8MP Team Game - The Axis team

[Telemecus]

Turn 53 24-Jun-1942 Air - Losses

The Soviet fighter force again saw far more losses than its production this turn, but the record was marred by our own losses during the Soviet turn.

[Crackaces]

100 fighters! What are you thinking ?

[Telemecus]

I am thinking the Axis Centre commander should be severely punished for allowing that through! [:D]

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

I am thinking the Axis Centre commander should be severely punished for allowing that through! [:D]

I do think the attacks were ordered by AGS

[SparkleyTits]

I just got flashbacks from 2by3's flaming stuka debacle when reading this [:D]
More experimental type air missions it seems!

[M60A3TTS]

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

Turn 50 03-Jun-1942 Air

Absolutely no air activity during the Soviet go - including no ground support or even recon.

During our turn even more curiously we find the same five clusters of Soviet airbases as last turn full of bombers and recon planes - but absolutely no fighters anywhere. They are all in easy range for our bombers - they almost seem to be laid out deliberately to lose as many aircraft as possible to unintercepted airbase bombing. As a team we even waited a day before starting the turn to discuss what this new Soviet tactic was. The best we could come up with was that, given how the Soviet team have protested that the bombing of their fighter factories made no difference and they did not even need all the things the factories made, this was their attempt to prove the point. So our response should be to maximise the airbase bombing and destroy as many Soviet aircraft as possible to make the point that they really did need fighters. So I spent the next day kabuki dancing all of the airgroups and airfields to maximise the effect of the airbase bombing. I was doing lots of screenshots showing hundreds of Soviet aircraft being destroyed on the ground with absolutely no Soviet fighter interception - and was looking forward to uploading these glories here in this AAR post ...

But on the second day a message arrived from the Soviet supreme commander saying they had made a mistake and forgotten to send all the aircraft to national reserve - and asked to take the ended turn again to do so. All the Axis team readily agreed to allow this. My big disappointment though is that I can now not show those wonderful glorious screenshots of the wholesale destruction of the Soviet air force on the ground.

Instead for this turn the air war was a sleepy affair - and the glories of what was going to be will only ever be known to me. Sigh.



On later reflection though the real curiosity is why no one in the Axis team, for even one minute, thought the first Soviet air deployment was a mistake. For anyone else that might have been my first thought and I would have asked. But for the 8MP Soviet team we were utterly sure it was intentional - and that was the scariest lesson this turn.

This was the right and good thing to do, I will add. Had the Soviet request been turned down, I very much doubt I would be playing Crackaces today.

I will also add that on turn 53 I left the game with my successor who had been advised to make sure the Soviet group ranges were set properly at the end of the turn before passing it on. Due to confusion over this 1 hex=40 group range that I have mentioned elsewhere, it was not done properly and turn 54 saw a large loss of Soviet planes. Still, that was the turn that I accepted from Crackaces even though the losses were not totally of my making. So there was a little bit of give and take in all of this.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

This was the right and good thing to do, I will add. Had the Soviet request been turned down, I very much doubt I would be playing Crackaces today.

Also no debate or cajoling - I felt I had to ask everyone first and the answer was a quick yes every time. One team member would say no for their solo games, but always felt this was a different experimental type of game rather than a straight competition one and so had to be treated as such. For my own part I am interested in the narrative, which strategies and tactics worked and were good and which were not. If it all boiled down to a mistake that would spoil it for me.

I know many see server games as the gold standard and for the competitive aspect it would be. But for other approaches to the game PBEM does have benefits. After having spent so much time on a game it would be a loss to have it spoilt for a reason all would be happy to undo but would be unable to on a server game. I have been in games which were kept alive because we both wanted to explore what would have been if a different choice had been made in an earlier turn - and were able to roll back and play on from that point. Again something that could not have been done on a server game.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step by Step

This will be my final turn as air commander in the 8MP game here. I have noticed that the whole air warfare aspect of this game has caused some interest and before I hand over the keys of this AAR to Crackaces I intend to write some reflections on what I think really happened, not all of which matches the impressions others seem to have. But I thought it could be useful for this turn instead of describing the results of the air war, I would instead write a step by step guide to what I actually did.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step 1: Recon of air bases

After a little kabuki dancing, to get some recon airgroups to where I want, I use recon to increase the detection levels of enemy airbases. Every enemy airbase should end the turn on at least detection level 2, but every airbase that may be part of the battle this turn needs to be raised to detection level 5 from the start. I say increase detection level rather than find where they are as every turn I will already know where they are before the turn starts. Indeed they are easier to spot at the start before recon when other units start getting detected as well. Airbases only lose one detection level every turn, so as long as you have them on detection level two you will be able to see them next turn. On turn 1 I know where every airbase is (from scenario data) even if they are invisible (as is usually the case for the Soviet airbase near Zapo. for example)- and made sure from then I started keeping their detection levels high so I would keep tracking where they were turn to turn. Similarly for frozen airbases out of range I would need to detect them and start tracking after they came into recon range and before they unfroze. This is important. The way I play the air war it is as improtant to know where there are no air bases as to know where there are - missing a few is a big problem. In practise there are always a few exceptions. 38IAD for instance starts the game out of range of Axis recon and unfreezes before Axis recon can find it. Luckily the 8MP Soviet team never moved it before then so I was able to recon its start position once in range, detect it and never lose it again. Similarly when new airbases start to be made it is important to pick them up quickly.



The picture above shows 68IAD after the airbase recon - it has been raised to detection level 5 as if it had some unprotected aircraft I might have been interested in bombing them. Next turn it will start on detection level 4, and I will raise it to level 5 again for the same reason. It has been parked on a swamp hex for many turns now without any aircraft. But if any turn it is moved by the Soviet team to anywhere else I will know straight away at the start of the turn.

Raising airbase detection levels to 5 means I know all of the airgroups that are on the airbase and how many ready aircraft are in each airgroup. Not only do I know this at the time of the recon air mission, the display will also update as the number of ready aircraft changes during the turn even if no more recon is conducted. I find this a real flaw in the design of the WitE air system open to exploit. I know because I exploit it ruthlessly. But I do find it strange that while you can find a lot of smoke and light on other aspects of the air war in these forums, no one really comments on this even though I find it the most egregious.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step 2: Find out your opponents percentage required to fly air doctrine

Many will get an inkling of this as the game goes on - but I find it useful to know this from the start. As for so many turns in this game, and almost as a standard for many others, the answer tends to be 50% so I will usually first try to answer the simpler question "Is their percentage required to fly air doctrine still 50% like it was last turn?"

There are different methods for doing this but for me the standard approach is using recon. I can provide a step by step guide if there is interest in one. But the principle is can you see the number of ready aircraft in a fighter group go down and show that before it would conduct interceptions and afterwards would not, and also eliminate other reasons for this such as the base ran out of fuel or ammo. It can be difficult to do as you need to untangle so many different elements. For instance you need to be sure that you are not seeing interceptions from another fighter group of the same model of aircraft. I tend to find it impossible to do in the early turns of a campaign game. It only becomes possible as airgroups spread out over larger areas and more go into reserve. Sometimes I can only narrow it to range - between 40% and 60% say. And sometimes it will take many repeat air recon missions to find out. Which is why I find it strange when someone sees 60 recon missions on one hex and thinks they were not searching for anything and it just must have been spam recon. My first reaction would be they were searching for the most important piece of information - the enemy air doctrine - and took a long time to do it. Fatiguing the enemy is a by-product.

Luckily this turn it became very obvious very quickly our opponents percentage required to fly air doctrine was indeed 50%.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step 3: What will it take to stop all the enemy fighters from flying?

Given that we know the percentage required to fly take a look at the number of ready aircraft in their fighter airgroups and consider what it would take for them to stop flying?

The above shows the state of three airbases in one hex only after their detection level was raised to five. Each airbase has eight air groups - a total of 24. But we can see now, still at the start of the turn, ten of these airgroups (stamped with crosses next to their name) actually already have less than the 10 fighters they would need in their airgroup to fly at all. The 87 fighters in these airgroups will remain on the airbase and never fly during this turn - they are only there to be victims. Four other airgroups only need to lose one or two fighters and they too will no longer fly at all. And this is indeed likely to happen in the whole turn just as they chase recon sorties or escort ground support. Although they are not yet on the no-fly list - they may as well be. So in reality, in spite of the impressive looking line up of 24 fighter air groups, only 10 are really effective. And if they lose a total of 51 ready aircraft they too would stop flying. (numbers in red after each airgroup show how many they will lose to stop flying)

In practice some of those airgroups would be set to night only missions. And for every fighter shot down in a fighter sweep there are usually two or three that simply move from ready status to damaged or reserved. So in reality these airgroups are only ten or twenty losses from not flying at all.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step 3: What will it take to stop all the enemy fighters from flying? continued

Here is the same analysis applied to another hex of airbases in the same cluster. These fighter air groups have slightly healthier numbers meaning they need to lose more than 100 ready status fighters before they no longer fly.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step 4: Use recon to find out where enemy fighters would fly to?

When this game started this question was usually just is the airgroup set to a night mission or not. But later versions have introduced a maximum range for each individual airgroup which can be set by the player. So just because a long range fighter like P40-B is set to day missions, it might no longer fly as far as it can because the player has capped it at a much shorter range. In turn 53 we used recon to find fighters would intercept at 3 hexes away from their airbase, then found at 4 hexes they no longer did, and when reconning at 3 hexes distance found the same interceptors again. This established that these airgroups had had their maximum ranges set at 3 hexes.



This turn we find that the two hexes of airbases described have an air range that is either uncapped, or capped at a large number of hexes (indicated by the red arrows from them in the picture). But remarkably none of the other bases have fighters that fly at all. Sometimes this is because those air groups are set to night missions only, or their airbases have run out of fuel or ammo. We know at least some of the fighter airgroups in other bases have more than the 50% ready requirement to fly so it is not because of air doctrine. This turn they are not in swamps or urban hexes. It is also possible to stop aircraft from flying at all by setting their maximum range to 1, as is often done deliberately for example for airgroups needing to recover from fatigue. However M60A3TTS has since indicated that this was due to confusion over the dimensions of the air range measure.

[Crackaces]

As the forum can see .. everything I have learned is from a MP game with Telemecus. That is why I saw the MP game as such a great experience for a sophomore such as myself. Alas, the game did provide a connection and I continue to use Telemecus as a resource. My thought is that this game will continue at some point as MP. It is a great way for a very experienced player to take newbies under their wing.

This game is extremely complex. This weekend was spent just discussing the ramifications of HQ overload and distribution of units. Exacerbated even more by a foray into the Caucuses.. more to come on that !

But there are so many nuances in this game from the air war described above to shaping retreat routes. It is very difficult to master every aspect of this game. There are players good at pushing counters around and real masters that understand every aspect of this game. It is through a MP game I was able to be exposed to these incredibly complex concepts at the very least.

Again I hope the game evolves back into MP.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step 5: Decision time! Sweep then Bomb, Bomb then Sweep, or Run and Hide?

We now know that the difference between Soviet fighters flying or not flying at all is just over 150 ready aircraft. This would usually equate to losing about 30 or 40 fighters in combat, when the rest of the required reduction would come from enemy fighters going unready or damaged. This is not a large number. If the whole strength of the Luftwaffe was brought out to achieve this it would be achievable. And the benefits would be considerable. The Axis fighter forces could spend the rest of the game resting - or intercepting unescorted enemy bombers. The Axis bomber forces could bomb all enemy airfields in daylight without interception and without need for escort and similarly support the ground forces without having to call on the fighters. A characteristic of the 8MP game is that for 40 turns or so this number has been so small.

Conventionally the margin between the enemy fighter force flying or not flying is large and this is simply not a prospect. It certainly was not for the first half dozen turns of this game. This situation can be avoided by keeping the percentage required to fly at a healthy margin away from the percentage of ready aircraft in airgroups on the map. If you are putting Soviet fighter airgroups on the map with only 9 ready aircraft out of twenty, then you should be thinking of a percentage required to fly of 20% or lower at least. We know in this game there has been a shortage of fighter aircraft to equip air groups. In this situation you do need to manually set your replacement settings so that only a few (and probably your best) airgroups get replacements - leaving all on replacements on when there is a shortage is a mistake. It is better to have half of your air force at full strength then all your air force at half strength.

Given the strengths and disposition of the Soviet fighter force we decide to go for it and try to ground the Soviet fighter force at the start of the game so that we can reap the benefits of their non-interference for the rest of the turn. It is a risk though as if we do not ground the Soviet fighter force, our own fighters will be too ground down to effectively escort our bombers for the rest of the turn.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step 6: Fighter Sweeps

You can use airbase bombing, city bombing or ground bombing but the principle is the same, just deselect the bombers and you have a dogfight between your fighters and theirs. In all I conducted 12 fighter sweeps this turn. After each fighter sweep I would check the number of ready aircraft on each airgroup and see that the numbers were dropping each time by far more than the number of aircraft they lost in combat. The fighter sweep process is very effective as, by definition, only those airgroups that can still fly, will participate in the next fighter sweep - bombing airfields still means some bombs will go on airgroups and aircraft that are unready to fly. By the final fighter sweeps you end up with almost the whole Luftwaffe versus the one or two soviet fighter groups still flying. Spam recon can help too - but never by as much as fighter sweeps and if only recon spam it will be counter-productive. But if you are down to just needing to ground one more Soviet fighter group to be fighter free ....

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Step 7: Party Time!

Then there comes the point when the last Soviet fighter air group stops flying. You can see this by checking all the enemy airbases and seeing all the fighter airgroups are now below their percentage required to fly air doctrine. I wish I had made of a screenshot of them at the time - it is a moment of jubilation. But you can also check by flying recon on the airbases and seeing they do not get intercepted. Once you reach this point turn all your fighters to a maximum range of 1 - they are going to spend the rest of the turn resting.

Now your bomber boys get to work - and with no fighters to bother them it is party time! The picture shows one of the 24 airfield bombing raids conducted this turn.

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 1-Jul-1942 Air - Losses

Although we are not inflicting the four figure losses we achieved for four turns in 1941, the process is still nevertheless the same. And I believe the big lesson is choose the percentage required to fly in your air doctrine very carefully.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

First things first - I think the stuff Telemecus is doing here is really exceptional in terms of the dedication shown to really get into the nuts and bolts of what is a pretty opaque air war module. I don't think there is anything wrong with it at all in terms of 'sportsmanship' - he has always been very upfront about the way he plays and so anyone playing vs him knows what kind of game it is going to be and the kind of micromanaging moves that will be required to keep up with this.

That said, roll on the WITW/WITE2 air module as I think that what this AAR has demonstrated is that in the hands of players that are prepared to "femto-manage" (in the words of Crackaces), the current IGO/UGO air module is pretty broken in terms of a game mechanic that is accessible to 95% of the playerbase

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: Sammy5IsAlive

First things first - I think the stuff Telemecus is doing here is really exceptional in terms of the dedication shown to really get into the nuts and bolts of what is a pretty opaque air war module. I don't think there is anything wrong with it at all in terms of 'sportsmanship' - he has always been very upfront about the way he plays and so anyone playing vs him knows what kind of game it is going to be and the kind of micromanaging moves that will be required to keep up with this.

That said, roll on the WITW/WITE2 air module as I think that what this AAR has demonstrated is that in the hands of players that are prepared to "femto-manage" (in the words of Crackaces), the current IGO/UGO air module is pretty broken in terms of a game mechanic that is accessible to 95% of the playerbase

A little funny;
Many years ago Pelton proposed that the air is overrated and not needed for a German victory. Now, some might propose the air “is too powerful” and not “historic”. The difference is player knowledge of different if not all aspects of this very complex game. I might be analogous to always playing a Ruy Lopez opening in chess and suddenly white opens with the “kings bishop game” Unexpected and given a player does not understand the ramifications it produces controversy.

On a side note .. air parody is soon on the horizon in this game. Maybe as soon as Turn 65.