Codebreaking allows you to see bombers before they bomb. Neat.

[Louella]

Playing a game, seeing what things are like, noticed something.

AI was doing that annoying thing with strategic bombers where they keep switching areas.

Turns out, since I had decrypted their ciphers, that I could see the area where they were going to bomb next. Before the bombers arrived.

Which meant I was able to switch my interceptor aircraft to that region before the bombers arrived, and since fighters gain efficiency quicker than bombers, I could disrupt the bombers long before they got enough efficiency, so the amount of damage they did was much less.

Not sure how useful that would be outside singleplayer or slow-speed multiplayer, but I thought it was neat anyway.

You can see this here. That "broken enemy cipher" icon appears when the enemy has assigned aircraft to the area. You can see the bombers have not yet done their first mission, whereas I've already switched 500 interceptors.

The broken enemy cipher icon also disappears from that view when the bombers have switched away, so if you see it's vanished, then the bombers are switching to a new area.

 

[brainiac1530]

If you have high enough air intel, you can actually see all their mission assignments by region. Same with navy, though that's usually even easier, with up to 50% from naval combat and probably a good bit from trade laws and the base value.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

This reminds me: wouldn't it be nice if you could assign air wings to multiple regions? So as Germany you assign some long-range interceptors to cover a whole swath of air space. The air wing would then split it's aircraft across the regions depending on the distribution of detected enemy bombers. CAS situated on a border between two regions could split themselves between battles in both regions, depending on the number of battles in each region that they had the range to reach.

 

[Louella]

If you have high enough air intel, you can actually see all their mission assignments by region.

That would be good, yeah. Though I only had 3 agents total. And it seemed like I needed them all on defence - I would capture an enemy agent every couple of weeks, it'd seem.

This reminds me: wouldn't it be nice if you could assign air wings to multiple regions?

Definitely !

An idea I had a while back, was for the air force to be re-done with "air fleets", kind of similar to how the naval system works. You'd have wings assigned to groups, under the command of an officer, and they'd be assigned multiple regions, and it would automate region and airbase assignments, so that air wings would move around if airbases were too damaged and so on.
Divisions can be automated with the battle planner. Ships are automated with the task forces and mission assignments. Air units, almost everything has to be done manually.

 

[7163D]

Divisions can be automated with the battle planner. Ships are automated with the task forces and mission assignments. Air units, almost everything has to be done manually.

You can assign squadron to an army, i think it is quite good.

 

[Alpha2518]

If you have high enough air intel, you can actually see all their mission assignments by region. Same with navy, though that's usually even easier, with up to 50% from naval combat and probably a good bit from trade laws and the base value.

Can you see strength by region too before committing?

 

[brainiac1530]

Yeah, for air missions it shows the number of planes assigned to that mission. It's particularly useful for missions like naval strike, where the planes are only conditionally active. For naval missions, you only see the number of task forces active/assigned. You can try and gauge how many ships they have assigned from the local naval supremacy, but ... well, that's a rant that deserves its own thread.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

You'd have wings assigned to groups, under the command of an officer, and they'd be assigned multiple regions, and it would automate region and airbase assignments, so that air wings would move around if airbases were too damaged and so on.

That would be pretty cool. There are so many repetitive tasks in the game that could be better handled with setting policies. It's like they want you to have an overwhelming number of non-decisions to execute.

 

[Alpha2518]

Yeah, for air missions it shows the number of planes assigned to that mission. It's particularly useful for missions like naval strike, where the planes are only conditionally active. For naval missions, you only see the number of task forces active/assigned. You can try and gauge how many ships they have assigned from the local naval supremacy, but ... well, that's a rant that deserves its own thread.

Good because in my multiplayer group I'm the Chief of Air Forces and I coordinate the entire air war.

 

[CrasherZZ]

An idea I had a while back, was for the air force to be re-done with "air fleets", kind of similar to how the naval system works. You'd have wings assigned to groups, under the command of an officer, and they'd be assigned multiple regions, and it would automate region and airbase assignments, so that air wings would move around if airbases were too damaged and so on.
Divisions can be automated with the battle planner. Ships are automated with the task forces and mission assignments. Air units, almost everything has to be done manually.

I had this same thought the first time I had to manage a large air force in Europe. The scaling of air zones in different parts of the world varies too much. Outside of Europe the air zones are huge, so it's not as much of problem assigning a wing to a zone but in Europe the air zones are relatively small so it would make sense to be able to assign wings to multiple zones there.