Bombing Missions vs. Production. Why not?

[Culdranth]

Do naval strike and targetted strat bombing of mil factories impact production timelines?

If not, why not?

If there is a carrier being made on the Normandy coast, why can't I target it and stop it from being finished?

If there are ten factories near Rome making planes, how is it that it does not affect the stockpile? Why can I not find and destroy stockpiles in general?

Wouldn't it make sense to be able to use my spy and recon assets to find where tanks, weapons, and other stockpiles are stored and try to whittle them down?

 

[Corpse Fool]

They will impact production in the sense that those factories/yards aren't available to build whatever they were building, and I believe that even if repaired, the efficiency of a damaged military factory is lost. Naval strikes against ships that are being refit, or repaired will also delay their refit/repair more directly.

The biggest issue (not that this really prevents it from working) with using this offensively, is that yards/factories are being taken from the bottom of the list, which are generally the lowest priority thing to begin with. You'd have to cripple an astonishing amount of their industry in order to start impacting the 'important' production lines, by which point you've already, well, crippled their industry.

Changes like bombing a carrier that is 'building' and not repairing/refitting in normady and stopping it from being built, or specifically targeting their aircraft/tank production facilities are extremely unlikely to happen in hoi4. Largely because of the way that production is abstracted.

 

[Culdranth]

They will impact production in the sense that those factories/yards aren't available to build whatever they were building, and I believe that even if repaired, the efficiency of a damaged military factory is lost. Naval strikes against ships that are being refit, or repaired will also delay their refit/repair more directly.

The biggest issue (not that this really prevents it from working) with using this offensively, is that yards/factories are being taken from the bottom of the list, which are generally the lowest priority thing to begin with. You'd have to cripple an astonishing amount of their industry in order to start impacting the 'important' production lines, by which point you've already, well, crippled their industry.

Changes like bombing a carrier that is 'building' and not repairing/refitting in normady and stopping it from being built, or specifically targeting their aircraft/tank production facilities are extremely unlikely to happen in hoi4. Largely because of the way that production is abstracted.

Tell me about your combat width.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Tell me about your combat width.

You're the first person to ask me about that publicly, and the second to ask about it ever since I changed my title as a joke. I was starting to think I was never going to have to actually answer it, and I don't really have a good answer for it anymore.

The general purpose combat width that I tend to use is going to hover around 20-22, based on what I refer to as the 'catgraph'. I call it that because to me it looks like there's 2 little ears sticking up on top of the graph, which is funny to me. If I know I'm going to be fighting around a particular type of terrain, I'm going to specialize to a width that fits nicely into that specific terrain/purpose.

I worry for what sorts of changes they might sneak into BBA that might make me have to redo some of my graphs.

 

[Xerberous]

You're the first person to ask me about that publicly, and the second to ask about it ever since I changed my title as a joke. I was starting to think I was never going to have to actually answer it, and I don't really have a good answer for it anymore.

The general purpose combat width that I tend to use is going to hover around 20-22, based on what I refer to as the 'catgraph'. I call it that because to me it looks like there's 2 little ears sticking up on top of the graph, which is funny to me. If I know I'm going to be fighting around a particular type of terrain, I'm going to specialize to a width that fits nicely into that specific terrain/purpose.
View attachment 870382

I worry for what sorts of changes they might sneak into BBA that might make me have to redo some of my graphs.

Stupid question: Why do I see no "spikes" in the Maximum line at the integer divisors of the terrain specific widths (32, 42, 45 etc.)?

 

[Corpse Fool]

Stupid question: Why do I see no "spikes" in the Maximum line at the integer divisors of the terrain specific widths (32, 42, 45 etc.)?

If anything this is just an issue with how I worded the title that is confusing. Despite the title wanting the 'lowest' maximum penalty, players would generally be wanting to look at the high points on the graph. Perhaps I should have called it stat retention.

Anyway, the reason you don't see spikes on any of the lines, is that the lines are an amalgamation of 324 different combinations of terrain, tactics, and flanks from 0 to 5, with the different lines looking for a different value. The blue line is looking for the lowest value, the red line is looking for the highest value, and so on. So, even if there is a particular situation in which a width does well, blue line doesn't care, blue line is looking for the worst of 324 different combinations and grabbing that. The red line however will take the best, and that is why it is almost pinned to 100%, there is almost always a situation in which a width does well.

You can think of the red and blue lines as lower and upper bounds, while the un weighted average line attempts to suggest where 'most' of the data lies. Since the red and green lines are practically straight and suggest you can get away with basically any width, the blue line then has the most usable information. I would want to avoid the worst situation

 

[Louella]

The way HOI4 is set up, factories and dockyards aren't really linked much to what they are building, dockyards in particular.

A ship being built, has no real in-game location, so can't be bombed. This can be a bit jarring immersion-wise.
In contrast, a ship being refitted has a definite in-game location, that can be bombed or captured.

For factories, it does track individual factory efficiency in some way, though I'm not too sure of the mechanism for how it does it. And I don't think that bombing factories affects production efficiency, even though that would seem reasonable.

Like, for Germany, say you only had mil factories around Berlin. And you started off only building infantry equipment. So, logically, all the factories in Berlin are producing infantry equipment. It would seem reasonable then, that if an enemy country bombed Berlin, that the production of infantry equipment would be impacted. But afaik it is not.


I don't think there would be a straightforward way to make HOI4 have more of a geographic connection between factories and their products.

 

[mursolini]

Geographically locating factories to production lines has lots of issues:
1. you need to assign each equipment not only factory, but their locations. Which, can be a nightmare to view, considering you might want to disperse or concentrate some production in some areas.
2. there would be a need for attacker in strategic bombing mission, to somehow know what is produced where, and how to target it.
3. AI would have to be taught what to bomb, which, isn`t that trivial, would eat into performance.
4. What to do with "fractions" of a factory that you get during occupation, especially considering compliance is state based.

With ships, it`s a bit easier, but same problem. What happens to 10 fractional dockyards dispersed around France that Germany get`s during occupation?

With stockpiles, again, question of just how much of the stockpile should be available to be bombed isn`t trivial(because hello, I`m SU my stockpiles are deep in Siberia,.. right?). how defender is supposed to manage their limited "invulnerable" storage, and AI, again, has to be taught some preservation strategies.

 

[Ringwraith_JP]

I'd honestly be satisfied with just the game assigning the damage to a random line everytime it has to assign damage to a factory/shipyard. No need to have it tied to the map. Just spread it around the production line everytime a factory moves from fine to damaged.

 

[Xerberous]

I would want to avoid the worst situation

Thanks for the comprehensive answer, yet with this statement I would respectfully disagree, at least for offensive divisions since you are normally able to choose the place – and therefore the terrain – where you attack.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Thanks for the comprehensive answer, yet with this statement I would respectfully disagree, at least for offensive divisions since you are normally able to choose the place – and therefore the terrain – where you attack.

I had already made the exception for specialization earlier in the thread.

 

[Znail]

I had already made the exception for specialization earlier in the thread.

Yes, specialized units for a terrain set is not that hard to set up. The difficult one is to make a generalist unit that works well. Seems like 10-11 and 20-22 are the best bands as I agree that you want to avoid it being bad as much as possible. 22 is the obvious choice if you want it as large as possible then.

 

[Diakonen]

Destroying stockpiles would be nice. Maybe even that we should build warehouse/storage. Then it would make more sense to lend lease/destroy old equipment to make room for new stuff.