I don't have issue with them deploying a lot of planes, but over 7000 in southern England is ludicrous.
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I suspect the issue comes from all aircraft being available for operations all of the time (and also having much lower accident/breakdown rates than historically) - so it's possible for the net number of aircraft built to be substantially lower than historical figures, but the net number of aircraft deployed being far higher. So, for example, the Luftwaffe had 2,000-3,000 aircraft for the Battle of Britain, on the most intense day (according to my super-basic Googling - so I could be off, but I'm confident the general idea is on the money) only 850 sorties were flown, and that was the most intense day. So in a HoI4 Battle of Britain, most of those aircraft are over Britain or the Channel all of the time, whereas historically, only a small fraction of them are, with the rest being repaired or serviced in-between operations.
It's also worth keeping in mind that those 850 sorties weren't 24-hour missions - so on any given hour, the number of aircraft being deployed by the Luftwaffe would have been less again.
I'm no expert in things air though, so I might be off - but I imagine that sorting this out would require at least some mechanical changes. The best I can think of (that doesn't involve insane levels of micro) would be to have two settings for air operations - normal and surge. Normal allows maybe 20 per cent of available aircraft to actually fly at any time, while surge might push that up to 40-50 per cent, but it can only be done for a short period of time. There perhaps should be different percentage for intercept vs the rest of the missions as well. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it though, so it could well be a rubbish idea. It also creates the situation of an enemy surging and a player not being aware of it in time to do anything about it (but this could potentially be handled by intercept missions having a higher base percentage, and perhaps no surge set-up - so that interception is a natural 'surge' counter?) Either way, it does add some mechanical and UI complexity to a game that's already got plenty happening.
It's also worth keeping in mind that those 850 sorties weren't 24-hour missions - so on any given hour, the number of aircraft being deployed by the Luftwaffe would have been less again.
I'm no expert in things air though, so I might be off - but I imagine that sorting this out would require at least some mechanical changes. The best I can think of (that doesn't involve insane levels of micro) would be to have two settings for air operations - normal and surge. Normal allows maybe 20 per cent of available aircraft to actually fly at any time, while surge might push that up to 40-50 per cent, but it can only be done for a short period of time. There perhaps should be different percentage for intercept vs the rest of the missions as well. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it though, so it could well be a rubbish idea. It also creates the situation of an enemy surging and a player not being aware of it in time to do anything about it (but this could potentially be handled by intercept missions having a higher base percentage, and perhaps no surge set-up - so that interception is a natural 'surge' counter?) Either way, it does add some mechanical and UI complexity to a game that's already got plenty happening.
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I imagine the number of planes only hurts the Axis in Singleplayer because you have limited amounts of Fuel/Oil so you cannot keep that many in the air. Where the allies if they have 7,000 can probably put all 7,000 in the air because their fuel/oil is sort of unlimited.
If the Germany-player allows the UK to import Oil via ship, then those 7k planes are real challenge.
If the Germany-player has a well functioned submarine-force, those 7k planes could fly 3 to 5 days and the fuel-storage is and remains empty.
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Wasn't everyone complaining the AI is too dumb and the game too easy? Now you request the exact opposite: to make the AI dumber?
I also made the mistake of ignoring subs in a Germany run, you learn in the process something about history: what the Germans were trying to accomplish. A lot of texts say they were trying to literally starve the UK which is stupid, as if the British didn't know how to plant and cook potatoes... In fact they were trying to "starve" the UK from oil and bauxite. And we learn that if they had succeded it would have changed the war.
As for the number itself, I'm pretty sure the USA could field more than 7k fighters in any airzone it wanted, so it is not totally nuts, although real life UK had a slower production than in the game. But real life UK built tons of tanks while the AI barely builds any as the UK.
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Raid their convey, cut their oil import sources, their planes would then become useless.
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I've never been one to complain the AI is too dumb yes there were issues early on with complete abandonment of fronts, but I have consistently griped about how unrealistic it is in the deployment and usage of forces. Something needs to be done to actually truly limit the amount of physical aircraft and divisions that can be deployed actively. It's completely unrealistic that any nation would deploy such numbers of units actively at a single time, as someone previously stated it doesn't factor into consideration damage to aircraft requiring time to repair during which they either have no replacement for the pilot or draw upon another aircraft that wasn't previously being utilized. This is also a problem with ground forces as you have the AI keeping a small stockpile of equipment in reserve but otherwise just slamming every piece of equipment beyond that into divisions. How to implement such actual limitations is a matter for discussion but it currently makes the game unfun for me because I can never keep pace with the AI even if I cheat.
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This is not a solution to the problem, merely a bandaid to make victory possible.
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Whether or not you ruin their supply, just put 8000 up?
No matter who you're playing, you should have a sizeable airforce. Especially as Germany.
AI is trash and it's not hard to overcome their fighter spam with your own, of superior planes.
Also it's better for them to have so many active planes because it's another thing they need to waste fuel on.
No matter who you're playing, you should have a sizeable airforce. Especially as Germany.
AI is trash and it's not hard to overcome their fighter spam with your own, of superior planes.
Also it's better for them to have so many active planes because it's another thing they need to waste fuel on.
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It's not hard if you min/max, but guess what that's not really fun.
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You don't need to min/max anything to get a decent airforce. 20 factories on fighters ASAP will almost keep you entirely covered for the game against the fighters the UK, USA and SOV can put up.
It's just common sense rather than trying to min/max your playthrough.
It's taking knowledge of how the AI plays the game and min/maxing your production to counter it. That's not fun, that's just cheesing the game to win.
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Well then I suggest you don't build any army because that's taking advantage of knowing that the AI will also have an army, and that's cheesing the game.
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Imagine assuming someone disagreeing with you is trolling. Yeowch.
Explain how it's different.
We all know how many divisions we need to say, take Poland and France, why is it any different knowing how many fighters we need?
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I agree that it's absurd to have that many planes in the air at the same time, but on the other hand so are the game not acting like there are that many planes in the air. This is obvious from the losses taken as they are far less then one would expect if thousands of fighters were facing off. We can consider it like HoI uses the availible airplanes and generates a similar result compared with history wich means that everything is taken in to account, including that not all planes will actually be flying all the time.
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I like this way of thinking of it - that the aircraft are the number of aircraft assigned to operating in that area - not the actual number of aircraft operating at any point in time
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I agree. Aircraft spam along with division spam are two of the main things that make this game pretty unplayable for me at times.
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I agree about performance and about aircraft . About division spam my opinion is:
the ai is dumb dealing with open space. Its just not reactive.... It will f.e. let you execute your spearhead operation doing nothing: it won't try to close the gap, it won't push against it at all. It will just move divisions to it and then do nothing waiting for the battle planer bonus to increase... And if the ai has only few divisions it is extremely easy to break through the front and then there is nothing behind it to resist at all. You dont even need infantry divisions to secure the flanks of your tank attack because its not going to attack fast. You just encircle the whole thing and it stays there doing nothing.
So fewer divisions -> easier game . But obviously the best solution would be a more reactive ai.
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Stellaris's Command Points mechanism is something that might be useful if adapted to HOI4. Some limitation on the amount of aircraft that can be operated simultaneously, due to limitations on crew training etc.
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