As Wing Leader progresses towards publication of the second edition of Victories (2e), it’s worth looking at the how the changes affect the combat outcomes. As an analysis of the combat systems has never before been published, it’s worth spending some time looking at this in detail.

Air Combat

In the second edition, air combat has barely changed, except for the arrival of the Edge ability, and some minor changes to jet combat. However, it is worth examining the outputs of air battles.

Losses

This first table will look at the outputs from a Battle of Britain-era fighter matchup, say between Bf 109E-4s and either Spitfire Mk.IAs or Hurricane Mk.Is. The salient characteristics of these aircraft are that they are close in combat ratings, they all have a Firepower of 1 and Protection of 4, typical of the early war. No die modifiers have been applied.

The obvious lesson from this is that the results are symmetrical, with both sides losing roughly half an aircraft at differential +0, with losses for the weaker side rising to almost one aircraft at the extremes. Particularly interesting is the exchange rate. At +0 both sides are exchanging aircraft at 1:1, but the curve climbs rapidly with each point of differential so that at +2 the exchange rate is 2.5:1 in the attacker’s favour.

What this shows is that modifiers to the combat rating have a massive effect on the output. The Bf 109E-4 and Spitfire Mk.IA are evenly matched in a hit and run attack. However, if the German attacker were to add the benefits of diving (+1), Veterancy (+1) to the British defender’s rigid doctrine (-1), they can expect a 4:1 exchange rate in their favour, and will likely bag a Spit with a low chance of losses.

In the next table I want to show the profound effect that Protection has on combat. Here, we assume the relative Firepower is 1 for both sides, but show two lines for the defender: one at Protection 4 (P4) and the other at Protection 3 (P3), such as you might find with with A6M2 Zero or Ki-43-Ic.

As can be seen, the effect of the weaker protection is an increase in losses and exchange rates of roughly 30% across the board. That translates directly into Victory Points. If we were to compare matchups of Bf 109E-4s vs. Spitfire Mk.IAs, and F4F-3 Wildcats vs. A6M2 Zeroes,  the US Navy boys will be racking up ~30% more victories and VPs than their European counterparts.

Note that dropping fighter Protection by 1 is roughly equivalent to increasing Firepower by 1. So upgunning a fighter by 1, say from the F4F-3 to the F4F-4 Wildcat, is equivalent to downgrading a target by 1.

We know that attacker differential has a profound effect on combat outputs, but it’s worth taking a quick look at the volatility of the combat system to die modifiers. In Table 3 we look at the defender losses, based on different attacker DRM.

Looking at the two values outlined in red, it’s plain that a +1 DRM is worth more in defender casualties than a +1 increase in differential. The outlined green values show that in the upper reaches of the Air Combat Table a DRM is worth +2 differential. This may be an incentive to work for those bounce DRM. However, with the exception of bounces, DRM do not affect the defender rolls or translate into lower attacker losses. Negative DRM, such as the -2 for head-on combat, have a massive affect on enemy losses.

Tackling Bombers

So far we’ve looked at fighter matchups that are roughly similar. Attacking bombers reveals a significant asymmetry, the major differences being:

• Bombers generally have greater Protection than the fighters
• Bombers have far less firepower

Table 4 looks at two bomber matchups. The first is a Spitfire Mk.II squadron attacking a He 111H-1, a typical matchup from the Battle of Britain. The second looks at a 1944 encounter, showing a heavily-armed Fw 190A-8 (vanilla variant, not the Sturmbock) going up against a B-17G heavy bomber group (with the +1 additional defence rating). In both cases these are hit-and-run attacks from behind–we’ll ignore head-on encounters in this peek.

NOTE: Against loaded bombers, the typical attacker differential will be +3, though this will be +2 against bombers that have dropped their bombs.

There are some interesting contrasts here. With the Spits against the Heinkels, the defender is losing roughly 85% the bombers that the same differential would inflict on fighters. However, the attackers are losing a LOT less than they would if they were going up against fighters–loss rates are running around 70%. And of course it is far easier to achieve high differentials against bombers. Exchange rates are greater.

The Focke-Wulf matchup against the B-17s reveals a very different story. The attack differential is likely to be similar to that seen in the Battle of Britain, but the attacker has more firepower going up against tougher aircraft with very large defence ratings. The effect is that lethality increases for both sides, on the order of a third more bombers being lost, against more than twice the number of attacking aircraft being lost. There’s an intersting historical narrative here of increasing offensive firepower running into a massively increased bomber defence.

A quick look at the VP outputs from exchanges reveals that for every 1 VP of Spitfires lost to the Heinkels, it earns roughly 9.6 VP of bombers, while for every 1 VP of Fw 190s lost, just 7.8 bomber VP are gained.

If we add in the effects of head-on DRM, the picture changes somewhat. In the Spit vs. Heinkel matchup, bomber losses are roughly halved, while fighter losses drop to a third or less. There’s a clear incentive to improve the exchange rate by making head-on attacks.  It’s a different story for the Fw 190s taking B-17s head-on, where their high defence rating means that losses on both sides are more or less halved. Note however, that this applies only where the Germans are attacking heavy bomber groups head-on (see rule 13.5.5). Earlier in the war, the USAAF did not develop the close supporting fire that we represent via the heavy bomber group rule; furthermore, the B-17E and B-17F had less frontal protection. Both these effects should give the attacking fighters the benefit of a significantly greater exchange rate, as shown in Table 5. Here we compare head-on attacks–our 1944 example against a 1943 example pitting Fw 190A-4s, with a lighter gun battery, against B-17Fs without the benefit of the heavy bomber group defence bonus.

The defender losses are exactly the same, but the difference in the exchange rate is striking and demonstrates the tactical and technical advance the USAAF made over the space of a year. Historically, the Luftwaffe discouraged head-ons after September 1943, ostensibly because of a decline in pilot quality.

The Edge

As discussed in an earlier post on the second edition, the main change to the air combat system is the addition of the Edge value. This was to allow us to better accommodate awkward ‘intermediate’ aircraft, such as the Hurricane Mk.I. Let’s go back again to Table 1, but this time assign the defender an Edge value. Table 6 compares results.

What’s interesting here is that when the attacker is at a disadvantage the Edge does not count for much , but when the attacker is dominant, that extra Edge can drop the exchange rate by 20-30%, simply by inflicting more attacking losses. In short, the Edge ability makes the possessors much more dangerous, particularly when cornered.

Jets

The final change to the second edition is to rebalance the high speed rule, which wasn’t doing enough to rein in the potentially devastating effects of jet and rocket aircraft. The old die modifiers have gone to be replaced with a simpler rule in which both sides in the combat halve the number of hits. Of course, because half values are rounded up, this reduces but does not halve the mean losses inflicted.

Assuming high-speed Me 262 attacks against B-17Gs take place at a +4 differential, an attack without halving hits would inflict a mean of 1.39 losses on bombers and 0.19 losses on the jets. With the halving, these are reduced to 0.88 bomber losses against 0.14 jets. In short, the effect of halving hits is that Bomber losses would be around two-thirds the normal number, rather than half. But just as importantly, outlier results delivering large numbers of bomber losses would almost disappear.

Next Time

In Part 2 of this article we will analyse the changes to bombing, and in particular the target and bomb value ratings.

In the meantime, order your copy of Wing Leader: Victories second edition at this link.

If you want the update kit for your existing copy of the game, order that here.

Articles in this Series: Part 1  Part 2

Author: Lee Brimmicombe-Wood