fighters not out of supply

[gchristie]

In a current PBEM my opponent is able to land and operate fighters behind enemy lines in non-city/fortress/other supply source hexes that had been claimed by partisans. The fighters can't trace a supply source but remain in full supply turn after turn. He can rebase his fighters deep in my territory and snipe away at aircraft I had moved back in order to repair them.

Why do the fighters maintain supply when land forces that can't trace a supply source can not?

Seems unrealistic that partisans could construct and operate landing fields and come up with fuel, replacement parts and ordinance to keep the boys flying. What is the rationale for this rebasing?

Lesson here, reclaim those partisan controlled hexes after eliminating the partisans.

[Kragdob]

I had the same in NA where British fighter flew from Malta to join forces fighting in Iraq...

I think this is a bug and it should be either:
=> disallow rebasing air unit to hexes with supply lower than (e.g.) 3
=> OOS air units should behave exactly as land units (movement =1, losing step per each turn OOS)

[gchristie]

Wondering if others have seen this in their PBEM games and think a change in game mechanics should be made to prevent this.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

This is not a bug and a necessity to e. g. allow islands to work as airbases. Air units get a supply level of at least 2 from such hexes. You can't trace a route to a supply source on islands without a city. They still worked as airbases.

So this is due to limitations in the game engine supply system. We need to rewrite the entire supply system to alter this and that means we can introduce serious bugs.

One reason for allowing air units to have supply anywhere is that they would more easily evacuate even if surrounded. The airplanes could just take off and rebase to another hex.

I don't think you will see many situations with air units operating from hexes far from the main supply line. They're very poor at defense so if cut off they can be attacked by land units unless they evacuate.

The area you will see air units operating by themselves is in north Africa. This is again one of the weaknesses of the game engine because you can form airfields in almost any type of terrain (all types except dune, swamp and mountain). This is added because you can only have 1 unit per hex instead of having airbases in cities stacked with the land units. That's probably the number one weakness of CeaW, but fixing that means rewriting the entire game.

So air units are allowed to base many places. Since you can't prevent them from rebasing it doesn't make sense to set them to 0 supply. It's possible to do so, but the game won't understand what's an island and what's a surrounded patch og friendly land. If you should have supply on the island, but not the patch of land then you get a tricky algorithm to figure out the difference. E. g. would the land hex be out of supply as an airbase if it can trace to a coastal hex and so on.

So CeaW has a simple rule saying that the supply in an airbase is at least 2 regardless of the supply in the hex. That means the air units can operate there without losing 1 step per turn from being out of supply.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The fighters can't trace a supply source but remain in full supply turn after turn.

They don't have full supply, but supply level 2. Air units don't fall below that so they're allowed to evacuate if surrounded. It's hard to prevent air units from flying over the units surrounding them.

I wonder why you have problems with this. Don't you have rear garrisons that can deal with the partisans? If the enemy flies air units to the liberated partisan hexes then I would cheer as the Axis player. I would rail a few Axis minor corps units to the area and attack the air units. They will suffer many hits from land attacks.

The main issue I see is late game where e. g. British strategic bombers could fly to liberated (by partisans) French hexes and then fly to e. g. Corsica or Sardinia to bombard Italy. That saves time. But the bombers are very vulnerable to air or land attacks at the end of the turn they're stationed in France. So it's very risky. If they succeeed they evacuate asap.

These situations just prove the importance of having partisans hunters as the Axis. I almost never see enemy air units behind my lines because I'm good at getting rid of partisans.

The main area this was a problem was in Russia because the Germans didn't take the Pripyat marshes hexes. So Russian air units were stationed there and bombarded Ploesti and other hexes. It took so long time for land units to move through the swamps that the air units could harass Ploesti for several turns. This is solved now because you can't have airbases in swamp hexes.

[gchristie]

The reasons that I'm not always able to attack these fighters is that a) my units are being used to hold back his ground forces or are protecting valuable cities from pesky partisans and paradrops, and b) not all of the hexes he lands in are areas that I can rail next to, so by the time my ground forces creep within attack range he can fly somewhere else.

Your posts give me an understanding of the reasons this kind of rebasing is part of the game design, and why it can't be eliminated so thank you. Not seeing a red circle indicating the air units were out of supply, I incorrectly assumed they were in full supply instead of supply level 2. Not allowing air units to rebase into swamps makes perfect sense, glub...glub

As I said, my lesson learned here is to reclaim any areas claimed by partisans in addition to eliminating the partisans.

Regards,

[Kragdob]

The main area this was a problem was in Russia because the Germans didn't take the Pripyat marshes hexes. So Russian air units were stationed there and bombarded Ploesti and other hexes. It took so long time for land units to move through the swamps that the air units could harass Ploesti for several turns. This is solved now because you can't have airbases in swamp hexes.

Well, maybe just add such prohibition for all desert hexes as well (dunes etc.)?

All other situation is acceptable for me for the reasons you provided.