Why CAS and Air are Worthless in Combat

[Jorgen_CAB]

The difference between hopeless and more hopeless is not something that really matters. AA did not stop allied airpower from being extreamly successful and may even have hurt the german war effort by the huge cost it took to just kill a single bomber. And for division AA Im not sure it had any real impact at all, allied airpower was so effective it basically paralyzed the german army.

At the and of the war things were so one sided anyway that it is impossible to judge either way, in 1944 during the early part of the invasion AA certainly had an effect. There obviously come a point when combination of enemy air and land forces are so dominant that it does not matter much.

 

[myrogia]

Something I haven't seen anyone here point out is that outfitting your entire army with AA is far from cheap either.

It's not correct to compare the cost of 1 divisions AA vs aircraft it can shoot down because the other 95% of the divisions you have will not be attacked by CAS at the same time, and their AA will be mostly useless as a result, but you still need it in case they should be attacked.


If we compare the cost of AA it's 5 per equipment at 1940 tech and to outfit a division with a solid base protection of one Line and one Support AA that requires 50 equipment = 250 cost per division.

The cost of 1936 Light SPAA is 11 and let's say we put 2 such battalions per mobile division which requires 30 LSPAA = 330 cost per division.

Now if we have 300 infantry divisions and 30 mobile divisions that's a total cost of 75000 + 9900 = ~85000 production

This cost can be put into perspective to getting 1000 CAS costing 24 each which is roughly what you need to cover 3-4 key spearhead battles sufficiently = 24000 production.

So you can actually afford to lose ~3500 CAS before you spent more on CAS than your enemy spent on AA (for an army of 330 divisions), and in return you got:

• More air superiority ( penalties to enemy divisions in combat )
• Bonuses increasing the stats for your own divisions in key combats ( which is impossible to reduce with AA )
• Damage done in key combats, especially importing for reducing the org of enemy tank divisions or 40w divisions making them impotent and allowing you to push them around.

The whole point of this thread is that you don't actually need to make noticeable investments into tech/production in order to get serious amounts of benefit against someone using CAS, so I don't know why you're conjuring up barely on-topic parameters for your fantasy.

The OP used 1936 AA tech as a support company in order to achieve his surprising results. That's 4 production cost with 20 per division totalling up to 80 total production per division. Unless you're playing "mindlessly make one division type and draw battle plan to Urals" single player, you're only going to be using AA in your actual, front line, divisions, with garrison and suppression divisions not needing them for obvious reasons. SPAA in armor divisions was already considered a "standard" thing to do because of the ridiculous AA per width and the otherwise glaring weakness of armor to CAS. Therefore, it's dishonest to add SPAA costs to this proposed new "meta" as it was already part of the old one.

80 production by 120 main infantry divisions totals out to 9600 total production. One CAS 1 is 22 production. Therefore, this proposed new meta change comes at the opportunity cost of 9600/22 = 436 CAS. This does not take into account the fact that CAS is something you will definitely be investing additional research, airbase space, production switches (therefore efficiency reductions and increasing production costs), as well as not insignificant amounts of rubber/aluminum which means lost civs to trade and/or synthetics. Even with all of these not-insignificant, unaccounted for, costs, your 436 extra CAS advantage completely evaporates in 2 months of extremely low intensity (160 width) combat. Actual combat scenarios of multiple armored breakthroughs with pinning from infantry along the line would see that time divide into mere weeks. All of this comes at the cost of putting 2 mils into AA at the start of the game, and then forgetting about it.

There are actual criticisms to be levied at OP and further inquiries to be made. The effects of air superiority over the air zone, the bonus of ground support, the benefits of CAS as a mobile response force for defending against, and in support of, armored breakthroughs. Creating a ridiculous straw man of a scenario that contradicts the very essence of OP's point is like arguing that arrmour is worthless because your 50 width, no infantry, no support company, armoured divisions can't last a day in combat.

TLDR: Fan-fiction about your anti-air only MP divisions is not evidence against the power of AA brought up by OP.

 

[TornadoWatch]

The whole point of this thread is that you don't actually need to make noticeable investments into tech/production in order to get serious amounts of benefit against someone using CAS, so I don't know why you're conjuring up barely on-topic parameters for your fantasy.

The OP used 1936 AA tech as a support company in order to achieve his surprising results. That's 4 production cost with 20 per division totalling up to 80 total production per division. Unless you're playing "mindlessly make one division type and draw battle plan to Urals" single player, you're only going to be using AA in your actual, front line, divisions, with garrison and suppression divisions not needing them for obvious reasons. SPAA in armor divisions was already considered a "standard" thing to do because of the ridiculous AA per width and the otherwise glaring weakness of armor to CAS. Therefore, it's dishonest to add SPAA costs to this proposed new "meta" as it was already part of the old one.

80 production by 120 main infantry divisions totals out to 9600 total production. One CAS 1 is 22 production. Therefore, this proposed new meta change comes at the opportunity cost of 9600/22 = 436 CAS. This does not take into account the fact that CAS is something you will definitely be investing additional research, airbase space, production switches (therefore efficiency reductions and increasing production costs), as well as not insignificant amounts of rubber/aluminum which means lost civs to trade and/or synthetics. Even with all of these not-insignificant, unaccounted for, costs, your 436 extra CAS advantage completely evaporates in 2 months of extremely low intensity (160 width) combat. Actual combat scenarios of multiple armored breakthroughs with pinning from infantry along the line would see that time divide into mere weeks. All of this comes at the cost of putting 2 mils into AA at the start of the game, bump it to 5 later, and then forgetting about it.

There are actual criticisms to be levied at OP and further inquiries to be made. The effects of air superiority over the air zone, the bonus of ground support, the benefits of CAS as a mobile response force for defending against, and in support of, armored breakthroughs. Creating a ridiculous straw man of a scenario that contradicts the very essence of OP's point is like arguing that arrmour is worthless because your 50 width, no infantry, no support company, armoured divisions can't last a day in combat.

TLDR: Fan-fiction about your anti-air only MP divisions is not evidence against the power of AA brought up by OP.

To be honest, I could make a follow up post with even more evidence.

But a lot of people think they know more about this game than they actually do, and speak with a great deal of confidence about mechanics while being insanely off-base. It's frustrating to deal with because I feel like I have to extensively prove the most basic presuppositions to even start, and even then people still try to argue about it. If I were to set up testing environments for SPAA, armor, whatever, the results would be just as bad, if not worse then what you've seen here.

But then you'll have people flooding into the thread insisting that it's 'not that bad', or whatever--Then you ask what experience they have, and it turns out they've never really strained in this game before, they don't use EAI, and they've never played multiplayer. They haven't even set up their own test environment to see for themselves, they just think it's "fine" and won't hear otherwise.

You have to write an academic-level paper to get your point across for things that I feel are incredibly obvious to anyone with actual practical experience. It's frustrating.

 

[jju_57]

On the contray. You clearly showed that AA vs. CAS is an issue. AA destroys way too much CAS. But your conclusion was a leap in that AA divisions are all you need (for land combat and not taking into consideration strat or NAV). The tests IMO can not be extrapolated to the entire army level.

 

[Cavalry]

The whole point of this thread is that you don't actually need to make noticeable investments into tech/production in order to get serious amounts of benefit against someone using CAS, .

Again, be sure to note that while it works well, this support AA is not going to win your land battle against the rich CAS players. Actually you will lose against stronger enemy with CAS if you bring only support AA, and if you bring more AA, your divisions will be outgunned by his land troops, while his CAS will simply wait for opportunity.

Support AA is cheap and effective? So what? Just don't think you win war with it, it is a defensive weapon.

 

[elitesix]

Fighters can strafe AA setups pretty easily, and would be a fairly easy target. Only "fairly" because it's still got a rapid-fire cannon on the other end. Even easier targets would be anti-tank gun crews and artillery, simply because they can't shoot back. Leg infantry would also be fairly easy albeit small targets but, well, there's a lot of them.

I figure the way that vulnerability is "simulated" is by giving arty/AT/AA battalions a very low HP value relative to infantry battalions. Probably not the best way to do that, but it's a way.

I think the analysis is more nuanced. It depends heavily on the amount of aa guns / spaa, the level of entrenchment, the concentration of aa guns/area (or how concentrated the division is), and the weapons used by the strafing fighters (early war fighters used 7.7mm or .50ca, mid-war added rockets, 20mm, and a single fighter-bomb).

The ingame picture for the first AA research shows a towed AA gun resembling a 37mm german flak or equivalent. An AA Company in hoi4 has 20 of these guns; a 1 width line AA has 30 of these guns. They had a fire rate of 150rpm under combat conditions, and 250rpm under ideal conditions. They also had a shield protecting the crew from fire from the front. They used HE/Frag shells that would decimate single engine fighters with a direct hit, and damage fighters with a near miss airburst (with timed-distance fuses properly set).

These things, in overlapping areas of fire, dug in, and camoflaged, given they have gun shields to protect them from 7.7mm and some .50cal depending on the deflection angle, could easily take a fighter strafing with guns if it was aware (ie, effectively a headon with fighter's guns versus 37mm flak). Also, even if the fighter strafed the gun, it could only kill the crew unless it had 20mm or bombs or rockets which would damage the AA gun. If the crew died, any nearby infantry could re-man the guns. Given all these things, fighters would take losses strafing these targets - nassive losses if multiple aa guns were near each other, and would definitely lose from an IC perspective trying to kill AA guns. Fighters suppressing AA guns only happened when there was a lack of locally concentrated AA fire and with fighter-bombs against lone AA. Anything short of that, and fighters take way more losses in terms of material than AA guns do, though throwing hundreds of fighters against 30 AA guns would kill or suppress those AA guns, but then from a hoi4 game perspective the next ship of AA guns would come in and continue to kill more fighters.

So in short, I don't think fighters as a counter against towed AA companies or brigades was used historically (strafing lone aa gun notwithstanding) and in hoi4 it shouldn't be used either. And either case, it wasn't really a good trade of in terms of material. One fighter down would probably cost the same as dozens of destroyed towed AA guns.

 

[myrogia]

Again, be sure to note that while it works well, this support AA is not going to win your land battle against the rich CAS players. Actually you will lose against stronger enemy with CAS if you bring only support AA, and if you bring more AA, your divisions will be outgunned by his land troops, while his CAS will simply wait for opportunity.

Support AA is cheap and effective? So what? Just don't think you win war with it, it is a defensive weapon.

This is a nonsense argument. "A-a-actually, a player with unlimited resources is still advantaged against a player with limited resources. So I'm not actually wrong (please don't let me be wrong)." CAS don't spawn out of the ground, fully formed and ready to use. You need to build them using significant amounts of industry, resources, and tech research. All things that could be used for other, much more useful, things. OP's point is that CAS is a noob trap that is deleted from the game with a negligible investment that also helps you in additional ways besides deleting CAS from the game. America is the "richest" country in HOI4. If you spend all game building infrastructure and forts, you will soon stop being the "richest", and a little bit after you will stop existing at all. A player that doesn't bother with noob traps is a player with more effective resources. A player with more effective resources is one that will be outgunning you.

 

[Retry]

To be honest, I could make a follow up post with even more evidence.

But a lot of people think they know more about this game than they actually do, and speak with a great deal of confidence about mechanics while being insanely off-base. It's frustrating to deal with because I feel like I have to extensively prove the most basic presuppositions to even start, and even then people still try to argue about it. If I were to set up testing environments for SPAA, armor, whatever, the results would be just as bad, if not worse then what you've seen here.

But then you'll have people flooding into the thread insisting that it's 'not that bad', or whatever--Then you ask what experience they have, and it turns out they've never really strained in this game before, they don't use EAI, and they've never played multiplayer. They haven't even set up their own test environment to see for themselves, they just think it's "fine" and won't hear otherwise.

You have to write an academic-level paper to get your point across for things that I feel are incredibly obvious to anyone with actual practical experience. It's frustrating.

If your post was titled "Why CAS are worthless in combat" I'd mostly, if not completely, agree with you.
Since your post is titled "Why CAS and air are worthless in combat", I don't, as do others, for numerous reasons stated beforehand.

That CAS is mauled by AA does not mean that, say, Fighters running air superiority is rendered moot by an occasional AA gun too. The point is that the data provided is just not enough to make that leap of judgement.

 

[Poopfaust]

TornadoWatch, please continue to do what you do. Block out the unknowledgeable posters, we know who they are. Actually, I am unknowledgeable.., but I know good stuff when I see it.., you sir, have good stuff. Keep up the good fight.

 

[Stug_Life]

AA needs to be nerfed if basic AA one and it just being in support companies can do this much dmg against someone who has invested as heavily as possible into CAS. A perfect balance is needed.

 

[DaleDVM]

After four versions of this game and years of reading debates about HOI, I have concluded that this community has some of the worst discussions I have ever seen. People argue their points with anecdotes, faulty math, strawman arguments, and fantasy in the place of historical accuracy. I am not sure if it is fanboy bahavior, or they don't want their favorite exploit to be nerfed, or they lack the intellect to see the problems even when they are pointed out to them.

Instead of recognizing the glaring game breaking fault in the game, people want to debate the subtleties in the scenario that the OP used? Guess what... Change the scenario and the same shit happens. Have any of you played against units with AA yet? It is a mess!

Thanks Tornadowatch. ^^^What Poopfaust said^^^

 

[Cavalry]

." CAS don't spawn out of the ground, fully formed and ready to use. You need to build them using significant amounts of industry, resources, and tech research. All things that could be used for other, much more useful, things. OP's point is that CAS is a noob trap that is deleted from the game with a negligible investment that also helps you in additional ways besides deleting CAS from the game..

it looks like we agree on most things, but not price! My view is if the opponents only have support AA, it still worth it to bring some CAS if you are on the attack. You get more casualties but will get paid back by encirclement easier or capture province. The casualties or ratio is not bad as the test, the test have 136 CAS casualties on one month long for one 20w division, that equivalent of 18 dead Cas per 24 hour battle on a 80 width of defenders. (It take sometime for the CAS to appear so the battle will be longer than that). The wounded divisions will kill less CAS, but CAS can stay full strength on a ground attack.

Churchill, Hitler or Stalin will be happy to pay 18 CAS for each province they take! And you just need only one tech for CAS too, the other techs are optional.

Tornado did a good job to find the bug.

 

[currylambchop]

That's not really how it work if you intend to attack a ground target... it is not a dog fight...

They still have to dodge flak

 

[minimouse007]

lay down the weapons guys. the devs confirmed they know about this, so we should eagerly watch the patchnotes
there is really no point to further derail this thread based on title and "IF" scenarios. op didn t state cas don t deal damage, but that building them is pointless when they die like flies.
and devs can t and shouldnt take such details like "ai rarely builds aa" into balancing consideration, due to the multiplayer and the fact that the player should build aa and would absolutely massacre ai planes. as i was complaining in my long thread about a week ago.

 

[currylambchop]

Instead of recognizing the glaring game breaking fault in the game, people want to debate the subtleties in the scenario that the OP used? Guess what... Change the scenario and the same shit happens. Have any of you played against units with AA yet? It is a mess!

Criticising someone using a faulty experiment = worst discussion ever? Ironic, you have been the only one to not even engage and just use ad hominem attacks or appeal to absurdity.

If you played using CAS, you would find it is nowhere near 'useless'.

But then you'll have people flooding into the thread insisting that it's 'not that bad', or whatever--Then you ask what experience they have, and it turns out they've never really strained in this game before, they don't use EAI, and they've never played multiplayer. They haven't even set up their own test environment to see for themselves, they just think it's "fine" and won't hear otherwise.

I play multiplayer, and it's certainly not as bad as portrayed by you. You are ignoring the points in favour of CAS and just dissing people because they have different opinions and painting them as 'unknowledgeable'. Even Bruinus was critiquing your reasoning, and they are far from 'unknowledgeable'.

 

[Alex_brunius]

To clarify some things here.

I agree with the analysis, that AA seem to perform alot better than it should if well balanced, both when it comes to how much damage it inflicts and when it comes to how much of the CAS damage it can reduce.

What I don't agree with is the conclusion that this makes CAS totally worthless and that there never is a use for them.

Just like I don't agree with the conclusion that submarines in 1.5 always were totally worthless and could never have a use. It's the same thing really, just because they are possible to counter in a cost effective way, does NOT mean that everyone always will be doing so, even in competitive Multiplayer.

In 1.5 the 1944 submarines were easily killed by 1922 Destroyers, despite this submarines had some situations were they were useful, against someone that does not defend properly submarines could sink many divisions in both the Atlantic and Pacific as well as tie down critical invasions long enough to get a better defense in place.

If the meta is that CAS is "worthless" and no one builds them, then guess what people will stop building the AA as well, because without anyone using CAS/TAC building AA is a waste as well and the side not building and research AA get an advantage.

If you in a MP game can catch someone unprepared they would need a minimum of 100 days to research AA and then 150-200 days or so to build meaningful numbers of them, perhaps more if they run concentrated industry. This gives you almost a years time window to do full damage with CAS. Often more than enough to secure either victory or an advantage large enough for you to snowball and win.

I'm not saying that CAS is great, but I am saying that despite AA being very OP there are still going to be places and situations where CAS can be useful.

 

[currylambchop]

I'm not saying that CAS is great, but I am saying that despite AA being very OP there are still going to be places and situations where CAS can be useful.

I share this opinion with you. I do agree that AA should be and is going to be nerfed, however CAS certainly isn’t useless.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

They still have to dodge flak

If you do then you are effectively taken out of the picture. You can't bomb or strafe something while dodging flak.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

If the meta is that CAS is "worthless" and no one builds them, then guess what people will stop building the AA as well, because without anyone using CAS/TAC building AA is a waste as well and the side not building and research AA get an advantage.

And then we are down to basic rock/paper/scissor mechanics which are no match in skill but luck.

1. Do I not care for either CAS or AA

2. Do I build CAS but no AA

3. Do I build AA but no CAS

or worst, I build a bit of both...

Balance need to be that you should have incentive to build both for the most part.

 

[currylambchop]

If you do then you are effectively taken out of the picture. You can't bomb or strafe something while dodging flak.

Yes but we are talking about casualties aren’t we?