Aerial Reconnaissance in HOI4 please

[redflag]

Since individual aircraft are now assigned rather than hundreds of planes it would be nice if reconnaissance flights can be assigned as a mission. Rather than have the level 10 radar of HOI3 the same information can be given by dedicating reconnaissance flights. After all the whole reason for the original arms race of planes in WWI was the incredible usefulness of planes in reconnaissance flights.

 

[Axe99]

This would be very cool - there were dedicated reconnaissance squadrons in WW2, and by the look of it intel will be a good deal more important in HoI4 than in previous games (a good thing ).

 

[ikeokp]

I question the usefulness. In HOI4 you can see the amount of divisions and units in a territory adjacent to you quite easily. What will aerial recon be useful for in this game? The only thing I could imagine is adding a very slight bonus to the recon battle modifier.

 

[Denkt]

You will get a bonus if you got air superiority over a region.
Earlier games, airplanes did remove fog of war as they passed over regions.

 

[Cpack]

Oooh yes...tried to model this in since HOI1.

For Pacific theater some kind of naval seaplane for long range spotting of enemy fleets would be great, especially if your fleet is weak and you're dependend on good intelligence

 

[redflag]

What I am trying to say is to have automatic fog of war lifted rather than having to manually fly a unit over enemy territory. Since HOI4 has individual planes rather than units having a small fraction of the planes flying reconnaissance missions is possible. This could be an passive (rather than active) lifting of fog of war just like radar stations in hearts of iron3 passively lifted fog of war deep into enemy territory.

Please pardon the writing on the pictures since they were for internal use in an old multiplayer game.
This is from an old multiplayer game in HOI3 notice the area surrounding the UK can been seen. With radar station upgrades the area that can been seen is extended. Photo reconnaissance missions could function the same way as radar upgrades in that they extend how far away you can see into the ocean/enemy territory.

[/URL]

The next picture is from a different game and two years earlier so England has no radar upgrades so the area that can be seen into the ocean is less. So my proposal is without photo reconasance missions the areas that can be seen into oceans/enemy territory is less.

You will get a bonus if you got air superiority over a region.
Earlier games, airplanes did remove fog of war as they passed over regions.

 

[Axe99]

Aye - given air missions are 'constant' (more or less), you could just assign X number of fighters to recon, and their effectiveness would depend on how many hours they were putting in over the enemy territory they were assigned to (which would be affected by the capacity of the fighters, where they were based and the enemy air presence in the area, noting that the recon planes would not be trying to engage anyone, but I'd expect you'd take higher losses and have less time and freedom to recon in a zone with a strong enemy air presence - I'm not 100% on this though, if this wasn't the case please ignore . It sounds like the underlying mechanics are in the game to make it fairly straightforward (if the actual mechanic isn't in there already ).

 

[Vlad_Constantin]

I think the fact that in HOI 3 when you researched the radar listening stations tech you could see all the units in half of Europe with a level 10 radar was too much. I would like a lot having reconnaissance planes that we can fly over enemy territory prior of an offensive to see what is behind the front line, where are the enemy planes located, maybe even to discover some supply dumps. I would also like to be able to do these flights over a (still) neutral country that I want to attack and get the infos for my offensive. If I do this then there should be a possibility of being intercepted and/or shut down which would deteriorate the relations with that country and also could lower it's neutrality. The chance of being detected should be increased by radar stations and/or by having patrolling interceptors in the air.

 

[redflag]

I cant link the video (because of that symbol) but a PBS video from NOVA stated that 80% of Allied intelligence on the Axis came from photo interpretation. For example Spitfire Fighters were converted into a reconnaissance aircraft by removing the guns and replacing them with F52 cameras cameras pointing vertically downwards (one in each wing two in the fuselage) . They were able to take detailed pictures from altitudes of 30,000 ft. Tens of millions of photographs were recently declassified.

 

[Big Nev]

With regard to recon' aircraft taking lots of casualties.

In the case of the Spitfires used in this roll, they were lightened (not just the guns and the ammunition were removed) and they were made as fast as possible. The end result was that unless a really fast German fighter was in front of where they were going AND ground control could direct it quickly enough AND the pilot managed to see his target before it was speeding away, he had a chance to intercept.

Otherwise it was a case of "what was that?"

"What was what?"

 

[Capt. Tane]

I like to idea of recon missions.
It has always bothered me I have air superiority but can't really find out where the enemies are, what they are (other than question marks) and what their (approximate) strength is without sending planes to attack a specific province.

 

[ikeokp]

Oh ok. I see what your saying. I like the idea.

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

They had already talked about this probably being in the game as airfields will automatically provide Reconnaissance. This would solve some of the problems in the pacific where you needed to build radar to have recon.

 

[redflag]

[video]http://video.pbs.org/video/2365355624/[/video]

This video showed how important reconnaissance flights were in WWI. Massive sums of money were spent on planes because they influenced the land campaign through reconnaissance at the strategic level. While not as glamorous as Fighters/Bombers these types of planes were just as important in WW2.