I might have bias because i have a lot of experience playing as an air controller for both Allies and Axis, and it's something i enjoy doing. To my understanding, no-air works as the USSR because most of your industry is going to be out of reach of enemy tac bombers, and strat bombers are usually banned. That's assuming the Axis were even able to invest into them, which I doubt they would be able to effectively do since the Axis usually uses fighters + CAS or fighters only. The USSR playing a mostly defensive war for at least the first year or two of being at war doesn't help, because you are required to invest in building airbases and RADAR that will likely end up captured and used against you, which is a massive waste of IC. You can be ahead of Germany in fighter tech due to the fighter focus under positive heroism and have plenty of air xp from China lend-lease, but if your built up airbases end up captured you will have to be constantly re-basing planes and lacking nearby airbases to put them all every time you lose one. The very large air zones in Russia don't help either, since once you get east of the Stalin Line mission efficiency drops off a cliff for both sides. Generally planes are just more useful on the western front and early Barbarossa on the eastern front.I've never gotten far enough along with any particular MP group to be able to play a Major or an Axis major, or influence their meta environment. Yes, the air game is a bit more important and involved in MP, but my talking earlier was centered more around single player which is what OP and most others here I'd imagine are most likely more involved in. I'd also like to think that the very existence of something like no-air soviets being a popular MP approach means that dominating the air isn't really something that you are required to do. I wonder if there have been any multiplayer groups that took that idea in any different directions though.
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