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I am not sure what has been changed in the code, but it seems Soviets are extremely reactive during Turn 1.

The Soviets are meant to be surprised but intercept A LOT, and that includes even intercepting well into Axis territory as if they had radars, knew the enemy was coming, and all the jazz.

I've just repeated over and over T1 to see what a player can do (before to launch myself in a PvP game) vs the default settings; but Axis life seems already much harder.

Yes, this can happen, although unlikely to happen very often as you get further away from friendly airfields. Code and data have changed since release in many ways, so if you haven't played for a while some things may feel different. As to this issue I can't shed any light on what changes have been made over the years that might have impacted it. Searching the whatsnew file is the only suggestion I have as there might be something mentioned there.

My testing continued.
This time I tried to escort business ...



The UI suggests my bombers are escorted, it's all green.
It'd be purple if they were not or the escorts had partial range.
Iasi is a staging base - btw.

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Much to my dismay, I discover that the escorts have not reached the designated target.
Good grace, I think, I've not been intercepted.

I spoke too early.



Migs from the airbase of Beltsy (Which was bombed beforehand, but not destroying everything in there) took off, pursued the bombers that were returning to base, and merrily reached them over Romania.

If it helps, I attach the saves before and after this small test I am conducting (for my own T1 airbase bombing optimization)

You can still do a lot of damage to the Soviet air force. The intercepts they conduct are actually conducive to shooting down many of those fighters. T1 air execution complete pictured below.
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Take out all the fighter bases using escorted bombers, after that you can run unescorted against dozens of bases that have bombers only. Iasi raid should be conducted against Odesa as shown. Of course you need to clear out the fighters at the bases circled first.
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Make sure follow path is checked for fighters to stay with bombers

Also bomb fighter bases up front before bombing anything past the front line. Otherwise you are going to get decimated.