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Doing the Italy campaign again except this time I'm moving my own squadrons when/if necessary. I understand the mechanics of how to move them and understand why, but what I'm having a hard time with is figuring out how many I can move and still balance supply with my ground troops. I know base size limits and such, but how do I figure out how many I can move and still keep good supply. I know you can assign priority to each base to push supply higher. Basically, I'm looking for a step by step example of what you are looking at when determining how many planes to move. Thanks in advance.

good question [8D]

to which there is no simple answer as it really 'depends'.

I'm assuming you are playing the Allies then you have no global supply problem its all about getting it to a location. So essentially keep the longer ranged stuff off the Italian mainland, use N Africa to bomb Sicily, Sicily/Sardinia/Corsica to bomb the mainland. Allied fighters on Corsica can easily cover around Rome.

your constraints are port capacity - which solves itself fairly quickly and moving stuff from the ports to the front lines (which remains an enduring problems), so you can bring fighters/tac bombers to around a port pretty soon after you have taken it.

In the main, I've not noticed any big problem in this regard and that is playing the 1943 GC and bringing ahistorical volume of air cover over from the UK.

Ok cool. Maybe I was making something out of nothing...sounds pretty straightforward as long as you don't try and move every squadron at once. I was moving my TAC stuff first, SAC last. Thanks.

To expand on Loki's comments, the key thing is to prepare the base at least a turn before you move air groups to it. This involves:

1. Set Supply Priority to 4
2. Set TOE to 100%

Then the next turn make sure Supply, Ammo, Fuel, and Support flowed to it. You might want/need to move a single air group to the air base to get the flow going. If so, do that the first turn and then the next turn check status of the air base.

Cary

Excellent suggestion.

One more question. Does it make any difference if you move say a malta air command squadron to a tac or sac base? Are there any advantages or disadvantages? Right now, I'm moving to bases where there is space, not taking into account what mix of aircraft are there. I am making a point to keep my troop carrier planes relatively close together.

In early versions of the game there was a penalty to basing an air group at an air base under the control of another AHQ, but that went away a long time ago.

Cary

Ok thanks again and Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you, and a better new year!

Cary

ORIGINAL: cfulbright

To expand on Loki's comments, the key thing is to prepare the base at least a turn before you move air groups to it. This involves:

1. Set Supply Priority to 4
2. Set TOE to 100%

Then the next turn make sure Supply, Ammo, Fuel, and Support flowed to it. You might want/need to move a single air group to the air base to get the flow going. If so, do that the first turn and then the next turn check status of the air base.

Cary

I agree. If I can give you my two cents, I would suggest to move the air groups gradually.
First (turn 1), set air base TOE at 100% + supply priority at 4.
Then (turn 2), move your low morale air groups. They will rest in the new air base while more supplies arrive. This will allow you to conduct air missions from the former air base with available air groups.
Finally (turn 3), move the rest of your air groups and conduct air missions with the groups that rested on turn 2.

I use this tactic to keep the momentum of air missions and to avoid supply shortage in the new air base.