Wisdom of buildind new VVS air groups

[wga8888]

The Soviets start with about 100 FB groups and 200 bomber groups. Is building any more wise given AP cost? One can spend an AP to buy a new group or upgrade a group missing planes which will bring a group to maximum. Or is it better spend no APs and to wait for replacements over many turns to build up a depleted air group (. Given all actions demanding AP, playing with the VVS may not be a valid priority in the early months.

I assume different players do differnet things.

[c00per]

Have not played in awhile but air was a HUGE suck on soviet trucks, so I would say no. If it uses trucks and is not infantry, armour, or support artillery think hard about it. That said I have not played in like over a year, so I could be way wrong.

[M60A3TTS]

It requires about 20,000 trucks in 1943 to support 8 mechanized corps.

For the same # of trucks you can support about 40 air divisions each with 6 fighter or tactical bomber regiments. 240 regiments in all.

FFBs at start
162FFB of which...
124 FFB are Regts
38 FFB are Bns

[56ajax]

The only aircraft that seem to do any damage are your tactical bombers so make sure you have enough squadrons of these. And use up your 153BS....

Swap your wasted squadrons into Reserve with Upgrade = Yes.

And remember the Soviet airforce can rule the skys eventually through weight of numbers.

[morvael]

I think it's better to have at least 450 air groups. I had about 570 but that was too much truck-wise (but it allowed constant rotation of lowest exp/morale m units to bring them all to good levels.

[c00per]

This reminds me of a game I disbanded every armour division, armour brigade, support units that used high amount trucks, AT Brigades, Air Fields, Reserved all level bombers etc. Needless to say I was on a extreme ruthless removal of truck consumption to experiment with infantry and cavalry in 1941 early 42. I must admit this was over a year ago but it was nice having almost every soviet infantry unit on the map having like 16 movement. Does that still work with the present version of the game ? has anyone experimented with that ?