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Having trouble understanding the air doctrine screen, the top row is % needed to fly but the rest,
are they % of importance? ive read the manual but still no clearer

hope you guys can help

basically they tell the allocation routine how many aircraft to use for a given mission. So if you want lots of missions, but with less planes than the AI believes is optimal, set <100, if you want a few, but really to turn up in strength >100.

Its a little bit more complex, but what you are basically saying is don't do this mission unless you have x% of the baseline number of frames you need.

I've seen advice from experienced German players not to muck around with their settings, with the Soviets I tend to set >100 for a lot, as you often have quantity available

@simon...

No surprise you're confused; many others are also confused.

AFAIK, 1st entry is minimum % of available units to fly the mission, all other entries are unit minimum counts that must be met from appropriate available units of one air base.

I set % to very low number, say 10% and then all unit counts by mission type to the same value, like 50 units, to get the maximum number of missions. With this approach one gets very good effects for combat air support, but not so clear results for planned bombings.

Thanks for your help chaps,il try your suggestions [:)]

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I would post here. Playing as a casual Russian player against the AI. My airforce is having no success against the Luftwaffe
as of late 1942. I'm tired of it. I remember reading a loooong time ago that the Russians can destroy the LW very quickly. Can you post some links to threads on this or briefly describe
the tactics or air doctrine settings that will permit me to at least start breaking even on air battles? Thanks.

Repeated bombing of AFs is the way to destroy the AI's AF. If you search form 'spam bombing' you may find references to this.

ORIGINAL: byron13

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I would post here. Playing as a casual Russian player against the AI. My airforce is having no success against the Luftwaffe
as of late 1942. I'm tired of it. I remember reading a loooong time ago that the Russians can destroy the LW very quickly. Can you post some links to threads on this or briefly describe
the tactics or air doctrine settings that will permit me to at least start breaking even on air battles? Thanks.

If you avoid cheese (ie the airfield spam), you can't win the airwar but you can survive. Have a look at my current AAR (its in late 42) and on one sector German dominance is such that I'm reduced to a 'fly and die' strategy. The good things are:

a), the Germans can't project that sort of power everywhere, so by default there are sectors where you can cope;
b), come 1943 it improves as German airpower is withdrawn
c), you do have an awful lot of fighters, so rotate them in and out
d), late 1942 is one of those phases where the Germans get a huge qualitative lead - the FW-190s and the Bf109Gs simply totally outclass all your early war fighters (La-GG/Yak-1 etc). You are on the verge of getting a decent set of upgrades that will return you to some sort of balance
e), remember that the VVS doctrinally did not prioritise air superiority in itself, what matters is still managing to escort your bombers to interact with the ground war

I agree its frustrating, I thought that by about May 42 I'd got a handle on the situation but it has spiralled out of control by late 42. The good thing, this is pretty realistic, if you avoid rules exploitation I find the overall flow of the air war is fairly well modelled