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Dinglir -> The early air war (11/5/2017 1:39:07 PM)
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I will start this thread by a clear statement: In my experience, the air war in 1941 is heavily biased in favor of the Soviets.
Disclaimer: The following is written based on the assumption that the Soviet player is both capable and willing to micromanage his airforce. If not, the Axis player will effectively be playing the air war against the AI, and should be able to gain the upper hand.
Looking at the historical situation, the Soviet airforce had serious problems figting the Luftwaffe in the early war. in 1941, the Luftwaffe was basically able to concentrate their resources over the critical sectors and gain local air superiority. For instance, in early september 1941, at the beginning of the battle of Leningrad, the Luftwaffe actually had numerical supriority over the Red Army air forces in that critical sector.
In the sectors where the Luftwaffe was not concentrated, the Soviets often had virtual air supremacy, such as in the later parts of the battle for Leningrad, when the Germans had transferred their airforces to fight over Moscow. But where the Luftwaffe went, they could gain air superiority (but never air supremacy).
In 1942, the situation was much the same. For instance, at the opening day of the actual attack on Stalingrad in late 1942, the Germans flew some 1500 sorties for the loss of two machines. It was not until the battles of Kursk and the Kuban bridgehead in 1943 that the Soviets were able to gain parity in the air.
In this game, the Luftwaffe will often be forced to fight defensively for the preservation of their strength, already from september or october 1941. So what is wrong?
Starting Experience
In 1941 most Soviet pilots had had very little training with the machines they were to fly against the Germans. For instance, one of the few Air Groups having received the IL-2 had only had time to practise takeoffs and landings and had never actuially practised combat in the planes they were issued. Few of the pilots had ever seen an RS-82 rocket they were now to use against the Germans. In fact, the Red Army doctrine dictated that the will of the proletariat would overcome all obstacles. As a result, it was better to have your men attend political rallies than actually training them for war. The latter was seen as an attempt to create an "elite" which was quite anti revolutionary. The officer purges of the 30's were very much still a factor at this time. I take this to state that the starting experience of Soviet Air Groups is way higher in this game than it should be based on actual history.
Experience gain
As has been proven by HardLuck (and myself) in many of his games, the capable Soviet player can fairly easily build up Air Group experience over the first few weeks of the war. Having an Air Group gain one or even two experience points pr turn is certainly not that difficult. What you basically have to do is to adopt a "fly and die" strategy, where you simply accept very high losses. You have the aircraft to spare, and your Air Group will gain experience from the combat. But historically, Soviet replacement pilots never had more than perhaps 10 or 12 flying hours behind them before reaching the front, and often none of them in the aircraft they were to fly against the Germans. Thus replacement pilot experience should be very low. German replacement pilots had 100's of flying hours and a far better training.
So, in game terms, a replacement pilot should not come with more than perhaps 15 or so experience points. Let us imagine an Air Group of 16 aircraft and 50 experience points losing six in a given turn (not at all an uncommon occurrence for the fall of 1941). Assuming half the pilots are lost and subsequently replaced, that would leave the Air Group with 13 pilots of 51 Exp (one point gain due to exp increase) and 3 pilots with 15 for an average of 44 Exp points! This is very far from the constant increase offered by the "Fly and die" strategy. It should be very difficult for the Soviets to build experience in their air groups when they are constantly bled by losses, but it is not. Instead, game mechanics make it possible (even quite easy) to rapidly build experience and morale in the Soviet airforce.
Combat mechanics
Granted, the manual is not really clear on the issue, but as far as I can construct the dogfighting rules, you should imagine all fighters lining up opposite each other with the bombers in line behind the defending fighters. The lines then start closing in, with the fighters firing their weapons as they get in range. Given the Soviet ability to fly a large number of aircraft, they can easily get 200 or 300 (or more) fighters lined up, so they will get quite a lot of shots away at the Germans. They will then loose, simply to being outnumbered. However, historically, most dogfights involved a lot fewer numbers than this. In fact, the fighting above the Kuban bridgehead in 1943 was considered extremely intense, often with as much as 20 or 30 aircraft involved from both sides. This is a far cry from theline of 2-300 Soviet fighters being lined up in the example above. In reality, most of the Soviet fighters flying should never find a target to shoot at. The result is that the Germans will find it very hard to maintain cohesion against an aggressive Soviet player, who can eventuallu overcome opposition by building german fatigue and sheer Soviet numbers.
Ground attacks
Historically, the support of the Luftwaffe to ground operations was immense during Barbarossa. The Luftwaffe continuously hammered artillery positions, disrupted supply lines and so on. In game terms, I have seen again and again and agian that the situation is very different. Any losses inflicted on Soviet units by the Luftwaffe is easily offset by the experience gain of those self same units. The CV of a Soviet stack is very often higher AFTER being bombed than before. My advice to any German player would be this: NEVER bomb a Soviet unit with red experience soft factor and limit bombing of Soviet units with orange experience soft factor. They will simply get stronger by being bombed! In the early game, this will basically mean that the Germans should not bomb the Soviets!
Conclusion
The result as I see it is very clear: The Axis is bound to lose the air war very early on. They will be fighting to survive from the early fall of 1941, and things will simply go from bad to worse. I have heard claims that methods exist for the Germans to offset this, but much as the fabled unicorn, I have heard the claims but never seen the evidence.
My suggestions for a future patch:
1) Lower Soviet starting experience in Air Groups considerably.
2) Impose a much stricter Experience loss from losing aircraft.
3) Make it so that an aircraft in a dogfight cannot be fired upon by more than maximum two opposing aircraft.
4) Nerf ground unit Exp gain due to being bombed considerably.
Please discuss.
PS. U2VS ROOOOOOCKS!
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