ORIGINAL: mind_messing
Turn 1 - 22 June 1941
VVS Re-organisation
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First order of business is to get the battered squadrons off to the Caucuses till they can be brought back up to strength down the road.
Second, get the biplane fighters off the frontline. They seem like free kills for the Luftwaffe at this stage. I may even go a step further and move the I-16s off the frontline as well, but that might make my overall numbers too low.
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ORIGINAL: loki100
actually the bi-planes are useful, there are two core dynamics with the VVS. If the LW is absent, anything that can drop a bomb is very useful. Remember that any interdiction cancels admin movement and if you have uncontested GS then you gain extra damage over the direct bomb load. If the LW is present, anything (& this includes the Yak-1s) you commit will die (mainly as in A2A combat experience/skill trumps almost every other variable)
Not quite sure what you are advocating here. Convert all bi-planes to bomber skill? Seldom do I find the Luftwaffe absent in places that it matters. Yes, a skill 65 pilot will die in a Yak-1 just as easily as they will an I-153. Still, I'd like to think that the Yak-1 does stand a better chance shooting down an enemy plane than an I-153 when pilot skills are identical. That and the Yak has better range meaning a better chance to catch an unescorted or low escort bomber mission.
ORIGINAL: loki100
Caucasus - why? If an airgroup has experience<national morale (& most will, not least due to taking on untrained pilots to replace losses), then if in the national reserve they will fly training missions to bring their skill/experience up to that threshold. If your problem is a relatively full air group with decent experience but low morale, then yes rotate a bit back on the map and set to rest.
Well....
In theory yes, in practice it's a matter for debate, because of this nugget:
16.7.4 Pilot Training
pilots with experience ratings over 50 will have less chance to gain experience through training than pilots
with experience less than 50.
That means the more pilots you have above experience 50 going into the reserve, the less effective the training program becomes, regardless as to what the Air NM is currently set at. This is important to understand in light of the fact that the great majority of Soviet air-to-air combat kills come from pilots with an experience level of 60 or more. In other words, this training program for the most part won't help your pilots down a whole lot more enemy aircraft.
Also, sending any air units to the reserves prior to Turn 12 must be done with caution. Once regiments drop to size 20, all air regiments in the reserve drop to 20 pilots. Now yes, the number of pilots in the CR always says zero, but remember that there is always a pilot for every plane in the reserve in spite of that. So if you have 2,000 planes in the reserves, you have 2,000 pilots for them. If you then take a regiment with say 5 planes and 60 pilots with all their experience from the map and send it to the reserves, the unit will arrive and then having been capped to the 20 aircraft will subsequently only retain 20 pilots. The remainder simply vanish. So in this example you could be throwing away 40 well trained pilots who will be more skilled than 95% of whatever the "pilot training program" can come up with.
For these reasons it makes a lot of sense to keep air units on map in the early game. And the Caucasus has plenty of airfields to park your refugee aircraft and pilots and await better days.
