Matrix Games Forums

Firstly,great,love it,super... I pretty much gave up learning the air in WITW hoping it would not be the same in this... alas it is and a lot of trouble has been gone to put this together.

Is there a very simple step by step video on the air - so far I cannot even find a button to make an AD, grrrrrr. From what I see it seems the AI help will not be enough in a human to human match. So the air cannot be set aside and "wing it" so to speak.

This game is not a hobby - its a new job to learn. I already have a full time +50% job but want to have fun with this too

So tips on the best approach please.

That makes 2 of us. The air system has always been a stopping point for me Any help would be nice....GP

I would not say it is a short intro to the air system, but there are some videos from Strategy Gaming Dojo - called "Basic Tutorial" - a lot of the time he is using to talk about the air system and how to plan and execute orders.
Hope that helps.

Thanks - does not need to be short... but needs to be easily understood.

It’s not too bad at all once you get your head around it. But that did take me some time (I used the air only scenarios in WITW). It kind of depends also how much input you want. I like to micro everything, including load outs, but it’s possible to let the AI do most of it.
I’d say maybe load up a road to scenario and practice. The important thing to note is the air war is much less pronounced than in the west. So most of the time I’ve had it largely assigned to ground support, and just placed recon (turn 1 is the exception). The ai is also pretty good, even better if you just tweak its missions a little. Doing so I managed to get 2000 Soviets planes destroyed, for about 180 Germans on day 1. I tend to fly 7000ft as it avoids AA, also always use escorts! Those losses I took would be even less if I hadn’t flown some missions without them.
The Axis guide has some tips for air war which might be useful.

From my limited experience and testing the best air recon AD is 1 strike per day every day. The operational losses are minimal compared to every other set up I tried so far. But there are surely people who know better

I would suggest reading my AAR and downloading the files to see the details of how I set up the Air Directives and then just click and move the target hexes on the map each turn. This will give you the basics of what and how.

You always have the options of letting the AI Air Assist do the work for you. It may not be the perfect micro-managed solution, but if you pay attention to what it does, you can learn most of the basics in the first four or five turns.

There are two major uses of air for the most part in WitE2. The first is Ground Support. This is easily setup and will work independently of your input. The second is Recon. This is also easily setup and to maintain but it will require you to do some of the work. Start with these two directives and then branch out as you learn and feel more comfortable with it.

When trying to learn the air part of the game i think that two screens that might be overlooked have some pretty nice information...

These are:

- the logistics phase report screen (air resolution)

- the SHOW DETAILS tab in the combat resolution windows (air losses and air combat).

These screens will tell you quite alot about how the air directives have been carried out and how the various aircrafts performs as well as the overall supply consumtion with regards to air activities.

Ok thanks for all this appreciated and encouraging.

Practicing on the AGN scenario (Road to Leningrad) is a good way to start. It's faster to execute turns on smaller map and go back to previous turn to see what you can improve, but you still have the whole Luftflotte 1 to manage.

My lessons learned:
- Read the manual
- Continuing from the above point, I learned that Turn 1 Day 1 the Germans have a surprise bonus, so use that to your advantage. I ran bombing sorties only on D1 without any recon (didn't seem to need it)
- Read everything about altitude from the manual. At least on German T1, 6000-9000 feet seemed to be a good setting. Could be different later on (AA, opposition, air mile optimization, more experienced pilots etc.)
- Air mission priority, use that! Make escorted sorties on Very High to hit fighter airfield at first (on T1). In general, get the opposition fighters out first, then fly bombing. You can do this on RtL scenario quite easily once you figure it out, and optimally destroy 800ish Soviet airplanes with only 10-20 casualties. Not sure how Air Superiority missions fit into this later on, but on T1 AS seems useless. You can fly bombing and ground recon later on with Low priority with just a few operational casualties.
- Use drop tanks selectively if needed, don't overdo it. I separated JG53 to be my "drop tank wing" and escorted the sorties to more distant Soviet fighter airfields with them. Check which staging base suits best to your escorts range.
- You'll probably want your best pilots on the fighters, so tag "Trained Pilots" on them
- You can evade AA by editing mission pathing nodes. Use the "Show AA" map mode, tag "Follow Path" and fly through low AA gaps.
- At least on GE T1, you need only 1-2 strikes per airfield with 50kg bombs. You can actually limit the number of bombers and escorts on the strikes manually to reduce fatigue and you'll still do OK. 20-30 bombers with 10 Bf-109 escorts do short work of most airfields.
- The more Air Directives you plan, the more you can control the results. But you'll do perfectly fine with bigger area directives if you consider them carefully.

I managed to get 800 SU aircraft destroyed in Air Phase alone with only 10-20 losses for Luftwaffe on the RtL scenario, using the full 10 Air Directives. And I'm sure there's still room for improvement though!

There's still a huge bunch to learn about almost everything in the air war for me, but this is what I picked up this far

ORIGINAL: Cavalry Corp

Firstly,great,love it,super... I pretty much gave up learning the air in WITW hoping it would not be the same in this... alas it is and a lot of trouble has been gone to put this together.

Is there a very simple step by step video on the air - so far I cannot even find a button to make an AD, grrrrrr. From what I see it seems the AI help will not be enough in a human to human match. So the air cannot be set aside and "wing it" so to speak.

This game is not a hobby - its a new job to learn. I already have a full time +50% job but want to have fun with this too

So tips on the best approach please.

My key tools for understanding what is going on are on the far right of the map information tab.

For the first turn air attacks I recommend:

T Air Recon Levels -> Combat Recon : shows me where enemy units and planes are, since I only want to deal with the air units I switch off T (toggle units on map, far left), to filter out the ground units

Y Show Air directive targets -> Ground targets only shows which attacks are active and how many planes are already assigned. This helps you know which targets have been assigned and helps you see missed air bases.

O All Flak; I only switch this on when planning the staging base and route to target.

A Show AOG; this shows you where the units are on the map. When you making a an air directive you will see a list of available units at the bottom, you can also click on that to see where it's located on the map.

I would just make a few airbase attack directives and then run the air phase them. Reload, change a few things and run again to see what works.

Nix77 - the directive limit is 32 per Air Command. 10 was for WitW. So even more room/ability to improve!

In the RtL scenario Luftflotte 1 seemed to have limit of 10 ADs, but I could be wrong?

ORIGINAL: Nix77

In the RtL scenario Luftflotte 1 seemed to have limit of 10 ADs, but I could be wrong?

While it does show 10 as the limit, you can keep adding more and they will run the additional ADs, not sure if it's a bug or a feature

Its a disconnect that was not discovered until recently when the developers were too busy on more important items before release.

Ok watching the videos - hours to go and we have not flown a plane yet waiting the the hard copy manual.

I just posted a semi-tutorial video on setting up air directives to youtube.

Nice - I will watch....

Watched this and the way you went through manually setting up the air directives was really really useful and has now made me much keener on setting directives manually from the Luftlotte level.

Thank you Capn Gown ......

The only downside was you left us hanging at the end of the video not seeing you execute them

Agree nice effort - could have bene a bit slower as I am 56 !!!. Many thanks for your help though.