One thing which really bothers me since I saw the first WWW is the state of the airwar in the game.
I'm not gonna talk about the UI. I want to talk about the mechanics and the whole way you throw your planes into the war.
This picture is from the WWW 5 at 19:40
This battle goes on for a long time. And other encirclements happened with the invasion of France. German troops had also encircled france and english troops in the southern France. It took also a while to defeat them.
It's nothing wrong about that and it doesn't bother me at all. From the landwarperspective it's fine. But not from the airwarperspective.
If such encirclements would happen in HOI III most players would call their airforce. Establish airsup and attack the encircled troops with tak bombers and CAS to help their troops and finish the enemy faster. Especially if the encirclement doesn't go so well.
In HOI IV you can't do that. In HOI IV the player throws in the planes in a big area and hopes for the best. No micromanagement. Your troops get a bonus or malus and that's it. This is boring and to be honest it really makes me sad.
The player hast lost some viable and fun options in the gameplay.
You can't focus a region with your CAS or tak bombers. Destroying single divisions, supply, IC or infrastructure there.
You can't support your spearhead/schwerpunkt if you advance deep into enemy lines.
You can't focus a single fleet in an area if more than one fleet is operationg in this area.
Another thing is the expierence system. If the player wants, he could make a CAS variant with very short range, high armor and high attack for focusing tanks. Right know if the player would do that most effect would be lost because the higher armor and attack is spread in an big area. Again a missed opportunity in HOI IV with the new variant and experience system if you ask me.
Enough with the mimi. Here is a solution which I think is far better.
Lets say we have wings and squads. A wing has 3-5 squads
This setting in the picture above would need 135 planes (54 bf 110 and 81 Ju 87 for example). It could be also 150 per wing or less or more. It's just an example.
This wing is now like a landdivision and I can give orders to them. Attack this fleet. Bomb this infrastructure in that region. Or attack anything on the ground in this big area.
Like in HOI III I can attack with this unit. Either big areas or one region with for example an enemy tank division in it. And I used my experience to upgrade those planes and specialise them to do that job pretty well.
Basically like the HOI III system adjusted for HOI IV. I explained this because some here didn't play HOI III and to make my point more clear.
Now you have the problem you have to manage 20,30 or 40+wings.
Not every wing would be operational. Some need repairs/replacements/upgrades. So no need for micromanaging there because you have to wait until they can do their job and are operational again. Of course you could use them but why attack with a wing at 25% strength? Only if you are desperate
It would be a big clickfest but I like this way more than the current state. The current state is casual and not challenging at all. Sry. I'm just beeing honest here.
But some players don't like that and don't want the clickfest. I can understand that. So we have two options here.
Either we create bigger units like airdivision (4-5 wings) or airkorps which would be even bigger and contain hundrets of planes. You don't have to move so much units because the are bigger and therefore less units on the map.
In my opinion this wouldn't fit for HOI IV and it makes no sense in many cases that 500 or more planes attack one single land division or region. Of course this happened (monte cassino or airraids on cities) but this was quite rare.
Or the other option would be to give the player a tool to let the AI do the most work and manage his wings in combat. Like we already have now in HOI IV but get rid of those big airareas for planes and adjust the system to wings.
I really like HOI IV and I'm looking forward to it. But I want to micromange my wings, specialise my planes for special
purposes and focus single divisions/leets and so on. The airwar right now is a big bummer if you ask me.
This is my opinion. Share yours. Maybe some ppl here have a better ideas.
Thanks for reading.
I'm not gonna talk about the UI. I want to talk about the mechanics and the whole way you throw your planes into the war.
This picture is from the WWW 5 at 19:40
This battle goes on for a long time. And other encirclements happened with the invasion of France. German troops had also encircled france and english troops in the southern France. It took also a while to defeat them.
It's nothing wrong about that and it doesn't bother me at all. From the landwarperspective it's fine. But not from the airwarperspective.
If such encirclements would happen in HOI III most players would call their airforce. Establish airsup and attack the encircled troops with tak bombers and CAS to help their troops and finish the enemy faster. Especially if the encirclement doesn't go so well.
In HOI IV you can't do that. In HOI IV the player throws in the planes in a big area and hopes for the best. No micromanagement. Your troops get a bonus or malus and that's it. This is boring and to be honest it really makes me sad.
The player hast lost some viable and fun options in the gameplay.
You can't focus a region with your CAS or tak bombers. Destroying single divisions, supply, IC or infrastructure there.
You can't support your spearhead/schwerpunkt if you advance deep into enemy lines.
You can't focus a single fleet in an area if more than one fleet is operationg in this area.
Another thing is the expierence system. If the player wants, he could make a CAS variant with very short range, high armor and high attack for focusing tanks. Right know if the player would do that most effect would be lost because the higher armor and attack is spread in an big area. Again a missed opportunity in HOI IV with the new variant and experience system if you ask me.
Enough with the mimi. Here is a solution which I think is far better.
Lets say we have wings and squads. A wing has 3-5 squads
This setting in the picture above would need 135 planes (54 bf 110 and 81 Ju 87 for example). It could be also 150 per wing or less or more. It's just an example.
This wing is now like a landdivision and I can give orders to them. Attack this fleet. Bomb this infrastructure in that region. Or attack anything on the ground in this big area.
Like in HOI III I can attack with this unit. Either big areas or one region with for example an enemy tank division in it. And I used my experience to upgrade those planes and specialise them to do that job pretty well.
Basically like the HOI III system adjusted for HOI IV. I explained this because some here didn't play HOI III and to make my point more clear.
Now you have the problem you have to manage 20,30 or 40+wings.
Not every wing would be operational. Some need repairs/replacements/upgrades. So no need for micromanaging there because you have to wait until they can do their job and are operational again. Of course you could use them but why attack with a wing at 25% strength? Only if you are desperate
It would be a big clickfest but I like this way more than the current state. The current state is casual and not challenging at all. Sry. I'm just beeing honest here.
But some players don't like that and don't want the clickfest. I can understand that. So we have two options here.
Either we create bigger units like airdivision (4-5 wings) or airkorps which would be even bigger and contain hundrets of planes. You don't have to move so much units because the are bigger and therefore less units on the map.
In my opinion this wouldn't fit for HOI IV and it makes no sense in many cases that 500 or more planes attack one single land division or region. Of course this happened (monte cassino or airraids on cities) but this was quite rare.
Or the other option would be to give the player a tool to let the AI do the most work and manage his wings in combat. Like we already have now in HOI IV but get rid of those big airareas for planes and adjust the system to wings.
I really like HOI IV and I'm looking forward to it. But I want to micromange my wings, specialise my planes for special
purposes and focus single divisions/leets and so on. The airwar right now is a big bummer if you ask me.
This is my opinion. Share yours. Maybe some ppl here have a better ideas.
Thanks for reading.
- 19
- 7
- 1
