Fiat's CR.42 biplane is a neat little nod to history, highlights the game's "No Brainer" non-decisions

[CrazyZombie]

It looks like the research part of the game does a just about OK job, but does not represent historical issues that well.

It does not.

IRL designing a plane was always revolving around designing and mass-producing engine for that plane. With good enough engine you can make the gate fly. If the engine is bad... well, either you have bad plane or you improvise with throwing out everything "unneeded" like Japan did with A6M.

Bf.109 is considered good fighter of its time. But, there are nuances. Look at models B and C. Despite all the progressiveness of their design they were NOT better than for example Soviet I-16 which they did face in Spain. Trick was that Bf.109 had bigger reserves for relatively simple modernization while I-16 reached its historical peak and deep improvement in the form of I-180 never succeeded, thanks to excessive focus on the liquid cooled V-type engines (ironically caused by meeting with Bf.109 in Spain). But, when we speak about modernization of Bf.109 or any different plane, when exactly it stops being "the same plane" (yup, ship of Theseus)? Different engine? Guns? Improved wings? Maybe, different canopy shape?

I think that two changes are needed. First of all, same designers as current naval one for planes and armored vehicles. Secondly, replacing current research slots with research teams, specialized each in certain sphere. Each state has own research teams, having their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, Soviets had fine plane designers but their efforts were constantly hindered by lack of powerful enough engines as engine designers couldn't give results fast enough, so potentially good plane frames were constantly getting underpowered engines at first. So, in the system where new more advanced plane frame doesn't automatically give you better engine player faces the choice of "making" a new plane with basically same set of modules, so being close enough to current one, and dropping production efficiency for a time, or wait for the new engine and choose again - same plane with better engine or completely new one - and again drop in the numbers, produced.

 

[billcorr]

In HOI4 terms, the UK spent XP to upgrade their existing aircraft, because the new model was still being researched.

Nicely said.

 

[CrazyZombie]

Nicely said.

Well, yes, but in HOI terms again it makes no sense to put effort into currently produced plane when you have a new one being available in the timespan of 100-150 days. The number of improved planes would never reach significant numbers to make an actual difference, and you waste precious XP which you probably could put into new model to immediately improve it at the start.

 

[Ffire]

Soviets had fine plane designers but their efforts were constantly hindered by lack of powerful enough engines

not only USSR, but Italy and Japan too. France also faced similar problem and add to that a bad frame.

 

[CrazyZombie]

not only USSR, but Italy and Japan too. France also faced similar problem and add to that a bad frame.

Well, yes, but I spoke about side, knowledge of which I was certain about.

 

[Seyfardt]

Very cool.

Italy starts the 1936 scenario with a variant in place.


View attachment 613638

"Addio, my little CR. 42!"

well you could as a intermediate option decide to label the CR 32 obsolete and rebuild your existing CR 32's into CR 42.... Will cost you military factories, but saves up materials (specifically rubber) for an improved baseline airforce where your oldest fighter will be just slightly less obsolete.. You can then try to skip the build of the 1936 variant and focus on building the 1940 variant with the appropriate research bonus added.

 

[billcorr]

The small decisions in any game will always be no-brainer, even if the devs try to make it hard to know which is best the player can perform simulations and tests.

Good point about variance in the types of decisions.

Right. Like in life, there will be easy decisions and hard decisions in a game such as HoI4. Assuming a normal distribution of "decision difficulty", most decisions in HoI4 would be expect to be middle-of-the-road.

But, my impression is that most decision clicking in HoI4 are for "no brainer"decisions.

It may help to define and quantify the difficulty of different decisions.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Problem is usually not the decision, but the limited resources.

 

[Happy Trigger]

I think that two changes are needed. First of all, same designers as current naval one for planes and armored vehicles. Secondly, replacing current research slots with research teams, specialized each in certain sphere. Each state has own research teams, having their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, Soviets had fine plane designers but their efforts were constantly hindered by lack of powerful enough engines as engine designers couldn't give results fast enough, so potentially good plane frames were constantly getting underpowered engines at first. So, in the system where new more advanced plane frame doesn't automatically give you better engine player faces the choice of "making" a new plane with basically same set of modules, so being close enough to current one, and dropping production efficiency for a time, or wait for the new engine and choose again - same plane with better engine or completely new one - and again drop in the numbers, produced.

They could divide the research of new models (tanks and planes), creating new category: engines (In MTG, models and engines are together). If you recieve a 100% bonus of research, its only applied to the new model, or new engine, not both. It would create a gap, that would need some time to close and make the new model effiecient. Do you want a new model with more slots to improve weapons and range, but bad engines, or to continue using your old model, but with a improved engine?

I think that would bring a good balance to the game, and more interesting decisions to the player.

 

[mursolini]

Question is, what is the problem that needs fixing?

I see quite a lot of confusion/uncohesion.

Reasons "historical" plane manufacturers had, different, simultaneous models roughly boils down to :
1. Availability of both radial and v engines. FW-190&BF-109, Yak/Lag, P-51/P-47, come from this, and frankly this level of detail is needless in game.
2. High competitiveness of air combat forced to have as short of development and manufacturing cycle as possible, thus upgrading existing model was always preferable to designing new one. Simply, the cycle of development-testing-ironing out issues- actually manufacturing mass series was shorter for new model, which was the reason it was preferable approach. This is where game has large problem. However creation of whole plane designers is a very expensive solution to a problem that can be dealt with simple number tweaking. If plane variant upgrades are somewhat redesigned, for example you couldn't just put flat +5 to engine without meeting criteria, and it being cheap on air expirience, variant upgrades made somewhat more powerful, and base stats of new tech planes were nerfed, or research of new model would open up new variants of older model, there is no need to create new designer system.
3. Different altitude performance required a mix of models, one plane couldn't fill in all altitude roles. Something game doesn't have, and maybe it's fine this way.
4. Country situation. Soviets had issue with supply of aluminum, hence had to set up for some inferior planes, they actually could manufacture in massive amounts, hello LA series. German lack of high octane fuel did reduce their ability to create more competitive engines. Japanese and Italy's reasoning for poor power of engines are unknown to me.
Each situation was either case of different immediate priorities or resources being allocated elsewhere. Which begs for question, how much freedom should player have. Obviously, Soviet aluminum issue was fixable, with 5 years, natural resources being available domestically and Soviet government having absolute control over capital, player should be able to fix it, or at least the option should be there, but unless carefully balanced, will just have one solution. Similar issue German fuel quality, and so forth. Should gameplay be created from historical issues, or they should be amendable by player, is debatable.

 

[Znail]

Japanese Zero is often underestimated because of how badly it did late war, but as mentioned so was this more due to new pilots lacking training then the planes. It was quite frankly one of the most amazing planes of WW2 and if Germany had Zeros for Battle of Brittain, then it's quite likely that would have ended up diffrently. The reason is the exceptional range it had. German fighters had a hard time excorting bombers across the channel and even harder to follow deep into UK. But the Zero had enough range that it could have escorted bombers all across UK past the Faroe Islands to Iceland and back. It's a bit sad that this range isn't represented in the game some way as Japan having a fighter with massive range would help a lot in the pacific.

 

[CrazyZombie]

Japanese Zero is often underestimated because of how badly it did late war, but as mentioned so was this more due to new pilots lacking training then the planes. It was quite frankly one of the most amazing planes of WW2 and if Germany had Zeros for Battle of Brittain, then it's quite likely that would have ended up diffrently. The reason is the exceptional range it had. German fighters had a hard time excorting bombers across the channel and even harder to follow deep into UK. But the Zero had enough range that it could have escorted bombers all across UK past the Faroe Islands to Iceland and back. It's a bit sad that this range isn't represented in the game some way as Japan having a fighter with massive range would help a lot in the pacific.

With all due respect to the lead engineer of the design team who brought A6M to life, you don't have to be genius to increase range at the cost of leaving plane unprotected to the unhealthy degree. He got technical task - he followed it.

Later, Japanese pilots played their cards right for quite some time, giving a lot of headache to US pilots over the Pacific. But, the moment, tactics evolved to the same hit&run as in Europe, A6M has become what it always was - unprotected light fighter with low survivability.

 

[KubiG37]

Well, yes, but in HOI terms again it makes no sense to put effort into currently produced plane when you have a new one being available in the timespan of 100-150 days. The number of improved planes would never reach significant numbers to make an actual difference, and you waste precious XP which you probably could put into new model to immediately improve it at the start.

That‘s one of the things I have an issue with.

How can you improve freshly researched design BEFORE you even start producing it/are able to compare it to something else? Considering a higher tier plane is already superior even to maxed out previous tier plane.

Tanks are balanced better, a max upgraded tier II tank is better than stock tier III, and cheaper too I believe.