7 x 10 or all 70??

No it is better to have 7 10-plane stacks than one 70-plane stack. For interceptors, I think the optimum number is actually 5, but not sure about this. I sometimes use 6 or even 7 in a stack, but 10 interceptors will take a big drop in their damage due to the SBDE thing.

Gathering up so many low-cost units and walking around the map is about the stupidest strategy you can come up against. It is very easily countered and you can destroy these huge stacks taking much lower losses if you plan ahead, use fortifications wisely and think about exactly what units you would be best off recruiting to counter each particular stack. In practice, you can usually play it so that you end up losing mostly militia, which are a very low cost unit, while destroying your opponent's AT and artillery units.

I started another thread about what I like to call 'fortress complexes' on another thread, and I have been able to use these to great effect against enemies who use this kind of strategy. Of course, if you try the standard mobile WW2 type warfare against these stacks, you will end up losing large numbers of very valuable units (like tac bombers, which will take huge losses against a large stack that is sexed up with a lot of AA guns). So the trick is to use the old-fashioned First World War tactic, and these work very well against what I like to think of as an old-fashioned First World War offensive strategy (i.e. massed artillery supporting a massive assault).

MartinB wrote:

For interceptors, I think the optimum number is actually 5, but not sure about this.

Personally, I use big, mixed-unit aircraft stacks as a last resort, and only when I know there is no better option than sending my TB wing into a situation where the Angry Birds are going to take heavy losses. That's never my first choice, and there are usually better options than using brute force and suffering high casualty rates. I'm a finesse guy, but I will use a sledge hammer and take my lumps if you leave me no other viable choice.

well i think I'm soon going to be putting the theory into experiment phase. I'm UK with 70 interceptors split into 7 squadrons and matey-boy is flying around what is left of my part of mainland europe with a 43 stack of interceptors. The Battle of Britain is about to start. I'm armed to the teeth with AA guns as well.

Free advice, Jonny: use the patrol function against his big stack with your multiple 10-squadron stacks. And whenever possible, make him use direct attack against your wings.

It's almost never a good idea to employ direct attacks (as opposed to patrol attacks) against other aircraft units. The one major exception is when the enemy aircraft are refueling (not just on the ground, but actually in the middle of refueling) -- then hit them with everything you've got with direct attacks. When aircraft units are actually refueling, the are effectively defenseless and their hit points are reduced from 20 (fighters), 25 (naval and tactical bombers) and 30 (strategic bombers) to only 5 hit points per suquadron, making them vastly easier to kill.

MontanaBB wrote:

Personally, I use big, mixed-unit aircraft stacks as a last resort, and only when I know there is no better option than sending my TB wing into a situation where the Angry Birds are going to take heavy losses. That's never my first choice

Also, if you have a crafty opponent who sneaks in fighter cover over your target, the interceptors will afford some protection to your bombers.

Jonny Hurricane wrote:

well i think I'm soon going to be putting the theory into experiment phase. I'm UK with 70 interceptors split into 7 squadrons and matey-boy is flying around what is left of my part of mainland europe with a 43 stack of interceptors. The Battle of Britain is about to start. I'm armed to the teeth with AA guns as well.

right, I've set up in squadrons of 7. I've just seen a 111(hundred and eleven) stack flying about now northern France now. See what I mean?

Is that 111 interceptors?

MartinB wrote:

Mont, does that mean you use your tac bombers without any interceptors added?

MartinB wrote:

Also, if you have a crafty opponent who sneaks in fighter cover over your target . . .

yeh, 111 interceptors patrolling over Paris. I've seen 5 or 6 stacks of tactical bombers today 12- 20 odd in each stack. I'm destroying airfields with my last units on the mainland, and have a good arsenal of rockets. artillery everywhere, railway guns, AA guns and lev 5 bunkers. should be a good fight.

Jonny Hurricane wrote:

yeh, 111 interceptors patrolling over Paris.

Can you click on that stack and tell me what kind of SBDE they have please? It must be really shit with 115 units.

MontanaBB wrote:

Among players experienced in COW air combat, that's not sneaky, that's smart.

If your opponent is online and knows of the patrol timer exploit, then you will never touch him.

WayneBo wrote:

If your opponent is online and knows of the patrol timer exploit, then you will never touch him.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, WB.

WayneBo wrote:

If your opponent is online and knows of the patrol timer exploit, then you will never touch him.

For the situation that Jonny Hurricane is up against, I would make the following points:-

1. A player who is stacking up 100 plus units of the same type obviously does not understand the SBDE rules in this game. So I think it is a fair bet that he does not read this forum, and is probably not going to be aware of many other intricate points about game mechanics

2. No normal human being is going to be online all the time. Unless your opponent is some kind of screwball weirdo who wakes up six times in the middle of the night to micro-manage his units, you are bound to catch him offline at some point. Even the half-assed opponents I have played against always manage to figure out when I am less active.

3. If Jonny's opponent does happen to be that one screwball weirdo who is always online and knows the game mechanics well, then he can always switch to making direct attacks instead of using the patrol function. Direct attacks will also cause damage, you just take higher damage to yourself when you make them so it is wiser to use the patrol function, but if you find you can never catch him with the patrol function you are going to have to use direct attacks.

One important point to be made is this. Many players imagine that if you stack 100 units together, it will spread the damage out and you are less likely to lose units. This is not how the game system works (as far as I know). When you do damage, you do a specific number of points that are then distributed among the various unit types in your stack. If you have a stack of only the same type of unit, then all the damage goes to that unit type, it is not distributed among the individual units within that type.

So, if you have ten units with ten HP each, you have a total of 100 HP, and if you take a damage of 11 points you will lose one unit. This is why it is always better to use a mixed stack (so two LT, a mot infantry and an armoured car stacked together are less likely to lose a unit than four of the same kind). A stack with 100 units will take all the damage to the same type, so any attack on it is bound to cause losses. Your attacking stack will also take damage, but a 100 unit stack will be doing very low damage. Even six interceptors are down to 93% damage, so a 100 unit stack must be doing very very low in terms of the SBDE.

Jonny Hurricane wrote:

yeh, 111 interceptors patrolling over Paris. I've seen 5 or 6 stacks of tactical bombers today 12- 20 odd in each stack. I'm destroying airfields with my last units on the mainland, and have a good arsenal of rockets. artillery everywhere, railway guns, AA guns and lev 5 bunkers. should be a good fight.

OK Jonny you seem like a nice guy, so I have sacrificed an interceptor in my current game to attack a six-plane stack, to see what kind of result I got, and the result was that I destroyed one of his planes, but my interceptor just got knocked down to 25%. So I think it is fair to assume that if you make direct attacks against his stack, you are not going to take disproportionately large losses because he has five or six times as many aircraft as you do in your attacking stack.

Mind you, it is still probably better to fight using the patrol function, but even if you have a problem with that (as Wayne Bo has pointed out), you should still be able to deal with him using your multiple 7-plane stacks.

well, what happened. I think the 111 interceptors over Paris was merely him waiving his big dick at me -showing me what he'd got pre-battle. These were split into around a dozen smaller squadrons when they hit, and done when i was asleep. A few hours later he attacked the Plymouth region. Which i was around to witness just before i started work. i actually couldn't see Plymouth there were so many planes above it. I managed to fire off 7 missiles at the airbase (all his planes were launched from the same one), in the hope i might damage the airbase enough to ground his planes. As i did so, he recalled all of his interceptors, and they were all lying about the grounds my missiles hit. a single and then followed closely by 2 triples. I thought i was bound to have caused some damage to his fighters with that lot, but didn't kill a single one. There was a pile of 69 ground troops there too. i managed to take out 2 x anti tank guns only. When i came to check on my mobile mid morning when i had a tea-break, i hadn't a single aircraft left.

I counted from the newspaper, i had downed around 70 interceptors and 30 tactical bombers.

Well you had 70 interceptors at the start, and if you downed 70 of his interceptors plus another 30 bombers, you actually killed more of his planes than you lost.