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PMCN -> RE: Air War (need help) (2/8/2012 12:39:50 PM)
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I am playing on the other side but I can make a few comments that might help.
I would adjust your doctrines so that you fly less planes more often, since the primary effect of air attacks is disruption. So drop the bombers flown to 30% and the fighters to 50% in ground support/ground attack. Keep air field attacks at 100% bombers and boost the fighters up to 110-120% to give yourself good coverage. You can likely drop intercepts down to 75% as your planes and pilots are better so you can do more with less. Interdiction I would set at 50% bombers and 50% fighters.
One thing to realize is that there is a few glitches in the report from air attacks. You have to destroy something before anything shows up in the losses window (this is a bug). That means if you damage 5 items nothing is likely to show up (unless you damage 2 of one thing then it shows up as 1 loss). Also disruption effects from air attacks can be significant, plus a dedicated air strike will reduce the supply level of the unit hit by it (I see the color of their supply triangle drop). Interdiction seems to be toned down a lot, from what I can see it no longer clobbers the unit into the stone age, but it is still worth doing. Also hitting a dug in target isn't going to do a lot of damage compared to one in lower entrenchment levels. You should up your reporting level of air attacks to 4 or 5 and watch several of them to get a feel for what your air force is doing.
You also want to use your transports to move fuel and supplies to your forward units.
I am unsure of the value of city bombing but if you see a high value target why not? You will pull his fighters up to intercept so it should be a net win on your part. But I would never send in un-escorted bombers. The AI does that from time to time and my planes have a field day. Even I-115 and I-16's are dangerous to unescorted He's and Ju's.
I would only bomb russian heavy bombers though. Production of IL-2's and in general russian fighter-bombers is so high you can't attrition them down easily after jan 42. Before that I would hit loaded airfields, but my experience is pick one airfield and hit it hard rather than trying to spread the joy around. Flak losses though seem fairly high and I'm not sure it is really worth it.
Lastly you have a number of night bomber groups that you can use to harrass units, I'd throw them into the fray at night and you should score minor but steady destruction of guns and men. Just be advised that a lot of hits will be on support squads.
Hope this gives you something to work with.
I have a question of my own. I used to do relatively well in night attacks on German air fields but as of the last few attempts my planes were rather heavily engaged by flak and didn't accomplish much in the way of bombing runs. Is that due to some change in the mechanics over the last patches since 1.02 or so?
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