How to beat late game air superiority

[Harin]

Well, we thought WW3 was going to happen in the 80's, but we for sure thought it would be the Russians coming from the east. Who would have thought it would be the Japanese.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Well, we thought WW3 was going to happen in the 80's, but we for sure thought it would be the Russians coming from the east. Who would have thought it would be the Japanese.

Still nervous though. The enemy has tons of divisions, and I am worried that their air force might recover and retaliate (I have crippled their oil supply to be safe). It is a distance from Berlin with yuge amount of troops.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Romania is getting the worst abuse due to their oil fields.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Finally took Sumatra -- totally devastated :/

 

[Harin]

I suspect the enemy will now have serious issues in rebuilding its air forces.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

I suspect the enemy will now have serious issues in rebuilding its air forces.

I do hope so. That is why I still keep certain regions suppressed with strat bombings (Italy, Eastern Germany, Romania). They still manage to rally a sizeable force of 6000 in Scotland, but I am keeping my smaller force of 2000 to tie them down there. Most importantly, the air cover for my land forces advancing towards Germany is still overwhelming, so I can eliminate it asap.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Final push into Berlin with 3 panzer groups and seven armies. Pray it will end well.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well the first strategy is effective but if enemy has long range fighters (especially jet) all over Europe, eliminating the airfields in a certain air zone is not going to work. So I took it to the extreme by nuking all the airfields, industries and cities of Europe (you need a giant pre-emptive strike when war started). Now when my armies advanced into Poland from Moscow, my planes enjoyed a tactical advantage because the enemy air force is currently paralysed.

Agreed with the second strategy...

AI doesn't maintain air superiority behind front-line regions. You can deploy for superiority, pause, and launch the nukes and this will clear all air fields other than those on the front.

This can also be used to trash AI supply of course due to the impact on infrastructure.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

I think T3 rockets can't be intercepted at all.

How to tell that? Is there a stats that says "can't be intercept"? Or it has extremely high air defense?

 

[kettyo]

How to tell that? Is there a stats that says "can't be intercept"? Or it has extremely high air defense?

Got a speed of 10000 kmph which translates into zero chance of interception. Even T2 rocket has about 5500 kmph which means zero interception but range is about twentyfold smaller.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Got a speed of 10000 kmph which translates into zero chance of interception. Even T2 rocket has about 5500 kmph which means zero interception but range is about twentyfold smaller.

So interception effectiveness is dependent on bomber speed? Wow. That is quite accurate. Historically, V2 rockets could not be shot down... What about aa? Do they intercept rockets like fighters?

 

[kettyo]

So interception effectiveness is dependent on bomber speed? Wow. That is quite accurate. Historically, V2 rockets could not be shot down... What about aa? Do they intercept rockets like fighters?

Yes disruption/interception is highly dependent on speed.

I don't know anything about AA vs rockets.

Probably @bitmode is your man.

 

[bitmode]

So interception effectiveness is dependent on bomber speed? Wow. That is quite accurate. Historically, V2 rockets could not be shot down... What about aa? Do they intercept rockets like fighters?

In almost all respects rockets are treated just like strat bombers that happen to be very fast and get destroyed after one sortie.
The damage calculation as described in the wiki should apply. Oddly enough, rockets don't seem to have any air defense at all, so AA should work pretty well against them.
There are a bunch of other bugs [1, 2, 3] that make rockets close to useless even if AA did not work against them.

Also I wouldn't be so sure that their speed makes them immune to normal interception (in terms of game mechanics). They don't have any air defense or air attack - the other two stats that go into disruption reduction. And the term is wrapped in a square root (see https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Air_combat#Disruption_damage_factor). Plugging in some numbers, I'd wager that they only reduce disruption by about 50% against an equal amount of fighters.

 

[kettyo]

In almost all respects rockets are treated just like strat bombers that happen to be very fast and get destroyed after one sortie.
The damage calculation as described in the wiki should apply. Oddly enough, rockets don't seem to have any air defense at all, so AA should work pretty well against them.
There are a bunch of other bugs [1, 2, 3] that make rockets close to useless even if AA did not work against them.

Also I wouldn't be so sure that their speed makes them immune to normal interception (in terms of game mechanics). They don't have any air defense or air attack - the other two stats that go into disruption reduction. And the term is wrapped in a square root (see https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Air_combat#Disruption_damage_factor). Plugging in some numbers, I'd wager that they only reduce disruption by about 50% against an equal amount of fighters.

So we can conclude: "make rockets great again!"

 

[I had a bad name 99]

In almost all respects rockets are treated just like strat bombers that happen to be very fast and get destroyed after one sortie.
The damage calculation as described in the wiki should apply. Oddly enough, rockets don't seem to have any air defense at all, so AA should work pretty well against them.
There are a bunch of other bugs [1, 2, 3] that make rockets close to useless even if AA did not work against them.

Also I wouldn't be so sure that their speed makes them immune to normal interception (in terms of game mechanics). They don't have any air defense or air attack - the other two stats that go into disruption reduction. And the term is wrapped in a square root (see https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Air_combat#Disruption_damage_factor). Plugging in some numbers, I'd wager that they only reduce disruption by about 50% against an equal amount of fighters.

Okay i pored over some parts of the wiki, and this is what I think:

I will give a hypothetical example on how speed of rocket can affect disruption, that kettyo suggests.

Let's say
75% of rocket A is disrupted.

100% - 25% (square root value) = 75%
625 = disruption value / (1+ speed factor). Ignore other two factors. Let's put it as 88. So speed factor factor is - 0.86.

If i increase the speed to -0.2, the square value increase to 10.48.
So 100 - 10.48 = 99.52.

99.52 % disruption damage factor for faster rocket!

If i have 100 rocket A and 100 rocket B (the faster one), 25 rocket A will be disrupted. And only 1 rocket B will be disrupted!

As for air defense and air attack, i am sure rockets are designed to hit ground target, not survive and return to their base (no need for air defense like bulletproof windshield or air attack like Browning machine gun). Hence, if the rocket is extremely fast like V2, the speed factor should be more than enough to compensate for the lack of air defense and air attack that conventional bombers possess. Not sure about that, need to calculate and check...

As for state AA, i believe they only target aircraft, not rockets.

 

[bitmode]

Okay i pored over some parts of the wiki, and this is what I think:

I will give a hypothetical example on how speed of rocket can affect disruption, that kettyo suggests.

Let's say
75% of rocket A is disrupted.

100% - 25% (square root value) = 75%
625 = disruption value / (1+ speed factor). Ignore other two factors. Let's put it as 88. So speed factor factor is - 0.86.

If i increase the speed to -0.2, the square value increase to 10.48.
So 100 - 10.48 = 99.52.

99.52 % disruption damage factor for faster rocket!

If i have 100 rocket A and 100 rocket B (the faster one), 25 rocket A will be disrupted. And only 1 rocket B will be disrupted!

As for air defense and air attack, i am sure rockets are designed to hit ground target, not survive and return to their base (no need for air defense like bulletproof windshield or air attack like Browning machine gun). Hence, if the rocket is extremely fast like V2, the speed factor should be more than enough to compensate for the lack of air defense and air attack that conventional bombers possess. Not sure about that, need to calculate and check...

As for state AA, i believe they only target aircraft, not rockets.

I checked again to understand your calculation and it works out much easier actually. There is a special rule that makes wings immune to disruption if they have zero air defense. So rockets don't just have a disruption damage factor of 99.52% but actually 100%. Just not due to their speed.
Interceptors still apply disruption to the rockets, so they may be useful to distract defending fighters from bombers.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

I checked again to understand your calculation and it works out much easier actually. There is a special rule that makes wings immune to disruption if they have zero air defense. So rockets don't just have a disruption damage factor of 99.52% but actually 100%. Just not due to their speed.
Interceptors still apply disruption to the rockets, so they may be useful to distract defending fighters from bombers.

Wait, so interceptors still can disrupt rockets? Then why said rockets have 100% disruption damage factor?

Also does state aa provide disruption as well? It seems that there is a distinction between disruption and damage. Cos i think disruption applies to ground mission planes only (CAS, strat bomb) while damage applies to all planes.

 

[bitmode]

Wait, so interceptors still can disrupt rockets? Then why said rockets have 100% disruption damage factor?

Because it is a special rule. It really just says "if air defense is zero, disruption damage factor is 100%" in the code. The formula with the square root is not used in that case. I added the exception to the wiki.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Because it is a special rule. It really just says "if air defense is zero, disruption damage factor is 100%" in the code. The formula with the square root is not used in that case. I added the exception to the wiki.

Alright. A little disappointing though. Historically, V1 could still be intercepted by faster planes. Only V2 is impossible to do that because of its speed. Hope they add this small change next time.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Wow, I am able to beat down US air superiority, thanks to the advice of some fella here.

3 Modern SPAA are enough to remove any air penalty.