Wishes for Air Combat in expansion

[Hughrocks123]

I think you should not have 1! Wing have a stacking problem

Its not like the 900 Sta Bombers the Brits used in Berlin weren't all dead by "stacking" problems the time it was over(7% Gone), why does 5 Air wings in HOI3 have to?:sad20/100 Str letf!). I only flew there twice. I have fighter escorts from Sweden, too, I think it made it even worse. Not saying you should complete get rid of it, 15 Wings eating stuff is just crazy, but not 5 wings should lose 50%. Maybe just 20%. Then after 5 wings, make it 50%, or some system like that.

 

[Corner79]

pivokrevnik

btw... I will take the risk of sounding like a fool..but *what* does the "organisation" mean anyway? I perfectly understand the concept with land forces, but with aircraft?
First I thought it portraits things like refuelling, rearming, repairing planes, but then it wouldnt last so many days, resulting in empty skies most of the time..

doest it mean that the pilots after a failed mission are too depressed to fly again for a couple of weeks or what?? a whole 100-planes wing at once?

I believe it represents the ground crew keeping the aircraft up to speeds. On several documentaries and books on the subject, it was very apparent at least on the Allied side which had a much bigger throw at it and more documented, that keeping the squadrons flying was a big job. For example the B-29 Super Fortress had to change some parts every 20 hours of flight, and change whole engines every 72ish hours of flight due to some internal parts heating up and catching fire. (Operating in the heat and humidity of the Pacific didn't help either).



Back to the original post, I cannot agree with you more that (although Paradox has done a tremendous job recreating this WW2 simulator) airpower is definitely not as big as an element as it should be in this game. Now I understand play balance becomes an issue, especially considering playing Hungary or some minor, but besides that I do hope air power takes a bigger step forward, at least by HOI4.

I believe one of the single most disappointments from conducting air missions is like you said in Point 5, you never really have good figures on how many aircraft you have, how many you lose and how your doing in an air war.


The Air Power Folder Screen: What would be cool is if you could dedicate a group of wings for a particular air war either like with theatres or an air power screen that you can monitor (this way the battle mechanics do not have to change much) So for example you can select 20 He-111 tactical bombers and 14 Bf-109 Messerschmidt wings for the "Battle of Britain" or another group of TAC, CAS and FGT for "Operation Barbarossa" and within this screen you can see overall how the air operation is going. You can see victories, losses (in actual numbers), supply issues, production and support needs, strategic effects, etc. It would be cool to if on this screen your commanders could estimate if the job was complete, like if enough fighters were destroyed for Sealion invasion or if air superiority was achieved. (Maybe you can select an option so it knows what to figure, based on intelligence too of course)

Strategic warfare is also something that is lost in the numbers. When I have dedicated 20 to 30 B-17, B-24 and B-29 wings to bombing the crap out of Germany, Japan and Italy, I want to know how I am doing and more than just what resources are temp. messed up. That strategic bombing pop up is annoying to have as you limit as much pop up as possible but yet you wish you could see more. So if you selected the air power operation to strategic missions, your commanders could give you new stats, like how much IC and Resources total was lost over a period of time collectively, how many bombers you lost in numbers, replacements needed, the whole nine yards. This type of air power screen can allow for the air power battles to stay the same they are now but then you do not have to focus on those quick battles. Instead you focus your eyes on the air power screen and all the giant lump sums of information about your particular air power mission. When the mission is complete, you simply create a new one or second one simultaneously, 3rd and so on.

Edit: You can also set your air power operation to defense, like if your Germany and your defending against American and British Strategic warfare offensives

 

[DarkSoul1984]

Just to start, the real game-breaking parts of air combat that need attention, in my honest opinion, would be:

1) the stacking modifier and its affects on attrition in combat

2) thresholds for when the squadron/wing need to rest need to be based on an individual units strength, not the collective strength (this would prevent the inevitable continuation of air missions despite the third or fourth unit in the group having a grand total of 3 strength)

3) Fixing that annoying little glitch/bug/mechanism that cancels an air mission instead of just resting a unit to recover strength

Get those three working properly to make for a fluid air combat system that does not need addressing ever four hours in game (as Germany anyways), and then taking care of the rest of the stated desires by other posters should be a fairly straightforward matter.

I'm just tired of putting INT wings on air defense patrols in the west while launching Barbarossa, coming back a month later to find them devastated and inactive.....

 

[Cybvep]

One of the things I really don't like is that air combat resembles land battles too much. Air unit are stacked in one province, they fight for a while, then fight some more, the side with the larger number of aircraft usually wins (unless crippled by overstacking penalties) and then the loser is confined to airfields. Assuming similar air tech levels, one air wing will rarely win with 2-3 air wings, even if IRL superior pilot training could greatly reduce the importance of numerical advantage. The way the overstacking penalty works makes no sense - it's as if all aircraft were attacking at once, not in waves. The feeling of a continuous air campaign is missing. What is worse, you never have to worry about a shortage of skilled pilots.

Anyway, I like some of the ideas posted in this thread and hope that air combat will be improved in TFH and in HOI4.

 

[unmerged(495036)]

I believe it represents the ground crew keeping the aircraft up to speeds. On several documentaries and books on the subject, it was very apparent at least on the Allied side which had a much bigger throw at it and more documented, that keeping the squadrons flying was a big job. For example the B-29 Super Fortress had to change some parts every 20 hours of flight, and change whole engines every 72ish hours of flight due to some internal parts heating up and catching fire. (Operating in the heat and humidity of the Pacific didn't help either).

yes, I know this. and service life especially of late piston (too owerpowered) or early jet (not refined yet) engines was very short and the planes required insane amount of service hours in ratio to actual flight hours.

However, it didnt mean whole wings were grounded for 90% of the time because they had to "regain organisation", goddamn. They simply assigned more mechanics to the wings, who worked nonstop. so this should be reflected perhaps by bigger manpower requirements for air units, not by being able to take off once in a blue moon..

 

[unmerged(495036)]

even if IRL superior pilot training could greatly reduce the importance of numerical advantage.

....................

What is worse, you never have to worry about a shortage of skilled pilots.

yes. experience should matter much more than with land and naval units, give much bigger bonuses. should be gained much more quickly, but then should be diluted with the losses (is experience now diluted when reinforcing land units? I dont know. Should be.).

btw, it is often mentioned that airforce has to be nerfed, because otherwise minors wouldnt stand a chance.. problem is completely elsewhere though, aircraft is so overpriced (IC-wise, leadership-wise, time-wise), that minors cannot afford it. There is also no mechanism allowing to buy outdated (sometimes even new) craft from bigger nations, as it was in RL (no, I dont mean license builds).
Many minors (or regional powers) had considerable airforce, even though usually not very modern and lacking in experience and doctrines. I mean, Czechoslovakia had about 1000 planes in 1939, both of local origin or french or russian.. try to achieve this ingame!

 

[SirDraco]

One of the things I really don't like is that air combat resembles land battles too much. Air unit are stacked in one province, they fight for a while, then fight some more, the side with the larger number of aircraft usually wins (unless crippled by overstacking penalties) and then the loser is confined to airfields. Assuming similar air tech levels, one air wing will rarely win with 2-3 air wings, even if IRL superior pilot training could greatly reduce the importance of numerical advantage. The way the overstacking penalty works makes no sense - it's as if all aircraft were attacking at once, not in waves. The feeling of a continuous air campaign is missing. What is worse, you never have to worry about a shortage of skilled pilots.

I would like to see more Pilot Training techs, which actually help affect Air Combat and help reduce the numbers war. Similar to how the Navy has different focuses. For instance in the Battle of Britain you had two distinct tactics used by different Groups. No 11 Group used hit and run tactics, sending one squadron in then another, while No 10 Group used the Big Wing tactic, assembling the entire wing before engaging the enemy. Each had their pros and cons, No 11 Group engaged the enemy quicker but had more loses while No 10 had less loses but took longer to engage the enemy. I would like to see techs for both of these, which improve your fighting capabilities.

The problem is, like you said, your stacks of wings fights as one and not as individual wings. This means that if the enemy send two different bomber stacks into your Groups area, they will only engage one and not both, which was not historical. This is why we need a Air chain of command. For the RAF it would be (The second being the Army equivalent, Wing/Division, Group/Corps, Command/Army. With this you would then be able to have your wings operate individually or together, add this with some new Pilot tech and hopefully Air combat could be more effective.

 

[Cybvep]

btw, it is often mentioned that airforce has to be nerfed, because otherwise minors wouldnt stand a chance..

Actually, I think that in some cases the situation of minors would be improved, because training is not directly connected with IC or at least not as much as aircraft production is. For example, Canadian, Australian, Czech and Polish pilots were generally quite good and contributed heavily to the Allied victory during the Battle of Britain. During the invasion of Poland, the Polish Air Force fought for weeks despite being outnumbered 1:4 and having outdated equipment. The Soviet Airforce was very ineffective during the early years and suffered significant losses during the Winter War, despite the fact that Finnish Air Force was heavily outnumbered.

yes. experience should matter much more than with land and naval units, give much bigger bonuses. should be gained much more quickly, but then should be diluted with the losses (is experience now diluted when reinforcing land units? I dont know. Should be.).

Yes, experience is "diluted" when units are reinforced.

You are right that quality was a crucial factor in aerial warfare, probably much more important than in case of naval and land warfare (not that training or experience are insignificant factors in these cases, but still...). Quality of pilots changed massively over the course of the war. In 1941-1942 the Japanese pilots were very good, in 1944 they were largely ineffective (during the battle of the Leyte Gulf the Japanese carriers were useless because of lack of pilots, so they were used as decoys). The Luftwaffe ruled the skies in 1939-1942, but it suffered from a severe shortage of skilled pilots in the late-war period. In 1944 German aircraft production was breaking new records, yet it did not improve the situation of the German airforce that much.

In order to represent this, air units would probably need to use a special type of MP. Otherwise, MP will never be a limitation for them.

The problem is, like you said, your stacks of wings fights as one and not as individual wings.

Yes, the impact of a single air wing should be much greater.

 

[unmerged(47028)]

I will add some "bugs" too.

Rework area bombardment and air superiority missions.

Now if you assign large area (not 1 province) for a ground attack bombers instead of using air support in ongoing battles or bombing a front line flies some hundreds of kilometers behing enemy lines and bombs some god forsaken cavalry division which you even did not know it existed. It looks like bomber pilots know more than there is information available. I never saw AI attacking my random divisions deeply behind my line. I assume it could be good for an interdiction mission (searching and attacking behind lines) but not the ground attack. The ground attack should concentrate on land battles and front line in an assigned area.

Air superiority area mission is also disastrous. Planes simply travel from one province to another probably in some pattern but ignore any bombers, fighters or transport planes just one province away in the assigned area. Bombers can bomb everything and fighters on area air superiority will do nothing unless randomly hits enemy occupied province.

The Air Superiority mission also does not stop tranport planes to drop paratroopers even if they stay in the same province. The fight lasts a couple of hours and then contact is lost wihout either party leaving province. I do not think transports would get away so lightly. Germans lost numerous Transport planes from AA in Holland in 1940, but just imagine what would have left of them if Brits had a complete air superiority there. I am not sure how many of them would have returned and dropped paratroopers in designated areas. I suggest like with amphibious landings the battle should last longer and unless enemy fighters are defeated you can not land. Or give some chance of dropping paratroopers each hour of fight but make the fight long.

 

[Secret Master]

Rather than have a special manpower for air units, why not just make them cost officers to represent the training investment?

 

[Hakello]

Ok updated the first post with some new ideas mentioned here, I try to exclude bugs unless you sugest a better way for it to behave, as we also have a beautifull bug report forum!

@Corner79, I agree with you that more statistics is always cool, especially when they are brought in a proper fashion, but I'm not including this suggestion as knowing this stuff would basicly be cheating and besides, gameplay value is very pale to the amount of work required to make this happen. It was a good post though

If anyone feels like I misunderstood/missed something please elaborate.

 

[Cybvep]

Rather than have a special manpower for air units, why not just make them cost officers to represent the training investment?

That's the case in HPP, but unless you use very big numbers, the impact is not that significant and it is rather strange that disbanding some outdated air units increases your officer ratio...

 

[Corner79]

Ok updated the first post with some new ideas mentioned here, I try to exclude bugs unless you sugest a better way for it to behave, as we also have a beautifull bug report forum!

@Corner79, I agree with you that more statistics is always cool, especially when they are brought in a proper fashion, but I'm not including this suggestion as knowing this stuff would basicly be cheating and besides, gameplay value is very pale to the amount of work required to make this happen. It was a good post though

If anyone feels like I misunderstood/missed something please elaborate.

I wasn't talking about adding all this stuff to statistics, I meant that this would be like a separate folder (like with the new one "Theatres" that came with FTM (or SF, can't remember). So this folder would act just like the screen for your theatre commander, where you can give the AI objectives, find out what your commander needs and found out how your doing (your estimated strength compared to your enemies but just for air power). It doesn't even have to be a folder, it could be a new theatre HQ just for air units and this information can be seen, interpreted and manipulated right on the map screen. The information gathered wouldn't be cheating because it would be the same as when your Theatre HQ estimates his power over the enemy in the game right now. But instead of having just a green bar, having actual numbers. These "estimates" can be increased by your intelligence level in that nation.

In fact now that I think about it more, I really like that idea of having a Theatre HQ designated just for Air power instead of connecting them to "Heeresgruppe A" for example. When the Might 8th Air Force was in England for the round the clock strategic offensive from 1943 on, they definitely had a theatre of operations. That way all these suggestions about designating "Battle of Britain" or close air support of "Operation Barbarossa" or air intercepts of "Defending the Reich" or simply just coastal command on "ASW Hunting" It can be a big operation, small, intense like the Battle of Britain, whatever you want. My point early is that these types of Operations and the feel of them are also missing from the game.

I love a lot of the other ideas about improving the stacking penalty, manpower issues, correcting the individual missions as well and they should be corrected too.

 

[plasticpanzers]

there should be a couple more techs for aircraft. One would be a "fighter command" such as
the UK had in 1940 (a revolutionary system) that could control many fighter groups and allow
a much lower stacking penalty. Would require a level 10 radar station. Would work also for
any nation. 1st level would be intercept only and later on air superiority.

Second is a "bomber command" that would allow lower stacking penalties for strategic bombing
so you can assign long range fighters to large bomber units or just large bomber stacks and not
loose so much in stacking. would have a lesser bonus for tactical bombers.

Just a thought.

 

[Cybvep]

there should be a couple more techs for aircraft.

Actually, in some cases there should be fewer techs. Have you looked at the Air Doctrines tech tree? Yuck.

More is not always better. Real in-game effects are important.

 

[Secret Master]

That's the case in HPP, but unless you use very big numbers, the impact is not that significant and it is rather strange that disbanding some outdated air units increases your officer ratio...

Well, I see your point. It is a bit silly, but it works well with current mechanics.

"Well, Ricthofen, I see here you have 80 confirmed kills against the RAF and you are the best fighter ace this country has ever produced. You have become a legend in the sky and countless movies and books have been made about you. You even have a line of frozen pizzas namedfor you in the United States. Sounds like you would be a great fit to command our 35th Supply Brigade. Welcome to your new job!"

 

[Cybvep]

For a mod it's ok, but we are talking about an official expansion here. You expect new stuff from an expansion, not sth that can be easily added/changed by mods, right?

 

[SirDraco]

there should be a couple more techs for aircraft. One would be a "fighter command" such as
the UK had in 1940 (a revolutionary system) that could control many fighter groups and allow
a much lower stacking penalty. Would require a level 10 radar station. Would work also for
any nation. 1st level would be intercept only and later on air superiority.

Second is a "bomber command" that would allow lower stacking penalties for strategic bombing
so you can assign long range fighters to large bomber units or just large bomber stacks and not
loose so much in stacking. would have a lesser bonus for tactical bombers.

Just a thought.

I would say that you could combine both of those into a "Air Chain of Command" Tech. When researched it would enable you to use a chain of command system, thereby allowing to link Groups into Commands. Using the RAF units, it would mean being able to have squadrons as brigade equivalents, so that you can see individual squadrons within wings, just like brigades within Divisions. Then you can have wings operate within Groups individually but still having the benefits of the Group Leader. It would also mean you would get more Officer effects added to each wing, as they would take the benefits from their Wing, Group and Command leaders. Would hopefully reduce the need for stacking. Add to this certain leaders preferring a different fighter tactic (Hit and run, Big Wing etc), it should lead to better air combat, with a added historical feel.

 

[Secret Master]

True, I suppose. But I was unaware that HPP had already tried my suggestion of officer ratios for wings so I didn't know it had been tried and found wanting.

I should also point out that the game links training to IC in ways that are generally suspect. This, I believe, is part of the problem. Let me give an example.

I want to train a brigade of INF. If I want it to have no starting XP, I get a 10% discount on IC/days. If I want it to have a starting XP bonus of 25%, I have to pay 20% IC/days. Now, I fully grant that training time is an important factor in the capabilities of the combat unit. And let's face it, you gotta spend IC on bullets, food, uniforms, and cleaning supplies (recruits in training will still be spending a lot of time cleaning the barracks and equipment until they graduate...). But there is a problem with this. If you want to simulate the training involved in air forces, the game's mechanics just reduce it to a question of manpower and IC. And since wings cost so little manpower, the only limiting factor is really IC.

I'm not sure a special kind of manpower would be that helpful unless you also divorced air units from the IC=training mechanic. It's not like Germany had a problem producing aircraft once Speer took over and they switched over to a war economy. It would also be useful to connect fuel usage to training pilots in some way.

Maybe we need a "pool" of trained pilots. You'd need a new slider on the production or leadership screens where you divert manpower to the special pool. Manpower converts to trained pilots at a rate that is determined by leadership, fuel, and supplies being spent alongside manpower. Then that "pool" of trained pilots is compared to the number of wings currently in existence and produces a training ratio that impacts wings. Wings would build at a specific rate that is not tied to current training laws, but their XP is tied to the special manpower ratio. Existing air units can gain further XP on top of the existing ratio, but replacing losses or building excessive wings without keeping up the pilot ratio will result in an overall decline of XP across the board.

But I wouldn't want a system like this without it costing fuel to train pilots. Right now, Japan can build the world's best carrier based air force without spending a single unit of precious fuel.

 

[plasticpanzers]

SirDraco I suggested two as the first is a defensive tech while the other is offensive. Each
would have a slowly increasing benefit. I do agree that there should be an air (and naval)
chain of command. I posted a couple weeks ago that i set up a theatre command in the UK
to handle all my aircraft only and assigned it 5-6 airfields soley for its use (with no ground
units so I had to manually put troops in to defend them if needed). it worked quite well.