (like overrunning France). For most situations you will do better by using the manual rail repair units to fix the key rail line or two along your axis of advance.

BTW, my sister lives in Davis so I'll be not far from you next weekend. [:)]

[MemoryLeak]

I really liked it in Santa Rosa but had to move to Sacramento to finish up at Sac State.
My wife use to live in Davis when I met her. It's a heck of a lot hotter in this area than SR.

Thanks for the tips. I'll have to try and figure out how to do manual RR repair. So I take it that all of these construction units that are just
sitting around, and I don't seem to be able to move, will just be there and I need to ignore them.

[HMSWarspite]

ORIGINAL: MemoryLeak

How does a mission planner know if fighters need drop tanks for a mission? Is there a quick easy way to tell the
distance to a target and compare it to the range with and without tanks?

And there seems to be a lot of lazy Engineers sitting around doing nothing while the railways are at 100% damage.

A fast way is to set the air mission you want (for example hit the Ground Attack button, select the air force and click on the target. You will see a line on the map, heading from a staging base to the target. If you extend the radius of the raid it is easier to see this next bit (set it to 8 or 10). Then look at the number of a/c the AD says is available. As long as 'esc' isn't zero, the AD box should have green or purple hexes. The green ones are the ones the escort can reach, the purple are unescorted and the uncoloured ones are out of reach of both. To quickly understand which aircraft can take part (and more importantly why) click on the 'number of a/c' text and it should open a detail screen. A/c able to fly will be in white and the others in purple/blue IIRC. Down the bottom of that list is a check box saying 'no fly reason' or something similar. Check that and it puts a line of red text below each non-flying group (things like 'out of range' or 'set to rest'). This should help a lot.

If you want to play with load outs and things, add a couple of specific groups to the raid (click on the + next to them - this should jump them to the upper part of the raid group list. Now the raid will select a/c from those upper groups only. To force a specific load out, click (or double click, I dont recall) on one of the FB groups, when its screen opens, change the load from auto to one without drop tanks (or force it to use smaller ones), then close the window. If it can still fly, it will be white otherwise blue. Thus you can fairly quickly gain a feel for who can fly with what. (Pay attention to the range column which is the distance to the staging base - don't be confused by differing transit lengths)


Having said all this, escorts can be left on auto all the time as drop tanks are discarded before combat and have almost no effect other than extending the range (supply only IIRC, and if you are hurting that much for local supply, evacuate the airbase). Only FB on bombing really matter as most of them have a trivial load if they are using tanks as well. One thing I do is (for example) put all Tiffies in 2TAF on 8 Rckts as a manual load out (there is a button to do this), then use them to set up all my interdiction raids... if they show up white, good. If not, cancel that AD, or maybe switch a couple of Sqds to a loadout with tanks. If I want to attack troops I might switch just the Tiffies on that AD back to auto or bombs (there is a option once a load out is selected to apply it to all <aircraft type> in (e.g.) Ground Attack AD.


But all this is really advanced and only barely needed on even Challenging AI...you can (as I said before) just point and shoot with ADs, leaving everything other than target type and hex and radius on auto.

[MemoryLeak]

HMSWarspite.

Wow, thanks for the detailed reply. I appreciate it. I copied and pasted it into Notebook and printed it for
future reference.

I was messing with loadouts because some of the Threads in WARROOM have tutorial information. And they seem
adamant about the importance or lack of effectiveness of loadouts. But If it really isn't necessary to
change them I won't.

By the way, you wrote "Tiffies in 2TAF on 8 Rckts". What the heck is that?


And any suggestions on all of the Construction counters on the map in Sicily (Operation Husky) that Joel
says won't repair RR because of a bug? I can't seem to move them and I don't even know how they got there
in the first place. And if I just need to ignore them that's no problem because this is just a practice scenario.

But any quick tips on RR repair since these units are useless?

[Joel Billings]

Yes, the construction units you can ignore. They help you dig in, fix ports and railyards (if on priority repair, which is automatic for port depots, IIRC), and do it all automatically. Yes, you could probably coax a little better activity by focusing on them, but generally the AI will move them around just fine. You do probably want to remember to put priority repairs on major railyard centers that you capture that you expect to use as a depot, but again, these are things you can deal with later after you have the basics down and want to learn more.

One more thing is they help expand any airfields you decide you want to expand in size. The Allies generally have enough around to do what's needed.

[MemoryLeak]

thank you Joel, I appreciate the advice.

[MemoryLeak]

I have been playing the Husky scenario for at least 16 hours. I have spent that much time or more reading the various manuals
and watching many tutorial videos. But no matter what I do, the AI changes my Air Directives.

Every time I think I am making just a little progress in understanding this thing something screws up.

For two turns I created two (each turn) separate Strategic AD's to BOMB CITY. The target was Messina. Each time, that would be four occasions,
the AI rerouted my strikes to two cities in Sardinia. That was four separate AD'S overridden by the AI.

I also created one Night Intruder mission (Air superiority) for two turns. I manually assigned Night fighters
to the missions.
They were short distance missions. Neither one was flown.

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? And I did click on either confirm or set air directive each time.
And some times it changes my schedule to fly. You know, the D1 D2 etc. And resets it to fly all days.

[Joel Billings]

Sounds odd. You can zip up your save before and/or after the air phase and attach it here (or in a bug thread in the tech support area), or you can email it to me at 2by3@2by3games.com.

I assume you are trying to bomb the port at Messina, right? I don't know that this is going to help a lot given there is a ferry there, but we should make sure it's working or figure out what was going on. Night intruder missions is pretty advanced. This is an air superiority mission to attack enemy night fighters. Do you have night missions flying in the area? You should be able to get air superiority in the daytime. I don't usually think about night intruder missions except in the Strategic bombing campaign in Germany.

[MemoryLeak]

I will try and send the saves to you at that email address.

As far as the night intruder missions are concerned. you'll have to look at the saves. I didn't know there
was a requirement that there had to be prior knowledge that there might be enemy fighters in the area before
you can create a night mission. I thought they would just flight and if nothing was found there wouldn't
be any kills.

anyway, I will send the saves right now.


it's on it's way

[Joel Billings]

It hasn't showed up yet at the 2by3@2by3games.com email address.

[MemoryLeak]

I sent it five minutes ago, did it make it?

First time my cat was walking on the keyboard so I had some addressing issues.

[MemoryLeak]

Joel, did you get the saves?

[Joel Billings]

I got them. I ran your turn 3 and Messina was bombed. I didn't see any missions to Sardinia. I didn't see a problem. Are you seeing something else with your turn 3 air phase results?

[MemoryLeak]

Hi Joel,

I have no doubt that it is me, otherwise there are so many people playing this game that other players
would be reporting this problem too.

But what I see is that after my turn I go to the AD Summary display and under Strategic Bombing there are
two BOMB CITY missions listed. I click on one of those and a course is drawn to a city in Sardinia.
I click on the other mission and a line is drawn to a another city in Sardinia. So instead of keeping
the missions I designed, it has substituted different missions, which I changed back. So maybe you are seeing
the fact that I changed the missions back to what I wanted.

[MemoryLeak]

there is just too much mystery about this game for me. I'm trying again this morning and I've had
two HQ's one at Catania and one at Gela, both on ships for the past two turns and each time I click
on the ON SHIPS button to unload them it says "Not Enough Remaining Port Capacity". I don't get it.
I haven't done any other actions at either Port. There are about 500 different numbers when I click on the
hex but I swear I can't figure out the relationship to unloading a damn unit and all of the numbers
to choose from.

[Joel Billings]

All I did was load in your turn 3 Allied save, and ended the air planning. Before I did this, I turned on the show air directives and this is what I saw. It all looks good...

[Joel Billings]

When the report came up, I clicked on the + next to the 1 to expand the detail on the one mission flown to Messian. It shows the results (see screenshot). If I click on he RAILYARD text, I am taken to Messian and the detail of the raid. This all looks as I would expect. You will have to send me a save just before you execute the air missions for me to figure out what missions you have set. I suspect you are changing the missions in a way you're not intending.

[Joel Billings]

As for the naval transport issue, look at the screenshot below. I took it in your turn 3 ground movement phase after clicking on the naval transport mode button. Notice that the port of Gela has a 14 in the middle of the circle. This means it has 14000 capacity for loading/unloading. Notice your HQ has a transport cost of 16520 and is too big to unload. This is a common problem for HQs and big armored units.

The solution given you only have small ports, is to unload over the beaches at the temporary ports. Unfortunately you moved your amphib HQs away from the beaches on turn 2, so on turn 3 you lost your temporary port status in the hexes where you had invaded (see last paragraph on page 61 of the manual). If you load your turn 2 save, you'll see that these hexes have port capacity. While unloading in these hexes is slow (uses more MPs), it does not use up the port capacity there as unloading units is free of charge.

[MemoryLeak]

okay, I understand the ports now, at least a little more. I thought the amphibious units were just boats and
I returned them to N Africa for safety. So they are more than just transportation.


I am going to start a new Husky game this afternoon. Right now I am reading more of the manual and
I'm in the process of printing it. It's too awkward to access it online all the time.

Getting units to repair RR is my next big undertaking.

And trying to figure out assigning units. When I click on
the big US armored unit, I notice that I can assign more types of units to it, AA and ART etc. I'm trying to figure
out where these units magically appear from and what the down side is to doing this. Because otherwise I would
logically conclude that I should select all the units available and add all of them to this Armored group.

If you look at my saved game you will see there are several Construction units sitting around by themselves.
I can't move them, I can't get them to do anything visibly useful. Only button I can click on is
Returning them to the HQ unit. Why or why not is this a good idea?

[Joel Billings]

They will auto return, so don't worry about them unless they are causing a stacking issue in which case that's why there is a manual return option.

As for attachments, they come from HQs up their chain of command (with certain limits for range, etc.). Allies have lots of support units, so it is good to attach the max (3 per division). This was historically done with lots of Tand Destroyer and tank battalions attached to infantry divisions. They are more useful than AA usually given increasing Allied air superiority. You can't attach artillery directly to combat units.