Matrix Games Forums

how's it possible? The game I took furthest was June '42 and most fighter groups had very few air kills. The bulk of air kills were by bombers and my guess is that they refer to the planes caught on the ground on the first turn.

ORIGINAL: abulbulian

ORIGINAL: Grymme

Helpless seem very knowledgable. So i would be carefull in writing of his research as "fantasy" I think at least one factor here has been ignored though (on both side of the argument) :

Lend Lease aircraft.

Anyway Albulbulian what is your source when you say the soviets should have 2 100 available aircraft in january 1942? Maybe there is some misunderstanding. Since they had around 20K combat aircraft at the beginning of the war. Also the forces in the eastern might have had some significance but one should remember that even if there were lets say 4100 aircraft in the Far East then these were intact and didnt have to be replaced. So all new production could go to the west and they even weakened the Far East front to reinforce the west.

With lend lease, production and reinforcements from far east 15K airforce in 1942 seems reasonable. But they were not all operational at the same time. thats another matter.

http://operationbarbarossa.net/Fast-Facts/Soviet-fast-facts.html

Well my only point to this thread was the issue with sov air getting 'out of control'. The numbers Helpless posted were a bit off from t he numbers I had seen for:
1) combat/util aircraft in theater
2) combat/util aircraft that the game represents
* maybe those were more prod #'s and not actual planes in use. We can argues the numbers till we blue in face, but the problem in the game still exists that sov air force is getting too large too fast and too easily.

So the bigger issue is that even with a great start and destroying 14k sov aircraft by 6/42, the axis will be at a 1:4 ratio in terms of planes. This is very inconsistent with anything historical. You don't have to read many books on east front to understand that it wasn't about till summer 43 when the sov were starting to gain air supremacy by sheer numbers. To have this happen in summer 42 when the axis player is doing 'better' than historical is an issue for ME. Now some people may not care too much, but I'd like to do what I can to make this game better.

ORIGINAL: Helpless

Where I agree there is a problem is with the numbers on the map, mainly with the Soviets. As I posted before, there seems to be some weird Support Needs calculation going on which means that the 250 Support Squads can't even support a full KG. This means that Airfield counters can be overloaded at 70-80 level bombers (ignoring HQ Support bonus). If this could be f.e. doubled, this would help a lot. Fighters/Recon/Tac Bombers can already be packed to a much higher practical limit.

They can support, this is just a display issue.

ORIGINAL: Helpless

What I think is needed is to force the AI to pack the Airfield with a minimum 250-300 AC

Similar formula already exist. Ai is creating new Air Bases based on the amount of air groups in game.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

how's it possible? The game I took furthest was June '42 and most fighter groups had very few air kills. The bulk of air kills were by bombers and my guess is that they refer to the planes caught on the ground on the first turn.

That's probably because few Soviet planes were flying support missions in battles. If they don't do that, they won't really suffer many losses.

ORIGINAL: Smirfy


I sincerely hope there is a sensible handling of the airwar put in place before WiTE 2. The Russians flew 30,000 plus sorties in the Kuban campaign some 8,000 interdiction sorties before Kursk the Germans some 27,000 during the 10 days of Kursk. On D. Day in Normandy there was some 15k sorties in one day. How in the world does this present system come close to a rational implementation based upon usability and historical basis. I'm glad the system is being looked at please please please lets get the airwar in proportion to the land war

ORIGINAL: MengJiao

ORIGINAL: Smirfy


I sincerely hope there is a sensible handling of the airwar put in place before WiTE 2. The Russians flew 30,000 plus sorties in the Kuban campaign some 8,000 interdiction sorties before Kursk the Germans some 27,000 during the 10 days of Kursk. On D. Day in Normandy there was some 15k sorties in one day. How in the world does this present system come close to a rational implementation based upon usability and historical basis. I'm glad the system is being looked at please please please lets get the airwar in proportion to the land war

About Kursk: despite those 27K German sorties, the Russian planes still did significant damage to the Germans.