An option for automatic air support would be a godsend with the ability for a human to override them and assign specific tasks would be a god send. It would make sense to just set your heavy bombers on strategic bombing and let them go at it at will instead of having to tediously assign strike areas. The same goes for bombers and CAS. I think in general every mission should have two modes:
1) An automated mode where you select an option and they do that. For example, if you choose CAS to enter CAS mode they will automatically attack targets engaged in close ground battles with your troops to help tilt the scales in your favor (and hence granting them the "support" part of their names). Very little human input would be required after that except having to occasionally rebase the buggers.
2) A manual mode like what we have now that allows you to specifically direct your missions at one target or area specifically.
That way you get the best of both worlds.
What manual mode? You set your bombers on a ground support mission (for example) and gave them the area where you wanted it carried out, how long they should do it, and whether it was day, night or both. So unless you took the most extreme micro-control (one day missions, covering one province), there is not that much obvious difference here. Certainly
not HOI3=manual control, HOI4=fully automated.
When you had the mission covering a HOI3 region (=state in HOI4), the planes would automatically target a province where combat was taking place on the ground. If you set an interdiction mission, they would target enemy units behind the lines which are moving. Because of this automatic targetting you didn't need to control exactly which province(s) they were going to attack.
Personally, I never used HOI3 regions, never mind provinces. I used the tools to allow you to select an arc or circle of operation drawn on the map. Set CAS with an arc of operation, radiating out of an airbase that covers a fairly wide area of the front (or even all of if narrow enough) and out to the range of the CAS. They won't ever bomb the provinces you control, nor will they usually bomb a province which is behind the enemy lines. They focus on the front line provinces and especially on provinces where you are attacking.
But what if I want to do a "preparation" before an attack, bomb the enemy units in the province I want to attack in a few days time? I used to do that micro-hell in HOI2, but don't in HOI3, I doubt it has much value once the devs stopped the situation that existed in HOI2 where it was possible for air units alone to destroy a land unit, especially if it was retreating and had no org. This is just like real life - the enemy forces would just stay in their trenches, bunkers and not take much damage. Only when there is combat on the ground, does the ground support come into it's own - forces that need to move to counter local attacks are vulnerable to direct damage, and other forces which might have moved are suppressed, and generally the whole enemy unit(s) defends at a penalty than if they weren't subject to air attack.
The new system should bring the following benefits:
1. There are
no longer wings constricting the whole of an air "unit" to a single province. 100 planes, even operating from the same air base and the same type, might spread across multiple provinces now, and carry out bombing missions across a wide sector of a "quiet" front. Seems much more realistic to me, there is some suppression and a small attrition of lost men and equipment in a number of enemy units. As long as the AI immediately focusses them all against one province if we engage in combat there.
2. Instead of a single block of 100 planes with the same spec (a HOI3 wing), we now have an airbase which
can have 100 planes of different types. So in an airbase we can have interceptors, bombers and long-range bombers. This is particularly important in remote areas, where few wings are likely to be located. No longer do we have 100 interceptors in Singapore for example, instead we could have 30 interceptors, 40 bombers and 30 naval bombers (I hope these are a separate type of plane).
3. A
link to the battle plans, so that the air control AI knows to prioritise the provinces where we intend to attempt a breakthrough at a specifc part of the front, and enemy units moving to reinforce that area. Or if we are going for an advance across a wide area, then the planes are spread out.
4. A
strategic air map mode (probably just reached automatically by zooming out from the sort of view in the DD screenshot). Showing which strategic regions we have air superiority, and which are contested, perhaps with some colour coding to give clear indications of whether we are winning or losing. I play mainly as JAP. I know that the Nat.Chi have some air units at the start of the game, and might (unlikely) build more by 1937. But it is nearly impossible without putting the game on super slow, focussing in on Northern China, watching for any signs of their planes over the front, and carefully inspecting all combat reports to get some idea of how active they are, how many planes of which types they have committed, and how effective they are. It's very very difficult in HOI3 to get an idea what your own air forces are doing, and impossible for enemy forces.
5. An
interface which pulls all of the "units" together in a particular strategic area. Fundamentally, the screenshot DD is showing us not so much a completely different approach to the air war, but a way to see what all of the units (by which I mean groups of planes in an airbase of the same type) in that region are doing - which units have missions, and how they are doing. Specifically we can see at a glance whether any of these units have been taking heavy losses, so we don't suddenly find that a bomber unit which we gave a long mission to has been completely wiped out (as we have all experienced at one time or another) or that a unit we gave a mission to ended weeks ago and the unit has been doing nothing.
The last is actually the most important change to me. You no longer have to keep baby-sitting individual wings. It is this which gets tedious micro in HOI3 if you have a number of air units operating across a big area. In Barbarossa for example you might have three strategic regions (Baltic States, Byelorussia, Ukraine), so there are only three interfaces to check on a regular basis to get an overview, not say 25 or more individual wings. You can see that if you start the campaign with 200 fighters in the Baltic States and after two weeks that they have dropped to 120 that you need to urgently supply them with more planes (and pilots). And if the Soviets started with 150 fighters and still have 130, then that would suggest that they have a very clear tech edge over your planes and you need to upgrade, and perhaps instead of just doing fighter/fighter dogfights, you might want to bomb the hell out of their airbases, or send some panzers to try to capture the airbase to deny them it's use.
