There has been previous discussion about the relative merits of the Bf 109K vs the Fw 190 viewtopic.php?f=121&t=62625. The former has the advantage of being a cheap upgrade from earlier Bf 109 variants and an initiative of 13, whereas the latter has an initiative of only 11 but an air attack of 20 or 22 for the D9 model. I have undertaken to try to answer the question of which aircraft is better via science.
Methods
I have written a PzC combat simulator using Apple’s Swift programming language that fully implements all aspects of the combat equation described by this thread viewtopic.php?f=121&t=62845&hilit=combat+equation (thanks so much to ThvN!) including initiative modifiers for experience, mass attack, and the random modifier as well as attack and defense modifiers. This has allowed me to apply Monte Carlo methods to this problem.
Specifically, I simulated combat between either a 109K or a 190D9 (since the D9 comes out only a month after the 109K) and a variety of enemy aircraft. In the simulations, I simulated two 10 strength attackers next to the enemy aircraft attacking it in succession, such that the first one gets a +1 initiative mass attack bonus. If the enemy survived these two attacks, I simulated additional attacks from 10 strength attackers until the enemy was destroyed. This is how I destroy enemy aircraft in the game, and I think it is a reasonable approach for attacking fighters. By placing two aircraft adjacent to the enemy, I am able to gain a mass attack advantage. Placing more than two aircraft adjacent would run the risk of the enemy being destroyed before the third can attack, thus wasting a turn for the third aircraft. Obviously for bombers which have very little initiative, the mass attack factor doesn’t matter as much. Unless otherwise indicated, the attackers have 5 stars of experience- after all we’re talking about 1944 and 1945 here.
My end points were the number of 10 strength attacks required to kill the enemy as well as the amount of damage taken by the attackers as measured by the prestige point value of any damage taken during the attacks. I ran the simulations repeatedly until the standard deviation of the mean number of hits to kill was known to withing 0.01. I ran all simulations at least 100 times minimum- for some cases several thousand simulations were performed.
Validation
I calculated the mean damage done against a variety of attackers and found that in all cases my simulator perfectly reproduced the predicted losses from the in-game loss predictor.
Results and Discussion
As you can see in the first simulation, it matters little whether you use 109s or 190s to kill Pe-8s. The 190 comes out ahead killing them slightly faster and taking slightly fewer losses, though the difference is trivial. Overall the Pe-8 is a weak plane that dies easily to all comers.
Now its starting to get more interesting. Against the heavily armored Shturmovik, we can see a big difference between the 109 and the 190. The 190 can kill a 13 strength Shturmovik in 2.2 shots, vs. 2.9 for the 109. That means two 190s can kill almost as many Shturmoviks as three 109s, and will take less damage as well. That means that the Shturmoviks will get a lot fewer costly hits on your mech if you use 190s.
Now things get more interesting still. Against a good Russian fighter, the 190 kill the enemy quite a bit faster than the 109, but also takes more losses. It costs 57 extra prestige to kill a 10 strength La7 via 190s, but the 190s will two shot it whereas the 109 will require a third shot a third of the time.
This is Russia’s most expensive fighter. Again, the 190 kills it in less attacks, but the 109 takes fewer losses thanks to its initiative. Specifically, killing a 12 strength Yak 9U cost 116 points less if done via the 109. That’s a fair bit of dough if you play at a high difficulty setting. A ran the simulation for a 5 star Yak 9U as well- the results were essentially the same the costs were just higher for each.
I must admit this one surprised me. Versus the meteor, the 109 has 2 less initiative, one less then you factor in the meteor having 3 stars and the 109 having 5. Factor in the random initiative roll, and you end up with somewhere between 20% of the 109s getting to attack first and 60% of the meteors attacking first. For the 190, the initiative difference would be 4, minus one for xp equals 3- that means 20-100% of the meteors attack first. The 109 has an A-D of 26- 25 = 1 corresponding to a 44% kill rate, while the 190 has an A-D of 32-25 = 7 corresponding to 66% kills. The way this balances out seems to be that the 109 takes more attacks to kill the meteor, without taking any fewer losses unless the meteor is strength 15 or above. The 190 is better vs. the meteor.
I was curious about this so I tried the simulation again this time for a 5 star meteor. In this scenario, the 190 is again better in both damage and losses when fighting meteors below a strength of 13. Above 13, the 109 performed better in both areas. You’ll notice the chart ends at 16- meteors above that strength can one-shot the 190 before it attacks so often that its losses approach infinity very quickly.
I’ll finish with the P-47N. Here we’re back to the familiar pattern of the 190 killing the enemy quite a bit faster, but taking more damage in the process.
Conclusions
1) The 190D9 is the more versatile choice. It destroys bombers and obsolete fighters faster, particularly armored bombers. Its availability of September 1942 sure beats March 1944- the 190A can rule the skies through 1943 in a way the 109G which is available at that time period cannot. Beginners should probably upgrade everything to the 190.
2) More experienced players may find there is a benefit to keeping a couple 109s around to deliver the first shot against the enemy’s most high-tech fighters as their losses would be lower. You have to be careful though, because as I showed with the meteor this isn’t 100% true all the time. Furthermore, six months later the 262 comes out which fills that role far better. Experienced players may also be attracted to the lower upgrade cost of the 190K- it is certainly a good upgrade if you can’t afford the extra 500 for the 190.
3) Although I didn’t show it here, in situations where your aircraft has than 5 stars, the 109, which tends to take less damage, is more likely to survive. There may be a benefit to keeping greenish units as 109s.
That’s it for now, hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.
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