Aircraft Usage

[saradog]

Is it best to use all aircraft assigned on a given turn or do they carry over?

[Buccaneer]

I do believe they carry over ... at least I've not seen them disappear from the box unless I have used them. (And then I often wish I had saved them til the following turn ;))

[Ricky B]

If you are playing with limited air availability where the visibility range limits the number of air units available, then there can be much less reason to save any. If it is 20 or 25%, then try to use them all as you already have plenty for later turns and you won't gain or lose any.

Otherwise as Buccaneer said they carry over to following turns.

Rick

[Liebchen]

Air Unit Availability

After being used in an air strike, air units must become available before they can be used in another air strike. The time required for an air unit to become available is variable and depends on Parameter Data (see the Parameter Data Dialog in the Main Program). In addition, if the AA fire associated with the air strike caused the air unit to become Disrupted or Broken, then this represents partial damage to the air unit associated with the strike and this must be recovered from before the air unit becomes available again. Normal Fatigue accumulation and recovery effects apply to air units and although these do not affect the availability of the air unit, they do affect the effectiveness of the air strike.

Example: with an Air Availability value of 20%, an air unit that has carried out a mission will have a 20% chance of being available on the next turn. If it were to fail the availability check, it remains unavailable and rechecks for availablity at the start of each turn until it returns to available status. With a 20% Air Availability value you might expect an air unit to be available on average for 2 air missions per day (assuming 1 day = 10 turns), not counting other combat effects like Disruption and Broken.

The availability of an air unit can also be affected by specific changes to availability as part of the scenario. The Units Menu in the Main Program and Scenario Editor display the changes in air availability that have been defined and allow these changes to be edited.

Low Visibility Air Effects

This is an Optional Rule that causes conditions of low visibility to result in reductions in air unit availability. The exact reductions are determined by parameter data. See the Parameter Data Dialog to determine the exact values that apply to a given scenario.

Whether you want to use them all now and hope that some become available again soon, or save some for later, is entirely up to you, depending upon the variables and the situation, obviously.

[ComradeP]

With Low Visibility Air Effects, air units can become unavailable even if you don't use them, so in that case it's use 'em or lose 'em. The manual isn't all that clear about the air units becoming unavailable if you don't use them.

Is there a screen where we can see the state of the air units? I can't seem to find a screen showing their fatigue. I also can't seem to find a screen showing all the present air units, as the strength screen overview can't be expanded.

[Ricky B]

With Low Visibility Air Effects, air units can become unavailable even if you don't use them, so in that case it's use 'em or lose 'em. The manual isn't all that clear about the air units becoming unavailable if you don't use them.
...

I don't believe air units become unavailable due to the Low Vis Air Effects rule, although we might be talking apples and oranges. When it first came out, my testing showed the following:

Let's say you have 16 air units, all ready to use, with the current visibility translating to 25% availability under this rule, and the other conditions allow air usage. For this exercise let's set air availability to 0% which means once used, the units are gone for good. Without the rule, you would have all 16 air units available for use.

With the rule, you would have 4 units available. If you use all 4, the next turn will have 4 more available. The next has 4 more and finally 4 more, then no more if you use them each turn. And if you don't use any, you will always have just 4 available, although at least in the past the available ones could change from turn to turn, although that may have changed at some point as I have played at least one game where my one and only air unit was recon for many turns in a row.

So you don't have any become unavailable for a period of time, it just limits how many of your entire group of air units are available for that turn. And I just setup a test using Budapest to verify that is how it works currently.

Rick

[ComradeP]

Yes, but it feels somewhat odd that the units that are not used become unavailable. In the timeframe of 2 hour turns, weather conditions dramatically worsening several times in a row at the air bases (in theory, as the air units that were available last turn suddenly become unavailable automatically), or communication breaking down between ground controllers and their aircraft seems weird.

I like the limit on air unit usage, I don't like them disappearing for several turns if I don't use them.

I'm also wondering how replacements and fatigue recovery work with availability limits, which I can't check as I can't find a fatigue or strength overview for air units. If air units can only take replacements or recover fatigue when they're available, that is somewhat problematic, especially the fatigue recovery (the air crews are just hanging around at their air base after all).

[Liquid_Sky]

Probably the air is being used by somebody else. Or the air did get used on rear area stuff. Or was used interdicting. Once the boys are aloft, they are going to shoot at something, and if they can't, will fly back home.

I am pretty sure that fatigue is removed regardless of whether the plane is available or not. I seem to remember that from Normandy, anyways. (Lots of planes and flak).

Fatigue for aircraft I figure is a mostly light damage to the aircraft then pilot fatigue. Fatigue recovery would be plane maintenance. Remember, the plane is only taking fatigue from being shot at from AA...not from flying missions.

[Liebchen]

Don't forget that they didn't really have good comms with the aircraft back then. They might be able to lob some colored smoke shells on intended targets. But they didn't really have the ability to call in air strikes with any degree of predictability or success. Planes would patrol certain areas, looking to meet their mission goals, and if ground attack was their assignment then they'd attack juicy looking targets.

But during limited visibility, they might be flying out there and not be able to see any. That could have the effect of causing them to be considered "used" in game terms.

[Ricky B]

...

I like the limit on air unit usage, I don't like them disappearing for several turns if I don't use them.

...

What are you trying to say with this? As I just posted above, my testing shows the units don't become unavailable if you don't use them. They are still "available" but due to the limit only a portion of the available units show up. They do NOT become unavailable if not used. The testing I did showed positively that they do not become unavailable unless used.

Rick