Air war, accidents and reliability

[Lumpy]

I've just delved a little into how the air warfare works, and I've come to the conclusion that, due to the 2% accident chance that are applied for both starting and landing at a mission, the overall 4% accident chance when having 80% reliability means you'll lose about 4% of your stack per mission. For a stack of 1000 fighters, that would mean losing, give or take, about 40 planes per sortie.

Am I right to assume that the majority of losses are thus attributed to accidents, and that reaching a reliability of 100% is far more important than, for instance, higher agility? Can someone with a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanics enlighten me?

 

[Lumpy]

Nobody?

 

[CharlieFox]

Those loses seem way too high but if the formula in the wiki is correct those are the loses you get...
If you set your planes to day and night missions(I assume this mean that they take off and land twice), do you really get 80 loses a day in 1000 plane wing

 

[Opanashc]

Luftwaffe lost ~40,000 planes, if memory serves me right, due to accidents. US Air Corps lost like 10,000 men dead, without them ever going overseas.

 

[Opanashc]

If you set your planes to day and night missions(I assume this mean that they take off and land twice), do you really get 80 loses a day in 1000 plane wing

Day missions give 2 per day, making it a day/night gives an extra mission once every few days.

 

[jamesd]

I don't know the formula, but I know accident losses are much, much lower than that in game. I just looked at a group of 100 Naval bombers that have been assigned to bomb a single air zone for 30 months straight in daylight only, and they've suffered 86 accident losses in that time. That makes it about 0.1% losses per daylight mission.

I don't even think that 80% reliability means that 80% of accident losses are avoided. At 4% accidents per mission when only flying 1 during the day, that would be still be a daily loss rate of 0.8%, or 8 times what my naval bombers lost.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Accidents typically tend to be around 10-30% of what you lose from combat ( in my experience at least ), which I think feels like a great balance. It's a noticeable amount, not negligible and not unreasonable either.

Upgrading reliability can still be very useful for missions and planes that don't encounter the enemy frequently, like fighters you use to give air superiority or naval supremacy bonuses (after beating the enemy airforce), or fighters patrolling to defend against port-strikes, strategic attacks or help spot ships.

 

[jamesd]

Accidents typically tend to be around 10-30% of what you lose from combat ( in my experience at least ), which I think feels like a great balance. It's a noticeable amount, not negligible and not unreasonable either.

Upgrading reliability can still be very useful for missions and planes that don't encounter the enemy frequently, like fighters you use to give air superiority or naval supremacy bonuses (after beating the enemy airforce), or fighters patrolling to defend against port-strikes, strategic attacks or help spot ships.

In my experience, playing as Germany and putting fighters up against French & British fighters early in the war, accident loss rates are more like 1% of combat losses and often lower. I typically assign aircraft to daylight only missions, prevent them from flying at less than 50% strength and keep reliability at 72-80%. It's taken me till early 1941 to get more fighters into the air than Britain, and that's with 45 factories on fighters from having conquered almost all of Europe (including the nominally Axis nations) and producing about 20 synthetic plants to provide rubber. Accident losses over the channel in the last month have been 1 to 66 air combat losses. I started the war with 1100 fighters and after producing and/or capturing say 3500-4000 fighters in 30 months I've only just recovered to 800 fighters after sitting at 200 for at least 12 months. It took the continuous focus to reduce aircraft production costs for me to start making gains. Fighter production has never suffered due to resource shortages.

 

[Alex_brunius]

In my experience, playing as Germany and putting fighters up against French & British fighters early in the war, accident loss rates are more like 1% of combat losses and often lower.

Unless I variant upgrade my airplanes reliability my accident rates tend to look closer to this:

24/118 means 20.3% of all the CAS losses in this zone was to accidents. ( This was with 80% reliability )

 

[Dalwin]

I am fairly sure that the accident rate is not that percentage per mission. I don't see myself losing nearly as many as that would mean.

As seen in Alex's screenshot, with 735 enemy ground troops bombed, there had to be many more sorties than only the few hundred that would yield 24 losses if the OP's percentages were correct.

 

[Louella]

I'm not sure if the chance of an accident is the 2% that's quoted, and I'm not sure how that figure was worked out.


This is what the defines say about accidents:

ACCIDENT_CHANCE_BASE = 0.1, -- Base chance % (0 - 100) for accident to happen. Reduced with higher reliability stat.
ACCIDENT_CHANCE_CARRIER_MULT = 2.0, -- The total accident chance is scaled up when it happens on the carrier ship.
ACCIDENT_CHANCE_BALANCE_MULT = 0.5, -- Multiplier for balancing how often the air accident really happens. The higher mult, the more often.

 

[scroggin]

I don't even think that 80% reliability means that 80% of accident losses are avoided. At 4% accidents per mission when only flying 1 during the day, that would be still be a daily loss rate of 0.8%, or 8 times what my naval bombers lost.

Correct, you still get accidents at 100% reliability and you can go past 100% reliability. It means you have 80% of the standard reliability level. So in the formula used to calculate accident rates you will have 80% of the standard reliability multiplier.

 

[Meglok]

I've just delved a little into how the air warfare works, and I've come to the conclusion that, due to the 2% accident chance that are applied for both starting and landing at a mission, the overall 4% accident chance when having 80% reliability means you'll lose about 4% of your stack per mission. For a stack of 1000 fighters, that would mean losing, give or take, about 40 planes per sortie.

Am I right to assume that the majority of losses are thus attributed to accidents, and that reaching a reliability of 100% is far more important than, for instance, higher agility? Can someone with a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanics enlighten me?

There is an old air guide by @sterrius linked in the beginner's resource guide on air warfare that explains accidents and how weather effects them.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-mechanics-combat-mission-quick-guide.947290/

Pretty sure the accidents section is still valid. The accident calculation formula is 100-reliability/10 as I have always understood it. Base reliability is 80%, so base accident rate is 2%. Spending xp on reliability reduces the chance, but there is probably a flat 1% chance of an accident every time you take off or land. Carrier accident rates are doubled. Weather can add anywhere from 1% to 6% additional chance. Not sure if weather malus can be reduced by extra reliability.

My rule of thumb is boosting S/E fighter agility is usually most important when spending xp on aircraft, but reliability always needs to stay at least 80%, 88% if I have the spare xp. Then spending 25 xp on reliability for all CAS, bomber, Nav, and Hvy fighters models is a good thing because it will reduce the amount of IC spent on replacing accident losses.

One issue that I hope is being addressed by @podcat in the review of the air system for 1.4 is the problem of weather and accidents. With the speed of the game a player is hard pressed to react to weather changes and ground their planes and it is impossible in MP games. In reality planes didn't take off in blizzards, sandstorms, heavy rain, etc. HOI4 carrier planes are coded not fly in bad weather. But HOI4 land planes will blithely take off in conditions that no sane pilot would ever fly in. Land planes either need the same stop code carrier planes have or players need a Do Not Fly in Bad Weather button they can choose to check. This problem is especially bad for smaller nations, losing 3-5 planes every time you take off or land is a killer when you don't have much MIC.

Yet another reason to Add Aluminum in Asia