Air Superiority Missions vs Enemy Naval Interdiction

[Harrybanana]

It is late and I am feeling grumpy so excuse me in advance for being surly; but can someone explain to me why Air Superiority Missions are useless at intercepting Enemy Naval Interdiction? If you are following the AAR of my game with Liquid Sky you will know that on our last turn he flew strong naval Interdiction missions against my proposed invasion site. I have no problem with him outsmarting me, if I did I would have conceded defeat long ago. But I was pretty sure he was going to do this and I thought I had a clever plan for dealing it. Namely to fly large air superiority missions over these same hexes to shoot down his bombers. But to my surprise I didn't shoot down any bombers or even make contact with them.

So I ran some tests to try and figure out what I did wrong. However, to my surprise I discovered that I didn't do anything wrong. It would appear that no matter what the settings Fighters flying AS missions will not engage enemy bombers flying naval interdiction missions. I realize the primary role of Fighters flying AS missions is to engage the enemy fighters, but surely if there are no fighters present they should engage the enemy bombers.

Below is the setup of my test German naval interdiction mission over the sea hexes near Normandy. Note that it is set to fly in the Allied turn.

[Harrybanana]

Here is the Allied Counter.

[Harrybanana]

Here are the combat results. As you can see my 672 sorties did not engage any of the German bombers. Given that these bombers were flying everyday 800 strong you would have thought they would be hard to miss.

As an aside why did my 300+ fighters only fly an average of less than 100 sorties per day? In other words why did less than 1/3rd of my fighters fly each day? Not that it would have made any difference, I'm just curious.

[Harrybanana]

And the resulting Naval Interdiction numbers. I tried a test running my own Naval Interdiction over these hexes and I was able to more or less match the German numbers. But it still means that if I was invading Normandy I would have to go through a lot of neutral sea hexes, which is not good.

It would appear that the only way to intercept enemy Naval interdiction is if you have friendly fighters stationed on airbases nearby that have not been given orders. Unfortunately most areas of France and the Low Countries are beyond this range, especially if the Germans fly at low altitude. With respect to the game designers I believe this is wrong.

I am not saying I didn't make mistakes in my game with Liquid Sky. For example, bombing the German airbases in France might have helped. But I am not sure. There are a lot of airbases in France and a large number of German bombers can reach the coast from well inland.

[Harrybanana]

Here is the Air Execution Log from one of my tests. As you can see there were no interceptions. I am still curious as to why only 80 to 108 of my aircraft flew AS each day out of the over 300 assigned to the Air Directive.

I can provide a save if requested. But if this is WAD as opposed to a bug I suppose the save is unnecessary. However, if it is WAD than again I think it is worth looking at as something that needs changing. If Air Superiority can't be changed to intercept Naval Interdiction than perhaps we need a new Air Directive called Combat Air Patrol or something.

[Helpless]

Don't know why you get no intercepts, but AS have direct impact on the NI values as it is. Save can be useful here.

[Helpless]

Just looked at the code and Naval Patrol are executed simultaneously with AS, so it may not get intercepted in some cases, which is WAD. But as mentioned AS does direct reduction of enemy NI values.

[Joel Billings]

I just downloaded the latest save which is just before the Allied air phase. I'll send that to Pavel so he can take a look.

[Joel Billings]

BTW, been gone for a few days, but somewhere I remember you asking about the next public beta. I don't have a precise ETA, but we'll be discussing it in the next few days and will let you know when we have a plan. We will probably be making the 1.01.20 official and then will roll out the next public beta at the same time as the 1.01.20 has been out now for about 2 months.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

Just looked at the code and Naval Patrol are executed simultaneously with AS, so it may not get intercepted in some cases, which is WAD. But as mentioned AS does direct reduction of enemy NI values.

Pavel, you say Naval patrol may not get intercepted "in some cases". Can you be more specific as to in which cases it will be intercepted by Air Superiority and in which cases it will not be intercepted by Air Superiority. In any event, is there a logical reason why AS Missions were designed to not intercept enemy NI? If there is no valid reason for this, is this something that can be fixed, or will we have to wait for WitW2 (just asking)?

In my tests I have not noticed that my AS Missions have any effect on the reduction of enemy NI values. Below are screenshots of a test with no AS Missions (on the left) and with Air Superiority Missions (on the Right). As you can see the Naval Interdiction is almost identical. I will email you the save I am using for this test.

[Helpless]

Pavel, you say Naval patrol may not get intercepted "in some cases". Can you be more specific as to in which cases it will be intercepted by Air Superiority and in which cases it will not be intercepted by Air Superiority.

Since AS and NP air directives are executing simultaneously, timing matters when it comes AS ability to intercept NP flight.

In any event, is there a logical reason why AS Missions were designed to not intercept enemy NI?

AS always reduce NI values.

If there is no valid reason for this, is this something that can be fixed, or will we have to wait for WitW2 (just asking)?

Technically it is possible to split patrol execution and run AS first. This is not too difficult, although it will make AS even more important.

In my tests I have not noticed that my AS Missions have any effect on the reduction of enemy NI values.

Reduction is real and I can clearly see it in debugger. However it may not be very efficient in case of very strong naval patrol presence.

[Joel Billings]

BTW, don't forget that bombing ports is a good thing as it will reduce some local Nav Interdiction, although it might also reveal where you're going to invade unless you bomb a lot of them.

Bombing airfields is probably a good thing (IIRC you said you're doing more of that now).

[LiquidSky]

It's a very strong Naval air presence. Its the entire Luftwaffe bomber force.

I've noticed a very interesting chain of events.

I set my Patrol to only execute on the enemy phase.

When he hits execute, my air also flies....and may fly before his AS. At the same time my airfields are getting bombed, and I lose a bunch of bombers. Low morale abounds.

On my turn, I put the entire bomber force on REST. Morale returns, airfields get fixed. Then I turn off REST so they can fly on his turn. Most of my bombers are available again.

I like the surprise element of flying patrol only on his turn. It doesn't effect his supply, but it does effect the movement of his transports. It wouldn't stop the invasion, although it would increase the attrition.

I have a lot of bombers, and trying to stop them by bombing my airfields may not work in the short term.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

Since AS and NP air directives are executing simultaneously, timing matters when it comes AS ability to intercept NP flight.

What do mean by "timing matters when it comes AS ability to intercept NP flight". Is this "timing" something I can control by setting my Fighters to only fly on certain days or something? Or is this "timing" just luck? If the latter, than in the multiple tests I ran I never got lucky.

AS always reduce NI values.

"Always" I don't think so. See my screenshot above where my AS Mission didn't reduce NI values at all. Or you can run the test I emailed to you.

Technically it is possible to split patrol execution and run AS first. This is not too difficult, although it will make AS even more important.

Will it only make AS even more important in relation to NP, or will it impact it's effect on other enemy Air Directives (such as strategic bombing or land interdiction)? If the former than my vote is to go ahead and make the change. Even if AS does reduce enemy NI (which I saw no evidence of in my tests) I still don't understand why aircraft performing NI are immune to being shot down or damaged by fighters flying AS when aircraft performing other missions are not so immune.

Reduction is real and I can clearly see it in debugger. However it may not be very efficient in case of very strong naval patrol presence.

Did you run the test game save I emailed to you? Are you saying that the AS in that test was reducing the NI values? Because if so how do you explain my screenshots above? My test game does use 800 bombers which I suppose would classify as a very strong NP presence. But it isn't just a case of the AS not being "very efficient", it is a case of the AS having no effect on the NI values at all that I can see. At the very most only one or two hexes got reduced by one point of enemy NI (and I am not even sure about that).

Part of the problem may be that you can't customize AS missions as much as other missions. For example, you can't choose how many aircraft fly per raid or how many raids are flown per day. Is this why only 80 to 108 of my fighters flew per day? If more had flown per day would that have made a difference to the enemy NI values?

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



It's a very strong Naval air presence. Its the entire Luftwaffe bomber force.

I've noticed a very interesting chain of events.

I set my Patrol to only execute on the enemy phase.

When he hits execute, my air also flies....and may fly before his AS. At the same time my airfields are getting bombed, and I lose a bunch of bombers. Low morale abounds.

On my turn, I put the entire bomber force on REST. Morale returns, airfields get fixed. Then I turn off REST so they can fly on his turn. Most of my bombers are available again.

I like the surprise element of flying patrol only on his turn. It doesn't effect his supply, but it does effect the movement of his transports. It wouldn't stop the invasion, although it would increase the attrition.

I have a lot of bombers, and trying to stop them by bombing my airfields may not work in the short term.

Yes, I got my turn back from LS and notice that almost every airfield I damaged last turn is back to 0 damage. There are a few exceptions but not enough to matter. I like to think that for every enemy tactic there is a counter tactic; but I'm not sure what I can do in this case to counter his Naval Patrols.

As Joel pointed out above I could have done more port bombing and that might have helped a bit; but I really don't think that is the main problem here. Last turn LS split his Naval Patrols between Brittany and Normandy. I suspect this next turn it will be even more focused.

[Harrybanana]

FYI, instead of having just one AS Air Directive with 300 aircraft I tried a test using 4 Air Directives each with about 75 aircraft. I thought maybe this would give me more raids/sorties and therefore would reduce enemy NI. I did get more raids/sorties, but there was no effect on enemy NI.

I then thought to test Helpless' assertion that AS does reduce enemy NI, but may be less efficient in case of very strong naval patrol presence. So I reduced the enemy bomber strength from 800 to 200 aircraft. I tested with and without AS and there was no difference in the NI. I can send you this save as well if you want. So Helpless when you say that the reduction in the enemy NI caused by AS is real and you can "see it in the debugger" I'm afraid I don't see that. Can you send me a save that shows this reduction in NI caused by AS?

Sorry to be such a pain; but I need an answer before I can continue my game with Liquid Sky.

Thanks for your help.

[Helpless]

Did you run the test game save I emailed to you?

Yes.

[LiquidSky]

I'm going to do a bunch of tests on this tonight. I will try and figure out what is going on.

[Helpless]

Tests are good and I made some myself after several code changes. It should make AS more predictable when it comes to NP flight intercept.

[Harrybanana]

Thank you Pavel.