Dinglir's thoughts on how to apply aircraft

[Dinglir]

For what it is worth.

[redrum68]

Good analysis on the various types of air units and Axis/Soviet strategy. Are you alright with me adding a reference to this thread and incorporating some of it into the references/tips thread?

[joelmar]

@Dinglir

+1

Thank you interesting explanations, everything is very logical, easy to read and understand. Certainly worthy of being refered to!

[eskuche]

Great document, thanks. What is your stance on FlaK? I have German spearheads carrying 1-1.5 battalions worth of SP FlaK and they do not seem to be downing anything (damaging unsure).

[joelmar]

Flak's utility is not only for downing aircrafts, but to turn them around by damaging them or just disrupting their flight paths.

the 20mm quads (sdkfz7) with it's hallucinating rate of fire and accuracy are also very good against cavalry and infantry squads

[56ajax]

Soviets, bomb in clear terrain, down South gets good results, turn to Guards in say 10+ turns, not that means anything, then ship them to a vital front.

Now can someone tell me the parameters for Group Range?

thx

[eskuche]

ORIGINAL: joelmar
Flak's utility is not only for downing aircrafts, but to turn them around by damaging them or just disrupting their flight paths.

Sounds good in theory. Can never get an actual readout of effectiveness, though.

ORIGINAL: 56ajax
Now can someone tell me the parameters for Group Range?
thx

The answer to this problem is the time-honored "well, it depends." If you're '41 SU with ground support off, you probably just want to protect your airbases from unescorted bombing, which ideally is the only attacks you're going to be getting hit by. If you're '41 advancing Germans, you probably don't want to fatigue all of your fighters during SU mad bombing but also don't want to get attacked for free. Going all out (~30 fatigue) with half of your fighters then setting them to 1 hex range and leaving the remaining unused yet at full coverage, perhaps staggering some to lower ranges in order to to blunt the "fighter-sweep-at-max-range" tactic, will probably get you good mileage.

[56ajax]

More basic question, if I enter 100 it is displayed as

100 (3) so the 100 is ???? and the 3 is??? (miles, hexes, vodka bottles?)


thx

[eskuche]

Oh, sorry, it's miles and in parentheses (miles/30 hexes). This is confusing because the manual states that combat missions pay FOUR times the range in miles (as opposed to three, which is what is implied here because each hex space represents 10 miles). By the way, max transfer is three times normal range. This is undocumented. For Stukas, which have a range of 352 or 11 hexes normally, this turns into 35 hexes transfer range.

When I say 1 hex range I set it to 30 (1). I'm not actually sure if this covers the six surrounding hexes.

[Dinglir]

ORIGINAL: redrum68

Good analysis on the various types of air units and Axis/Soviet strategy. Are you alright with me adding a reference to this thread and incorporating some of it into the references/tips thread?

Sure. Use it as you will.

[Dinglir]

ORIGINAL: eskuche
What is your stance on FlaK?

Axis:
Flak is essential in combatting the enemy IL-2's and U-2VS's from very early on. The weakness with my Axis Air strategy is that my fighters are tied to the bombers and will do very little to disrupt the Soviet Air attacks during their own turn. Thus I need to rely on Flak. Thankfully, you should be able to get between one and two Flak regiments to each Corps level HQ, resulting in quite a few dead IL-2's (in 11.X - don't know about 12.X yet).

Soviet:
I have misplayed these grossly for a long time now, leaving them to die as their cities get overrun by the German spearheads. You can withdraw them for 1AP if Germans are within 5 hexes. A Soviet AA Regiment holds 100 guns, which are also usable in an Anti Tank role. I haven't played a Soviet player bombing deep for a while now, but I plan to stick a few AA regiments on an Airborne HQ or something similar and then try to use it as a "moveable Flak base" to protect industry. Do not know how that will work.

[eskuche]

What I've been doing is using Luftflottes or Fliegerkorps HQ as my mobile FlaK bases (e.g., on rear stacked level bomber bases). The former deposit FlaK back to army groups the following turn, but you miss out on some of the combat ratings keeping it static, and it costs 1000 vehicles a turn to move (unless you "accidentally" get it bumped to remove dumps). The latter won't be able to return SU's immediately, removing some of the flexibility, but you lose fewer vehicles.

You may be able to achieve the same with STAVKA-controlled extra HQs, though Soviets generally have much fewer available in my short stint as them.

[eskuche]

Also it's questionable whether SU battalions and companies are worth rescuing even at 1 AP. Regiments for sure.

[56ajax]

You cant buy manpower or equipment in the game, which is what the Soviets are short of early on, so I think they should be saved.

[joelmar]

@eskuche
Sounds good in theory. Can never get an actual readout of effectiveness, though.

Yes you can, just watch air battles at message level 7. Very interesting things going on if you have the patience of course. Same is true for ground battles.

[redrum68]

@joelmar - Is there any way to dump the message level 7 output to a file so I don't have to sit and watch but can just browse through it afterwards?

[joelmar]

@redrum68

It would be awesome, but not to my knowledge. But lately I've had more and more patience in doing it. The main problem is some attacks shown take a long time, including the numerous rifle vs rifle actions, which mystifies me because when the message levels are at 1, the whole battles are very fast. Maybe it simply slows down the process and all operations take an individual time ratio corresponding to their load on the processor?

But yes, I would love that.

[eskuche]

Technically you could automate a series of screenshots and convert image to text but I’m not sure that’s worth the effort.

[joelmar]

a lot of time investment!

[joelmar]

BTW, I just found out that if you watch at level 6, you see only the destroyed, damaged and disrupted results instead of everything and all results are displayed fast.