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Tom1939 and RickyB,
I've some questions about how things changed with the advent of the me-262...since none of my games ever seem to make it past 1942

What were your respective strengths of air forces, and average experience levels, and how long did it take for the jet fighter to make a major change. I've read many of your posts, enjoyed them all, but I remain curious about the aircraft's ability to 'reverse the tide'...if it ever happened.

Thanks guys

Well, when i was the germans the effect was quite brutal. I had air supriority when it came, but I had big losses fighting the La5fn's and co. The jets being fighter-bomber is the meanest part: I could bomb any soviet airfield at will. I think the cannon rating have some effect at airfield bombing, or was it just luck but they were excellent for airfield attack as well (they had a load of 22, which helps). They did not do that much better against fighters then the fw's (20% better I would say), but with the high cannon rating they destroyed nearly every hit they made (less damaged). I had some great advantages in my game though. The cost was normal, so every factory put out 15-16 me262A's. So I mass produced them, and at the end I had nearly all jets. Rick can not do that right now as we play now with a newer version, and the cost of jet's shoot up. Oh, and the jets were great tank killers as well. The perfect plane I say... From the soviet standpoint I'm in right now, too perfect.

To answer the question about my air strength:

I mass produced fw's and he177's right from the start. I had nearly every unit equipped with them at the start of my offense in 43 summer. My fighters had a exp over 70 on an average. My bombers were hit hard by soviet fighters, so they had about 60. My fighter units were mostly near full strength, my bombers about half. I always had air supriority throughout the game, with Rick challenging me from time to time.

As Tamas says, he was able to mass produce the jets in the first game because the game still had the design flaw allowing all equipment, no matter the cost, get produced at around 15 or higher per factory (same for Panthers, He177s, etc). So he was able to deploy full air units of jets. In our current game, the jet factories are producing 9 jets, while I can get 20 Fw190As per factory, so I am equipping a few units with jets but the majority still have the prop jobs. There just wouldn't be anough jets to produce just them, I think. Same for Panthers, although I have almost all production switched to them.

In other words, the limited output of high cost items is much more realistic than before and it causes a real problem deciding whether to switch to the better, more expensive equipment, and it helps keep the more expensive equipment from dominating the battlefield.

Did i miss something or did Rick imply that there was a limit to production of jets / prop planes per factory?

Originally posted by MikeB
Did i miss something or did Rick imply that there was a limit to production of jets / prop planes per factory?

Mike,

All equipment factories have an inherent limit. Originally, they would grow fairly quickly, in part based on cost, to 15 output. After that, it was only slightly possible for a factory to grow in size, with lower cost items having a better chance of growing.

One change in the latest version is that rather than a normal max of 15 for all factories, it was changed so that the normal output cap is 75/cost, so that high cost items max out lower. The factories can still go past this cap as before, but it is very slow and unlikely. Anyway, this new implementation means that at a cost of 4, a factory will grow fairly fast to 18/19, then grow veryyyy slowly. At 9, it will grow to 8, then even more slowly.