Controlling the skies or how powerful is a strong airforce?

[Denkt]

I feel that the exact gains from investing in an airforce have not been shown in WWW. As airforce is mostly limited to a supportive role to the army and navy we have seen success without making large use of it (Hungary stream). But it would be interesting to see how much an investment into the airforce can pay back, the aircrafts are quite expensive both in terms of production cost and manpower requirement and naturally they need heavy tech invesment as they have a whole doctrine tree.

But if you do these investment into the airforce how much can it help your army and navy on the path to victory?

 

[Gort11]

I fully agree. I don't think we've seen enough non-infantry-division gameplay, whether it's tanks, aircraft, or navies.

 

[Number 7]

realistically as pretty much everyone knows its incredibly important. i hope to see it in action in the next World War Wednesday.

i didn't take too close a look at the air summary screens of hungary but i might go back and take a look. i know Daniel was shooting down a reasonable amount of french planes (i think they fight with reduced efficiency too for having to fly so far from their airport).

But i also know at one point the germans assigned over a thousand fighters to one of his air zones during the sneak attack on germany. if there was adequate german bombers it might explain why daniel's casaulties were higher than the germans (i believe it was 216k german losses vs 260k hungary losses at one point) even with a planning bonus vs zero dig in bonus

 

[jalapen0]

As long as it's not the ROFLSTOMP you could do with CAS in HOI2. Wasn't it Blue Emu who forced bitter peace with one tank and a shite ton of CAS?

 

[BigBobBear]

As long as it's not the ROFLSTOMP you could do with CAS in HOI2. Wasn't it Blue Emu who forced bitter peace with one tank and a shite ton of CAS?

though at the same time if you have quite a few bombers and close air support and a massive fighter cover, it should do quite a bit of damage since producing said amount of aircraft would be quite expensive, i hope they found the middle ground that makes airforce worth the investment, but not as op as they were in hoi3

 

[Ultimate_Hobo]

Ignore this - its wrong.

Aircraft dont directly do damage to units now (iirc), rather, they just modify combat.

In some respects I like this but I am somewhat worried they will end up being a bit pointless. Whats better, a tank division or an air wing? One fights effectively while the other modifies combat, it all depends on balancing ultimately but I hope theyve found a good middleground since I can easily see the air being fairly pointless.

 

[kosmoface]

I've watched every WWW, yet I really need to play the game myself. I guess it is a fine balance. Since you have to manage so much, a too granular Air Combat kann be tedious, but too simplified it doesn't quench the thirst (same goes for naval warfare).

I mean I *love* air combat, but when I play War in the West I feel overwhelmed by the details and I usually love it when it gets into the nitty gritty. In Hoi 3 it is too much clicking for the various air missions for my taste (because I am very peculiar with them).

In the end I hope every shortcoming will be solved with DLC. Furthermore I believe HOI 4 will be a real success, just like CK2. It smells sooo good...

 

[Eusterw]

Fully agree.

 

[kviiri]

Aircraft dont directly do damage to units now (iirc), rather, they just modify combat.

That's not true, I think they showed otherwise in the Japan WWW.

 

[panzerzombie]

That's not true, I think they showed otherwise in the Japan WWW.

Yes I think so too, iirc there was a "hits" counter in the upper battle screen where participating airplanes are listed


edit: found something in japan singleplayer #3 in minute 7:58 where he talks about aircraft bombing damage ( no bombers present so no damage display ), but there are other incidents which I didn´t find yet.

 

[kalauer]

Yes I think so too, iirc there was a "hits" counter in the upper battle screen where participating airplanes are listed


edit: found something in japan singleplayer #3 in minute 7:58 where he talks about aircraft bombing damage ( no bombers present so no damage display ), but there are other incidents which I didn´t find yet.

Air superiority gives a combat bonus, but assigned tactical bombers also damage enemy units, but only when those are in battle.

 

[malkys]

Don't forget about the strategic bombing. IMHO every major power should be able to field strategic bombers to weaken the enemy on the industrial/infrastructure side...

 

[PlacidDragon]

Well, what we have gotten in the WWW's is 99.9 percent infantry spam (usually with lacking equipment and few if any support regiments).

That is, with the exception of the multiplayer WWW's, where especially Johan was fielding a fairly balanced army (well, balanced and balanced, if i recall he made his entire army motorised...lol), where we saw some examples of strategic bombing (again Johan harassing Daniel).

But in the single player streams, its been all about the foot sloggers. There was one semi serious attempt to show fleet combat, but due to the Italian fleet being divided, it was basically just a quick massacre, and that was that. There has been the odd armor or motorised division in the various streams, but its basically all regular infantry. Aircraft has also been fairly sparely shown, as Daniel has never really had a sizable force (remember in the Hungary stream, he was setting up bombing the German divisions, but saw that they had a #"¤%#ton of fighters, so he cancelled the orders).

So its very difficult to get any sense of "how effective" anything but a straight up infantry division is. When Daniel got pushed back as Hungary against Germany in the latest stream, i imagine that Germany had some variation in their divisions, but i cannot recall having seen any straight up panzer divisions (but i might not have looked hard enough). He was certainly pushed back, so whatever the Germans had, it seemed to give more "bang for the buck" than what Daniel brought to the party

 

[kviiri]

Agree with the above, but I kinda see why that is. People wanted to see action instead of a full hour of build-up - and arguably a quick attack is a good strategy for Japan at least, seeing how underequipped the Chinese army was.

 

[Number 7]

Don't forget about the strategic bombing. IMHO every major power should be able to field strategic bombers to weaken the enemy on the industrial/infrastructure side...

i imagine every major power CAN, but i can't really see Japan or Italy devoting the resources to it. Unless i'm wrong, i can't see as much of a use for strat bombers for japan in particular due to the pacific theatre being just a lot of spread out islands

 

[malkys]

i imagine every major power CAN, but i can't really see Japan or Italy devoting the resources to it. Unless i'm wrong, i can't see as much of a use for strat bombers for japan in particular due to the pacific theatre being just a lot of spread out islands

Well yeah. For Japan it could be interesting towards USSR, Asia or the south-west pacific.
I really hope that strat bombing matters in HoI4, because some other aspects of the game look like it's getting way more strategic/global and less micromanagement.

IF air support for troops on the ground or strat bombing matters, you should at least aim to have a strong fighter force, to keep your enemies bombers out of your airzones.

 

[tommylotto]

i imagine every major power CAN, but i can't really see Japan or Italy devoting the resources to it. Unless i'm wrong, i can't see as much of a use for strat bombers for japan in particular due to the pacific theatre being just a lot of spread out islands

I cannot say whether it was a wise allocation of resources, but in real life, Italy did in fact develop the Piaggio P.108 a four engine bomber much like the B-17, but of course Italian industry could only manage to build a handful. So, there weren't enough of them to have much of an impact, and the P.108 never saw the constant improvement that a B-17 saw over a long successful production life.