Matrix Games Forums

@HardLuckYetAgain

I haven't played a game yet on 1.12.03, but I made some trials of the opening, and I didn't find it was a problem either.

I don't think it should be random though. Retreat has some logic to it even in RL and retreat paths should have some measure of predictability.

ORIGINAL: joelmar

@HardLuckYetAgain

I haven't played a game yet on 1.12.03, but I made some trials of the opening, and I didn't find it was a problem either.

I don't think it should be random though. Retreat has some logic to it even in RL and retreat paths should have some measure of predictability.

I agree with you

This has been a very helpful resource, thank you for taking the time to develop this thread. One question I had on strategy was during turn 1 I often bomb the hell out of Soviet Air bases racking up thousands of kills on the ground. It appears you are suggest a more tempered approach by conserving the Luftwaffe for ground support. I thought that damaging the Soviet air force severely in the start would be better. Can you advise on this further as to why one should not?
Thanks again for your help.
Rebel

@rebelkevin12 I'll give you my view on this, and EvK might add his own latter on.

First, this guide was written for 1.11.03, so quite a few things have changed in the 1.12.xx patch. But most of the principles described by EvK are still relevant, though at different degrees of importance in the new paradigm.

Killing on the ground as many airgroups as possible is of course a very good way to go. But in my most recent Axis turn 1 experience, I managed to kill 5200 soviet planes, including the more modern ones like Migs, Yaks, Il-2s AND recon (which are the most important to get), while keeping a part of the LW completly fresh or with low miles traveled, including fighters. My aim was to use them for heavy interdiction, and it worked to a certain degree. I almost didn't use GS during the turn. And I kept fighter escorts to a minimal, which is something between 60-75% on turn one to effectively protect your bombers and kill enemy fighters in the air. Some may have different opinion on this one way or another, but that recipe worked well for me, I had low fighter losses on turn 1, complete dominance of the skies for a few turns, and what little VVS flew against me was easy pray, thereby augmenting my kill tally every turn.

That said, I know eskuche did a 6000+ turn 1 kills on airbases in 1.12.xx, which is probably a near perfect turn 1 in that respect. see here: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4793058#5

But... others do less kills and still manage a very good air war. All that just to say that I don't think there is really a "better way to go".

Hi, I am happy it has been helpful to you.

One question I had on strategy was during turn 1 I often bomb the hell out of Soviet Air bases racking up thousands of kills on the ground. It appears you are suggest a more tempered approach by conserving the Luftwaffe for ground support. I thought that damaging the Soviet air force severely in the start would be better. Can you advise on this further as to why one should not?

Please point me towards the particular quote you are refering too. I suppose you mean this:

The primary mission for T1 is to reduce the enemy ground unit and manpower count, making support of the ground forces the primary occupation of the air force.
At the same time, I go for maximal morale reduction of Soviet air groups to delay the moment when they will re-appear on the sky while using the special T1 situation to train the air force. By delaying the air-field bombing until the later parts of the turn, the fighter gets the chance to engage Soviet aircraft and gain experience and morale quickly. It is important to spare fighter air groups for escort missions on for later airfield and ground bombing as well as for base defence during the Soviet turn, therefore the training missions are flown by the air groups with lowest experience.

The idea is that the primary objective for me on T1 is to encircle or lock down as many units and manpower as possible. To do this you have to win some crucial attack with advanced mobile formations, e.g. Riga or against some big tank division in the South. Winning them can make the difference between having an enemy army properly encircled or allowing them to escape. So for some crucial attacks, fly ground bombing and/or support or provide fighter cover against Soviet ground support. The number of these battles is limited as I am not talking about your ordinary infantry assault here. So even when giving support to some close, key battles, there will be enough left to damage the Soviet airforce significantly. If you look at the main map in this post: fb.asp?m=4601276 you see that the air kill count was 6553 aircraft and another game saw slightly less than 6000 with this approach, both very good numbers (not sure if 1.12.05 will allow the same high kill count as I did not monitor the changes).
So it is not an "either or" but a "both" approach, although with somewhat more weight on ground combat support than (probably) usual.

IMO the kill count isn' even that important: Except for a few niches (recon, daytime tactical bombers) the Soviets aren't likely to run out of aircraft not matter the T1 losses unless you make the VVS your focus during summer 1941 at the cost of ground support. What matters more to me is to hit air group morale and experience to make the airgroups useless for a few turns. Although losses and morale loss are somewhat correlated, there are diminishing returns.

All this is based on 1.11.03 and older, but I believe the principal ideas are still valid.


@joelmar: Thank you for chiming in! I am not following the forum lately due to RL reasons but have the guide/library threads subscribed so there are Email notifications.

@Evk: my pleasure

For the forum following sentence, that's why I changed my first comment because I then guessed that you would probably see it anyway. It was no reproach by the way, I've been a bit out of the Wite forums myself lately, for RL reasons too.

I will say my opener is hardly nearing perfect but there are some things to be gleaned. As EvK said, there are actually fewer bottlenecks in the VVS than people expect. For me, they appear to be recon, IL-4, and (relatively) irreplaceable tactical bombers such as the out of production I153BS and 12 per turn Su-2 (some around Rzhev I recall). While yes bombing turn 1 for morale is useful, the experience is relatively untouched and it will return after some cycling, while the experience actually remains. To that point, does morale even affect combat stats for planes or only experience and airframe?

Another point is what the Soviet player will do. If they are going to counterbomb in turns 1-2 with 40 plane regiments, it is imperative to 1. Keep this in mind with airbase placement, especially turn one, 2. Specifically target level bombers (long range > SB-2 > Pe-2) to prevent damage, a lot of these BAK air corps bases being fairly far in the back, such as by Zaporozhye and Novgorod 3. Keep fighter fatigue in check (I generally only escort the first bombing per airbase if at all turn one, as most of your fighters arrive fatigued from other theatres), and 4. At least attempt to cut down any regiments above 20 planes, I.e., prefer to take three regiments from 40 to 20 rather than destroy two full regiments. This cuts down on the airframe VOLUME available to counterbomb on turn 2-3 until soviet regiments downgrade to 20 planes.

A final, and much more controversial view is to leave most old soviet planes untouched. An example: I lost 1000 planes turn 3, only to get 20 regiments back as modern fighter bombers. If one mostly ignores the non-prioritized planes as above, VVS will be stuck with biplanes unless they splurge AP to do it manually. Biplanes contribute basically nothing (except fatiguing Axis fighters) to air combat or support, so this strategem may be defensible but has yet to be tested.

ORIGINAL: eskuche

A final, and much more controversial view is to leave most old soviet planes untouched. An example: I lost 1000 planes turn 3, only to get 20 regiments back as modern fighter bombers. If one mostly ignores the non-prioritized planes as above, VVS will be stuck with biplanes unless they splurge AP to do it manually. Biplanes contribute basically nothing (except fatiguing Axis fighters) to air combat or support, so this strategem may be defensible but has yet to be tested.

Interesting insight, even after all this time, people still have interesting new ideas to consider stealing.....

Thank you all for the comments. Your experience and wisdom is appreciated. The links by EVK have served me well.

Is it possible to re-upload the images please? That would be very helpful.

I will get in contact with matrixgames or do it manually, thanks for the heads up.

Thank you for the interesting guide!

Do you still have it as a word oder pdf document with all images? Then you could maybe provide a download link to it.

Unfortunately not, but here is a link to my image saving thread which contains all images used in the Guide, IIRC in chronological order. I will repair the broken links this evening.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1&t=327794

You are welcome, I. glad you like it. I believe that some of the not game mechanics related aspects are useful for WitE2 as well.

Btw, welcome to the forum!

Edit: Updated the images.

The images are back! Thank you very much. A really helpful guide!

mcalpine wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 10:32 am The images are back! Thank you very much. A really helpful guide!

Edit: I did not see your last post up to now. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.