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Greetings,

For the Ground business, while situation presently improved for Germany - Axis panzers are still extremely brittle and can get evirated with sweeping attacks by Soviets. Due to inability to gain panzer replacements out of the logistic systems, pratically German panzers once hammered, forever hammered in '41.

For what concerns the Night Bombing - after Tyronec game where Ground-Attack unit was devastating, now it seems ontop of railyards bombed overnight it was the turn of airfields.

Someone can say 'spread your fighters' but as some may guess, to move fighters well in and offer cover you need to air supply the airbase or wait for logistics to truly catch up. And if you fly by night, you take massive OPs losses. But maybe one should fly by night after this show...

Here you go, 58 night raids on the same airfield! I do not consider the AA presence small or little by any means, that's 80 guns and 50+ are of the big caliber type. So we've 71 destroyed Bf109s on the ground (Not sure how many damaged frankly). And nothing impedes Soviets to do a repeat next turn, over, and over, and over anywhere they spot a German fighter base. Soviets have thousands of bombers as well - seen in other games already.

Just a screenshot of ground combat - I am not complaining on infantry or artillery losses but the panzers seems to have been trashed, with almost a 50% loss to own AFVs on both ends. (And a 4:1 loss ratio between the parts)

Especially as Germans were on the defense, and an amount of Soviet tanks are not of the T34 / KV1 type (Pratically 50 out of 1970), the rest are light tanks or so. Germans lost an amount of PzIII instead.

It may have been a single lucky episode though (Both leaders are good and I believe both forces belong to Assault HQ, Germans surely do) - I've still a vehement perception of Panzers to be very frail and brittle.

Only 71 German fighters lost from the Soviet Night Bombing German Fighter bases? You got off pretty light for only 277 bombers I would think. What is that like 4 bombers per German fighters?

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

Only 71 German fighters lost from the Soviet Night Bombing German Fighter bases? You got off pretty light for only 277 bombers I would think. What is that like 4 bombers per German fighters?

I do have to apologize to you AlbertN for showing the effectiveness of Soviet Night bombing on German Fighter bases when I left since you seem to be the first for it to utilized against.

Do you have a save for this where I can run the soviet attacks? Is this a server game? Gary is in the process of reducing op losses in general but increasing night op losses by weaker pilots. Having a save would help speed the process. While doing this, Gary also found that a/c damaged by flak that crash on the runway which were supposed to be treated as flak losses were being counted as op losses. So some of the enemy op losses are really flak losses. If on the server, let me know the players in the game. Thanks.

PM'ed you Joel. Yes it is a server game.

ORIGINAL: AlbertN

Just a screenshot of ground combat - I am not complaining on infantry or artillery losses but the panzers seems to have been trashed

About 100 of them are Pz I-II and Pz Jag I, German units have no fort.
There is an other case. Soviet units attacking but having in losses Engineer-Sapper Squads. Why? Isn't its a labor squads?

I am a Soviet in another game and these squads are armed with rifles and the like, so they are probably used as infantry.

And - well Germans will rarely have grand fortifications at Turn5!

ORIGINAL: AlbertN

I am a Soviet in another game and these squads are armed with rifles and the like, so they are probably used as infantry.

And - well Germans will rarely have grand fortifications at Turn5!

If Soviet player able to have on T5 Tank division that has CV 101 in combat and also able to provide prepared attack with 1697 tank and have leaders like Bobkin then I see no problem why is there could be such German tank losses.
There is other question - why for such large battle no any air presence.

For me the main basis issue at start of GC is that Soviet units getting random morale/exp and some units can get too high these parametres without any reason. Just "because it's moddeling "the chaos in Red Army" or something like this or because it would too predefined in an inverse case". E.g. German player can meet Soviet KV/T-34 elements that has high exp right at start of the war. It's a nonsense.
So let's remove this randomness and make normal Red Army units.

The general problem is how Soviets move as they pratically can do all hexes in admin movement, thus come in, do a prepared assault, and move away on need.

I've a game with the Soviets (Albeit the German player has not sent turns since a while by now) where it's not exactly hard to sit and wait and build up CCPs with a reaction force somewhere and then blow the hammer.
As a German I understood I cannot regiment vanguards of the sort because regiments gets annihilated by Soviet lightning attacks.
I've done that myself with some success and some failure in my Soviet game, considering thought it was my absolute first Soviet game. (Albeit that one was with the previous patch)

I learned this from HLYA last week and did some tests.

I got in 68 night bombings by the Soviets on Turn 1.

Here is just a few shots:





Start of German turn 2, and filtered by Soviet last Air turn:



@Joel I have some saves if you need them.

I think part of the bigger issue is that the Soviets can just bomb at will with 200+ planes per GA on turn 1. Historically they could not achieve that in 1941 at all. Especially not on turn 1.

I believe the labor squad type is supposed to fire in defense only, may be a bug possibly related to the engineer name part

I got AlbertN's saves and was able to set up the attacks that he took. I've sent that to Gary so he can use it in his tests of his tweaks. Losing 5 to 1 in the attack is only a victory in 1941 when taking out German fighters is maybe worth that kind of loss rate. With the lower pilot losses these days, it's even less effective over the long run, but likely still better than could have been done. Not sure about Zovs results as some of this must be daylight given the losses in the air, but it sure looks like a very costly strategy even before Gary's tweaks.

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

I got AlbertN's saves and was able to set up the attacks that he took. I've sent that to Gary so he can use it in his tests of his tweaks. Losing 5 to 1 in the attack is only a victory in 1941 when taking out German fighters is maybe worth that kind of loss rate. With the lower pilot losses these days, it's even less effective over the long run, but likely still better than could have been done. Not sure about Zovs results as some of this must be daylight given the losses in the air, but it sure looks like a very costly strategy even before Gary's tweaks.

Those same German fighters that were destroyed on the ground, what 70-100ish, would shot down "hundreds if not thousands" of Soviet planes. If you look at it that way you are saving Soviet planes for the cost of a level bomber fleet.


The level bombers don't live in a microcosm either if I were going after German fighters. Anything within the IL2 bombing range would be fair game too thus continuing the loses from Night bombing that was started by the bombers by night bombing with IL2's too. The replacement rate of the IL2's alone lets this to be done. because that rate ramps up pretty quickly too. Along with this you would attrit the German fighters down by flying a few bombers on GA or GS missions with huge fighter escorts out the ying-yang to draw out any auto-intercepts or AS missions the Germans have further attriting them. By sometime in 42 the Germans are living hand to mouth with what-ever replacements they get a turn if they stay within range with their fighters. I have done it in WITE1, and yeah this isn't WITE1, but all the same principles are here and can be done more so because of the replacement rates of the Soviet.

There really is "NO" delimiting factor to not using all of your planes at your disposal to accomplish a goal other than a replacement rate. I will test it out after the tweeks go through and if I think it is still possible to do after the tweeks I will be house ruling it out of my games.

Given - I suspect presently Air rating of leaders is meaningless - since it seems armada of planes fly no matter what's the leader skill; besides that the feeling that I've right now is that for the supplies the Luftwaffe eats, I may as well park it in Axis Reserve and forget of it.

In general I agree with Hyla on this topic and deeply. Germany produces at best less than 50 Bf109 chassis a turn (that when they produce the maximum allocation, which is not even said). And Soviets have plenty of bombers for all I remember from previous games, no matter how many they lose on T1.

In two different games I've had the LW Fighters pretty much trashed in two different ways. Here by night bombing, elsewhere by having HUGE Soviet armadas of planes flying in just a sector and overwhelming the local fighters with sheer numbers. The first fight or few fights can go well enough, but then you have less and less planes intercepting whilst there are still hoards and hoards of Soviets swarming the skies. And it turns into a spyral.

Again bigger in my view of the night bombing is the Soviets Turn 1 with hundreds of bombers flying GA interdiction and unit bombing. The Soviet Air Force was crippled the first week not only in air frames and pilot’s but in their command structure to coordinate air offensive missions.

ORIGINAL: AlbertN
Given - I suspect presently Air rating of leaders is meaningless - since it seems armada of planes fly no matter what's the leader skill; besides that the feeling that I've right now is that for the supplies the Luftwaffe eats, I may as well park it in Axis Reserve and forget of it.

As I understand it, the leader ratings are significant, but the question is not so much whether a squadron will fly at all, but how much of it will fly and whether it will fly as a large strike/intercept group with other squadrons or in an uncoordinated fashion. That lack of coordination can make a big difference in the results, especially if any interception by the other side occurs. The air details should help you see this effect. Over the course of a week, which the WITE2 air phase represents, I think this makes sense.

Regards,

- Erik

That is what I understood as well Erik - but I feel that empyrical experience suggests otherwise.

If the Russians wants a strike of 200 bombers to take place, it WILL take place. Repeated times. With 200 bombers (if they've them at hand).

The player puts in parameters for the mission and how they want it, and that's how it will take place in general at least for bombing; as long as the mileage of planes allow. At least that is the feeling for Ground Attack.

I may be wrong in my perception - or maybe there is a bug even. But I know the numbers I see in the game.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: AlbertN
Given - I suspect presently Air rating of leaders is meaningless - since it seems armada of planes fly no matter what's the leader skill; besides that the feeling that I've right now is that for the supplies the Luftwaffe eats, I may as well park it in Axis Reserve and forget of it.

As I understand it, the leader ratings are significant, but the question is not so much whether a squadron will fly at all, but how much of it will fly and whether it will fly as a large strike/intercept group with other squadrons or in an uncoordinated fashion. That lack of coordination can make a big difference in the results, especially if any interception by the other side occurs. The air details should help you see this effect. Over the course of a week, which the WITE2 air phase represents, I think this makes sense.

Regards,

- Erik

Could you expand on the air details you are referring? A lot of details about the air war are very opaque and I think this is feeding a lot of misunderstanding.