Air power still seems overpowered

[cato13]

Hello,

So i'm playin the fall weiss campaign with latest patch and ive came to the conclusion that air units inflict far to much damage on ground units.

i dunno if its maybe down to my axis units in africa bein low on supply but so far ive lost 3 units to air power in 1941, one of those units being the famous africa corp tank unit.

it just doesnt feel right that air units can completely wipe out a corp sized unit.

thoughts?

ps,

add another army unit to the list. the way its lookin, air units could wipe out all my forces in africa without enemy ground units even getting involved. i could try and retreat to italy but then whats to stop the same thing happening. and before anyone says i should have fighter cover, i do. i have 4 fighters down there but they havent had any effect. im sure everyone must agree that the above scenario ive described is a bit ridiculous.

its kinda ruined this campaign for me if im bein honest.

are there any campaigns or mods that make air units a but less powerful?

[Harrybanana]

I agree. Not sure about the Fall Weiss campaign, but in the Vanilla game bombers, especially if massed, appears to be just too powerful. In particular the Luftwaffe, if properly nurtured and led, can overwhelm any defense. Just look at my AAR with KZ where the invincible Luftwaffe pretty much won the Game. In another game I am playing the Luftwaffe on one turn destroyed an Army in Portsmouth and on a subsequent turn destroyed a fully entrenched corps in Bristol; both units had AA level 1.

I believe the solution is simple. Limit it so that a particular hex can only be bombed by a maximum of two air units in a turn. Of course, I don't know if this would be simple to code or not.

[crispy131313]

Air units are indeed less powerful in Fall Weiss II (mod). I believe what you are facing is a bit of unhistorical strength of Britain in the North African campaign. This was purposely done to counter the tendency of players to stack the cards and send many more reinforcements to Libya then historical.

I would suggest in the Advanced Option screen (under scripts) to deselect the following "Unit" script" Strong Allied Air Presence Detected In Egypt. As a result you will not face a "hard mode" battle for the sky.

Similarly there is script another for ground forces, i think it has the title Mobile Units which you could also turn off if you find the North African campaign too hard. Mind you that the changes to the single player campaign were designed to be challenging in some parts.

Also just some tips in case this is causing issues as well. Fighters will not receive supply from HQ's unless they are attached (huge effect in North African campaign) and researching Anti-Air would help.

[cato13]

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

I agree. Not sure about the Fall Weiss campaign, but in the Vanilla game bombers, especially if massed, appears to be just too powerful. In particular the Luftwaffe, if properly nurtured and led, can overwhelm any defense. Just look at my AAR with KZ where the invincible Luftwaffe pretty much won the Game. In another game I am playing the Luftwaffe on one turn destroyed an Army in Portsmouth and on a subsequent turn destroyed a fully entrenched corps in Bristol.

I believe the solution is simple. Limit it so that a particular hex can only be bombed by two air units in a turn. Of course, I don't know if this would be simple to code or not.

or just reduce air attack values for aircraft. this isnt 2018 where a plane can drop tactical nukes! [:)]

[cato13]

ORIGINAL: crispy131313

Air units are indeed less powerful in Fall Weiss II (mod). I believe what you are facing is a bit of unhistorical strength of Britain in the North African campaign. This was purposely done to counter the tendency of players to stack the cards and send many more reinforcements to Libya then historical.

I would suggest in the Advanced Option screen (under scripts) to deselect the following "Unit" script" Strong Allied Air Presence Detected In Egypt. As a result you will not face a "hard mode" battle for the sky.

Similarly there is script another for ground forces, i think it has the title Mobile Units which you could also turn off if you find the North African campaign too hard. Mind you that the changes to the single player campaign were designed to be challenging in some parts.

Also just some tips in case this is causing issues as well. Fighters will not receive supply from HQ's unless they are attached (huge effect in North African campaign) and researching Anti-Air would help.

i like playin hard mode in my wargames though, i just dont like my game being ruined by severely overpowered and completely unrealistic death star air units!

and yes im aware of the supply rules and i abide by them! [:)]

[James Taylor]

I've again long professed that air units should have a reduced ability to cause strength reductions as the footprint(strength) of the attacked unit is diminished.

It only makes sense if there are less people and machines they should get harder to hit. At one strength most air attacks should be futile having only a small percentage of making the targeted unit "combat ineffective".

On the other hand, each player has virtually the same set of tools to apply and there always seems a counter to every situation, discovery being the key.

[cato13]

ORIGINAL: James Taylor

I've again long professed that air units should have a reduced ability to cause strength reductions as the footprint(strength) of the attacked unit is diminished.

It only makes sense if there are less people and machines they should get harder to hit. At one strength most air attacks should be futile having only a small percentage of making the targeted unit "combat ineffective".

On the other hand, each player has virtually the same set of tools to apply and there always seems a counter to every situation, discovery being the key.

agreed, apart from your last comment. to use an extreme analogy, command and conquer has similar mechanics.


dont have a problem with air units affecting moral and readiness and maybe also dealing the odd point or two of damage.

do have a problem with air units wiping out unit formations on this scale of map!

[KorutZelva]

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

Just look at my AAR with KZ where the invincible Luftwaffe pretty much won the Game.

Being on the receiving end, that's certainly how it felt like. [:D]

I wonder the impact on the game if one where to give bombers 'artillery' stats, basically they'd destroy morale and readiness but would have to rely boots on the ground to do the heavy lifting.

[crispy131313]

ORIGINAL: KorutZelva

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

Just look at my AAR with KZ where the invincible Luftwaffe pretty much won the Game.

Being on the receiving end, that's certainly how it felt like. [:D]

I wonder the impact on the game if one where to give bombers 'artillery' stats, basically they'd destroy morale and readiness but would have to rely boots on the ground to do the heavy lifting.

Then you may run the risk of recreating WW1 trench warfare tactics. Air power in it's current form levels supply and helps destroy units and is necessary to keep the flow of the game moving forward. I can think of only a few key cities in the European Theater that were fought for dearly and never taken, so we need the tools to destroy units quickly and move forward. Bombers do this job well.

[Sugar]

Then you may run the risk of recreating WW1 trench warfare tactics. Air power in it's current form levels supply and helps destroy units and is necessary to keep the flow of the game moving forward. I can think of only a few key cities in the European Theater that were fought for dearly and never taken, so we need the tools to destroy units quickly and move forward. Bombers do this job well.

[&o]

Additionally there`s a way to stop enemy bombing. Of course takes some skill and imagination to figure out how.

[cato13]

ORIGINAL: crispy131313

ORIGINAL: KorutZelva

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

Just look at my AAR with KZ where the invincible Luftwaffe pretty much won the Game.

Being on the receiving end, that's certainly how it felt like. [:D]

I wonder the impact on the game if one where to give bombers 'artillery' stats, basically they'd destroy morale and readiness but would have to rely boots on the ground to do the heavy lifting.

Then you may run the risk of recreating WW1 trench warfare tactics. Air power in it's current form levels supply and helps destroy units and is necessary to keep the flow of the game moving forward. I can think of only a few key cities in the European Theater that were fought for dearly and never taken, so we need the tools to destroy units quickly and move forward. Bombers do this job well.

i certainly dont want a ww2 game to reflect ww1 tactics but surely you agree that a scenario where air power alone can completely remove 100's of thousands of troops which is what this games scale is at is in any way realistic?

and this is in 1941. whats it gonna be like once all those air units have researched and skilled up? im probably lookin at air units in 1944 being able to destroy full strength units with a couple of attacks!

everything else in this game is bang on the money but this is a game breaker for me, which is frustrating cos its almost perfect! [:)]

[KorutZelva]

ORIGINAL: crispy131313

Then you may run the risk of recreating WW1 trench warfare tactics. Air power in it's current form levels supply and helps destroy units and is necessary to keep the flow of the game moving forward. I can think of only a few key cities in the European Theater that were fought for dearly and never taken, so we need the tools to destroy units quickly and move forward. Bombers do this job well.

To be fair any unit artilleried to death is a unit ripe for expeditious destruction.

I like a bit of ''combined'' in my combined arms. [;)] I cringe when two bloated airforce (with assisting token land force) duke it out in the desert. That way the number of bombers in a given front would gravitate towards an appropriate number based on the land unit available to make use of their suppressing power.

[James Taylor]

Perhaps we incorporate an overrun feature while quenching the airpower strength reduction.

Let's say that airpower attacks eventually reduce an attacked unit's morale and readiness to zero(irregardless of strength).

At that moment any armored or mechanized unit(corps size minimum?), or even a unit with the tech upgrade of mobility, will be allowed to overrun the unit, removing it from play.

The cost to the overrunning unit is AP=1, or perhaps just the terrain effect. It could even be dependent on clear terrain only or other considerations.

[PvtBenjamin]

The Axis air power is a major shortcoming of the game.

[PvtBenjamin]

I played a game that in 1944 German Strategic Bombers were attacking without an escort and 10 Str Lv 5 US fighters w/ HQ attached did zero damage. When a Tac bomber was escorted w/ Lv 5 German fighter my 10 Str Lv 4 USSR fighter w HQ attached would go from 10=> 3 with again 0 damage to either tac or fighter.

[Hubert Cater]

Thanks for the feedback everyone and off hand it is a bit hard to say one way or the other if things are potentially askew as there are a lot of different examples listed above, and without the numbers, i.e. levels, experience, supply, HQ attachments, there are potentially just too many factors that could have played a part in some of the results.

For example, in the unescorted German Strategic Bomber example above facing off against a 10 str Lv 5 US fighter, I can get results anywhere from 1:7, 4:5 to 7:1 depending on what Level the German Strategic Bomber is, how much experience it has, who it is attached to, the supply level and so on and this would also change depending on the US fighter experience and who it is attached to as well.

I also ran a test where I had a fully entrenched Corps in Bristol, with AA Level-1 and attacked it with 7 Tactical bombers, all with 1 experience point, attached to an HQ with 2 experience points and all at supply 9, and a range of Ground Attack levels from 1 to 3 for the Tactical Bombers and at best I could knock the Corps down to strength 5, but more often than not it stayed in the range of 7 or 8 strength.

However, generally speaking, and let's say we are looking at Tactical Bombers, they are currently set where you can expect them to take 2-3 strength points between closely matched units, i.e. a Level-1 Tactical Bomber at 9 supply with no experience will inflict 1:3 on a supply 8 fully strength Corps that is out in the open.

Since increased Ground Attack levels will be cancelled out by increased AA applied to defenders, this ratio will tend to stay the same until supply levels, attachments, and experience become alternative factors. In this light, I'd argue that having an air unit being able to take 2-3 points of damage is not necessarily a bad thing as it does help to keep the flow of the game moving, especially for the Axis in the early years regarding Poland, France, Balkans and then Barbarossa, but beyond that I can see two main points of contention, possibly three:

1) Should air units inflict any strength point damage at all?
2) Should air units be allowed to mass together?
3) Should air units be allowed to destroy a unit?

For 1) I would still argue yes as otherwise the early parts of the game, especially the flow and timelines, would potentially suffer. Very early on, many air unit attacks are spread out so inflicting 2-3 points of damage is helpful and typically a ground unit is required to finish the unit off. Unless you start with ground units and then finish off with air after the fact, but essentially it is rarer that a grouping of air units is wiping out units all on their own. Later on this can happen as more air units are built and tactics possibly change with this in mind.

For 2) we have attempted to limit this with recent changes to how air units are linked to HQs, but if a player would still like to mass their air units, and they put in the effort to do so with the right number of HQs, then this is possible. Question really is here if this should be forcibly limited further from our end, or is it reasonable enough for a player to be rewarded if this is their strategy? Often there are pros and cons to this strategy and other areas may suffer and increased costs may be involved and at times the gains are short lived especially if another part of the war has suffered as a result. For example, the Axis may go all in for North Africa and it may feel overpowered there, but in the long run Barbarossa suffers and big picture wise the war may ultimately be lost despite the initial feelings of things being terribly unbalanced.

For 3) the bigger concern for me would be if air units are destroying ground units outright, i.e. from full strength, or was it a unit already severely weakened and on its last legs, or from a concentration of multiple attacks, and even possibly air attacks. If it is the former I think this would be a problem, but I suspect it is only the latter, which could be amended if it is indeed a deal breaker, but we'd have to be careful to not disrupt the flow of the game that is also quite important as well.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Hubert Cater


I also ran a test where I had a fully entrenched Corps in Bristol, with AA Level-1 and attacked it with 7 Tactical bombers, all with 1 experience point, attached to an HQ with 2 experience points and all at supply 9, and a range of Ground Attack levels from 1 to 3 for the Tactical Bombers and at best I could knock the Corps down to strength 5, but more often than not it stayed in the range of 7 or 8 strength.

All I can say is that this is what happened to me in my game with Yeremenko (which I have now resigned). In fact, as I said it happened twice, first to a full strength Army in Portsmouth (which I think was only entrenched to level 1 or 2) and then to a full strength Corps in Bristol with maximum entrenchment. Admittedly I don't think either unit was attached to an HQ. But the unit in Portsmouth was defended by an AA in an adjacent hex and both Cities had their AA upgraded to level 1.

You say you attacked with 7 TAC, but in my game my opponent first attacked with 2 (or maybe even 3) Med Bombers to reduce the entrenchment and efficiency of the defending unit. Did you try that? The usual MO is to attack the enemy unit first with corps or Med Bombers to reduce the entrenchment, then finish it off with TAC.

[PvtBenjamin]

The fighter was in Turkey (city) with Eisenhower attached, the fighter had just been operated from the US and was reduced from 10 =>6 on the Strategic Bomber attack. The USSR fighter was in Stalingrad with Konev attached. Tac bombers were reducing Army/Shock Army (lv 2 AA) at 4-5 per clip even with the intercept. 4 full strength (or close ) armies/shock army lost in one turn. I had 4 HQ's west of Stalingrad. These type outcomes were very common. I give you the person was probably better at Air strategy than me, but he still hadn't taken Moscow/Stalingrad/Cairo or London.

I think addressing question 2 (massing together) would resolve many imbalances. Many Axis players put their ENTIRE air force in one area, Sicily/Northern Africa for example. Then obliterate a region. Early in the game there is no defense when they do this and it is very unrealistic.

Perhaps some type of airbase or geographical limits would make a major improvement. Obviously less limits in Germany/USSR etc but still some limits.

I have enjoyed thousands of hours of SC vs AI over the years. I think the massing of air units greatly reduces the PBEM experience.

Thank you for your interest in the issue.

[PvtBenjamin]

Harry's description of UK is very close to my experiences. UK fighters also greatly reduced which is costly to repair.

[KorutZelva]

1) Should air units inflict any strength point damage at all?

Arty can still give the odd damage point, especially upgraded. I don't think they should be shut down completely from inflicting some (especially to tanks).

2) Should air units be allowed to mass together?

We wouldn't prevent people to mass them, but it wouldn't happened as much if they were 'flying artillery' because their wouldn't be a big benefit to do so. You're not shoehorning smaller concentrations with an arbitrary limit, you're rewarding a different behavior.

3) Should air units be allowed to destroy a unit?

In my AAR with HB bombers wiped out two armies in cities (Rabat and Casablanca) without too much efforts (IIRC, both the units and the city had upgraded AA). Once the entrenchment is gone, land unit melts. Turning the planes into 'flying artillery' still offers lethal and dynamic offensive possibilities. Artillery is good against a static defense but takes time to set-up. Bombers have long range and are more flexible since they can hit at many point across the line where it is needed. They can strike even behind the first line of defense that the artillery wouldn't be able to reach to help you get that breakthrough and keep up with that breakthrough as it advances.

I see bombers as unit killer as a hold-over design decision of previous iteration of the game where that was no unit-swap or unit cycling. Concentration of land unit was hindered so they had give bomber the power to get that finishing touch. The game has evolved to a point that we don't need to rely on them for unit kill as much.