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ORIGINAL: Bletchley_Geek
On my answer to Eduhausser I've been discussing several hypothesis:
1. During the first 8 turns of the campaign my opponent intensively used and almost exclusively hasty attacks. This generated a very high number of attacks per turn, which were dutifully supported by the Luftwaffe in the role of air artillery. My hypothesis is that such an accelerated pace of operations saturated and finally broke Luftwaffe ground support and logistics.
2. Maybe, as Eduhausser notes, he modified Air Doctrine to maximize air support, which interacted in a perverse way with 1.
3. The mass concentration of the VVS on his axis of advance exposed the Luftwaffe to a greater attrition, either due to air combat, planes which were damaged and fatigue.
4. Because of 1, 2 and 3 it's very likely that most of his airbases were full with planes under repair. Due to the pace of advance he has achieved so far, he's been moving his airbases every two turns or so, without first moving the squadrons to the National Reserve. If I recall it correctly, there's a chance that planes under repair are abandoned when the airbase moves.

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ORIGINAL: BigAnorak
For much of the testing process Axis air attrition was too low, and they were often going in into the 1942 campaign season with 1000 more planes than they had historically. Changes were made late in the process, and it looks like the overall loss numbers are in line, but Stuka losses do look very high.

The air model is being reviewed, as is the air doctrine screen to hopefully make it clearer as to what the numbers mean.

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can basically forgo air attrition or at least it feels like they can.

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ORIGINAL: BigAnorak

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can basically forgo air attrition or at least it feels like they can.

Their operational losses were increased even more that the Axis were - historically 50% of Soviet air losses were operational/training related.

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Could someone explain to me how the precentage figures work in the air doctrine screen? I mean, 300% is the maximum so what figure I should use to commit only half of my operational air force to fly missions.

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ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000

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Could someone explain to me how the precentage figures work in the air doctrine screen? I mean, 300% is the maximum so what figure I should use to commit only half of my operational air force to fly missions.

To address this question directly:
The Percent Required to Fly (PRTF) setting determines if any given air unit is going to fly or not. If a 150 plane unit only has 75 ready planes, and your PRTF is set to 60%, they won't go.

Setting this higher than 100% will generally mean that your air force will not fly any missions.

The individual mission settings determines how many planes will be flown by a unit (provided its PRTF makes it eligible for the mission). If a 150 plane unit has 100 ready planes, and your PRTF is set to 60%, then the plane unit will go. If your individual mission setting is set to 40%, then 40 out of the 100 ready planes will fly the mission.

Setting this to a high percentage will obviously mean getting more planes in the air, but your air units will also be worn out quicker, since more planes might be shot down, more planes might become operational losses, and planes will incur more fatigue from flying so many sorties. I believe the game is capable of modeling a 100 plane unit only flying each plane once if you order 2 missions at a 50% mission setting.

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Air doctrine screen has a Ground Support On/Off switch.
??

Where is this switch?

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ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000

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Air doctrine screen has a Ground Support On/Off switch.
??

Where is this switch?

Pressing 'X' on the keyboard will toggle Ground Support on and off. Useful if you want to make attacks without involving your planes, then turning it on for a more crucial attack.