Choosing fighter types

[eric_rocks]

Hi,

I am playing a game as the Soviets, and it is now 9/42. I have been producing YAK-7B's and I am trying to determine whether I should continue to produce these, or switch to either the LA-5 or the YAK-9?

I am having trouble (of course) with 190's. They are tough planes to go up against with any of these fighters. Which of these planes will perform the best against the 190?

Here are the stats for comparrison:

name............type....antiair.can.....load....end.....durab...cost....avail

Yak-9 0 21 6 8 20 20 4 10/42
La-5 0 21 5 13 11 25 4 9/42
Yak-7b 0 20 8 4 10 17 3 2/42

How important are anti-air, cannon, durability, load, and range? How does cost factor into this?

I use my fighters almost exclusively in a CAP role. Therefore, I don't believe range is that important because it is limited to 7 in this role.

Right now, I am inclined to stick with the YAK-7B's because I already have a pool of 1000+, so my air units get more replacements without an additional penalty to experience.

[JagdFlanker]

The way you explain it, I now think it's a great idea to stick with YaK-7b's until the La-7FN comes out in 3/43! In comparing fighters, what yer looking at mainly is antiair, and reallly there's not a huge diff between the Yak-7b and the YaK-9 (my choice of the 3). And another advantage for the 7b is you produce 25% more with it's lower cost than the 9, and the 7b's higher cannon means more damage to enemy bombers.

But it's not possible to keep producing 7b's unless you turn off the AI factory upgrade, which means you have to wait 4 weeks when you manually upgrade anything as opposed to the 1 week for auto upgrades. The Yak-7b does upgrade to the Yak-9 automatically with the AI, so upgrading to the better fighter would be made painless for ya if you choose that route. Plus the 1000 pool should keep your current 7b wings topped up while you upgrade older wings to the 9.

As for competing with the FW 190, the La-5FN in 3/43 is the first fighter to be equal in antiair, but i'm sure the German's high experience would negate that advantage in a big way. I would think the Red airforce really doean't stand a chance until large #'s of German fighter wings are diverted to the Reich to defend from the USAAF bomber raids.

[Tom1939]

Use la's just because they are fighter-bombers. Only air combat is not enough to hurt the luftwaffe. You should use at least 30 fighter bomber squadrons to destroy a single strong luftwaffe fleet positioned in a german hq. First you fly 3 missions with each 7 escorting and 1 bombing fighter bomber units (you will lose about 2:1, if experience is high enough), this should nearly eliminate german fighter presence to fly in escorted bombers. After all german fighters were eliminated use all bombers in range to destroy all possible german aircraft. Only this can you get near equal losses. Always try to get the initiative (?) in the air as well. It might be a bad tactic but it worked for me (only 7-8 fw units can stop this).

[Forward_March]

"Only air combat is not enough to hurt the luftwaffe. You should use at least 30 fighter bomber squadrons to destroy a single strong luftwaffe fleet positioned in a german hq. First you fly 3 missions with each 7 escorting and 1 bombing fighter bomber units (you will lose about 2:1, if experience is high enough), this should nearly eliminate german fighter presence to fly in escorted bombers. After all german fighters were eliminated use all bombers in range to destroy all possible german aircraft"

That one's hard to do if you're sticking to house rules. How many Russian players have have been less than happy about the above being used on them?

[Tom1939]

"Only air combat is not enough to hurt the luftwaffe. You should use at least 30 fighter bomber squadrons to destroy a single strong luftwaffe fleet positioned in a german hq. First you fly 3 missions with each 7 escorting and 1 bombing fighter bomber units (you will lose about 2:1, if experience is high enough), this should nearly eliminate german fighter presence to fly in escorted bombers. After all german fighters were eliminated use all bombers in range to destroy all possible german aircraft"

That one's hard to do if you're sticking to house rules. How many Russian players have have been less than happy about the above being used on them?

Well, I never played a game with house rules, and I don't remember the house rules. But I think the limit is on interdiction on a korps isn it? Maybe I'm wrong, but with max 3 attacks (or how many it was?) on hq's it would be quite sad first turn for the germans in 41 with half of the red air force surviving:)

[Tom1939]

I found the house rules, and number 2 says : 2 interdiction attacks from one hq to an enemy corps. So my tactic is even house rule friendly:)

[JagdFlanker]

I sorta use the same basic idea (with Germany) when trying to bomb important corps, just to wear down the Sov airforce before I let loose the bulk of my bombers. But it's irrelivant whether they are fighter/bombers or not since those initial strikes are not gonna bomb anything, and you can always interdict the HQ with fighters instead of using airfield attack. If you are using house rules then only 2 interdiction strikes may be made by each of your HQ's on his HQ, so in that case perhaps have 7-8 fighter wings and 1-2 bomber (or ftr/bmr) wings so you can do 1 airfield attack and 2 interdictions.

Overall, though, I find it hard to scrounge up 30 Sov fighter wings at anytime in the first 2 years since the German ftrs pretty much decimate any Sov opposition fast, esp in '42 when FW190's are swarming like flies over a dead bloated stinking body. Even this tactic can only really work for 1 turn since I'm sure most of your ftr wings would be ground to nothing and would have to retreat to regroup for a few months. But it's hard not wanting to inflict some damage to German airpower somehow seeing how the Luftwaffe dictates terms over the front until '43, so it's nice to be able to get a little revenge in there somehow.

[Tom1939]

I sorta use the same basic idea (with Germany) when trying to bomb important corps, just to wear down the Sov airforce before I let loose the bulk of my bombers. But it's irrelivant whether they are fighter/bombers or not since those initial strikes are not gonna bomb anything, and you can always interdict the HQ with fighters instead of using airfield attack. If you are using house rules then only 2 interdiction strikes may be made by each of your HQ's on his HQ, so in that case perhaps have 7-8 fighter wings and 1-2 bomber (or ftr/bmr) wings so you can do 1 airfield attack and 2 interdictions.

Overall, though, I find it hard to scrounge up 30 Sov fighter wings at anytime in the first 2 years since the German ftrs pretty much decimate any Sov opposition fast, esp in '42 when FW190's are swarming like flies over a dead bloated stinking body. Even this tactic can only really work for 1 turn since I'm sure most of your ftr wings would be ground to nothing and would have to retreat to regroup for a few months. But it's hard not wanting to inflict some damage to German airpower somehow seeing how the Luftwaffe dictates terms over the front until '43, so it's nice to be able to get a little revenge in there somehow.

Yes, I agree. No way to stay with the fw's and live:) Hit them and retreat, then do it again. 30 fighter wings are hard to arrange, but less has no real effect. Life is hard for the red air force. I use fighter-bombers and not bombers on this tactic to have 1 more fighting fighter unit, no other reason.

[eric_rocks]

Use la's just because they are fighter-bombers. Only air combat is not enough to hurt the luftwaffe. You should use at least 30 fighter bomber squadrons to destroy a single strong luftwaffe fleet positioned in a german hq. First you fly 3 missions with each 7 escorting and 1 bombing fighter bomber units (you will lose about 2:1, if experience is high enough), this should nearly eliminate german fighter presence to fly in escorted bombers. After all german fighters were eliminated use all bombers in range to destroy all possible german aircraft. Only this can you get near equal losses. Always try to get the initiative (?) in the air as well. It might be a bad tactic but it worked for me (only 7-8 fw units can stop this).

I don't think the LA-5 or the LA-5N are fighter bombers. At least not in WIR 3.3.

Please correct me if I am wrong, as I agree that fighter-bombers are much more useful.

I think the Yak 9T and the Lagg 3 are the only fighter bombers the Russians can produce.

[JagdFlanker]

Correct, but the Lagg is rather weak air combat wise compared to the Yak-1 and grows obsolete very quickly. But the Yak-9T has a VERY nice cannon and OK air combat, plus comes in after Germany has to start withdrawing air wings!

[Forward_March]

I found the house rules, and number 2 says : 2 interdiction attacks from one hq to an enemy corps. So my tactic is even house rule friendly:)

So, the rules allow one to bomb enemy airfields as many times as one wants?

What's the general consensus?

[JagdFlanker]

To be polite I always expanded that rule for myself to 'each HQ may make two attacks per mission per target', so that any HQ may not make more than 2 airfield attacks per enemy HQ, hence my suggestion above about 1 HQ doing 2 airfield attacks and 1 interdict on 1 enemy HQ to draw the enemy fighters out.

But by lorenzo's current rules, only interdiction attacks have limits.

[K62_]

The main task of Soviet fighters is to shoot down German bombers. Their most important rating is cannon. The upgrade sequence I'm using is Yak1 -> Yak7b -> Yak9t. Hurricanes are also great but you'll never have them in numbers.