Aircraft and Leaders

[Leadfingers]

I've always struggled with my Air Force... they always seem to perform poorly.

Then I realized that I could attach my aircraft to a Corps commander (for free...not part of his 5 "slots").

But...when I do that, the Aircraft doesn't seem to receive any of the bonuses from the commanders.

So why bother?

Im SO confused

 

[marxianTJ]

They have to be in range and it's somewhat hard to accomplish that when you can't see what the radio range is.

Typically I opt for just attaching them at the army group level (since that's a fairly large range - and it gives them the supply bonus that the general's skill provides). Plus I can move them around without worrying a ton. *Sometimes* I'll attach them at army level if they're going to be used as part of a static defense - that is, if we're pretty much intending not to move, may as well put them in or near the same tile as the army HQ - plus they'll get the ORG bonus from the army commander's skill.


The Main thing with air forces, and whether they perform well or not mostly boils down to your stack sizes and compositions.
So, I'll give you a few rules of thumb:

1. Never put bombers and fighters/INTs/CAGs in the same stack - when you send your bombers to bomb, if they are attacked and have fighters present, they will stick around to fight, and thus take more damage, whereas if they're purely bomber stacks, they will get hit, but will (almost) immediately flee.
2. If you find that you *need* to do a lot of bombing of some sort, but your bombers keep getting bounced by fighters - set your missions to night only - your bombers will do less damage, but they'll also take less damage and will be able to do do more bombing runs before needing repaired as a reslut.
3. Make sure your air generals have at least 2-3 stars (you can do this manually) that way if they accidentally end up in the same province as another wing, they won't cause a massive stacking penalty for being over the command limit.
4. The ideal stack size ranges from 3-5 - you'll incur a stacking penalty, but the penalty is offset by the fact that you're putting more firepower in the squad, and also damage will be spread out more evenly across all the units in the stack.


When you do your research, make sure you're researching *at least* pilot training, but, leadership allowing, it's helpful to have ground crew training (will make org come back faster), and an efficiency tech (interception, ground attack etc) - they'll be most effective then.

Other quality of life tips:

1. Make sure your air units are being upgraded - differences in "upgrade tier" can make a huge difference.
2. There is no reason to put an air general with a trait on any of your INT units - excepting night-flyer, because all the other traits only have to do with bombing and not air to air engagements.
3. Make sure you're utilizing air fields that can repair at least *most* of the units in your stack, or it will take *forever* to repair and get you back in the air.
4. Mission types also play a big role in how much damage you take. I find that it's best to use air units on a case by case basis - if you just set them to attack a province and forget about them for a while, you'll come back some time later and find that they've been completely crushed - the same goes for setting very large mission areas - the bigger the area, the more likely you are to be engaged multiple times. That is, of course, if you actually care about your air units lol.
5. Planes are made for fighting. Don't worry you have a bunch of beat up wings, as long as you deal some good damage before they have to sit around for a while lol.
6. The Infrastructure level in the province in which your air field is located will influence how quickly your planes regain org. So for example, we have several planes in a level 1 air base, but with 10 INFA, they will recover ORG quite quickly - they just might not repair quickly. Whereas 1 plane in a level 10 air base in a "red" infra province - will recover org *very* slowly, although they'll repair quickly!
7. Only put "tank buster" generals on CAS units - they make everything they're attacking "harder" - which is what CAS are designed to hit *really* well since they have huge hard attack values - but every other kind of bomber will suffer as a result - as they typically are meant to hit soft targets (and have much higher soft-attack values). Making things harder will *hurt* them - so keep Tank Busters off of your TAC and MRF wings.
8. Air combat gives almost no experience to the general - so keep your most desirable generals *off* of wings you intend to use purely for air to air combat.

 

[Leadfingers]

"Typically I opt for just attaching them at the army group level (since that's a fairly large range - and it gives them the supply bonus that the general's skill provides). Plus I can move them around without worrying a ton. *Sometimes* I'll attach them at army level if they're going to be used as part of a static defense - that is, if we're pretty much intending not to move, may as well put them in or near the same tile as the army HQ - plus they'll get the ORG bonus from the army commander's skill."

But I just said that attaching planes to a leader dont do any good... so why bother?

When I tested, I attached my planes to an Army Commander, to receive the bonus to ORG... there was no change. How do you know that attching them to an Army Group commander will give them the supply bonus.

 

[marxianTJ]

Because I can see my supply need drop. You *should* be getting an org bonus from the army command as far as I'm aware as long as you're in range of the army HQ - unless it was ninja removed from TFH without me caring to notice lol.

 

[Kovax]

One trick is to send your INT on an "Air Superiority" mission over the provinces you intend to bomb, BEFORE you send the bombers. Any opposing fighters will attack your INT, exchange damage with your aircraft best able to fight them, return to base for repairs, and then your bombers can show up later. Break the opposing fighters first, and you'll spend a lot less IC/days repairing your typically more expensive bombers.

Placing aircraft in groups of 3's means that they work moderately efficiently as a single group of 3, yet two groups of 3 (6 planes) doesn't degrade your total firepower nearly as much (compared to 8 or 10 planes) if you end up with 2 groups of 4 or 5 in the same province. I try to use two groups of 3xINT together, early in the war, in order to beat up the initial opposing air units, while taking less damage per plane in return. Once opposition is broken, I use them as independent groups of 3, for higher efficiency per plane. You may be able to get marginally better performance by initially grouping them in 5's, and later reducing the size of the groups down as far as groups of 2xINT, but I don't need the additional micromanagement to reorganize them according to the amount of opposition at the moment.

If you run aircraft in groups of 3, build your airfields up to 3 or 6, so you can base one or two groups there and repair everything each night. If you typically run 4 or 5 in a group, expand your airfields to 4 or 5, or multiples of those. Infrastructure helps with recovering ORG, so you might consider adding a level or two of Infrastructure at a few of your most critical air bases.

As pointed out, mixing aircraft of different mission types, ranges, or other stats rarely works as well as hoped for, and generally combines the major disadvantages of all of them.

 

[Leadfingers]

Because I can see my supply need drop. You *should* be getting an org bonus from the army command as far as I'm aware as long as you're in range of the army HQ - unless it was ninja removed from TFH without me caring to notice lol.

If you could test that and reply, that would be awesome, sir

 

[StanCollins]

They have to be in range and it's somewhat hard to accomplish that when you can't see what the radio range is.

2. There is no reason to put an air general with a trait on any of your INT units - excepting night-flyer, because all the other traits only have to do with bombing and not air to air engagements.

7. Only put "tank buster" generals on CAS units - they make everything they're attacking "harder" - which is what CAS are designed to hit *really* well since they have huge hard attack values - but every other kind of bomber will suffer as a result - as they typically are meant to hit soft targets (and have much higher soft-attack values). Making things harder will *hurt* them - so keep Tank Busters off of your TAC and MRF wings.

2. Can it be true that "Superior Air Tactician" doesn't help INT/FTR/CAG wings?

7. I've never heard of this situation. Why would the type of air general you have affect the hardness of the target? Even so, wouldn't the "Tank Buster" bonus offset this when attacking armored units?

 

[marxianTJ]

The "tank buster" effect adds +20% hardness (or -20% softness) - that's what it does - it makes the stuff it shoots more hard. Which makes it great for CAS because it makes certain soft-ish brigades (like say ART) into more "hard" brigades, which makes your CAS in turn do more damage because of their very high hard attack values. Which is also why it's bad for TAC/MRF wings because their soft-attack value is much higher than their hard attack, so you want things to stay as soft as possible.

Superior Air Tactician: Gives a 10% combat modifier for ground attacks and interdiction - note the complete absence of mention of air combat - since you neither interdict nor ground attack air craft So SAT generals are best put on MRF and TACs who will be hitting soft ground targets.

Now I don't know if this is true, but I assume it is, that the +10% bonus to combat you get with a SAT general will *stay* in affect if your air unit is attacked while it is bombing or interdicting ground targets (which makes it even better).

 

[Makje]

from C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Hearts of Iron 3\tfh\common\traits.txt:

##################################
# Air traits.
##################################

tank_buster = {
    allowed_leader = { air }
    tactical_attack = 0.2
}

carpet_bomber = {
    allowed_leader = { air }
    strategic_attack = 0.1
}

night_flyer = {    
    allowed_leader = { air }
    night_attack = 0.1
}

fleet_destroyer = {
    allowed_leader = { air }
    naval_attack = 0.1
}

superior_air_tactician = {
    allowed_leader = { air }
    offence_modifier = 0.1
}

as far as i can tell tank busters are good for tactical bombers and superior air tacticians are good at all offense which doesn't seem de exclude air combat and therefor good for INT

 

[marxianTJ]

lol so either the tool tips are completely wrong or the code itself has very ambiguous names for things.

 

[Makje]

well both could be wrong actually. I mean i don't know exactly what tactical_attack does... i don't really see how it would add 20% hardness though and expect that it has something to with making tactical bombers better. Same with offence_modifier, it sounds good to have a bonus to offense but how it works exactly ?

 

[marxianTJ]

So, after a little digging: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rior-tactician-superior-air-tactician.555366/

Apparently all the confusion is due to a hold-over from the "conversion" of leaders from Hoi2. I know what was super confusing to me early on was the SAT used to be for fighter generals in hoi2, but not in this one.

So the reason the code says funny things is because it's actually the code from hoi2 that's been repurposed in hoi3 in confusing ways lol.

 

[StanCollins]

So, after a little digging: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rior-tactician-superior-air-tactician.555366/

Apparently all the confusion is due to a hold-over from the "conversion" of leaders from Hoi2. I know what was super confusing to me early on was the SAT used to be for fighter generals in hoi2, but not in this one.

So the reason the code says funny things is because it's actually the code from hoi2 that's been repurposed in hoi3 in confusing ways lol.

I freely admit to being totally lost in this discussion. Are you saying that you still believe your points 2 & 7 above are correct despite the code cited by Makje?

 

[marxianTJ]

Nobody *really* knows I think is the correct answer lol.

 

[StanCollins]

Nobody *really* knows I think is the correct answer lol.

Why does this not surprise me?

OK. I'll just keep on assigning my SAT and TB leaders as if it does some good.

 

[Wave]

One thing that is sure is that this code:

tank_buster = {
allowed_leader = { air }
tactical_attack = 0.2
}

Doesn't add any hardness into enemy units.
I couldn't find any example but I very firmly believe that it would be softness = -0.2 if it did it because

    mechanized_brigade = {
        softness  = -0.01
        maximum_speed = -0.2
        defensiveness  = 0.1
        toughness = 0.1
    }

Removes softness from mechanized brigade and thus makes it harder.

Another example is in heavy armor brigade's unit file, the file doesn't say anything about hardness but the softness value is 0.10 which makes its hardness value 90%.

EDIT: Also the trait code would be a heck of a lot longer because to change the enemy unit hardness you would need to change the scope of the code because right there softness = -0.20 would make your own planes harder...

So, what tactical_attack = 0.2 could then mean? Well, we have the carpet bomber trait which gives strategic attack boost and the fleet destroyer trait which gives naval attack boost which seem to be pretty clear, one destroys buildings and another destroys ships. Thus I could say I'm 90% sure that tank buster gives you some boost on attacking ground units. I'll try to dig it up from the files to see if there is any other example.

Also a totally logical wild guess on the SAT trait, offence_modifier is probably the attack efficiency percent that you can see when you put mouse on your units in the battle window, same thing that takes penalties and boosts from different things.