My recon planes are always shot down!

[Griefbringer]

Having served in AA unit in military, I do not see anything unrealistic with frontline AA weapons being high priority targets for artillery.

In game the spotter planes cannot call artillery fire, but in real world they could very well have radio link to ground artillery control, enabling them to issue coordinates for targets - and I presume they would consider any AA gun in close vicinity a high priority target.

Also, I don't really think that clearing the way for ground forces was really what the air units were doing all that much in WWII - attacking units close to the front line ran a risk of strafing and bombing friendly units (this happened historically, and it can also happen in game). Rather, they would be taking the battle to the depth and attack reserves, artillery and supply units in the rear, to prevent them from supporting the front lines.

[PantherCub]

Originally Posted by Griefbringer

Also, I don't really think that clearing the way for ground forces was really what the air units were doing all that much in WWII - attacking units close to the front line ran a risk of strafing and bombing friendly units (this happened historically, and it can also happen in game). Rather, they would be taking the battle to the depth and attack reserves, artillery and supply units in the rear, to prevent them from supporting the front lines.

I agree, and I used it more as a figure of speech. What I mean is that the game creates a cycle where artillery is helping the air force to penetrate to their targets, while I think a more historical cycle would be the air force hitting enemy artillery at the start of an attack to help the ground forces.

From what I know (which certainly is not everything) I think air support as in the game with planes striking enemies in actual combat contact with friendly forces was not really practiced in WW2, on account of the risk of hitting friendlies, at least not until very late in WW2. IMHO it would be more realistic with air attacks taking place before the battle than during it. Though the present effect that players have to think about AA defences and integrate them in their battle plan is nice.

[Griefbringer]

Originally Posted by PantherCub

IMHO it would be more realistic with air attacks taking place before the battle than during it.

On advance and assault battles you can do this as preliminary bombardment if you want to - and if you use level bombers they will not be available for a second run later on. (They probably will not hit anything useful, either.)

As for historical air actions close to the front lines, there was a practice of mounting air recognition panels close to the front lines, to indicate that this was still friendly area but that enemy front line would be somewhere ahead. Of course this did not always work quite the way it was supposed to - especially when some rear area folks wanted to be safe and mounted extra panels way farther from the front line than they should have been used.

Personally, I am not very fond of using air strikes myself. They don't offer the kind of tactical challenge that manoeuvring units on ground involves, they can take quite a lot of time to resolve (especially if there are lots of AAMGs around) and when I use them they rarely cause significant damage (cannot say the same for AI air strikes on my units, though).

[PantherCub]

Originally Posted by Griefbringer

Personally, I am not very fond of using air strikes myself. They don't offer the kind of tactical challenge that manoeuvring units on ground involves, they can take quite a lot of time to resolve (especially if there are lots of AAMGs around) and when I use them they rarely cause significant damage (cannot say the same for AI air strikes on my units, though).

Amen to that!