why do i lose so many fighters during the air battle? pls help

[kaan2901]

as you can see here i lose at least 6-7 times more airplanes than the enemy does but i cant see the reason. see the ss below. i lost 2728 airplanes but the enemy lost 442. it is not a spesific situation for this warfare. the same thing also happens other regions too. btw i use the expert ai mode.

 

[Crushwolf]

The only thing I can think of is that your fighters (and those of your allies) are much worse than the enemies. That, or your runways are bombed/overloaded, so most of your planes assigned to the mission arent flying. That is a horrendous K/D ratio...ouch!

 

[BeauNiddle]

Mouse over the skull and it will tell you how your plane stats compare to the enemies.

Sorry I'm not good at recognising plane models but a death ratio that high suggests you're flying very different years. Current year or better, with the appropriate designer boost + 5 engines and maybe 2 guns (guns is useful vs bombers but weakens you slightly vs other fighters)

The enemy also have a 2-1 advantage against you.

You have fuel, you have good spotting, v.good efficiency - so it's not the usual mistakes people make.

 

[kaan2901]

Mouse over the skull and it will tell you how your plane stats compare to the enemies.

Sorry I'm not good at recognising plane models but a death ratio that high suggests you're flying very different years. Current year or better, with the appropriate designer boost + 5 engines and maybe 2 guns (guns is useful vs bombers but weakens you slightly vs other fighters)

The enemy also have a 2-1 advantage against you.

You have fuel, you have good spotting, v.good efficiency - so it's not the usual mistakes people make.

it says that the enemy airplanes are more agile and has higher speed but i use the latest technology mostly. almost all of my aircracts consist of 1940 and 1936 and the year is 1941. so the year is not very different. when i researched 1940's fighter i gave 2 points to engine (because i didnt have enough air xp then) then forgot to upgrade it but i am not sure that this is the main problem. i dont think it would make that much difference.

 

[kaan2901]

The only thing I can think of is that your fighters (and those of your allies) are much worse than the enemies. That, or your runways are bombed/overloaded, so most of your planes assigned to the mission arent flying. That is a horrendous K/D ratio...ouch!

as i replied to the other comment, my planes are not outdated. they mostly consist of 1936 and 1940's tech and also my air bases are not damaged. maybe this is because of the expert ai mod. i took a long break to the game and now returned back with this mod so i dont remember how it was before. i have 300 hours and things are still not clear for me.

 

[Secret Master]

i lost 2728 airplanes but the enemy lost 442.

There are various things you can do to improve your fighter performance.

1) Try to fight at 1:1 odds or better. If the enemy has more planes than you, they will improve their killing ability compared to yours.

2) Make sure your planes are set up with proper range in the air regions you are operating. If an air wing only has half the required range to operate in a particular area, it's going to take a huge hit to mission efficiecny and fight worse.

3) Exercise air wings before the war to get their XP up.

4) Research air doctrines. Seriously, these are important.

5) Choose the light aircraft designer before researching the 1940 and 1944 fighter. It boosts agility, a key stat for fighters attacking other fighters.

6) Pick up the 1940 light fighter in a timely fashion and produce it ASAP once you complete research on it. 1940 light fighter is much better than the 1936 fighter.

7) When adding XP to light fighters, I'd focus on engine upgrades, some gun upgrades, and enough reliability to put the plane at 50-60% reliability. More experienced players can run lower reliability planes, but newer players should stick to 50+.

8) If you are Britain, appoint Sholto Douglas to the general staff.

9) If you are Britain or the US, grab the NFs that cut the production cost of light fighters. You'll thank me later.

10) Make sure your planes are operating for airfields that are not overstacked, that they have supply, and that you have enough fuel.

 

[kaan2901]

There are various things you can do to improve your fighter performance.

1) Try to fight at 1:1 odds or better. If the enemy has more planes than you, they will improve their killing ability compared to yours.

2) Make sure your planes are set up with proper range in the air regions you are operating. If an air wing only has half the required range to operate in a particular area, it's going to take a huge hit to mission efficiecny and fight worse.

3) Exercise air wings before the war to get their XP up.

4) Research air doctrines. Seriously, these are important.

5) Choose the light aircraft designer before researching the 1940 and 1944 fighter. It boosts agility, a key stat for fighters attacking other fighters.

6) Pick up the 1940 light fighter in a timely fashion and produce it ASAP once you complete research on it. 1940 light fighter is much better than the 1936 fighter.

7) When adding XP to light fighters, I'd focus on engine upgrades, some gun upgrades, and enough reliability to put the plane at 50-60% reliability. More experienced players can run lower reliability planes, but newer players should stick to 50+.

8) If you are Britain, appoint Sholto Douglas to the general staff.

9) If you are Britain or the US, grab the NFs that cut the production cost of light fighters. You'll thank me later.

10) Make sure your planes are operating for airfields that are not overstacked, that they have supply, and that you have enough fuel.

1. even it is 1:1 i keep losing the fight
2. range is not problem for my situation
3. i made them exercise until reaching max xp before the war
4. i already finished the air doctrine three. i always spare one research slot for air doctrine.
5. i already did
6. i started to produce 1940's fighter at the start of the year 1940.
7. i gave 2 points to the engines of 1940's fighter because i didnt have enough air xp then i was going to upgrade it but i forgot. but i dont think it will make that big difference to lead this k/d ratio.
8 and 9. i am germany
10. they are not overstacked in the bases and also bases are not damaged.

please help me to figure out the problem. i dont think any of these leads this k/d ratio because i know most of them.

 

[Jeremy971]

Land units can have AA.

If you let your mouse over the number of fighter losses, you will see what shot them...

In my previous games, most of my losses came from AA regiment in land divisions.

And it's almost impossible to avoid it. Except sending a lot of CAS and push hard with your own division

 

[Secret Master]

7. i gave 2 points to the engines of 1940's fighter because i didnt have enough air xp then i was going to upgrade it but i forgot. but i dont think it will make that big difference to lead this k/d ratio.

Wait, you're Germany and you only had enough air XP to put +2 on the engines of your fighter? How did that happen?

 

[King Of Heroes]

Aces are probably giving their air wings a lead in stats, I'm not sure how the "their planes are more agile/faster than ours" calculation works but small wings with aces can grossly inflate the stats.

Edit: This in regards to only the tooltip hinting at the enemy plane stats, about the difference at K/D ratio it should be something else.

If you could post your savegame so we could take a more indepth look it would help us figure it out much faster.

 

[blahmaster6k]

If I had to wager a guess, I'd say that the enemy has a much higher ratio of 1940 fighters to 1936 ones than you do. Even if you have fighter 2's already, if most of the planes you have in the air are still fighter 1's, those are going to trade badly if Britain is already producing large numbers of Spitfires. This is likely to happen because the UK has the Fighter Command focus to boost its research of fighters. Britain will almost always have fighter 2 before Germany because of this focus. As others in this thread have stated, 1940 fighters are much better than 1936 ones. Also, in that screenshot the enemy has twice your number of fighters, and the side with a numbers advantage gets a bonus in individual air combats.

You also talked about having finished your air doctrine already, but even more important than having finished your air doctrine, is having picked the right air doctrine. Strategic Destruction and Operational Integrity both have a key doctrine which boosts fighter and heavy fighter agility by 10 percent. Battlefield Support does not have this boost, so fighters with this doctrine are by default weaker than those of countries which take the other two. Britain's AI tends to go OI, while the USA goes SD. If you're Germany the game gives you incentives to take battlefield support with all those juicy bonuses, but it's a pitfall if you're looking to have the best fighters possible.

 

[eastcoastceojam]

Operational Integrity also has the best fighter detection, the best interception detection, the best air superiority mission efficiency, almost the best bomber defense, and lets you get the boost to aces without missing out any other bonuses.

Plus, I think I read in a thread somewhere that the Operational Integrity doctrine is what Secret Master prefers to use in his MP games.

The link below is to the nice table on the wiki that adds up all the maximum bonuses:

Air doctrine - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

 

[blahmaster6k]

Operational Integrity also has the best fighter detection, the best interception detection, the best air superiority mission efficiency, almost the best bomber defense, and lets you get the boost to aces without missing out any other bonuses.

Plus, I think I read in a thread somewhere that the Operational Integrity doctrine is what Secret Master prefers to use in his MP games.

The link below is to the nice table on the wiki that adds up all the maximum bonuses:

Air doctrine - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

In my opinion, Strategic Destruction is the best one. It's tied with Operational Integrity in air superiority mission efficiency and fighter agility, which are the most important things given by air doctrine for fighter combat. The two are also tied in ground support, but Strategic Destruction has twice the air superiority as Operational Integrity, which when used with the Airland Battle land doctrine is a deadly combo for ensuring encirclements and overruns. Strategic Destruction also has more naval mission efficiency, which is great for carrier planes and land based naval bombers. And needless to say, Strategic Destruction has many more buffs for strategic bombers, if you're using those (which I usually don't, but it's worth pointing out). The only real area where Operational Integrity has an advantage over Strategic Destruction is its 15% ground support mission efficiency, which to me isn't that big of a deal.

It might look on paper like Operational Integrity has big advantages to its fighters because of the increased detection in different missions, but it doesn't really matter because you can get max detection just by having enough RADAR and planes in the air that a boost from doctrine is irrelevant. Strategic Destruction also lacks ace generation chance, but any country can farm more aces than they know what to do with just by splitting a couple hundred planes up into wings of one plane each for a couple months that it doesn't make a difference. I think I got about 50 aces from air volunteers in the Spanish Civil War in my last Germany run before I even started researching an air doctrine.

 

[eastcoastceojam]

^ Great points. I forgot the OP was talking about Germany, who I rarely play as. Strategic Destruction is a great doctrine for a Major.

SD used to be my go-to for everyone, mostly due to all those juicy air superiority buffs you mention. But I would always get pissed at all that research time spent on Strat Bombing or Escort buffs, which I rarely use, just to get to another bonus that I actually wanted.

OI is so much more well rounded, and Detection is a much bigger deal if you are playing as someone like Yugoslavia or Romania in a pre-1939 war. But that is off-topic to what the OP asked, so thanks for correcting me.

 

[blahmaster6k]

^ Great points. I forgot the OP was talking about Germany, who I rarely play as. Strategic Destruction is a great doctrine for a Major.

SD used to be my go-to for everyone, mostly due to all those juicy air superiority buffs you mention. But I would always get pissed at all that research time spent on Strat Bombing or Escort buffs, which I rarely use, just to get to another bonus that I actually wanted.

OI is so much more well rounded, and Detection is a much bigger deal if you are playing as someone like Yugoslavia or Romania in a pre-1939 war. But that is off-topic to what the OP asked, so thanks for correcting me.

That's true, OI is much better in early wars where you have low-tech planes with low mission efficiency and base detection, or on minors where you can't afford to spare a slot researching RADAR. I do have a counterpoint to that second point you mentioned, about not liking wasting time researching doctrines that don't provide anything beneficial to you. It's perfectly viable to research the air doctrine only up to the one that provides the fighter agility and stop there and focus on other more urgent priorities with your research slots, and here SD has the advantage in my opinion.

Multi-Altitude Flying in the SD tree is the fifth doctrine from the start. Before Multi-Altitude flying you already got fighter detection, ground support, and efficiency for air superiority and naval missions. In the OI tree, Fighter Veteran Initiative is the sixth doctrine, which means it takes ~200 more days of research to get there as opposed to the SD version. Along the way you also get ground support and air superiority, along with the big detection boosts that are useful for minors and some interception mission efficiency. The problem is that with OI you have to wait until almost the bottom of the OI tree to get Air Skirmish for AS mission efficiency, whereas it's the third research in SD.

As you pointed out, minors get the most out of OI's early detection bonuses. But minors are also the countries that typically have fewer research slots and can afford to dedicate less time to researching an air doctrine. If want to get the most important bonuses of a doctrine while only researching the first 5 doctrines, SD is your best bet.

 

[DicRoNero]

btw i use the expert ai mode.

It's a modded game so it probably belongs to mods section, but in vanilla having that little planes compared to the opponent as you've got there (2015 vs 5197) is just asking to get slaughtered. Even Jets II don't trade good vs mere 1940 LFs in such conditions (been there, done that). Up to 3 fighters can fight against 1, so numbers do matter a lot.

 

[blahmaster6k]

It's a modded game so it probably belongs to mods section, but in vanilla having that little planes compared to the opponent as you've got there (2015 vs 5197) is just asking to get slaughtered. Even Jets II don't trade good vs mere 1940 LFs in such conditions (been there, done that). Up to 3 fighters can fight against 1, so numbers do matter a lot.

I didn't realize he uses Expert AI. In Expert AI the AI UK absolutely rushes fighter 2 incredibly quickly, uses the designer, and puts +5 engine and +3 to weapons on them. A pure +5 engine fighter 2 will trade favorably against them, but not by much, and EAI UK will research Fighter 2 long before Germany is able to.

 

[kaan2901]

Wait, you're Germany and you only had enough air XP to put +2 on the engines of your fighter? How did that happen?

because i joined to war after 1940 and this xp came from the air excersizes before 1940

 

[kaan2901]

Land units can have AA.

If you let your mouse over the number of fighter losses, you will see what shot them...

In my previous games, most of my losses came from AA regiment in land divisions.

And it's almost impossible to avoid it. Except sending a lot of CAS and push hard with your own division

almost all of them were shot down in air warfare, not by anti air

 

[kaan2901]

If I had to wager a guess, I'd say that the enemy has a much higher ratio of 1940 fighters to 1936 ones than you do. Even if you have fighter 2's already, if most of the planes you have in the air are still fighter 1's, those are going to trade badly if Britain is already producing large numbers of Spitfires. This is likely to happen because the UK has the Fighter Command focus to boost its research of fighters. Britain will almost always have fighter 2 before Germany because of this focus. As others in this thread have stated, 1940 fighters are much better than 1936 ones. Also, in that screenshot the enemy has twice your number of fighters, and the side with a numbers advantage gets a bonus in individual air combats.

You also talked about having finished your air doctrine already, but even more important than having finished your air doctrine, is having picked the right air doctrine. Strategic Destruction and Operational Integrity both have a key doctrine which boosts fighter and heavy fighter agility by 10 percent. Battlefield Support does not have this boost, so fighters with this doctrine are by default weaker than those of countries which take the other two. Britain's AI tends to go OI, while the USA goes SD. If you're Germany the game gives you incentives to take battlefield support with all those juicy bonuses, but it's a pitfall if you're looking to have the best fighters possible.

i dont know why but when i check the existing airplanes i dont see the british ones. they are mostly soviet and rest of them are france. so my airplanes are not against britain in this warfare.

i dont know about the doctrines too much and i chose the battlefield support doctrine as default for germany. so this is one of my mistakes.

the other thing is i thought my planes are mostly 1940 but when i check now all of 1940's were destroyed and now i only have 1936 ones left. i keep producing the 1940 one but they are destroyed immediately. now i started to understand...