Air Changes | Developer Corner

[Arheo]

Has the introduction of intercepting the planes en route actually stopped the current whack-a-mole-ness of air combat in your test games?

This, combined with an updated AI plane commitment & evaluation system mean you should see a lot less ping-ponging or instant reactions. There is a need to control the route to the target as well as the skies above it.

 

[Arheo]

Any reworks for aces? Maybe an air wing could have up to 5 aces (all movable between air wings of the same plane type). There were 2,500 German aces and 1,200 US aces throughout the war. Plan amounts in the game are much lower than in reality so maybe aces can be scaled down as well to match it (hence up to 5 per wing of 100).

Fixed wing size == more wings == more aces overall.

Could you take a look at the range circles for aircraft, for example in the western US say Nevada, aircraft are able to to fly much farther in one direction than another. I would think the airport would be in the middle of the range circle, but for some airports that is not the case.

This is something we considered, but the technical cost to do so significantly outstripped the value. It is worth mentioning here that we have split up some of the larger strategic regions into smaller ones in order to lessen the impact of this effect.

I certainly hope the wing size settings are moddable, preferably by archetype. Sizes of 10 just doesnt work to represent historical carriers in detail, would have to use sizes of 2 or something.

Also, any hopes we could get ranges that take map projection into account, instead of being the same regardless of latitude?

Wing sizes will be moddable.

I am very happy to see the dev team listening to the playerbase feedback and trying to solve one of the undoubtedly most important issues with the game currently.

With this opportunity im curious if other improvements to how air works will be made, and have compiled below a short list of ideas & questions:

1. Will it still be possible to have non-fixed airwing sizes for mods? hopefully you will find a way to make the system work with minimum airwing size of 1 to allow the extra flexibility for the playerbase that wants it.

This is not currently planned, but the fixed wing size will be moddable.

2. With some changes to AI mentioned, will it also be possible to add AI strategies regarding air in the future?

We are adding several.

3. Is expanding the set of aircraft attributes being considered? Possible addition of stats like altitude/rate of climb for example.

More on this soon.

4. Are there any plans to change the way plane ranges are calculated from the center of the state instead of airbase location?

As above; no.

6. Also regarding range, earth is a globe and hoi4 map is not, which is fine in some cases but breaks down at very long ranges or high latitudes. Having the ranges be corrected by latitude would be possible and a welcome change, at the very least to more modern mods for hoi4 in the world of missiles and long range bombers

We get this question in several areas of interest. While I understand the desire (imperator projection best projection), it is not an economical tech decision at this point.

9. Will there be a info screen for each air theatre (much like the army one) with losses and kills, bombing damage etc... ? it would provide a very good overview of said stats instead of clicking on each air region and adding up all the stats.

No, but more on this soon.

Does this mean that if I have 100% control over all possible routes to target I can leave the target region itself uncovered?

Not necessarily. Interception is not a hard blocker, it will disrupt and cause casualties to planes passing through a region. At some point it may become too costly to continue flying through any given region, but this rightly exaggerates the need to fight over intermediary locations as well as the destination point.

 

[C0RAX]

1) The max size of wings to 100 is very good to prevent CAS/Bombers deathstack which exploits engagement mechanics. but, how will it work for Carriers ? Imagine a 40 deckspace carrier with +10% deck space bonus, it would make the design have 44 slots. If only increments of 10s, how will it work ?

carrier deck space modifiers will become additive, so a +1 deck space modifier will add 1 wing(10 deck space) in capacity. You can still overcrowd your carriers as before as well.

 

[YaBoy_Bobby]

Wouldn't size 96, and size 12 wings be more realistic?

Maybe, but that would require air bases to be divisible by those numbers, amongst a number of other issues

 

[YaBoy_Bobby]

I know you said there would be no Air Marshalls in the foreseeable future, but have you considered the ability to promote Aces to become air advisors, like how you can do the same for generals/field marshalls and admirals for the army and navy respectively? Aside from allowing a way to get more air advisors like how you can get more land and navy advisors, it would also simulate the dilemma between keeping your Aces in combat, getting combat bonuses but risking their death, vs retiring them so they can instead teach your other pilots(give air experience) and give passive bonuses.

We were initially planning to work aces into the promotion structure but ran into issues with scope and how to make aces exactly fit into something that they currently don't. What I mean is that there are not enough types of aces compared to say relevant air advisor types. This would mean either simplifying the number of air advisor jobs or changing aces to fit the advisory roles. Beyond that, there is the aspect of leveling as an advisor which is linked to field command level in other cases. Again, this would be a lot of time spent reworking something to achieve a solution that doesn't mesh well with the game's other structures and presentation paradigms.

In the future, we may have time to expand air command and advisors more, but for now, we thought everyone would be better served building something that solves QoL and management issues. Later on down the road, if time allows, we can build upon a more solid base that we create here.

 

[YaBoy_Bobby]

instead there should be an upper cap to air wing size like for example 200 ac

dynamic wing sizes create more issues than just capping upper bounds solves

 

[C0RAX]

Game was just patched. My CV air wings are defaulting to 100 now, which is way to large. Can I change that? It mentions 10 above, which would be fine, but 100 is way to big for an early carrier. They don't have the room, so I am not sure how to deploy them. It's preventing me from using carriers.

are you seeing 100 size wings on the carrier they should switch to 10 size when they are moved to the carrier