Air War - How to combat bomber hopping spam?

[Orbs]

This has always been an annoyance but in NSB with AI building even more planes and being able to nerf supply through train, truck and railway bombing it’s becoming a huge headache.

As Germany my air force is larger than the Allied Air Force. During the battle of Poland, Denmark, Benelux and France I had green air. But now that I control so much of Europe the Allie’s just keep putting up 1000 Bombers in different air regions, and when I Move my planes to combat them they just move the bombers to another region. Ad nauseam. Forever. I'm Wasting IC building trucks and trains while also repairing railways and hubs.

I know there is a magic number (used to be 400ish planes before NSB) in each air region to combat this but my Air Force just isn’t that big yet. I can overcome them in any air region but constantly having to chase after them when they move to a new region is seriously making me go insane.

its Crazy that I can’t tell some lower level general to micro this for me. I’m having to just play the game in F3 and constantly chase the red air (I can get about 300 planes in every region at once but it’s not enough to prevent the attempt and Then I’m forced to stack much of my air to combat the ~1,000 bombers when they arrive).

Until I can double my Air Force are there any tips? Or is his just a huge flaw that has to be lived with?

Allies flying huge bombing raids in different locations is realistic, but me having to micro it every minute should not be.

thanks.

 

[sdplissken]

This has been kinda a problem for a while but people will realize it now

 

[Goodfontana]

It might be obvious, but the best solution to your problem is to just naval invade the UK and be done with it. Doing so is surprisingly as easy as ever. Just mass your airforce in the channel, start sinking ships, and when they remove the ships from there, put your subs in and launch a naval invasion immediately. I invaded with a bunch of tanks and it's like the UK divisions weren't even there of how fast they were dying.

If you don't want to do this, you could always just halt your offensives, distribute your airforce around your land protecting the supply (start with 100 each, then 200, etc., by 400 you should be golden), and then continue your offensives normally.

 

[awmobile367]

Welcome to the minigame "Whackamole"!

 

[Medu Salem]

There is no way to avoid it, unless you root out the source problem... which is the UK.

After being done with France immediately schedule a 10 or 40 div naval invasion (depending on if you rushed Landing Craft which I usually do as prep just to be sure something lands somewhere) and be done with them. The earlier the better so that not as many countries jump into the Allies and so they can't start to outproduce you with planes and so there is no place left for the allies to station their wings.


But that said... I even noticed the fighter/bomber hopping when sending volunteers to Spanish CW. The second you put your wing somewhere the enemy wing will go to another territory. Not such a huge issue, since only 3 zones and you can make 3 wings and still perform better than the AI, but that's the first where I first noticed the aggressive hopping spam.


The worst might be the Soviet spam though, because that's something you can't even root effectively, unless you have enough fighters to send into every territory to have air superiority no matter where they send their doom stack.

 

[Cavalry]

There is an armored train and a cheaper train version on Support company tech tab.

For players with inferior fighter force, I think just use a lot of AA in infantry and they kill many annoying CAS. And don't use supply truck.

 

[DukofDeth]

I once managed to get the AI to leave me alone by having enough aircraft on superiority or interception missions in each relevant zone. It does tie up a lot of aircraft but with just over 2100 fighters - they can be old ones as its just a numbers game - spread across seven zones [including Italy, Western Poland and Czechsoslovakia as well as Germany's four air zones] you can keep strat bombers away. In the defines there as code to the effect that at just over 300 fighters the bombers are to avoid the zone.

I said once - did this in a game as Germany - but I also managed it once or twice as China against Japan, which also likes to do a lot of strat bombing [with tactical bombers].

 

[long_fella]

stuff

fwiw the boot's always been on the other foot when I play the Soviets, with German air forces jumping from zone to zone and me having to manually chase them round the map...

 

[Publican]

It's awful but I mitigate some of the frustration by putting a couple hundred heavy fighters in airbases which allow them to "straddle" two or three zones. Then I reassign just those squadrons on intercept missions to assist the dedicated standard fighters flying air superiority missions in their "home" zone that's being targeted. This "top up" strategy seems to slow the AI's "tipping point" for moving their bombers and it's also easier than physically moving normal fighters around all the time.