Why so few Soviet recon aircraft?

[RoflCopter4]

The Soviets obviously have a huge production of most kinds of aircraft, dwarfing the Germans in nearly every respect. There is however one notable and obvious exception and that is recon aircraft. The Germans produce numerous types and do so in reasonable numbers, some 30-35 aircaft per turn. Even accounting for the reduction in numbers to the East this is still around 20. If you're losing 20 recon craft a turn you've got some problems. The Germans have ample supply of them.

The Soviets on the other hand produce a whopping 12 per turn. This isn't that much less than the effective German production to the East, but given the gigantic production of other types, and given the inferiority of Soviet pilots through much of the war which makes very possible to lose far more than this in an average turn (especially considering that 6 of them are lousy Po-2s), this seems rather low. Is this actually historical? Air reconnaissance was obviously a very important part of air power in WW2. Why is the production so low? I've only actually messed around against the AI so far but even there I find myself wishing I could slap some cameras on some of the 64 useless U-2VS I produce a turn and actually fill out my recon squadrons. As it is the Germans seem always a little better off in this department.

[A game]

Recon is actually far to easy for both sides in this game, you can never achieve the kind of massive surprise buildup and breakthroughs that were a constant feature of the war from the start to the finish historicly. WitE could really use some kind of subterfuge/maskirovka system, like having 'dummy' counters to simulate troops...

Anyway I have never found recon a problem as Soviets, maybe just dont spam it when you dont really need to? The most important function is finding where the german armor is massing.

[Nix77]

Keep the units stacked in non-clear terrain more than 3 hexes away from the enemy and you should have a decent surprise moment there (Detection Level stays at DL2, airbases wont work though). Make stacks of HQs as decoys, or resting infantry to be suspected "buildups". There's enough counters already to play around with

[timmyab]

A split down pz corps can look like a pz army to air recon. In covered terrain even split down sec divisions mixed with HQs can look threatening.

[Telemecus]

There are several hundred in your production pool from the start remember, so your losses are covered for a long time even if you produce none.

And you can use the U2VS as a recon too as air missions raise detection levels. Treat a U2VS bomb unit mission as a recon mission with the occasional bonus of an enemy kill. The U2VS has a tenth of the build cost of a Pe-2R and uses a twentieth of the fuel, so even loosing a lot of them is still cheaper.

[A game]

ORIGINAL: Nix77

Keep the units stacked in non-clear terrain more than 3 hexes away from the enemy and you should have a decent surprise moment there (Detection Level stays at DL2, airbases wont work though). Make stacks of HQs as decoys, or resting infantry to be suspected "buildups". There's enough counters already to play around with

The problem is that a unit shows up as 'armor' vs 'infantry' at very low detection levels. So a competent soviet player will always know where the german armor is massing. The recon in this game is far to easy and this is one area where it does fail at simulating the historical situation.

[Nix77]

Have them in non-clear terrain, preferably more than 3 hexes from enemy to keep the DL low. You just need to spend some fuel to stay hidden, which sound historical enough for me.

For non-air base units, air reconnaissance can raise detection levels up to a maximum of four as follows:

Maximum Detection level 1: Non-Air base units located in non-clear terrain further then 3 hexes from supplied enemy units.

Maximum Detection level 2: Non air base units located in non clear terrain and not adjacent to enemy units.

Maximum Detection level 4: Non-air base units located in clear terrain

For air base units, there is no limit to the DL that can be gained by air reconnaissance. (This has been patched, there's a limit of DL5)

As detection level increases, the on-map unit and its hex pop up will display the following information:

Detection Level 1: If the unit is an air base, the type will be displayed; otherwise the unit counter will be blank.

Detection Level 3: The Unit type will be displayed

Detection Level 5: The Unit name, unit size and CV will be displayed. Enemy units that start adjacent to friendly units will have a minimum DL of 5.

Detection Level 7: Soft factors can be observed (5.1.3).

Stacked Units: When FoW is enabled, no CV/MP numbers will be printed on an enemy counter if there is no unit with a detection level greater than 4 in the stack. If there are units with DLs both greater than four and four or less in a stack, numbers will be printed, and a '?' will be printed instead of the - or = between the numbers to indicate that in addition to the estimated CV strength in the hex, there are units of unknown strength in the hex. If the top unit in the stack has a DL of 1 or 2, a blank unit type box will appear on the top unit counter to indicate it is of an unknown type.

As you can see, with DL2 the unit type can't be seen.