Experience

[postfux]

I started a german campaign 36 and did beat Poland and France within days following the historic timeline. I relied on breakthroughs and encirclement while against France i also had to fight a massive battle pushing south from Belgium to pin the French army behind Maginot.

My spearheads are tank and mot Corps with armd. cars followed by inf with arty and at to help in the heavy fighting. I try to use engineers for river crossings and mountain Corps for hills.

My airforce concentrates on attacking airfields and is supporting the army in attacking provinces where heavy fighting is taking place. I have airgroups with 3 bombers/escorts and 1 fighter or 3 cas/escort and 1 interceptor as well as airgroups with 4 fighters. I rotate fighting duty to regain org so they wont be beaten too heavily if intercepted.

All doctrines for this era are researched and my leaders are competent.

After starting Sealion and encircling London I dont have a single unit with enough expierence to earn a single star and my airgroups did little better.

Is this to be expected or am i doing something wrong?

 

[Pang Bingxun]

No, you are doing something right. Experience gained appeares to be proportional to the hours fought. But in order to minimize your losses you avoid long battles when possible.

 

[postfux]

Thanks for your help. This explains why my defensive airgroups are shooting down bombers by the hundreds and still remain better recruits.

 

[MagooNZ]

Yes,experience is gained in battle, but it is lost as raw recruits are brought in to replace combat losses and return the division to full strength. Experience is also lost just by having troops on the front line of a static front, and when suffering attrition losses due to weather (blizzard), terrain (desert), which is made worse by low ESE in low infrastructure provinces remote from your capital. If you have a static front (eg just holding the line during the winter months), and want to preserve the experience that has been gained, you need to take these most experienced divisions off the front line.

The rate of experience gain can be modified to suit : look for the XP gain factors in the misc.txt file found in your games \db directory

 

[Titan79]

What Pang and Magoo wrote is totally true, postfux (welcome to the forum, btw!); anyway, there is a way to make XP gain a bit faster, especially for aircraft - and it is Interdiction/Ground Attack mission (works best against non-entrenched units and, of course, smaller groups rather than big ones).

This is an example of the XP one can gain after some months of attacks against the right enemy formations:





As you can see, it is possible to go above 1, 2 and even 3 XP stars (those fighters will eventually reach 5 if I don't make big mistakes). However, you have to avoid casualties at any cost, otherwise your XP will be diluted with the raw recruits refilling your ranks.

 

[unmerged(526990)]

Likewise, I've had experience with CAS and TAC getting up to five stars doing ground attack and interdiction missions in easy conditions. Takes a while and I know those missions are of limited usefulness, but I think it's worth it in the right situation.

 

[postfux]

Thanks for the helpfull replies and the welcome.

I have no problems with the reduction due to losses. That seems allright. I think the failure in the system is to only reward fighting time and not success (battle won, strength/org reduced).

Its good to know at least offensive airgroups can be made veterans with carefull planning. They are also the only ones in my campaign to accumulate experience.

That the heroic defenders of your home skies remain green because they are shooting down bombers too fast seems not to credit their achievement enough.

For ground troops experience seems not to be relevant. I dont expect it to become better in russia with higher losses to be expectet.

 

[Titan79]

Its good to know at least offensive airgroups can be made veterans with carefull planning. They are also the only ones in my campaign to accumulate experience.

That the heroic defenders of your home skies remain green because they are shooting down bombers too fast seems not to credit their achievement enough.

Yeah, that's the gist of the matter. In order to get some Experten with >60 XP to be unleashed against enemy bombers, you'd first need to use them in a ground support role to rack up experience.

 

[PB-DK]

That the heroic defenders of your home skies remain green because they are shooting down bombers too fast seems not to credit their achievement enough.

yes indeed this is a problem for fighters and interceptors that is rather annoying at least to me as well... but i don't see much of a way to alter that...

 

[lollibast]

dont know if that`s "wad" but it`s quite realistic. think of fighter aces and the characteristics of dogfighting

 

[unmerged(526990)]

dont know if that`s "wad" but it`s quite realistic. think of fighter aces and the characteristics of dogfighting

Agreed; I think historically technology and doctrine had a much bigger impact on the air war than experienced gained by air crews (not that the latter wasn't significant as well, of course). I don't know if it works with way (probably not), but the experienced gained should really be non-linear as well. I'm sure their very first hour of air combat taught airmen way more than their 100th!

 

[postfux]

Agreed; I think historically technology and doctrine had a much bigger impact on the air war than experienced gained by air crews (not that the latter wasn't significant as well, of course). I don't know if it works with way (probably not), but the experienced gained should really be non-linear as well. I'm sure their very first hour of air combat taught airmen way more than their 100th!

I share your opinion about aces vs doctrine. I somewhere read it was not uncommon to get shot down before even knowing about an attack. But getting your fighters in the air in numbers and approaching the enemy right is not only doctrine but also a matter of experience.

 

[unmerged(526990)]

I share your opinion about aces vs doctrine. I somewhere read it was not uncommon to get shot down before even knowing about an attack. But getting your fighters in the air in numbers and approaching the enemy right is not only doctrine but also a matter of experience.

I agree, I just think it was that early experience that was the most important, and that went on to inform doctrine more than anything. For example, it only took one serious carrier vs carrier experience (Midway) for both sides to make significant changes to their carrier doctrines.

 

[Titan79]

It would be nice to make air squadrons gain experience faster when fighting versus other air targets (i.e. dogfighting) rather than attacking ground targets - or at least I'd prefer it to be this way.

I guess, however, that changing this line in misc.txt

# Air XP gain Factor
	1.0

would simply result in air units gaining XP at a higher rate on every circumstance, right?

Is there a way to "split" air vs air XP gain opposed to air vs ground XP gain (maybe a new line to be added in 1.09...)?

 

[Commander666]

Since nobody's answered you, I would assume "no". But don't take my word for it.