Various Air Questions

[mergele]

So I am back at HoI3 again after a year of abscenes and I got a list of some questions I either never knew in the first place or have forgotten by now in regards to air.

1) I know that on release the defensive stats on ground units were meaningless due to a bug in the files. Was this also true for air units and if so has this also been fixed?

2) Airfield bombing, which stat does it use for damaging the enemies planes?

3) Missiles. I think I used them once and I got no idea what the deal with those was. The wiki says they are one-use units, but I clearly remember using them just like any other air wing. If so, what is their advantage compared to STRAT?

4) Do planes repair and regain ORg even if they are currently flying a mission when midnight hits? And does the 'reserve' command in this situation still work?

 

[marxianTJ]

For ground units yes, for air units no.

STRAT attack I'm pretty sure, but that's one that's never been tested I've only seen it really be effective when using STRATs

They're more expensive in LS but cheaper to build overall. Still not all that useful though when compared to STRATs or just not building any strategic attack at all. This is definitely the case where some mechanics were ported from hoi2 without a *ton* of thought about how it would actually work.

I don't know the answer to #4 I would assume they would regain some org at midnight if not landed just no STR repairs (which would affect org regain). The reserve command is mostly utilized for moving planes from one airfield to the next without taking the 50% org penalty lol. I'm not sure anybody *really* knows what it does perse.

Welcome back

 

[mergele]

1) So all those + air defense techs are utterly useless, nice to kow.

3) I do generally like to have some potent strat potential at hand for infra busting in preparation of offensives or steralizing of enemy breakthroughs and since I this time wated to try a SU strategy that's very light on tech I just grabbed all the rocket techs leading up to the flying bomb because why not.

4) I'm refusing to use reserve command for rebasing, call it houserules . I do have found it to be quite nice to cut down a bit on micromanagement during low-intensity periods.

 

[Count Blue]

4) Do planes repair and regain ORg even if they are currently flying a mission when midnight hits? And does the 'reserve' command in this situation still work?

No, and yes I think. The reserve command seems to work to me at least.
However all planes take some micro over time.
Leaving them completly unattended for prolonged periods of time is not adviced.

 

[mergele]

Of course, yes. But having one wing cover the area of two wings with faster healing can extend the time until reshuffelling is needed by two or three days sometimes if little is currently going on.

 

[Kovax]

1) I know that on release the defensive stats on ground units were meaningless due to a bug in the files. Was this also true for air units and if so has this also been fixed?

2) Airfield bombing, which stat does it use for damaging the enemies planes?

3) Missiles. I think I used them once and I got no idea what the deal with those was. The wiki says they are one-use units, but I clearly remember using them just like any other air wing. If so, what is their advantage compared to STRAT?

4) Do planes repair and regain ORg even if they are currently flying a mission when midnight hits? And does the 'reserve' command in this situation still work?

1 - The game took some of the numbers straight from HOI2, but HOI2 used decimal fractions and HOI3 used percentages. Giving the planes a +0.05 increase with a tech caused a 5% improvement in HOI2, but the same +0.05 tech boost in HOI3 only gave it a 0.05% increase in effectiveness, trivial at best, if not completely ignored due to rounding. Fixing the problem (using a 5% increase) causes major differences in balance between air-to-air and air-to-surface combat results, so fixing one breaks the others. Unless the game is carefully rebalanced between air, land, and sea combats, the dysfunctional techs are the lesser evil. I assume it's easily fixable, but the rebalance afterwards is going to require a lot of testing (I've dabbled with the related files, to change the decimal fraction values to percentages, and then attempt to rebalance the game, with results that might be "marginally less broken", or perhaps just broken a bit differently). I'm not entirely positive, but the Toughness and Defensiveness values as they are now MAY (or may not) have some effect in air-to-ground combat, but are totally useless in air-to-air battles.

2 - Runway cratering doesn't damage enemy aircraft, it merely damages airfields, reducing the number of aircraft that can repair at a time.

3 - After the little bit I read here on the forums, I never bothered to research missiles. It seems that they're treated as regular (but somewhat cheaper) air units, except that they're automatically destroyed at the end of the attack, and then you suffer National Unity penalties for having your air units destroyed on a bombing mission.

4 - Planes regain a small amount of ORG per hour, regardless of whether they're flying or grounded. Knowing how Paradox works, the amount probably depends on the infrastructure of the province they're flying over at the time. Planes airborne at midnight will not repair. If doing "round the clock" bombing with separate day and night groups, I try to rotate missions between the day and night groups, so the latter can get some repair time.

 

[marxianTJ]

I've definitely *seen* landed air craft targeted by STRATs in runway cratering missions - I'd have to do some experimentation to determine what exactly was going on - but I was pretty shocked to see it having previously thought such a thing didnt happen lol.

 

[Lautipus]

Usually I don´t bother with planes, just get interceptors and multi role to keep my sky clean.
Regarding missiles, I found some use for them. Let me explain, as Germany in the 1944 scenario, you can do logistic/port strike (not sure which one exactly) on the Normandy beaches, so you don´t risk your airplanes, which would be a suicide. I did this also in Italy (the Allies have only 2 ports there). So the troops don´t get all the supplies they needed, eventually they will run out of them and than I was capable to beat them with ease.
I presume that you could also destroy infrastructure behind some enemy units, so that you can slow them down and encircle them.

 

[JanKaas]

1 - The game took some of the numbers straight from HOI2, but HOI2 used decimal fractions and HOI3 used percentages. Giving the planes a +0.05 increase with a tech caused a 5% improvement in HOI2, but the same +0.05 tech boost in HOI3 only gave it a 0.05% increase in effectiveness, trivial at best, if not completely ignored due to rounding. Fixing the problem (using a 5% increase) causes major differences in balance between air-to-air and air-to-surface combat results, so fixing one breaks the others. Unless the game is carefully rebalanced between air, land, and sea combats, the dysfunctional techs are the lesser evil. I assume it's easily fixable, but the rebalance afterwards is going to require a lot of testing (I've dabbled with the related files, to change the decimal fraction values to percentages, and then attempt to rebalance the game, with results that might be "marginally less broken", or perhaps just broken a bit differently). I'm not entirely positive, but the Toughness and Defensiveness values as they are now MAY (or may not) have some effect in air-to-ground combat, but are totally useless in air-to-air battles..

Does anyone know if one of the mods out there tried to address this?

 

[Kovax]

I presume that you could also destroy infrastructure behind some enemy units, so that you can slow them down and encircle them.

Having the German air force bomb the infrastructure behind the Maginot Line to delay reinforcements, while using TAC strikes against the defenders with different wings by day and night, can help take out the defenses in a matter of days. I've launched attacks on the Maginot Line just above the bend, where it's not protected by the river, with Engineer-equipped divisions from 3 adjacent provinces, while bombing by day and night, and had the defenders collapse in around 3-4 days, while reinforcements were delayed by air strikes until my own units had taken the fortifications. The attackers went through, then turned up and down behind the line, causing the defenders to abandon the entrenchments rather than risk encirclement. After breaking just one province on the line, you can take about another 75% of the Maginot Line without a fight. After that, you've got a multi-lane highway into the heartland of France.

In another game, I didn't add any AT to the German army, and used TAC and other aircraft to neutralize Soviet armor. It worked well enough most of the time, and the inclusion of additional soft attack (more INF and ART) provided a decisive advantage against any division without MARM or HARM. Since then, I've limited my use of AT to one division per Corps, which is sufficient to have it where you need it most of the time, without saddling every unit with it.

Normally, air power is an important addition to almost any combat where you're not inflicting a overwhelmingly high ratio of casualties on the enemy. Air attacks not only reduce enemy Strength (meaning less of them shooting at your guys on the ground), but reduce enemy Organization, meaning that they'll break and retreat earlier. Initially, I send in groups of 3 TAC to assist ground battles, each with a group of 3 INT on Intercept to cover the TAC if they're jumped by the opposing INT. Any larger stacks (4+) cause unacceptable stacking penalties if I end up with both TAC and INT fighting: 6 planes do no more damage than 5 for most types of air missions, but defend against damage a bit better, and 7+ will actually inflict LESS damage on the enemy. If I'm attacking enemy bombers, I may want two groups of 3 INT in on the attack, or else a larger single group of 4-6 planes.

The air war mechanics take a bit of time and effort to understand, but they can become extremely powerful as the techs advance, if used properly.