SF - Air Leader traits not working?

[Dakk]

SF 2.03c, vanilla, checksum: SIDW

During a recent play-through I noted that I never saw any effect by the Air Leader trait "Superior Air Tactician". While trying to find out what it did, I was intrigued to find that no one seemed to KNOW what it does.
Example threads:
Superior Air Tactician?
What is Tactical Attack?
HOI3Wiki

The common denominator of all threads I've come across is that there was never a confirmed effect. The Wiki doesn't even list it. Still, it's in the game and defined in the trait-file.

My curiosity was peeked by this, and I tried in game to see if I could coax forward an effect by any mean. While doing so I also tried the other traits. I tried different set-ups, but the bulk of my tries where done as the USA on the 1944 scenario (ready access to all kinds of planes on the UK mainland, that can just zip across the Channel). These are the results:

Traits tested, alone or in combination:

• Night Flyer - supposedly gives a 10% combat modifier to air-to-air attacks (night_attack = 0.1)
• Carpet Bomber - supposedly gives a 10% combat modifier to strategic bombing (strategic_attack = 0.1)
• Fleet Destroyer - supposedly gives a 10% combat modifier to naval bombing (naval_attack = 0.1)
• Superior Air Tactician - ? (tactical_attack = 0.1)

Planes used:

• Multi-Role, FTR
• Tactical Bomber, TAC
• Strategic Bomber, STR

Missions flown:

• Air Superiority
• Air Intercept
• Strategic Bombing
• Logistical Bombing
• Runway Cratering
• Installation Strike
• Ground Attack
• Interdiction
• Port Strike

Result:
Night Flyer - adds 10% to all missions flown at night
Carpet Bomber - no visible effect in any mission
Fleet Destroyer - no visible effect in any mission
Superior Air Tactician - no visible effect in any mission


I know there has been speculations that the effect is well hidden in the tool-tip, so I've made sure I've had leaders with different traits in the same battle at the same time so I could spot any different %. No luck. Also, some people speculate there's an effect, but it's not visible (a bug presumably), which sounds unlikely, but in either case we need to confirm that there's no visible effect first.

I'm reluctant to post this in the bug-forum yet, because I find it so wildly unlikely that the traits do not work, and yet there's not a single post stating so with certainty... So, please, fellow forumites - I'd appreciate having this confirmed or (preferably) refuted! And let's not do "I heard..", in-game testing is the name of the game

Addendum:

• Tank Buster - supposedly reduces the defending divisions softness by 20%

..have not been tested by me. Feel free to do it. I also got a feeling a similar thread might be needed for Naval traits.

 

[Slan]

Dakk asked me to check and confirm or refute his results in this case. And it would be the farthest from my mind to decline such a challenge!

So, the topic is the Air Leader traits. There are 5 + 1 of them:

• Superior Air Tactician,
• Carpet Bomber,
• Night Flyer,
• Fleet Destroyer,
• Tank Buster,
• + Spooter, which should be an Air Trait as well.

To test them, I will use Germany (because they have leaders for every trait), the '36 scenario (because there's not much going on yet so I can focus on the things I want to), the latest patch 2.03c and I will use the noneutrality cheat to allow me to DoW Denmark (because they have a navy, a ground force, they are close, and I don't have to worry about their army or airforce).

The idea is to use a 3xTAC bomber Wing to do different missions with the different traited Air Leaders and check the tooltips and the results of the missions. I will use TAC-s because they can do any mission (except of course CAG-duty). I also set IC allocation to Upgrades to 0, so it won't interfere with my experiment.

First I thought I would do an in-depth analysis, detailing every step, but I will spare you that, and will only state my results.

Results:

• The Night Flyer trait works as intended: it decreases the penalty from fighting at night.
• I won't do a long enough statistical test to have scientific level proof, but I do feel that the Carpet Bomber trait does help Strategic Bombing missions (the damage done per mission is random, but I felt that the average damage was higher with 'Lentzsch' (who has the trait but only 2 skill) than with 'Christiansen' (who has no trait, but 3 skill)). It also helped Logistical Bombing, Runway Cratering. The damage done to the Ports themselves doesn't seem to be effected by either the Fleet Destroyer or the Carpet Bomber.
• I also tried to check the effect of the Superior Air Tactician trait, but that's a hard one. I suspect that it does help with air-to-air combat, but it is hard to experiment with because if you beat the enemy, they will retreat and you can't really attack them again.
• I couldn't check the Spotter trait, as that would need a very long experiment for which I don't really have the time. Let's just hope that it works. (Although I very much doubt that air detection has any role at all, so it should effect the chance of air wings detecting ships on the sea.)
• I also can't say anything about the Tank-Buster, becuase trying that one out would need me to be in war with a nation that actually has tanks, which would make a controlled experiment virtually impossible, due to the chaos that would result in.
• On a related note: for some reason, Bombers are damaged on missions even when there's no AA in the target province.
• Also note, that air wings are repaired from top to bottom, but damaged evenly. That means that if you don't let your air wings that consist of multiple air groups rest from time to time, then the first group might remain in good shape, but the rest might turn up pretty beaten up.

All in all, I think the traits do work, but actually proving that would need very in-depth experimentation.

 

[Charles Reeps]

Slan: if the bombers flew over any province containing provincial AA, each level of AA will get a shot at them. This applies to any aircraft, not just bombers. So your bombers might have flown over provincial AA on the way to the target.

 

[Slan]

Slan: if the bombers flew over any province containing provincial AA, each level of AA will get a shot at them. This applies to any aircraft, not just bombers. So your bombers might have flown over provincial AA on the way to the target.

No, they didn't, as there was no AA on the way. And (although I didn't test this nor did I pay any attention to this ever) AFAIK provincial AA only attacks planes that are directly attacking the province. That is because planes are 'teleporting' some provinces every hour, because they are faster than jumping only one province per hour, so it wouldn't work really well if they attacked the planes in every province.

 

[Dakk]

Thanks alot Slan! I knew your scientific side would get the better of you

A longer reply is forthcoming, but I was curious right now - did you ever get tool tips showing any effect (or did you notice and effect just based on the efficiency over time with/without trait?)

 

[Slan]

Thanks alot Slan! I knew your scientific side would get the better of you

A longer reply is forthcoming, but I was curious right now - did you ever get tool tips showing any effect (or did you notice and effect just based on the efficiency over time with/without trait?)

Over-time estimation. The only trait that had a direct effect on the tooltip was the Night Flyer, which clearly showed that the plane had only -40% on its attack value from fighting during the night, while it was -50% when the leader didn't have the trait. With the others, it was a not-so-well grounded statistical experiment.

 

[Charles Reeps]

No, they didn't, as there was no AA on the way. And (although I didn't test this nor did I pay any attention to this ever) AFAIK provincial AA only attacks planes that are directly attacking the province. That is because planes are 'teleporting' some provinces every hour, because they are faster than jumping only one province per hour, so it wouldn't work really well if they attacked the planes in every province.

Thanks Slan, the book was wrong again. Flew bombers from Tokyo to Amsterdam. Along the way they "stopped" in three enemy provinces containing AA. Either the AA had terrible aim, or it didn't shoot! I'm inclined to believe the latter.

 

[Lord Solar]

The only trait that had a direct effect on the tooltip was the Night Flyer, which clearly showed that the plane had only -40% on its attack value from fighting during the night, while it was -50% when the leader didn't have the trait.

So the effect is measured in percentage points? Or is everything always calculated from the base 100 %?

 

[Slan]

So the effect is measured in percentage points? Or is everything always calculated from the base 100 %?

Modifiers are percentage, yes. But they are calculated additively, not multiplicatively. (There was some debate over this a while ago.)

But for some reason the base is either not 100% or there are some hidden modifiers (ie. not mentioned on the tooltip), because the numbers don't always add up.

 

[DerKomtur]

For more rigorous experiments, why not start a multiplayer session? When both sides are human controlled, both can disable reinforcements,... Generally make sure conditions are equal (e.g. prior to checking tank buster trait).
(If anybody knows how to change which network ports HoI uses, I can take part in these experiments.)

 

[Slan]

For more rigorous experiments, why not start a multiplayer session? When both sides are human controlled, both can disable reinforcements,... Generally make sure conditions are equal (e.g. prior to checking tank buster trait).
(If anybody knows how to change which network ports HoI uses, I can take part in these experiments.)

That's a good idea, but one that I won't attempt to realize. It would either need two separate players in separate locations, making it rather hard to coordinate, or one player on two separate computers, both of which can run HoI3 at a decent rate, which I don't have. (Starting HoI3 twice on the same computer would hurt performance quite a lot, if it would even work in the first place, as it usually crashes the computer...)

 

[tanku]

Modifiers are percentage, yes. But they are calculated additively, not multiplicatively. (There was some debate over this a while ago.)

But for some reason the base is either not 100% or there are some hidden modifiers (ie. not mentioned on the tooltip), because the numbers don't always add up.

Numbers don't always add up because they are not simply added. They are multiplied using equation similar to this: E = 100% * (1 + Mod1)*(1+Mod2)*...

I did some testing on air battles (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=499298) to find out how air modifiers are calculated in reality and I didn't find any hidden leader effect that is somehow included in total attack or defence effectiveness.

My findings are the same as yours that only Night Flyer trait gives visible bonus. If other traits gives any bonuses than their are not included in total effectiveness displayed in tooltip.