Paratroopers underpowered? Or am I doing it wrong?

[jonatron5]

I had a bad experience with paratroopers that made me rage quit my last play session

I was playing Germany and had the bright idea of knocking England out before they got really mobilised,

So I rushed paratroopers, and designed my divisions to have 20 combat width, support artilery, support engineers,support hospitals, support signal corps, support logistics, I trained 24 divisions with this same template, I trained them to be as elite as possible, assumed a general with the commando trait. , then I dropped all of them on the port town of Portsmouth. It was occupied by acouple British infantry, no big deal right? 24 divisions might get cut down in half or many thirds, but would eventually take it , no?

Well the entire stack got wiped

Assuming for simplicity each one of my divisions has 9,000 men in it, I triamed 24 of them

That's 216,000 men dropping in one town,

Or just shy of a quarter of a million soldiers!!!!!
All armed with submachine guns.

I reloaded and tagged England, and they have 2 infantry divisions on the town each with 9,000 men

For a total of 18,000 men.

So England beat my men 18,000 vs 216,000 now admittedly my 216,000 were highly disorganised low on strength and had just paradropped in. So this means every single British soldier had to kill or capture 12 men in a day.

While I'm no professional tactician, I find it very difficult to believe a defending force could beat an attacking force of roughly equal provisions, that out numbers it by greater than an order of magnitude.

Not to mention the fact that I had air superiority over the area, to get my men their in the first place

Im not mad that the invasion didn't work, I'm mad because of the seeming absurdity of it getting stack wiped without even capturing the single county.

If I landed took 75% losses but took it, and then got driven back, I would be much more understanding of that.

 

[Beethoven]

Paratroopers are actually OP because of a bug. See here.

Your problem is combat width/reinforcement. Since your paratroopers were comparatively high width, they did not reinforce for your battle, so it made no difference that you drooped all the extra divisions.

Forget about all the field hospitals etc. That does not help paratrooopers. Instead, make your paratroopers be lower width. Maybe something like 8 width, or even less than that. The only support companies you really need to bother with are support artillery and support rocket artillery. Preferably go with Superior Firepower Integrated Support doctrine. Re-do your paradrop with that, and it should work. Because of the bug, it will work better if you drop on difficult defensive terrain like cities/mountain. For UK, it would probably be easiest to paradrop on top of a port like Bristol/Cardiff/Hull, which is urban terrain.

If you do that, the paradrop will work. However, it will only work because of the bug.

 

[jonatron5]

Paratroopers are actually OP because of a bug. See here.

Your problem is combat width/reinforcement. Since your paratroopers were comparatively high width, they did not reinforce for your battle, so it made no difference that you drooped all the extra divisions.

Forget about all the field hospitals etc. That does not help paratrooopers. Instead, make your paratroopers be lower width. Maybe something like 8 width, or even less than that. The only support companies you really need to bother with are support artillery and support rocket artillery. Preferably go with Superior Firepower Integrated Support doctrine. Re-do your paradrop with that, and it should work. Because of the bug, it will work better if you drop on difficult defensive terrain like cities/mountain. For UK, it would probably be easiest to paradrop on top of a port like Bristol/Cardiff/Hull, which is urban terrain.

If you do that, the paradrop will work. However, it will only work because of the bug.

Thanks for the response,

I feel as though the combat width issue, isn't that realistic, at least not as it applies to this particular situation, I mean its not like they my soldiers are not going to join the battle from the front lines, they are all being dropped INTO the battle.

 

[Secret Master]

Even with the bug in place, PARA are a poor choice for dropping by themselves on targets. They should be used in conjunction other attacks to open width, or to seize undefended ports/complete encirclements.

PARA lose most of their ORG on a drop, and if they don't have a place to retreat, they are as good as dead. This assumes all PARA make it to the drop zone; if you lose transport aircraft, you can lose troops enroute.

 

[Dalwin]

You should have spread them out and dropped a few on the port and a few into each surrounding province. These can then attack from multiple directions. WIth 24 divisions you had enough to repeat this on 3 ports simultaneously.

 

[DamdIfINo99]

I dropped all of them on the port town of Portsmouth. It was occupied by acouple British infantry, no big deal right? 24 divisions might get cut down in half or many thirds, but would eventually take it , no?

Well the entire stack got wiped

Here's the only part where you went wrong. Personally, I actually make my PARA Divisions 40 combat width which means I could effectively hit 12 tiles with PARA assuming a total combat width of 80-per tile.

The part I implore you to change is your drop strategy. Avoid the following areas:
- Ports
- Coasts* (Most of the time)
- Cities (Sometimes)
*Coasts along with Islands tend to be ambiguous for PARA. Use your naval forces to scout these areas and determine whether they are fit for PARA landings or if MAR should be used.

@Secret Master and @Dalwin summed it up pretty well with avoiding occupied areas and hitting multiple locations.

 

[RISINGSOUTH92]

Not sure if its black ice or If I am doing something wrong but, when I drop paratrooper they have no organization.

 

[NikkTheTrick]

So England beat my men 18,000 vs 216,000 now admittedly my 216,000 were highly disorganised low on strength and had just paradropped in. So this means every single British soldier had to kill or capture 12 men in a day.

While I'm no professional tactician, I find it very difficult to believe a defending force could beat an attacking force of roughly equal provisions, that out numbers it by greater than an order of magnitude.

Game mechanics wise, you lost because of combination of combat width (only 4 of your divisions could actually fight) and low organization due to a paradrop. Once the original 4 divisions lost, others had no chance to reinforce them yet. This resulted in a lost battle. With no province to retreat, that means a surender.

Regarding how realistic it is, keep in mind that you have dropped a horrendous number of troops into a small area. Without giving those troops any chance to get into order. With over 200 000 troops dropped at the same time, there would likely have been severe, and highly demoralizing, causalties due to paratroopers colliding in mid-air.
The paradropped army quickly became a disorganized mess, where soldiers did not know who is where, fired on each other and were mopped up by defenders who actually had a chance to operate like a decent military.

A more effective approach would have been to drop all around the target. That would be 2-3 divisions per province, so you would cover provinces around Portsmouth and then one or two provinces beyond (will give you some trategic depth). Let paratroopers get in order in relative peace (recover organization) and then assault the defenders the old-fashioned way.

Also, if you had a province captured near the port, the paras that dropped on the port could at least retreat to it and re-org.

 

[egill]

I've found the biggest hurdle with paradropping on the UK to be provincial AA - zones with 5 AA will knock 90% plus of your para's org and strength off.

Even so, spread out the drops so you can attk port(s) from multiple squares and you can often win a port long enough to transport a sizable army by sea across the channel in a swarm. The Royal Navy can only intercept a low number of the transport fleet at a time so a fair number should get thru.

As far as organisation I use 20 width for paras - more org and durability
On Companies I agree that hospitals don't help much; Arty and Eng (def and digging in) are a must; Recon (Init) and AT provide a nice battle bonus esp if the Brits have armour.

Paras come into their own on larger fronts (Russia). Once you're breaking the line in 1-2 places drop paras just ahead of the breakthrough and along the back of the Red front.
It really helps destabilise their line and allows more encirclements. Remember to turn off the paras automatic frontline once you land, so they stay in place - even better transfer them to a defensive FM once they are in supply.

 

[DamdIfINo99]

Not sure if its black ice or If I am doing something wrong but, when I drop paratrooper they have no organization.

That's meant to simulate the disorganization of the initial drop. Imagine small squads of light infantry being confronted by infantry and armor. If you were to simulate the Normandy landings, then you would drop PARA one province away from the coast.

 

[RISINGSOUTH92]

That's meant to simulate the disorganization of the initial drop. Imagine small squads of light infantry being confronted by infantry and armor. If you were to simulate the Normandy landings, then you would drop PARA one province away from the coast.

It makes since but, they get destroyed almost immediately.

 

[Galleblære]

I've found dropping paratroopers all over Wales is a good place to get a foothold and create chaos in the UK. Ship over a few more heavy hitting units, and you should steamroll the UK in no time.

 

[Praetori]

Paras dropping on-top of regular division should be squashed by any sane logic (most historical drops that occurred in areas controlled by regular divisions had those para portions that landed in actual staging areas of the opposition slaughtered). All successful post-drop operations were in areas that were not completely controlled by the opposition (equivalent to landing in empty provinces) with a few minor exceptions that are on a scale too small for the HOI scope.

It's really a squeeze to get paras into a grand-strategy-game with such low combat resolution in terms of "provinces" and no mechanics for coexistence. They're really only effective (in terms of cost/effort) when used on either empty provinces or in conjunction with other "normal" attacks (exploits aside).

Their greatest strength, aside from the mobility of a paradrop, is to drop in unprotected provinces around/behind an important objective (and worst-case on top of it as well) to increase the total available frontage for regular divisions. Thus if you have a numerical superiority but can't utilize it due to a lack of available frontage (as in landings or channelizing terrain) then paras are your friend.
They're also marginally good for island hopping or taking control of awkward provinces in far away places or behind enemy lines or as quick reinforcements to far-away places, like northern Norway, Greenland etc.

Exploity tactics like fort-sploiting, dropping them behind enemies to cut large areas off or across retreat-paths works well enough but it's not something I would recommend as the AI is struggling as it is already.

PS: I would really have loved to see a set of specific combat "tactics" that were only enabled through paradrop combat which would enable "regular" attacking divisions to benefit from the paradrops (increased movement-speed, more breakthrough, less defense for the defender etc) and actually make them useful.

 

[War Emblem]

As has been pointed out poor tactics led to this defeat not the game. In fact the game performed exactly as it should. Can you imagine if an army dropped 216K men around one city? The logistical chaos would be a nightmare. Those dug in British have MGs you know and it's pretty hard to miss 216K men dropping. Shooting 12 of you out of the sky each seems pretty realistic to me.

A more sound plan would have been to set up two naval invasions and have your paratroops make 3 drops of 8 each in close support of the invasions. This surely would have established a bridgehead for you.

 

[wraithstalke]

Yeah, sure they should have logistics problems, but he's got a local superiority of 10 - 1, and doesn't even displace the garrisioned divisions.

 

[Searry]

Paradrop on the port and the surrounding areas. Attack the port from every direction with small width paras. After the port is taken just turn the divisions into some monster divisions. The game is so broken you can nearly instantly ship tons of new equipment and men to the one port.

 

[Meglok]

Isn't Portsmouth covered by about 5 P-AA? Avoid dropping in areas covered by lots of P-AA, it deorgs Paras even worse than normal.

The others have all commented on how you can improve your tactics by spreading out your drops.

 

[Daddl]

If you want the realism explanation: You shouldn't drop paratroopers directly into cities, even worse when its that many. Its suicide. Imagine 200.000 men in the air, defenders don't even need to aim, they just shoot in the air furiously with all they have and kill two thirds or rather more before they even land, and now imagine death people falling from the sky, while the poor paratroopers try to land - where? On top of the houses? They rather strangle themselves and each other in their parachutes.

There is a reason why the allies didn't drop paratroopers directly into Cherbourg, or if you take a look at Market Garden, they landed outside the cities and bridges and not directly on them. They sure knew why.

Now you could say a HoI4 province is a larger scale and resembles the city and its surroundings so there should be enough space, but somewhere there needs to be a simplification, and if we take the city just as the urban area itself the result the game produces is fairly correct.

 

[Praetori]

Yeah, sure they should have logistics problems, but he's got a local superiority of 10 - 1, and doesn't even displace the garrisioned divisions.

Doesn't matter as paras of the time and age didn't land as organized units. It's all fine and dandy if you can get a few hours undisturbed to collect and deploy them but something else entirely if you drop on top of enemy formations (Chania being a good/terrible example).
The problem is that the combat mechanics doesn't allow for the granularity of paradrops and infiltration as "movement-is-attack" and single province dominance rules the game.

 

[bERt0r]

I believe even in Operation Market Garden, paradroppers didnt land right on top of enemy divisions. They landed behind the enemy lines, then made their way to their target bridges and tried to hold them, while the main allied force was advancing. Paradropping right on top of an enemy division seems suicide.