How do Air Units Work?

[ComradeP]

So if I am understanding everything correctly, if air units are available, use them that turn; don't save them?

Well, it depends on how heavily defended in terms of AA the targets you can see are likely to be and if they're worth an air strike.

Personally, I normally don't bomb random infantry stacks as my air groups are likely to gain fatigue from the mission and the soft attack value of most of the tactical/fighter bombers isn't great. On the other hand, there are more carpet bombing units in PB than the PzC scenarios I've played, and those can cause significant casualties to a stack.

Unlike in PzC, where you can bomb anything as long as a unit that can spot for the available air unit can see it, you have to plan air missions 1 turn in advance in PB. This makes selecting targets carefully even more important, and means the player is more likely to engage guns (which often don't move) or targets with a predictable movement path (like a number of units using the same road, where you know where they'll end up in the enemy's next turn).

Also unlike in PzC, your air units don't get replacements, which makes me more conservative than I'd usually be when it comes to using them. You don't want to fall into the trap of trying to preserve their strength until it's too late for the air units to make a difference, but just bombing a target because you can is in my opinion not the best way to use air units.