Recommended air combat change: range and area concentration

[Wags43]

Edit: I apologize, I didn't realize there was a "suggestion" sub-forum. Feel free to move or delete the post, it won't happen again. (End Edit)

I was playing a game just now and ran into an issue that really needs to be looked at. In South America, I had planes stationed at the airport in the north eastern province of Suriname. I'm at war with Venezuela. Venezuela has advanced along the coast and taken the two northern coastal provinces of British Guyana and their forces now boarder the north western province of Suriname. I hope you can understand how the situation was set up: the enemy front line was one full province away from the airport.

My planes were originally assigned to the Bolivar state, as thats where the battle began. The range circle almost fully encompassed Bolivar and so the mission efficiency was very good. Now the attack proceeds and Venezuela has advanced into Brittish Guyana, so I go to reassign the mission region for my airplanes and realize that the region my planes now have to fly in is Brazil, which is massive and severely cut the mission efficiency.

So the result was, while the enemy was farther away from the airport, I had much better mission efficiency than when the enemy was closer to the airport!! The air combat range and efficiency really needs to be adjusted.

I do have a recommendation if you would hear me out. Instead of having planes target entire regions, have them be able to target individual provinces, or a user assigned group of provinces. To account for this, you can adjust the range circle. The range circle should no longer center on the airport, but instead it should center on the selected province. The planes fly straight to the province, then have enough fuel to fly in a range circle (loiter), then back home. The range circle would need to be shrunk in size to account for the distance it is away from the airport. You could also reduce efficiency some due to distance away from the airport reducing loiter time. This would be a much better implementation of range and it would allow for more direct control over air forces.

 

[Wags43]

Just thought of this:

You could keep all of the current game mechanics but add in a province focus modifier. The closer the battle is to the province clicked on when assigning the air region, the higher the efficiency. Get a bonus for combat near that selected province, with decreasing efficiency the further the combat is away from that province.

 

[SophieX]

So the result was, while the enemy was farther away from the airport, I had much better mission efficiency than when the enemy was closer to the airport!!

In my understanding of your statement:
Your mission efficiency by not covering the whole air-zone was better, than before where you could cover a complete air-zone?
Then there are some factors you might take in account:
- weather-conditions
- day-time

 

[Wags43]

Reply: It wasn't weather, it was how the range circle calculates air combat efficiency depending on the size of the state selected.

Bolivar, which is small, was about 3 province distance away from the airport, but the range circle encompassed almost the entire state, so it was high efficiency.

As the enemy moved closer to the airport, the state changed to Brazil, which is massive, and the range circle only covered a small fraction of Brazil. So by moving closer to the airport, one province away, my planes now had an extremely reduced efficiency because they can't cover all of Brazil. It wasn't just a little lower efficiency, it was a massive difference.

Really, the closer a battle is to an airport, the higher efficiency it should have. The range circle over a state makes for situations that are intuitively backwards, like the one that happened to me. It wasn't weather or any other factors, it was only how much the range circle could cover each region that affected the efficiency.

Edit: and I do understand the efficiency is low when first switching air combat to a new state. I was looking at maximum possible efficiency. And I keep my air crews on day only flight. I will sometimes do strategic bombing at night, but I didn't have any there at the time. Just Fighters and CAS only set on day flying only.

 

[Haresus]

The "quick" solution is to create smaller air zones. Air zones are smaller in areas that were more central to WW2, but massive in areas that are generally less important to HOI4 (South America, Siberia, central Africa). Massive air zones do not function very well.

I imagine one reason why there are so many large air zones is performance, more air zones probably require more calculations than one big massive air zone. However, calculating air superiority on a province or state level would probably be even more performance-heavy.

 

[Wags43]

The "quick" solution is to create smaller air zones. Air zones are smaller in areas that were more central to WW2, but massive in areas that are generally less important to HOI4 (South America, Siberia, central Africa). Massive air zones do not function very well.

I imagine one reason why there are so many large air zones is performance, more air zones probably require more calculations than one big massive air zone. However, calculating air superiority on a province or state level would probably be even more performance-heavy.

Yes, thats a great idea and would probably be the easiest to implement. But I understand what you're saying about game speed and lag. It could make it worse on some computers.

I still love the game either way and will play by whatever parameters they decide. I do like the idea of giving general orders and grand strategy without all the tedious effort of micromanaging every single detail.

 

[MechaThumper]

In my understanding of your statement:
Your mission efficiency by not covering the whole air-zone was better, than before where you could cover a complete air-zone?
Then there are some factors you might take in account:
- weather-conditions
- day-time

Its the opposite, the closer state is less efficient than the further state. It has to do with the air zone sizes and big air zones dont work very well.