Airforce sucks

[Adler]

I am new to this game but damn, planes suck. Not all tho, i had some nice success with heavy fighters, you could strife enemy gun or infantry and get out after 1 pass and they dont get suppressed so much.

Thing is, planes like ju87, he111 or other bombers are just horrible, they get shot down instantly. AAA is just insane. I thought, maybe you must send some crappy planes together and get some kills that way, nope. Send like 6x ju87 bombers, they all got suppressed before reaching target, which was on the front line, not like i told them to fly across entire map. AAA shot down half of them and rest ran away. You dont even need fighters because AAA will do everything better.

I was also never hit by enemy planes since you can just spam cheap AAA behind some hill, buildings or forest. Enemy cant see it, if they hit you with arty you can just drive away and change position.

I heard that in SD1, planes were OP and they changed it, but holy ♥♥♥♥, they are useless now, you don't even have much of them, just few fw190A8 fighter-bombers that can get shot down easly or 18 or so ju87 that you can't even afford to buy all of them and they get shot down even easier.

While fighterbombers or heavy fighters are just fine, then actual bombers are pure crap, ju88/87, he111 etc. It's such a waste of points to put them into your division. No one even use them in MP.

Edit: I bet someone will come and say something like, just kill enemy AAA before sending planes... I never run out of AAA myself, they are cheap and you have lots of them. Also can put them behind building or something so it's really hard to spot them, most of my games, i never lost single AAA, just kept them behind and shot down or suppressed enemy bomber that tried to attack me. And if you destroy all AAA, then you are about to win anyway since enemy run out of units like this, then it means he is doing really bad.

[♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔]

Air game requires some planning, sense of timing, and prepwork.

Launching out a plane or two every once in a while will just get them killed. A lot of the time, artillery is used alongside air to pick off and suppress AA - even if he moves his AA, it will likely not gonna be very effective on the move, allowing to to quickly swoop in with a plane and sweep it out. Air is also good at blunting a forward pushes, as enemy has to leave his AA cover to advance. Air can be used as a passive bluff - if you see enemy spamming lots of AA it means that he is not investing in ground game and so you have an opportunity to roll him up old-fashioned way along with his AA. Player Spanischer Ritter, for example, was infamous for bluffing with a cheap biplane spam - it caused people to panic and buy up a ton of AA, while in reality he only spent like 100 points on the whole swarm, and was not actually going to do any further air, making all that AA mostly deadweight. It's a complicated topic - I suggest watching some competitive match games where air builds were being played.

Air is definitely viable, but is a bit involved to set up.

[Adler]

All this is on some pro level pvp, like bunch of tactics in star craft 2 or something. But just to have fun in gameplay or even realism (because AAA were ♥♥♥♥ in ww2, here it's just overpowered). It's simply not fun to use, unless like you said, you play on some high level and know how to use something as best as possible.

It should not be like this, not everyone is like that or wants to put so much time to be pro. As for now, my point about planes like ju87 stands, it's useless, no one is using them. Everyone goes for fighter bombers, other than that.. it's all useless.

You should at least be able to send that 6 stukas and maybe lose 2, 1 or 2 wont drop bombs but still do some damage. Because now, you lose them all without even getting bombs dropped.

And all this is without even enemy bothering with sending fighrers to fight your planes. AAA is simply way overpowered. You dont even need to spam it, 2 are so strong they will at least suppress enemy plane before it gets close.

Whats the point of having units in the game that are so bad, no one bothers with them?

[♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔]

Treat air as another tool in your belt. It may not always be helpful, just be ready to deploy it when there is opening for it.

Ground based deck can win without air play, but air deck cannot win without ground play.

Stukas by this point in the war were dinosaurs, only able to operate under very favourable conditions. Game emulates this quite well...
Stukas with AT gun pods are actually quite good exactly because of their low speed - they have more time to kill their target before passing over them. Of course, they are still fragile, and need safe air to be dominant.

Easy to use air units are the HE and AT rocket fast planes. As long as you don't send them deep behind lines, they can dart out, shoot and run. Difficult to stop.

[Adler]

Originally posted by ♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔:

Stukas by this point in the war were dinosaurs, only able to operate under very favourable conditions. Game emulates this quite well...

This is not true at all. If you read Rudel's book you will see that his stukas were fighting pretty much till the end under very unfavorable conditions. And they were still able to do a great damage.

This game is not a stimulator anyway, but even if we look into gameplay perspective it is just bad. Planes like he111 should be able to fly at high altitude and be immune to light or even medium aaa. It's simply ridiculous when you get shot down by light aaa because your bomber fly at 1k... planes like this should be intercepted by fighters. Stupid aaa should not be answer to all problems.

It's like devs created bunch of planes and anti aircraft artillery, gave them some stats but did not really care that some stats are so bad that it makes certain units completely worthless.

Again, I can simply put bunch of fw190 and heavy fighters into my deck and I can do bunch of damage. But my point is, that certain planes are simply ♥♥♥♥. Why would I use ju87, even if I get 16 of them or so, if they are unable to drop even one bomb while I lose them all the time. I can just send heavy fighters that are able to reach aaa gun and strife it.

This is simply unbalanced, aaa should not be destroyers of the worlds. They should not be able to completely stop every attack, it's not fun or realistic. Good aaa cover should shot down something, damage other but still enemy should be able to get some damage as well. You don't even need to bother with fighters now since aaa does all the job.

This is literally rock paper scissors planes game. Except that plans don't beat anything in that category.

And the game should not create certain category, air force in this case, that is insanely hard to play with. Seriously, whats the point? Someone in company thought it's a good idea to make planes so bad and hard to play with? That you need some insane skill to use them in a decent way?

I only played 10vs10 tho, will try 4v4, maybe it's too big of a chaos and every part of map is filled with aaa spam. But it still does not change a fact that even on 20 ppl map, it's horribly balanced.

[♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔]

Originally posted by Adler:

This is not true at all. If you read Rudel's book you will see that his stukas were fighting pretty much till the end under very unfavorable conditions. And they were still able to do a great damage.

And the game should not create certain category, air force in this case, that is insanely hard to play with. Seriously, whats the point? Someone in company thought it's a good idea to make planes so bad and hard to play with? That you need some insane skill to use them in a decent way?

I only played 10vs10 tho, will try 4v4, maybe it's too big of a chaos and every part of map is filled with aaa spam. But it still does not change a fact that even on 20 ppl map, it's horribly balanced.

Yes. Rudel's memoirs sit behind me, resting in an entire book case of military history material. Rudel is certainly a talented pilot, but hardly an unbiased source. All memoirs should be taken cautiously.
Late in the war Rudel was still in charge of own ground support unit, but it was practically the last major Stuka unit of it's kind, and he kept it together in part due to his prestige and clout (and propaganda value). There was a large quantity of Stuka pilots early in the war, those pilots were either flying other aircraft or were dead/POW by 1944. Without firm air cover, Stuka attack was a one way trip - they just could not cope with fighters which flew at 3+ times their speed. And Luftwaffe air cover late in the war was an increasingly rare thing.

Air is an entirely optional tool. An advanced tool. Focus on ground, and when you have mastered that, you can take your game to the next level with air support. But you can easily play almost entirely without active air use.

Balanced (balance that game developers aim for) Steel Division is in 1v1(has own issues), ideally 2v2 (a mode closest to ideal, imho), or arguably, maybe, 3v3 (already can turn into slow WW1 thing sometimes). Anything above that is not really meant to be taken a supported mode of play (which is fine, if you are not playing competitively, and just want a WW2 sandbox experience).

10v10 is a terrible place to learn air! Any problems with air are 80-90% due to the fact it's 10v10. You have huge amount of units all crammed together on the same map (realistically, 10v10 wold have to be played on the map twice the size to make it reasonable). There's no room for any maneuvering, or any kind of positional trickery, AA is everywhere, artillery is dominant. Pure WW1 with tanks.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Adler:

I only played 10vs10 tho

This is the source of 95% of your air-problems, as Teaboo hinted. ;)

10v10 mode was added as a "just for fun, hey everything is crazy" mode that the devs outright stated was going to be impossible to balance.

Even 4v4 can get pretty hectic when you're trying out new tactics or learning various game nuances - I'd recommend a 1v1 "friendly" match (with an opponent who isn't entirely "tryhard"), or 2v2 custom games to start with.

In addition to the "use artillery to suppress enemy AA", you can also bait enemy AA (or enemy fighters) by using fighters of your own to draw AA fire while your bombers/ground-strike aircraft head to their targets. Just like in real life, in SD it's much harder for ground-based AA to shoot down fast, small, nimble targets than lumbering multi-engine bombers.

[Nilla]

I see a lack of general game knowledge here. Looking at the meta and air force usage you need look no further than 559 and any Soviet deck that gets IL-2's with the 37mm guns. AA is in a great place right now, if you take care of your planes and understand where AA is and what AA the enemy has you'll be ok.

[♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔]

Originally posted by Nilla:

I see a lack of general game knowledge here. Looking at the meta and air force usage you need look no further than 559 and any Soviet deck that gets IL-2's with the 37mm guns. AA is in a great place right now, if you take care of your planes and understand where AA is and what AA the enemy has you'll be ok.

While I agree with you, I actually think Adler is also mostly correct, but in the context of 10v10 games he was playing in. There's just too much AA crammed into limited space for one player's air to work well in 10v10s.

[Nilla]

Originally posted by ♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔:

Originally posted by Nilla:

I see a lack of general game knowledge here. Looking at the meta and air force usage you need look no further than 559 and any Soviet deck that gets IL-2's with the 37mm guns. AA is in a great place right now, if you take care of your planes and understand where AA is and what AA the enemy has you'll be ok.

While I agree with you, I actually think Adler is also mostly correct, but in the context of 10v10 games he was playing in. There's just too much AA crammed into limited space for one player's air to work well in 10v10s.

I agree that 10v10's are the main issue, not so much the AA itself. The same argument could be made in Wargame in 10v10's. It's more of an indication on how awful 10v10's currently are rn

[curbs]

planes take increased damage if your flying right at the AA

[Silver 1]

Eugen nerfed the fighter and made planes to take double damage if they fly toward AA. Now some divisions like the 5th PZ and skijager cannot stand up to strong divs like 29th tank or 26th inf.

SD2 has a design failure, division in the same category (PZ div, mechanised div, etc) have identical economy and almost identical equipment. So how to differentiate divisions? Make some divisions have strong air force, while others have strong ground force. What's the result? all divisions with strong air but weak ground can go to hell because If they cannot hold the upper hand in early game then they will be overwhelmed sooner or later

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Silver 1:

Now some divisions like the 5th PZ and skijager cannot stand up to strong divs like 29th tank or 26th inf.

Not sure why you think that air changes hurt the 5th Panzerdivision. 5th Pz *never* had a strong air tab, and if Panthers, Tigers, Pak 40s and Flak 88s can't stop Russian tanks, I'd put the blame on the player rather than the deck.

So how to differentiate divisions? Make some divisions have strong air force, while others have strong ground force

Not seeing a problem here. Decks which are strong in one category are weak in another; that's a fundamental example of game balance.

[Silver 1]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Originally posted by Silver 1:

Now some divisions like the 5th PZ and skijager cannot stand up to strong divs like 29th tank or 26th inf.

Not sure why you think that air changes hurt the 5th Panzerdivision. 5th Pz *never* had a strong air tab, and if Panthers, Tigers, Pak 40s and Flak 88s can't stop Russian tanks, I'd put the blame on the player rather than the deck.

So how to differentiate divisions? Make some divisions have strong air force, while others have strong ground force

Not seeing a problem here. Decks which are strong in one category are weak in another; that's a fundamental example of game balance.

1. The problem lies in the result after this method of differentiation. If you think 5th Pz is in equal strength when compared to HG Pz/ 21st Pz then we don't need to discuss further.

2. Air changes hurt as 5th PZ's ground attack plane will suffer much more casualties when strafing. I have recently played as 29th Tank and went against 5th Pz. His Do217 and Me410 becomes kamikaze plane after mid phase B. I think the 5th Pz loses lots of its offensive power after this change.

3. I absolutely agree that 5th Pz can defend Soviet Tanks. However, I cannot expect Soviet Player will feed me non-stop then I defeat him by a counter attack. I want to go on offensive.but, when panther G encounters IS-2, what should my 5th Pz do? Spam big cats or donate planes as free points? I want to play stronger decks and capture flags for my team, not just defend a flag...

4. If I missed sth please add. If I made a mistake please point out. I am a returned player...