The early air war

[morvael]

In the upcoming patch there is an air war related fix that helps to increase survivability of late war fighter bombers like Fw-190F8 or recon fighters during air combat.

Regardless of that fix, there is certainly a problem of determining how many aircraft would actually be involved in a fight. I think now any number of aircraft may attack any number of aircraft, and it would be impossible to represent historical events like the attack of less than 40 German fighters on nearly 2500 Allied bombers and escort fighters. In reality those intercepting fighters attacked only a small part of the entire force, and most of the Allied aircraft were somewhere else at the time. In WitE superior numbers always win, allowing extra fighters to bypass escorts and attack bombers.

[Dreamslayer]

ORIGINAL: Dinglir

I will start this thread by a clear statement: In my experience, the air war in 1941 is heavily biased in favor of the Soviets.

In my last test - 1st German turn. Some recon + AF Attacks only. I`ve got next results :
Axis lost 17 planes(including 1 recon and 2 romanian planes), Soviets losses was around 5500.

[morvael]

First turn doesn't count, it's rigged so that Soviet air force will suffer massive losses on the ground.

[Stelteck]

It is strange that loosing pilots help building experience. I agree with previous statement. If it is the case something may be done about it.
Loosing pilots shall be a net loss for the efficiency of the air squad. For both size. (Yes, it means that having plane shoot done will be more costly for the german too. So be it).

I would like to add something else about the problem. It is not an air war game.
During my own multiplayer game i do not micromanage the air force, because it is not the most interesting and fun part of the game. As a consequence, my soviet air force do not own the sky in 1943.
Did this change anything to the operation on ground ? I'am not sûre.
Maybe we are considering too much the effect of the air force in ground combat. I'am not sûre it change a lot the results of ground battle.

Whatever, if micromanagement of the air force is a necessity in the game to perform well, it is not a good thing.
Any solution have to take into account that a large amount of players will not be happy to have the lenght time of a turn increase by one hour.

[Dreamslayer]

ORIGINAL: morvael

First turn doesn't count, it's rigged so that Soviet air force will suffer massive losses on the ground.

Of course Soviet air losses was huge but not 5500 for 4 days. And of course German losses was not around 17, lets say 30 after logistic phase.
I`ve read one article about losses of Bf-110 on Eastern Front in 1941. This article is contain detailed statistical table about it. So, losses of Bf-110 from 22 June to 25 June is around 20+ (I`m talking about losses 60% + in German loss gradation (60-69% - written off, 100% - irretrievable loss)).

60-69% - written off

Sorry, 60-99% ofc.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: morvael

First turn doesn't count, it's rigged so that Soviet air force will suffer massive losses on the ground.

Ya, but to the tune of 5500 aircraft?

[Dinglir]

ORIGINAL: morvael

You're sure this is not an effect of Fog of War?

More or less.

But as I haven't checked it specifically before the attacks, I cannot be absolutely sure.

I have seen this so many times on units adjacent to the German lines. For instance, the Kaluga stack attacked in turn 24 was adjacent to three German units, so there should be a rather high detection level. It will surprise me a lot if this is simply a case of detection levels.

But I will make a point of looking for that in the future.

[Dinglir]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck
Whatever, if micromanagement of the air force is a necessity in the game to perform well, it is not a good thing.

You could achieve this by setting up house rules or by a future patch having an "AI manage air force deployment" option or something similar.

Personally, I like the game for its complexity. I want to be able to look into the details.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: Dinglir

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain
The Air rules in my opinion are fine. How the Germans handle their planes is a very BIG reason how the Soviets get their jump in experience. If the Germans handle their planes incorrectly they will play into the Soviet game outright. Like I posted when Dinglir was playing Pelton the German Air force works with finese. Don't try to be the bully on the block or the Soviet will just swamp you with their numbers. Take a step back and look how you two (Dinglir & Tyronic) handled your German Air Force and ask how you could have done things different. I know the answer having been there and done that. I just took advantage of what you two left open.

In 1941, the Luftwaffe had fought a war for two years and also had the most rigorous training programme in the world for new pilots. In comparison, the Soviets had what must be the LEAST experienced airforce in the world. No matter how inept I have been at playing the Germans there is simply no way the Soviets should be able to build experience to match German pre war experience levels in a few short months.

Comparisons with my game against Pelton is also off, as I was certainly not a "capable player willing to micromanage my airforce" at the time. That game was my first real experience of WitE and I was a complete rookie. Still, by 1942 I had air supremacy over two thirds of the front and equality over the remaining third. For a rookie to do that against one of the most experienced players out there does suggest some sort of imbalance to me. That status should not have come until 1943.

Finally, the claim that "the tools are out there" is a bold claim that is hard to put to the test. i respect that you do not wish to play more games currently (neither do I), but I am inclined to disbelieve you unless presented with some sort of "proof" (AAR or otherwise). I guess we will just have to leave that one as "undecided" for now.

Pelton is a very capable person in his games but imho he didn't play the German Air force to the way I would play my German Air Force. Again I'm not trying to be critical but the tools are there to do what is necessary. There is nothing wrong in disbelieving and wanting to delve deeper into a situation. That is what makes us better players and understand what is happening in the game. I know that it can be controlled as the Germans just way too many people use the German Air force like the German ground game, forcing everything and fatiguing the hell out of things and flying every mission in the book. The Germans are about finesse in the Air. Know the settings and what to fly and you can hold the Red Air Force off into 43 as is historical. Run the German Air force in the ground in this game and suffer the consequences early. (The key to the Air war is German fighters and their state, that is the tool that turns the lock in this Air war)

As much as you think the Air war is bad at the moment in our game it is not. My Fighter experience on average is 74-72 (around 20 units) with many many units a great deal lower. With the 3 highest 84, 83, 81 respectively. I have lost a total of 12892 planes as of turn 25. The Germans still hold the reigns imho.

[56ajax]

Very interesting conversation and I am worried that the only offensive arm that the Soviets have in the early years is going to be neutered.

Still I do micro manage the Soviet Airforce to some extent and I regularly bomb every Axis airbase I can find. I like my squadrons to be at full complement and as replacements to the front are very slow in coming I swap units in and out of Reserve, where they sit for a month? till they get close to full strength, if at all.

I am at Turn 47 in a server game and here are my top squadrons ranked by experience

Aircraft - Exp - Morale - Kills

Lagg3 - 88 - 96 - 18
Mig3 - 87 - 90 - 6
Mig3 - 86 - 91 -13
Lagg3 - 84 -83 - 12
Mig3 - 84 -73 -26
Yak1 - 83 - 90 - 27
Mig3 - 83 - 83 -9
Mig3 - 83 - 91 -12
IL2 - 82 - 89 - 128
Pe2 - 81 - 87 - 27

and in about 35th place

IL2 - 75 - 82 - 370

For the fighters the kills arn't all that high, shoot down an Axis aircraft once a fortnight, and the tactical bombers do take losses that impact experience and morale, to some extent. I assume at some stage all this will be important, but at the moment it is not stopping the Panzers.

[morvael]

Recycling to reserve with the free +5 morale gain (which allows for the experience to follow) is perhaps too good. And only one side is able to use it extensively.

[Stelteck]

The Air war is a game inside the game.

Maybe the first question to ask is : Does it matter much ? Did the air war could have a significant impact on ground combat ?
I do not know. Maybe we shall gather data about it first.

I know for example that we all use to bomb twice a target before engaging ground combat. But i suspect that this action may only raise target fatigue to maybe 5%, leading to a decrease of combat efficiency of 1.5%. [:'(]

I know also that currently we can strategicaly bomb tank factories, leading to decrease of T-34 or PzIII production. But does it matter much ? Do we lack medium tanks ? Not soviet side. And german side i'am not sûre.

Counting only casualties, with intensive tactical bombing, you can kill 2000 german per turn maybe. 200 000 in 100 turns, probably less as a lot will return (only disabled). Does it matter 200 000 in 100 turn ? I do not know.

There is a lot of thing like that. I do not know.
What i know is there is a lot of rumor about how the game is working and what is important, and it would be a surprise if they are all true.

Air recon is efficient at least [:'(]
(Ha, i forgot interdiction. Interdiction is really, really annoying and can ruin your day).

Forgive me, my intention is not to make all the people who love the air war depressed and sad. But i hope we could gather data to better understand the air part of the game. Maybe we could create some scenario testing ? I never opened the scenario editor. Maybe i should.

[tyronec]

ORIGINAL: HardLuck
Take a step back and look how you two (Dinglir & Tyronic) handled your German Air Force and ask how you could have done things different. I know the answer having been there and done that. I just took advantage of what you two left open.

You seem to be under the impression that my comments are a reaction to our game. This is not the case, my experience of Soviet air dominance in '42 comes from playing the Soviet side and having large fleets of ILs and LBs free to bomb Axis units and air bases at will from early '42.
In our game you were restricting Luftwaffe bombing by having large numbers of fighter air bases close to the front so I was conducting an air offensive again them. We don't know how that was going to work out because you terminated the game at T8 but I certainly do not accept that I was losing the air war.

Interesting post on air force numbers (if it is accurate):
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.co.u ... h-and.html
One number that seems surprising is that the Luftwaffe had a growing ground attack fleet even late into the war and my understanding is that they were still effective. Clearly their fighters could do little to stop the Soviet bombers and ILs by '43.

[Nix77]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck
Maybe the first question to ask is : Does it matter much ? Did the air war could have a significant impact on ground combat ?
I do not know. Maybe we shall gather data about it first.

Quoting the manual:

Disruption: Disrupted ground elements can no longer fire and they will not contribute their combat value to any future overall CV computations.

Bombing Soviet forces with a strong concentration of Stukas can disrupt 25-50% of the Soviet ground elements before the battle. As an example, in one game 300 Stukas were concentrated to bomb the defenders of an urban hex. With two runs, 5000 out of 30000 Soviets were disrupted. That's a direct hit of 5-10% to the CV, and that was in an urban hex with L2 forts.

Taking into account these facts, I'd say that the air war really does matter.

In my Soviet MP game on turn 21, the best 34 FB/F air groups (one page on the commander's report) have all over 70XP. Best groups have above 80XP. Tac & Level Bombers have a bit lower XP, averaging about 10 points lower than the fighters, but morale has been on the rise with several groups having over 80 morale.

I have been extremely aggressive in the air, sometimes even too aggressive. The losses have climbed to over 13000 lost, of which 4000 were on the ground. I have actively been cleaning the pools of old airframes which may be partly the reason for the high losses. I also haven't been paying that much attention to fatigue since I don't care that much about the losses, I'm more interested in creating casualties for the Germans in the air & ground and just exhausting the Luftwaffe by making numerous sorties every turn.

I'd definitely say that the Soviet pilots seem to gain XP and morale too rapidly. I actively use the reserve rotation as a tool to raise morale, so usually there are no groups flying with low morale (under 45).

With Germans, you definitely need to be more careful with the air war. I recall losing countless bombers as the Germans by not paying attention to the fuel and ammo levels of my escorting Messerschmitts. Soviets usually have so many fighters and also airbases to support them so supply isn't much of a problem. I'm also perfectly OK with losing the older level bombers or Sturmoviks (depending on the factory situation) since there will be plenty of them produced to replace the casualties every round.

I think if the pilot XP gain would be slightly lowered the more casualties the air groups suffer, even the Soviet player would need to do some thinking when using the Red Air Forces. Reserve rotation morale gain reduction might be in order too, reserve should logically operate more as tool to reduce fatigue and recover airframe losses more quickly?

EDIT: Disruption is converted to fatigue before new combat, so the effect of ground bombing to the CV is 1/3rd of the disruption. Still a considerable factor! The aircraft do disrupt in ground support phase also with a direct 1:1 disruptive effect, so air superiority basically gets a multiplying factor to a concentrated attack.

[Nix77]

Ok I didn't take into account at first before my last edits the fact that disruption is "cleared" and transformed to fatigue before each new combat. But still I'd say air war really matters.

An example: ground bombings disrupt 3000 men out of 10000. In the next combat, this is effectively 10% reduction to CV. The superior airforce operates aggressively in the area, exhausting the defenders with air superiority missions. When the actual attack commences, there's a big chance that the attacker's ground support can operate almost without any interception, which leads to maybe another 1000-2000 men disrupted. That's 20-30% reduction to the CV, simply by using air superiority.

WitE air system is a bit fiddly and doesn't give that many tools to effectively defend "out of turn" if the opponent has enough air assets available to mess your pool of defending fighters. This in my opinion works heavily against the Germans since the Luftwaffe is working with more limited resources.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: tyronec

My experience of Soviet air dominance in '42 comes from playing the Soviet side and having large fleets of ILs and LBs free to bomb Axis units and air bases at will from early '42

Interesting, so your opinion/words above for Soviet Air Dominance is the mass production of TAC and Level bombers not to do with anything the Soviet player does.

ORIGINAL tyronec

but I certainly do not accept that I was losing the air war.

GREAT! So your words seems to be supporting what I said in the other post I made that the Germans can do what is necessary to not lose in the Air when a Soviet does what I was doing At least that is what I am getting from this comment But of course you believe that air dominance comes from the mass production of TAC and Level bombers so it really doesnt matter what a Soviet does anyway as stated above.



So my point still stands that the Germans can do what is necessary to keep the Soviets at bay. This witch hunt to FURTHER delimit the Soviet Air Force should not be done to the Soviet side that is already struggling in a one sided ground war that current patches give to the German player.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

ORIGINAL: morvael

Recycling to reserve with the free +5 morale gain (which allows for the experience to follow) is perhaps too good. And only one side is able to use it extensively.

If you are going to do this just limit the amount of squadrons that go to reserve (i.e. 5 squadrons) instead of having the MASS capability to send to Reserve. But again this isn't the solution imho since many Germans need to look at how they are handling their airforce instead of just saying the Soviets are too strong. It is the "cry" wolf syndrome that has caused the current patch to favor the Germans in the ground war at the moment, please dont carry this over to the Air war side of things.

[Nix77]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: morvael

Recycling to reserve with the free +5 morale gain (which allows for the experience to follow) is perhaps too good. And only one side is able to use it extensively.

If you are going to do this just limit the amount of squadrons that go to reserve (i.e. 5 squadrons) instead of having the MASS capability to send to Reserve. But again this isn't the solution imho since many Germans need to look at how they are handling their airforce instead of just saying the Soviets are too strong. It is the "cry" wolf syndrome that has caused the current patch to favor the Germans in the ground war at the moment, please dont carry this over to the Air war side of things.

The Germans definitely currently have the tools to keep the Soviet Air Force at bay if you know what you're doing. By controlling where you fly and making sure you're not exhausting the Luftwaffe, you can have local air superiority in selected key locations, which should usually be enough for the German advance in '41-'42.

Problem is that with the WitE air war system, it's extremely difficult to control how your air groups are flying "out of turn". With a larger air force, the Soviet player can locally exhaust the Luftwaffe, not by winning or destroying planes but by just accumulating miles to their fighters by sacrificing cheap planes (while gathering XP), and then operate almost freely.

I'm not sure if there's a need to balance out anything, I just think that the air war system is quite difficult to handle, and it's more so for the Germans. I'm currently playing the Soviets as my only game, so no pro-Axis bias here

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck
Maybe the first question to ask is : Does it matter much ? Did the air war could have a significant impact on ground combat ?..

Counting only casualties...Does it matter ...? I do not know.

My answer is definitely yes, sort of. I think it is comparable to cavalry in ancient warfare. Not the most powerful unit, but you could get a lot of them to where you needed them when you needed them. The odds of winning the battle are tipped to whoever had the most. So while the impact of the air force is not great, it is frequently the little extra that tips slight losses into slight wins. Aircraft maybe do not make the losses, but they do take the ground.

ORIGINAL: Stelteck
I know for example that we all use to bomb twice a target before engaging ground combat. But i suspect that this action may only raise target fatigue to maybe 5%, leading to a decrease of combat efficiency of 1.5%. [:'(]

My own hunch is that may be using the air force this way makes it less effective. Better to jack up ground support in air doctrine and let it be allocated as efficiently as possible that way to the close call battles? At the margin in close calls even small effects are disproportionately significant. Added to this Nix77 makes other points on the superiority of ground support. And for Stelteck that would mean even less air force micromanagement necessary [;)]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck
I know also that currently we can strategicaly bomb tank factories, leading to decrease of T-34 or PzIII production. But does it matter much ? Do we lack medium tanks ? Not soviet side. And german side i'am not sûre.

If you are choking medium tank factory expansion so that you lose 80% to 90% of your production across the war I think possibly yes - but you need to wait for the later game to be sure. Would any experienced soviet player really want T-34 numbers decimated?

ORIGINAL: Stelteck
Forgive me, my intention is not to make all the people who love the air war depressed and sad.

I think they are good and fair questions so no forgiveness necessary. The one thing I would like to persuade non fly boys of is that there is an interesting strategic part of the air war. It is more abstract rather than positional. But anyone who plays the Soviet side and is in to attrition rates and ToEs should have no problem with that. The problem is the initial interface which presents a lot of boring repetitive checks that are needed if you are not to have a catastrophe. I literally have my own pre-flight check list. But once you get past this, or if it is designed out by the developers, there is a whole strategic side which I am sure every player of WitE would actually be interested in.

ORIGINAL: tyronec
my experience of Soviet air dominance in '42 comes from playing the Soviet side and having large fleets of ILs and LBs free to bomb Axis units and air bases at will from early '42. In our game you were restricting Luftwaffe bombing by having large numbers of fighter air bases close to the front so I was conducting an air offensive again them...

One number that seems surprising is that the Luftwaffe had a growing ground attack fleet even late into the war and my understanding is that they were still effective. Clearly their fighters could do little to stop the Soviet bombers and ILs by '43.

If you read the manual properly it is quite possible to keep all bombers out of fighter range of the opposing side while still conducting air missions. I could write pages on the best places to put airbases, and how to place them in an attack or defence posture, whether to do a zonal defence or not etc. But these things never get written about.

[Nix77]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus
I could write pages on the best places to put airbases, and how to place them in an attack or defence posture, whether to do a zonal defence or not etc. But these things never get written about.

Wouldn't mind if you did write these pages you talk about...