Half the Soviet air force auto-transferred to reserve

[Beethoven1]

In my server grand campaign game against jubjub, something like half of the planes I had deployed on the map were suddenly transferred to reserve on turn 7, with absolutely 0 player input from me. I did not want them transferred to reserve... I was in fact planning to use them on some particular missions this turn, and had deployed them to particular places the previous turn in anticipation of that!

I believe what happened is that they were assigned to the Kharkov air Command, and the Kharkov Air Command disbands on turn 7. To make things easier to manage, I had only been using the Kharkov and Leningrad air commands.

I was not expecting that the Kharkov Air Command disbanding would mean that all my planes suddenly disappeared from the map. Instead, I would have expected similar sort of behavior to what happens to land units that are assigned to the Kharkov military district when the Kharkov military district disbands (as it also does on turn 7).

As a suggested way to change this, perhaps it could be possible to change this behavior so that when an AOG disbands, any air groups underneath it will not be sent to reserve, but instead remain on the map and be re-assigned to some other sensible default AOG, similar to how Military District land units get re-assigned to STAVKA when a military district disbands? Since there is no STAVKA for air, it would maybe make sense for e.g. air groups assigned to the Kharkov Air Command to get re-assigned to the Southwestern Air Command or something along those lines. Similarly for other military districts. Or maybe a catch-all STAVKA-equivalent AOG could be added?

[Joel Billings]

I can understand the frustration, but having them reassign to the nearest Air Command of the same nationality may also be confusing/frustrating. I take this as not a bug, but as a QOL suggestion for a change.

[Beethoven1]

I can accept that it seemed initially to be WAD and in this sense not a bug.

However... on closer inspection it appears that there actually IS a bug which I didn't initially realize was there.

It appears that at least some of my planes did actually stay on the map and were re-assigned from the Kharkov Air Command to the Southwestern Air Command. For example, this one says it is now assigned to Southwestern, and I am sure it was previously assigned to Kharkov Air Command:



And if you look at my level bombers here in the Commander's report, there are quite a few listed as being assigned to SW Air Command. These are most (or possibly even all) of the planes I had previously had deployed and assigned to the Kharkov Air Command:



However, these planes do NOT appear in the on-map GUI for the Southwestern Air Command. See here it says that there are only 63 planes and only 2 air groups of planes (32 SB-2s and 31 DB-3Bs).



The only reason it is showing those two air groups at all is that I deployed one of them just now and assigned it to SW, and the other one is one that I realized was already deployed, but was "invisible," and I was able to re-assign it from the invisible SW Air Command to regular SW Air Command, and that made it then appear in the GUI.


So it appears that the game actually did have my suggested behavior of keeping the planes on the map but re-assigning them to a different air command (in this case, Southwestern). However, something is messed up with the graphics that made them not appear on the map and me not realize they were there initially!!!


You can see this for yourself in the current server game save in the game between jubjub and I.

[Joel Billings]

Just saw your PM and was able to get the save and repeat the problem so will bug it. Thanks!