How Powerful is Air Power?

[SacremPyrobolum]

I love Darkest Hour to bits, but a major problem it has is in not making air power very important in anything except naval combat. Establishing air superiority against a similar sized foe is next to impossible unless you physically take their airfields and bombing missions are generally only successful against unentrenched foes of a significantly lower quality. Even then they hardly seem to make much a difference. And don't get me started on strategic bombers...

Does the air power in this game feel like it has more impact on the game? Can you actually "Battle of Britain" the enemy an knock out their airpower for good more or less?

 

[Alex_brunius]

The only way to knock out someones airpower "for good" is denying them resources needed to build new airplanes ( aluminium, oil or rubber ), after you have shot down their planes.

Strategic bombing in HoI4 can when used in massive scale be pretty devastating damaging half or more of the buildings and factories in an airzone, but they are very expensive and thus out of reach for all but the largest major powers.

CAS is so powerful that many players in multiplayer make it the core of their strategy ( which has more to do with them being hard to shoot down and cheap to build then the damage they inflict being that special ).

Air superiority does have a key impact in slowing down enemy units on the field making them easier to encircle, as well as giving your units bonus in combat and enemy units penalty in combat.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

The only way to knock out someones airpower "for good" is denying them resources needed to build new airplanes ( aluminium, oil or rubber ), after you have shot down their planes.

I suppose I should clarify that by "for good" I mean that knocking out planes has more of an impact than it does in DH, units would often suffer minor damage and then retreat to unreachable positions on the map to recover to do it all over again, on and on and on.

I'd want air battles that are more like naval ones where you regularly lose units that you have to rebuild.

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

I'd want air battles that are more like naval ones where you regularly lose units that you have to rebuild.

You'll lose them faster than you can rebuild if not focusing your industry on air warfare.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I suppose I should clarify that by "for good" I mean that knocking out planes has more of an impact than it does in DH, units would often suffer minor damage and then retreat to unreachable positions on the map to recover to do it all over again, on and on and on.

I'd want air battles that are more like naval ones where you regularly lose units that you have to rebuild.

Here HoI4 is clearly superior IMO since the issue with HoI2 ( and derivative games ) is that reinforcements are damn cheap.

In HoI4 reinforcing 50% of an airwing of 100 planes cost the same amount as half a new airwing does (since the same plane equipment is tracked and used for both), so shooting down planes always have an important industrial impact that is felt.