Graymane
Posts: 520
Joined: 3/31/2005 From: Bellevue, NE Status: offline
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Air Planning Continued or Still fumbling with the bra strap for the first time So now we get down to the nuts and bolts of planning missions for the first turn. I've already decided (unless someone posts before I've finished the turn telling me I'm crazy) to send all the bombers in the same formation to a target(s) and rotate entire formations for rest/reserve at the korps level. Next thing I have to do is look at targets and missions. The missions are bombing, sweeps and recon. There are also night missions. I would also include feints and decoys (not sure if that is two missions or one =). According the manual, it would appear that recon is important. Looking at my targets, most are at the 30+ day for last photo. My first question is should I recon before the raid or after? I think I will recon early in the morning where I want to attack as well as some decoy areas to not give away my main effort. I have recon planes, I have the recon missions, seems simple no? I will probably have the AI do it and then just adjust the missions to what I actually want reconned. Now, my little problem is how long after that should I send my next mission? Recon Wins Battles Or What general Custer didn't know did hurt him In the other games that I play with a decent air focus (HOI, WITP-AE), intel is important. In HOI, it tells you where stuff is, it WITP-AE, it knocks the detection levels up and helps you figure out what is there and increases your chance of hitting the target. I think it is the same here. We are expending lots of money and lives, so lets give ourselves the best chance. My next thought is that if flying a lot reduces readiness (or whatever it is called in this game), how can I get the bad guys to fly when they don't really need to? I'm thinking I could use my low experience and/or resting units to perform feint missions early in the morning to get the UK to scramble their fighters. I'm hoping if I set a target over the water, it will actually not bomb. I will probably have to do some research to see if I can just send planes toward the coast and then turn them back. I'm also not sure if this matters for fatigue. If I'm resting units but flying a feint/decoy is as fatiquing as a real mission, then I'll have to think of something else. This whole "foreplay" before the main even is similar to SPWAW I find. There you have recon battles to limit your opponents knowledge of your intentions. The person that wins the recon battle almost always wins the main battle. So, I know I'm going to recon and I'm going to feint. The feints are to get fighters up and running. I will use the word decoy for when I carry out a similar mission at the same time as the main effort and feint for doing it long before. Fighter Sweeps Next, I think about what else I do in my other games in the air war. In both HOI and WITP-AE, I run missions over enemy air space and air fields to gain superiority. They have different names and mechanics in those games, but the idea is to kill the fighters or at least keep them from the area. That seems to be fighter sweeps in this game. What I'm wondering, and I'm sure it is in the manual and mentioned but I've forgotten, is if there is a difference in alt for sweeps when over an AF. i.e., if the target is an AF, will it always strafe regardless of alt or do I have to set it? If it is NOT over an AF, will enemy fighters even engage it? Oh well, back to the search tool. My biggest problem is lack of intel. I have no idea if I need to sweep or not cause I have no idea on numbers. I also don't know how many fighters I need for a sweep. When I select the mission, I pick a lead group but what if I want more to go? Do I need a new mission or can I just use "Add Escorts"? Finally, why should I sweep instead of just escort? In other games, you get various stacking penalties under various different names/guises, so by sweeping, you can get a ton of fighters into the area and fight it out. So given all that, I still don't know whether to sweep or not. Bombing Targets or What was the point of playing this again? So next we have to bomb stuff. I'm sure that is a technical term somewhere. My problem is, there is a lot of stuff to bomb and a lot of different kinds of stuff. More stuff than the other games where I've bombed stuff. Of course, that is to be expected from a bombing stuff game. For my purposes, I'm going to say you can bomb factories (including ports/RR), AFs, and radar sites. I'll skip troops for now. We need to bomb industry without losing our entire AF. To do that, we need to win AS. To do that, we need to kill his fighters or render them less effective. We can render them less effective by bombing AFs to reduce service and comm. We can also render them less effective by bombing radar sites. This makes him react more slowly and keep more aircraft in a higher state of readiness. All-in-all, it allows us to get inside his command loop to where he won't be able to react effective. So, for this effort, I would first want to win AS. To do that, I need a combination of fighter sweeps and AF/Radar attacks. Long term, damaging industry will also reduce his ability to have effective fighters, but for now, this is the quickest way. Clearly, the main effort is going to be London and the surrounding vicinity. Special care, however, must be taken to not damage Upton Park this time around, or there will be consequences. Generally, when I'm faced with a really big map and a lot of units, I find it helps to have a routine for moving around the map and units. I haven't discovered it yet for this game, but for now, I'll start at the edges and work my way in. The reason being is that there are fewer target choices for units in Norway, for example. So planning those is going to be easier. Then by the time I get to the middle, I will have more manageable choices. So, for my overall plan, my main effort will be from the Dover to London area for now targeting energy and dock facilities at first. Why? because energy seems to have the most impact on stuff and docks are close by for secondary targets. Secondary efforts with be Southampton and Ipswich areas as they will be close enough (I hope) to draw fighter cover from the main area. In Norway, it will be whatever I can reach from there, I haven't checked yet. Probably that area of Northern England called Scotland ( if that doesn't get a response nothing will). Aberdeen? Edinburgh? So, for force allocations, if you will recall, I have roughly 10 KG and 3-4 JG/ZG to allocate for missions. Assuming (because I haven't actually checked locations on everything) 2 raids per secondary target, that leaves about 6 for the main effort. Assuming at least 1 JG/ZG per secondary area, that leaves 2 for the main effort. Already if feels like I'm spread too thin
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< Message edited by Graymane -- 1/19/2010 8:19:11 PM >
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