Bug with tactical support?

[kklemmick]

So I've been running into this situation over and over in Warplan, where a ground attack/close support air unit set to full support, does not actually support attacks within its range. This has been happening primarily with games I'm playing as the Allies, but I've also seen it in games as the Axis. As a side note, it seems like the tactical air groups take priority over the ground attack groups when determining which air group to support an attack, which seems completely backwards IMO.

I need to play with this more to get more details on this bug, but it's happened enough times here I'm sure there is something broken here. Has anyone else run into this?

It's to the point where I won't even bother building ground attack air groups as the allies, because I've yet to see them actually support an attack.

[Platoonist]

Can't say I've seen this, but most of the time I'm an attrition-mission only bomber.

[ncc1701e]

I am not sure that tactical air groups take priority over the ground attack groups. The way the game works is that it is selecting the air units in full support based on their effectiveness level. The higher, the better.

Since ground attack groups have short range, they are moving often to be in range and hence are losing tons of effectiveness. Your tactical air groups with better range must have better effectiveness level. And thus, they are the first selected.

That is also the reason why I hate to use Interceptors. Escort fighters have a much better range. And at the end of the day they perform better because of their higher effectiveness. They don't have to move whereas Interceptors with their low range are moving often.

[stjeand]

Well as the Allies I have no ground attack and rarely create them...

but I have not seen them experience this issue so long as they have the effectiveness and are set to ground not naval support.

[kklemmick]

Well in this case no aircraft are supporting the attack (because the ground attack group is the only one in range), even though it's in range, has decent efficiency and is set to full support. It's not happening with my German ground attack groups, it seems to be something unique to the Allies/UK.

I normally don't build ground attack groups with the UK, but I have in a couple of games and I'm seeing the same problem in both. I will try to take some screen shots next time to show why this isn't working.

[stjeand]

It is set to ground not naval correct?

There was a change to make it so that naval would not support ground.

[Nirosi]

It is set to ground not naval correct?

There was a change to make it so that naval would not support ground.

Are you sure about that. From what I see they still seem to do it.

[stjeand]

Are you sure about that. From what I see they still seem to do it.

I remember asking for this...because the French fleet used to go suck up German air units by just moving into range and 1 hex over and over...you do that with a few battleships and you will shoot down a bunch of German air for basically no losses.
I know it was working in the past...NOW I want to test again.

So it was requested that...

Ground support ONLY ground
Naval support ONLY naval
Strategic support BOTH ground and naval

PERHAPS it was only for defense...but I forget.
Then again it may have changed.

I know in WPP this is not the case.

[Nirosi]

Are you sure about that. From what I see they still seem to do it.

.

Ground support ONLY ground
Naval support ONLY naval
Strategic support BOTH ground and naval

That would be nice!

[stjeand]

So I ran a test...

Ground, Strategic and Airfield will NOT attack naval units moving if on full support. This fixed the French naval air hunt which was good.

Naval will support naval intercepts and ground for attack and defense.
Strategic will support for ground attack or defense.
Airfield will support for ground attack or defense.


I wish more for what I requested to be honest that way you can say I want to intercept naval but not support ground.
Ground units can attack and take away naval intercept which is too bad.

Maybe in WP2 or the future.


THOUGH in this I did test ground attack and they supported with no problems.

Only reasons I can think they would not?

Range?
Not on full support?
Less than 50% efficiency?
Less than 10 aircraft?

All this is guess work though.

[kklemmick]

So I 100% agree that the settings are completely non-intuitive.

I generally set most of my tactical air to intercept naval, because I want everything that can fly to hit any transports coming towards my beaches, but it's odd that these do support ground attacks. OTOH, if I set something to ground, it doesn't hit naval as well, so what gives there?

I think it's more difficult than it sounds to come up with a good approach here. Generally speaking, I want everything that CAN to take a shot at something that happens on the other player's move, because a shot is better than nothing. OTOH, I want to be in control of what happens on my move - I might want to save specific bombers for strategic bombing or whatever. So if it were up to me I'd do the following:

1) Have the best full support air that is capable of a mission fly that mission on the other player's turn. Does not use operation points.
2) On the player's turn, use only those air that are set to full support fly a support mission.

With those two rules you could avoid the whole "role" thing entirely. All air responds, if it is set to full support. On your turn you can precisely control what responds by selecting full support or manual. I think this would vastly simplify this situation without causing all the confusion that happens now.

That said, currently for the allies the ground support aircraft are simply broken. I can't get them to work in any full support situation.

[Nirosi]

OTOH, if I set something to ground, it doesn't hit naval as well, so what gives there?

IIRC (but I might not as I am getting old) it used to do both (naval and ground) and could not be changed by the player. Alvaro made that change because some players where using ships to "absorb" ground support options (I was a requested change by players). But he did still want to keep the original "do all option" which became the naval intercept setting. Of course now one can instead "absorb" naval interceptions by doing ground attack in the same range. Overall it was an improvement, but it can still be improved.

I remember stjeand making the same suggestion as he did on this post when the change was originally made, but for some reason it was never implemented as such. I can only hope it will eventualy be...

[kklemmick]

Yeah, I figured there was probably some playtesting history that lead to this, but whatever the reason the way it works currently is extremely unintuitive. Having naval and ground options would make sense if they ONLY did those options in either case AND had an "all" option as well, but the way it works now where naval is the "all" option is extremely hard to grasp. And the fact it doesn't work at all in my experience for UK air ground support units is of course broken. If/when I get some time I'll do a hot swap game and get more data, but for the moment it looks like building ground support units as the UK is a terrible option.