Is There An Auto Air Defense/Intercept Function?

[SonofWinter]

I have to keep changing my fighters to intercept from one region to another, all the time, to stop the allied bombers.

Is there an auto-intercept function or is this just a giant game of whack-a-mole?

Is there a button I'm missing?

 

[el nora]

 

[GrandVezir]

Is there an auto-intercept function or is this just a giant game of whack-a-mole?

Free mini-game included with your purchase of HoI4!

 

[Corpse Fool]

The air simulation is fundamentally flawed, and is even inconsistent. CAS/tac bombers suffer mission efficiency/plane count penalties if they don't have enough range to cover the whole zone, but are also only capable of supporting battles that are happening within their range. Being able to magically teleport aircraft from an airfield into whatever zone and skipping whatever space is between the airfield and that zone, is absolute nonsense. Only having 3 missions a day at exactly the same time every day is nonsense. Only being able to fit 5 AA guns in the entirety of siberia, but you can fit the same 5 guns into Luxembourg is nonsense. Being able to have a wing, a single wing, the smallest and practically only level of organization for the air war, being able to range for a single airplane to 1000 airplanes is absolutely massive difference in flexibility compared to any other environment of the military. Being able to build an airfield in an enemy-controlled province while you control the state is absolute nonsense. Being able to fit 2000 planes on Johnson atoll is absolute nonsense.

I mean, a lot of other parts of the game can use a bunch of fixes and tweaks, but considering they have already overhauled the air sim, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

 

[Harin]

The air simulation is fundamentally flawed, and is even inconsistent. CAS/tac bombers suffer mission efficiency/plane count penalties if they don't have enough range to cover the whole zone, but are also only capable of supporting battles that are happening within their range. Being able to magically teleport aircraft from an airfield into whatever zone and skipping whatever space is between the airfield and that zone, is absolute nonsense. Only having 3 missions a day at exactly the same time every day is nonsense. Only being able to fit 5 AA guns in the entirety of siberia, but you can fit the same 5 guns into Luxembourg is nonsense. Being able to have a wing, a single wing, the smallest and practically only level of organization for the air war, being able to range for a single airplane to 1000 airplanes is absolutely massive difference in flexibility compared to any other environment of the military. Being able to build an airfield in an enemy-controlled province while you control the state is absolute nonsense. Being able to fit 2000 planes on Johnson atoll is absolute nonsense.

I mean, a lot of other parts of the game can use a bunch of fixes and tweaks, but considering they have already overhauled the air sim, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

@Corpse Fool, I cannot figure out why you like HOI4's air simulation so much. Frankly, I think it is absolute nonsense.

 

[Corpse Fool]

@Corpse Fool, I cannot figure out why you like HOI4's air simulation so much. Frankly, I think it is absolute nonsense.

I'm not sure if I'm using the words wrong, or you're making a joke that I'm just too upset about the air sim to properly interpret right now.

 

[Harin]

I'm not sure if I'm using the words wrong, or you're making a joke that I'm just too upset about the air sim to properly interpret right now.

Its a joke.

I agree so much with your points, that clicking agree did not do it justice.

 

[SonofWinter]

So I'm stuck with this nonsense of England doing bombing runs in Western Poland mid 1940?

 

[brainiac1530]

If it really annoys you, I guess there's the option of building state AA everywhere. Unless they have a really next-level deathball of strategic bombers, a few points should inflict considerable attrition on them. I remember one game where just the day 1 AA installations were outstripping my production. That was a learning experience. From then on, I only bothered with strategic bombing if I was going to be able to commit 50+ mils to it. Four-digit bomber counts or bust.

 

[DukofDeth]

In the defines it is coded for the AI to ignore air regions where more than 300 fighters are active, so having air groups of about 325 and set so they maintain that number should keep the AI from bothering you there. I tried it out and it does seem to work, though you do need to have enough fighters to pull this off.

 

[desphorin]

In the defines it is coded for the AI to ignore air regions where more than 300 fighters are active, so having air groups of about 325 and set so they maintain that number should keep the AI from bothering you there. I tried it out and it does seem to work, though you do need to have enough fighters to pull this off.

Interesting to know! It means that I actually have some use of whatever interwar fighters I have

 

[TheMoe]

So I'm stuck with this nonsense of England doing bombing runs in Western Poland mid 1940?

If you can go on the offensive, they do tend to focus more of their air power on defending their home territory, though in my limited experience the strat bombers continue their runs. It's pretty funny that I can have 2000 fighters doing intercepts over the English Channel, and as Corpse Fool noted in his post, somehow the strat bombers just fly right through the "fighter soup" without losses and bomb Northern Germany and Denmark or Poland for that matter. J

 

[DukofDeth]

It would be nice if they would come up with a way of modeling losses while transiting such defense corridors - like so many losses per fighter mitigated by defensive fighters or escorts, further mitigated for higher level bombers being intercepted by less capable fighters [or augmented, if fighters more capable than bombers] since then the cruising altitude and speed would factor more; then another set of calculations for flak defenses. If they could get that into one or two equations it would be nice, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. They're supposed to be revamping the land combat system, which will introduce some changes to the air system, and then after that they might redo the air system like they redid the naval system.

Even just introducing a restriction so bombers could only be redirected to a neighboring air zone, and only one redirect done per day. If the AI doesn't like the situation in any zones it could then just cancel its strat bombing for the day or week and find a way to get some friendly fighter cover rather than go with the losses from unprotected bombers. The bouncing about is nonsense, though.

 

[SonofWinter]

The other thing is, only my good fighters are being shot down, while my crappy Inter War fighters never get shot down. I'm amazed that the fastest and best fighters are the only ones taking casualties, while cheappo units are The Immortals.

 

[GrandVezir]

It would be nice if they would come up with a way of modeling losses while transiting such defense corridors - like so many losses per fighter mitigated by defensive fighters or escorts

That's probably the core of the problem: HoI has never had a good system for escort/interceptor dynamics. Version 4 doesn't even have an escort mission for fighters. Which is worse: a bad interception system, or a missing escort system? Oddly, the two failures combine to a weirdly historic balance where strategic bombers are hugely expensive but become useful once you spend the resources.

Of course, fixing that problem would also require fixing the problem that the fighter/heavy fighter split as modeled in HoI4 is simply wrong. German* long-range fighter/bombers were, indeed, lousy dogfighters, but (to focus on a single example) the USA P-51 was an excellent dogfighter with range to usefully reach Berlin from airfields in England.

*

Spoiler: Footnote

Confirming yet again that the game models most things military on "What Would the Wehrmacht Do?"

 

[DukofDeth]

The DeHaviland Mosquito was also an excellent fighter. Not sure but that may have to do with roll rate - if the design doesn't allow for quick changes in direction then you're about as manouverable as a medium bomber