Hearts of Iron IV - Developer Diary 7 - Air Combat

[potski]

Trust me all when I say.. the screenshot doesn't do the map justice. Today at the office when I went by podcats desk I thought, "Daaaaammmn, map looks so freaking awesome!".
You'll simply have to wait and see when it's out.

We know that the screenshot is a JPG, so there is a loss of resolution compared to how it would look to anyone running a modern video card/monitor. But we can see enough detail to see it is awesome.

The detail of the mountains in North England for instance representing the Penines and mountains in Cumbria is really nice. And as I predicted a few days ago, there are more "coastal" sea zones and I'm pretty sure more sea zones generally. You can't get a very clear idea how the provinces on land are, but it looks pretty much like HOI3 in terms of size/position. The details of the coasts is fantastic, but I think it looks like the Channel at Dover/Calais looks far too wide. I guess there is a design decision there to include two coastal sea zones easily controlled by either side, and another one in the middle?

Other than that proportions and positions look good overall. But a few observations (not criticisms as we know it is pre-Alpha):

- No ports in Southampton, Portsmouth, Liverpool or Newcastle in UK, and none in Le Havre in France
- Port in Bristol. By WWII this port was useless, too far up a river which couldn't take large ships
- Port along the north coast of the Devon area. This is presumably supposed to be Plymouth, which should be positioned on the south coast
- No Channel Islands
- No River Tyne at Newcastle

Really looking forward to it when it is complete

 

[Dan1109]

And concerning the miniairbattles that take place, how would you represent a 1000 bomber air raid, with 300 long range escorts? I know we don't want doom stack problems of HOI3, but superior numbers usually led to victory.

Or are these 1v1,2v1 battles actually micro battles, ALL happening in the same province? Example, Germany has 400 fighters for defense which scramble. So, there are 300 1v2 battles (1 Bomber, 1 escort vs 1 fighter), 100 1v1 (bomber vs fight) micro battles, and the other 600 bombers get through up opposed (but have a malus for being air intercepted anyways)?

How would this scenario play out?

 

[tommylotto]

I just read through the DD plus the developers' comments. I note this:

This will also, of course, negatively affect the operation of ground forces in the Region.

I know naval combat is for a future DD, but my question involves air combat.

Can you designate planes to target a sea area as its strategic region of operations? I assume so. And if so, and if you achieve air superiority in that sea zone, will that negatively effect the operation of naval forces in the Region? Will it effect convoys?

I am thinking of the central Mediterranean and the air battles around Malta, but control of the Channel would be just as critical to a potential Sea Lion operation.

 

[meioutaxes]

Hi Darkrenown,

If individual planes do not gain experiences from air battles, what will be gained from air combat, some kind of experiences which could be used for plane production and increasing combat skills of air units, and who will gain these combat experience, the commanders/generals or the air bases/squadrons?

"While individual planes do not gain experience, combat/missions have the possibility of generating Aces. Aces can be assigned to Air wings and improve the efficiency the planes. We'll talk more about them in a later dev diary."

 

[Aurgelwulf]

Can we get a sneaky look at the aircraft teching?

Is the Stuka still glorious?

 

[Gamer_1745]

tommylotto,

Looking carefully at the map shown it seems to have 2 sea strategic region of operations: The Channel & North Sea They are boarded in white.

Edit: Oh and Baltic or some other area north of Denmark.

 

[Dalwin]

This looks great. It is basically what I envisioned back when the DD on land doctrines let slip that air superiority was going to be represented in game.

For me, this one was one of the major checkpoints as to whether the game was headed in a direction that I liked. I'd give it three thumbs up if I could.

I just read through the DD plus the developers' comments. I note this:



I know naval combat is for a future DD, but my question involves air combat.

Can you designate planes to target a sea area as its strategic region of operations? I assume so. And if so, and if you achieve air superiority in that sea zone, will that negatively effect the operation of naval forces in the Region? Will it effect convoys?

I am thinking of the central Mediterranean and the air battles around Malta, but control of the Channel would be just as critical to a potential Sea Lion operation.

Here is how I think the interaction between air and naval is going to work.

Can air units be given missions in sea zones? That obviously has to be yes. I think it is also an obvious yes on the air superiority over sea zones part of the question.

What will this mean? Based on how interception is described for air to air, I think it will be similar. Naval operations within an area will have a chance of beign spotted and intercepted by enemy air assets in a region. The liklihood of this happening will to a great extend depend on the level of air superiority in the region but there are other factors too I am sure.

We know nothing about how naval missions will be set and how naval combat will work. I do not expect it to be abstracted to the same extent that air has been, but I think the above point on how air and naval will interact is a logical extention of what we have been told in this DD.

This is all very exciting. The way that this reflects the strategic and operational realities of the war is a major improvement over previous versions.

 

[safe-keeper]

I too like the number of provinces in the Channel .

More ontopic, I think the new air system looks very promising, far better than having to micro air units like in HOI3.

 

[Admiral Piett]

I like this new system! Air combat was really tedious and annoying in HOI3, so this is a big step in the right direction. I'm very curious to see naval combat now.

 

[sbr]

[*]Coverage is more a concept than a stat, and is based on a plane's Range stat compared to the distance to the center of the Strategic Region it is operating in. Planes which can just barely reach the target have a poor Coverage value compared to a plane that can fly laps around the area.

I am curious about this. Can you get into more detail about what the Coverage concept does and how planes that can barely reach the Region are penalized?

 

[podcat]

Can we get a sneaky look at the aircraft teching?

Is the Stuka still glorious?

not as glorious as the Ju 187 :3

The details of the coasts is fantastic, but I think it looks like the Channel at Dover/Calais looks far too wide.

Yes, the channel is much wider than in real life. You really need more than one provinces to be able to make proper naval mechanics and have time for AI or other players to react to movement and we cant really make smaller provinces since they have to have enough room to display ships so... we always chose gameplay over accuracy for stuff like this.

Or are these 1v1,2v1 battles actually micro battles, ALL happening in the same province? Example, Germany has 400 fighters for defense which scramble. So, there are 300 1v2 battles (1 Bomber, 1 escort vs 1 fighter), 100 1v1 (bomber vs fight) micro battles, and the other 600 bombers get through up opposed (but have a malus for being air intercepted anyways)?

How would this scenario play out?

Basically like that. Bombers who slip through are still disrupted in their operation so may not be able to bomb as accurately etc. The system runs a couple of times, so fighters who attacked one bomber may catch another afterwards too etc.

I've been somewhat critical and at times pessimistic about HOI4. But let me say that this DD has completely reversed my stance and opinion. Great thought and work has gone into the mechanics involved. A+

Now a simple question or three.

1) We build various planes in our factories and then assign these to airbases? Is that how it works?
2) In HOI3 there was air superiority and intercept for gaining control of the skies. I know you mentioned escort now. So how will fighters assigned to these different mission work over a single region?
3) Do we assign planes based by airbase or by state (which might include multiple airbases)?

1. mostly yes. we will do a dev diary on training and deployment later
2. fighters on air superiority mission are considered to also serve as escorts when bombers do runs, so there is no need to micro the missions separately. We might or might not include an actual escort mission later if its necessary for control but atm I dont think so.
3. per base, although there is only one airbase per state (which can be built to a high level to simulate a spread of bases if you like)

Will it be possible to lower enemy org so much with airpower that two dudes with a swiss army knife and a packmule can rout the enemy without a fight?

only if the mule is especially vicious...

I have one question, will plane production be similar to tank production as we've seen, for example, I have the P47 Thunderbolt, its considered a fighter-bomber due to its size and armament capabilities. The way you've described a heavy fighter or at least how I interpreted it is that it is a Heavy Fighter so its only good at taking down bombers over regular fighters. The P47 was what I consider to be the best fighter-bomber in Americas arsenal. The P47 was already armed with 8 12.7mm guns and could carry 2 500lbs bombs as well as later carrying rockets. So will we have the option to build ground attack related P47s and specific heavy fighter P47s after unlocking the P47, or will it all just be mashed up into one

As someone said heavy fighters are generally twin engine. I however think that we did actually include the P47 as a heavy fighter due to its capabilities (heavy armament, long range etc), but dont quote me on it, the air tree has changed several times.

tommylotto,

Looking carefully at the map shown it seems to have 2 sea strategic region of operations: The Channel & North Sea They are boarded in white.

Edit: Oh and Baltic or some other area north of Denmark.

yes there are strategic areas over water as well

 

[safe-keeper]

Oh and also love all the people griping about how the pre-alpha map looks. Even with a giant red banner stating that "this screenshot is not indicative of final quality" people still don't get it...

 

[Mannstien]

I dunno why you are so against our map, we think it looks pretty great.

I agree, looks awesome.

 

[potski]

Hi Darkrenown,

If individual planes do not gain experiences from air battles, what will be gained from air combat, some kind of experiences which could be used for plane production and increasing combat skills of air units, and who will gain these combat experience, the commanders/generals or the air bases/squadrons?

"While individual planes do not gain experience, combat/missions have the possibility of generating Aces. Aces can be assigned to Air wings and improve the efficiency the planes. We'll talk more about them in a later dev diary."

Since they do not seem to have any clear organisational structure (squadrons, flights, wings, groups) then nothing to give experience to as 10th Wing has x experience that it can carry around. When you have micro-level of individual planes, then you can have an airbase which has 1 or 100 planes attached to it, and therefore 1 to 100 pilots. And they are not going to track the experience and knowledge/training level of individual pilots, surely?

I suspect there will be an overall Air Combat Experience, and just like the Land Combat Experience, this builds up depending on how many of your planes are engaged in air combat missions, compared to the overall size of your forces. And you can then spend this by opening up options in the plane designer - like we have realised from our experience of May 1940 that we need faster fighters, so we get to use our air experience to develop Spitfires instead of Hurricanes for example.

Plus, I guess the local flavour will be carried by the air ace instead of the air unit, so an existing air ace can gain traits over time (if he stays alive) and you can gain more aces by more experience of actual combat. If you are losing the air war then you will lose more air aces shot down than you are developing new ones, and then the bonuses applied to the planes where the experienced air ace is stationed get lost, and then you can have a vicious circle. This seems a good way to imitate the loss of experienced pilots for GER and JAP later in the war - if they have very few air aces the remaining pilots will not be very good, without trying to get too involved with stuff about training of pilots. Or GER can protect the air aces by flying fewer missions, and therefore abandon any attempt to contest Allied air superiority.

 

[Centurion1973]

Podcat: What about Runway cratering/attacking aircraft on the ground? Will it be implemented? If so how will it work?

thanks

 

[Dan1109]

Concerning Strategic Bombardment, as a human, especially playing at harder levels, it NEVER seemed to pay off, because IC could be rebuilt relatively quickly, and for "free". With this concept of single unit aircraft, which WILL die in almost any air raid (Even unopposed by fighters, just due to AA), it seems like an even worse proposition.

Are there any plans to require IC to repair IC? Also, it sounds like Civilian IC can be hit as well (or instead of, by accident), which would be a cool thing. It would affect the enemy, but in different ways. If the Allies never bombed Germany, their IC Production would have been through the roof, due to the fact that even though a huge amount of IC was 'destroyed with no repair', their IC production was at its peak near the end of the war, well after the 42-44 bombing campaigns.

Not sure how you can make this realistic - IC doesn't repair? But that means IC would have to be cheap, and a player could spam IC production like the USA players do sometimes (I dont do that, personally). If you simulate even a 7% Bomber loss (which was typical towards the end of the war, even with fighter cover), how do you reward the player for losing 7% of its units on a single city bomb raid, but the enemy can simply repair the IC for free, within a few weeks (amount of time most likely needed to rebuild ORG in the bomber crews). Again, it doesnt seem like it will pay off.

 

[seattle]

Love it! It's almost exactly what I proposed in my thread about an abstracted air warfare.
Two questions:
1. If a carrier counts as an air base (screenshot: Graf Zeppelin), then what about the US-Navy? You're likely to have 20+ carriers. Won't that become a micromanagement hell?
2. AA: in previous HoIs I would serial build several hundred AA and be safe from enemy bombers for the rest of the game. The problem with HoI's implementation of AA is that once constructed is doesn't consume supplies or any other sort of costs. In reality AA in use was extremely expensive. Shooting down an enemy bomber with AA wasn't even cost-effective. How are you going to counter AA spam?

 

[joeenochs]

Hi Podcat,
the Germans used their air force in a very tactical way to support their ground forces with breakthroughs.
How will this be modelled when e.g. France is divided into only two air regions?
Are their special doctrines for ground support? Will the land battles have modifiers based on the dedicated aircrafts in a region?

 

[keynes2.0]

only if the mule is especially vicious...

He's a pretty nasty dude until the Second Foundation chills him out.

 

[Dalwin]

Hi Podcat,
the Germans used their air force in a very tactical way to support their ground forces with breakthroughs.
How will this be modelled when e.g. France is divided into only two air regions?
Are their special doctrines for ground support? Will the land battles have modifiers based on the dedicated aircrafts in a region?

That was covered to some extent. There is a generic bonus that land units will get to their effectiveness for being in a zone in which they have air superiority. The size of this bonus is affected by doctrines among other things. This represents these very tactical support missions abstractly without even having them be missions in the HOI1-3 sense.