Airplanes

[Grosshaus]

I don't bother using planes in HoI just because it takes too much work to handle them. With a historical Wehrmacht 80 percent of the time fighting I woud be ordering planes to attack, too boring.

So I back the idea of airplanes attached to other units, perhaps to Zeppelins as well? That way one could bomb foreign capitals, but by making Zeps expensive and hard to invent and also dependant on attached airplanes, they wouldn't become too important.

One way to think about is that airplanes weren't that important, but could have been. I'd like to see what would have changed if Germany had started to invest in airplanes earlier, would they have reached Paris with the aid of air raids instead of horse-drawn artillery?

 

[unmerged(13083)]

Re: intelligence

Originally posted by GLENN
What use would an increase in intelligence due as an aircraft unit?

The other side has troops in trenches, and we all know that one couldn't even get to the enemies trenches before being killed.

There were very few shifts in the lines. IT was a stalemate war.

So what practical purpose would this unit serve?

How would I benefit by having this unit?

In WWI air scouting was vital to keep track of troop movements along the line. Without that scouting the enemy could stack a huge number of infantry divisions and move all their artillery into one location and blast its way through.

Not that they didn't try that anyways, but with the scouting the other side can easily reinforce that area of the line to slaughter them all when they charged.

 

[unmerged(4396)]

I would propose that airplanes be handled more as a 'doctrine' than a unit or brigade. Just research 'army-air recon doctrine', get a plus to your ground units spotting ability and be done with it.

 

[Prufrock451]

Well, look again at the tech tree.

In my EU games, it's not uncommon for me to nudge up on the Industrial Revolution sometime in the early 18th century.

And if you're playing the US in HoI and you don't finish the game with Kevlar-wearing infantrymen carrying M16s with night-vision sights, supported by VTOL fighter-bombers based on a nuclear carrier, well, you're not playing the game right.

I don't think it should be all that difficult for a human player based in the US or Britain or some other democratic nation to push well past the boundaries of what was accomplished in 1920. I think a tech tree ending about where the HoI tech tree begins would be perfect, with rudimentary coal-to-rubber conversion, basic tanks, fighters, and bombers, and maybe the equivalents of the Pre-War Field Testing doctrines.

 

[Grosshaus]

In the announcement Paradox said about event-based research, so that would make airplanes unaccessable befor the Great War? I don't like that, since I want to try to change things, perhaps planes research could be twice or so more expesive prior to 1914, but certainly not impossible!

 

[Prufrock451]

I admit, I have my hesitations about event-based research, but I'll reserve judgment til I see it.

I wouldn't want the "Thomas Edison" event to fire and give a bunch of techs to the owners of New Jersey, if the owners of New Jersey happened to be Lakota horsemen armed and supported by the Russian Empire.

On the other hand, if I'm playing a Britain that's been researching combustion engine technology since 1850, it makes little sense to wait 60 years for the Daimler event before I can attempt to build an automobile.

Basically, what I'm saying is while great men occasionally shift the course of history, not every historical event should depend on the actions of a specific Great Man.

 

[m45tion87]

Hmmm... If you can build airplanes (or squadrons) by just researching one tech it sounds like easy job!

Let us just hope that it isn't so easy that American Civil War will be fought in the air too...

 

[unmerged(13083)]

Well think about it, the first airplane is a pretty revolutionairy concept.

I don't think just by having increased research spending in a country, it makes them all that much more likely to invent an airplane sooner.

It took the wright brothers' innovativeness to accomplish it, and who is to say that even if countries did spend alot more on research, that a plane would actually have been built before the wright brothers did it historically.

Event-based tech gains for things like flight are fine with me.

 

[Gwalcmai]

Well, the Wrights did make a very successful plane, but it's not like they were the only ones researching flight. A lot of people managed to get airplanes off the ground around that time. The Wrights' plane was much better, because it gave the pilot great control, but it isn't like they were the only ones who could pull it off. Remember, what happened at Kitty Hawk was the first controlled flight by a heavier-than-air aircraft.

But of course, what slowed down the development of the first controllable plane was the governments not being interested. Flying was for the birds, especially cuckoos and self-respecting countries didn't DO that kind of thing. They saw no use in it, and were not ready to invest in it's development. So, you could make it event based, but the starting point for the likelyhood of it happening should be some years before the turn of the century. IIRC, the Wrights based a lot of their work in that of some German who was considered an authority on wing design. They found he had got some figures wrong, recalculated and make effective wings. Had the guy got it right, a plane could have been created a decade of two earlier.

 

[Vynd]

Originally posted by Prufrock451
I wouldn't want the "Thomas Edison" event to fire and give a bunch of techs to the owners of New Jersey, if the owners of New Jersey happened to be Lakota horsemen armed and supported by the Russian Empire.

I dunno... sounds pretty cool to me!

 

[unmerged(17506)]

During WWI, airbombs were hand launched. That means they were as efficient than hand grenades. Don't expect ravage Paris that way !
I think it could be an improvment of recon zeppelins.

The question of submarines seems to be more relevant.

 

[Stingray]

Many people could have invented the things that were invented earlier than in RL if they'd had the funding to test their theories and ideas. So IMO thechs should be possible to get a bit earlier than in RL.

Maybe dependant upon circumstances, if you start to wage a long lasting trench war in 1880, you should have a chance to get tanks earlier if you pushed for it ?

And perhaps the opposite, if your country didn't have any need for say canals, why would you become a master of constructing them ?

 

[Arkestra]

Many people could have invented the things that were invented earlier than in RL if they'd had the funding to test their theories and ideas. So IMO thechs should be possible to get a bit earlier than in RL.

Yes but for every Orville and Wilbur Wright there were another pair of aviators whose ideas were doomed to failure no matter what the funding. Governments and investors didn't have the benefit of hindsight that we have.

Maybe dependant upon circumstances, if you start to wage a long lasting trench war in 1880, you should have a chance to get tanks earlier if you pushed for it ?

I've been hoping for a mechanism like this for a long time, it's a very good idea. The problem is, how do you model the game engine to basically go "Britain has been stuck in trench warfare for x years, innovative officers in the army have come up with an intruiging idea"?

Perhaps there could be a bonus to martial research in times of war; after all, nothing spurs development quite like a raging conflict between evenly matched foes.

 

[unmerged(8300)]

Observation Balloons

I think that the whole aerial unit issue, whether handled by independant units or brigades, should actually be availible from the start (1835) by modelling aerial balloons. This way aeroplanes could be worked in near the end of the tech scale in a way that really keeps them in a structure meant mostly to provide recon advantages to land or naval units. Near the end of the tech tree with the late ww1 era bombers like the Handly Page and Zeppelin bombers, I think that aeroplanes/zepps should add some tactical advantages as well, but I see the point of those that want to limit this to brigades.

However I think that strategic use of large fleets of bombers, though it should be very expensive, and hard to achieve too early on, is not all that a-historical. However the game could be made more historical by making large air units cost proportionally more industrial output than manpower, leaving a country that produced a large airforce with the only option for its manpower of producing untrained militia units. Since air units cant hold territory and ww1 bombing technology (which should be the cap in the game) should never produce more than a point or two of strategic or tactical damage, in the end I think this will be a failing strategy.

Air units should be much more influential in small numbers because of their recon advantage. Either half a dozen independent units of observation balloons, or one balloon brigade equipped division in each stack is all that is needed. More will be superflous and a waste of industrial output because of their high expense to combat effectiveness ratio.

As far as actual effects these will depend on the combat model, but should obviously start very modestly with early (1830s) balloons, or perhaps even not start at all till balloons became more widely used in the 1860s. I think that one big breakthrough is when the balloon operater could be connected to the ground station by a telegraph cable. At this point im not sure if actual game map viewing advantages are in order, it depends on the scale of provinces in Victoria and how far a baloonist with a good pair of binoculars could see. However perhaps there could be a tactical recon formula in Victoria sort of like the cavalry superiortiy formula in EU2, basically if one side has balloons and the other doesnt they get a bonus to the combat tables or die rolls or whatever.

Once planes are availible they can actually cross the lines and see a province or so into the enemy rear. Also planes can shoot down observation balloons. If air units are independant then this is easy to model, if not then probably you should just give more advanced airplanes a higher tactical recon value, and whichever side has the greater value (over a certain spread that would be considered a tie) will get the recon advantage. The downside of this is that early on in the game it will give a less than logical tactic of "balloon wars" since the side with more balloons would have an advantage while in reality basically you just need enough to cover your frontage and balloons cant really fight each other.

Still I think having observation balloons and airplanes in the game would be cool, but I dont want to see Handly Page bombers showing up in 1850 any more than the rest of you.

 

[unmerged(2036)]

Originally posted by Arkestra

Perhaps there could be a bonus to martial research in times of war; after all, nothing spurs development quite like a raging conflict between evenly matched foes.

Reading through this thread, that was my thoughts as well.
The military developments during peace time. was nowwhere near the developments made during ww1 and ww2.

In other words, you might have functioning airplanes , but using them effectively in battle is not developed on the drawing board.

Perhaps add bonus to research when useing military units, or
limit peacetime spending on military.

 

[unmerged(2036)]

Oh and I hope airplanes won't be in Vicky as a unit
If the game is going to be anything like I expect (and hope),
they will be more of a problem than a feature. (KISS )

Same goes for tanks.
Even by WW2 only "ze germans" had the brains/experinces to use them as more than a support unit.

 

[Grosshaus]

If research is divided as in HoI, then a system could be made so that researching military techs (especially tactics) would be a lot more expensive during peace time. However fighting Sioux shouldn't give one an advantage in researching tanks, so colonial warfare shouldn't be made equal to European fighting.

Also pure events giving an invention, say flight, always at the same time gives the player again a bonus against the AI. If historical accuracy is wanted, then a negative bonus to research of a tech that wasn't invented in real-life when someone tries to invent it anyway might do the trick.

 

[FINALmasa]

Well, I don't know about the whole wartime thing (I don't think you can have that unabused), but to slow down research, just give a multiplier to the cost of research as it becomes more advanced in any one area. For example, if you only decided to research planes and get them by the early 19th century or so, you would actually be paying much more money for it than others that average out their research. Still, having average research probably wouldn't even let you have planes by the time you finished the game. That way people can research only specific tech trees, but they won't have quite as much tech in total as an average tech nation.

 

[unmerged(5934)]

Two points:

a) The Wright Brothers didn't create the airplane from thin air. Usually they are represented as little more than enterprising village artisans (they did make bycicles, imagine...). In fact the bycicles in 1900 were high technology, shiny new, and besides, they were into motorbykes too. That put them right in the edge of modern technology - light aluminium alloys, hollow metal tubes structures, internal combustion engines, electricity (pretty much the ones needed to make an aircraft).

In addition (and very much in late XIX century style) they were cunning businessmen that tried to patent the airplane concept and control the whole business... good material for a SF novel (or Victoria mod) where WB (Wright Brothers) controls airplanes around the whole world - just like Edison tried to patent and control the movies (have you watched 'Nickelodeon? good movie...)

b) Airplanes and zeppelins could be very important indeed, even in 1914-18. The powers weren't developing huge fleets of enormous bombers in 1918 just to waste money. Those planes were fairly primitive by 1939 standards, but fighters were even more backwards if that's possible, and air defences pretty much hopeless. And you have to add to that reconaissance (including sea reconaissance) and the enormus importance that planes did have in colonial warfare - nothing like an airplane to strike terror into the natives hordes!

 

[MacGregor]

This is a subject that is bound to cause consternation regardless of how it is handled. Those who favor lots of freedom to change history, at least technical history, will favor air units with no limits on when they can be developed outside of the player's skill. Those who prefer that their games stay true to the historical time line will prefer some limitation, such as the "brigade" concept conferring a simple "reconaissance" bonus. My concern with the first track is that I'm loath, given the ability in HoI to significantly speed up research, to change the nature of the game in order to incorporate an invention that IRL was simply a footnote, and not strategically significant (outside of reconaissance) in the games time frame. Maybe that can be part of the Jules Verne scenario. And how much do we want Paradox committing valuable time and thought on an issue that is limited strictly to the endgame, when we all know that most of us never even make it to the end game with most of their products. I'd rather that they spend their efforts working on the earlier issues. But then, I'm not committed strongly either way on the issue.