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Opening week air war numbers - 3/29/2021 5:19:21 PM

Bronze

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I am suffering 5 times (837) the number the Germans suffered opening week while inflicting less casualties (3,444FOW, 3,882 w/o FOW) - is this me and if so what should I be doing differently? I am clearing all the bases within striking distance and hitting some runways with tanks. 65 of these casualties are axis allies and 81 recon. 417 are air combat losses which seems rather high as at the end my transports use all their travel time with no interceptions occurring.

Even more concerning and perplexing I suffer 834 pilots killed to 837 planes lost...... Did I miss the equip pilots with parachute button?

< Message edited by Bronze -- 3/29/2021 5:23:09 PM >

Post #: 1

RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/29/2021 5:22:48 PM

821Bobo

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From: Slovakia
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Bombers will get shot down without escort and flying every day ground attack will result in high ops losses. These are two most probable causes of your high losses.

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RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/29/2021 5:25:50 PM

Bronze

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Agreed - only having them fly 3-4 days though. 240 of these are fighter losses, mostly in A2A combat.

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RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/29/2021 5:40:02 PM

Repsol

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In what order are you attacking these airbases ? I think this matters quite alot...

I don't know if this is the right way to do it but something like this seems fine to me...

- V high prio...frontline airbases with good enemy fighters
- high prio...frontline airbases with older enemy fighters
- normal prio...further away fighter bases (good planes first and then older planes)
- low prio...enemy bomber and utility bases...

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RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/29/2021 5:43:44 PM

821Bobo

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Bronze

Agreed - only having them fly 3-4 days though. 240 of these are fighter losses, mostly in A2A combat.

This is definitely abnormal. LW fighters have no problems to massacre Soviets. Are you sure those are A2A losses and not ops? Screenshot of such encounter will help.

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Post #: 5

RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/29/2021 10:47:44 PM

Bronze

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Listed as "Air combat losses" under the air losses tab. Should there really be such a profound interception on the first 3 days of war? And what's with the 99.9% ration of pilots lost with their planes? A

< Message edited by Bronze -- 3/29/2021 10:50:21 PM >

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RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/30/2021 12:03:03 AM

Sammy5IsAlive

Posts: 514
Joined: 8/4/2014
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Bronze

I am suffering 5 times (837) the number the Germans suffered opening week while inflicting less casualties (3,444FOW, 3,882 w/o FOW) - is this me and if so what should I be doing differently? I am clearing all the bases within striking distance and hitting some runways with tanks. 65 of these casualties are axis allies and 81 recon. 417 are air combat losses which seems rather high as at the end my transports use all their travel time with no interceptions occurring.

Even more concerning and perplexing I suffer 834 pilots killed to 837 planes lost...... Did I miss the equip pilots with parachute button?

Hi Bronze,

Those losses do seem high.

My suggestion when you see losses like that is to do a 2-step process. Firstly look at the breakdown of loss cause. If there are lots of ops losses then you are probably pushing the air forces too hard, whether it be by asking them to do too many missions, sending them out to the limits of their range or in the case of the fighters fitting drop tanks which seems to really increase their ops losses.

If you are seeing lots of air combat losses then you need to do step 2. If you go to the Air Directive Summary screen once you move into the ground phase you should be able to examine the different ADs (and the different missions within those ADs) and identify the ones that have had the most losses. You can then click into the battle screens for the different missions and try and work out what has happened.

One thing that I'd suggest double checking, further to what Bobo has said about unescorted bombers. If you leave ground support switched on all the way through your T1 ground phase I think there is a strong possibility that your bombers will commit without fighter escort to some of the 'deeper' battles that your Panzers are conducting at the edge of their movement. Two obvious examples would be the attacks you make on Riga/Minsk - I think both of those attacks are close enough to Soviet airbases that likely escaped the air phase fairly unscathed and will be able to put up enough fighters to really shred unescorted bomber formations. I think that's a principle that holds true in subsequent turns also - the long range of the Ju-88s combined with the short range of the fighters means you have to be really careful with the Ground Support button. At the moment I take the simple approach of making sure it is turned it off as the first and last thing I do each turn. I'll only switch it on if I know a battle is crucial or there is the opportunity to really cripple a strong Soviet unit and each time I switch it on the next thing I'll do is check that I have fighters in range (simple way to do this is to click into your fighter AOGs and make sure you have 'range circles' ticked). Obviously as the front line settles down a bit and your fighters move forward you can afford to be a bit more relaxed about doing that check.

EDIT - re. the pilot losses see the other thread - that is something the Devs are aware of and are monitoring.

< Message edited by Sammy5IsAlive -- 3/30/2021 12:04:41 AM >

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RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/30/2021 12:52:35 AM

AdmiralHalsey

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I have similar loses. This is the default combat performance of the AI Air assist on the first turn.

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RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/30/2021 12:57:48 AM

Bamilus

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Default AI orders are bad, especially in the south where they have huge radius ground attack missions well outside of escort range. The simplest fix is to adjust the location/radius of the airbase ground attack missions so that most/all of the hexes are shown as green. The green is escort range, purple is unescorted range. This will give you about 200 losses vs 2k-2.5k soviet losses and takes about 1 minute. You of course can do more manual adjustments to get even better, but this is a huge improvement over the default AI.

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RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/30/2021 1:01:41 AM

Erik Rutins

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It's always possible to optimize furtherr with manual directives, but I have to say having played a campaign with the full AI air assist, all I did was pay some attention to when I was getting out of fighter range and not over-use ground support and across the campaign it did quite well overall.

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Post #: 10

RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/30/2021 1:23:53 AM

carlkay58

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All of the air forces in both WitW and WitE2 are far more robust than players think they are. I have lost over 14K aircraft as the Soviets in 41 and STILL was able to max out all of the squadrons and AOGs by the end of November 41. I will grant that the pilots were just at the NM level but they gain experience and morale quickly in the Reserve Box and then can be deployed onto the map.

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RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/30/2021 1:33:41 AM

Bronze

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The point I am failing to convey is these are on missions set to bomb airfields on days 1-3 of the 1st week - there was virtually no air resistance on the first 3 days of the war and I am getting relatively slaughtered in A2A combat...

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Post #: 12

RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/30/2021 2:02:23 AM

Sammy5IsAlive

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So I just loaded the campaign and ran the air phase immediately with no changes.

I got 334 losses vs 2567 on the Soviet side.

Of the Axis losses 84 were Recon planes which are not needed on that turn - I'd suggest that when there is the chance to revisit the 'default' ADs the recon ones are got rid of.

In terms of the airfield attacks there were heavy losses in unescorted bomber attacks on
Kaunas 27 Axis losses vs 19 Soviet
Kolosovka 21 vs 30
Novogrod-Volynsky 31 vs 44
Chernovtsy 50 vs 51

So my input would be...

Cancel the recon missions

Only fly on D1 (i.e. leave it at as set with the default AI directives.). As per the manual you get a big bonus on D1 that is lost on subsequent days.

Tweak the GA ADs so they are not picking up those airbases outside of escort range (note that on my test there were a number of unescorted missions that suffered few losses - the one you want to avoid are the fighter bases outside of your own fighter range).

As discussed above be careful with how you use GS in your movement phase so you are not calling unescorted bombers into battles close to active Soviet fighter support.

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Post #: 13

RE: Opening week air war numbers - 3/30/2021 2:11:02 AM

TheFerret

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On those GA ADs, turning partial escorts ("Partial ESC") off should prevent them from flying outside escort range, right?

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Post #: 14