I was just looking at weather penalties on the wiki and it states that CAS damage has a penalty of -90% during night missions so it seems obvious to me that anyone who has opted to build tactical bombers over dedicated CAS planes on the basis that they are more flexible and can perform more roles would want their tactical bombers to be running CAS missions during the day and strategic or perhaps some other mission at night where although they would still have problems finding targets they would be harder to detect, this is however not possible as there is no way to issue such an order which rather raises the question of what was the point in including tactical bombers in the game at all if you cannot infact leverage the flexibility they are supposed to offer?
If you can only realistically issue one sort of order then you should always build specialised equipment, there is nothing to be gained from flexibility.
Its not just an issue of day and night either, it should be possible to set orders for weather conditions and enemy air strength, and the priority of different mission types when more than one role is chosen.
E.g.
1st priority : Tactical bombers will provide CAS by day // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
1st priority : Tactical bombers will deploy mines at sea by night // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
2nd priority : Tactical bombers will deploy mines at sea by day // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
2nd priority : Tactical bombers will bomb strategic targets by night // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
3rd priority : Tactical bombers will bomb strategic targets by day // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
With this sort of control over orders full usage of the planes could be gained without any need for further (micro) management.
In this way planes would, assuming the air superiority / escort and weather requirements were met:
By day provide CAS if units were engaged and if not would favour the deployment of mines until saturation and once that were achieved would bomb strategic targets and by night would first work on the deployment of sea mines and after that put their efforts into strategic bombing by night.
Naval strikes are a great example of why this sort of control is needed; for a start i have absolutely no idea what the weighting is for a naval mission to take place so I have no idea if my planes would go and bomb sea targets over performing a CAS on land, it seems likely that you might want to prioritise such a target of opportunity but equally you probably wouldnt want to send your planes in against that target if the skies were clouded with enemy air superiority fighters.
This really should not be particularly difficult to implement but it seems to me would make rather a lot of difference in terms of realism and enjoyment for the player.
If you can only realistically issue one sort of order then you should always build specialised equipment, there is nothing to be gained from flexibility.
Its not just an issue of day and night either, it should be possible to set orders for weather conditions and enemy air strength, and the priority of different mission types when more than one role is chosen.
E.g.
1st priority : Tactical bombers will provide CAS by day // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
1st priority : Tactical bombers will deploy mines at sea by night // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
2nd priority : Tactical bombers will deploy mines at sea by day // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
2nd priority : Tactical bombers will bomb strategic targets by night // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
3rd priority : Tactical bombers will bomb strategic targets by day // bad weather ? YES / NO // Air super requirement %
With this sort of control over orders full usage of the planes could be gained without any need for further (micro) management.
In this way planes would, assuming the air superiority / escort and weather requirements were met:
By day provide CAS if units were engaged and if not would favour the deployment of mines until saturation and once that were achieved would bomb strategic targets and by night would first work on the deployment of sea mines and after that put their efforts into strategic bombing by night.
Naval strikes are a great example of why this sort of control is needed; for a start i have absolutely no idea what the weighting is for a naval mission to take place so I have no idea if my planes would go and bomb sea targets over performing a CAS on land, it seems likely that you might want to prioritise such a target of opportunity but equally you probably wouldnt want to send your planes in against that target if the skies were clouded with enemy air superiority fighters.
This really should not be particularly difficult to implement but it seems to me would make rather a lot of difference in terms of realism and enjoyment for the player.
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