Pfff...air combat :(

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PMCN
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by PMCN »

I am now mid-january 42 and the losses are running at 1000+ for the japanese and 700+ for me as the allies. But the thing is I notice that my pilots of the older junk (Buffaloes) are very good and my top pilots are in the P40Es. The P40Es are able to inflict serious losses on unescorted bombers and the AI does that a lot and they can often do very well even against zeros but it is a question of pilot skill. Shooting down unescorted japanese bombers wasn't that difficult they were fairly fragile and had few defensive guns so if you are blowing them out of the air that is what I would expect. The zeros/oscars are a danger though they can rip up my Buffaloes and the AVG is down to only 2 functional squadrons as the one in rangoon is nearly out of planes.

Nates die generally against P40Es. But I'm hard pressed to find that ahistorical. The losses the AI is suffering is brutal but they are also wearing down my air groups something fierce. I have less than 20 fighters total in the Philippines and about 25 fighters in Singapore with 14 fighters in rangoon. Production is well below losses for me and I assume the japanese is seriously in trouble with that degree of losses. My groups at Pearl are still way below strength.

I use my bombers mainly for night raids and that seems to work well. I've noticed the allied bombers do pretty good defending themselves. The B17s I sent in at 30,000 feet and they did better un-escorted. Didn't hit much bombing though. Is there some sort of minimum altitude for level bombers though? My best bombers at the momemt are the kingfishers they have been doing a bang up job around the Philippines attacking transports and freighters.
Streptokok
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Streptokok »

ORIGINAL: Paul McNeely
The P40Es are able to inflict serious losses on unescorted bombers ... Shooting down unescorted japanese bombers wasn't that difficult they were fairly fragile and had few defensive guns so if you are blowing them out of the air that is what I would expect.

I agree, but please tell me why am I not suposed to find it strange when my CAP of 20-30 fighters of Oscars and Nates isnt able to do the same to unescorted Blens and Hudsons?
I find it completely unbalanced to see those planes escape my CAP every time and my Nells getting sloughtered every time, I dont think that 6 Blens shouldnt get masacred the same way when they are oposed unescorted with 20-30 Jap fighters...
Im sorry but that seems rather unfair and unbalanced.
Nates die generally against P40Es. But I'm hard pressed to find that ahistorical.

I agree again. But I do find it ahistorical when they manage to win every single fight against Zero CAP/sweep first 3 days of war.

And the bigest thing of all that I do mind is the historical part here.
Its a game. It shouldnt be all historical. Should give both sides a chance in PEBMs to show what they can do.
Otherwise theres no point in playing PEBM, just play as allies vs AI and win all the time...
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EUBanana
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by EUBanana »

My P40s in the Guadalcanal scenario got their ass well and truly kicked by Zeroes. The P38s didnt do very well either.

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Flying Tiger
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Flying Tiger »

Main thing I wonder is what setting are you on for the AI??? Historical, Hard or Very Hard. If not on "Historical" try switching to "Historical" that should improve things. The AI gets combat bonuses on the higher levels.


WHAT??!! we were ASSURED that the die rolls were not affected (effected?? who cares). Giving the AI logistic help, movement bonuses, complete intel, etc. does not bother me. Loaded dice?? i'm not so sure
PMCN
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by PMCN »

I can't comment on the allied bombers because frankly I've never seen that sort of thing happen. I've not lost so many of my bombers to enemy cap that I recall but on the other hand I've never encountered serious cap except when I foolishly sent in my banshees or when the lex strike went in. In both of those cases my planes were 100% killed. Most of the time I send my un-escorted bombers in at night and there they do ok. The sole exception is the chinese ones which go in low and only get a few intercepting fighters which they mostly drive off. And yes I've seen the IJN bombers do the same thing, depends on the number of "gun jammed", "engine cutting out", "low on ammo", "leaking oil" events you get. The only daylight raids I launched were with B17s and they went in at 30K feet where the zero is less maneuverable then the B17. Mostly I get bomber damaged at the end of the day. Given the Betty has nearly twice the ranger of the allied bombers and they aren't that different in size I would suspect they lack armour. So your zeros probably damage a lot of allied bombers without shooting them down. Why 20-30 fighters can't shoot down 6 inbound bombers I can't say since I'd think that they were toast at that point.

I've never seen a zero protected strike get their bombers hurt and the zeros in numbers are damn dangerous. They are a meat grinder for your fighters. The Oscar is nearly as bad so I've never seen what you are commenting on. I am down to less than 60 fighters in the Philippines, Rangoon, and Singapore total after some 5 weeks of air-to-air combat. I've seen zeros everywhere so the Japanese are not running out of them. I'm doubtfull even my better pilots have managed much better than 1:1 losses against the zeros with P40Es. In the Philippines I am consolidating my squadrons down to a single P40E squadron, and a single P40B squadron due to losses. The P40Bs are used at night. Most of my zero kills are "on the ground" from when a CVL and a CV were sunk by submarines.

It may be important to remember that the allies have radar. I almost always have detected the raid on radar so tha means more of my CAP is available to be used. This may be part of the reason your sweeps are not so effective?
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Halsey »

To look for before assigning airstrikes.

Leaders
Fighters: insp 60+, air 60+, aggres 60+.

Bombers: high insp and aggres will increase the likelyhood of unescorted strikes going in.
Put weiners in charge, they will bug out and go home, unless escorted.[;)]


Altitude performance
Fighters:
Look for the major break in altitude effectiveness.

Bombers:
So, if your fighters get the break at 21000', set your bombers at that altitude also.[;)]

Your not in Kansas anymore Dorothy.[:D]
AE isn't like WITP in quite a few areas.
bklooste
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by bklooste »

One question is fair why are people using better than historic tactics to get get historic ( or worse) results...eg the leaders at start are what the Japanese actually used , escorts were used commonly and suplemented by sweeps not the other way around ,supply at start is what they used and they operated A6M2s and Nates at forward bases with poor Av support.
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TheTomDude
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by TheTomDude »

ORIGINAL: TheTomDude

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

ORIGINAL: Streptokok

Ah I know, a whine post [:(]
But I just dont get it how am i suposed to get anywhere with these loses now, and it completely kills the fun of the game in later year, hell it kills the fun in 06/42 when allies get better planes.
What happens then? jap player cant even get his plane airborne, they get shot during take off?

Point is, there is no point playing AE like this, because with this results its a shure win for allied player in PEBM.
Whats the point of playing then?
Isnt the "fun" of playing it in the posibilty that it wont end the way WWII actualy ended?

In stock it was possible for advanced players to do unhistorical things like clearing China and Russia or India, taking north Australia and New Zeland. And it was too much, I agree. AE is suposed not to let this happen, but should allow for unhistorical to happen to some extent. With this kind of disaster I dont see how?

Its turn 2 ffs and my A/C polls are empty (those that matter ie. zero, betty, Nells even Nate pool is empty [:(] ), squads understrength....

-----

I need to go play wwiionline a bit and leave AE for a day or two alone me thinks, not good when a game gets frustrating...

Main thing I wonder is what setting are you on for the AI??? Historical, Hard or Very Hard. If not on "Historical" try switching to "Historical" that should improve things. The AI gets combat bonuses on the higher levels.


Joe, the manual says:

Hard - The computer is given some logistical advantages.
Very Hard - The computer is given some logistical and combat advantages.

I'm playing on hard because I did not want to have the Ai having combat advantages. So is the manual correct or does the Ai also have combat advantages on hard like you said above?
Thanks

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Streptokok
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Streptokok »

Getting wasted vs easy AI [:(]

Anyway i tried it all and nothing works on unescorted Blens. Impossible to shoot down by Japs. And unescorted Netties get chewd like a juicy BigMac.

3 times in turn they attack 3 times oposed, none shot down.
34 Nells oposed by 2 Buffalos, 6 shot down.

Turn after turn same crap. Tried all fighter types, tried all altitudes. Blens escape [8|]
I gives up, its sucks to be Jap in AE.



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HistoryGuy
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by HistoryGuy »

I think some of this frustration may result from "perceptions" of what happened historically.  If you are already convinced certain airframes did better, then AE seems totally lacking in realism.  Try perusing "Bloody Shambles" in detail.  It seems most Allied AF failures were attributable to lack of numbers, poor leadership, logistics, planning, training, rather than individual airframe performance.  It boggles the mind to know that the Brewster ALMOST became the standard Navy fighter rather than the Wildcat, because its performance wasnt THAT bad, but it was not chosen because the manufacturer was totally inept in a managerial sense.  P-40s did poorly on the first day in the Philippines because of abysmal fighter direction and inappropriate tactics, but US fighters did shoot down several zeros and were able to do so at reasonable cost in ATA combat.  As for AE, I have not seen invulnerable Blenheims and my air-to-air losses, as the Japanese, though somewhat puzzling at times, vary with changes in tactics.  I even had Oscars knock down B-17Es but the combat results do not always indicate the Allied plane was destroyed - it gets credited to the victory tally (apparently) after the operational reports list the B-17E as crashing due to battle damage.  Otherwise I cannot explain how an Oscar unit at Miri got 16 kills when it was only attacked by B-17s from DEI!
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by bklooste »

It seems most Allied AF failures were attributable to lack of numbers, poor leadership, logistics, planning, training, rather than individual airframe performanc

I would have used this exact quote for the Japanese not the allies....The allies may have rated their ground based leadership , planning and logistics bad but when they saw the Japanese records after capturing them they new the Japanese were far worse to the point where they couldnt even get parts and salvaged aircraft , sure the US had lots of paper work but they eventually would get the parts.
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Hokum
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Hokum »

 Early japanese fighters were notoriously undergunned... try upgrading your oscars to the c version until you get the hien (granted, that's early 43).

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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Remenents »

I am playing as Allied Historical and I dont see ANY kind of results near to that. My planes are getting slaughtered left and right. Even had some Jap bombers shoot down 10 out of my 25 fighters with only a 1 plane loss to the Japs lol. So I am not sure whats going on for you. Maybe you are just having some really horrible luck?
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Dr. Duh
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Dr. Duh »

I need to experiment some more to verify what I was seeing in my last game -

when I had fighters assigned to LRCap for just a few days I saw their fatigue had shot up to 60-80% range. I don't know exactly why this happened. I know a couple squadrons did actually intercept an attack, but I know for sure some squadrons that didn't yet they still had sky-high fatigue too.

What I have to check is does throttling down the max-range or setting a specific target hex make a difference to how fast you gain fatigue for LRCap? What I'm wondering is if by not setting a target and having a default range circle that I ended up with everyone out flying dawn to dusk trying to defend every hex within their effective range and that's why they're so tired.
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Barb
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Barb »

Try lowering the percentage flying :) Imagine yourself doing 2-4 flights a day with maybe 2 hours in air each. Would like to see you not beeing fatigued... [:D]
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Streptokok
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Streptokok »

After a sweep that squad goes to sleep for 2-3 turns, more if needed. I never send sweeps if pilots fatigue is above 5.
I really tried it all, only thing that gives some results is high sweep with high exp Zeros.
But those arent great either, 2-3 planes shot down is max.

My samurais only did 3 runs with good results. 2 were Zeros vs Buffalos, i think 5 and 10 shot down and one was a mistake sweep over hex with AVG.
And check this, it was 36 Oscars Ib with not so briliant pilots and I got even odds. 7 Oscars traded for 7 AVG.
Go figure that one out [:D]

31.12.41 and I finaly shot down 1 blen [8|]
they got so cocky they attacked mini KB, once again Claudes wrecked havoc among allied planes and managed to shoot down one blen, others turned back.
"On paper" Nate looks like a better plane to me, could be wrong there, but Claudes look like the worst thing for Japs.
Yet they regulary scare off and even kill some B-17 and I have so far lost only 2 in dogfights. No other Claude loses, didnt even loose one to Ops [8D]

Nates on the other hand are pretty much useless. Sometimes they manage to drive away unescorted bombers but getting something killed and not getting killed is what they totaly suck at. And then its puzzling how Oscars Ia and Claudes with same guns manage to get better results.

Another anoying thing I noticed is that any pilot that gets 4 kills dies on next mission. Not a single pilot above 3 kills in my planes now, not even on KB after batling allied CV TF and raiding Hawaii on first turn [:(]
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Streptokok
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by Streptokok »

I apologize to all samurais flying Nates. Aparently it wasnt their fault they performed so bad [:'(]

Set the "right" commander, set the right altitude for that fighter type and youre good to go [:)]

Compared in the tracker both Buffalo and B-339 look better than Nate in terms of speed and firepower. My error was that i have set Nates too high, where they loose their manouverbility advantage. And the manual says:
7.4.2 AIR-TO-AIR COMBAT
Once aircraft have closed for combat, the most important factors include pilot Air to Air & Defensive skill, Aircraft maneuverability, speed, and altitude. If a plane has a significantly higher maneuverability, the pilot will try to dogfight. If the plane has a significantly higher speed, the pilot will try to make slashing attacks. Whether the pilot succeeds or not is primarily dependent on his skill. A Higher Top Speed is not a trump, but it does affect or modify the way Maneuver is used. When an Aircraft checks it’s “instantaneous” speed versus an opponent, it may be able to reduce it’s opponents Maneuver by some factor up to one half depending on the severity of the top speed delta. Higher EXP pilots will attempt to keep their speed up.
Where top speeds are similar the severity of this check is less, and Combat will depend more on Maneuver values at the given altitude, Firepower, Durability, and pilot Air to Air Skill.

I guess they suceeded this time (finaly set Nates to 9000 feet) to drag oposing planes into dogfight and then Nates owend the sky.
Even tough report says 1 Buffalo was destroyed, actual kill total is 14xBuffalos/2xB-339D+some Vildbeests for 1 Nate.
Afternoon Air attack on Kuala Lumpur , at 49,79

Weather in hex: Moderate rain

Raid spotted at 43 NM, estimated altitude 11,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 28 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 40



Allied aircraft
Buffalo I x 10
Vildebeest III x 9
B-339D x 6


Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-27b Nate: 1 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
Buffalo I: 1 destroyed
Vildebeest III: 5 destroyed
B-339D: 2 destroyed



CAP engaged:
1st Sentai with Ki-27b Nate (0 airborne, 7 on standby, 30 scrambling)
7 plane(s) intercepting now.
0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 3 out of immediate contact.
Group patrol altitude is 9000 , scrambling fighters to 9000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 33 minutes
5 planes vectored on to bombers



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on Kuala Lumpur , at 49,79

Weather in hex: Moderate rain

Raid detected at 40 NM, estimated altitude 11,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 26 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 19



Allied aircraft
Buffalo I x 7
Vildebeest III x 10


No Japanese losses

Allied aircraft losses
Vildebeest III: 3 destroyed, 3 damaged



Aircraft Attacking:
6 x Vildebeest III bombing from 6000 feet *
Airfield Attack: 1 x 500 lb GP Bomb

CAP engaged:
1st Sentai with Ki-27b Nate (6 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
6 plane(s) intercepting now.
0 plane(s) not yet engaged, 12 being recalled, 1 out of immediate contact.
Group patrol altitude is 9000
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 25 minutes
9 planes vectored on to bombers

The question is how do you know if your pilots have enough exp to drag enemy into combat type that favors your plane type?
How do I know how often (bad) wil those nasty "engine cut off, oil leak etc..." occur for some plane type. Is that determined by service rating or durability or something else?
What is the influence of climb rate in dogfight?


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jomni
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RE: Pfff...air combat :(

Post by jomni »

I'm in the 3rd month of my Japanese campaign and I also remember losing a lot of zeores in the first few days.  I learned to live with that loss.  And now, though still behind in the kill count.  I've been pretty much successful in securing the airspace of major theaters (PI and Singapore) and racking up the kills slowly. 

Most effective way to use zeroes is actually doing prelimenary sweeping missions.  Zeores on escort duty will just get themselves killed for some reason, maybe because they don't want to stray too far from the bombers that they are escorting.

With regards to Nates the tip in the previous post seems promising.
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