Are Strat. Bombers still banned in MP? Why if so?

[Happy Trigger]

Hey any chance can you look at this image and contextualize it for me?:

One of the players in the game I'm in arguing for banning Strategic Bombers put up this image as "proof", what am I looking at, what is the problem are they claiming, and if they are presenting something without proper context, what's the context that mitigates this?


It also seems like, the reason to ban strategic bombers also comes from a position where Axis/Allies mp relies on having Romania and shit specializing their nations to only outputting bombers/fighters etc hence 5k bombers in 1942 (or the US/UK ONLY spamming strats?). This seems like a toxic way of playing mp, I think nations in general should do whats fun, not what is "essential" to winning, howdo you solve that?

I think one of the ways to solve that is forbidding land lease of planes. Every nations has to has their own air force. And the second one, in the same direction, would be forbidding land lease entirely, or at least, allowing land lease only from countries that are out of the war.

I think that land leases shouldn't be for free. I believe they are the most unbalanced thing in this game.

 

[Sbrubbles]

How do you prevent players from optimizing the game into unfun ridiculousness in multiplayer games without outside rules. The age-old question.

 

[Sid Meier]

I think one of the ways to solve that is forbidding land lease of planes. Every nations has to has their own air force. And the second one, in the same direction, would be forbidding land lease entirely, or at least, allowing land lease only from countries that are out of the war.

I think that land leases shouldn't be for free. I believe they are the most unbalanced thing in this game.

Although this probably/presumably doesn't help in the case of the US/UK still being able to allegedly, produce that insane number of bombers on their own.

Do you know whats going on in that picture though? Is it allegedly light fighters not doing enough damage? I don't really see.

e: Also banning lendlease doesn't stop say, Italy/Canada from simply *only* building a strategic bomber force and that being their sole contribution to the war effort. Lendlease I think is only a relatively small part of the puzzle, mainly the one where minors lendlease the big ally extra fighters for fighter spam.

 

[Happy Trigger]

Although this probably/presumably doesn't help in the case of the US/UK still being able to allegedly, produce that insane number of bombers on their own.

Do you know whats going on in that picture though? Is it allegedly light fighters not doing enough damage? I don't really see.

I had similar situation against a China receiving land leased from the soviets. They gave them a lot of fighters, while they were building STRATs. I couldn't destroy their planes with fighters 1, even though i had technologic superiority over their light fighters. After that i realized that even against TACs, fighters are trash and you need at least a few numbers of heavy fighters to intercept bombers.

The question with the land lease is that, besides UK and US, you won't have, normally, any other country producing bombers, because they'll have to invest in other things now that land lease is not allowed. Otherwise, every nation focus on a single thing and that alone gives the Allies a huge advantage, expecially in Asia, because Japan has only 2 allies in the region, but against the Axis in Europe too. (That don't prevent minors producing high cost equipment, but limits them with the use of their manpower.)

And even if US focuse strictly in STRATs, that can put UK in disavantage position against the combine production of fighters from the Axis.

 

[Sid Meier]

I had similar situation against a China receiving land leased from the soviets. They gave them a lot of fighters, while they were building STRATs. I couldn't destroy their planes with fighters 1, even though i had technologic superiority over their light fighters. After that i realized that even against TACs, fighters are trash and you need at least a few numbers of heavy fighters to intercept bombers.

The question with the land lease is that, besides UK and US, you won't have, normally, any other country producing bombers, because they'll have to invest in other things now that land lease is not allowed. Otherwise, every nation focus on a single thing and that alone gives the Allies a huge advantage, expecially in Asia, because Japan has only 2 allies in the region, but against the Axis in Europe too. (That don't prevent minors producing high cost equipment, but limits them with the use of their manpower.)

And even if US focuse strictly in STRATs, that can put UK in disavantage position against the combine production of fighters from the Axis.

I think this still misses that a nation like Canada or nations in a similar position, could in theory get away with not producing any kind of military, not producing tanks, infantry, or boats, just strat bombers and only strat bombers and fielding their own 2,000+ bombers to join up with the UK's or US's bomber forces because they don't need a land army, no one is going to invade them, the war will end (via players surrendering) before D-Day really needs it, etc.

 

[Happy Trigger]

I think this still misses that a nation like Canada or nations in a similar position, could in theory get away with not producing any kind of military, not producing tanks, infantry, or boats, just strat bombers and only strat bombers and fielding their own 2,000+ bombers to join up with the UK's or US's bomber forces because they don't need a land army, no one is going to invade them, the war will end (via players surrendering) before D-Day really needs it, etc.

You can invade any coast without garrison easily. One time i saw i Japan invading and capitulating USA during D-day, because the Allies thought that they couldn't be invaded because of their superior navy.

If Canada don't garrison their ports, other player will have, or you can exploit that. And if other player is putting infantry in the field, they aren't producing tanks and planes only.

 

[Happy Trigger]

Forbidding land lease balance things so well, that nations like South Africa can't invest in heavy tanks only, otherwise they won't have enough guns, trucks, etc, to fill their divisions. Them, who is gonna help them? UK of course. They will have to diverge production to tanks, or AT. Without any costs, land lease is OP.

 

[Sid Meier]

You can invade any coast without garrison easily. One time i saw i Japan invading and capitulating USA during D-day, because the Allies thought that they couldn't be invaded because of their superior navy.

If Canada don't garrison their ports, other player will have, or you can exploit that. And if other player is putting infantry in the field, they aren't producing tanks and planes only.

I feel like its very rare that this is a position one can exploit, hence why they are able to do it in the first place. Japan isn't going to risk its navy I feel, invading Canada to risk losing those troops when the US finally comes around to containing them. Also it would require noticing that their coast is unguarded (vs the fact that the US can probably park some spare INF/coastal defence there); like this requires a lot of things and clearly isn't reliable.

I think the answer here is a nation needs to build their military as a proportion of their total military. I.e you need X many land divisions to have Y many bombers/planes etc.

 

[Happy Trigger]

I feel like its very rare that this is a position one can exploit, hence why they are able to do it in the first place. Japan isn't going to risk its navy I feel, invading Canada to risk losing those troops when the US finally comes around to containing them. Also it would require noticing that their coast is unguarded (vs the fact that the US can probably park some spare INF/coastal defence there); like this requires a lot of things and clearly isn't reliable.

I think the answer here is a nation needs to build their military as a proportion of their total military. I.e you need X many land divisions to have Y many bombers/planes etc.

That is a good form of balance too. Yesterday i saw a USA with 1,5 million man in the air force, doing STRATs only. You should suggest that in the forum.

If you'd like, we could play together without land lease as a test. That would change the face of the game, and the player as well for good. xD

 

[Sid Meier]

That is a good form of balance too. Yesterday i saw a USA with 1,5 million man in the air force, doing STRATs only. You should suggest that in the forum.

If you'd like, we could play together without land lease as a test. That would change the face of the game, and the player as well for good. xD

Honestly Paradox needs to implement a separate manpower pool for airforces and navies. Something to limit the number of airplanes that can be in the air; and ships at sea; and something to consume Air/Sea XP as a cost to building large warships/advanced planes. The 40,000 Light fighters that get fielded are a little ridiculous in the context of the game and if this was instead limited/bottlenecked to something like 4,000 pilots and that using strategic bombers/pilots attritted pilots on a regular basis at historical rates this would I think do a lot to nerf the massive airforces.

 

[Forster]

You asked for it!

I hate to say this, but that is one ugly map.

 

[Sid Meier]

I hate to say this, but that is one ugly map.

We're still in Victoria 2, but yeah the colonizing was quite a crapshoot back in EU4.

 

[Forster]

Honestly Paradox needs to implement a separate manpower pool for airforces and navies. Something to limit the number of airplanes that can be in the air; and ships at sea; and something to consume Air/Sea XP as a cost to building large warships/advanced planes. The 40,000 Light fighters that get fielded are a little ridiculous in the context of the game and if this was instead limited/bottlenecked to something like 4,000 pilots and that using strategic bombers/pilots attritted pilots on a regular basis at historical rates this would I think do a lot to nerf the massive airforces.

I think this is a good solution. It bothers me that multiplayer has countries specializing in production. I don't think that happened anywhere in WW2, or even today. Countries may not be able to produce some war materials, but can buy them elsewhere, or receive them through lend lease.

 

[Secret Master]

One of the players in the game I'm in arguing for banning Strategic Bombers put up this image as "proof", what am I looking at, what is the problem are they claiming, and if they are presenting something without proper context, what's the context that mitigates this?

Well, before I even put that into context, I want to say that a picture of a single mission/day of aircraft doing anything in HOI4 doesn't prove much. I can show you single day pics of 1000 fighters facing another 1000 fighters that are exactly identical in every way and with identical detection and mission efficiency, and on one day we'll see 0-7 kills, and on another day we'll see 7-0 kills, and everything in between. When I test, the minimum I test is for 30 days.

That being said, I will tell you what I see in that picture:

I see someone trying to say that STRs are overpowered by comparing the combat capability of 4000 fighters to 5300 strategic bombers. Given the cost differences involved, I would expect 5300 strategic bombers to perform much better than 4000 fighters, since they would be much more expensive. If you aren't doing IC equalized tests when complaining about the power of certain equipment in the game, then the comparisons aren't nearly as useful. It's like saying that tanks are overpowered because 1 tank can kill 3 infantry kits. Well, that's great and all, but tanks are so much more expensive than infantry kits that if I was killing 1 tank for every 3 infantry kits I was losing, I'd buy myself a drink for being so awesome. And if I was losing 100 kits per day while the enemy was losing 10 tanks, and we were facing 2 panzer divisions for every infantry division I was employing, you'd accuse me of cheating with a win/loss ratio that good.

I also see a game where they have one person designated as air controller.

I see 55% disruption on the strategic bombers, and they are only getting around 4.4 buildings bombed per day. If the number of fighters were equal in cost to the strategic bombers, we'd expect far higher rates of disruption, since light fighters are half as expensive as strategic bombers.

It also looks like the area has some static AA.

It's worth noting that the only real cogent argument I ever heard in favor of banning strategic bombers (not that we ever did in our group) was that with enough STRs in one area, you could bomb all the airfields to death faster than the defenders could react with planes. This argument does not hold up in the face of how planes work in the game right now.

It also seems like, the reason to ban strategic bombers also comes from a position where Axis/Allies mp relies on having Romania and shit specializing their nations to only outputting bombers/fighters etc hence 5k bombers in 1942 (or the US/UK ONLY spamming strats?). This seems like a toxic way of playing mp, I think nations in general should do whats fun, not what is "essential" to winning, howdo you solve that?

We balanced the game in certain ways in our MP mod. But we also have some house rules that prevent minors from being used to just build one thing. We only allow minors to put at most 25% of their MIC on planes or tanks at one time. Otherwise, you get Heavy armor South Africa, heavy fighter Hungary, and so on.

 

[Sid Meier]

Well, before I even put that into context, I want to say that a picture of a single mission/day of aircraft doing anything in HOI4 doesn't prove much. I can show you single day pics of 1000 fighters facing another 1000 fighters that are exactly identical in every way and with identical detection and mission efficiency, and on one day we'll see 0-7 kills, and on another day we'll see 7-0 kills, and everything in between. When I test, the minimum I test is for 30 days.

That being said, I will tell you what I see in that picture:

I see someone trying to say that STRs are overpowered by comparing the combat capability of 4000 fighters to 5300 strategic bombers. Given the cost differences involved, I would expect 5300 strategic bombers to perform much better than 4000 fighters, since they would be much more expensive. If you aren't doing IC equalized tests when complaining about the power of certain equipment in the game, then the comparisons aren't nearly as useful. It's like saying that tanks are overpowered because 1 tank can kill 3 infantry kits. Well, that's great and all, but tanks are so much more expensive than infantry kits that if I was killing 1 tank for every 3 infantry kits I was losing, I'd buy myself a drink for being so awesome. And if I was losing 100 kits per day while the enemy was losing 10 tanks, and we were facing 2 panzer divisions for every infantry division I was employing, you'd accuse me of cheating with a win/loss ratio that good.

I also see a game where they have one person designated as air controller.

I see 55% disruption on the strategic bombers, and they are only getting around 4.4 buildings bombed per day. If the number of fighters were equal in cost to the strategic bombers, we'd expect far higher rates of disruption, since light fighters are half as expensive as strategic bombers.

It also looks like the area has some static AA.

It's worth noting that the only real cogent argument I ever heard in favor of banning strategic bombers (not that we ever did in our group) was that with enough STRs in one area, you could bomb all the airfields to death faster than the defenders could react with planes. This argument does not hold up in the face of how planes work in the game right now.



We balanced the game in certain ways in our MP mod. But we also have some house rules that prevent minors from being used to just build one thing. We only allow minors to put at most 25% of their MIC on planes or tanks at one time. Otherwise, you get Heavy armor South Africa, heavy fighter Hungary, and so on.

Was it you who made the mod that nerfed strategic bombers? Can you link the mod or was it someone else?

e: Apparently it was alexbrunius, but thanks for your write up and response!

 

[Fulmen]

Was it you who made the mod that nerfed strategic bombers? Can you link the mod or was it someone else?

e: Apparently it was alexbrunius, but thanks for your write up and response!

I made one as well that nerfed both MEFO bills and strat bombers, back when MEFO bills first came out. I actually only recently took it down (it had been redundant for years).

 

[Sid Meier]

I made one as well that nerfed both MEFO bills and strat bombers, back when MEFO bills first came out. I actually only recently took it down (it had been redundant for years).

Whats a MEFO and what made your mod redundant?

 

[Fulmen]

Whats a MEFO?

It's a mechanic PDX added to Germany IIRC when WtT came out, meant to somewhat represent the heat-up of the German economy and the necessity to plunder other countries relatively soon, and of course the historical Mefo bills. When they were first added they IIRC gave Germany -20% on consumer goods needs, which was absurdly overpowered and just resulted in Germany having insane amounts of factories by 1941, breaking the balance of multiplayer.

What made your mod redundant?

PDX nerfed Mefo bills a few times and eventually settled on how they currently are in the game. Strat bombers were also eventually nerfed, thus rendering the mod redundant.

 

[Voigt]

Another very important note about the posted screenshot which is described as "proof": In the screenshot there isn't fuel in the topbar, and also there is still Unity instead of Stability and Warsupport. Meaning this screenshot is extremly old.
In the meantime quite a bit of balance patches happend.

 

[Sbrubbles]

Another very important note about the posted screenshot which is described as "proof": In the screenshot there isn't fuel in the topbar, and also there is still Unity instead of Stability and Warsupport. Meaning this screenshot is extremly old.
In the meantime quite a bit of balance patches happend.

That's a good catch. Who knows how long ago that was taken