Advice

[kaybayray]

Swift,
THanks for the info.

Escorts,
I was stacking at 4k and 7k with no close escort. I will drop them down a bit. I have been maintaining escort from friently coast to target and back to friendly coast. The LW has pursued me all the way back to Biggen Hill.

I am only playing the computer, jeez I dont need anything that can think and learn to kick my rear.. the AI is doing that well enough atm. [8D]

Changing AC type,
Could you please give me a brief walk through on doing this? How long for units to be upgraded or changed? Recall I do not yet have a manual to show keys to use or sequence of procedures.

Moving units,
I have only moved units from base to base. I have moved them to bases that show they belong to the same Command as the unit I am moving.... is this correct? Forming the 15th? How is this accomplished and when?

Bomber missions,
Wish I had that many groups, I only have 5 in MTO and 8 in ETO plus the Pathfinder units. However I just started the Campaign and am only on day 3.

Intruder Missions,
Could you please walk me though setting one of these up? I seem only to have bomber of Fighter Bomber types for this. How do I designate them to attack enemy AC on Night missions? I have located 5 bases that have Night Fighters so I want to deal with them. I have been much more successful with BC night bombing missions than with the 8th Daylight missions. Losses are like 1/4 as high.

Thanks for all the great assistance.

I also picked up BOB II Wings of Victory the other week. That is a great game. Thanks guys. [&o]

Wish you could do that with this game...... That would be GAME [8D]

Later,
KayBay

[Hard Sarge]

I am off to works (oops got to leave now) if Sqift doesn't reply, I will answer some of those when I get home in the morning, they easy once you get used to it, it is 2nd nature

[kaybayray]

Right on Sarge n Swift,

You guys are awesome. Thanks for takin time to "Splain it" to me. [:D]

Later,
KayBay [8D]

[Walloc]

ORIGINAL: kaybayray
Changing AC type,
Could you please give me a brief walk through on doing this? How long for units to be upgraded or changed? Recall I do not yet have a manual to show keys to use or sequence of procedures.

Since this is fairly easy ill give it a go and save HS time.
Basicly u need to go into the detail tab of a unit then at buttom of that page u will see a change aircraft button.
A couple of ways to get there.
First if u press list airunits. Find unit X of type of aircraft u wana change. Then when u called up info box for that unit press on the detail tab at the "top". Then at buttom u should see the change aircraft button.
U could also press on map on airfield of unit. Then select if more than 1 unit at airfield, the unit in question and then above.
Key is to get into the detail tab of the unit.

Moving units,
I have only moved units from base to base. I have moved them to bases that show they belong to the same Command as the unit I am moving.... is this correct? Forming the 15th? How is this accomplished and when?

Yes to first part. If u wana move between command u have to use shuttle flight command, but as said it makes a mess in vanilla version. Read dont do it.
Form the 15th happens all of it self on the 1st/2nd Nov. Only thing to remember is having all units in the command having US made planes else the units with british planes stay in 12th AF.

Kind regards,

Rasmus

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: kaybayray

Swift,
THanks for the info.

Escorts,
I was stacking at 4k and 7k with no close escort. I will drop them down a bit. I have been maintaining escort from friently coast to target and back to friendly coast. The LW has pursued me all the way back to Biggen Hill.

I am only playing the computer, jeez I dont need anything that can think and learn to kick my rear.. the AI is doing that well enough atm. [8D]

Changing AC type,
Could you please give me a brief walk through on doing this? How long for units to be upgraded or changed? Recall I do not yet have a manual to show keys to use or sequence of procedures.

pretty much like Wallac says, get a screen of the unit, under detail, you should see change plane type, click that, if there are planes in stock, you can pick the type to change to, you will see in the list how many units are flying that plane and how many are in stock, as long as there is at least one plane, you can change to it (which say you have 3 squadrons of 27 planes, and you have 30 planes in stockpile, you could pick all 3 squadrons to change planes, each one would get 10 planes, and then as you get more planes, the squadrons would fill out)

Moving units,
I have only moved units from base to base. I have moved them to bases that show they belong to the same Command as the unit I am moving.... is this correct? Forming the 15th? How is this accomplished and when?

Roger and Roger
pretty much you only want to move units between the same command, we have talked and hope to work something out so it can get units to move to other commands, but this is more down the road, the 15th comes in and the game will make the changes

there are a couple of units that do not act the same as the rest, there are two what were called Divebomber groups, flying the A-36, if left alone, they will change to fighters, when there are enough in stock, and become FGs, if you change planes, they are seen as Bombers, and can be changed to other bombers, but then you lose them as fighters, they will become and stay BGs, I think it is either 214 or 218, will disappear and then become a RCM type squadron

in the old game, change all the FS to US plane types and they will all go to the 15th when it shows up, if you let them keep there Spits, they will stay with the 12th
Bomber missions,
Wish I had that many groups, I only have 5 in MTO and 8 in ETO plus the Pathfinder units. However I just started the Campaign and am only on day 3.

Intruder Missions,
Could you please walk me though setting one of these up? I seem only to have bomber of Fighter Bomber types for this. How do I designate them to attack enemy AC on Night missions? I have located 5 bases that have Night Fighters so I want to deal with them. I have been much more successful with BC night bombing missions than with the 8th Daylight missions. Losses are like 1/4 as high.

for NI's
you can plot them like a sweep, to a target point, which can be a AF or a spot on the map (RCM planes fly as NI's, so can be plotted out into the north sea or what not

NIs will fly as a single plane, or you can pick single plane or multi planes (multi will be about half of the squadron, but will fly as a single plane but will follow the same path, taking off every few minutes)

for a NI mission to a AF, plot a Single plane, set the alt you want, and the time, most times you want it to be a bit after the BC raids take off, as you are trying to catch the LW planes as they are coming back to land

for escourt you can plot multi planes and they will fly with the raid (here you need to plot the bomber raid, and then pick NI, and click follow, the NIs will then have the same path, plot them either higher or lower, but you need to figure out what time to send them, as they are faster then the bombers

hassle is, this does not work too well in the old game, getting a report of 2 night fighters attacking each other, was cause for stopping the game and writing in the forum the good news, it does work better, but kills are still simi rare

this one is one, you can let the staff plot for you, click on set bomber, pick BC, and then click on set Intruder missions, make sure AFs are the target, and the AI will plot some missions for you (not the best, but it is quick)

NIs can be worth it when it works, and a pain when it don't


Thanks for all the great assistance.

I also picked up BOB II Wings of Victory the other week. That is a great game. Thanks guys. [&o]

Wish you could do that with this game...... That would be GAME [8D]

that has been going though my mind also, the trick is getting it to work, start out small, and see if it is worth it ?

Later,
KayBay

[wernerpruckner]

Bomber missions,
Wish I had that many groups, I only have 5 in MTO and 8 in ETO plus the Pathfinder units. However I just started the Campaign and am only on day 3.

soon enough you have more units....much more units

BC is probably the most important weapon for your score in 1943 ( try to reach at least 20 terror ....maybe you can get higher ...probably up to 30 )

[Walloc]

Swift just asking. U sure u mean vanilla scn too?

In JC OOBs IIRC, u start at a much higher terror score initially than what u do in the vanilla scn.

I've flatten all of Ruhr all cities to 80+ dam plus and i get almost nada bombing more. I've tested it. The northern city are pretty wasted too. Bremen, Hannover are totally gone. Been to Berlin 5-6 times and over all its at maybe 20 % damage and i got a score in terror in vanilla of 11.

Only part i havent really touched is Bavaria, but i cant see how there could be 19 points there+ berlin and minor towns around.

Kind regards,

Rasmus

[wernerpruckner]

hehehe,
 
I am probably a cruel BC player..... I use BC only in full strength....probably only every three turns.
 
in the beginning I tend to use raids only with single A/C types
 
a typical turn my look like:
20:00 Sterling I raid to Emden
20:15 Mossie B ( one Squad ) to Hamburg
20:30 Lanc III raid to a small city along the Rhine
20:45 Halifax raid ( several streams - usually two to 3 ) against Hamm
21:00 Mossie B to Hamburg
21:15 Lanc I mission to Berlin ( a nice target point is the RMAL POWER plant ) with several streams
21:30 Wellington raid to Bremen
21:45 Lanc III to a small town along the Rhine
22:00 Mossie B to Berlin
22:15 Sterling III to some undefended city
 
during all these raids there are streams with NIs and RCM/ECMs and only few patrolling NIs on A/Fs
 
if such a turn works right you´ll make 2000 to 5000 terror per BC turn ( and some nice ID damage ).
 
Most important is to damage as many cities as possible ( you get more points for damaging a city to green status, than to create more damage to an allready damaged city ....., I tend to ignore damaged areas of cities for a long time for BC - except if I try to shut down the RRs with BC, which means high level RR targets ( score of 6 or higher ))

[kaybayray]

Swift,
So a better use of BC would be to spread their attacks out with the aim of a higher overall number of cities damaged? This would increase your Terror score over pursuing a strategy of inflicting higher levels of damage to individual cities?

I have been focussing on launching massive raids against an individual city. Typical strength is 400+ bombers in a strike. I tend to devistate what ever target city I attack but I see no gain in Terror score. This would correllate with with your thoughts. This may explain why my Terror score has stagnated. Out of the gate I attacked several cities each night and my score rose about 1 pt each night. Due to dropping morale I had to rotate crews so I addopted a rotation method to keep their morale >50 or I would not fly them, they would stand down until morale was >50.

I will try your suggestions. [8D] One problem though, I adopted this strategy because I was getting chopped to pieces by the LW night fighters. I found that by flying in the larger forces I was getting kills against the LW and only losing 1-3 crews in action and 2-4 crews from damaged AC crashing on the homeward flight. But again my Terror score seems to be suffering for it.

I like the idea of mixing NI units in with the bombers. I tried sending some units against LW fields I knew had night fighters but they seemed to just fly to the base and then turn around and leave. Not sure what units would be best to put into the bomber stream or at the LW fields. Any suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for all the input from you guys. [8D]

Later,
KayBay

[kaybayray]

I just got a message in the 43 Campaign that the 12 Air Force and Med Command are restricted to Avalanche Targets. What is that? What are the targets and what does this mean? Sorry, I bet that is described in the manual that I dont have. [:(]

Later,
KayBay

[wernerpruckner]

ORIGINAL: kaybayray

I just got a message in the 43 Campaign that the 12 Air Force and Med Command are restricted to Avalanche Targets. What is that? What are the targets and what does this mean? Sorry, I bet that is described in the manual that I dont have. [:(]

Later,
KayBay

Mandatory Targets:
the Air Forces will be forced to bomb certain targets for some time ( Avalanche, Overlord, VSITE, VFAC, UFAC, UPEN )

12th and MED are stuck with Avalanche targets ( tactical targets in Italy ) for the whole time ( 15th will be on mandatory targeting also for some times )
just try to turn Italy cherry red, you get some nice points for flattening all those RRs, PORTs and OILS...also in Italy it is the easiest to learn the timing of raids/sweeps vs enemy A/Fs

[kaybayray]

Thanks for your info. [8D]


BC
I am working on putting together a good BC run in my next session. I have a couple questions. Reading over you example target list for BC how many squadrons are in each "stream"? Would like an understanding of how much force to apply to targets. I am working with the initial period of the 43 campaign.

I set up a few raids and and placed a section of NI units among each one. Each of the raids I built have about 5 squadrons in them. Too much or not enough? Also what altitude should I be flying at?

Strat Bomber runs
I dont have that many B-17' squadrons atm so I am limited to putting up a max of 2 raids ETO and 1 raid MTO. I dont have very many Escort AC so I was wondering about setting up Fighter Sweeps to coincide with the Bombing runs. I am setting the Fighter Sweep course to align with the Bombers and at the same or higher altitude. What do you think if this? Any suggestions on how to maximize the effect if you think this is a good strategy?


Avalanche
Working with the target restrictions in the 43 campaign for Avalanche I attacked a few Ground Units. They have some pretty intense Flak with them. I took a lot of damage and lost several AC. I used both Fighter Sweeps, Dive Bombing and Medium Bomber raids against them. None seemed to effect them other than a "Disruption" of 4 or 3. What is the scale here? Not sure if that is good or bad. Should I even attack the Ground Units or should I focus on the other targets, like AF, Rail, Radar and Port instead? How should I be attacking Ground Units?

Thanks again for all your assistance. [8D]

I will check out some of the AAR threads and see if I can glean things from there as well. I want to try some of these things out. I figure that in the Long 43 campaign I have to really mess up a lot and over a long time before it really puts me out from ending up with a win.

Later,
KayBay [8D]

[wernerpruckner]

attacking ground units:
 
ignore them, it takes a too huge effort to make them break from the frontline.
 
go for the RR ( railroad), PORT and OILS....also recce and more recce of A/Fs....if you find a nice A/F with many A/C on it attack it with raids and sweeps.....never use sweeps on another kind of target....they will get killed by Flak

[wernerpruckner]

strategic bombers:
 
I´d suggest to keep close to coastal targets in the first few weeks of the war with the 8th AF.
Brusseles and Paris have some nice targets around

[wernerpruckner]

BC raids:
hint
for the German side each NI looks like a bomber box in the early stages of war.....a human player may check the speed, but the AI is too dump for that
=> you can create NI streams to fake targets
plot it like this:
20:00 6 Wellington RCM
20:01 6 Beaufighter
20:02 3 beaufighter
20:03 3 Beaufighter
20:04 6 Mossie NF
20:05 3 Mossie NF
20:06 3 Mossie NF
 
this gives a huge amount of radio chatter and looks like a huge raid for the German site. And you have only used 2 Squads of NIs and a part of a RCM unit and you can plot several of these fake raids.
 
 
The size of my bomber raids depend on A/C type and kind of target.
I try to put a pathfinder unit as leading unit in every stream.
For me a stream is between 5 and 8 units each. How many streams go for a certain target depends on the size of the city ( but it can be up to 5 streams for me ).
Streams sometimes go all the same way and same to the target and do not split ( maximum effort for some kind of targets )
sometimes they go in as above but than make a starburst for several targets
or they go in in different times and routes and meet at the same time over the target from several directions
 
this always depends on the reaction of your opponent.
 
Small cities and RRs I often only attack with a single Lancaster III unit, just to harrass the enemy ( and when they hi the target, they usually make nice damage )

[kaybayray]

Hey Guys  [8D]
 
I am still workin on implementing the suggestions you have given me. Thanks [&o]
 
I have been using tons of recon and found that I can monitor the repair of targets that I have hit. This helps a lot in keeping some form of a strategy running for the long haul. I have also used it very successfully for the staging of fighter sweeps. The last 2 turns I have destroyed 40+ enemy AC on the ground from fighter sweeps that were generated directly from recon operations. Each with only a few (3-5) losses in performing the fighter sweeps. I was watching where the enemy AC were operating from and stage a sweep to that base. That worked ok until I hit a base that had a very high concentration of Flak. So now using recon I can choose which target has the best AC to Flak ratio for a sweep. [:D]
 
Working with the BC some too but only a couple runs done and no change in Terror. I believe I am just not hitting enough targets. I need to let BC morale inmprove some before another session. Using the NI units did tend to soak off several of the interceptors during these runs. I believe I am still over concentrating forces on individual targets.
 
I just got another restriction to 8th AF for Sub pens and UFAC's. I destroyed one of the Sub Pens (Brest I think) easy enough but now the closest UFAC is quite far. It is at just about maximum fighter escort range. I will run that turn tonight. I put all the fighters up I have to escort with but I just barely have 1 squadron to cover each section of the mission. I think I will take some serious losses on this run in both FG's and BG's. I will try some of the tactics you showed me to draw fighters away from my strat mission but it is such a great distance I think I am gona get nailed no matter what I do.
 
 
Just for the record I would like you to add some kind of production selection to the Allied side for the Matrix version. I would like to have something to say about the force that I am building in the Long campaigns.
 
Thanks for the great assistance. I will be asking for some more insight into strategy and tactics as I wait for the Matrix Version to hit the shelf.
 
Later,
 
KayBay[8D]

[Hard Sarge]

something about recon, low level will tell you about AA, med and high does not

yeap, that is a "bad" Manatory one, they are going to be defended well with Flak, and your going into the teeth of the Reich defence, and you don't have the fighters to defend the raids, but you got to damage the targets

welcome to the world of being in charge, with somebody else telling you what you can or can't do

best you can really try is to send out the 2nd Tac, and IXth into the radar and AFs on the coast of Holland, send in any FC squadrons that can reach, now up to you, do you send the 8th out in a massive single path, or split them up ?, also do you try to send them in on the tail of the other units, or wait some, so the LW is running out of gas and heading home

of course, you never know if the LW has committed everything, or does it still have units on the fields waiting ?

if you start too early, the LW changes targets and goes after the Heavies, if you go too late, the LW has landed and refueled, and is ready for a 2nd round

[sauro brusch]

In the new game exists the Wilde Sau and the Zame Sau for the NJ ?

[wernerpruckner]

ORIGINAL: sauro

In the new game exists the Wilde Sau and the Zame Sau for the NJ ?

Wilde Sau is in the original game with all its units ( JG 300,301,302 )

Zahme Sau is a tactic that works with the original game

[kaybayray]

Sarge,
THat is exactly what I am pondering. Trying to figure timing to draw LW assest away from the Heavies and not have them run into freshly refueld and rearmed LW on the return trip with few Escorts. Pretty sure no matter how I slice it I am gona get hit hard.

Been wondering if I should stand the heavies down a few days and hammer on the LW see if I can wear them down for this long run. THe last two days I have destroyed over 40 LW fighters each day on the ground with sweeps based on recon intel. The LW has reacted and either pulled them back or beefed up the AF's with heavy concentrations of heavy Flak.

I brought I and II of JG2 down below half strength. However JG1 with 109's is still strong and ZG 26 is still in force in the area. So far the Zerstorer's have not done well against my heavies but the 190's and 109's have shredded my formations each time I run the gauntlet. I really need some concentrations of Escort on the far end of the run. The 51 cant get here fast enough for me. [8D]

I have thought of swapping out some of the older model spits for 38's but the 38's have not fared too well in air to air combat as escorts. They have done extremely well in sweeps with ground kills. Thank God I have the luxury of sittin on my arse and contemplating what to do tomorrow for as long as I want. Man those guys in the real deal surely were being crushed under the pressure of time to act.

I think that is what is making this such a great game. You can plan all you want but you never really know until they all land. [8D]

I will let you know how I fare. Thanks again for all your words of wisdom. Cant wait until you guys complete and ship. Keep hammering it out. [&o]

Later,
KayBay