So Air Superiority of 320 should keep them out of certain zones and then set up one zone for interception? Or does 320 on interception also keep them out?
English Air Power
- Thread starter SonofWinter
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Several different people have been hitting me with that disagree, so I'd like some more information if you're willing to give it. Could you please just tell me more about what you're doing with all the aircraft and what your role as the air controller is?
Basically, the air controller just manages the entire faction's combined air force. This saves on research as only one member of each faction needs to research an air doctrine. Every major still researches and produces planes, but they all lend-lease 100% of their production to the air controller, and the air controller also receives as much fuel as needed through lend-lease as well. Typically the air controllers for Axis and Allies are Hungary or Romania, and Canada. This is due to those countries having either the best focus tree for rushing fighter 2/3, having high command that gives +3% air superiority atk/def/agility(Canada has 2), or both. Romania has a better light air designer at +15% agility instead of +10%, whereas Hungary can rush fighter III with an ahead-of-time reduction, so there are valid reasons for both to be air controller, and both have been meta at some point or another. I haven't played MP in a while, so I don't know who currently does it.
Also, Germany's "Jagernotprogramm" decision enabled them to cut fighter production cost by 25% by increasing production cost of other aircraft by 25%, lasting 180 days. in earlier versions of the game (i want to say until 1.7 or 1.8 but I can't find it in the patch notes), this decision was repeatable as long as you had below 750 deployed fighters and 350 in stockpile. I'm sure you can see how this was exploited with the use of an air controller. By lend-leasing 100% of its aircraft production to the air controller, Germany was basically able to just permanently have 25% cheaper fighter production due to never having an air force bigger than 1100 planes. This exploit was fixed in a patch as the decision can now only be taken once which makes it not nearly as good(though the decision is typically banned anyway). The intended use of the decision was for a Germany that is horribly losing the air war to be able to crank out fighters incredibly quickly. The intended use is now almost the only possible use, but once you've lost the air war you're not coming back so it might as well not exist.
Another reason for having an air controller is that when multiple allies are flying missions in the same air zone, fighters will not escort allied (not same country) CAS or bombers. This isn't that big of a deal, but it should be noted anyway.
Air management is the same as in a normal game, just a different player has control over it. One player gets to devote all of their mental focus and time to making sure planes are always in the right air zones, keeping green air over theaters of combat, defending against strategic bombing, bombing naval routes, etc. The added focus can be important for taking down planes if not trading favorably to save for when you need your numbers at a key point in time, and things like that. A player on Germany will be having to manage so many different things like microing tanks, managing focuses/research/spies/everything else, and might not notice that they're losing fighters 2-to-1 and lose most of their air force.
Air superiority gives enemies a really hefty penalty to defense and movement speed, and in multiplayer nearly all gains are made via encirclement. Encirclement can become hard or impossible under red air against a good opponent who knows how to micro defensively. AA can reduce the penalty but can't remove it completely. The main value of AA is in shredding CAS which it does very effectively, but if you lack air superiority you're still going to be slower than the enemy and have a penalty to defense from the sheer presence of enemy planes. USSR is usually going to have slower tanks than Germany anyway because it builds heavies vs German mediums (unless Germany goes heavies now too, I'm probably a year behind the meta in terms of playing "competitive" games), so it doesn't really care about the penalty. A USSR who does do air can be key to an Allied victory however, because this forces the Axis to choose between splitting their air force in half during D-Day situations, allowing the USSR to have uncontested air over the Eastern Front, or allowing the Allies to have uncontested air over France.
TL;DR The philosophy that I've always seen in MP and agree with is that air superiority is key to winning the war in MP as the Axis or Allies, and air controllers are the most efficient way to manage air in multiplayer.
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We don't allow air controllers in our MP games, so becomes a real problem for us in some situations.
The air war is really damn important. One of the primary things we look for in intelligence reports on the opposing faction is how many MIC are allocated to planes, not just raw numbers of planes themselves.
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Thank you for taking the time to respond. It doesn't really deviate from my expectations all that much, I'm sure that the enhanced capabilities of your opponents means you can't just ignore entire environments like navy and air like I usually do in single player. But that is still largely only tightening the tolerances for sloppy play, and it doesn't really make neglecting the air force or such penalize you more.
Referring to a previous example of 2000 fighters at an average cost of 25 IC per plane, that would be 50k IC. Dividing that by 300 means we could be protecting 166 divisions. Now, that does require going down medium tanks which seems to be left behind in multiplayer in favor of heavy tanks which would be basically doubling the cost of the AA without much of an improvement in its actual value, requires additional research and army XP and a lot of other shifted gears. But it is still something that I haven't really seen much study done with other than "this is just something you have to do".
I am not aware of any specific testing that anyone may have done to check how valuable the air war actually is in terms of land battles. Maybe this is because it was never tested, maybe it was because it didn't work out, or maybe it was because anyone who thought to try got insta-banned and was never given the opportunity.
@el nora has dug into this before. Divisional AA certainly can be used to completely negate air superiority penalties, but getting the last couple of % is increasingly more difficult and not really worth getting. The speed penalty does not scale with air superiority modifiers, it'll always be a maximum of 30% and will be reduced at the same rate from divisional AA as the defense penalty. This means you only need 80 or so divisional AA value to have the same maneuverability as you ever did. You also only need 112 AA value to ignore 35% of the defense penalty, which is something you can pretty easily achieve with MSPAA2 with +5 gun. More AA than that, like using MSPAA3 and support AA can negate more of the penalty. I also believe nora mentioned previously that you can only get a max in game of something like 60 or 65% penalty to defense, which can be knocked down by ~150 or so divisional AA to about 15 or 20%, which is a massive improvement with a fraction of the cost. Only like 300 IC, 2 width and a support company out of every division.
Referring to a previous example of 2000 fighters at an average cost of 25 IC per plane, that would be 50k IC. Dividing that by 300 means we could be protecting 166 divisions. Now, that does require going down medium tanks which seems to be left behind in multiplayer in favor of heavy tanks which would be basically doubling the cost of the AA without much of an improvement in its actual value, requires additional research and army XP and a lot of other shifted gears. But it is still something that I haven't really seen much study done with other than "this is just something you have to do".
I guess this is the core of my question. Why is the air war important? Other than for the seas where the best navy is an airforce, and to help ward off strategic bombers which I've heard are often banned in MP, all that is left is the land battles, and I feel like it tends to cost a lot more in planes to achieve a bonus that can be easily negated or at the very least greatly diminished by divisional AA.
I am not aware of any specific testing that anyone may have done to check how valuable the air war actually is in terms of land battles. Maybe this is because it was never tested, maybe it was because it didn't work out, or maybe it was because anyone who thought to try got insta-banned and was never given the opportunity.
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I may be misunderstanding here, but I was under the impression that the speed penalty couldn't be 100% negated either. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but that's not how I thought it worked.
You do acknowledge that at least the defense penalty cannot be entirely negated, yes?
In that case, I'll quote you from another thread, the mass assault is bad one:
This is the same principle in this thread as in that one. Reducing the enemy defense by even a little bit can be a massive increase in actual damage, even if the penalty is partially reduced.
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Technically it can. Realistically it won't be, getting enough AA to get rid of the last couple of points of the max penalty is going to be extremely difficult. But of course it depends on specifically who the controller is and how much penalty they can put on you. I dont remember the numbers off hand, I'll go into the game and get them at some point later.
More attacks is always going to be more damage. In that 20% scenario, the amount of damage added is between 20 and 80%. But defense doesnt work like that. Depending how much defense there is, whatever reduction in defense may not see any increase in damage at all. As much as I prefer 20 wide defenders, there seems to be a lot of favour for 40 wide defenders in multiplayer which are capable of stacking enough defense to give even 40 wide tank divs some difficulty overwhelming them.
And I think this still comes back to economy of effort. But in order to even approach that issue I would need a fair amount of data that I just dont have. So I cant really continue this.
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Against competent opponents, there is only so many divisions you can put into combat in a particular area due to width and logistics limitations. Air power lets you overcome that limitation. We see it all the time in our MP group in some key battles.
There are no-air strategies for some countries in some situations. The Soviets are an obvious example where it could work.
But I am not sure when the last time was that we saw victory for the side with the weakest air power (not strictly in numbers) in our MP group. Where and when that air power is applied varies greatly, but decisive defeats in the air correlate strongly with victory in our group.
We don't ban strategic bombers, but I would like to note for the record that TACs can also bomb strategically.
State level AA can reduce the damage they inflict substantially, but state level AA can also be bombed. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of 3000 TACs without my own air force capable of fighting back as Britain, Italy, or Germany. I especially wouldn't want to be on the receiving end after the other side figures out I'm going for a no-air strategy and decides to punish me for it.
Yeah, that's me. The demi-moderator that bans people for testing game mechanics. I'm so good at it that I've banned myself several times for testing game mechanics. Like that time I banned myself for figuring out that there wasn't enough aluminum in the entire world for the US to reach its historical aircraft production goals. Or that time that I figured out half the MP community was wrong about aircraft design. Or my personal favorite was my insta-ban for the tests I did with negative speed battleships when MtG first game out.
Those were the days, weren't they?
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Yes.
84 exactly.
Yes. The number 112 is focused upon specifically because the base maximum enemy air superiority penalty (before +X% air superiority modifiers) is -35% defense/breakthrough. To get higher requires doctrine and/or advisors. However, since each additional point of air attack is less useful than the prior, adding support aa is almost never done to tanks as it reduces the penalty by only about 1.5 percentage points more than the pair of spaa do. However, as the initial values of air attack are so strong, that same support AA is going to reduce the defense penalty by 8.3 percentage points when used by itself, and is one of the best possible supports for 20w infantry.
SD doctrine (as any AC will be taking) give +30% air superiority, raising the cap to -45.5% defense. If the AC goes down SF airland battle as well, they can get another +20%, raising the cap to -52.5% defense. If they also happen to have a ground support genius (only Bulgaria gets a genius all the rest have to settle for an expert. The meta has shifted since BoB, @blahmaster6k. Bulgaria is the best possible choice for Axis AC EDIT: for other reasons, not this. Bulgarias ground support genius requires Communism. This is what I get for typing before having played Bulgaria AC myself), they can get another +15% for the highest possible penalty of -57.75% defense. As stated above, it is not worth your time trying to completely negate such a penalty as, due to how the curve flattens out, a +65% air superiority bonus would require 112 * (1+0.65)/(1-0.65) = 528 divisional air attack, or 7 hspaa3 battalions with +5 gun. However, just having the 154 air attack from 2 battalions of the same counteracts 70 * 154 / (112 + 154) = ~40.53 percentage points of the penalty, dropping them down to -57.75 + 40.53 = -17.22% defense penalty in the worst possible case.
In the vast majority of cases, the AC only has an expert instead of a genius and typically doesnt bother getting the air superiority from SF airland battle, they can get a maximum of -49% defense, which is nearly all counteracted by the SPAA, down to -8.47% defense. If you have a concealment expert in your high command, or fight in certain terrains, those will also reduce the enemy air superiority penalty by the same amount as they reduce cas width.
I will however disagree with @Corpse Fool here as there is something that nobody is mentioning. The ground support bonus is capped at +25% attack and breakthrough when they saturate 100% of the available cas width, which can be massive. Modifiers to that bonus are kinda iffy though, as they only apply to the nation that has the modifier, irrespective of who is actually controlling the air. So the AC basically should never get the tactical bombing expert advisor (no nation has a genius except Turkey which needless to say is never allowed in historical games) as that would only provide +15% more ground support (+3.75% attack) to only their own troops, not allied. In order to get the modifier applied, the individual nations that want it should go down BS doctrine for the +40% (+10% more attack). Ground support is not modified by divisional air attack, except inasmuch as the air attack will shoot down the planes providing the ground support. It may be reduced by not being able to fill the cas width because of the concealment or terrain modifiers, I don't recall that I tested this.
Also just because strat bombers are banned, doesn't mean that strat bombing is banned.
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You know I meant banned from whatever multiplayer group and not specifically this forum, right? Like... there are loads of communities out there that you probably don't even know about, let alone have the power to ban people in?
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No, that wasn't clear to me at all. If that's what you meant, how would someone get insta-banned in an MP group for a strategy before anyone has time to see it? I've heard of people getting kicked for making really boneheaded opening moves, but not insta-banned for some kind of new strategy.
Of course, I don't play with people who want to try a new strategy without signaling to their allies what they want to try and why. If only to see if it's really feasible.
Because it's strong.
In single player it is not that releveant. You could also ask "Why are tanks important" in single player. There are youtubers that do single player world conquests with almost any nation with 7/2s.
In multiplayer it's different.
Without air you (almost) cannot naval invade. Therefore "no air"-Allies are not viable.
If you try "no air"-Axis, you will likely have no chance to get Egypt. So you can forget the whole Africa campain and have to defend the whole coast of the Med. If the Soviets see that you dont use any rubber, they might start to produce some Planes. And with red air against the Soviets you can forget Barbarossa.
As the Soviets a "no air" strategy is an option because it's almost certain that Axis will outproduce you in planes. And in that case it's better to invest your IC elsewhere.
But how strong is it? My question was posed before nora answered it. As nora points out, it is around -10 defense to your enemy and around +25% attacks if you use scout planes or CAS. The attacks are something worth caring about, but it is also an extremely expensive way to try to boost you land divisions. If you are already capped out everywhere else and there is no other way to get the boost you think you need then yeah you kinda have to use the airforce. But there are often alternatives.
Tanks are something I have a much better understanding of. The armor bonus itself makes the division 2.8x more powerful in combat, on top of the tanks adding breakthrough and hardness that helps prevent damage, and more attacks to deal damage. This is a lot easier to quantify than air power, which is just attack and defense modifiers across an enrire zone.
I was largely ignoring navy because I am more than willing to admit that the best way to do anything naval is usually with aircraft.
I thought this was already one of the options? I've seen talk about Italy goes MA-R for the manpower and puts garrisons everywhere.
I'm not sure, but have you mentioned the direct ORG and HP damage from CAS which ignores defense, hardness and armor?
Isn't it +40% (a 1d6 roll instead a 1d4, so on average 3.5 instead of 2.5) ?
It's an option to give up Africa from the start.
The point is: If you can win in Africa you dont need to garrision the Med and can use that forces somewhere else.
We have only recently introduced CAS into the conversation at all. I'll have to run a bunch of tests on how much ground attack translates into org/strength damage inflicted, and how that compares to what a proper division can do from just the +% attacks. Especially considering the 1 mission every 8 hours, 2 missions a day, and CAS having to be within range of the battle to be able to join that battle. Additionally, I've seen a lot of talk about people prefering to use TAC bombers instead of having to invest into CAS/NAV, and possibly strats which spreads research and production somewhat thin. Also, scout planes can also provide the air support buff while also granting intelligence which can grant an intel buff.
In terms of extra org damage dealt yes. But taking half the damage also means they last twice as long. 1.4x2=2.8x multi for the e-org balance.
If. If you can, yes you only have to garrison around egypt/suez and Gibraltar/morroco which is a whole lot less territory to garrison. But that only applies if you are able to take both of these and are then able to hold them. If you take them and then lose them, you're back to garrisoning everything anyway. So this question ultimately comes down to how reliably you can take those places and hold them for the duration of the conflict. I'm sure the allies recognize the importance of forcing the Axis to defend a longer border and having supplies come in to malta and cyprus and their other air/naval bases in the med, as well as allowing their navy in to protect supplies to those bases and prevent invasion. I'm sure the allies are going to fight pretty hard to keep those places under their control. I've heard most games are decided on the eastern front and/or whether the allies can D-Day well enough to pull enough troops off the eastern front. I haven't heard of many (not that I've heard of many games to begin with) that were decided by the africa campaign.
The campaign in Egypt and the Med has a large impact on our MP games. It does not completely decide things, but it's the rare game where the Allies lose Gibraltar and the Suez and still win.
The garrison situation is a part of it. But there's also the ability to put pressure on the Raj from the opposite side as Japan, the ability to hit the softer underbelly of the Soviet Union, and the ability to project Axis naval forces all over the place. Taking Morocco also has the side effect of projecting Axis air power to the coast of Portugal.
I'll also point out that the last time in our MP group the Allies lost Egypt, they lost a substantial portion of their army, too. During their attempt to withdraw through the Sudan, we cut them off with paratroopers and overran them with armor.
In fact, we got so tired of the Med having such a disproportionate impact on things over the years that we implemented a few historical decisions relating to Iran and Iraq so the Allies at least have some options regarding those areas.
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