The became so pointless. In theory bomber killers but why bother if you can upgrade weapons of fighters to ludicrous levels?
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Heavy fighters are dead and buried.
- Thread starter Beagá
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Haven´t testet them yet in Combat since 1.11. So I can´t say anything about their Advantages / Disadvantages. In prevoius Versions they were good in their Job. But an Refit like for the Tanks / Ships is inevitable for 1.12 and DLC.
@Secret Master any comments? Has your group noticed a large swing towards s/e fighter effectiveness vs bombers?
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I was expecting with the popularity of logistic strikes that heavy fighters would be the counter.
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You can make them effective at great effort. What they really need is the ability to provide ground support.
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Well, IRL heavy fighters were a dead concept apart from the night role. The adoption of drop tanks along with more internal fuel combined with the logistical simplicity of 1 engine, 1 crew member, SE fighters gaining significant horsepower, and sufficient firepower ended the romance some nation's had with heavy fighters.
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I think this situation could be helped by the inclusion of some sort of abstracted-beyond-recognition altitude stat.
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Then you're making things up for the sake of having 'a thing work' in game. Heavy fighters generally had the same altitude limitations as they used the same engines as their SE fighter counterparts.
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If I had actually played a full MP game with the new DLC, I'd have more data for you. But I haven't, so I can't comment.
But I will say this:
Prior to NSB, we fiddled around with heavy fighters to make them more useful. Some tweaks to designers and doctrines, but nothing too big.
What we found, though, is that because of how we model the Pacific in our mod, they became an important aircraft type in that theater. In essence, against a Japan that has only focused on the Zero, as the US, I could effectively make the IJN useless by using heavy fighters and submarines. Tora Tora Tora is not a big deal if Japanese carriers have 0% sortie efficiency due to enemy air superiority, and land-based bombers are hitting fleets outside of combat while submarines drag fleets into combats that tie them down for extended periods of time with no outcome.
We had to tweak a number of things after a game that saw Japan seriously hamstrung by just heavy fighters, NAVs, and submarines. Japanese fighters, while better on paper, ended up with absurdly poor mission efficiency over relevant sea zones where they got absolutely trashed by heavy fighters with 100% efficiency. All that agility matters not a whit if poor mission efficiency turns a 1:1 fight into a 2:1 or worse fight in favor of the heavy fighters.
Let me put it like this: at one point, I had heavy fighters with such ridiculous range that I could operate them over southern China if I wanted. Operating in the South China Sea was nothing to them. And this mattered a lot when I attacked Taiwan; I had air cover over the island when I invaded. And when I took it, I could use that island to put heavy fighters over every sea zone and air region in Japan proper. Nowhere was safe.
In Europe, though, there's not a lot of reason to use them in any sort of competitive environment in vanilla.
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They could be refitted to or from light bombers as well (see mosquito) to keep them usefull. But most likely the new Airplane designer could simulate this.
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If you are fighting in East Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, then they are still essential because you need the range to cover the large Strategic Regions.
OP's view is rather Eurocentric.
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Ah, yes, the wooden wonder ... wasn't a heavy fighter. In actuality the Mosquito was used in precious few 'fighter' roles. Initially with NOS injection it was used to combat the Ju86s. After this use case, the only thing it 'fought' was buzzbombs.
99.9% of the use cases for the Mosquito were pathfinder/night intruder, and as a light 'intruder' bomber again mostly at night. i know, i know, the mosquito flew at mach 5 in 1939 was made from unicorn horns, and singlehandedly won the war but the truth is this plane was excellent at night and despite having a 'fighter' configuration was virtually never used in this configuration and it certainly wasn't changed between fighter, FB, and PR/pathfinder roles. Once it was configured, it stayed as that role.
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I think there is ample enough evidence that PDX aren't really above making things up.
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I don't know if they are good statistically but I find myself using them more and more simply because of range flexibility.
You can give fighters a little more range. But there are still places you'd want the heavies for either their range, stats vs ground attack aircraft, or just flexibility. I'm kinda lazy and tired of moving planes around. Heavies move less.
The other reason being escorts for tacs, Navs, etc. Even though escort doesn't work, at least you can draw the fighters off the other aircraft and not lose your veteran attack wings.
You can give fighters a little more range. But there are still places you'd want the heavies for either their range, stats vs ground attack aircraft, or just flexibility. I'm kinda lazy and tired of moving planes around. Heavies move less.
The other reason being escorts for tacs, Navs, etc. Even though escort doesn't work, at least you can draw the fighters off the other aircraft and not lose your veteran attack wings.
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the above mentioned edge cases. I like using them in R256 mod playing as Honduras. In that mod as that country the airfields are few and far between and if you decide to move south into South America the situation doesn't get any easier. Also in that mod you can research fighter bomber roles for single engine and heavy fighters.
Africa has extreme ranges and if for some reason you choose to fight there they can be useful early on. All this may change though with w/e they're going to do with the 1.112 aircraft designer feature. If you can research drop tanks, add more fuel, etc then what little use heavies have no may shrink even more.
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If you have enough IC to build both fighters and heavies, you can fill up the airbases close to the front line with fighter wings, and put the heavies in farther back airfields. That way you can theoretically have double the number of fighters within range of the front line provinces. I will typically assign the heavies to Interception over my frontline or industrial areas, and assign fighters to Air Superiority. Of course if I don't have the luxury of extra IC I would focus on fighters and create variants with more range, agility, and firepower.
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Could you go into a bit more detail about those air interactions?If I had actually played a full MP game with the new DLC, I'd have more data for you. But I haven't, so I can't comment.
But I will say this:
Prior to NSB, we fiddled around with heavy fighters to make them more useful. Some tweaks to designers and doctrines, but nothing too big.
What we found, though, is that because of how we model the Pacific in our mod, they became an important aircraft type in that theater. In essence, against a Japan that has only focused on the Zero, as the US, I could effectively make the IJN useless by using heavy fighters and submarines. Tora Tora Tora is not a big deal if Japanese carriers have 0% sortie efficiency due to enemy air superiority, and land-based bombers are hitting fleets outside of combat while submarines drag fleets into combats that tie them down for extended periods of time with no outcome.
We had to tweak a number of things after a game that saw Japan seriously hamstrung by just heavy fighters, NAVs, and submarines. Japanese fighters, while better on paper, ended up with absurdly poor mission efficiency over relevant sea zones where they got absolutely trashed by heavy fighters with 100% efficiency. All that agility matters not a whit if poor mission efficiency turns a 1:1 fight into a 2:1 or worse fight in favor of the heavy fighters.
Let me put it like this: at one point, I had heavy fighters with such ridiculous range that I could operate them over southern China if I wanted. Operating in the South China Sea was nothing to them. And this mattered a lot when I attacked Taiwan; I had air cover over the island when I invaded. And when I took it, I could use that island to put heavy fighters over every sea zone and air region in Japan proper. Nowhere was safe.
In Europe, though, there's not a lot of reason to use them in any sort of competitive environment in vanilla.
I was under the impression that mission efficiency controlled the effectiveness of the assigned plane's stats. Those stats are an average of the fighter types assigned's stats, dragged down if below 100% efficiency. How does that influence the number of planes in combat?
As for carrier sortie efficiency, how exactly does that work? I had assumed that enough fighters over a sea zone would disrupt enemy naval bombers just as they would land based bombers and that's how red air hurts carriers. Does air superiority effect sortie efficiency, which implies that interception missions on land based fighters is ineffective for controlling hostile carrier planes.
On this note specifically, since the game is relatively limited in choice, I wish we could hard lock airwings into certain designs. If I made a range variant, I don't want that variant going to 'general coverage' airwings. I would want that variant going only to my escort wings or the airwings I have in 'insert theater with terrible infrastructure here' airwings.
there is historical precedent here. Some aircraft did well for the UK in say the Indochina areas that got massacred in Europe. The Beufighter and Hurricane in 1942/43 as an example. The P40 did 'ok' for the UK and the USA in Africa as it had more range. There are other examples but it just sucks that the moment you create a new variant the game considers it the bee's knees and sends it everywhere without the option of considering a variant as a specialty ... unless I'm missing something.
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