Extreme air losses..

[SchDerGrosse]

In the prior patches, my planes were getting shredded by flaks, this presumably have been corrected, so it should be working now.

Still the Luftwaffe is getting the floor mopped in random ground support missions just as the one below.



Uuuups you just lost 132 level bombers in a random battle. Sooooorry!

Whats more it shows that 17 Ftrs were committed by Germany during the attack, which also begs the following two questions:

- Why on earth would the game send up 17 escort planes to cover 200+ bombers (my esc. percantage is set to 150%!)
- Why the f*** are those escorts comprised of PZL 11F (RU)-s, when I SPECIFICCALY did not set any ground support missions for the Rumanians and LF4 does not contain a single Rumanian FTR unit??



I lost 500 planes in a single turn in some mild action. Its T5, I am playing on challenging, my airforce should be dominating the skies. These losses are from like 3 such effed up attacks where the AI decides that I should take ridonculous casualties.

Is this WAD, and is there a way to prevent it? I am already dreading the "ground support on" button, cause GS will do random sh*t like that.

Thanks,
(and yes, iam pissed)

[Zovs]

Can you click the Show Details and the the Air losses

[SchDerGrosse]

There.

The losses are now from air combat. Still think its extremely high. Not to mention the fact that what are the RUM FTRs doing up in the air as escorts??

[Joel Billings]

Best to post some saves if you can. Your losses are over the top. You've lost in 5 weeks as much as the AI losses in all of 1941. Ideally saves just before your air execution phase so we can view your ADs, and also after the a few of the ground battles. Are you losing the bulk of your losses in the ground phase or the air phase?

[KenchiSulla]

Can you also post a screenshot of the Air Combat tab?

[SchDerGrosse]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Best to post some saves if you can. Your losses are over the top. You've lost in 5 weeks as much as the AI losses in all of 1941. Ideally saves just before your air execution phase so we can view your ADs, and also after the a few of the ground battles. Are you losing the bulk of your losses in the ground phase or the air phase?

Not even doing recon (or barely).

All my losses stem from bog standard ground support missions:
- LF1 -> AGN
- LF2 -> AGC
- LF4 -> AGS

Thats it.

Heres the save: https://easyupload.io/ty5ipa

And heres my air combat tab:

[KenchiSulla]

A couple of observations:

-The soviet fighter kills do not match with the losses.
Caused by Air Superiority missions?
-escorts are not flying (did you have any in range?)
-Soviet fighters that do intercept are high experience
-Where are the Yak 1 fighters?

[Joel Billings]

I looked at your save. It's hard to say for sure what is going on as before turn 5 you had already lost 2000 aircraft to around 6500 Soviet aircraft, which is a very tough start. About 20% of your losses is among the Axis Allied airforce. I think you are overusing them as they are quite fragile and not very good against the starting Soviet pilots (the Soviet pilots get worse before they get better later on in the war). In the latest turn, it's clear you are flying many more ground support missions than you need to. In one case you had 400 bombers fly against an isolated division far from the front lines. This kind of hyper activity can stress your airforce and logistics. The fighters in the center are already greatly depleted, so not sure what they've been doing the past few turns, and not sure why so few were flying other than longer range and already being worn out). In the north you had pushed your fighters far forward and they were well supplied, and in this area they clobbered the soviet air force losing 61 and destroying over 300 Soviets (including 22 to 170 fighters lost). Hopefully some of the players have ideas for what you might do. There are some good posts in the war room about this. You are playing with lower admin and logistics levels so this may be impacting your air units some. Is anyone else seeing these kinds of Axix losses in early 1941?

[SchDerGrosse]

Thanks both to KenchiSulla and Joel for the answers.

Couple questions:

1. What exactly do the words "overusing" and "hyperactivity" in relation to Ground Support entail? I do not really have control over what gets assigned to the missions, my only tool to control ground support is the big red ON/OFF button. It is turn 5, I do not beleive that I should be economic at this time of the campaign and keep switching on and off and ONLY use GS for important battles. You mention the 400 bomber against the lone isolated unit incident. Who told the game that it should use that many bombers? It sure wasnt me. Furthermore, I havent seen a single person (like pple doing lets plays on youtube) cherry picking where to use ground support this early in the game.

2. Why oh why did those WW1 Rumanian planes participate in the battle? My air directive for LF4 is to support AGS. LF4 does NOT contain ANY obsolete Rumanian or Hungarian Fighters. And it happened again! See below.



This time, it was Hungarian FTRs who rose up as escorts, yet not a SINGLE old HU/RUM fighter unit is ordered to participate in GS missions (as you can see from the save only some "Heja"-s and RUM Focke-wulfs are part of LF4, therefore these old airplanes should NOT have participated in the attack. Yet they did. Why?


3. Escort percentage is upped to 150%, apparently it does jack s***, as the AI regularly sends up 200+ bombers with 18 escorts. What am I doing wrong?

4. And the million dollar question, have I already lost the game by getting shot down so many of my planes? I do like myself a challange but it would be nice to know if I should consider restarting the game as my crippled airforce practically spelled doom for the rest of the campaign.

Thanks,

[Joel Billings]

I don't think you've lost just because of the air force losses, but it will probably hurt over the long haul. As for the Axis fighters flying, they are likely just joining as Patrol aircraft since I assume they aren't in any other ADs. The escort percentage will usually make a difference if you have a/c available to fly, although it's not a direct linear thing. The fact that you don't have escort means increasing the escort percentage isn't going to change anything. It would make a difference in the case where you had about 100 fighters and 100 bombers in the north (if you lowered the percentage or had more fighters available to fly). You don't need 150 percent escorts in 1941. In fact you could probably get by with a lower percentage for those units that only have German fighters.

I know many players that will use the GS on/off button to keep air from flying in battles where they are not needed or where they are too far from escort range. You should always think about whether you want ground support. I was surprised to see 400 bombers flying in. I wouldn't expect that many coming into these battles. Is that something that others are seeing as well? If so, I'd lower the air doctrine setting to get less bombers in GS. I'm more used to seeing the 100-150 bombers like AGN is putting up.

[Stamb]

Its better to read AARs than to watch youtubers. Also it makes no sense to have air support on all of the time. There are different opinions about about GS in general: from being completely useless because 200 bombers damage/destroy 4 elements and they consume a lot of valuable freight(supplies/ammo) from an Axis perspective, to a pretty useful one. Maybe it depends on a patch/luck.
Personally I think GS have way to low impact on a battles, while IRL it was a key aspect for a Germans, flying artillery.

I was not using bombers at all in my AI game (except for naval interdiction). Only fighters on auto intercept. You should have no problems with it.

[Hardradi]

GROUND SUPPORT LOSSES:
I agree you must have overdone Ground Support in previous turns. Even your Luftwaffe fighters groups that wont fly are heavily damaged. The other tool available to limit GS losses is to put groups on/off rest so you can choose who will fly GS. I try to fly only a max of three GS missions for each Army Group sector. Even with this I sometimes get overzealous and cant believe how much I have lost at the end of the turn. If you can see you enemy is no longer responding to your ground support turn down your fighter escorts to save miles, op losses, flak losses, etc. Use GS for key battles with tight odds.

WHY DID THE Cr.32bis FLY?:
I dont know, they are not in your GS objective. IAR 80A fighters are tied to the GS Air Directive. I can only guess that the Cr.32s flew as part of the auto intercept routine. They are in the vicinity. Note the IAR 80As and Heja's are gas guzzlers compared to the Bf 109s. Not a good choice for low supply forward air bases.

WHY ARE YOUR LUFTWAFFE FIGHTERS NOT FLYING:
I see all your Luftwaffe fighter groups are already fatigued and travelled a significant distance before you hope they will fly Ground Support. This tells me you have only moved them up at the start of your turn. This causes two problems:

a) They are fatigued and have traveled significant miles before you want to use them.
b) You are flying them onto naked air bases with little air support, supplies, ammo and fuel.

Move up one at least one Luftwaffe fighter Air Group in each area of action at the end of each turn (preferably the one that has flown the least number of miles). When you turns starts they will be fresh and hopefully the air base stocked to support your ground support. Try to use level 2 air bases. They only time when they will not be fresh is if they have seen significant air action in your opponents turn. You can stop this by putting them on rest before your opponents turn.

Likewise move up recon groups at the end of your turn. This builds supply in the forward bases for your other fighter groups. Your fighter groups can then move forward and be less troubled by point 2 above.

You have also flow in bomber groups to a newly conquered Vinnitsa AF. Bomber groups should be behind the fighters and recon where they can more easily draw supply. They should be on airbases that are being fed directly by rail.

Where support, supplies, fuel and ammo are low/depleted in an airbase try doing to 'Re-supply air base" routine.

MASSIVE NUMBERS OF PLANES FLYING:
It looks like you have most of Luft #4, Rumaninan and Hungarian Air Commands allocated to both your GS Air Directives for AGS and AGA. Your giving the AI a smorgasbord of bombers to fly with. Limit it with more precise GS Air Directives and use Rest to control what flies.

Good luck.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

I had a quick go with the save in the South running the next turn - moved all of the Hungarians and Rumanians out of Luftflotte 4 and into their national Air commands. Put JG52 into V Fliegerkorps. Set V FlK only to run GS for AGS and gave the Rumanians and IV FlK their own GS missions for 4th Rum Army and 11A respectively. Did a manual resupply of the JG3 airbase.

Ran 3 test battles around Uman. Results were not perfect but got a 6:1 kill ratio for fighters/fighter bombers. Less German fighters flew than I wanted which I guess is down to supply issues - I think it is a bit of a learning curve working out the balance between getting the fighters forward so that they are in range and keeping them in good enough supply so that you can rely on them joining missions. There are Soviet air groups flying with experience in the 70s and 80s so it may be a bit of a feedback loop where some of your 'learning mistakes' are giving the Soviet air force easy victories and building up their morale/experience.