English Air Power

[SonofWinter]

How is the UK able to field 4,000 fighters in 1940? I'm just curious how they are able to field such a monstrous air power and how am I supposed to stop it?

I mean seriously, what will it take to stop this whack a mole of having to defend against them every day, changing to a new area.

I thought the Germans were the ones doing a Battle of Britain, so I'm just stunned that I'm having a Battle of Netherlands.

Also, why does every Polish and French fighter join them. Sure, some airplanes made it out but most of them did NOT.

Is anyone else having these issues? Is it just me that is having an unplayable game in SP? What am I missing?

 

[Bunnytob]

The UK has a lot of fighters to start with, and otherwise the AI does generally put a lot of fighters on factories, the UK included.
As for the other fighters joining them, that's just how HOI4 works. (The whole "Airplanes are captured when an airbase is captured" thing didn't go over too well.)

 

[Emren]

As Germany, you need to really invest heavily into fighter production from the start. It’s been a long time since I played Germany, but 15 factories into Fighters is not a bad start. Of course you don’t have the rubber for that, so expanding the synthetic plants is key, and trading helps a lot.

 

[SonofWinter]

So instead they decided to give England an inexhaustible air power of 3 countries? That was their solution? I mean sabotage, or the army destroys them before they can fall into enemy hands, that makes more sense than just giving them to the next closes ally in a line of succession.

 

[KDEstroy]

4000 fighters isn't even that many for 1940. If you put 15 factories on fighters starting in 1937, and make sure you have enough rubber, you can easily have 5000 or more fighters by 1940. I'm confused as to your "whack-a-mole" reference, you only really need air superiority over the regions you are fighting in. Granted Strat Bombers are annoying, but 1936 fighters simply don't have the range to fly deep into Germany.

 

[SonofWinter]

As Germany, you need to really invest heavily into fighter production from the start. It’s been a long time since I played Germany, but 15 factories into Fighters is not a bad start. Of course you don’t have the rubber for that, so expanding the synthetic plants is key, and trading helps a lot.

So build an army of a million air planes?

 

[SonofWinter]

4000 fighters isn't even that many for 1940. If you put 15 factories on fighters starting in 1937, and make sure you have enough rubber, you can easily have 5000 or more fighters by 1940. I'm confused as to your "whack-a-mole" reference, you only really need air superiority over the regions you are fighting in. Granted Strat Bombers are annoying, but 1936 fighters simply don't have the range to fly deep into Germany.

The fact that England can bomb Western Poland at will means I'm playing whack a mole with their airforce. It's just dumb.

 

[Emren]

If you want to fight off kill strat bombers, you need Heavy Fighters. If you want to just fend off their attacks, province AA and radar helps a lot. Strat bombing Poland in 1940 doesn't sound like a crisis, though, as you should be fighting in the Low Countries and France. The damage they do will be auto repaired anyway.

 

[Bunnytob]

This whole "whack-a-mole" thing is considered to be one of the main problems with air power (even if efficiency does nerf it a bit), and is one of the reasons why Strat Bombing is often banned in MP. It'd be a nice thing to be able to automate.

 

[Eh up me duck]

You only need about 300-400 air planes in each air province to prevent strategic bombers - after you take Western Europe their fighters will be based in southern England and won't be able to reach Germany "proper".

Additionally as others have said you should be out numbering the allies when it comes to air power. There's no reason not to have 15 factories on fighters from day 1, additionally with air experience from the Spanish civil war you should be making good progress down the fighter doctrine tech tree.

If you produce plenty of fighters and remember air doctrine tech, Western air power shouldn't be a problem.

 

[demon72]

Last run I would be very happy with 4k, as Britain had 10k fighers in early 1941!

Air-Battle for britain took almost two years!

Even though I appreciate a good/tough "Battle for Britain" - 10k is to much!

 

[Bunnytob]

When I played Germany, I typically only started with 5 factories on fighters, climbing to 15/20 as I ramped up my MIC numbers. I still got air superiority, but I had no reserves. Worked well enough for me.

 

[Simon_9732495]

As Germany you can attack the rubber supply of the uk per convoy raiding. If you fail, they will have a number of planes that makes the air war a little bit a challenge.

In my opinion it should be VERY hard for Germany to have air superiority in the west in 1941ish.

 

[Ringwraith_JP]

A simple solution to that would be to destroy a significant part of any countries' air force if it capitulates. Poland and France shouldn't have their entire air force survive capitulation.

 

[Corpse Fool]

As Germany, you need to really invest heavily into fighter production from the start. It’s been a long time since I played Germany, but 15 factories into Fighters is not a bad start. Of course you don’t have the rubber for that, so expanding the synthetic plants is key, and trading helps a lot.

I disagree. Outside of naval engagements (where they absolutely dominate), I find aircraft to be rather lackluster. Especially in single player where the AI is typically terrible at managing everything. Yes, the AI tends not to use divisional AA so CAS has some pretty good direct damage, as well as air support bonuses and air superiority penalties are force multipliers. But you have to first have a force to multiply.

In single player as Germany I'll rarely have more than 1 factory on the starting planes just to maintain a bit of numbers, not research new ones or doctrines. This saves a lot of research that you can put into tanks and industry, and it saves a lot of industry you can put into tanks. Even if you do have good bonuses from the air, these bonuses are often going to be more expensive and have less impact than the armor bonus. I've found that having a couple more tank divisions brings me a lot farther than having air dominance.

Even if you completely neglect the air and let the enemy dominate it, divisional AA basically ignores it. Enemy strat bombing might be annoying, but I also haven't had many actual problems from it, I'm still absolutely destroying them in the ground war.

 

[Bunnytob]

Mhm. Support AA in a division tends to net a highly positive K-D MIC-wise unless swarms of planes appear, and even then LSPAA is all that's needed.

 

[Emren]

I disagree. Outside of naval engagements (where they absolutely dominate), I find aircraft to be rather lackluster. Especially in single player where the AI is typically terrible at managing everything. Yes, the AI tends not to use divisional AA so CAS has some pretty good direct damage, as well as air support bonuses and air superiority penalties are force multipliers. But you have to first have a force to multiply.

In single player as Germany I'll rarely have more than 1 factory on the starting planes just to maintain a bit of numbers, not research new ones or doctrines. This saves a lot of research that you can put into tanks and industry, and it saves a lot of industry you can put into tanks. Even if you do have good bonuses from the air, these bonuses are often going to be more expensive and have less impact than the armor bonus. I've found that having a couple more tank divisions brings me a lot farther than having air dominance.

Even if you completely neglect the air and let the enemy dominate it, divisional AA basically ignores it. Enemy strat bombing might be annoying, but I also haven't had many actual problems from it, I'm still absolutely destroying them in the ground war.

Green skies is a numbers game, though. If you want them, you need more planes than your opponent. How valuable green skies are in which zones at what moments in the game is of course debatable.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Green skies is a numbers game, though. If you want them, you need more planes than your opponent. How valuable green skies are in which zones at what moments in the game is of course debatable.

Yes, this is one of the reasons I avoid investing into the air war at all. Its largely and all or nothing affair. If you didnt spam fighters hard enough to gain advantage and be shooting down more of theirs than they shoot down yours, everything you have invested is made worthless because you are not gaining any benefit and will be bleeding IC while the enemy grows. If you have a larger economy you could try to force the enemy into commiting a larger percentage of their economy into achieving the advantage than you are sacrificing of yours. But as the Axis, I would say you have the smaller economy than the collective force of the allies. Especially when it comes to rubber and aluminum.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Taking this discussion to a more relevant thread

I find that having green air is incredibly useful and important, especially against the Allies who love to strat bomb.

Green air is whatever to me. Green air won't capitulate the enemy. Green air won't stop enemy divisions from capitulating me. Only boots on the ground can do that. Green air is only going to be a supporting element, a force multiplier to those boots. Instead of spending all of the extra research and industry on fighters to give your boots a friendlier environment, why not just put all of that into having better boots? 2k Fighters at an average of 25 IC per plane is going to be 50k IC, which could also have been 4 or 5 medium tank divisions. I think that the 4 or 5 tank divisions are going to have a much greater impact on my operations than what the green air by itself would. Red air is going to be a penalty to my movement and defense/breakthrough, but that can be entirely offset by divisional AA which is often going to be cheaper than what it costs to establish whatever level of superiority penalty. You only need 2 MSPAA2 with +5 gun to get the 112 AA value needed to ignore 35% of the superiority penalty, which is the basic maximum before doctrine and other boosts. That is only 288 IC and 2 width out of any division you care about protecting. Any amount of divisional AA, even just support AA is going to be cutting enemy CAS damage down to 1/4th of what it would otherwise be, and shoot down their CAS. What else is there to protect against, other than strat bombing?

You need thousands of bombers for strat bombing to be anything more than an annoyance. Between dispersed industry upgrades and some state AA (as well as just bum-rushing the Brits to minimize this problem), I've never found any of that to be much of a threat. I can imagine that if you're playing more historically and going for poland, france, sealion, then crossing the atlantic for the USA, I can imagine giving them so much more time and involving more powers is definitely going to make it more difficult. But even then, more state AA with AA/radar upgrades and maybe a couple handfuls of fighters (300+ makes AI avoid it?) protecting my important areas might be enough.

I don't think I've ever seen a MP game where the Axis went no-air, and it was pretty heavily derided as a meme strategy outside of the USSR.

I've never gotten far enough along with any particular MP group to be able to play a Major or an Axis major, or influence their meta environment. Yes, the air game is a bit more important and involved in MP, but my talking earlier was centered more around single player which is what OP and most others here I'd imagine are most likely more involved in. I'd also like to think that the very existence of something like no-air soviets being a popular MP approach means that dominating the air isn't really something that you are required to do. I wonder if there have been any multiplayer groups that took that idea in any different directions though.

you talk about paradropping the UK before France is even capitulated, and I find that incredibly memey and not very fun, since the AI can't deal with paratroopers at all.

Yes, the point was to do a semi-historical run so I could get a bunch of the industrial focuses before the war and use a bit of MEFO. Capping the allies early means I didn't have to fight the USA and I didn't have to garrison France so I could focus everything else on the Soviets, beat them up and delete the save. I had fun with it for a while, but I've mostly shifted over to playing as the Soviets now.

 

[DukofDeth]

Part of the problem is that the production costs are tied to some of the historical costs, but there's no wearing out of the machinery. The army has the attrition costs for exercising and for moving, so wear and tear are built in, but with aircraft the only modelling of wear and tear is accidents, and that's not all that high. Real accident rates were much higher, but not always fatal - you'd lose the plane but not the pilot, whereas accidents in HoI4 always eliminate the pilot with the aircraft [I think - otherwise why the experience loss]. Like the land system, the air system needs a major overhaul.

In reality, the UK had plenty of aircraft - their production was replacing their Battle of Britain force [what they started the battle with, about 600 fighter a/c] about every two months. It was pilots they needed - those they could not replace so easily. Pilots need to be trained, not just drawn automatically from the manpower pool. Even the Russian pilots got some training.