What to do with the Soviet air force the first few turns?

[Beethoven1]

What is the best thing to do with the Soviet air force for the first few turns? Do you need to un-assign it from following armies/fronts that are being encircled, to avoid getting planes overrun on the ground? I certainly wouldn't want the handful of planes that managed to survive the initial German airfield bombing to just sit inside the Bialyostok pocket rather than flying out to the east and trying to escape to safety! Is the best thing to do simply to give an order to "retreat" and un-assign from army HQs for a turn or two before the front stabilizes?

[M60A3TTS]

First thing you have to tell us is are you using AI Assist or not. If you are, it can do as much of the work as you want it to and not be too concerned about any of this. Using it in your first playthrough is not a bad idea.

If you are not going to use it, then there is a fairly lengthy to-do list at the start of the game and it gets simpler from there.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

First thing you have to tell us is are you using AI Assist or not. If you are, it can do as much of the work as you want it to and not be too concerned about any of this. Using it in your first playthrough is not a bad idea.

If you are not going to use it, then there is a fairly lengthy to-do list at the start of the game and it gets simpler from there.

I am using the AI assist (just figuring out the basics of how this all works for now).

So far I did the following. I am not sure if these are all the best ideas, but they seemed to make sense to me:

1) On air doctrine, set all missions to low-intensity and to only fly in good weather, in the hopes of reducing losses by only flying if circumstances are particularly favorable.
2) Setting "stance" to retreat for Northwestern/Western/Southwestern/Southern air commands and attaching all of those to FHQs that are further back (Leningrad/Moscow/Kharkov) in the hopes that this will cause planes to fly to the east out of pockets rather
3) Setting all of the Air Commands/AOGs to "TRAINED PLT" to hopefully avoid flying pilots who have no idea what they are doing and just getting them all shot down immediately.
4) Set supply priority for all air force to 0, to prioritize army, since I am assuming it is better initially for the air force to try to recover from the initial shock and avoid flying much.

Anything you would do different from this or change for the first few turns until the front gets semi-stabilized?

[M60A3TTS]

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not use AI Assist. That said...

Good on 1 and 2, at least with regards to weather, intensity I don't tend to play around with but feel free to experiment.

On 3, you don't train enough pilots to cover your whole air force. Decide on what air units should be prioritized. On turn 12 of the 41 campaign, be aware that air units will be size 20 and not 67 as many start out. Ask yourself if you truly need trained recon or transport pilots.

On 4, fighter units don't really eat that much supply. The level bombers consume a fair amount. Your depots farther back can generally supply the bombers without eating heavily into the supplies bound for the front. If you want to limit air units from flying too much, you can always set air doctrine to a higher % required to fly.

[56ajax]

Um, send most of the Soviet Air Force to reserve and start selectively upgrading. And try to guess where the front line will stablise and build airbases.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: 56ajax

Um, send most of the Soviet Air Force to reserve and start selectively upgrading. And try to guess where the front line will stablise and build airbases.

not really, you can get a lot of use out of it in the opening turns. But agree about starting airbase construction early.

To add to M60s list, if you use the AI-assist it has a routine to remove depleted air groups from the map automatically. It does this all war (& later will try to replace like with like in the AOG) but its incredibly helpful to sort out the mess you inherit on T1.

Again with the AI assist the LR air command will default to railyard bombing - this is incredibly useful in 1941 as it slows the speed at which the Germans can build up a supply network. So worth thinking about which HQ/stance you want to link this command to (you can do this at the BAK level if you want) as to where you think this will pay off the best.

[carlkay58]

If you are using AI Air Assist then make sure that all of your front line AOGs have a stance of RETREAT. This will pull them back from pockets and the front lines so they are less likely to be overrun.

[Searry]

Recon and bomb German Panzer regiments and divisions with all the tactical bombers that are in flying condition.

[Beethoven1]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not use AI Assist. That said...

Good on 1 and 2, at least with regards to weather, intensity I don't tend to play around with but feel free to experiment.

On 3, you don't train enough pilots to cover your whole air force. Decide on what air units should be prioritized. On turn 12 of the 41 campaign, be aware that air units will be size 20 and not 67 as many start out. Ask yourself if you truly need trained recon or transport pilots.

On 4, fighter units don't really eat that much supply. The level bombers consume a fair amount. Your depots farther back can generally supply the bombers without eating heavily into the supplies bound for the front. If you want to limit air units from flying too much, you can always set air doctrine to a higher % required to fly.

Based on this, I raised the % required to fly to 50% and prioritized trained pilots for the Migs/Laggs/IL-2s. The result was on the 2nd turn nothing really flied (except I guess evacuations to the rear) and I lost a grand total of 3 planes. Meanwhile the Axis lost 48 to operational losses and AA. So now we see how the VVS can achieve a favorable loss ratio against the Luftwaffe, that is better than 10 to 1 [&o]

[loki100]

don't forget there are 2 bonuses to actually delivering GS - there is the basic airplane y does x damage routine snd there is a bonus set of damage for having more bombers over the battlefield - so ceding the airspace totally can have rather nasty side effects