Soviet aircraft production strategy

[metto_x]

I'm playing the USSR in a 1941 campaign.
Currently I have all except one of my fighter factories making Yak-1s, one is making Mig-3s. This is because I-15s auto-upgrade to Mig-3s and if I would manually upgrade them to Yak-1s I would lose a lot of experience(auto-upgrading doesn't seem to cost exp.).
Should I produce only Yak-1s?
When should I switch my fighter production to a newer type? What type?

I haven't touched my bomber factories, most are making Il-2s. Should I switch some to Il-4s as these have 4x load value?

My tank factories are all producing T-34s, except some Kv-II, one Kv-1E and one T-60 that just appeared. What heavy tank model should I produce? Is there any point in making T-60s or should I just convert the factory to make T-34s?

[Morphy]

I produce only Yak 1s. They're the best and in early 1942 all factories switch automatically to Yak 7s. It also means you have to change equipment manually. You loose a lot of experience, that's right, but you gain on quality of airplanes. Yak 7s are better against fighters (20:18) and bombers (8:5 or 4). Additionaly if you have all factories producing the same equipment it's easy to gather a pool of 1000 items and then your divisions can have 200 airplanes instead of 100.

Just produce Yaks until you have La-5 - then switch production manually.

Il2 Sturmovik and Il 4 are different types of planes: the first one is dive/close support bomber while the latter is light heavy bomber. Thus you cannot manually replace Il2 with Il 4 and vice versa. But you should remember after development of Tu2 all Il4 units will be gradually replaced and divisions turned from level bombers units to dive/ground support units. So if you want to have some heavy bombers to cripple German industry you need to have some TB3 factories and TB3 units.

T-60 are very cheap and useless - T 24 is pretty comparable and unless you suffer enormously high losses you will have plenty of them since they're replaced by T-34. Instead of T-60 you should produce T-34 - more expensive but much better thus you loose less tanks and crews gain experience quicker.

KV II- switch all factories to KV1. They're extremely costly - instead of them you can produce plenty of KV 1s which are better tanks. KV 1 has worse gun, but until Germans use Tigers and Panthers on large scale (1943) their tanks have very thin armor. KV1 has better armor (historically questionable, but on the other hand KV II they were very high, therefore were easier targets), and when Germans introduce new Pz IV g/h, better armor is what you need most. Remember that Pz IV g and h have good gun but weak armor - what means an ideal Soviet tank should have moderate gun and thick armor - that's exactly KV1.

The only reason I don't switch all Soviet factories production to KV1 is T-34s are cheaper and have relatively strong armor as well (10, while the best German tank is equipped with gun 9). Untill introduction of Pz IIIj (January 42), Stug IIIg and Pz IV g (May 1942), Marders III (April 42) Germans are really hopeless...

[metto_x]

Thanks for the helpful reply!