[WarInEur] RE: air superiority and air combat incentives

[Wardall Clark]

Air Superiority missions expose AP to a risk of being killed.  If you don't fly 
them, your AP on Sea Superiority and Ground support stand a certainty of 
being killed. Unfortunately, If ones doesn't have enough total AP to fly 
then the Air superiority mission simply raises your casualties to no effect 
on the ground war.  
 
Everybody knows this, which is why the much weaker side declines to fly 
and thereby passes up the chance to inflict casualties. 
 
Now suppose that fighting could prevent the other side from utilizing some capacity, then the 
incentive to fly would be increased. The much weaker AF would still decline to fly but a somewhat 
weaker one would come out and play every now and then as a calculated risk.
 
Right now the only rule in basic WIE in which Air superiority matters is Air Movement.  
Perhaps Air superiority should be a requirement for use of shifting combat odds and 
additional combat results rules. 
 
On the West front the use of the DG BWIE Sea Lion rule providing relief from High Seas intervention 
is supposed to require that the Axis also establish Air superiority in order to use sea superiority AP 
to negate high seas intervention.  
 
Is there not a connection between Air superiority and Air reconnaissance in the Fog of War rules?
 
Limiting the total number of AP that may fly Air Superiority Missions would much reduce the risk.
BWIE now has limits for each Air front. The limit for the East front is 20 AP. Which means if the 
the Soviets can put up 13 AP then the Axis can usually be denied Air Superiority that week. The problem 
in WitE is that after having 7 of 10 slaughtered in the opening week it takes many cycles before the Soviets
reach 13 AP. 
Perhaps the Air Superiority Box needs to be limited for when playing without the options, but not when there
are additional incentives to contest Air Superiorty week after week. 
Even with this rule, the risk of air casualties does seem to me to be somewhat too high (current is one 
AP lost per six opposing APs.) Steve suggestion would drop this to one per ten.  What about an eight
sided die?.  At one per ten the battle of britain would not be lethal enough, IMO.
 
BOB
 
PS. I also think the Air Attrition rules are backwards, the Big AF doesn't inflict extra attrition on the smaller AF, instead
it suffers attrition in relation to its own size. Flying is dangerous. The rules reflect the losses during combat missions
Attrition is supposed to pick up on the routine losses unrelated to the intensity of the combat. 
 
> From: "Kent & Sue Haunschild" <kentsue at cox.net>> Had another idea after rereading these emails this morning. What would the effect be if everyones Air Superiority was capped at 30 for all fronts?> > Now all three sides have the ability to fly without fear their ground combat AP will be lost to no effect. The losses to the 2:1 ratio rule is why I don't fly when I get outnumbered, And, I assume others feel the same.> > But, if we cap the number of AP to thirty then all players should be encouraged to fly more often. 30 AP per side will produce an average of 5 AP losses per battle. While this is approximately the attritional number needed per cycle it is still two lethal for sustained flying.> > To correct this I'd go with Steve's idea and reduce Air Combat losses by going to a ten sided die. This would 
>reduce the chance of a loss from 17% to 10%. This would give the sustainability that is currently lacking and 
>give all the players the ability use their AP to influence the ground war.> > From: SGMINFO at aol.com > > The question of the max out syndrome with the airforce has been examined before, and my conclusion on this problem eventually boiled down to this.> The airforces don't fly enough. (As Kent also theorises).> > The reason they don't fly is fear...fear that with the somewhat capricious air war, once you have, lost parity, you cannot stay in the air without suffering insupportable losses. > My own solution, yet to be tested by wider application is to move from the six sided, to the ten sided dice. That is, to reduce lethality.> > an innovation, is to reduce the penalty for the weaker side, by increasing the threshold for 
penalties to the weaker flying side's ground support options. Now the lesser player is less deterred 
and can see greater reason to fly in adverse circumstances. > > I might propose that instead of the 2-1 trigger point for the additional penalties to ground support, we raise this experimentally to 3-1 bfore knocking down aircraft on G/S.> 
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