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Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 12:50:12 AM   
TheFerret

 

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Okay, so what exactly drives aircraft ops losses, and what can I do to bring them down? What is a reasonable and sustainable ops tempo for each air force?

On turn 14, I ran 1 mission per night for 7 nights against the port in Odessa (so less than the default "low" intensity for a one-hex Bomb City AD) in clear weather and had the following losses, 100% ops losses:

N1: 69 escorts, 122 level bombers sortied; 11 escorts, 29 level bombers lost
N2: 28 escorts, 135 level bombers sortied; 5 escorts, 30 level bombers lost
N3: 23 escorts, 110 level bombers sortied; 4 escorts, 14 level bombers lost
N4: 46 escorts, 67 level bombers sortied; 7 escorts, 14 level bombers lost
N5: 20 escorts, 53 level bombers sortied; 7 escorts, 7 level bombers lost
N6: 16 escorts, 46 level bombers sortied; 4 escorts, 14 level bombers lost
N7: 12 escorts, 24 level bombers sortied; 0 escorts, 6 level bombers lost

Total: 428 escort, 557 level bombers sortied; 38 escorts, 114 level bombers lost

That seems... excessive? Especially since none of the 557 bombers managed to hit the port...

I'd hate to see what would happen if I set the default "high" intensity of several missions per day. Odessa would be buried under the smoking remains of the entire Luftwaffe!

Thanks!
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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 1:15:09 AM   
fritzfarlig


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Are yours airbases overstacked ?

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 1:25:59 AM   
M60A3TTS


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Honestly, the option is in the game to fly missions 7 days a week, but that's like saying you can do 200mph in a Ferrari on the Interstate. Yes you can do it, but there's a fair chance it doesn't end well. In terms of how this plays out in the air war, you are running the units into the ground.

Regardless of days, distance matters. The farther you fly, the more likely you take ops losses.

I don't fly more than 3 days a week generally. If I am hitting multiple targets in a small area, I may set some missions to Days 1,3,5 while another group does Days 2,4,6 and a third might do 1,4,7. In that way my units only fly 3 days, while any defending fighters might end up flying all 7. Then their ops losses can start to rise.

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 7:31:45 AM   
Repsol

 

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Fatigue does not really seem to be the deciding factor here...As percentually the ops losses seesm to be at its highest during the initial few days...



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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 7:37:45 AM   
Repsol

 

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would making 2 or 3 seperate directives targeted at the same location make any difference i wounder ?
Each directive containing fewer aircrafts ? but the total sum of attacking aircraft would still be the same...
Or perhaps otherwise manually restricting the number of aircrafts taking part in each strike (in the same directive).
The high initial number of aircrafts doing the first two strikes seems to be an issiue...

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 7:38:36 AM   
ast95

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Repsol

As percentually the ops losses seesm to be at its highest during the initial few days...




That's okay. More ready crafts&pilots => more sorties => more losses. More losses => less flights next day (whith same support and infrastucture and more expirience) => less op losses.

And some Darwin's natural selection, of course.

< Message edited by ast95 -- 4/2/2021 7:40:55 AM >

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 10:46:41 AM   
dudefan

 

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My testing resulted that the amount of ops losses is higher if more Missions are flown per day compared to the amount of days per week. So it is better to fly one mission per day than 3 missions for 3 days. But further testing is needed.

And of course distance to target is a huge factor

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 11:22:45 AM   
Dreamslayer

 

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Best way to reduce operational losses is to delete all air directives and let your planes sit on the ground. In my last test I used Air Superiority - 90 sorties and 6 ops losses. I think this is best solution before we can get ops losses fix patch.

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 12:00:56 PM   
loki100


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Dreamslayer

Best way to reduce operational losses is to delete all air directives and let your planes sit on the ground. In my last test I used Air Superiority - 90 sorties and 6 ops losses. I think this is best solution before we can get ops losses fix patch.


I'd say the operational losses are working as designed. Push your aircraft to their limit and ops losses go up, fly in poor weather and ops losses go up. Make sure you don't overcommit and generally ops losses stay low

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 12:14:36 PM   
Speedysteve

 

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Wouldn’t the fact of night bombing (vs day) also cause a higher loss rate along with experience level?

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 12:29:46 PM   
Dreamslayer

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: loki100
I'd say the operational losses are working as designed. Push your aircraft to their limit and ops losses go up, fly in poor weather and ops losses go up. Make sure you don't overcommit and generally ops losses stay low

Ok. It was one of the groups of JG 54 on T1 RtL. Its about 35 fighters group that had a schedule D1-3-5 and limited by 30 a/c. So 3 days with 1 day for rest between, 30 fighters - 90 sorties for the week = 1 sortie per plane on mission day. And no any contacts with Soviet planes. And 6 ops losses + 2 damaged planes.
If its a real challenge for LuftWaffe in the 1941 summer then I don't know...

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 1:24:52 PM   
joelmar


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This is WitE 2. Ops Losses are am important part of the game for the moment.

The Axis player must learn economy if he wishes to still have an air force by the end of summer.

Use the LW on shortest ranges as possible.

Beware of the intensity parameter, it's a kind of Ops Losses dial!

Use the LW as an hammer to hit hard where it is really important. GS by example has to be turned on and off and be aware what plane will fly from where when GS is used. One thing I do to limit that is I set all my bombers to REST and I turn only the ones I want to fly to "Day" or "Day or night" when I need them. I've had a few black eyes before learning that with bombers flying from very far to GS and suffering very high ops losses

I don't use Air superiority, it's the best way to wipe out one's own fighter arm before the end of summer 1941.



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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 4:08:10 PM   
M60A3TTS


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Also, at the risk of stating the obvious, the Luftwaffe gets replacement aircraft and pilots. In the winter in severe weather you shouldn't fly much and can boost your air numbers that way. Ops losses is not going to destroy your air force if you can get out of the WiTE mindset of attacking every ground target with air support. Take the opportunity to be selective. If you are going to drive off a pesky security regiment, why should you call in valuable Stukas to help do it? In 1942 I think it was, Richtofen complained at one point that the Luftwaffe units in his air corps were constantly being called in to deal with enemy forces and the ground commanders were relying on air support too much. That should tell you something.

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RE: Managing aircraft ops losses? - 4/2/2021 4:37:36 PM   
joelmar


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quote:

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

Also, at the risk of stating the obvious, the Luftwaffe gets replacement aircraft and pilots. In the winter in severe weather you shouldn't fly much and can boost your air numbers that way. Ops losses is not going to destroy your air force if you can get out of the WiTE mindset of attacking every ground target with air support. Take the opportunity to be selective. If you are going to drive off a pesky security regiment, why should you call in valuable Stukas to help do it? In 1942 I think it was, Richtofen complained at one point that the Luftwaffe units in his air corps were constantly being called in to deal with enemy forces and the ground commanders were relying on air support too much. That should tell you something.


+1

Another point that is worth mentionning is get rid of drop tanks and don't use them unless absolutely necessary for an important mission. Those are Ops losses uppers, which makes sense. If you are straining an airplane with extra weight, you should expect to have more mechanical problems.

In the initial setup of 22 june 1941, you have quite a few stuka and Bf110 that have them, but they're not even necessary if you make sure those airgroups hit nearby airbases only. So I get rid of them first thing at the beginning of that turn. But I also change all the ADs so I'm not 100% positive what is the effect of that on the default setup. Though I don't think it would change the nb of enemy kills that much, but will definitely be smoother on your precious dive bombers and bf100s.

That said, turn 1 bombings should also be approached with a different mindset than in WitE 1, first you'll never get as many kills as in WitE1. Second, it is more efficient to limit the kills on the ground to nearby airbases (priority to fighters) to limit the air mileage and Ops Losses, and then rely on auto intercept and GS during the ground phase to get the kill numbers up to 4000-4500 by the end of the turn, considering that rebasing fighter airgroups to newly captured forward airbases is usually efficient to get supplies and air support on turn 1 because there is plenty of supplies in depots that are not too far behind and the truck pool is high (use "Resupply airbase" if necessary).

And that is even without considering HardLuckYetAgain's ideas in his "Der schreie der verstorbenen soldaten, HLYA(G) vs Gunnulf(S)" AAR.

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