Air attacks.

[Wdll]

In modern times they can easily win a battle for you. If done correctly, enough to make the opponent rethink if he can continue fighting the campaign against you.
What you need though are a few things.
a)Numbers. You need at least 10 planes.
b)Numbers. You need several missiles/bombs per plane. None of that 2 per plane crap, unless they are SEAD.
c)If the opponent has good AD, you need more than enough SEAD to go in first to either kill off or force the AD to waste their ammo on them instead of your strike aircraft.
d)Long term plan, at least in a PBEM campaign. You can never know when the game will give you the air sorties you will need, and the support points to go with. You need to save points from the repair points you get. Which means you need to sacrifice other things.
e)If the enemy AD is very good and easily outclass your SEAD planes, especially in EW, forget it.

Is it worth it to use planes? Hell yeah! But only if you are serious about them. If in a 45K (initial) army you get 2-4 planes and expect to win the battle with them...that's a waste of credits. You're far better off buying anything else.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Wdll

In modern times they can easily win a battle for you. If done correctly, enough to make the opponent rethink if he can continue fighting the campaign against you.
What you need though are a few things.
a)Numbers. You need at least 10 planes.
b)Numbers. You need several missiles/bombs per plane. None of that 2 per plane crap, unless they are SEAD.
c)If the opponent has good AD, you need more than enough SEAD to go in first to either kill off or force the AD to waste their ammo on them instead of your strike aircraft.
d)Long term plan, at least in a PBEM campaign. You can never know when the game will give you the air sorties you will need, and the support points to go with. You need to save points from the repair points you get. Which means you need to sacrifice other things.
e)If the enemy AD is very good and easily outclass your SEAD planes, especially in EW, forget it.

Is it worth it to use planes? Hell yeah! But only if you are serious about them. If in a 45K (initial) army you get 2-4 planes and expect to win the battle with them...that's a waste of credits. You're far better off buying anything else.

Quoted in the Game Play Notes section of the Game Guide:
"The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.", Winston Churchill: The Gathering storm, 1948.

Churchill's quote is so true. I once had a PBEM game with the original SPII, way back in the MS-DOS days, where I was UK and he was USSR, in a "what if the Cuban missile crisis went critical" war in 1968/9.

I got allocated 2 flights and bought 4 Hawker Hunters with rockets - and they come with 4x30mm Aden cannon and a fair bit of ammo too. That last bit was crucial.

I noted the lack of enemy AAA fairly quickly and after the game my opponent admitted that he had quite simply forgotten to buy any AAA cover at all. Plus his main vehicles just happened to be the relatively few Soviet ones without an AAMG (early T-62, BTR-60PB etc).

I was happily plinking his T-62 all game long with these, and getting no reply whatsoever. They probably each had 2-3 kills by game end each(including BTRS as well).

In that situation even a few planes could rove the battlefield entirely at will. I could even plot runs starting from his edge of the map with total impunity and thus have a high expectation of "up the kilt" shots on his heavies.

So always have at least a "fig leaf" of AAA cover, even if it is just some pintle mounted 12.7mm AAMG on Jeeps etc.

And a few planes can turn the tide - if your opponent cooperates !.

Andy