Best air missions, navy missions and spy missions?

[Zeprion]

What are the best air missions, navy missions and spy missions?

Every air and navy mission only gives a general description, so I can't tell for sure which one is better. Air superiority mission says "Wings with this mission will fight and disrupt any enemy air wings operating in the area", but what are the effective changes? Do they get 20% more damage or something like that?

What are the effective differences between: air superiority, close air support and interception missions? When should each be used?

And for bombers, when should you use strategic bombers or kamikaze? which one is better?

And for the navy, what is the effecitve stats modifiers between: patrol, strike force, convoy raiding, convoy escort and naval invasion support?

For spy, the effective change of each mission is pretty clear as well as what their upgrades do, but I wonder, what are the best upgrades and missions for spies? How can you put them to best use?

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

There is no "best". It all depends on what you want to achieve.

What are the effective differences between: air superiority, close air support and interception missions? When should each be used?

Air missions - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

And for the navy, what is the effecitve stats modifiers between: patrol, strike force, convoy raiding, convoy escort and naval invasion support?

Naval missions - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

For spy, the effective change of each mission is pretty clear as well as what their upgrades do, but I wonder, what are the best upgrades and missions for spies? How can you put them to best use?

Missions - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

Intelligence agency - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

 

[Fulmen]

Air stuff:

-AS for contesting air.

-Interception if you want your fighters taking off only when bombers are spotted in their region (they will still engage fighters though and there is no difference in prioritizing targets).

-CAS should always be on unless you can't protect your bombers against fighters (yellow/red air).

-Kamikaze is for hitting ships. Very OP. Heavy fighters can actually magically survive kamikazing, which is about the only thing they have going for them (unless they fixed that by now, which I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't).

-Strat bombers are only worth it in MP and useful for nuking airfields, both figuratively and literally, as well as blowing up refineries. I guess you could still use TACs to strat bomb, but there isn't really a scenario in SP where you'd want to go for TACs instead of CAS, or indeed a scenario where you wouldn't have your bombers committed on CAS missions (since your units are pretty much engaged non-stop in SP). In MP TACs are viable for certain nations (mainly Japan) due to this dual purpose.

Naval stuff:

-Spotting for patrol.

-Combat stats (attack, armour, deck size, etc.) for task force.

-Stealth for subs and speed (and light attack?) for surface raiders IIRC.

-For escort missions just spamming obsolete destroyers with at least one tier 1 depth charge is/was the most efficient thing to do. Don't know if they've changed that but I doubt it. If you're short on fuel you could always go for newer DDs with maxed out sub detection and depth charges.

-The bigger the guns, the more shore bombardment they will give, though the bonus caps out at some point (so don't bother deploying 10 BBs against one province). Since MtG CLs and DDs have also been able to give some shore bombardment, like in the older HoIs.

Spy stuff:

-Collaborationist government by far. If not available, you could go for combat bonuses, BP stealing or the propaganda mission which lowers stability (and war support?), but I reckon those aren't really worth the investment most of the time.

Depending on who you're playing, you could also just be cheesy, spam spies, boost party popularity and coup, but where's the fun in that?

IMO the magic of spies doesn't really come out in singleplayer, they're more of an MP thing.

 

[brainiac1530]

They all do different things, so this is mostly based on what you want, and/or what assets you have available. It's best not to think of certain missions as "better" since they're usually not in direct competition with each other. There are some that are arguably "more important," though.

The most important air mission is air superiority. If your enemy has air superiority, then your troops get penalties to movement speed, defense, and breakthrough. The movement speed has the potential to be the most critical one, resulting in encirclements and overruns where they wouldn't occur otherwise. Fighters on air superiority contribute to air detection, and engage enemy fighters and/or bombers according to your detection capability. They can shoot down or merely "disrupt" bombers, preventing them from performing their missions.

I would say that the most fundamental naval mission is actually convoy raiding. The entire purpose of your navy is to secure for yourself, or deny to your enemy, access to the seas for shipping. Everything proceeds logically from this; if your convoys are being raided, you need to escort them. However, playing defensively isn't necessarily optimal, so you may want to go on the offensive. That means setting patrols to actively search for raiders, and strike forces to react. (Well, except in the case of submarines, since most ships are poorly equipped to engage them. Naval bombers can work wonders here. Patrols can still be useful if they have good sub detection values.) If your enemy has sufficient naval force to actively challenge you for supremacy, then they can react with their own patrols and/or strike forces.

Spy missions are where things go topsy-turvy. Again, there's a "most fundamental" mission. That's building a spy network, since it's required for everything else, provides benefits of its own, and is the main source of spy experience by far. Spy missions are in direct competition with each other, since you have a limited number of spies and all spies can perform all missions (though a few spies may be slightly better at particular ones.) This means you need to prioritize those which will provide the greatest benefit. Also, since blueprint stealing requires three operatives to perform, it actually isn't even an option for most countries to begin with. If you have the ability to set up collaboration governments, this is often the most impactful mission (depending on the size of the nation in question, and assuming you get to annex or fully occupy them.)

Intelligence agency upgrades are incredibly out of balance right now. Some may not do anything at all, some marginally buff actions that are incredibly ineffective to begin with (boosting ideology), and some are virtually required. I would take Passive Defense, and at least some of the cryptology stuff, in literally every game. Most of the rest is debatable, but suicide pills is actually pretty useful if your enemy has the Passive Defense upgrades, to reduce how often you need to do rescue operations.

 

[DGuller]

What do scout planes do? Do they merely aid in intelligence gathering, or do they also do things like spotting fleets and submarines in case you don't have radars?

 

[brainiac1530]

Scout planes boost intel. If you have an intel advantage over someone, you can get a spotting bonus against them. So, yes to both, kind of.

BASE_SPOTTING_FROM_DECRYPTION = 10,
NAVY_INTEL_BASE_SPOTTING_BONUS_MIN_INTEL_FOR_BONUS = 5, -- at least this intel diff is needed for start applying BASE_SPOTTING_FROM_DECRYPTION bonus
NAVY_INTEL_BASE_SPOTTING_BONUS_MAX_INTEL_FOR_BONUS = 40, -- at this intel BASE_SPOTTING_FROM_DECRYPTION will be applied fully