MASSIVE 543 Soviet bombers to the battle!!! RUN FOR COVER!

[Nikel]

Considering the numbers of available Soviet bombers, hundreds of them looks like too much.

Before the war the VVS had 2212 bombers.

The first screenshot happens in the second turn, so supposedly the Germans had already inflicted many casualties on them as they did historically.

So how could they concentrate more than 500 bombers for an attack?

Besides that, if they could, why there should be so many for that kind of land combat roughly 5000 vs 5000 infantry?

And 505 surviving bombers cause only 216 casualties on motorized infantry deployed, attacking in the clear ground in a clear day?

[ncc1701e]

Yes, this is in the living manual:

---

Living Manual.JPG

Thank you, I don't read the manual just play by immersion. So we have a NOT WAD since we have a crapload of planes above 300 here.

Of course that is the manual but the real "Authority" is Mr. Billings ruling on this. I will wait for an answer there but "Thank You" so much NCC1701e Enterprise!!!!!!

Just want to point out that the manual says unlikely.

[Joel Billings]

I got the saves for the big Soviet attacks and will pass them along to Gary. I don't get 500 a/c all the time, but am getting between 250-500 a/c. BTW, why are all the German flak units back in OKH? No flak with your units or even the corps HQs is asking for trouble. I attached a battalion of flak and the attackers suffered 3% losses to flak (vs 0). Just as important, the flak will reduce the accuracy of the aircraft. Did you intentionally remove all of your flak?

Could use saves for the bad German ground support.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

I got the saves for the big Soviet attacks and will pass them along to Gary. I don't get 500 a/c all the time, but am getting between 250-500 a/c. BTW, why are all the German flak units back in OKH? No flak with your units or even the corps HQs is asking for trouble. I attached a battalion of flak and the attackers suffered 3% losses to flak (vs 0). Just as important, the flak will reduce the accuracy of the aircraft. Did you intentionally remove all of your flak?

Could use saves for the bad German ground support.

Yes, I intentionally removed all flak back to OKH. Once my battle lines stabilize (around turn 6 or 7) I divy out my flak based on possible Soviet Air in the area. Sitting in OKH they are on the "Spring of Life"(NSS), suffer no adverse move effects or loses, don't need truck for supply. So yes, I know about the flak on aircraft but to me the benefit of them sitting in OKH the first 6 or 7 turns out weighs the 3% loss to Soviet aircraft when I want my fighters with experience. If this makes sense.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Could use saves for the bad German ground support.

You are asking for a save of all my SU's back to OKH bad ground support save? Is that what you are referring to as "bad German ground support"? It isn't hard move OKH to Berlin and then move every single SU to the HQ.

Personally I consider it optimal not "bad" I get to pick where and when to use them and are on NSS (Fountain of life) I have been doing this forever and has served me very well.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Could use saves for the bad German ground support.

You are asking for a save of all my SU's back to OKH bad ground support save? Is that what you are referring to as "bad German ground support"? It isn't hard move OKH to Berlin and then move every single SU to the HQ.

Personally I consider it optimal not "bad" I get to pick where and when to use them and are on NSS (Fountain of life) I have been doing this forever and has served me very well.

OH! Sorry you were referring to JasonBoomers post. I am so sorry, my reading comprehension suxs butt since I really only passed 1st grade and failed the next 17 grades.

[Joel Billings]

Gary has made changes to bring down the bombers committed, especially for Soviets in 41/42. He also found another cause of the defensive GS missing entirely, and fixed that. This is another nasty bug. He also slight increased level bombers in ground support and their chance to kill/destroy versus just damage. Taken together, all these changes will make a difference. I saw cases of Stukas now doing big damage when on defensive GS (which is better than attacking GS). With these changes, players may have to reevaluate the use of bombers in defensive GS. I've tested the changes and they seem to be working. We're waiting now to get a beta version we can send to testers, and then hopefully onto player in the coming days.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Gary has made changes to bring down the bombers committed, especially for Soviets in 41/42. He also found another cause of the defensive GS missing entirely, and fixed that. This is another nasty bug. He also slight increased level bombers in ground support and their chance to kill/destroy versus just damage. Taken together, all these changes will make a difference. I saw cases of Stukas now doing big damage when on defensive GS (which is better than attacking GS). With these changes, players may have to reevaluate the use of bombers in defensive GS. I've tested the changes and they seem to be working. We're waiting now to get a beta version we can send to testers, and then hopefully onto player in the coming days.

Once the BETA is ready Beethoven and I will implement the changes. You should be able to compare and contrast the results with my Turn 2 since I "DID" use Stukas and Level bombers for Germany and Beethoven used a metric crap ton of Soviet bombers. I expect to have turn 3 probably this weekend since I am just now finishing up turn 2. Again, "Thank You" for diving into this for the community.

[Stamb]

great news!
what about current tactical bombers performance, it is planned to leave them at current level?

[jasonbroomer]

TY

[Hardradi]

Sounds good.

[Joel Billings]

Tac bombers just got better in defensive ground support, since they were often not hitting anything due to the bug. We don't have any plans to adjust them.

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Tac bombers just got better in defensive ground support, since they were often not hitting anything due to the bug. We don't have any plans to adjust them.

I agree with you Sir that the "German" TAC bombers were not hitting a darn thing. But i have turn 1 and Turn 2 where Soviet TAC bombers were ripping me up. So I am glad to see that the German TAC bombers finally got the Soviet CRT ((Combat Result TAble) for those that don't know what CRT is). Is why I mentioned it in the original posts.

Anyway, Thank you again.

[Veterin]

Hi Joel,

Just picking up on this thread again. My understanding was the 0.51 patch was supposed to reduce the number of sorties that fly in any one mission however I've seen some battles where there are over 1k Soviet aircraft and many more with several hundred.

1.png (458.37 KiB) Viewed 680 times

I've got two questions of the back of this

1) Is it intended that there should be so many bombers/fighters on GA? 1k aircraft is a lot in one hex. I had 111 fighters defend and I ran several layers of AS at varying altitudes so there is not much else that can be done in terms of mitigation

2) New Soviet meta is to force combat above 25k for increased fatigue. Flying 1k sorties and changing for super high/low altitudes is purely to fatigue and wear out axis fighters through op loses without actually fighting. Is this mechanic working as intended for PvP games with dogfights over 25k?

2.png (370.86 KiB) Viewed 676 times

This screenshot is just to show that i mitigated what i could through lots of AS but many of the engagements resulted in very little combat. Should be a lot easier to find 1k Aircraft in a 10 mile hex

[Joel Billings]

The changes had to do with the number of bombers that fly in ground support. There were no changes in how many bombers can fly during air phase missions. There was an increase in the likelihood of detection of air phase missions, and thus an increase in intercepts. The number of bombers you got into one air phase mission does seem extremely high. Do you have a save before the air phase resolution where I can run it and see these results?

[Joel Billings]

We had our con call today and all agreed that these kinds of numbers in one raid should not be happening. Do you have a save you can give us for this? We're likely going to add in some limitations to reduce the very large missions. Over the course of a week, many smaller raids could be flown, but having this kind of single large coordinated raid should not be possible. If you have a pre-save, please zip it up and attach it here or email it to 2by3@2by3games.com. If this is from a server game, and you can save it just before the air phase and let me know before you continue, I can download it off the server. Thanks.

[Veterin]

Thanks Joel. It's a PBEM game vs Beethoven so I've asked him to share the pre-air run Soviet turn.

It's not an isolated instance by any means as another GA in the same turn had 900 committed (650 bombers) and previous turns in this game as well as in one of my other games have had similar levels of Soviet air commitments.

[Beethoven1]

We had our con call today and all agreed that these kinds of numbers in one raid should not be happening. Do you have a save you can give us for this? We're likely going to add in some limitations to reduce the very large missions. Over the course of a week, many smaller raids could be flown, but having this kind of single large coordinated raid should not be possible. If you have a pre-save, please zip it up and attach it here or email it to 2by3@2by3games.com. If this is from a server game, and you can save it just before the air phase and let me know before you continue, I can download it off the server. Thanks.

Here is a save from right before the air phase was run:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... preair.psv

I agree that it is definitely more planes than should be possible to commit in a single attack like this in a coordinated fashion.

HOWEVER, while I definitely would support limiting the numbers that can fly in ground attack further, I would caution against the implications of what will happen if you change that but don't change anything else, in particular in relation to air superiority and interception.

The reason why I set up the air mission to be a single mission with as many planes is possible is, simply put, that is he only way it can have any effectiveness whatsoever without leading to close to 100% losses of HUGE numbers of planes in a single turn.

So if you decrease the number of planes that can join ground attack missions but don't change anything else, the only thing I expect this will do is effectively make ground attack useless, and I for one do not anticipate that I will never use it again, at least as Soviets in 1941. The reason is that if you run a larger number of small missions, what will happen is the German fighters will intercept every single one of the smaller missions and inflict up to 100% losses on them. So as a result, the only viable way to do any sort of ground attack is currently to do a single mission with the maximum possible number of planes. It will be intercepted (like everything else), but at least since there are a large number of planes, the German fighters cannot shoot all of them down at once in a single turn's air phase. And so if you take that away without changing anything else, the meta will be that the only use you can ever make of the VVS is basically limited to offensive ground support (and that is not even particularly good, and also gets intercepted basically 100% of the time, but it is at least a bit less horrendous than anything else, so since you have planes, may as well suicide them that way rather than in another way).

To understand this, please in the save do try setting up a larger number of smaller ground attack missions rather than just a single large one, either in the same place on the map or in some other place, and observe what happens.

Also I would encourage you to try some missions at lower altitudes (as I did in previous turns) so you can see how extremely very high flak losses are in the current path.

I'll try and explain why, and what is going on...:


Prior to the changes in a recent patch that were made to interception, it was already possible in 1941 (after the first turn or 2 by which time air bases could catch up to the front) for Axis to intercept close to 100% of Soviet ground attack missions, and to inflict close to 100% losses in many cases in the process on he Soviets, often with better than 10:1 kill ratios in favor of Germany. This is what HLYA did against me. However, most Axis players could not/did not do this and got VERY different results, because they did not set up air superiority missions or did not know how to do it in the very particular way that HLYA did it. Players that did not set up micromanaged air superiority were instead getting more like 0% interception rate.

So the situation was basically that a few Axis players could get 100% interception rate, while most others would get 0%, with no middle ground in between. Incidentally, I do totally agree that players should not have to set up air superiority to get reasonable interception (although I am not sure that 100% is really reasonable, it seems a bit high).



But after the changes to interception, this basically meant that especially if the Axis player set up air superiority (as Vet does after HLYA taught him the method), then Axis interception (which is now also very good even if you do not set up air superiority) was supercharged.

There is 0 downside (or close to it) in terms of the game mechanics for Axis of setting up air superiority, in HLYA's particular way, because you take basically 0 ops losses and don't have any discernible downside from doing it, other than the pain and hassle of having to excessively micromanage it.

I would encourage you to look at the save from the Axis perspective so you can see what Vet did with his air superiority missions as well. I am pretty sure what you will see is he will have set up air superiority missions which are centered on particular airbases, with only individual air groups assigned directly to the mission which are based at the same air base. This is the secret to having super-effective interception, as far as I am aware anyway.

Because the air superiority mission is centered on the airbase, this leads to basically 0 ops losses from flying around extra. Possibly the ops losses might be calculated based on the center point hex of the square or something, rather than taking into account that the planes flying in the air superiority mission will in reality be flying in the entirety of all the hexes in the square. So basically, the Axis player just has to micromanage things to set up air superiority along more or less the whole front each turn (which Axis can in fact do, especially with unlocked theater boxes, which is the option with which basically every PvP game is played of which I am aware).

[Beethoven1]

I did a quick test where I changed the following in the save for the 2 interdiction missions that are set near Kherson:

1) Lower altitude to 9000 feet (default altitude)
2) Lower # of planes requested to 50 bombers and 50 escorts requested, with 20 bombers and 0 escorts the minimum needed for the mission.
3) Instead of 1 single mission on one particular day, up to 5 missions are run every day.

So basically this changes it from 1 big bombing mission to lots of more realistically sized ones.

These are the results from running the air phase with those more realistically sized missions:



Axis loses a total of 12 planes, Soviets lose... 678...

That is a loss ratio of 56.5 to 1.

Even if you do not count the 330 (!!!) flak losses or the 32 operational losses, that is still 316 Soviet air to Air losses compared to 10 Axis air to air losses, a ratio of 31.6 to 1. And btw this shows how high flak losses are currently - yes, he does have a lot of flak, but surely flak losses cannot be intended to be that high from one localized area within a single week of bombing.

Or even if you only count the fighter losses, that is still 260 Soviet fighter losses to 10 Axis fighter losses, a ratio of 26 to 1.

Pardon me, but although I know the VVS was bad, surely it cannot have been this bad in reality, and surely this sort of loss ratio is not realistic.

also notice that 100% of the Soviet fighter losses are MiGs or Yaks, i.e. the good Soviet fighters. Not a single i-series plane is involved in this, and despite that the losses are STILL so lopsided in the Axis' favor. And in addition to that, every one of the Soviet pilots is one of the pilots with the high starting Soviet air national morale, the relatively good pilots that they have at the start of the game. So things should get EVEN MORE lopsided in 1942 as Soviet air national morale goes down...

Clearly, no sane Soviet player will ever run ground attack if the results are going to be similar to that, so if that is how it is supposed to be, you might as well outright delete ground attack from the game.


So while I do agree that bombing missions involving 1000 planes (700 bombers and 300 fighters) in a single mission on a single hex all at the same time certainly cannot be right and is not historical, neither is the alternative in which Soviets bomb with smaller missions. So simply reducing the size of air missions doesn't fix things, it just makes them broken in a different way unless you also address that at least IMO.

[Veterin]

I think it's reasonable for soviets to take heavy flak losses when there are several Axis AA attachments in the exact hex that's being bombed (which was the case in this example).

There needs to be a "cost" to using the VVS and with stupidly large GA + very high altitudes there isn't a cost. With ~350 fighters produced per turn even if you lose 40 fighters (and zero bombers) on GA soviets can afford to completely indirect several hexes to a very high level whilst still growing the VVS over time.