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Soviet airforce is op [PBEM]
Posted: Sat May 31, 2025 8:28 am
by FreakinHeck
So we are playing a pbem game. We at the very first turn our soviet opponent just annihilated our 18th mot div with only air bombing. The division had no MP and stood next to soviet bunkers if it matters. I believe it's not any fun and historical that it's possible just to remove best German divisions from map without even using ground forces. 18th mot even had attached aa unit, we've done almost everything that we could at T1 to protect it. Save files were attached. We just want to know how did it actually happened. Did the div surrounded to fort or what?
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Re: Soviet airforce is op [PBEM]
Posted: Sat May 31, 2025 9:18 am
by Wiedrock
That's abusing the Air War basically. That's why some completely block the Groundattack Air Directives. I suggest 'house-ruling' such shenanigans by limiting Ground Attack-Strikes on a single Hex per turn.
Re: Soviet airforce is op [PBEM]
Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2025 9:26 pm
by M60A3TTS
Wiedrock wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 9:18 am
That's abusing the Air War basically. That's why some completely block the Groundattack Air Directives. I suggest 'house-ruling' such shenanigans by limiting Ground Attack-Strikes on a single Hex per turn.
Are you able to actually see the saves without the password? All I see from the OP is 147 missions against the target and the last sortie did nothing at the cost of one aircraft. I also don't have a sense of many players advocating blocking GA directives.
I can also assure the OP that after a time, the VVS is largely incapable of this sort of thing if the Axis player has a reasonable degree of experience.
Re: Soviet airforce is op [PBEM]
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2025 9:41 am
by Wiedrock
There's no saves needed.
It is well known that the AD GA-Unit can be massively abused by the VVS in 41, killing easily 4-5kMen of a Division and leaving the rests DAMaged behind. After X (like 600-800 Sorties) Flak will mostly stop shooting and if fighters are around they are also cooked at one point.
His example is even more ridiculous by its outcome then what I've seen bafore, since it is T1 (so isolation cant be done) and a German Division seems to be vanishing due to low RDY/TOE.
Historically speaking, you can do in 1 week in 41 in a 10mile Hex more sorties then Soviets did 2 years later in the whole Kursk area in multiple weeks. One reason obv is that you have control over all planes and are not limited to one Air Army assigned to a sector. But it's also missing some type of "organization malus" in some way making such things impossible. Whatever Air Leader stats are being used for, it does not seem to limit Sorties (generally speaking).
Re: Soviet airforce is op [PBEM]
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2025 1:08 pm
by Metalist
Wiedrock wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 9:18 am
That's abusing the Air War basically. That's why some completely block the Groundattack Air Directives. I suggest 'house-ruling' such shenanigans by limiting Ground Attack-Strikes on a single Hex per turn.
Any recommendation on how many strikes should be allowed in terms of historical accuracy?
Re: Soviet airforce is op [PBEM]
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2025 2:37 pm
by Wiedrock
Metalist wrote: Sun Jun 15, 2025 1:08 pm
Wiedrock wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 9:18 am
That's abusing the Air War basically. That's why some completely block the Groundattack Air Directives. I suggest 'house-ruling' such shenanigans by limiting Ground Attack-Strikes on a single Hex per turn.
Any recommendation on how many strikes should be allowed in terms of historical accuracy?
I won't say I, could judge historical accuracy perfectly. I do not know all the figures for Soviet Sorties in 1941/42, so my idea is to fix the obvious imbalance/exploit you have shown while not making the mission completely useless (after all it's a game and we have a tool which should simply be somewhat balanced and not erased).
So what I find somewhat balanced and makes the mission still worthwile to use are the following rules:
- only one AD GA Unit per Hex
- 2days/week with 2Missions/day and 200planes/Mission, which is giving 800Sorties/week as a maximum per Hex.
- If you add the rule to limit the GA UNIT ADs per faction Germans being allowed 3, Soviets being allowed ~6 (so about one AD per Air Army/Luftflotte basically - without it being "bound" to actually using the different AOGs) you will have a max of 6x800=4800 Sorties per week as the Soviets doing GA UNIT.
...as said, I do not know Soviet sorties figures of 41, but it is neither OP, nor worthless if balanced like this (ofc. it depends to some degree if you get intercepted or not).
This way Flak and Interceptors are not running out of steam and give free range to later Missions (sometimes with this 4 Mission limit they shoot at all 4 missions, sometimes only at 3 or so).
As said this is not "historic" it's just an attempt to balance it, but 400 Sorties/hex should also be just fine (and maybe more historic).
Re: Soviet airforce is op [PBEM]
Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2025 10:06 am
by tyronec
I won't say I, could judge historical accuracy perfectly. I do not know all the figures for Soviet Sorties in 1941/42, so my idea is to fix the obvious imbalance/exploit you have shown while not making the mission completely useless (after all it's a game and we have a tool which should simply be somewhat balanced and not erased).
So what I find somewhat balanced and makes the mission still worthwile to use are the following rules:
only one AD GA Unit per Hex
2days/week with 2Missions/day and 200planes/Mission, which is giving 800Sorties/week as a maximum per Hex.
If you add the rule to limit the GA UNIT ADs per faction Germans being allowed 3, Soviets being allowed ~6 (so about one AD per Air Army/Luftflotte basically - without it being "bound" to actually using the different AOGs) you will have a max of 6x800=4800 Sorties per week as the Soviets doing GA UNIT.
...as said, I do not know Soviet sorties figures of 41, but it is neither OP, nor worthless if balanced like this (ofc. it depends to some degree if you get intercepted or not).
This way Flak and Interceptors are not running out of steam and give free range to later Missions (sometimes with this 4 Mission limit they shoot at all 4 missions, sometimes only at 3 or so).
As said this is not "historic" it's just an attempt to balance it, but 400 Sorties/hex should also be just fine (and maybe more historic).
I did some testing on this.
There does appear to be a limit of 200 planes of either type to execute a GA mission; so max 200 Fighters + 200 Bombers, or 200 Bombers on their own.
There is some variation as to how much AA fires against this maximum level of attack, however it will generally fire against 2 sorties (that would be a total of 400 F + 400 B). It will often not fire against the third or later sortie of this size.
If the sorties are smaller then the AA does continue to fire for longer, so it looks like the calculation is around ammo supplies rather than the number of sorties.
If the ground units are on or adjacent to a depot then the AA continues to fire (but not always) so there is some sort of resupply possible.
The test was for fully supplied units as the start of a scenario, so part way through a game it may be different.
I feel that this is a bug in the game, I don't know of significant historical examples where ground units being unprotected against air attack because of lack of ammo - and certainly not early in the war.
So I would concur more or less with what Wiedrock is suggesting, no more that 400 bomber sorties per hex on any turn. Or you could say a maximum of two attacks of up to 200 bombers on any hex per turn.
Re: Soviet airforce is op [PBEM]
Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2025 4:31 pm
by Joel Billings
At this point, sounds like a house rule limiting GA sorties in a hex is the way to go.