VVS destroys nearly 500 German fighters in a single Soviet air phase in 1941: WAD?

[Beethoven1]

In my server game with HLYA, I am on Soviet turn 5. I just completed the Soviet air phase, and I destroyed 448 German fighters in it.

100% of these losses were German Bf-109s. No Romanians, no bombers or recon planes etc... Just 100% pure German fighter losses.






I have NOT saved, both because I am concerned that if I do it might ruin the game, and also so that you can get the save off the server from BEFORE I ran the air phase, so that you can replicate this.

I saved right before running the air phase, so you can see exactly my air directives etc, and you should be able to replicate basically the same results by simply running the air phase as is.

So I am going to hold off for now and wait for a recommendation of what to do.



Here are the air losses in the game so far:



On turns 2 through 4, the only missions I was running were ground support. I noticed that HLYA was managing to get a 100% interception rate, which I am pretty sure is not realistic/historical, so I started the other thread linked here ("100% Fighter Interception Rate") --- https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 7&t=387499

And in that thread, Joel said that it was more or less WAD:

It is WAD for now. My take is interception in ground support is too easy, and interception in ground attack is too hard. However, I don't know when or how these might be adjusted in the future. AS missions are really the only way to have a good shot at intercepting air phase missions that are not very deep into enemy territory.

Since this was apparently WAD (or WAD enough for current purposes), either I had to keep doing the same thing, or try something different. I was taking up to 20:1 losses against me in ground support, and with a 100% interception rate, clearly it was not sustainable/sensible to simply keep doing that (and I don't know for sure, but I am somewhat doubtful that ratio being quite so lopsided is realistic).

HLYA mentioned that there was something he knew that I could do:



I had 2 guesses as to what I could do. One of my guesses was airfield bombing, and the other guess is something that I won't mention here because I know HLYA will read it. But I did not want to have to try either of them out until I knew if the defensive ground support and 100% interception rate was WAD, so I stared that other thread to find out.



How did I know which airfields to bomb?

There were 2 ways which I could tell pretty much exactly which airfields to bomb. First, the game told me in the air phase execution log thingy which airfields Germany has moved planes to. I vaguely remembered seeing this in the previous turn or 2, but didn't write down which ones planes were moved to then. However, I did vaguely remember that one of them from a turn or 2 ago was Vitebsk. And obviously it also stands to reason that HLYA would put fighters in Vitebsk, it is an obvious place:



Secondly, the UI shows me which airfields Germany is expanding, and their progress to being upgraded to a higher level airfield. For example, here I could see that HLYA was upgrading the Orsha airfield, with 61% progress on the way to level 3:



There are 2-3 other airfields that I was pretty sure had German fighters in, but didn't bomb because I was not sure if I had enough planes to do so effectively in range (without weakening the bombing of other airfields too much). These were Riga (air execution log said there were fighters there, and the airfield was being upgraded), Dretun (log said a Stab was moved there and it was being upgraded) and Kiev (it was being upgraded, and I am sure he mus have fighters in some airfield near there to cover that part of the front).



What settings did I use?

I am playing in the "No Time to Die" 4v4 player game. In that game, our Soviet air commander, Shaggy, recently did airfield bombing which was very effective. Since I am in the game, I have the save from that, so I simply copied his settings for bombing. The airfield bombing which Shaggy did is mentioned in the AAR here:

T-34 - Early February 1942

With weather being fit for air operations in the very south, the VVS suddenly launches a series of attacks on Kerch airfield, destroying more than 50 x Rumanian Bf-109E on the ground.

Also for reference, here are PBEM saves from after the turn 34 Soviet air phase in that game, and from the start of Soviet turn 35 (when the air directives from the previous turn are visible), so you can see the same basic air directives in this game as the ones I used:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... rPhase.psv
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... LOGI_0.psv




There are however some things to note which possibly might be related to the results of the airfield bombing:

1) In the No Time to Die game, it was winter, so it is possible the Romanian planes were on rest and did not intercept and defend themselves against airfield bombing for that reason (??).

2) In my game with HLYA, he is using unusual settings for his air which most players do not use. This has been getting him a 100% interception rate against Soviet defensive Ground support, but maybe for some reason those same settings mean he is not protecting well against airfield bombing as a side effect. I obviously don't now what his settings are exactly, but it is probably a good idea to check his settings, in case they are making the airfield bombing be worse than usual.

3) Most of the German fighters (other than in Vitebsk) I think had just been rebased, so maybe they did not have enough air miles or something.



Overall, it seems to me that this airfield bombing was probably too effective to be realistic. At the same time, it seems to me that Germany having a 100% interception rate against Soviet ground support is probably also too effective to be realistic.

So anyway, what is the verdict on if this is WAD, and what if anything we should do about it in the game? Should I save the game and keep these air results, or should I go back and not do airfield bombing?

From my perspective, if I don't do airfield bombing, what am I supposed to do instead - just take 20:1 losses on defensive ground support, and get it intercepted 100% of the time? If I could just leave ground support on and this would result in air losses that would be reasonably realistic and historical, that would be fine with me. But I doubt that is the case with HLYA's fighters being set up to be so effective at intercepting.

And likewise from HLYA's perspective, I would bet that having so many of his fighters destroyed by airfield bombing like this would seem pretty devastating and game breaking.



Also, here are some screenshots of my air directives and sample results, for reference. But you should be able to replicate by simply running the Soviet air phase from the last save on the server:



^ Air battle results. The German losses do not seem to include losses on the ground, only air to air.


Sample air directive report:



In general raids of 48-60 bombers appear to have been the most effective. Smaller raids of ~12 planes did not destroy much that I can see.

[Stamb]

i reported GA interception issues when i was playing my first pvp game as an Axis, which was ages ago
and after that moment i house rule GA except of Axis t1

[DesertedFox]

It would seem to me that the issue could lie in weekly turns.

Once a fighter group is assigned as an escort for whatever bombing action, GS, GA etc, it is not available for CAP or AS for the entire week.

Thus even if the Germans had suitable radar on the eastern front in 1941 (not sure if they did) warning of incoming raids

they would sit idly by on the tarmac and take one for the team.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

The main issue at hand is that the LOG shows exactly where German fighters are re-based to, I can see Soviet rebasing too as a German but have re-framed from using that info even from BETA. But this HAD to be brought out.

So here are the main issues.

* Seeing your opponents Air movement in the LOG. (This should really be taken out for your opponent seeing this information. Not to mention seeing your opponents air base information, why recon when you have the info readily available) Now you will have to play musical chairs with your air force with a bazillion moves to hopefully your opponent wont track. But ultimately they can figure it out if put enough time to it. I really don't want to play that game but that is one way to semi-fool your opponent. The other is to move your Air force a bazillion miles to the rear not to be bombed every turn. So again I ask, "Is this the game you really want to play?)

* Basic interception (No AD set) is just horrid on interception rate. Something is wrong with basic interception and really wish we could get to the bottom of it and THIS bombing is a perfect example of this since all of these fighters were well rested, well supplied. The rate of basic interception makes a baby cry even louder

* I set no AD interception either AS nor GS this turn. Would AS have intercepted GA and if so how much? Would AS have made a difference against GA? From the previous link it was said to be WAD for GS and so far we have not tested that out on GA but will test out next turn with Beethoven and I setting up a test bed in our game for the Devs to look at on the results. Will get to the bottom of this one way or another.

* The bombing of the Airfield with the amount of planes on them is probably justified since there were 3-4 squadrons of fighters on each of the medium size airfields. But that leads us back to basic interception and my lack of AD to intercept and if it would effectively intercept GA

* When 100+ of my fighters did intercept the loss was only 2 bombers. WHICH WAS really only ONE TIME basic interception from Beethovens many many many bombing runs in his snapshots mind you out of all the mission. With over 400+ fighters in range for basic interception(no AD set) you would think the Germans would not be caught flat footed with their heads in the sand. You just have to smile at these results, shake your head and move on. Then pray it gets looked at. But that leads back into my fault of not setting AS and if AS is effective against GA.

Of the 2 of these the log files being seen and basic interception is a must look and addressed. But that is just my opinion.

[DesertedFox]

Hi HL,

This is from my experience as the Russians.

I have SAD set up with 3 x fighters and 2 x bombers usually on GS assigned to a specific Front.

I have IADs set up with 5 x fighters not assigned to any air directive. Thus these guys should, and from experience, do intercept any enemies that come into their range, even intercepting enemy fighters that are not escorting anything.

So in my limited experience, it works for me.

From your AAR I have already made comments that the intel appears to be too good in terms of air groups relocating.

[DesertedFox]

One more thing and I am not an expert on how the air works in the game but another possibility here is the attack height.

It appears that the attackers came in at 5000 ft and I am guessing the defenders were at 15K feet.

With a 10 K difference in height as far as I know they will miss each other. But again, I could be wrong in this.

I know this is not WITP which has an excellent air system (with just 1 major flaw imho) CAP will vector to the height of the attackers and depending on the height difference and range they were spotted against their respective speeds intercept them with a variable number of CAP.

That is a 1-day cycle where each squadron can be set to a different patrol height and this is a 7-day cycle with all the CAP, AS, etc set to one height (I think) in a particular Air Front HQ.

[xhoel]

Good write up. I hope Joel sees this thread.

The issue with being able to see enemy aircraft movement in the Log is one I reported on ever since the game was on Beta. It already is on the bug list but at low priority. Seeing how much it can be abused as shown here will hopefully lead to its priority being increased.

The issue with no interceptions happening is something that needs to be addressed fast. You shouldnt have to use AS directives to cover your own airfields, that is nonsense and only adds unnecessary micromanaging. Fighters should intercept runs in the vicinity of their air base and especially bombing runs on their airbase. The interception effectiveness should also increase with time. So if the Soviets launch a raid on D1, by the time they launch their other raid on D3, German fighters should be waiting for them. This reflects units being put to high alert due to previous bombing runs.

If we can manage to change these few rules, it might solve this problem completely.

[M60A3TTS]

One more thing and I am not an expert on how the air works in the game but another possibility here is the attack height.

It appears that the attackers came in at 5000 ft and I am guessing the defenders were at 15K feet.

With a 10 K difference in height as far as I know they will miss each other. But again, I could be wrong in this.

I know this is not WITP which has an excellent air system (with just 1 major flaw imho) CAP will vector to the height of the attackers and depending on the height difference and range they were spotted against their respective speeds intercept them with a variable number of CAP.

That is a 1-day cycle where each squadron can be set to a different patrol height and this is a 7-day cycle with all the CAP, AS, etc set to one height (I think) in a particular Air Front HQ.

I've never bought into the argument that air combat shouldn't take place because of altitude differences. Even the most rudimentary air alert systems, be they spotters on the ground with binoculars or sound devices can estimate altitude and direction. Pilots are always reminded of the need for situational awareness, so I don't see all that many cases developing where opposing air units never see each other and just pass one another like ships in the night.

From the game perspective, you would need not just one AS directive to cover an area, but differing ones by altitude to make sure you ran into the opposition. It's simply not workable.

[Beethoven1]

Joel, if/when you read this thread, please respond to say as soon as you can get the save from the server. I will need to know so that I know when I can start and save the turn again.



Also, just to clarify on xhoel's comment, German fighters did do some auto interception, on the land bridge and also near Odessa:



However, there was no auto intercept on other airbases/areas like Orsha, Valmeira, Veliki Luki that I saw. One issue with the interception may also have been that HLYA had the German air doctrine set to 300%, so that more planes would fly. And in lots of those battles you can see that more than 100 German fighters flew, and shot down Soviet bombers efficiently. However, that may have meant they could only fly in some battles, and others did not get intercepted for that reason.

So there is sort of a game of rock/paper/scissors with setting the air doctrine to 300% or to some low percentage like 10%. If Germany sets them high, then they can massacre groups of Soviet planes, but on the other hand if Soviets do smaller bombing missions, then Germany may not be able to intercept them all with a 300% air doctrine. So that is likely part of what happened.

[Beethoven1]

There were a total of 309 "AF bombed" battles though, so it appears most raids were not intercepted. Probably in some sense there were just too many of them:



In the Odessa area, however, I only had 120 unescorted Soviet bombers (range issues). And in there, they were intercepted and ended up not destroying many fighters at all. Most of the destroyed German planes were in the center and north, especially on the big bases that had multiple fighter groups like Orsha/Vitebsk.

[Hardradi]

So there is sort of a game of rock/paper/scissors with setting the air doctrine to 300% or to some low percentage like 10%. If Germany sets them high, then they can massacre groups of Soviet planes, but on the other hand if Soviets do smaller bombing missions, then Germany may not be able to intercept them all with a 300% air doctrine. So that is likely part of what happened.

Since I had a crack at your setup in another thread, I think its only (f)air that I mention that this is a poor setup to have in place when your opponent hit the end turn button. Asking for trouble.

[ShaggyHiK]

I think the problem is primarily in the settings of the German anti-aircraft guns. They are very bad as anti-aircraft guns. And too good as terrestrial. In the relative value of its own efficiency.

Similar raids on Soviet airfields from the German side do not bring the same success, unless it is T1, but bring high losses of German aircraft in raids. In general, the only antidote to this is to use the SUP mission, but you cannot know in advance where the Soviets can fly for sure to guarantee their safety, apart from any relocation mechanics when your planes are tied to the airfield and do not fly.

[ShaggyHiK]

Poor supply can also have an effect. Because in the winter in the other party that Beethoven spoke of, I noticed higher losses from the German anti-aircraft aviation. In the form that I see these raids, it does not work correctly, planes fall where in theory they should not. For example, German scouts fall from the actions of Soviet anti-aircraft gunners. Although in reality their sorties were not even spotted as often as we would like. Not to mention the fact that they would shoot down, and the same IL-2, when making an attack, fights too little from the OPS, although the aircraft was not very stable when maneuvering and flew at low altitudes, which did not allow it to be withdrawn, the pilots simply crashed into a spin after leaving the attack .

[Stamb]

in this thread
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... ntercepted
i was Axis and had 100% settings for a fighters - did not work

later on there were many other GA, this time i was Soviet with 100% settings, and it was also not intercepted
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... d#p4993407

Joel mentioned AS
but i fully agree with xhoel

if i have to protect airbases with AS and set it for each turn then i better keep house rule of no GA

[Zovs]

I am pretty (afk) that I set my % requirement to fly to 20% and I get interceptions all the time vs GS and I thought against GA. I never use AS. I’ll run some tests later this morning.

[Joel Billings]

I've downloaded the saves and was able to recreate the situation. I agree right off that the logistics report should not be giving this info away to the enemy, and I assume this can be fixed fairly easily. I can't speak to the issues of interception and whether there's enough of it. Interception in general is on the list to be looked at. The Soviets did lost over 700 a/c, and the in the air ratio was an astounding 425 to 5. All I can agree is that t should be a lot harder to locate and destroy half the German fighter force. I've passed along the info to Pavel. The thread is long and there's a lot of info here. Aside from the logistics report, can someone summarize the other issues brought up here? I've been gone for 4 days and trying to catch up now, and wanted to get the basics to Pavel so he can at least address the logistics report issue in the next update that gets made. Thanks.

[K62_]

This is pure speculation on my part, but in GC41 German airplanes usually run out of fuel/ammo before they run out of miles. It is quite possible that the 400+ fighters flew GS during the German turn and exhausted the limited supplies available in the forward air bases. Auto-intercept will not fly from bases that are out of fuel/ammo. So, if this was indeed the case, lack of auto-intercept would be the price paid for flying super-effective GS during the Axis ground phase.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

This is pure speculation on my part, but in GC41 German airplanes usually run out of fuel/ammo before they run out of miles. It is quite possible that the 400+ fighters flew GS during the German turn and exhausted the limited supplies available in the forward air bases. Auto-intercept will not fly from bases that are out of fuel/ammo. So, if this was indeed the case, lack of auto-intercept would be the price paid for flying super-effective GS during the Axis ground phase.

There was no Air action in the turn other than rebasing and the only long haul rebase was JG-27 in the North/Center. All other rebasing was local in the North/Center. The biggest problem from above is reading the air execution and seeing where rebasing of enemy went to. The Germans can do it too as you see a picture of Turn1 below I capture of this game. I just reframe from it but this had to be brought out. See picture below. Airbases had ample fuel, ammo. Nice to see you back K62!!!!

Air execution.png (673.68 KiB) Viewed 1682 times

[Beethoven1]

I've downloaded the saves and was able to recreate the situation. I agree right off that the logistics report should not be giving this info away to the enemy, and I assume this can be fixed fairly easily. I can't speak to the issues of interception and whether there's enough of it. Interception in general is on the list to be looked at. The Soviets did lost over 700 a/c, and the in the air ratio was an astounding 425 to 5. All I can agree is that t should be a lot harder to locate and destroy half the German fighter force. I've passed along the info to Pavel. The thread is long and there's a lot of info here. Aside from the logistics report, can someone summarize the other issues brought up here? I've been gone for 4 days and trying to catch up now, and wanted to get the basics to Pavel so he can at least address the logistics report issue in the next update that gets made. Thanks.

1) You should not be able to see which airbases enemy air groups have moved to in the logistics report. Although realistically the enemy would probably have some intel on this, it would be imperfect/fog of war.

2) You should probably not be able to see which airbases the enemy is expanding, at least not reliably/without fog of war, because that basically tells you which ones there planes are at. Although realistically the enemy would probably have some intel on this, it would be imperfect/fog of war.

3) For these airfield raids, Soviets did 300+ bombing missions with a gazillion sorties bombing a lot of airfields more or less simultaneously. It is probably doubtful that they could have realistically coordinated this well, especially in July 1941. Something like this would probably be challenging and require a long planning period even for he better organized Luftwaffe.

4) I think the German airfields did not have much if any flak in them. They probably did not get flak to their airfields due to the general freight issues and maybe supply priorities or something? This may be one of the reasons why Soviet airbase bombing is comparatively effective, but when Axis does it against Soviets in 1941, Axis takes too high losses for it to be worth it in my experience, mostly because of flak losses.

5) Honestly, maybe it is even WAD and/or realistic that if Soviets could pull off repeated large scale raids and initially had the element of surprise on their side, they could have destroyed a lot of Axis planes on the ground. Maybe one group of bombers gets intercepted, but if you send 300 raids, some of them will get through un-intercepted, as happened here. But is the "if" plausible? So the problem may not necessarily be how anything works individually, but how things fit together when you send massive repeated raids and tire out the enemy fighters, and when you have players selecting different settings for air missions/air doctrines which are not likely all mutually balanced in all their combinations.

6) The air doctrine settings for Mission AC and Escort AC ranging from 0% to 300% seems deeply problematic. If Soviets set their ground support/ground attack to 300%, then Axis will want to set their air superiority/interception to 300% to counter it. But if they do (as HLYA did here), it makes them more vulnerable if Soviets do a big attack of 300 raids like I did here. Some will be intercepted by a lot of fighters and massacred, but other raids get through. The problem is that each player can only set this air doctrine percentage one time in each week, and once it is set, you are stuck with it and it applies for all the missions in the entire week, even if there end up being 300 missions or 5000 missions. What would happen realistically is instead the air commanders would dynamically adjust the number of planes they send on missions during the weak, depending on what the enemy was doing and what is the situation on that day/hour (not just week). They would not simply continue sending the same # of weeks just because "our air doctrine for this week is 300%" or "our air doctrine for this week is 50%." If nothing else, I would maybe suggest simply deleting this setting from the air doctrine and always having it on 100%. Otherwise you have a rock/paper/scissors game where players have to guess each week what. Similarly for other things like altitude. Maybe I set it at 5000. Maybe I set it a 25000. You have to guess, and you are stuck with your guess with a whole week, and whatever happens happens. You can only change it next week, and maybe then I change my altitude. Or maybe I don't. Rock/Paper/Scissors.

[Zovs]

Maybe the Soviets should be restricted to set the AD above 100% until Nov 1942, when they can go to 200% and the finally to 300% in July or Nov 1943.