escort effectiveness

[antoniusb]

It seems like my escorts assigned to a naval patrol mission are nowhere to be found when my force is intercepted by the enemy. Would this be because those escorts are too fast for the attack aircraft they are escorting? If this is the case, if I were to lessen the range of the mission boundaries would this make it more likely for my escorts to engage in combat?

My thinking is that the amount of time that even if they have the range to participate as an escort, their higher speed gets them to the edge of their coverage limit before the attack mission arrives. Adding drop tanks would both slows down their airspeed and extends their radius which allows them to effectively escort the mission (though with the consequence that they are less combat effective).

I would like to know if I am thinking about this the right way or is this not a factor in the game. Or is it already factored into the limit of the escort range so that if I see green shaded hexes I should be expecting that my escorts will be actually escorting the planes flying the mission in all cases regardless of differences in airspeed?

[cfulbright]

Can you upload a game in a Zip file so we can see what might be the problem?

Cary

[antoniusb]

I think I figured it out. The manual seems to confirm that the escorts will be less effective the closer you get to their range limits which makes sense since the range would represent the absolute limit of its capability. If they are escorting slower aircraft then even at the point where they are technically within their range there would be no way they could be at the limit of their range at the same time that slower aircraft were to reach that same spot (unless they were to give the slower aircraft a head start which would mean that they would not be escorting those aircraft in the early portion of the flight).

[loki100]

more general point. I find that fighters on an AS are more aggressive in looking for A2A combat. So its worth dumping an AS mission over your bombing targets (when you have the range) as well as escorting directly. Basically your escorts are there to keep the bad boys away from your bombers - they don't go looking for trouble.

But teaming up the two means you have fighters who are looking for the enemy.

More specifically the allies actually escorted in blocks. So one group of escorts took the bombers over to say Belgium, a second group met there, took them into Germany. On the way back the first group again picked them up over Belgium.

In game this is abstracted (sensibly) to a single relationship between escorts and bombers but you can still model it by adding shorter ranged fighters (say Spitfires) to an escort mission. Will make crossing say the Ruhr very much safer than just relying on escorts that can go deeper into Germany.

[cfulbright]

To Loki's great point, what I do is set up a Fighter Command base at Bradwell Bay and stock it with the highest EXP air groups, then give them Spitfire VIII's (and Mustang III's when they're available). With the 90gl drop tanks, you can set up a four-hex size AS AD centered on Moers, so it covers the Ruhr targets. Fly it every day of Friendly Air Phase at 24K feet.

Cary