Is there any way to further streamline Air?

[Treviranus]

A lot of people seem to really like the Air Rework that we got with By Blood Alone but it's a double-edged sword for me. Since the upsides are fairly obvious, I'll just be a negative nancy and focus on what still bothers me a little:

Simply put, it's a mess. For example, let's say you're playing Japan: to start the game you need to produce no fewer than six different kinds of planes which includes building both CAS and Carrier-CAS. I get the argument that this is realistic, but is it really necessary to have CAS and Carrier-CAS as different planes? Is that conducive for better gameplay? Maybe it's just me, but the main focus of HOI4 is land warfare, with naval and aerial warfare being condiments, so to speak. As it stands right now, I find navy and air somewhat bothersome and happily ignore it as much as I can and since I'm only playing SP I get away with it. Here's what I usually do to start a game as of now: Deleting the airforce (including deleting carriers) and start from scratch with only producing fighters if I'm playing a minor, or fighters + CAS/tactical bombers if I'm a major.

 

[Terracos]

you can use Carrier Cas from normal airports. And with the right decision they are even cheaper than standard CAS. Yes they have a little less range but in the pacific all small aircraft lack the range anyway.

 

[Gran Strategist]

As Japan you should only really be producing carrier versions as Japan has various buffs around production and use of carrier planes.

When I play as Japan I never build none carrier variants of small air frames and just use up the none carrier variants you start with in the war with China, where you are uncontested in the air anyway. Once I start making carrier based variants I delete the none carrier variants.

For other nations carrier cas in particular are not really a priority but with the island hopping Japan needs to do they often make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful invasion.

 

[bitmode]

Since the upsides are fairly obvious

What are the upsides?

Before the plane designer, getting rid of special carrier planes might have been an option. But now the devs will probably not want to take away an option/"feature" from that.

The four stats attack/defense/agility/speed is also probably one or even two too many to represent the air combat capabilities of the different planes.

As for the combat resolution itself, it could hardly be any less streamlined; there is a lot of potential there. Unfortunately the updates ususally revolve around allocating more player attention to a sub system instead of less.

 

[PorkchopSandwiches247]

Im fine with it, but you shouldnt lose production efficiency changing carrier planes to regular or vice versa…I mean theyre not that different, come on. Also they should be pretty easily convertible. Also conversion needs a big rework in general.

My bigger issue is twofold: with air combat ui is really obtuse and not intuitive, and its really annoying you have to have ships at sea to train carrier planes. Its not a huge deal but really quite pointlessly annoying

 

[Gran Strategist]

Im fine with it, but you shouldnt lose production efficiency changing carrier planes to regular or vice versa…I mean theyre not that different, come on. Also they should be pretty easily convertible. Also conversion needs a big rework in general.

My bigger issue is twofold: with air combat ui is really obtuse and not intuitive, and its really annoying you have to have ships at sea to train carrier planes. Its not a huge deal but really quite pointlessly annoying

There are usually quite significant differences between carrier and land based planes. In general carrier planes need a lot more structural integrity to be able to land with an arrester wire. Landing gear is usually much stronger to deal with higher impacts from a pitching deck and many carrier planes had folding wings so they could store more planes on the ship.

All of these factors greatly change the dynamic and balance of the aircraft and thus they are usually specifically designed for carrier operations. If you took a Spitfire, reinforced its frame to accommodate arrestor wire landings and chopped up its wings to allow them to fold it would handle completely differently and be balanced completely differently, likely making it perform very poorly.

I agree the conversion system need a QoL run through and having to micro carriers to be at sea to get their planes to exercise seems overly micro. I would just make it so that if the task force has no current mission or is on training you can train the aircraft. If they have a designated mission the aircraft are then on operations and not training.

 

[PorkchopSandwiches247]

There are usually quite significant differences between carrier and land based planes. In general carrier planes need a lot more structural integrity to be able to land with an arrester wire. Landing gear is usually much stronger to deal with higher impacts from a pitching deck and many carrier planes had folding wings so they could store more planes on the ship.

All of these factors greatly change the dynamic and balance of the aircraft and thus they are usually specifically designed for carrier operations. If you took a Spitfire, reinforced its frame to accommodate arrestor wire landings and chopped up its wings to allow them to fold it would handle completely differently and be balanced completely differently, likely making it perform very poorly.

I agree the conversion system need a QoL run through and having to micro carriers to be at sea to get their planes to exercise seems overly micro. I would just make it so that if the task force has no current mission or is on training you can train the aircraft. If they have a designated mission the aircraft are then on operations and not training.

Im not saying they need perfect production efficiency because there are obviously some differences, but basically it should be not much worse than switching a tank line into a TD or SPG…

 

[Alexander 'The Grape']

Why do you need to reinforce your starting air wings?


You can get away with building exactly two types of plane as Japan: Carrier Fighters (zeros) and Carrier CAS with bomb locks and dive breaks, which double as naval bombers. Both can use the same Naval Aircraft Designer, and get -20% IC cost from the Naval Aircraft prioritisation decision.

You only even need to research Survivability Studies to improve the fighters air defence, you get all the other modules from the Zero focus

 

[vermicious knid]

It is easy to mod in the ability to deploy as carrier wings for any airframe. Just need to alter common/units/air.

Removing carrier airframes entirely would be a bigger project...you'd have to mess with everybody's starting planes and AI priorities.

 

[goodcigar]

Big problem with the Designers imo is that they introduced a lot of busywork that you have to do every single time you play but didn't provide any historical templates or example templates. Most people would probably be happy to use historical templates for the nation they're playing as.

 

[blahmaster6k]

its really annoying you have to have ships at sea to train carrier planes.

You...do realize that you can take the carrier planes off the carriers, exercise them, and then put them back on the carriers?

 

[PorkchopSandwiches247]

You...do realize that you can take the carrier planes off the carriers, exercise them, and then put them back on the carriers?

Yes. I said annoying, not impossible.

 

[Eruth]

Big problem with the Designers imo is that they introduced a lot of busywork that you have to do every single time you play but didn't provide any historical templates or example templates. Most people would probably be happy to use historical templates for the nation they're playing as.

I agree with this. I enjoy the designers, but I usually end up making pretty much the same template every time. Some way to save templates between games and automatically unlocking templates with tech, would both be nice QoL.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Yes. I said annoying, not impossible.

The way you phrased it here

you have to have ships at sea to train carrier planes

made it seem like the only way you knew of to train carrier planes is to put the fleet out to sea.

Either way, by this logic any amount of micro is annoying. It takes a whole one click to move the fleet to an ocean tile next to the port, or one click to put the planes in an airport, and then another one click to put the fleet back in port or the planes back on the carrier.

If having to make a single click is annoying I don't know what part of the game isn't annoying.

Big problem with the Designers imo is that they introduced a lot of busywork that you have to do every single time you play but didn't provide any historical templates or example templates. Most people would probably be happy to use historical templates for the nation they're playing as.

There is an auto-design button in every design window if you don't want to engage with the designer any more than you have to, the game will put together the best design it thinks it can from the tech you have unlocked. I don't really know if most people would prefer that though, since a big part of the game for a lot of players is to optimize their country. Using default designs isn't optimal in most cases, and historical designs often don't translate very well into strong gameplay due to the game mechanics. Particularly for the air designer, quite a few historical configurations are impossible to build due to invalid thrust/weight.

I think an option to export designs to use in future games would be nice, but it's understandable why it's not in the game. And for what it's worth, the auto-upgrade button takes care of most of the work in upgrading designs already. It's pretty rare to drastically change a design when you get a new tech, most of what happens when you research a new tech is just replacing the old version of the same module.