If an aircraft is grounded, and fueled waiting on an airbase, the game automatically "scrambles," the aircraft to defend from the attackers. Given TB's are twice as good at defending as they are attacking:
Even if the enemy did not have interceptors, your five bomber stacks were each outgunned by the twelve on the ground, each fighting at twice the power as yours, given they are at the same level.

The problem becomes that the defending planes do not need to refuel, the thought being they would launch shortly before the attack, land, and not have spent enough fuel to need refueling. If they were to need refueling, it would ultimately lead to an exploit of sending a single aircraft to launch the enemy planes, followed minutes later by large flights to destroy the now fueling defenders.


As for the grounded planes scrambling, your best bet is to match your five TB's with an addition of five Interceptors (the ten aircraft stacked together). The interceptors will help knock out the enemy TB's. Another smart addition would be SB's, which could damage the enemy air base, and force the enemy flight into truck mode where they would get bombed to nothing very quickly.

As far as not dealing damage to the enemy TB's, battle damage is divided unevenly, with the slowest parts of a stack taking the most damage as they are the easiest target. TB's travel much faster than any ground units that would have been in the stack (in the city), and so the TB's took minimal damage compared to the ground targets.


I hope this helps explain the game's mechanics for you some. Just remember, the same mechanics apply in reverse. It is in no way "unfair," as your fueled and waiting aircraft will also defend your cities.


Edit:
To reply to your.. Double post..
45 TB's have a VERY crappy SBDE. Split into groups of five or so. Patrolling is also the least effective way to use aircraft, as they deal 25% damage every 15 minutes, while the enemy fights back at full power. Patrolling is truly only useful when trying to watch over roads and other lanes across the map, while not truly knowing when or where the enemy will be.

It is not true that enemy fights back with full power. If it was the case, nobody would use it.

If you patrol over enemy air patrol (so, air vs. air battle) every 15 minutes your planes will do 25% damage, enemy will not do any damage in return. However, their planes will also every 15 minutes deal 25% damage to your planes and yours will not respond to that (times on your and enemy planes are almost always different, so one can decide to wait his planes do one 25% hit and move them away to avoid hit from enemy). That is for pure air combat.

If you patrol over enemy land units (no enemy planes), every 15 minutes your planes will do 25% damage, and receive 25% from enemies. If you order attack instead of patrol, both your and enemy damage will be at 100% (or at least much higher than patrol since numbers are never exact, observed many times).

If enemy has both land units and air patrols, it is just combination of previous cases. Your patrol will deal 25% damage to all them together and receive 25% only from land units, but it will also receive 25% from enemy patrol every 15 minutes.

Para is correct, but in this case so is whoopsy. There is a bug and/or exploit and/or some kinda hacker adjustment in there somewhere also. I spotted it myself when trying to kill 6 fighters and 6 tacs patrolling with somewhere around 40 fighters split up in groups of 5 and 6 each. Also another combat with a combination of patrolling air, fighters and ground troops with AA.

Potentially the sbde is not working correctly? Or attackers fail to engage each 15 min patrol cycle? I made a couple bug reports when I found it.

I would however like to point out to woopsy that 7 stacks of 5 tacs each should loose to 12 tacs landed in an airfield. So while there is a bug in the system somewhere, what you described should lose. Tacs attack factor is pretty small against air, so unless it is refueling you shouldn't even try that combat without fighters escorting your tacs.

For example: 5 tacs at level one do 1 point each when attacking. so 5. But you are patrolling so 4 attacks per hour each at 25%. So 5 / 4 = 1.25 But the defending tacs defense against air is 2 at level 1. so 24 x sbde penalty x 25%. so about 3 or 4 defending, depending on the exact sbde (I forget the exact sbde for 12 tacs) Now you shouldn't have lost a tac each patrol cycle like you describe, but you should lose one an hour +/- out of each of your 7 stacks of 5 tacs each. And once you add in the random Xfactor, many patrol cycles the landed tacs would receive less than 1 point of damage. So yeah it is possible for them to show not a scratch and on average it would take approx 3 or 4 hours of patrolling or more just to kill 1 of those landed tacs. Not good odds. You lose 7 tacs an hour and he loses 1 every 3 or 4 hours, if that.

Now if those 12 tacs were patrolling instead, then your 35 tacs should win and win big, because while engaging you don't do well, when it is his turn to engage he should drop massively every 15 mins. Probably should lose a tac or more every 15 min.

I don't necessarily agree with this game mechanic where landed planes defend better than patrolling air, but it is the way the game runs.

It's an illusion that the planes are actually all landed. In fact as described many places in this forum, unless they are refueling, landed air is actually flying CAP over the airfield. the ONLY way to actually catch grounded air is when refueling or when in convoy. I don't necessarily agree with this game mechanic, but it is what it is.

Tac bombers get a lot of attention


If there are two groups of aircraft, lets say German and French. If the French aircraft are patrolling and the Germany aircraft patrol over them, they will just deal out 25% every 15 minutes, there is no return fire. However the French will the deal out 25% in 15minutes, as they are more than likely not in sync

As I already explained, the defending planes scramble into the air to fight the attacking planes. Refusal to read about the game features will not change them, you should instead learn from all of the experienced players, and adjust your tactics, accordingly. The only way to catch planes on the ground is when they are refueling, or when they are stuck in convoy (moving between cities they cannot fly between, due to distance or destroyed airbases).

The thought behind this feature, is that all units automatically defend. You do not need to order infantry to return fire, it is automatic. For aircraft, it is equally automatic. The planes you are fighting are not "grounded," they take to the skies to defend their city. There simply is not a graphic to show this.

There are several real gems of hidden game mechanic info in this thread!

They should really be un-hidden, imo. For example, the info text for Tac Bombers could say "Will attack ground targets in range every 15 minutes at 1/4 strength, without inducing a counter-attack", and the text for fighters (all planes?) could say "Will scramble to protect their airfield when attacked, if landed and not refueling"

@Whoopsy
Yes, infantry actually will defend themselves on water. They have much lower HP, but it is very well known that a handful of infantry against a single sub, both on water, is a relatively even fight. Transports have deck guns, which could devastate a shallow sub.

As far as tanks fighting in cities, it is stated that they are more effective in plains. It really seems like you just want to argue with somebody, at this point. As far as planes "actually being in the air," they aren't. I explained that. Another player tried explaining it, another way, and now you seem flustered, and confused...

If Planes:
1.) Are fueled
2.) Are at an airport
They can defend their city by scrambling to the air. This is an incredibly realistic feature.

Apparently infantry in troops transports are also accompanied by the most capable Destroyer Escorts, with advanced sonar, depth chargeres, seahawk helicopters towing mines, ....
for as "wise" points out:
A handful of infantry against a single submarine can deal a great more damage than a fleet of 2 destroyers, 2 cruisers and 2 battleships.

Actually woopsie you can have it both ways since a turn represent 1 year. Planes can be shelled at the airfield at the same time other planes are flying to protect against aerial assault. But no Bytro developer is going to change the entire game mechanics because one person out of many can't figure out the game mechanics. There are enough real bugs that they are kept busy fixing them. Enough other players have figured out how to use air correctly. Once again, not a bug, a feature. I suggest you study game mechanics and once you understand how to use air correctly, then you will be able to spot a bug in the system much easier, so they can fix that instead. You will also be able to realistically simulate air combat at the scale this game is designed to simulate. Then we can all have fun! Good luck.