AS and air transport

[tyronec]

As far as I can tell AS doesn't intercept air transport missions. They just fly around and die from ops losses.
Does anyone know if this is correct ?
If it isn't then how should they be set up ?

[IanW]

And your Air Transport don't listen to 'Don't fly there, it's right next to enemy fighters'.\\

Bluntly, your air force is being run by drunk junkies.

And that's for the Soviets and Nazis.

Deal with it, and move on.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: tyronec

As far as I can tell AS doesn't intercept air transport missions. They just fly around and die from ops losses.
Does anyone know if this is correct ?
If it isn't then how should they be set up ?

I use AS rarely now. You are correct that they just fly around and die from OPS losses. My earlier turn in my Jubjub AAR I had 60ish OPS losses from fighters flying around on AS missions. It is PISS poor and semi-shelved AS missions at the moment. Might have been how I set them up but I will revisit soon enough.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: IanW

And your Air Transport don't listen to 'Don't fly there, it's right next to enemy fighters'.\\

Bluntly, your air force is being run by drunk junkies.

And that's for the Soviets and Nazis.

Deal with it, and move on.

I am interested how you deal with it. The community wants to know. Thank you in advance for enlightenment.

[IanW]

I don't.

The Red Air Force loses an ungodly number of transports running supplies in to air bases near the front, to bases that aren't actually important.

I shake my head, and go 'Yeah, another couple of Air Army generals got sent to Siberia' and move on.

It's up there with 'Why don't we adopt a panzerfaust, a bazooka or a PIAT ?'.

You just deal with the things you can change.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: IanW

I don't.

The Red Air Force loses an ungodly number of transports running supplies in to air bases near the front, to bases that aren't actually important.

I shake my head, and go 'Yeah, another couple of Air Army generals got sent to Siberia' and move on.

It's up there with 'Why don't we adopt a panzerfaust, a bazooka or a PIAT ?'.

You just deal with the things you can change.

Ok, makes sense.

[AlbertN]

I concur Air Superiority right now I barely use - the OPS losses are insane in general in WITE2.

W.Allied in their strategic bombing campaign deemed non acceptable a 5% loss ratio for their bombers.
Here 5% is almost default ops losses without enemy opposition, at times even 20%.

Air Supply I do use regularly from Airfield to Airfield - usually to shuffle Freight on some unit that needs refitting, aptly parked in an airfield; or to supply remote airfields with air squadrons; or to instantly supply an immediately transferred fighter group.

[tyronec]

I concur Air Superiority right now I barely use - the OPS losses are insane in general in WITE2.

The high losses could be acceptable if they intercepted. However as far as I can tell AS does not intercept air transport.
Does anyone know any different ?

[AlbertN]

In the most recent patch I think it may - as I've seen situations of 0 enemy fighter presence, but they suffered losses.

Before the most recent beta patch, it was not intercepting the enemy at all through Air Supply. I know because I tried to stop the enemy air supplying Smolensk in a game with no success.

[Rosencrantus]

I would ask this, I've never seen any auto interception of ground attack missions, which makes the directive extremely strong for breaking open one area of the front. Only bomb city and the such I see actually get auto-intercepted. But I've set up AS missions but sometimes they lack the range to completely cover the area. Do you guys knowing anything to deal with it aside from AS missions?

[AlbertN]

I believe the business is some 'time for the bombers to get there and get away' before intercepting fighters 'get alerted, take off and arrive where they need'.

That is at least the impression I got.

So supposedly one has to make use of Air Superiority missions -but- these presently are suicidal for my standards, and it feels silly to just have your fighters fly in the sky and crash 5-20% of them in OPs losses, when the enemy may not even show up at all.

Then suddenly there is the trainwreck of Soviet Bomber Armada showing up on some units, bomb the hell out of them (in general generating a bucket of fatigue) before the land attack comes.
And the Luftwaffe that supposedly rules the skies in '41 is quiet.

Given I am not the best expert in the Air Doctrine parameters, I'd like to have GS that flies off only when there are escorts for instance but even the Escort 100% does not work. If I attack somewhere that is just in bomber range but not fighter range, bombers take off and go alone. (Sure I can disable it - and that may be my mistake WHEN IT IS MY TURN! - But what if I want to leave GS ON for the enemy turn?)

[tyronec]

In the most recent patch I think it may - as I've seen situations of 0 enemy fighter presence, but they suffered losses.

Before the most recent beta patch, it was not intercepting the enemy at all through Air Supply. I know because I tried to stop the enemy air supplying Smolensk in a game with no success.

You do get intercepts of transports by small numbers of fighters just from them being in the area.
However my experience is that having an AS mission makes no difference, well actually it is worse because some of them die.
Maybe AS only flies during the air phase and with air supply during the ground phase the AS mission is no longer active - I don't know, just speculating.

[Joel Billings]

AS missions are supposed to have their miles flown in the air phase available to intercept GS and air transport in the enemy phase. Given the way things are put together, it's possible that something is making it less likely than it should for them to intercept. It's generally harder to intercept air transport missions because they are generally further away from you airbases. Also, in general, missions flown in both phases generally are weaker in the enemy phase (at least I see that with naval patrols). Since to intercept enemy air transports you have to fly in the enemy phase, maybe this is leading to it being harder for them to intercept.

If you've got saves (ideally one just after you create the AS ADs, and then one at the start of the enemy turn when you expect them to fly), create a tech support thread. If it's against the AI hopefully let me know where you see the problem. If against a human player, then it gets hard to do it without getting a save from that player right before they launch their air transport mission with info on what mission to fly.

Generally speaking, I think the best thing you can do to intercept enemy missions in the ground phase is get your fighters close to the area you want intercepted, and then let them do it automatically.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Generally speaking, I think the best thing you can do to intercept enemy missions in the ground phase is get your fighters close to the area you want intercepted, and then let them do it automatically.

I can irrevocably deny this plausibility to happen on automatic interception. Automatic interception has been very very very very low to happen across the map in my games. Only when I have AS set to "ONLY fly in the Enemy turn" have I had any success to intercept AND THEN only to lose a bazillion (60) aircraft in a turn running AS missions. So the answer points to itself but is self inflicting too much damage on the user of said AS.

[carlkay58]

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Generally speaking, I think the best thing you can do to intercept enemy missions in the ground phase is get your fighters close to the area you want intercepted, and then let them do it automatically.


I can irrevocably deny this plausibility to happen on automatic interception. Automatic interception has been very very very very low to happen across the map in my games. Only when I have AS set to "ONLY fly in the Enemy turn" have I had any success to intercept AND THEN only to lose a bazillion (60) aircraft in a turn running AS missions. So the answer points to itself but is self inflicting too much damage on the user of said AS.

(in reply to Joel Billings)

On the other hand I have been VERY successful in having this work. I am not sure what the differences are between HLYA's setup and mine. I will try and track this closely in the future.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58


quote:

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Generally speaking, I think the best thing you can do to intercept enemy missions in the ground phase is get your fighters close to the area you want intercepted, and then let them do it automatically.


I can irrevocably deny this plausibility to happen on automatic interception. Automatic interception has been very very very very low to happen across the map in my games. Only when I have AS set to "ONLY fly in the Enemy turn" have I had any success to intercept AND THEN only to lose a bazillion (60) aircraft in a turn running AS missions. So the answer points to itself but is self inflicting too much damage on the user of said AS.

(in reply to Joel Billings)

On the other hand I have been VERY successful in having this work. I am not sure what the differences are between HLYA's setup and mine. I will try and track this closely in the future.

Early game and probably supply constraints.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

ORIGINAL: HardLuckYetAgain

ORIGINAL: carlkay58


quote:

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

Generally speaking, I think the best thing you can do to intercept enemy missions in the ground phase is get your fighters close to the area you want intercepted, and then let them do it automatically.


I can irrevocably deny this plausibility to happen on automatic interception. Automatic interception has been very very very very low to happen across the map in my games. Only when I have AS set to "ONLY fly in the Enemy turn" have I had any success to intercept AND THEN only to lose a bazillion (60) aircraft in a turn running AS missions. So the answer points to itself but is self inflicting too much damage on the user of said AS.

(in reply to Joel Billings)

On the other hand I have been VERY successful in having this work. I am not sure what the differences are between HLYA's setup and mine. I will try and track this closely in the future.

Early game and probably supply constraints.

I did have a nice automatic interception turn 7 but was over water this turn. On the ground I am not so lucky at all.

[tyronec]

AS missions are supposed to have their miles flown in the air phase available to intercept GS and air transport in the enemy phase. Given the way things are put together, it's possible that something is making it less likely than it should for them to intercept. It's generally harder to intercept air transport missions because they are generally further away from you airbases. Also, in general, missions flown in both phases generally are weaker in the enemy phase (at least I see that with naval patrols). Since to intercept enemy air transports you have to fly in the enemy phase, maybe this is leading to it being harder for them to intercept.

If you've got saves (ideally one just after you create the AS ADs, and then one at the start of the enemy turn when you expect them to fly), create a tech support thread. If it's against the AI hopefully let me know where you see the problem. If against a human player, then it gets hard to do it without getting a save from that player right before they launch their air transport mission with info on what mission to fly.

Generally speaking, I think the best thing you can do to intercept enemy missions in the ground phase is get your fighters close to the area you want intercepted, and then let them do it automatically.

This is in my StB server game so I have no saves.
I have around 600 fighters near Stalingrad. With 'no mission' they are generally intercepting air supply with 5-10 aircraft and shooting down maybe 2-5 transports a week. It worked just as well with less fighters in the area which is what I had during the early turns. This is from memory as I have no record of the actual numbers.

AS makes no difference, except to have Soviet fighters get lost. However it could be there is a way to make it work but that is the question I asked at the start of this thread and there has been no answer.

As I understand it historically it was the VVS that stopped the resupply effort; shooting down or damaging about half the air supply fleet and aborting a large number of missions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuKpHUsvZm0

[tyronec]

I did have a nice automatic interception turn 7 but was over water this turn. On the ground I am not so lucky at all.

I have seen AS work against Naval patrol. That is why I wonder if it only works during the air phase and not against air supply occurring during the ground phase.

[metaphore]

I'm new to this game and never played anything from GG before.

Anyway, such an air system was a huge disapointment for me and barely made me quit playing because I could not figure out how to use it efficiently. Moreover, it's also the very the first step of each turn, and one must spend quite a lot of time right at the begining to sort out how it is working (or let everything to auto). I might have restarted several dozens of campaign games after playing a few German turns in order to try those different AD settings.

So, I also couldn't make my AS working against enemy airlifted supplies, or anything else that could be worth such an insane level of operational losses inflicted to my fighter force during AS missions. Auto interception (Fighter groups based in range while not being assigned to any AD) are inflicting very slight damage to enemy transport missions while their attrition rate is also quite low.

Comparatively, it seems ridiculous to me that a huge formation of unescorted (but fast) Ju-88 during a bombing raid might suffer up to 100% casualities if intercepted by a bunch of I-153s (a slower biplane) while any transport mission, even without protection, will deliver hundreds of tons of supplies close to the hex where a full Geschwader of enemy fighters were actually based.

Whatever the fighter setup, airlifted supplies seems to be able to get thru (for both side).

Finally, so many things are looking so weird in the Russian sky that I gave up trying and dumped all my airforce before even restarting the first campaign turn (excepted the german fighters and transport). Then, my über pilots are killing scores of enemy, like 30+ to 1, and the only thing I have to do is to rebase them as close to the front as possible during the movement phase.

Now, even that bit is painfull to do with an interface probably designed around 1991. (well, GG should have a look at the ergonomics of 2021 software too !).