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What do you think of the air-stacking penalty

  • Keep it, i didn't even notice it/i like the challenge

    Votes: 75 14,1%
  • I think it sucks, get rid of it

    Votes: 230 43,2%
  • The idea is good, but it should be better implemented, see suggestions below

    Votes: 203 38,2%
  • I don't give a plane's ass...

    Votes: 24 4,5%

  • Total voters
    532
Diminishing returns is the way to go. I.E. 2 first stacks would always fight at 100%, 3rd always at 95% and so on, until the extra units would not add anything. This way it could be applied to the AI too.

Hmm. Actually this sounds exactly like the command limit. Maybe the true solution would be lowering max command values? 1-3-6-9 for example?

Also, all planes should have more air defence points, to reduce the massacre when the other stacks air attack exceeds the other ones air defense.

How about air defence efficiency always at 75% and tripled defense points? (Air defence efficienc lowered so that planes would actually get destroyed too).
 
another solution

What about this solution of "too big air armies"

As someone already posted here, multi-thousands air-raids happened but they were very rare and hard to manage. More than that, even though there vere 1000+ airplanes in one air-raid, they were never present at the same time in the same area - it took hours to all the planes to reach the target.

Solution to this "disparity" with the reality, as I understand, should be the stacking penalty.

But this can be solved I think much easier way. The air commanders should have much lower number of units, they can command. Say that air marschall would be able to command 6, the middle rank general 2 or 3 and the lowest commander would have still just 1.

Would this be much more simpler? The AI would adopt (if it is working this way) to lower number of troops easilly and it would be fair for human players as well.
 
Clearly the air stacking penalty is trying to deal with the idea of rushing around with one big stack of aircraft destroying the enemy in detail. This solution fails because the AI can still form big stacks and these can annihilate at players aircraft with no way of fighting back. Rather than try to come up with a fair solution I would propose one simple change.

Make the stacking penalty ....

Only apply to attack strength so it doesn't make your aircraft easier to destroy.
and
Only apply to the aicraft beyond the particular stacking limit.

i.e. First four aircraft never suffer any penalty, next one suffers a 1 step penalty, next one a two step penalty etc.
 
I think i may have a viable solution. After a set number of units (4 or 6 perhaps) give all of the units over this limit absolutely no effectiveness, so they have no effect on the battle whatsoever. This should apply on bombing missions too. What do you guys think?
 
The previous suggestions sound pretty good within the context of how HOI works. I especially like the idea of not affecting defensive strengths, and believe that this will also improve other aspects of the combat system - night combat and harsh terrain combat, to name but two.

A follow-up remark:

If we apply a penalty to some, but not all, units in a battle because of leader command spans, overstacking, etc., then we also need to do at least three things:
1. Apply the penalty to the least effective units, or the most effective*, but not to those units near the bottom of the stack. When a combat system mixes realism and coding issues to this extent, it needs serious attention.
2. Make the combat interface capable of displaying modifiers for more than a fixed, limited number of units. You could get zapped by leader command spans a dozen times, and never know it, because the screen seldom or never displays the warning.
3. Document. For heaven's sake, document. It's not hard to whip up a .pdf file with the basics!


*: Least effective? Most effective? Choosing either will cause problems. But the problems will be less severe then those we are now dealing with.
 
The Problem is that the whole way air-combat is done in this game is unrealistic. But I think it simulates the power of airpower effectively. It just does it a little bit faster then historicly.

Perhaps the effectiveness at destroying strength should be lessened while keeping the effectiveness against organization. Except when a unit is moving. If a unit is moving then air power would be much more effective at reducing strength. This simulates that troops, or vehicles moving out of concealment are easy targets for aircraft. While troops and vehicles in foxholes and hulldown positions are not. This would stop the complete destruction of ground units in defensive positions.

Air to Air combat on the other hand should have the stacking penalty removed completly. Two enemies of equal air strength can battle each other for much longer times. But if one is greater then the other the destruction of the smaller is much greater. Frequently odds can not be calculated in straight numeric terms. 10 planes verse 5 is not two to one odds. Its actually 100 to 25 or 4 to one.

Think about it in simple terms. Two planes can keep the one plane from ever scoring a hit if they support each other. The two planes keep forcing the one to play defensive till they can get a clear shot. The one must get lucky to knock the other off. Also if a large amount of aircraft are attacking an airbase the first group would take out the air-cover while the second group would pound the AA defence while the third and fourth would pound the base to oblivion in one complete raid. There is no time for the base to recover. So making stacks of aircraft less effective is ahistorical. The should of stayed with the old system.
 
I like the idea of a stacking penalty/cap, but I think 4 units is far too low. Historically, there were operations involving several hundreds of aircraft - in a few cases, over a thousand. Assuming that one air division represents around 100 planes, this would argue for a cap of something like 8-12 units.

As a compromise between the intent of this and the historic details... I would say that the current cap number should be changed from 4 to something like 6-9.
 
Since a penalty for a stack smaller than 12 makes the use of Air Marshals and Generals impossible, I'd start there with a penalty.
 
I think the penalty should either be raised to 9 units per stack, or it should be imposed on the AI as well. The AI's huge stacks, being unpenalized, have far too large an advantage over a human-controlled stack of 4 units. It is almost crippling the air warfare facet of the game.
 
Give it to the computer too, can't you limit the amount of squadrons the computer uses in his airforce?
As germany with hsr 1.04b I managed to beat the british strats and bombers, to some extent the french and british fighters too. I managed to stop britons from bombing my reich to pieces, I did that with a wall of fighters and a wall of AA-guns in front of them. I managed to even destroy some small Soviet bomber stacks, hell I even won few fights against even smaller fighter forces...
But what I didn't manage, was to beat those few 12-24 enemy fighter stacks, which in turn decimated my airforces and pretty much screwed up my invasion plans.

I can't understand how this "feature" got into the game, don't the new patches get playtested at all? While I admit that patching of hoi has been vigorous, and I can't tell that the devs don't care for community, I sincerely hope that these kind of issues will be fixed, even HOI 2 is coming soon. It would really show us, that even if a new game is coming out of the door, still the devs care enough make an older game better by just changing this teeny weeny "feature". I would do wonders for my belief in Paradox and their games in future.
 
I have a suggestion...
Remove the air-stacking penalty. Then cap the number of air units that can base in a province at 1 for every 10 points of infrastructure.
Ta-Daa! No more ludicrous 50-odd air div stacks, the AI is discouraged from putting vast numbers of its planes in the Sahara (or wherever...) and air combat can be allowed to run free.

Even over, say, London, this should limit the number of air units involved in combat to a manageable level, it will bring a little more realism to the air war as planes will concentrate naturally around the more strategically valuable areas and the main objective of eliminating massive 'Hunter-Killer' air stacks will be acheived without having to re-program the AI too much.

Want to kill those US strat bombers? you'll need to put several small fighter groups in bases across Germany, not one huge force in Berlin. Want air superiority in the Pacific? You'll need carriers now that the islands only hold a few airbases each.

Seems like the easiest way to me...
 
If I send airplanes to an ally as exp. force, will they have player stacking-penalties or AI no-stacking-penalties?
I´ve come to the conclusion that the Italians have more use for my tac bombers before barbarossa than i do (playing as germany, that is).
 
Muckbulle said:
If I send airplanes to an ally as exp. force, will they have player stacking-penalties or AI no-stacking-penalties?
I´ve come to the conclusion that the Italians have more use for my tac bombers before barbarossa than i do (playing as germany, that is).
Im pretty sure that the AI planes dont get the penalty.
 
Alls Fair in love and War

The air stacking penalty is unfair in my opinion,but is more realistic representing the over crowded skys.Thousands of planes over the channel for instance,all at once would crash into each other.The penalty should be evenly distributed.AI should be penalised just like human players. :(
 
I find it a little bizarre that air units move over a province and engage in action for what seems like several hours with enemy air or ground units.

Aircraft in WWII didn't !

Fighters seem to have been typically limited to 7 bursts of fire, each of two second duration (or they could use up the whole 9 yards of ammunition in one extended burst).

Bombers would move to the target (or what they thought was the target), release their bombload and then promptly head for home. Surely one round (perhaps one rather savage round) of combat and then all head off ammunition depleted . . .

This would allow for several waves of aircraft to be scheduled to go into action over a given province at intervals.

Otherwise, if the apparent extended combat is supposed to represent waves of attacking aircraft and perhaps also defending fighters alternating between engaging attacking aircraft and refuelling and rearming on the ground then the stacking limit makes no sense to me.
 
Winkelried said:
Since a penalty for a stack smaller than 12 makes the use of Air Marshals and Generals impossible, I'd start there with a penalty.

I agree with that. Having an Air Marshal able to give a bonus to a unit of max. 12 - and then applying a penalty because his force has more than 4 makes no sense.
 
Well i am happily using the ASP patch now in all my games,as the penalty couldnt be applied to AI aswell so was unfiar in my opinion and unhistoric.The penalty started to annoy me ,Yes i understand the game was changed to make AI airforces more of a challenge.But its application is unrealistic as for instance when the Nazis attacked most countrys early in the war they destroyed there airforces quickly because of there air superiority later when usa had air superiority they made mincemeat of the nazis this is the way the game worked before the changes.With the penalty even destroying the polish airforce can be very costly and later it is very hard to inflict any damage on usa airforces etc.
So for me now its part of the install process to applie the ASP patch for which i am very thankful for :)
 
Dr Rare said:
Well i am happily using the ASP patch now in all my games,as the penalty couldnt be applied to AI aswell so was unfiar in my opinion and unhistoric.The penalty started to annoy me ,Yes i understand the game was changed to make AI airforces more of a challenge.But its application is unrealistic as for instance when the Nazis attacked most countrys early in the war they destroyed there airforces quickly because of there air superiority later when usa had air superiority they made mincemeat of the nazis this is the way the game worked before the changes.With the penalty even destroying the polish airforce can be very costly and later it is very hard to inflict any damage on usa airforces etc.
So for me now its part of the install process to applie the ASP patch for which i am very thankful for :)

My Airstacking Penalty patch?
You like? :)
How stable is it for you? I havent had any crashes but i dont play much maybe you can answer.
I only noticed a *minor* graphic error sometimes...however its gone in 0.1 seconds and the stacking penalty really is *gone*.....

It was quite difficult to find and fix the stacking penalty too due the fact its not something that changes over time.