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decourcy2 -> RE: Incredible game but feeling slightly lost (1/31/2015 4:55:53 PM)
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The AD's are definitely a useful start. The first turn is a bad turn for micromanaging but after the first turn that problem goes away.
Start by looking at your missions that the game generated for you, your AD's.
You will see something like 3 bombing missions from Bomber Command at various cities in Germany. On the right side of the screen showing your missions you will see a list of the aircraft in Bomber Command and you will see very few night fighters.
The first micro you HAVE to do is moving fighters in particular to forward airfields and adjusting your air headquarters. Most of your night fighters are in Fighter Command. I suggest moving all of the Mosquitoes to Bomber Command so they can escort your night bombers.
Now look at 'area' in the instructions for each mission it gives you. This is how many hexes around the central target hex the computer will try to perform the mission. This is incredibly important to change. Interdiction, recon, and air superiority have reasons to be in multiple hexes, strategic bombing missions in particular do not EVER want to have an area larger than zero. You will be torn up by flak if your heavy bombers just wander around Germany looking for targets.
Sometimes the automatic AD creator does not take advantage of all of the aircraft an air force has available. For example, Bomber Command may have some recon aircraft but the AD creator may not create a recon mission.
When you see your directive it will look something like this...
Bomb City
Bomb City
Bomb City
Bomb City >>>>
The first three are missions that are planned, the bottom button is how you add new missions. Click that button, now look on your top bar and click the directive type you want for this mission, for example 'recon'. That will create a new recon mission that you will choose a target for, and for something like recon i suggest a 6 hex area, depending on how many aircraft you have available.
Now days to fly. If you are clicked on a mission within an air directive you will see at the bottom of the mission details a line that says 'advanced options'. That is the easiest way of seeing what days a mission will fly. I suggest recon fly 1-3-5-7, with 1 and 7 being the most important. I will often make a bomber group fly one mission 2-4-6, while another strike from the same group would use 3-5-7.
Recon missions are critical for your strategic bombers to hit their targets and for your tactical air to know, for example, what air bases are full of German fighters. So recon has to be done on the first and last day at least.
Level bombers can be turned into extra naval patrol missions. For Example Malta command has one squadron of Baltimore light bombers, i create a naval patrol mission with Malta command and that squadron happily flies about helping out my naval interdiction.
Figuring out how many days you can fly without over fatiguing your pilots is art not science. Honestly, just run a couple turns and watch what happens with various amounts of days flown.
And fighter bombers do need escorts. I lost 151 Typhoons the first week thinking Typhoons don't really need escorts, their fighters, right? Yeah, it was bad. Fighter Command has buckets of Spitfires doing nothing but drinking tea, put some of them in the same HQ, say RAF 2nd TAF, as your Tiffies.
Hope some of this helps, ask any other questions you have as well.
Mike
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