Land based Naval Air Useless?

[AegonTheUnready]

I had a naval battle off my coast recently where some land based air participated. I had a 200 ground support wing and 50 naval air wing. Of that total I got 100 ground support and only 7 naval air show up to the fight.

Worse yet they only showed up ONCE in a week long battle.

Am I wrong in thinking it was a complete waste of research time and resources to get land based naval air.?

 

[egill]

I've had mixed results

Lack of range, reliability and poor weather severely reduce success

High spotting chance (radar, fighters on superiority, good weather and large target) can make a big difference.

Recently I flew 2 x 100 land based naval air against a large US carrier force and had frequent attacks of 90 to 120 land based naval - sank 2 carriers and damaged 3

 

[Warhammer]

I had a naval battle off my coast recently where some land based air participated. I had a 200 ground support wing and 50 naval air wing. Of that total I got 100 ground support and only 7 naval air show up to the fight.

Worse yet they only showed up ONCE in a week long battle.

Am I wrong in thinking it was a complete waste of research time and resources to get land based naval air.?

Problem with the game is that land based naval bombers are only allowed to participate once in each battle so if you have say 1000 land naval bombers, they will participate in the initial fight but will not return even if the battle goes on for days/week+. They are good for hitting convoys and bombing seazones that don't have a fleet engagement going on as each attack counts as a separate new battle. Carrier naval bombers however will keep on fighting though, maybe its how Paradox wants to balance things, no idea.

Just to add though, 1940s Naval bombers are usually strong enough to kill screens and damage capital ships, putting 5 wings of 100 in a seazone is more than enough to kill or scare away most enemy fleets operating there. Trick is to not operate your own fleets in that seazone so that its not one continuous battle.

 

[Axe99]

There's (at least) a couple of things going on (afaik):
- There's a limit (based on ship strength) of how many aircraft can enter a naval battle.
- There's a bug, such that sometimes land-based air will participate as often as it should (a couple of times a day I think, can't remember) and sometimes will only participate once (full stop) in a naval battle, leading to wildly different results of how effective it is. If you have a naval battle, hover your mouse over the air wing and it'll show when it was last in the battle. Sometimes it refreshes very frequently, other times it won't refresh at all (it'll count up to 100+ hours).

I personally don't find it useless (when land-based air does take part in a naval battle 1-2 times a day, it's actually a tad stronger than it should be, imo, but this seems to be relatively uncommon), but it'll be good when the results of land-based naval air are a bit more predictable.

As for cost - if you plan to have carrier-based naval bombers, you'll need to research the techs anyway. I generally still build some NAVs when I play, but at this stage they're more for flavour.

The word is that Patch 1.4/Oak will have a significant focus on improving air mechanics, so all being well this'll be sorted

 

[Dalwin]

The only participating once in a naval engagement does weaken land based air at sea without a doubt. However, even with that flaw, air is so cheap compared to ships that it is still worth having.

 

[kettyo]

Land air usually attack only once per naval engagement. This does not apply to bombing ships at sea or port out of naval engagement. Also you can trick that you disengage and reengage with your fleet, so the air attacks again but then you're exploiting game mechanics i think.

Also a related problem is that naval air defense seems generally very weak. So having land air attack continously would be seriously OP. Ships are much more expensive and still they'd be close to defenseless agains cheap planes.

 

[Dalwin]

Land air usually attack only once per naval engagement. This does not apply to bombing ships at sea or port out of naval engagement. Also you can trick that you disengage and reengage with your fleet, so the air attacks again but then you're exploiting game mechanics i think.

Also a related problem is that naval air defense seems generally very weak. So having land air attack continously would be seriously OP. Ships are much more expensive and still they'd be close to defenseless agains cheap planes.

that would not make land based air seriously OP. There was good reason why ships were very hesitant to perform any operations under enemy land based air coverage. We also are not talking about them striking hour after hour. Depending on day/night selection in the planes' orders, they should be able to get in one or two strikes a day for each day of the battle.

 

[Meglok]

Land based CAS and NAV will engage enemy fleets on their own, so that in itself is a good thing.
As Axe99 noted, the number of planes engaging is limited by the number of targets. The ratio is probably a little low and will be looked at whenever PDs gets around to the naval system.

One thing you can do to get around the naval air "one shot" bug is to cancel and reissue nav strike orders to the wing. Assuming it makes it's detection roll it will engage again each time it has new orders. Having radar and fighters flying over the sea region helps in detection.

 

[Admiral Piett]

Only turning up once in a battle is the main issue. I have had a lot of success with NAVs in my current Italy game, but for the most part it is a damage-over-time type of impact. They are constantly hitting Royal Navy fleets that sail in the Med, doing damage here and there and sinking stuff from time to time. Paradox definitely needs to increase their impact in actual naval battles though.

 

[kettyo]

that would not make land based air seriously OP. There was good reason why ships were very hesitant to perform any operations under enemy land based air coverage. We also are not talking about them striking hour after hour. Depending on day/night selection in the planes' orders, they should be able to get in one or two strikes a day for each day of the battle.

Yes it would be good but also would be good to lose more planes to such naval raids bc naval air losses are currently negligible. I've yet to see a single air to navy encounter won by the navy.

Also it would be then good to well increase the impact of air interdiction on convoys. It is just silly that German convoys can happily sail along the British coast. It should be very dangerous even if the Home Fleet is in utter ruins (assuming the RAF is still operational). Redirection of convoy routes bc of interdiction is also missing. It is kinda funny how recklessly they keep on moving through a heavy interdiction zone. This is extremely painful for AI naval relocation of troops (threat check is completely missing when doing such)

 

[C-Breeze]

Am I wrong in thinking it was a complete waste of research time and resources to get land based naval air.?

I wouldn't call land-based nav a complete waste. Even with the 1-shot bug, they are capable of producing critical hits on occasion, and generally I find they work well when employed independently from ships in a succession of repeat engagements. The results are often not of the quick, dramatic variety, but over the long haul, they wear down enemy fleet strength quite nicely.

 

[BaddoSpirito]

Land based naval air is overpowered just not when helping a fleet that is actually fighting. Build radars and naval bomb with wings of 1000. The enemy won't be able to keep a fleet in that seazone and if he does, he will lose all his capital ships very quickly. Just don't engage the fleet with your own then your bombers won't do much.

 

[Meglok]

Yes it would be good but also would be good to lose more planes to such naval raids bc naval air losses are currently negligible. I've yet to see a single air to navy encounter won by the navy.

Also it would be then good to well increase the impact of air interdiction on convoys. It is just silly that German convoys can happily sail along the British coast. It should be very dangerous even if the Home Fleet is in utter ruins (assuming the RAF is still operational). Redirection of convoy routes bc of interdiction is also missing. It is kinda funny how recklessly they keep on moving through a heavy interdiction zone. This is extremely painful for AI naval relocation of troops (threat check is completely missing when doing such)

It is likely the impact of air on convoys was nerfed for this very reason. You think it is bad now, how about if almost every Axis division was blown out of the water as it sailed thru the Channel, and the ai continued to try to send divisions until it ran out? Can you imagine the howls on the forum? They probably toned it down until they can come up with a solution to the issue, otherwise the game would be unplayable.

 

[kettyo]

It is likely the impact of air on convoys was nerfed for this very reason. You think it is bad now, how about if almost every Axis division was blown out of the water as it sailed thru the Channel, and the ai continued to try to send divisions until it ran out? Can you imagine the howls on the forum? They probably toned it down until they can come up with a solution to the issue, otherwise the game would be unplayable.

That is pretty sure.

Most probably they keep the one shot bug in for similar reasons. It could have been easily fixed if they want i assume. Having it fixed must have caused even more serious issues

 

[Dalwin]

That is pretty sure.

Most probably they keep the one shot bug in for similar reasons. It could have been easily fixed if they want i assume. Having it fixed must have caused even more serious issues

I disagree completely on this being the source of the one shot bug.

If land based planes are attacking alone they will get a chance to hit those convoys again in 8-12 hours. If there are any ships (including subs) involved in the battle then it is extremely likely that all of the convoys will die even if the planes don't show up at all.

 

[lihp]

Land based naval air units are far from useless. To me it was most obvious in Germany games, where naval bombers and my basic German fleet was able to lock down the Skageragg and keep allied naval units out - esspecially invasion forces. The starting 72 naval bombers and the united fleets work like a charm there.

That beign said: I have no clue if there are issues or bugs for other countries, since I didnt have a need for those so far.

 

[AegonTheUnready]

It is likely the impact of air on convoys was nerfed for this very reason. You think it is bad now, how about if almost every Axis division was blown out of the water as it sailed thru the Channel, and the ai continued to try to send divisions until it ran out? Can you imagine the howls on the forum? They probably toned it down until they can come up with a solution to the issue, otherwise the game would be unplayable.

Wouldn't it be better to not have AI divisions going on random cruises?

 

[kettyo]

I disagree completely on this being the source of the one shot bug.

If land based planes are attacking alone they will get a chance to hit those convoys again in 8-12 hours. If there are any ships (including subs) involved in the battle then it is extremely likely that all of the convoys will die even if the planes don't show up at all.

But if it's unintentional why it's not got fixed long ago?

 

[Baron Jukaga]

They are far from useless but really should have 1-2 sorties a day instead of the 1 per battle. Even so, I had no problem locking down the Med with a small SHBB fleet supported by NAV and land based fighters.

 

[Meglok]

Wouldn't it be better to not have AI divisions going on random cruises?

Yeah, well, PDS is still trying to figure out how to manage that little issue.