Mistake turns into a game changer for the Air War.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: neuromancer

...

As Mehring says, perhaps the air war needs some serious tweaking. Right now I am starting to question the usefulness of ground support, the main result seems to be to kill attacking planes more than anything else.

once you get into close/marginal battles you'll see the impact ... and if you don't do GS then you will get hit by the secondardy rule that the side with the most GS gets extra disruptions over what is hit.

Now on T1, yes, its a tool for damaging the VVS, the number of marginal ground combats is minimal

before I'd agree with Mehring on this, I'd want to see what his evidence is - I don't see any of his claims in any of the games (vs AI or HtH) that I'm involved with

[MakeeLearn]

Did not ground support missions contain a subset of air superiority missions?.

[neuromancer]

ORIGINAL: loki100

once you get into close/marginal battles you'll see the impact ... and if you don't do GS then you will get hit by the secondardy rule that the side with the most GS gets extra disruptions over what is hit.

Now on T1, yes, its a tool for damaging the VVS, the number of marginal ground combats is minimal

before I'd agree with Mehring on this, I'd want to see what his evidence is - I don't see any of his claims in any of the games (vs AI or HtH) that I'm involved with

Fair enough.

ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn

Did not ground support missions contain a subset of air superiority missions?.

More or less. The bombers are usually escorted by fighters. If the combat is in range of a fighter base (and possibly if it flies within range of one) then they will fly up to engage the attacking formation. IIRC historically there were some pretty epic air battles over some battlefields, and the early IL2s didn't have a rear gunner which meant they were defenseless if a German fighter got behind them, making fighters even more important. How the results of those battles compare to the game I couldn't say.

[RG11B19D]

Turn2 Aces. JG3 has quite a few pilots represented in this screenshot.

Has anyone gotten an ace with over 100 kills?

[neuromancer]

I'm finding I lose more damn planes to operational losses than to the enemy! Like, a lot more!
Do the pilots not know how to fly? Do the wings just fall off? What is wrong with these planes!?

(sorry, not strictly on topic, but I felt the need to vent)

[MishaTX]

I'm finding I lose more damn planes to operational losses than to the enemy! Like, a lot more!
Do the pilots not know how to fly? Do the wings just fall off? What is wrong with these planes!?

I still find it interesting how op losses almost always result in the death of the pilot.

Now, it may very well be that I don't fully understand what "operational losses" mean in this game, but in my mind it means wear and tear, landing gear failing, engines cutting out etc., but if such things, in real life, had had a mortality rate of about 99% as I see in the game, I guarantee you that nobody would have ever been able to talk me into grabbing a yoke ever [:D]

Loss of airframe/damage, sure, but almost assured pilot death?

[Bamilus]

ORIGINAL: neuromancer

I'm finding I lose more damn planes to operational losses than to the enemy! Like, a lot more!
Do the pilots not know how to fly? Do the wings just fall off? What is wrong with these planes!?

(sorry, not strictly on topic, but I felt the need to vent)

There was a long thread on this and its because op losses are set high. Whether they are set too high vs history or not is up for debate, but its by intentional game design.

[neuromancer]

MushaTX: they had parachutes in those days too, no ejection seats, but if your engine dies in flight you could certainly still hit the silk. And as long as your landing isn't a tumbling flaming wreck, you'd think you could still have a decent chance of walking away from it; plane may be done (propellers snapped off, undercarriage crushed, severe structural damage) but the pilot isn't.

Bamilus: Ah, I see. WAD - whether it is a good design or not is another matter.
Well, I've been learning ways to mitigate ops losses, but they still tend to outweigh combat losses unless I really end up mixing it up with the Soviets.
Should be one of the things they let us pick a level on, and have it automatically apply to both sides.

[MishaTX]

MushaTX: they had parachutes in those days too, no ejection seats, but if your engine dies in flight you could certainly still hit the silk. And as long as your landing isn't a tumbling flaming wreck, you'd think you could still have a decent chance of walking away from it; plane may be done (propellers snapped off, undercarriage crushed, severe structural damage) but the pilot isn't.

Exactly what I mean. Every turn I've looked at the total air losses, Pilot KIA pretty much always correlates exactly with airframe losses, even though ops losses make up at least half of my losses.

Some pretty lethal "ops losses", if you ask me [;)] Or perhaps "ops losses" in the game doesn't mean what I'm used to it meaning.

[neuromancer]

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it doesn't.

I also noticed that the Soviets don't tend to take as many pilot losses; still high, but less than the near 100% the LW does.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: neuromancer

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it doesn't.

I also noticed that the Soviets don't tend to take as many pilot losses; still high, but less than the near 100% the LW does.

mainly they are crashing over their own territory while the axis over Soviet territory. Reverses come 1943 and the Soviets are on the offensive

[neuromancer]

Ah, I had wondered if that might be the theory.

[DekeFentle]

After some judicious AD's in the South pretty much leaving North and Central alone this is what I ended up with. This is of course post the Axis T1 ground move.