Any tips to use an airforce?

[unmerged(286778)]

I've never used air or naval units because I mostly played as minor nations, so what would be a good way to use air units? Do you just focus your bombers on one unit at a time, or do you set it on region and let it bomb a more units? Is it also the same with fighters or do you just put it in region mode for air superiority? Thanks for wasting your precious time to read this.

 

[Amallric]

Its more efficient to use bombers on single provinces, but it means more micromanagement too. For fighters, it might be interesting to put them on defense in a large area, and then let them be.

 

[Hister]

It depends on the battlefield situation - if you want to brake any particular defence or are defending yourself send your bombers in that province alone. It really healps tip the balance of battle in your favour.

 

[Pier]

A bit old and outdated, but still largely relevant guide is on the HOI2 wiki.
I suggest you read through that one at least once.

http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi2wiki/index.php/Effective_Use_of_Airpower

 

[unmerged(140582)]

There's really no single definite answer. As mentioned, the question of how you use your airforce is mainly a question of how much micromanagement you want to do. Undoubtedly, your bombers are a lot more effective if you assign them new missions against specific provinces for every single day, in order to turn the tide of ongoing ground battles. That of course means that you will have to put in a lot of work to achieve that effect. The same applies for your fighters: The most effective way is to monitor enemy airforces directly and send your own forces on indiviual missions to shoot them down.
On the other side of the coin, you could just assign them a large area, or even a country, and let them do their own thing for a month or longer. Their impact will still be felt, but they might be wasting a lot of time with bombing unimportant provinces behind the frontline you don't care about. Of course, that also runs the risk that your aircraft will suffer unnecessary losses thanks to the AI.
I prefer to use them that way, and just occassionally take a more direct hand when a more important battle takes place, in which case I give new orders.

 

[alufdufe]

It also depends on whether you can get air supremacy. In a Barbarossa type situation, you can't use the SU air force like you would the Luftwaffe. If you try, you'll probably lose most of it on the first day.

Edit: On the other hand if you play the US in 44-45, with 120+ plane airforce, and all the air doctrines, you can easily have planes over half of Europe at any one time.

 

[ljigsrb]

It also depends on whether you can get air supremacy. In a Barbarossa type situation, you can't use the SU air force like you would the Luftwaffe. If you try, you'll probably lose most of it on the first day.

Edit: On the other hand if you play the US in 44-45, with 120+ plane airforce, and all the air doctrines, you can easily have planes over half of Europe at any one time.

well thats operation sealion on long run much better to conduct before barbarosa.

 

[alufdufe]

When I play the US, I start 3 pairs of serial airfield builds 3 weeks apart. When these serials get going and I have all the repair techs, the interval will drop to 2 weeks. So I'm laying down a pair of airbases every 2 weeks. Having England is nice, but you can flatten Germany from Sardinia,Corsica, and Northern Italy too.

 

[unmerged(286778)]

I micromanaged with my CAS against the Japanese, and ended up ending the Second Sino-Japanese war. This picture I'm about to show you is in 1944 at the climax of the war, I didn't save the pictures of 1943-44 because I didn't think about it at the time and this is the "oldautosave" file.

Red lines= Japanese front
Black lines= Chinese defence
Yellow arrows= Chinese advance
Blue arrows= American advance
Red circles= CAS or other aircraft
By the way, the Japanese were a pain to take out because I had to move my units all around the pacific to capture the remaining islands the Japanese tried to escape to. Also the Chinese defence literally obliterated Japan's army for me, (while I was clearing up the front I even saw a stack of at least 103 units in one province) thanks to my lend-lease act and SU's Zet Operation, oh and the land I took from Japan was still owned by China so while China took its candy back it ended up redeploying my units to DC.

 

[Commander666]

I micromanaged with my CAS against the Japanese

Congratulations! Looks like you have moved beyound your other post which stated you rarely use airforce. You tried using CAS to assist in land battles and you won. CAS are the very best planes to use against ground unit interdiction. But since your planes were coming from the States and operating in a region where there are few airports, longer range tactical bombers which also rebase much better maybe would have been a better choice.

Each aircraft type has its unique pluses and minuses. Most large countries need all types and it really is a challenge for any player to build the "best mix of airforce" that gives him not only the best air defence, but also the best air attack including on ground forces, ships, infrastructure and other aircraft. And from being able to deploy this airforce by having bases from which the planes can reach their targets, to building new bases in the best places, to researching and upgrading to extend aircraft ranges is another important component of the total airforce. But no airforce should be built without consideration of the targets such airforce will tackle. So the general discussion of airforce is really difficult. What airforce is best for your country is highly dependent on what country you are, and who is likely to be your enemy. With those questions answered, you can take on a building program that will likely get the mix of aircraft best suited for your needs (and which you can afford).

Unfortunately, in this game and real life, for any airforce to remain effective it needs to be able to first protect itself. Hence I think most players probably break down "air force building" into two distinct concerns. 1) They will take on a program of building intercepters and/or fighters with which to attack enemy airforces and with which to protect your various bombers and your country from enemy bombers. 2) They will do a seperate program of building bombers of various types chosen as to what targets they want to be able to destroy. In all cases, most major country's air forces go thru an evolution. Example: Germany in the early years can do very well with cheaper but shorter range interceptors as there are many airbases in France and Germany and Germany is really wanting a big interceptor force to gain air superiority. But as Germany expands, the shorter range interceptors become nearly useless in Africa and Asia. So the time will come when Germany stops building interceptors and instead builds longer range fighters.

In the same way, because Germany does not have the ICs to build all aircraft types, careful choices need to be done in choosing a bomber program. Fast building and hard hitting CAS are excellent in the beginning for taking Poland and France but their short ranges do not make them appropriate for Russia once the Barbarossa line has move some provinces towards Moscow. The best remedy is to build a few CAS which will be used where their short range suffices and also have at least equal or more tactical bombers to support the war as it reaches further and further away. But another evolution happens when your war has eaten up all the land next to you and now you need traverse the seas to continue your global conquest. Hopefully you anticipated the need for Naval bombers to support these operations and started a building program for them early enough so you got what you need. Finally, strategic bombers can be really helpful. Did you know that a seemingly impossible obstacle like 20-30 infantry divisions in a province can be brought to its knees - if the country is small enough - by just strategically bombing it to zilch? STRs do that much better than TACs and their long range really helps. Finally, there is no single unit that can create such a major upset in any war as can a single transport plane dropping a parachute division. Countries have been annexed by the use of a single transport plane, and other bastions like the UK have been opened up like a can of sardines using vertical envelopment.

It's a big topic. Study the stats of the different aircraft carefully in the production folder. And just try using different aircraft types to learn about their pros and cons.

 

[unmerged(286778)]

By the way, are missiles even worth the time and effort? Last time I built one it wouldn't do anything.

 

[Commander666]

By the way, are missiles even worth the time and effort? Last time I built one it wouldn't do anything.

I have found missiles to be the most effective way to bring a country to its knees. I reduced the UK to only 10 ICs using a concerted build of V1 and V2 rockets. While there is some minimal manpower lost for every missile shot off, they achieve much better damage results than possible with bombers because you can easily build many, many more missiles than bombers and they don't suffer the damage that bombers do. A very long campaign of strategic bombing using airplanes will leave you with a huge reinforcement bill (bigger still if enemy has intercepters) even if you succeed in seriously crippling the enemy country. Missiles are so horribly effective (and no counter measures possible) they should have been banned by the UN.

When I attacked USA I used the next generation of V2-3 (ICBMs) to take out all of the Yank's AA thereby sparing my bombers from having to attack that first.

Why did your missile not fire? Were you at war with anyone? Was it in range of any target? Did you give it time to gather some organization? It does not have to have full ORG to fly, but has stronger effect if it is. But - if it was under 50% ORG and your air mission slider is at the usual 50% setting - then it will not fly.

There are only two things you can do with a missile:
1) You can strategically redeploy it to a closer airbase if you placed it too far back.
2) You can mission it to do "strategic bombardment" on enemy. This is actually better refered to as a strategic "strike" since each missile only has one flight. It will fly a few hours after you give the mission order. Just watch it. They produce pretty explosions in target.
HINT: Always check enemy target to pick ones with high number of factories then target missile to that province. If you target a whole region, the missile will often be wasted on low priority target.
OTHER HINT: NEVER, Never put missile on airbase you use for aircraft. It will prvent you combining aircraft into sets of four.

When missile hits it severly damages factories, resources, infrastructure and installations like AA and Radar. But it will not do any damage to airbases - which is simply very wrong. (playing 1.05)

Happy fireworks!

EDIT: My Russia has - by 1953 - shot off 40,300 missiles. I have build and got ready another 40 units of ICBMs spread across Russia to use on Japan, and am building about 20 more units so I will have about 1 ICBM for every AA they got. My bombers won't take any damage from that threat and can immediately go into Interdiction roles.

 

[unmerged(286778)]

I have found missiles to be the most effective way to bring a country to its knees. I reduced the UK to only 10 ICs using a concerted build of V1 and V2 rockets. While there is some minimal manpower lost for every missile shot off, they achieve much better damage results than possible with bombers because you can easily build many, many more missiles than bombers and they don't suffer the damage that bombers do. A very long campaign of strategic bombing using airplanes will leave you with a huge reinforcement bill (bigger still if enemy has intercepters) even if you succeed in seriously crippling the enemy country. Missiles are so horribly effective (and no counter measures possible) they should have been banned by the UN.

When I attacked USA I used the next generation of V2-3 (ICBMs) to take out all of the Yank's AA thereby sparing my bombers from having to attack that first.

Why did your missile not fire? Were you at war with anyone? Was it in range of any target? Did you give it time to gather some organization? It does not have to have full ORG to fly, but has stronger effect if it is. But - if it was under 50% ORG and your air mission slider is at the usual 50% setting - then it will not fly.

There are only two things you can do with a missile:
1) You can strategically redeploy it to a closer airbase if you placed it too far back.
2) You can mission it to do "strategic bombardment" on enemy. This is actually better refered to as a strategic "strike" since each missile only has one flight. It will fly a few hours after you give the mission order. Just watch it. They produce pretty explosions in target.
HINT: Always check enemy target to pick ones with high number of factories then target missile to that province. If you target a whole region, the missile will often be wasted on low priority target.
OTHER HINT: NEVER, Never put missile on airbase you use for aircraft. It will prvent you combining aircraft into sets of four.

When missile hits it severly damages factories, resources, infrastructure and installations like AA and Radar. But it will not do any damage to airbases - which is simply very wrong. (playing 1.05)

Happy fireworks!

EDIT: My Russia has - by 1953 - shot off 40,300 missiles. I have build and got ready another 40 units of ICBMs spread across Russia to use on Japan, and am building about 20 more units so I will have about 1 ICBM for every AA they got. My bombers won't take any damage from that threat and can immediately go into Interdiction roles.

Okay thanks, but I was playing as Japan and I built V1 missiles and I'd let them regain org, and place them in a airport close to enemy provinces but it didn't show any other option except none.

 

[unmerged(5228)]

CAS can remain useful for Germany for quite some time. The sheer size of the Eastern front makes CAS difficult to use but it is possible. If the front has regressed from blitzkrieg to static warfare the are useful for targeting the large stacks of Soviet defense units.

CAS also have rather decent naval attack values. You could base them in Sicily and interdict enemy naval traffic going through the central Mediterranean.

 

[unmerged(286778)]

Holy crap Richard Nixon! Just to let you know, I do know he is dead.

 

[Commander666]

Okay thanks, but I was playing as Japan and I built V1 missiles and I'd let them regain org, and place them in a airport close to enemy provinces but it didn't show any other option except none.

Sorry, I can't think of any other reasons. What air base did you place the missile in? What is the closest enemy province to that airbase? With that info I can check the range and see if it is indeed less than the short range of a V1.

 

[unmerged(286778)]

Oh never mind the province was out of range (Singapore) of my V1.

 

[Commander666]

Yes, V1 flying bombs have very short range. Placed in Japan I don't think you can even target the Philippines, and most definitely not Singapore. Not even sure you could reach any Chinese target. But with some more tech development and building ICBMs (V2-3) you will have no problem hitting Washington, or London, or......

 

[unmerged(286778)]

Yes, V1 flying bombs have very short range. Placed in Japan I don't think you can even target the Philippines, and most definitely not Singapore. Not even sure you could reach any Chinese target. But with some more tech development and building ICBMs (V2-3) you will have no problem hitting Washington, or London, or......

Yeah I was fighting the Netherlands and even the closest province with an airport couldn't reach Singapore. I don't remember which province but I'll check later.

 

[unmerged(286778)]

Ugh, you know what I hate? Is how air transports can't transport your paratroopers to different airports. You have to move your paratroopers there by land or sea transports. Thats probably the only thing that keeps me from building airborne, even though there one of my favorite units, other than marines. Semper Fidelis!