Air combat is a bloodbath

[ltccone]

WW2 is all of 2.5 months old. And almost all of my fighters have been shot down.

Over Western Germany I've lost 2376 fighters, while shooting down 2116 fighters and 593 bombers. I only lost 49 over Poland.

What gives here? I have FIFTEEN Bf 109s and 50 He 51s left in my entire airforce...

 

[Riekopo]

I really don't understand how they didn't notice this before release. Unless they did and ran out of time to fix it.

 

[Praetorian44]

I have also noticed how quickly planes seem to be going down. Hopefully they'll fix this in a patch.

 

[Beagá]

What gives here? I have FIFTEEN Bf 109s and 50 He 51s left in my entire airforce...

So the AI is actually good and making you thinking about resources and what is happening in it?

Zero issue. The real issue is sending airplanes over friendly areas being the same as sending them over enemy territory - pilot shot down over Germany shouldn´t be the same as pilot shot down over France.

However... if the allies have 3000 planes... and you have 1000... They really have no reason not to bomb Germany. That was the allied long term plan BTW, ehich failed because what happened in may 1940.

There is also reason why the AI always calls Italy in 1939. It´s both to split armies AND airforces.

 

[fat4eyes]

Yes it is. My issue is that it happens way too fast. 1000 planes shot down in a week? The Battle of Britain lasted 3 months and only 4000 planes (both sides total) were shot down. I always put my planes on low intensity just so that my production can sort of keep up.

 

[ltccone]

So the AI is actually good and making you thinking about resources and what is happening in it?

Zero issue. The real issue is sending airplanes over friendly areas being the same as sending them over enemy territory - pilot shot down over Germany shouldn´t be the same as pilot shot down over France.

However... if the allies have 3000 planes... and you have 1000... They really have no reason not to bomb Germany. That was the allied long term plan BTW, ehich failed because what happened in may 1940.

There is also reason why the AI always calls Italy in 1939. It´s both to split armies AND airforces.

Yes, it is an issue. That is WAY too many planes shot down, on both sides, in too short of a time.

 

[fat4eyes]

There's also the issue of zero training time. It takes months to train an infantry division, but a fighter squadron deploys in a week.

 

[S.D.Smither]

There's also the issue of zero training time. It takes months to train an infantry division, but a fighter squadron deploys in a week.

Also air superiority should determine how quickly, if at all you are able to train pilots. One of the biggest issues for the Luftwaffe was also an inability to train pilots towards the middle and end of the war. They had no where were the could easily and effectively train pilots without them potentially getting shot down by the enemy. Same with tank crews, they couldn't train a lot of them effectively without potentially getting bombed the hell out of. They also lacked the fuel to train both the pilots and tank crews really...Air superiority really is undervalued in this game imo.

 

[ltccone]

Or alternatively you are just a bad player that can´t understand what is going on in the game.

But that would take effort, and it´s easier to complain than becoming good at the game.

Call Italy into the war like the AI does and get good at the game. Sorry, but that´s all there is to it. The only real issue the air war has is missions over friendly/versus enemies and I´m not forced to agree with your pseudo-issue.

A 'bad player?' Wow you sure think A LOT of yourself, don't you?

 

[robw963]

Honestly though, I think there's a good point to what Beagá is saying, if maybe a little ego bruising. My first bunch of play throughs (as Germany) I was getting annihilated in the air. I wasn't building enough fighters, I wasn't building variants, I had no clue about setting retreat priorities, I wasn't producing enough fighters to replace losses and I wasn't properly supporting my air force with radar stations and additional airfields. So yeah, a month ago I would say I was a bad player but I learned how to beat it by reading here and experimenting on my own. Honestly, I love that. If I could beat the game right out of the box I'd be really disappointed. And I'm still figuring out how to optimize it.

 

[ltccone]

Honestly though, I think there's a good point to what Beagá is saying, if maybe a little ego bruising. My first bunch of play throughs (as Germany) I was getting annihilated in the air. I wasn't building enough fighters, I wasn't building variants, I has no clue about setting retreat priorities, I wasn't producing enough fighters to replace losses and I wasn't properly supporting my air force with radar stations and additional airfields. So yeah, a month ago I would say I was a bad player but I learned how to beat it by reading here and experimenting on my own. Honestly, I love that. If I could beat the game right out of the box I'd be really disappointed. And I'm still figuring out how to optimize it.

His 'solution' is to immediately bring Italy into the war when you invade Poland, to 'save' your airforce. Italy didn't join the war until June 10, 1940, so that shouldn't be the solution.

I had about about 2,400 Bf109s. If that isn't enough, how much is? I'm producing 5 a day, and will have Fw190s in 62 days.

I did mange to knock France out of the war in 6 weeks without the help of a single plane.

I was looking for help, not being told I'm a 'bad' player and told to do something a-historical because that's 'what the AI does.'

 

[TitaniumShadow]

I have to agree that air combat is a little too bloody. In my last game I had around 1,450 Bf 109s of various variants at the start of the war. Not too bad, as Germany historically had around 1,300 total fighters at the start of the war. However, after less than two months I had lost 1,395 fighters while killing 1,977 allied fighters, which is around 300 more than the combined totals France, Great Briton and Poland started the war with historically.

As a side note, there are still almost 1,200 active fighters operating in France, while my fighter strength is around 350. So as Germany you had better plan on having more than 3,000 fighters to start the war if you want to guarantee air superiority.

And yes, I had radar sites, additional airfields and AA batteries, which is why the kill ratio was in my favor.

 

[robw963]

His 'solution' is to immediately bring Italy into the war when you invade Poland, to 'save' your airforce. Italy didn't join the war until June 10, 1940, so that shouldn't be the solution.

I had about about 2,400 Bf109s. If that isn't enough, how much is? I'm producing 5 a day, and will have Fw190s in 62 days.

I did mange to knock France out of the war in 6 weeks without the help of a single plane.

I was looking for help, not being told I'm a 'bad' player and told to do something a-historical because that's 'what the AI does.'

I won't claim I've perfected this, I'm still working on optimizing, but I build at least 3,000 and really it has to be more like 4,000 fighters when Danzig time rolls around. I try to have 2 complete racks of fighters under production (15 factories each, so a total of 30 factories). I think that's around 8 or 9 fighters per day. I try to get an ME109 variant (with boosted agility/reliabilty) as soon as possible. Ideally, about 1/3 of my fighters will be variants by the time the war starts. Like you, I'm really gunning for the FW190, but if you wait to produce only those and skip the ME109, you're screwed. I built 2 radar sites per state along the entire western front. I add airbases in southwestern Germany because the range of the ME109 will not allow you to properly cover the entire region if you don't. Read the tooltips when you hover over an Air region (F3). It will tell you your coverage percentage. Hope it helps. Yeah, the airwar is bloody, as it actually was in World War 2, but if you apply the right resources to it you can win it.

 

[lihp]

OP just doesnt know, what a bloody air battle is....

 

[LongVin]

I've noticed this too. It's either all or nothing. I had a few playthroughs so far and nothing stays contested for long.

 

[PrussianTiger]

I've noticed this too, I've compensated but as the last dev diary said they were looking into air combat being too bloody.

 

[Lord Romanus II]

I mean, from a gameplay perspective it might seem too bloody, but the air war was also quite bloody historically. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain the german lost roughly 2,000 planes in the fight on the western front through to France's surrender, and that's about what I'm seeing. You can drastically reduce losses against the AI with overwhelming force in your home territory and with radar, though.

 

[DaveDash]

The air war was very bloody in reality.

At one point Germany was losing up to 200 planes a day in the Battle of Britain.

The bombing over Germany caused so much attrition for the allies (50%!) they had to limit themselves to night raids only

To get a realistic/plausible results you need to adjust your sortie rate based on loses (by default it's set to no retreat) and only set bombers to sortie at night - until you get air superiority.

This is not to say that it doesn't need tweaking - you should probably be able to chose decisive vs non decisive formations to reduce critical loses, and certain other aspects of air combat also need tweaking (strength of bombers vs fighters).

 

[skrup]

Another guy, cant recall his post, noticed that if you send the fighters in smaller wings up you'll have a much higher kill ratio. So say if you put 100 wings of 10 fighters up, instead of a 10 wings with 100 planes you cut like a hot knife trough butter, even if the enemy has air superiority.
Still, even i know now a gamy trick to win, for me the issue is that it is too quick. You, and the AI, can loose 2000 planes within a week, but production is with 15 factories at 80% efficiency assigned, 6 planes. That means it takes a year to replace the loss of a week. And that need to e solved.

 

[grandad1982]

I'm not sure it's too bloody but I did feel like the blood flows a little too fast as it were.

I think one of the main problems that people are having is that the UI is guff and doesn't really give you the feedback you need to know how your decisions are impacting results.

After my aborted UK game where I really didn't build enough mic and didn't get enough fighters, as Germany I made sure I had a complete line of fighters from the start and increased things from there. I get level 2 fighters asap and dropped most of my air xp on engines and reliability.

When deploying planes I form one massive wing deploy it to the zone I want and set is repair and Misson, then I use the split airwing button to turn that 1 in to loads of 50 stacks. They kept the main settings of the big wing and it requires less clicks this way to set up. I could go smaller than 50 for better efficiency but that's just micro clutter and hell.

Also make sure you spread them to multiple bases for better zone coverage, build AA and radar and check back with the air map regularly incase your need to add more planes to a zone.

The is a great mod I'm using that has helped me loads. It changes the look of the map so at a glance I can see if I'm doing well or not and I can actually see the air zones properly! I think it's called better strategic view, I don't think I could pay without it now, it mashes since great changes!