Some thoughts on Para and Airborne Divisions

[demon72]

1. Should Para be allowed to drop on every terrain type (from the beginning)?

Jumps on Mountain-, Jungle-, Forest- or Swamp-terrain seems somehow wrong (at least with most WWII-equipment).

Maybe Para II or III (assuming better training and and more controllable parachutes / better equipment) should allow additional terrain types.


2. Should a distinction be made between Para and Airborne?

Airborne could carry light vehicles, light ART and more supply and would provide more mobility and firepower that way.

Therefore you would need to produce Gliders that get lost after landing.

Airborne should only be allowed in Plains and Deserts.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

1. Should Para be allowed to drop on every terrain type (from the beginning)?

Players choice.

2. Should a distinction be made between Para and Airborne?

No.

 

[ThaHoward]

If they drop in mountain terrain they will likely be dropped in the plains, valleys etc there. Austria for an instance is not 100% mountains even if the map look like that.

Vienna is not literally placed on a mountain top, and neither will the paradropped troops. Swamps could perhaps increase accidents/casualties.

 

[Louella]

tbh, airborne & parachute divisions are kind of in an awkward spot in HOI4.

The airborne landings on D-Day, and the large operations of Market Garden & Varsity, only translate to single-province attacks, given the scale of the map.

So a single battalion of coast guard troops in the coast forts of Normandy, can somehow also simultaneously occupy all the farmland south of the beaches, enough to effectively prevent parachute landings.
HOI4's parachute penalties, mean that airborne attacks against occupied provinces are extremely unlikely to succeed. 80% penalty to ORG for 96 hours, means paradropped divisions are likely to get de-org'd and destroyed long before the battle concludes.

So instead, parachute divisions are best used to drop behind enemy lines into unoccupied provinces. This only really works in North Africa, where there's a thin strip of provinces, and it's possible to trap opposing forces into a pocket. It can sometimes work in Italy too, since most of italy is only 3 or 4 provinces wide.

The range of transport aircraft and the numerous other issues with paradrops (there are many many threads where people struggle to understand why their airborne divisions aren't parachuting), just add to the problem of paratroopers being of limited real use.



Should the mechanics be reworked, then I would like air supply and paradrop missions for transport aircraft to be reworked.
Air supply should be a separate function, possibly several different functions, to allow people to mod things as they see fit.

1. Air supply from airbase-airbase, by aircraft landing at the destination, which allows a lot of supplies to be carried, over long distances.
2. Air supply by air-dropped containers, would be shorter ranged.
3. Dropping paratroopers.
4. Towing gliders for glider troops.

Capacity of the aircraft should matter. This could allow mods for things like the Me323, if there is an attribute for how much supply each aircraft can carry.
The size of the airborne division should also affect the number of aircraft required to transport it, again, dependent on the capacity of each aircraft.
Older strategic bombers, could be repurposed to perform the roles 2,3,4, again, dependent on capacity of aircraft.

Airborne operations were extremely affected by the amount of transport aircraft available - Operation Market Garden required basically the Allies entire fleet of transport aircraft, and it was still not enough to do it in one drop, and that was only ~3 divisions.
Hoi4 allows you to do drops much larger than Market Garden, and with a lot fewer aircraft. This doesn't seem right.

 

[GrandVezir]

Airborne operations were extremely affected by the amount of transport aircraft available - Operation Market Garden required basically the Allies entire fleet of transport aircraft, and it was still not enough to do it in one drop, and that was only ~3 divisions.

Although each of those historic Allied airborne divisions was 3-4 times the size of default paratrooper units in HoI4.

 

[Alpha2518]

Go back to HoI3, airborne drop with full org to make them more useful. If you were to do something like drop them in Normandy now in a game, they'd be immediately wiped off and very quickly because they drop with 0 org. This make it impossible for them to fulfill their historical role. I was only able to achieve airborne invasions in a MP game once against Japan and that's because the Japanese player was incompetent and this allowed me to build sea ports in the northern Japanese islands for supply and then bring my army over. For reference, I was playing as the Soviet Union.

Even my best friend, who was Germany, told the Japanese player exactly what I would do and how to stop it and he was exactly right. If I was playing against a competent player, my invasion would've failed from the first airborne drop and there'd be no second chances since I didn't want to wait on trying to build up a fleet for a naval invasion. I needed forces freed up to go take on Germany as well as additional factories. Mostly the factories.