Air power - axis / russia

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Tom1939:
Hi!

I play a game with rick with 3.0 wir, and my experience says rick has right. I have air suppriority against his soviet air force, but keeping air suppriority is much harder now as my fighters do not gain experience for just flying missions, in previous versions if you had the air suppriority your fighters gaind exp just for escorting. So if you once had air suppriority you kept it. So I think 3.0 is more realistic, but it does hurt my beloved Luftwaffe.

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And fortunate for me, too. <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0"> That is why my strategy, since there is no strategic bombing, is to allow the Luftwaffe to lose fighters in escort missions, when done, without opposition to give any experience. The Soviets still have no real balance in the air, but with time they may be able to at least fight a little bit. With the Me262 coming though, don't know if it will have a chance <img src="frown.gif" border="0"> .

[Mist]

You guys seem to have missed devastating first strike on German airfields which should take place in the begining. In ordinal campaign'41 Soviets have many planes destroyed because:
1. Extremely low experience of Soviet pilots
2. High concentration of planes in 4 HQs
3. Special bonus for German bombers which lasts
several weeks from the begining of campaign

First point can not be applied for Germans since Luftwaffe had very high experience of two year war and presented itself small(compared with Soviet AF) elite force

But IMHO, surprise attack supposes low readiness of defender and points 2 and 3 are applied especialy to represent surprise. They should be applied for Germans at least one of them. Increase amount of damaged aircraft in the begining or concentrate them like it was made in Barbarossa scenario and you will see Luftwaffe badly hurt by first blow. As airgroups will rebuild their experience will drop and taking air superiority back will be hard task.
And vice versa, disperse Soviet planes in the begining of Barbarossa, remove special "surprise" bonus for German bombers and Luftwaffe will face very serious problems already in September'41
That was my "imho". Thanx.

[ September 07, 2001: Message edited by: Mist ]

[ September 07, 2001: Message edited by: Mist ]</p>

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Mist:
You guys seem to have missed devastating first strike on German airfields which should take place in the begining. In ordinal campaign'41 Soviets have many planes destroyed because:
1. Extremely low experience of Soviet pilots
2. High concentration of planes in 4 HQs
3. Special bonus for German bombers which lasts
several weeks from the begining of campaign

First point can not be applied for Germans since Luftwaffe had very high experience of two year war and presented itself small(compared with Soviet AF) elite force

But IMHO, surprise attack supposes low readiness of defender and points 2 and 3 are applied especialy to represent surprise. They should be applied for Germans at least one of them. Increase amount of damaged aircraft in the begining or concentrate them like it was made in Barbarossa scenario and you will see Luftwaffe badly hurt by first blow. As airgroups will rebuild their experience will drop and taking air superiority back will be hard task.
And vice versa, disperse Soviet planes in the begining of Barbarossa, remove special "surprise" bonus for German bombers and Luftwaffe will face very serious problems already in September'41
That was my "imho". Thanx.

[ September 07, 2001: Message edited by: Mist ]

[ September 07, 2001: Message edited by: Mist ]

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The problem for the Red Air Forces in the scenario are in two parts. First, the scenario was originally created with the thought of using it with the regular game, but we are playing it with Ed's wirhack and thus no western strategic bombing, allowing all air units to go east. To counter this, we should have agreed on some kind of limits to keep elsewhere, or I should have reduced the strength quite a bit.

The second problem is that the Luftwaffe starts with only a few air units in the east. Thus, the Soviet air power was fine the first turn or two, although the loss ratio was terrible because of the poor planes being used (better experience, readiness and some planes than the 1941 campaign but not enough to matter). However, then the Luftwaffe moved in large numbers of fighters and that was the end of any chance of air control for the Soviets. The big problem now is the Germans are making ONLY Fw190s, and the ME262 is coming later in 1943, as could have happened had Hitler not interfered and the Germans had the necessary raw materials in mass quantities to make the jet engines.

Overall the air losses are only something like 2-1 in the Axis favor, so it is not a disaster, but Luftwaffe dominates the air, pounding the ground units into the ground. I still hold out minor hope of achieving something in the air as the Soviet experience gains and the Luftwaffe drops in 1944, but I don't know this happens.

BTW, the air war was really bad until I launched a number of strategic air raids into Germany because EVERY fighter was at the front. This helped anyway.