Just going back on old team emails I found this snippet in response to a question about reconnaisance which I thought worth sharing here again.
In the case of Axis there is so much recon available that I can do as much as I need AND you can do any you want - so no need for exclusivity or allocation. For the Soviets it would be a different matter.
The recon rules I use are
i) Get all airbases in range of front or which can be bombed to detection five (to know about the airgroups on them)
ii) Get all other airbases to detection level 3 (keeping track of airbases)[updated based on patches]
iii) All other units to detection four in clear or two if close (keeping track, help interdiction)[two-thirds of units on detection level 4 will be on at least detection level 1 next turn]
iv) Recon to know which units are at the front (ground commanders tactical use)
v) Recon to see if a hex will be intercepted (to fly unescorted day bombing)
vi) Recon to work out opponents % required to fly air doctrine (basically find a spot which only one airgroup can intercept and does, wait for them to lose some interceptors and repeat until they no longer do, check other interceptors still fly from the same base so it is not a fuel problem, and then repeat with others to get better and better ideas of what it is)
vii) Recon to degrade enemy interceptors
viii) Recon stacked on airbases to dilute enemy bombing of airbases from good aircraft
I see many others only use reconnaisance air groups for number iv - which is only a tiny part of what they are useful for. i-vi all provide extra information, so when someone says other uses of recon do not provide extra information they are wrong.
vii though is the interesting one. Looking back I cannot see any mention of this in the Matrix forums before then - so I may have been responsible for transmitting this monster into the Matrix world. I understand it to be a tactic of overwhelming an enemy fighter group, or fighter groups on one air base, with a large volume of reconnaisance flights to reduce the number of ready aircraft in the enemy. This was many-to-few. Some how in Matrix this transmuted to many-to-many, or trying to fatigue all enemy fighter groups with recon flights! Recon Spam was born! [:D]
EDIT: another use that has become apparent since is to find hexes and so flight paths with least flak.
