ORIGINAL: rainman2015
What about ground unit bombings in WITE2? I use them a LOT and do it all manually. Any hex i really want to take gets hit 2 times prior to the attack to get all the disrupted troops.
Sounds like you are not doing this manually right before each battle in the new system.
Randy
as with my comments above to Northern Star - I'd suggest a wander over to the WiTW AAR forum - there are quite a lot of detailed descriptions of how to use the air directives and their flexibility.
At its core, you open your turn and need to set them up as at this stage you can't move ground units but you can do admin things like set up depots, re-assign commanders and support units and so on (I tend to do these at this stage as I'm less likely to forget).
If we ignore specialist missions like naval interdiction, strategic bombing and recon, in WiTE2 you'll find the bulk of your airforce is doing one of three basic missions:
a) ground support. You assign the air units to a HQ and then they are used in the actual combat phase - so very close to the current WiTE mission;
b) air superiority. This really comes in two forms. An active mission is where you give your fighters a geographical area to patrol and go and do that. There are some nasty tricks here, like you can opt do this only in your opponents part of the turn (which can really catch out someone a bit lax about escorting their bombers) or a night fighter mission where they sit around known airbases waiting for units to return. The alternative is simply not to give a fighter unit any orders. They will then only fly interception in your own airspace - this is quite efficient as they don't use fuel or take operational losses unless they are actually called on;
c) ground attack. This is probably your default mission but comes with different options.
c1) First you draw a target area (there are some really nice on map visual aids to help you do this - it can get quite obsessional making sure you have just the pattern you need. The target area can range from 0 hexes (ie you tell it to go and bomb just one hexes) to 9 hexes (you tell it to operate within 9 hexes of a designated central hex). I usually find I am using 1-3 as my rule here.
c2) You then allocate planes to the mission. These can be a mixture of active planes (bombers) and escorts (fighters) - note that some fighters can operate in a bombing role but are less effective (again as per WitE)
c3) you chose the sort of mission via 'target priority' - options are airfield (bomb enemy planes); unit (directly bomb an enemy unit); railway (concentrate on hitting rail lines and movement - very good for supply interdiction); port/ferry (probably rare in WiTE2 but you concentrate on hitting port infrastructure or river movement); interdict (more below) or railyard (you bomb railyards - good as it degrades overall rail capacity and the ability to unload units and freight)
---- interdiction is probably the default mission. You do two things with this. Some (limited) direct damage to units in the area chosen and substantial losses if a unit moves in an area (this includes retreating), this also interdicts tactical supply (ie truck movements) so can be very effective at plastering the rear area. Edit - units can have more than one priority, so you can tell it to say do an interdiction mission but allocate some planes to airfield bombing, or to hit both port infrastructure and the railyards and so on.
d) for all missions, you can dig deep into the details. Planes have different load outs (simple eg drop tanks give extra range but at a cost in combat efficiency), some bombers can shift between a few heavy bombs and lots of light ones. The altitude can be set - want to bring in your Sturmoviks at 1,000m here is where to do it, the number of days per week, intensity of commitment, tolerance for bad weather etc,
So to your answer, if you really want to bomb a hex, gather an appropriate set of air units, tell then ground attack-unit-hex and they will do the mission you use in WiTE. As an eg, in WiTE2 I tend to place some stukas into a specialist mission to directly bomb Brest-Litovsk on T1 - makes it so much easier to take. You can then allocate some specialist support to the corps/army you have making the attack so you get more support at the moment of combat.
The distinction unit bombing-interdiction is subtle. I regard the first as costly for my airframes as you are telling them to go and bomb a relatively fixed space and to risk flak etc. The second gives more indirect effects, the enemy will degrade but over time but on the other hand your planes can operate longer (they are hunting roads and obvious communication channels).
edit - but apart from ground support all this is done before the land movement/combat phase. So you do need to think about air allocation and plan it. Its less problematic than it sounds but perhaps is why I tend to have each axis air corps on interdiction and hitting a 1-2 hex zone rather than broken down into lots of small targetted missions - the latter is more an indulgence for the Western Allies over France in 1944.
