Recon Interdiction?

[Medicusa]

Maybe I have overseen this in the manual, but when I fly recon missions I can tell the airplanes to do units, interdiction and this stuff. I have been told now that doing interdiction in a recon mission with priority shows me units while recon missions with unit priority gives me more information about units strength. Is that true? Until now I always thought interdiction is distrupting enemy lines of communications.

[loki100]

yes, from 18.1.6

I think it had the role you describe in WiTW but not in WiTE2.

[squatter]

It’s very unfortunate the game uses the word ‘interdiction’ to describe ‘recon searching for unspotted units’ as clearly the two things have absolutely no relation.

I’m guessing the way things are coded prevents any easy rewording of this function, because I can’t imagine anyone thinks this a good use of terminology?

[carlkay58]

An interdiction bombing mission is one that focusses on finding chokepoints of enemy movement and disrupting them. So a RECON mission to support interdiction is to help find those chokepoints so the bombers can be more efficiently used.

An air attack on ground units is one that focusses on finding enemy units and disrupting them with bombs. So a RECON mission to support air attacks is to help identify those units so the bombers can be more efficiently used.

Yes it is awkward but the RECON directives are targeted to help specific bombing directives and uses the same terminology as the bombing mission to simplify things.

I would like to note that both the Recon directives AND the Bombing directives will return intel on other units in the area as they will search the flight paths both to and from the mission hex(es). The Recon will gain more knowledge than the bombing units will but both will gain some intel. This can be used to find out information on enemy formations when Recon aircraft are not readily available or not in numbers sufficient to search rough terrain. Just set up an area of INTERDICTION or GROUND ATTACK with bombers and you will find some information about the enemy units in the area. This also illustrates why you want the Recon directives to fly first in the turn so that later bombing directives can be used better.

[Stephan61]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

An interdiction bombing mission is one that focusses on finding chokepoints of enemy movement and disrupting them. So a RECON mission to support interdiction is to help find those chokepoints so the bombers can be more efficiently used.

An air attack on ground units is one that focusses on finding enemy units and disrupting them with bombs. So a RECON mission to support air attacks is to help identify those units so the bombers can be more efficiently used.

Yes it is awkward but the RECON directives are targeted to help specific bombing directives and uses the same terminology as the bombing mission to simplify things.

I would like to note that both the Recon directives AND the Bombing directives will return intel on other units in the area as they will search the flight paths both to and from the mission hex(es). The Recon will gain more knowledge than the bombing units will but both will gain some intel. This can be used to find out information on enemy formations when Recon aircraft are not readily available or not in numbers sufficient to search rough terrain. Just set up an area of INTERDICTION or GROUND ATTACK with bombers and you will find some information about the enemy units in the area. This also illustrates why you want the Recon directives to fly first in the turn so that later bombing directives can be used better.

But you cannot do the Bombing Mission as described without the RECON, which happens the turn before!
As this is a very fluid situation in the opening turns the RECON is meaningless for using when directing bombing missions.

[carlkay58]

The detection level of the hex is determined by the amount of recon you do over the hex. The detection level is then used in both aerial and ground combat vs ground units. The higher the detection level the less damaging the combat modifier is. If you do RECON on D1 before the bombers go in then the recon directive raises the detection level of the hex and the bombers are more efficient.

[Zovs]

i.e. Recon on D1 GA on D2 etc

[Jango32]

Do people manually assign AOGs to the recon directive or do they leave it on Auto?

If the former, how many per directive?

[carlkay58]

It depends. I tend to assign a single AOG to a recon directive and use it accordingly. An example is Koluft 18 is used in a recon directive near the 18th Army. But then I tend to do Recon directives with an area of 3 or 4 and lots of them. If I was going for a single area 10 recon (for in depth recon where I plan a breakthrough) I would probably leave it on AUTO for the best coverage.

[Stephan61]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

The detection level of the hex is determined by the amount of recon you do over the hex. The detection level is then used in both aerial and ground combat vs ground units. The higher the detection level the less damaging the combat modifier is. If you do RECON on D1 before the bombers go in then the recon directive raises the detection level of the hex and the bombers are more efficient.

Agree with you directives on D1 Recon, but how do you know where to do your bombing missions on D2 if you cannot see the results of your D1 recons until after D7?

[carlkay58]

I have the bombing missions on either single hexes or the same area and target hex as the Recon directives.

[squatter]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

An interdiction bombing mission is one that focusses on finding chokepoints of enemy movement and disrupting them. So a RECON mission to support interdiction is to help find those chokepoints so the bombers can be more efficiently used.

An air attack on ground units is one that focusses on finding enemy units and disrupting them with bombs. So a RECON mission to support air attacks is to help identify those units so the bombers can be more efficiently used.

Yes it is awkward but the RECON directives are targeted to help specific bombing directives and uses the same terminology as the bombing mission to simplify things.

I would like to note that both the Recon directives AND the Bombing directives will return intel on other units in the area as they will search the flight paths both to and from the mission hex(es). The Recon will gain more knowledge than the bombing units will but both will gain some intel. This can be used to find out information on enemy formations when Recon aircraft are not readily available or not in numbers sufficient to search rough terrain. Just set up an area of INTERDICTION or GROUND ATTACK with bombers and you will find some information about the enemy units in the area. This also illustrates why you want the Recon directives to fly first in the turn so that later bombing directives can be used better.

I'm not sure I really follow.

Are you saying that a bomber interdiction strike will produce more interdiction per hex if the recon level of the hexes involved (as produced by an interdiction recon mission) is higher?

Because for me, the main point of 'interdiction' recon is to spot where the enemy is massing units.

[loki100]

this answer is mainly from experience with WiTW - mainly as crudely you have a lot more airpower and thus tend to remove some of the statistical variance and noise that low level missions are vulnerable to.

a) combat is recon, so lets say I know the LW is clustered around Avignon but there are say 8 bases they could be on. I run a recon mission on D1 to see if I can pick up some data, I bomb D2/D3, likely the D2 missions will pick some empty bases, by D3 the routine is pretty sure what is there. My recon returns on D4 for confirmation. Then I chuck in the serious bombing raid and it will tend to go for the critical airbases. So that is 3 AD, 1 recon, 1 small bombing raid (lets say with B-24s) and 1 serious bombing raid (B26s/Liberators etc)

b) I want to hit enemy units behind my planned invasion beaches (esp if those are the hexes my paras are going to land on). recon D1, a decent spread of interdiction D2-3 (same as above), confirm D4, GA-unit D5-D7

c) We are in the breakout phase and I want to know where the enemy is roughly (this is closer to a WiTE2 situation), run recon-interdiction and GA-interdiction over the broad area, I'm fishing and at the end I'll have a decent idea if there is anytyhing.

edit the point about the ADs for a+b is they can be broadly drawn, by the time they go in, the game routines will narrow it down for me
Now all this works in WiTW in part as the Allies you have the assets for this sort of layered air assault. It works in WiTE2 but its less obvious as it will take you to 1944 with the VVS to get the volume of air groups and even then you are hampered by short range.

but to repeat, combat works as recon.

[squatter]

Thanks Loki.

I understand that recon level will have an impact on ground attack missions, and interdiction missions.

But the simple point of this thread is to say that 'interdiction' recon is poorly labelled.

Being that it is the recon mission designed to spot unseen enemy formations, it is THE primary recon function in the game. And when used for this primary purpose of spotting new units, it is horribly mislabelled as 'interdiction' recon. The terminology chosen serves as misdirection for the player attempting to learn the interface, sadly.

[loki100]

don't disagree - its like a few things (NM being one of the worst), its not the wording you'd pick now for the concept, but its often scattered so much over the code as to be impossible to retitle

[squatter]

ORIGINAL: loki100

don't disagree - its like a few things (NM being one of the worst), its not the wording you'd pick now for the concept, but its often scattered so much over the code as to be impossible to retitle

its often scattered so much over the code as to be impossible to retitle

That's the bit non-developers like myself don't realise when we get rather indignant over what we think are obvious and simple things to change - with such small dev teams and limited resources sometimes things are not as easy to modify as those on the outside might assume.

Like many aspects of this game, you just have to learn and accept.

Something in the end I'm prepared to do in order to experience this incredible simulation