Axis Recon Planes

[king171717]

Why do the Germans have so many recon planes??? On turn 1, Germans have over 600 recons planes where as, they have 1000 fighters and fighterbombers and 290 divebombers. I would think they needed a lot of recon planes to scout Russia and that the in game recon planes are way more effective than in real life.

[Telemecus]

I think this is because of the historic air doctrine of the German air forces. The Axis were the first to arm for the war and the air force was still largely an extension of the ground forces. So bomber number were not being compared to fighter numbers but the number of artillery pieces they would hope to replace. For the army a recon plane was much cheaper and more effective that a ground recon vehicle, so it made sense to replace them in hundreds. It is only when you look at the different strands and say is that the right balance for an air force that you might come to a different view.

[Denniss]

Many of these recons are short-range army co-op recons for immediate battlefield recon. Those were closely attached to armies.

[Dinglir]

I believe I read somewhere that the Germans often used their recon planes for stuff such as artillery spotting (unlike the Soviets).

This also helps explain why the German artillery was so much more deadly the the Soviet (measured piece by piece).

Ingame however, the amount of German recon aircraft opens up the possibility of recon spams (I personally do not recommend it, though).

[eskuche]

I have made some tests that suggest recon spam currently doesn't actually really do anything outside of fringe cases such as minorly fatiguing out a lone fighter group (which shouldn't really happen) guarding rear bombing.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4772215

[joelmar]

Yes, I agree eskuche. I actually do a lot of recon, most of which I do manually. And the interception it creates is so low that I probably create at the most 1% fatigue over the whole Soviet air force!

And I already spend as much time on recon as many people spend on playing their whole turn... so... recon spam? If you can do it effectively and have the time to spend on it, go for it, you are a WitE hero! lol!

[Telemecus]

I think the fatigue argument was always a blind alley. I used it to flip a ready aircraft to a damaged or reserved aircraft which happens once every ten times at least. If you have a Soviet airgroup close to the percentage required to fly that is all you need to stop all of the airgroup flying.

[joelmar]

Yes, but that needs the Soviet's helping hand... "Please dear Soviet, forget to put your needed to fly ratio under 50..." [:D]

[eskuche]

I guess it’s clear which side of the debate I am on (based on evidence!) but Soviets are free to “recon spam” by bombing units suicidally with biplanes to a much greater effect. I think the only real issue is that recon can clog up battles both visually and technically when reaching over 1000. I have yet to reach that point, however, and I’ve flown probably upwards of 600 recon a turn.