Airpower assignment annoying?

[jeep91]

Hello everyone. Before I start the thread, I just want to say hearts of iron looks amazing and I can't wait to play it. Everything about it so far has been great, but watching the world war Wednesdays has made me kind of noticed something I am slightly concerned about.

When you're assigning new air wings to certain areas or air missions, it seems very clunky and time-consuming. Setting a front line takes the drag of a mouse, navy planning is made by simply assigning zones from the fleets and the mission you want them to do which is all relatively simple and straightforward.
However watching Daniel in some of his sessions, has made me notice how annoying it looks to constantly be assigning planes to airbases making sure they are in full moving them around to a small icon on the map. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong?
For example when me and my friends play, we play on a consistent speed, usually speed 3 or 4. From what it looks like so far you going to be rushing trying to move your air units around. It seems very time-consuming and I feel like I would miss out on other important tasks that must be done, or the war in general.

Daniel has even expressed himself during the Japan WWW that he was frustrated assigning air, whether he meant it or not looking back at it clearly is annoying to him to have to do it rushed, and he is one of the best. Then during the Poland and Hungary game, Daniel barely used air at all. And often forgot about it didn't care to use it as Hungary.

Forgive me if the thread is kind of all over the place, it is half me thinking as I go trying to push the idea across that is in my head, airpower seems clunky. But I feel the gist of my points has been made. It looks like assigning air is more of a hassle than it should be. Again, do not hates on me personally it is just a view looking and I love PDS and HoI 4.

Cheers

 

[Lifthrasil]

Assigning air units has never been this easy and comfortable in any HOI itaration as it is in HOI4.
You assing air units to several states at once(for missions)! That means you don't have to babysit them all the time, but only occasionally (every few weeks or months) shift them around when the battle rages elsewhere.

Btw Daniel did use air forces in Poland, check the stream again. The only problem was, that he did not have enough to meaningfully resist the German airforce. That's why he did not bother to produce more planes.

EDIT: The only thing that takes more work is choosing and selecting the airbases from which they operate. But, depending on the number of bases and airwings you have, this should be an acceptable amount of time.

 

[tsk92]

It looks more streamlined and easier than in HOI3, so I'll wait and see. =)

 

[ViribusUnitis]

Well yeah, in comparison to HOI3 the new mechanism in HOI4 is a HUGE improvement, at least for me it looks intuitive and straightforward - of course we will see when the is released.

And I also think like Lifthrasil said, the main reason Daniel didn't use it in the Poland / Hungary games was that the enemy airforce was just way too strong. In the Poland stream I remember him saying very often that the planes will not survive very long and that it's kind of a suicide mission when he was assigning his (very small) air wing to the front line provinces. And yeah for Hungary, I think we all agree that they also do not have the Air-Tech and the amount to compete with France / Britains - bombing.

 

[Wimpola]

The air assignment looks far more easy than Hearts of Iron 3 but one thing that I would like to see is manually attack a province. It would be under the battle plan area and it's like a paradrop on a province except it's for planes. But I don't really care because the bonuses are there when you have air superiority.

 

[DiegoVaz]

realistically speaking

armies can move on the land form their home capital to the front since the can carry whatever they will be needing
navies travel vast distances from their ports since you cannot have ports everywhere and since the ships have a huge amount of range when compared to any other military vehicles

but when it comes to aircraft specially your fighters are very limited in range ( one state or two probably )
realistically aircraft where moved to airbases near to the front before being assigned on a mission as they can refuel and rearm faster that way

they are trying to make the game as close to the real thing as possible
i don't see any kind of annoyance in assigning them to airfields during a war ( as it feel more authentic )
if you find it difficult you should try playing on lower speeds for some practice
again being a game which can churn out so many different scenarios. everything in this game is subjective.

 

[Maizel]

It may still be a few clicks, but it it far easier than in HOI3. In HOI3 it was such a pain setting up your air force to have decent coverage. And it was a pain to keep your air coverage in pace with your advance or retreat.

You had the give new orders pretty much everytime you either lost or gained a province.

 

[jeep91]

Assigning air units has never been this easy and comfortable in any HOI itaration as it is in HOI4.
You assing air units to several states at once(for missions)! That means you don't have to babysit them all the time, but only occasionally (every few weeks or months) shift them around when the battle rages elsewhere.

Btw Daniel did use air forces in Poland, check the stream again. The only problem was, that he did not have enough to meaningfully resist the German airforce. That's why he did not bother to produce more planes.

EDIT: The only thing that takes more work is choosing and selecting the airbases from which they operate. But, depending on the number of bases and airwings you have, this should be an acceptable amount of time.

True, fair enough, good points guys Guess we will see!

 

[schimwyr]

I would like to see a system more like Army equipment for the air wings. From what I can see, not only do you have to specify the number of planes but the specific model as well. I would like an option to take one more step back form that.

I would only want to click on an airbase and order say 100 "fighters" to be stationed there and let the supply chain figure out how to best fill that request. Say I only had 67 of my top of the line fighters. The supply chain assigns those 67 and fills the other 33 fighters with the older model I still have in stock. As I manufacture more of the newer model the supply chain upgrades the air wing with the newer model. Add in all the options for upgrade prioritization and the options for the airbase to only have these plane models so if you only wanted a base to have the oldest fighter type or to never use carrier planes. As I said, the army equipment supply model but for airbases.

You could still have multiple stacks, the supply chain would fill the 3 stacks of 100 "fighters" as best as possible.

 

[jeep91]

I would like to see a system more like Army equipment for the air wings. From what I can see, not only do you have to specify the number of planes but the specific model as well. I would like an option to take one more step back form that.

I would only want to click on an airbase and order say 100 "fighters" to be stationed there and let the supply chain figure out how to best fill that request. Say I only had 67 of my top of the line fighters. The supply chain assigns those 67 and fills the other 33 fighters with the older model I still have in stock. As I manufacture more of the newer model the supply chain upgrades the air wing with the newer model. Add in all the options for upgrade prioritization and the options for the airbase to only have these plane models so if you only wanted a base to have the oldest fighter type or to never use carrier planes. As I said, the army equipment supply model but for airbases.

You could still have multiple stacks, the supply chain would fill the 3 stacks of 100 "fighters" as best as possible.

Yeah I agree with the kind of idea, I think it would be easier just to give a fighter total and have the A.I assign them to the closest base and let you know if they cannot reach or are full, seems alot easier. But like I said, guess we will see
Like, 500 fighters total assign this to the Western Europe Airspace and the A.I will move them in bases closest to your objective, etc.

 

[panzerzombie]

I still would like to have a thing like the divison-designer for plane units.

Air units could be inside defined airgroups ( as equivalent to divisons) consisting of a number of squadrons ( could be easily handled with add/subtract buttons ). So you could design mixed units or fighter only or bomber only etc. To open up a new air group on an empty you could just select a predesigned template to be filled out from reserves.

Nice touch would be if you could even drag-drop those on-map units from airport to airport.
I think that would reduce air craft hassle to a minimum.

RAF Air Groups ( or US Air forces )consisted of about 200-400 aircraft ( wildly differing by country and air force branch ) and squadrons of about 12 -24 aircraft ( again wildly differing...).

 

[Bridger15]

I'm not certain why you need to assign your air wings to an air base. It seems to me the AI should move them to whatever airbase is most effective for the mission you sent them on. It seems unnecessary for the players to constantly babysit the plans to move them forward or backward as the front line moves.

It's easy enough to assign them to combat zones with combat missions. Changing those as the front line moves is already enough work. Doing it *again* with the airbases seems like un-fun and unnecessary micromanagement.

There could be popups that alert the player when an airbase is over capacity (I.E. more planes are trying to use the air base for optimal performance than can fit there) so that the player could consider upgrading it or building another.