Why fighters participate in a battle?

[Stamb]

i have fighters in IAD that belongs to Orel air command
they do not have GS directive

i have western air command that have SAD with bombers and GS directive for western front
i left GS on

during battle my fighters from Orel air command still participate in a battle despite absence of enemy planes

why?

is it a bug or WAD?

if it is WAD then is there a way to fly only bombers while still not using REST for a fighters?

[loki100]

WAD, the explanations are in 18.1.3 and 18.1.10

The only control is to use rest status and flip this on/off. So what I do with the VVS is to put all the other air armies to rest, use the current one for GS till I feel its exhausted and then put that to rest. If its late war and I'm doing a lot of attacks I track units that are starting to lose pilots and rest them (don't want too many inexperienced new pilots). Usually no need for this if a given front only attacks a few times.

Move onto another front and repeat.

The advantage is you don't run your fighters out before the next front is in action (picking up mileage at the limits of their range)

the escort routine, which is what you describe, is independent of enemy action, its not interception as such

[Stamb]

ok, thanks for the info

my plan was to have active fighters to intercept enemy recon while not having fighters in GS as i was sure that enemy fighters are not in range.

unfortunately it is not possible to make

[loki100]

No, I personally preferred the WiTW set up where if you manually assigned an airgroup to a particular AD they weren't available for anything else (incl auto-intercept). if I recall this didn't really work with the AOG as a building block so we have the current rules. I don't tend to find it much of an issue with the LW or the early game VVS but it does kick in come mid-game and the only way I've found around it is to se the rest routine. it also helps to organise the VVS using the Corps between AOG and Air Command

[AlbertN]

It may come handy a 'rest' routine that sets AoGs to rest once their fatigue reaches X treshold, or the like too.

Just commodity of life.

[DarkHorse2]

It may come handy a 'rest' routine that sets AoGs to rest once their fatigue reaches X treshold, or the like too.

Just commodity of life.

+1

That would be really nice, and possibly, keep AoGs from getting run into the ground air phase execution.