Limit on maximum number of bombers in naval strike

[KDEstroy]

According to the wiki, the maximum number of bombers allowed to join a naval strike is equal to the sum of all the ships' HP in the fleet, divided by 20. However, 20 planes are always allowed to join.

Naval battle - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

Air missions - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

However, this does not seem to be the case in game. In fact, the only limit on the number of naval bombers allowed to strike at the fleet seems to be the air wing size limit. What this means effectively is that you could potentially have 1000 Naval bombers attacking a single fleet, on a single day. Here, the light cruiser has only 150 HP, yet it was attacked by 1000 naval bombers at once.

In case you think that this is just a graphical issue, and that 20 bombers could've sunk the cruiser, I created an air wing of just 50 bombers. Clearly, the bombers did far less damage. This shows that even 50 bombers can't sink the cruiser in one sortie.

I was hesitant about posting a bug report, because it's possible that the mechanic is working as intended, or perhaps fleet frontage was never a part of the game. Personally, I think fleet frontage is absolutely necessary, because in the current state of the game, 1000 naval bombers can beat just about any fleet.

 

[billcorr]

Nice report!

The original analysis (October, 2016) that coined the term "fleet frontage" could be wrong.

Enemy Fleet Frontage determines number of land based air that can attack enemy fleet

Fleets' sizes are equal to the total number of hit points of all the ships in the enemy fleet, Fleet Size = total number of hit points of the fleet The AI calculates a "fleet frontage" score. Fleet Frontage = (Fleet Size) / 20 This fleet...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Or the parameters could have changed over the years.

 

[billcorr]

I was hesitant about posting a bug report,

It might not be a bug, but instead working as designed.

The "fleet frontage" analysis posted in October, 2016, was just my way of trying to understand the game mechanics.

My analysis could have missed the big picture.

There are other folks (MrAnalyst and BitMode) who are better at back-calculating the game mechanics.

 

[Corpse Fool]

This sounds like the same sort of thing they did with CAS, intentionally or not. Which is that even though CAS is limited to 3 per width the enemy uses, sending a 1k wing is going to bomb with all 1k.

 

[billcorr]

From the Defines:

"strength" = "hit points" = "health"

(of the ships)

Note the line below the highlighted line.

"max extra plane % that can join every day"... so perhaps in a long running battle that lasts for days, a large number of planes can end up joining the battle.

(?)

 

[Mattias88]

I think the problem is that one whole wing is always allowed to join. If you had many smaller wings instead Im sure it would work better.
Thankfully these things will soon be a thing of the past with fixed air wing sizes.

 

[Cloak71]

From the Defines:

View attachment 853343

"strength" = "hit points" = "health"

(of the ships)

Note the line below the highlighted line.

"max extra plane % that can join every day"... so perhaps in a long running battle that lasts for days, a large number of planes can end up joining the battle.

(?)

I don't think this applies though. That define is for an ongoing combat, naval strikes are not the same thing. The behaviour of naval strikes outside of combat is different from naval strikes that occur during a combat. It is entirely possible that their is no frontage for naval strikes outside of combat or that it is quite a bit higher.

 

[bitmode]

However, this does not seem to be the case in game.

The limit is calculated as described in the wiki but I then naively assumed it would actually be used in the appropriate place as well. Both the GUI and the damage calculation are bugged in that they use the wing size instead. The bug does not happen with multiple wings because the limit prevents new wings from joining once it is reached.

Thankfully these things will soon be a thing of the past with fixed air wing sizes.

I doubt that multiples of 100 will adequately address this situation for small task forces at least.