I agree that the versatility is great. It almost makes me want to focus only on tacs to improve my production. I'm curious if its worth switching to heavy fighters too.They're not as good as CAS as ground support on a enemy damage / production cost basis.
They are, however, flexible. You build TACs when you don't have the production to spare to build three different entire air forces for NAV, STR, and CAS. Build less of those three, build some TAC, and rotate them between the missions to help as needed. (You may not need all three types at the same time. For instance, NAV becomes pretty useless once you've sunk the enemy fleet. TAC could at least start doing something else. You have to research an extra plane type, but can save production cost on the three specialists.)
You can also yse TACs in places where you need the range, like far Eastern Europe, Asia / Pacific, South America, Africa. Range means air zone coverage which means higher mission efficiency. CAS have pretty short range, so you need a lot more of them in big air zones to get whatever number you need to actually be in the battle.
Heavy Fighers are not as bad as most people think. If you fight at oversized airzones, they will actually trade in your favor against light fighters. Sometimes in quite an astonishing ratio, provided you also attain higher detection rates.I agree that the versatility is great. It almost makes me want to focus only on tacs to improve my production. I'm curious if its worth switching to heavy fighters too.
Against state AA, air defense is the only stat that protects planes. The divisional AA works very similar to the ones on ships, i.e. the percentage of planes getting shot depends only on the AA value and no stat of the planes has any influence (as far as I can tell).if I buff up the engines will this reduce losses to AA as well as to air combat?
I'm curious if its worth switching to heavy fighters too.
Against state AA, air defense is the only stat that protects planes. The divisional AA works very similar to the ones on ships, i.e. the percentage of planes getting shot depends only on the AA value and no stat of the planes has any influence (as far as I can tell).
Which is one reason why I never bother engine upgrades on bombers. It does help them a bit against fighters, but the impact is barely noticeable compared to the impact upgrading fighters has.
Of course you are correct on this point. After all you are the @Secret Master! But you usually end up with so much air XP that you have nothing else to spend it on. I don't upgrade bomber engines as a priority but I almost always have enough XP to eventually upgrade them.
Do you upgrade range or payload or reliability on those bombers before the engines?
Playing as Germany using CAS I upgrade the engines before payload or range.
This is the only part of your post I find surprising. Are you doing this to capitalize off Germany's head start in Battlefield Support Doctrine?
. Better engines means slightly more CAS are not disrupted or shot down, not many but a couple.
A few fighter for escort will do wonder than no fighter. For example in Spanish Civ war 30 fighter can fully escort 200 TAC. Make them both fly at day only.