Was the air force overpowered in HOI2?

[joeenochs]

It is obvious that the air force has been nerfed in HOI3 compared to HOI2. People keep saying that the air force was too powerful in HOI2 so it had to be done. I don't think it is true. The air force was very powerful in WW2 in real life (as is today) and if you choose to ignore this important game aspect, you should have a really big problem. In HOI2 a digged in division in a province with some anti air installation hardly took any damage, but a fleeing division could be bombed into none existence. Exactly how it should be. Why was ground attack and interdiction nerfed?

 

[Inbrainsane]

"Why does it always rain on me..." *sing*

IMO, the current "nerf" is mainly caused by the permanent bad weather and the laggy interface. Its just too much hassle to micromanage it efficiently.


I hope this will be fixed in the future.



Its sad, that air units can still be wiped out in combat. A major part of any air unit is staff, logistics and ground crew. And I dont see, why they can be killed in air combat on an organisational level.

 

[unmerged(56465)]

They certainly aren't overpowered in the latest version of Armageddon. The casualties they take from even level one flak are simply hideous. And increasing the surface defense in the unit file, strangely enough, doesn't even seem to help much.

 

[unmerged(106255)]

I'm glad they got the nerf and the stacking penalty. In HOI2, a flight of 16 cas killed half the German army in one of my campaigns. Cool the first time, but an utter letdown once I knew of it.

 

[ComTrav]

NAV seems to have taken the biggest hit (though that might be the crazy always-raining-at-sea weather.) They were really, really good in Hoi2.

TAC/CAS have turned around plenty of battles for me, though they're no longer Death Stars capable of wiping whole units off the map.

Transports are better now because the logistics system makes them worth building.

And STRATs got a huge buff. You now actually have to stop them instead of ignore them. Some people actually think they're too good now, but I suspect that's more of a problem with flak not working very well. (And in 1.1c air units were almost unkillable anyway...) It's highly unlikely you will damage the National Unity of a major (they'll get a huge bonus just for intercepting you) but you can do lots of damage to IC. If you're a Carpet Bomber, Hoi3 is way better.

 

[JASGripen]

It depends. Airpower where not that strong in plain HoI2. Then it took a twist to slightly overpowered in Armageddon.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

In HoI 2 vanilla and Doomsday, airpower was a joke. 4 wings of CAS basicly annihilated whole divisions within days. I played a game as germany, just building air units and destroyed the whole allied army within 3 months.

NAV and CAG were gross. Why even bother with building a navy? Airpower maimed fleets within days, ships that took years to build were sunk by air units costing 1/5th of their IC and time.

But the worst part in HoI2 was, that only the attacked unit was allowed to shoot back at the enemy. AA brigades were simply worthless unless every unit was equipped with it - and CL and DDs couldn't really screen any capital ships. Fortunatly, this was fixed with Arma and at this point, airforce was finally somehow balanced.

And ground attack is still very, very strong in HoI3. If you look at ORG damaged caused by bombers, even 2 TAC are enough to speed up battles by a factor of 4-10.

In short: In HoI3, airforce is finally a very valuable tool, but no longer a game breaking, division killing monster.

 

[Kuciwalker]

Anyone who doesn't think airpower was horribly, horribly broken in HoI2, please read this AAR by Remble.

 

[ComTrav]

Lol, the Remble AAR was the first thing I thought of, too...

 

[Kuciwalker]

The short version: Remble annihilated several hundred Soviet divisions through Japanese airpower alone, and is in the process of doing the same to the Allied armies in Germany. This is starting from the 1944 Gotterdammerung scenario.

 

[joeenochs]

I know the AAR.

Are you sure that game mechanics were broken and not the AI?

A human US player would have brought in some interceptors and end of story. (You could argue that carriers have their own interceptors and so on but then you are already in a rather detailed discussion.)

I like a powerful air force. For equal opponents it will neutralize but if not, it is a huge advantage, which can't be overestimated.

EDIT: Didn't read through the war with the USSR though. Don't know what he exactly did. You should probably need at least some ground forces in combination with the air power. In my experience with HOI2 that is true. But even this can be debated. Because if you do not care about civil victims, you can bomb a nation into non existence from the air alone.

 

[LaDoncella]

I'm glad they got the nerf and the stacking penalty. In HOI2, a flight of 16 cas killed half the German army in one of my campaigns. Cool the first time, but an utter letdown once I knew of it.

yes, and now 2 interceptors units can hold 50 enemy planes units without receiving any damage at all

 

[Mjarr]

One thing every RTS game - regardless of genre or scale - suffers is that if there is something to exploit, high majority of people will do that. Realize that CAS in high numbers kills USSR armies alone -> build alot of CAS. Realize that high stack of NAVs will sink any fleet that floats -> make NAV superstacks which also results average strategies simply about zergrushing. Zergrush this, zergrush that, zergrushstack those etc, resulting occasionally to the paradox that not using zergrushes or exploiting high stacks is considered "lol noob" among generic gamers and stupid argument among those who have some braincells in their head.

HoI2 did have rather zergrush-alike CAS deathstars (or even tacs occasionally) due power of the ground attack mission and the fact you could have almost have unlimited air force in terms of size as there was nothing really to prevent you from building 200 CAS squadron air force and spread it in stacks of 24 around the world and destroy everything.

You could say that it is not inheritedly flawed in HoI2 by design and theory, but in practice it ends up that players will abuse everything they can even if they could make the decision to not abuse it.

 

[ComTrav]

Your argument about exploiting game mechanics is basically true for most multiplayer games. People play these to win, and that encourages a min/max mentality. (In a well-designed RTS, a good player can easily counter such strats most of the time, though...it's funny that 'zergrushing' is used for this, the original zergling rush was never that hard to stop once you realized you could attack with SCVs/Probes...)

Against an AI opponent, though, I don't know why you would bother most of the time. I suppose it's your game, and if watching CAS deathstars zap away army after army is your thing, you can play it that way.

 

[Mjarr]

Against an AI opponent, though, I don't know why you would bother most of the time.

Partitially one could say that it's because it is 'fun' in it's own ways. Alternatively people might just be too lazy to do anything else than the easy way. Yes I am completely aware that some people are looking for the challenge, but then it comes to the basic question: "Why put some effort and challenge in your game when you can just spam and zergrush everything to death?"

Of course it is related to the question what makes games fun, and often in grand strategy games dominating the entire world with country X and beating the living shit out of other countries (regardless if it's AI or not) is typically part of it and then we're moving on the line of either being efficient or wanting to have a challenge.

 

[joeenochs]

Coming back to what this means for the air force in HOI.

It is not a problem to make something powerful like the air force was in HO2. You only have to make sure that it is balanced, which means, a powerful counter measure exists. This was true for air force with HOI2 I think.

This is all for multiplayer.

For a single player game you have to also make sure, that the AI understands about the counter measure. Also when you design the game mechanics, you should have the effects on AI in mind, whether it can handle it. And thirdly you have to live with the fact, that no AI will be perfect.

Bottom line:

Whether something is overpowered, you only see in multi player. In single player you primarily learn about the flaws of the AI.

 

[enigmamcmxc]

NAV and CAG were gross. Why even bother with building a navy? Airpower maimed fleets within days, ships that took years to build were sunk by air units costing 1/5th of their IC and time.

Lets be fair, thats how it is. The Bismarck, Tirpitz, Prince of Wales, the Repluse, the Italian battleships at Taranto, the Yamato, the US battleships at Pearl Harbour or the Japanese carriers at Midway.

In my last HOI2 Doomsday game my ships got a hammering each time i engaged the Japanese surface fleet so i retailated with as many planes i could assemble and move into the area and blew them out the warer - as i would expect it to in real life.

In regards to ground losses i recall wiping out what appeared to be something like 10-20 Japanese divisions who were retreating through the use of everything i had available after one battle. Now that seemed a little OTT however divisions dug in with full org i couldnt really dent enough to launch ambphious assualts etc so from what extreme to the other imo.

 

[Mjarr]

and blew them out the warer - as i would expect it to in real life.

Planes wiping out single ships is not the issue in general, it is entirely reasonable, but a stack of 8x NAV squadrons which are able to sink 20+ ship carrier fleet (or even larger battleship fleet) in a day certainly is another story.

Or did I miss some part of history where 800 (presuming HoI2 squadron is roughly 100 planes) mainly maritime patrol\anti-sub planes blasted the entire enemy navy in four hours?

 

[enigmamcmxc]

Planes wiping out single ships is not the issue in general, it is entirely reasonable, but a stack of 8x NAV squadrons which are able to sink 20+ ship carrier fleet (or even larger battleship fleet) in a day certainly is another story.

Or did I miss some part of history where 800 (presuming HoI2 squadron is roughly 100 planes) mainly maritime patrol\anti-sub planes blasted the entire enemy navy in four hours?

Look at Midway the four main carriers wre destroyed in something 5-10 minutes from only a few bombs; the real life examples above show how only a few planes can damage or destroy the main capital ships. In real life the Royal Navy was so worried about this iirc they had an RAF unit on permant standby to provide air cover for them as much as possible in the Med.

On the other hand a number of German capital ships (heavy cruisers) iirc slipped through the channel after being harrased by hundreds (iirc) RAF bombers etc

In one of the big show downs between my Royal Navy Fleet and the main Japanese Fleet in the HOI2 game mentioned above the Jap carriers destroyed 2 battleships, seriously dammaged my carriers and wiped out an entire squadron destroyers and a few other ships while i did hardly any damage to their capital ships but did take numerous screens. To quote myself:
"They [the RAF] reaped holy vengeance on the Imperial fleet sinking three carriers and two battleships within a short space of time. They then returned to their previous duties but the naval fighting did not end. The Imperial Fleet struck back sinking yet another Royal Navy battleship and once again the RAF was called upon. In one day the decisive moment of the naval war happened; the RAF strikes annihilated the Japanese capital ships – two more carriers were sunk and a further seven other capital ships!"

Imo so they should, i didnt write down what i had used by in that game i had something 16 tactical bomber wings (in four groups) and eight straetgic wings in two groups; supported by hell loads of fighters, interceptors, eight CAS and whatever else my allies had. So the level of destruction inflicted seem appriobitaly for the ammount i threw at the Japanses.

"During October the next major naval battle took place. The Royal Navy, now patched up from the fighting earlier this year, stood toe to toe with the Japanese for yet another inconclusive battle. The Japanese fleet made a huge error and fled to port within Borneo – sensing an opportunity, after the huge success earlier this year, the RAF was called in. Over the next few days the bombers, supported by the air fleet arm from the carriers, pounded the Imperial Fleet in port but were unable to deal any sort loss to the capital ships, although they did sink several destroyers in port. Under such a hail of bombs the Japanese sallied forth, linked up with reinforcements, and struck the Royal Navy. In yet another devastating battle the Japanese sunk the light carrier HMS Ocean and the battleships Prince of Wales and the Royal Sovereign, furthermore three fleet carriers were also badly damaged. The Royal Navy’s Indian Fleet retreated and every bomber in the theatre was called upon to hunt down and destroy the Japanese fleet. With the RAF scouring all waters around Borneo, Java and Sumatra it was only a matter of time until they found the marauding Japanese fleet and unleashed hell upon them. Before the Japanese fleet was able to escape eastwards they had lost four more carriers.

....

While the navy may not have been able to deal the killing blow, they had left there mark on the Japanese and with complete air superiority no Japanese ship is now safe.
"

As learnt by the real life examples air superiority is key and ships are screwed if they dont have it.

 

[Laurwin]

I dunno, clearly if you look at the early war 'obsolete' battleships, you will notice right away that they had pretty horrible anti-air armament. This was quite true for cruisers as well, in the Royal Navy, the early war AA on board ships wasn't simply adequate in the early war. With the invention of the proximity fuse and good radar systems by the allies, things got better. Even the guns themselves changed in the case of the Royal Navy I believe, they started using the better Bofors guns as well, instead of those older WW1 pom-poms and stuff like that.

And the point that Mjarr made still stands IMO

you're talking about NAVs which are essentially maritime patrol/anti-sub aircraft such as PBY Catalina, Focke Wulf Condor and so on...
Carrier aircraft are essentially interceptors, or dive bombers (at least in hoi2 terms; the exact same airplane with USA for example F6F Hellcat)

When those slow, big and cumbersome aircraft come up against; lets say: the carrier air groups of six fleet carriers, some escort carriers, numerous light cruisers and destroyers bristling with flak guns in perfect formation... you're gonna have lots of dead bombers...

the USN fast battleships also had fairly good anti-air capabilities, with a strong escort force of cruisers and destroyers they might also probably hold their own against those kind of maritime patrol airplanes, which were of course designed to carry out bombing attacks against pretty much totally defenseless merchant ships (unless in a convoy)