Non ending Air and Naval battles

[Nick U]

I put my Interceptors on Air Superiority missions over an enemy airfield, I restrict their mission to that province only. Regularly I get pop ups saying they have been attacked by enemy air fleets. However, at the end of the battle I rarely see an end of battle report (maybe 1 in 8). Over the course of a single day, 5 or 6 of my Intercepter wings may engage an enemy airforce, some more than once. However, when I check the progress towards the Strategic goal of "Veteran Airforce", the count of air battles fought hasn't changed or only gone up by one. After 4 years of warfare, I'm still on 102 Air battles out of 250 needed and the count should be a conservative 500+.

Frustratingly, even when I do get an end of battle report (and the Veteran Airforce count does actually increment), I'm often told that I've lost the battle. Even though, my full strength, fully organised German wing of 4 up to date INT is only engaging 3 very battered assorted Russian aircraft and my planes take negligable damage. Converserly, more than once I've seen one of my air transport aircraft get intercepted while rebasing and I get a report that I've won the battle.

It seems to be related to when a unit is passing through a hex that is the subject of an enemy Air Superiority mission. If the air unit passes to the next province before the air battle comes to it's natural conclusion, the air battle is simply cancelled rather than concluded.

I'm not certain why the wrong side is occassionally credited with the win, but I'm guessing that it occurs when the conclusion of the battle and the move occurs on the same tick. The games knows one side won but neither side is in the process of retreating, so the game gets confused as to who won.

I've seen this happen with Naval battles but it is much rarer which I think is due to the speed of Naval units and the much larger sea provinces. This means that even when units are just passing through they spend several hours in each province and the fight usually concludes before they can get out. However, I've watched many naval battles lasting several hours on slow ticks, see ships dying then suddenly the battle window closes down with no end of battle report. Once I had a fleet of 5 Destroyers on patrol. They were attacked by a much more powerful fleet including 3 Battleships. Three of my DDs were sunk, but then the survivors patrolled out of the province, instead of retreating to the neighbouring port province. There was no end of battle report and no friendly fleet has arrived in Province X report, which with my settings, happens when a retreat occurs. The game didn't pause and while I was still wondering what was happening, the enemy fleet followed and attacked them a second time, annihilating the remnants.

Should I be putting my Interceptors on larger area Air Superiority missions or using Air Intercept missions? If I want a naval unit to engage/guard in a single hex, is it as effective to just use the move order and then leave it sitting there, instead of a Patrol/Convoy Raid order which will see it wandering around the neighbouring sea hexes?

 

[Count Blue]

Should I be putting my Interceptors on larger area Air Superiority missions or using Air Intercept missions? If I want a naval unit to engage/guard in a single hex, is it as effective to just use the move order and then leave it sitting there, instead of a Patrol/Convoy Raid order which will see it wandering around the neighbouring sea hexes?

I prefer the intercept over the air superiority. I use air superiority only to recon a spot before I do a para drop or something like that.
Maybe Intercept will give you more battles quicker.

Naval battles are pretty random and the game speed will deliver significant changes in the outcome (if you care to load a savegame and repeat the battle).
The faster the game speed the stranger the result (IMVHO).
From annihilation (slow speed) up to passing by (fast speed) without encounter.

 

[Kovax]

If you have your planes set for day or night operations, they will break off combat at the end of their "shift", and you will be informed that you "lost" the battle. Not a problem, just an inaccurate message. Same situation where your subs manage to evade the intercepting Destroyers, and escape with minimal or no damage: you "lost" the battle, despite having succeeded at their secondary strategic aim: avoiding combat with enemy sub-hunters.

 

[Nick U]

My planes are set to daylight only operations, but that is not the reason why the majority of battles are non events.

Last night I tried switching from Air Superiority to Air Intercept for my air groups, their targets were enemy airfield provinces and I simply saw no air battles. I have come to the conclusion that Air Intercept is for use over friendly territory (or right on the front line) and Air Superiority is for use deeper inside enemy territory, particularly in areas covered by Fog of War (FOW).

I did try a test of increasing the area an Air Superiority mission covered for one air group. Instead of just covering the single airfield province, it covered the 6 surrounding provinces too.

The issue though, assuming my initial assessment of what the problem is, is that an aircraft moves 5-7 provinces per tick. Thus will still jump out of the target area after one tick, on the outward journey at least. However, on the inward journey there is a chance they will arrive one hex short of their destination and then need another tick to move into the final province and land. Thus allowing my Interceptors two bites of the cherry, but it is a small chance on incoming aircraft only.

This potentially is offset by the need for my interceptors to relocate one or two provinces to carry out their attack if they are now patrolling 7 rather than 1 provinces. I'm not sure how the game models that situation, but I assume there has to be a downside to covering a larger area? If so the effect might be to actually cause less damage to the enemy, as on average 6 out of 7 of all battles, both outgoing and incoming, would require a relocation prior to engaging.

It did seem to improve the occurance of final battle reports (and thus the count towards Veteran Airforce), but the sample size and time was too small to say for definite and it is very difficult to determine whether less damage was done on each engagement. I will investigate further tonight.

What I am starting to believe is that the issue goes deeper than just affecting the Veteran Airforce count. It seems leader traits aren't getting updated/improved if there is no end of battle report either. Leader experience is updated per tick while the battle is ongoing, but leader traits are only updated once at the conclusion of the battle.

 

[Count Blue]

If there are no enemy planes on the enemy airfield air intercept mission will not work AKA do nothing.
But if there are enemy planes stationed it works in my games.

It looks like it lures the enemy planes into intercepting.
Might be a bug I am exploiting without knowing?

BTW I play the Semper Fi Version of the game.

So if you happen to play TFH or FTM - YMMV.

 

[Nick U]

If there are no enemy planes on the enemy airfield air intercept mission will not work AKA do nothing.
But if there are enemy planes stationed it works in my games.

It looks like it lures the enemy planes into intercepting.

I play TFH and yes I agree if no enemy planes are stationed on the airfield no fights occur. However, when there are planes stationed there fights happen when the enemy aircraft (I assume) take off and then land at the beginning and end of their missions. I don't think the enemy are being lured into intercepting. Otherwise, neither side would prematurely leave the fight, except occasionally for the end of shift Day/Night occurance mentioned by Kovax above.

 

[Kovax]

Using Air Intercept only works if you have sight of the target province, or good radar coverage, otherwise your planes are never called in. In cases such as an enemy airfield behind the lines, Air Superiority works more reliably, since your planes will be sent there without requiring something to be spotted first. I prefer Intercept if I've got bombers operating there or adjacent (such as when I'm using INT to protect my bombers while they attack enemy ground units, or trying to protect my own ground forces from enemy bombers), and prefer Superiority otherwise.

On Intercept, if the enemy aircraft never show up, I don't waste fuel and supplies flying back and forth. If my own INT absolutely, positively has to be there, then I use Air Superiority.

Note that sending your planes to an enemy airfield with enemy aircraft present doesn't guarantee a combat, because the enemy will often choose not to fly, especially while recovering from damage and/or disorganization.

 

[Nick U]

What I tend to do for Barbarrasso as Germany is build up about 10 airgroups of 4xINT, 8 of these airgroups I put on front line airfields running Air Superiority missions over the nearest Russian Airfields. The other two remain on a rear base airfield regening org.

The Russian AI tends to group his INTs into 3 wing units and they tend to be inferior to German INTs. Thus when they take off for the first round of combat, they inflict some damage but take more themselves. I immediately swap out the damaged INTs with the rear base aircraft on a wing for wing basis, keeping the same leaders on the same missions more or less permanently. After each battle, the AI grounds his airgroup for a few days, but seems to start flying them again as soon as the first wing reaches a certain threshold of reorg. At the next battle I might see one Russian wing at full strength and the other two with low org and/or low strength and they get a pasting. Often I don't need to rotate any of my wings on the second and subsequent engagements.

The AI never relocates airgroups away from a frontline airfield unless threatened by land forces. Nor does it transfer wings between airgroups on the same airfield, to build one fit airgroup and leave all the damaged wings on the ground. As it builds new airgroups it will often stack them on the same airfields with the same result befalling them and the added problem that the airfield is now over capacity and cannot repair all it's wings at the optimal speed. The net result is that one German 4xINT airgroup can often pin down as many as 4-5 russian airgroups (12-15 wings) as they are constantly returning to the fray piecemeal while still understrength. All I have to do is swap out 1 or 2 INT every now and again to maintain my forces at 100% Strength, 95%+ org. Meanwhile very few Russian missions are run against my ground forces (exception - longer range TAC, flying from more distant airfields), while my bombers and air transposts can operate almost with immunity.

It is all good stuff, except despite the number of engagements kicking off, few have an end result. Leaders that have been running an Air Superiority mission for the best part of a year are still only 18%-24% of the way to the Air Superiority trait (if they didn't start with it) and I'm still less than halfway towards the Veteran Airforce effect. I suppose I shouldn't complain, the job is getting done. But eventually I will be going against the US airforce and I assume they will start with better training levels and equipment.

 

[Kovax]

The ONLY way to get high skill air leaders is to have them do ground attacks, day after day. INT can do that passably well, so if you have an INT unit that's not currently needed to pin down opposing air units, send them to strafe some ground targets. Advancement is apparently geared for repetitive TAC and CAS missions, not high-intensity but short duration INT or FTR combat, or the occasional STR bombing run.