ORIGINAL: JoV
Sorry to piggyback on another thread, but is there a guide/thread/AAR which you could recommend which breaks down in detail the process of managing the air war?
Have played WitP, WitE extensively and want to get into this too, but getting over that initial hurdle of turning theory into practice when it comes to air ops always seems to trip me up [:D]
try this one -
tm.asp?m=4429752, its written with a focus on the air war so a fair bit of discussion around why some choices were made etc
ORIGINAL: Titan
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Anyway leaves me with this game that i keep putting down in the to hard basket....Is there an easy way to use the planes
Few suggestions that may help you.
First think of there being 3 different basic models to handle the airwar - most with variants of how much you do as oppose to allocate over to the AI.
So there are two extremes. At one end, simply tell the AI to run the air game, it will come up with missions, move your air units and so on. Probably a bit unsatisfactory, especially in the campaign as there is a gap between Sicily/some Italian action and landing in France where the air-war is really the focus. At the other extreme, its a micro-manager's idea of heaven. Set lots of very specific air missions, with planes specially allocated, their load-outs chosen, the height and intensity of the mission chosen and its route to target tweaked ... and careful attention paid to how it interacts with other missions.
So, the alternative is to use the AI as a support, this runs the gamut from:
a) use the air mission screen to set some broad parameters, so its a step up from pure AI control but you are acting as a senior commander setting out mission priorities and the AI then packages it up into actual missions and so on. Vs the AI, this can be quite adequate;
b) as above, but review and tweak the resulting air directives manually - this can be a good compromise, adjust say the area of a ground attack mission, lower the relative priority of ground support vs ground attack, perhaps assign the ground support to a specific corps that you intend to use for the key attack;
c) next step, delete some of the auto missions and add your own air directives to fit your perception of need;
d) do your own air directives from first principles
e) now it gets more manual - you can accept auto-assign of planes to directives (often perfectly valid) or manually assign (useful if you say want your 2 engined bombers doing ground attack vs units and your single engined fighter bombers running interdiction). In the end this can lead you to obsessing over small details.
So the good thing is you can stop on this hierachy exactly where you want to.
As to learning, play at least one of the strategic air war scenarios a few times. These are different to the tactical ones and its as well to get the basics clear (from both sides) before going onto the campaign. The feed-back loop from action to consequences is a bit quicker.
To get used to tactical air, play the breakout scenario. As the Allies try to get level 7-9 interdiction over key hexes. I'd also strongly suggest play a few turns left hand-right hand. As the Allies its not immediately clear what this does to the Axis side, but you see immediately the damage this inflicts if you open the turn from their side. And you can then explore what responses the axis side has.
edit: another barrier to the air war is the OOB. Obv you can take what you start with and work with that, but I'd generally suggest spend time re-organising. For the Axis get your OOB sorted out geographically or functionally (ie all the fighters in the Reich defending against strat bombers in 2 commands - one day one night). For the allies, I tend to sort out the OOB by task so when I am doing air directives I know what sort of planes I am accessing. This matters more for the planes in the UK as Italy tends to be a bit more of making the best of what you have.