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Air Changes | Developer Corner

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Hey Everyone! I am back this week to talk to you a bit about some changes we are making to air management and combat. The first thing I want to get out of the way is that this is not a “Man the Guns” style rework of combat and management systems. Our focus on air changes have mostly revolved around quality of life and balance changes to existing systems, while largely maintaining the structures people are familiar with (with a couple of exceptions). So, let's get into it!

Starting off with a QoL change I am very happy about: Simplified Wing Deployment. Anyone who has experience with managing air wings probably has some complaints about how deploying wings works. The live system requires three clicks in the best case (four if you include choosing a base) to deploy a single wing into an empty airbase. In the worst case this requires more clicks and doing some math for creating a large wing that can later be divided evenly. Now, we are adding quick deploy buttons to the air base UI to allow deployment of a wing in a single click. We are also keeping the old deployment menu for more advanced deployment options. Also, in this menu, we have simplified the flow for deploying single and multiple wings at once.

WIP UI design of simplified wing deployment tools. Note the art style here is not indicative of a change in art direction for our UI. In the first image we see the setup that can be done to select fast deploy options from any air base.
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In the second Image we see the newer version of quick deploy within the advanced deployment menu. You now have a set of filters to only show planes of a specific type, and you can now set the reinforce preference on all of the wings you are about to deploy, or individual ones.


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One of the most visible changes to air management, and hopefully a big quality of life improvement for most people, is the addition of Air Groups. The first thing I want to say is this is not Army Groups or Fleets. For now, and the foreseeable future, we are not adding Air Marshals or any sort of mechanical impact to using Air Groups. Air Groups are an organizational structure and nothing more. What it will do is enable the grouping and selection of multiple air wings across multiple locations bases for easier management. These groups will be displayed when in the air map mode so that you do not have to hunt down your wings on the map when you want to interact with them.

A very much WIP view of our current air groups
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Of the changes we are making, one of the most notable is moving to standardized/fixed wing sizes. This change comes with a loss of flexibility in some situations and makes managing smaller numbers of airplanes a bit more complicated. However, I think that real air combat in HoI4 is measured in thousands of airplanes and not dozens. We are currently looking at 100 sized wings for most aircraft, with size 10 wings for a few specific equipment types(scout plans, CV planes, ect). This allows us to streamline wing deployment and some other management stuff such as not having AI take up weird percentages of air bases. It also makes balance easier and fixes a few exploit cases. This may take some getting used to but I feel it improves the overall experience of managing large numbers of aircraft.

The final change I want to discuss today is an addition to the combat system. We are adding a new mechanic for intercepting planes in regions enroute to their target. In most cases, engaging planes in their target region will still be most effective. But in others, such as when range is a factor, the region being crossed has a bunch of engagement and spotting bonuses, and in a few other cases leaning into combat in an intermediary region can be a good idea.

Beyond these more concrete changes we are doing a balance pass on existing air combat mechanics. A lot of this is still too WIP to discuss, but I would like to highlight one of our objectives which is decoupling agility and speed with more impact given to speed in later air superiority fighter designs, but more on that at a later date.

As always, I wish you all the best and don't hesitate to tell us how these changes make you feel.

Until next time o7
 
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xtfoster said:
Not to be a nitpicker, but of the 6 AC-130 Gunships lost to enemy action, 3 were shot down by 37mm AA, 1 more was shot down by 57mm AA, only 2 were shot down by missiles (one by an SA-2, the other by a shoulder-fired SA-7). Even though the AC-130 has a service ceiling of 12km, it can't attack from there.

EDIT: I misread that. Those 6 were just those lost in Vietnam, another was lost during during Operation Desert Storm to a Strela-2 shoulder fired missile.
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This is fair, and somehow that didn't factor into my calculations...​
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Still, I think the question remains how best to balance Aircraft losses in Ground Attack Operations when each Division with Air_Attack takes a minimum of one plane down each. ​
 
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I think the missing element (apart from aircraft damage, which is definitely an issue at present - maybe fixable with a reliability-linked trickleback?) is altitude. You could perhaps link this to mission type (so ground attack means low altitude for instance), but then you'd need different aircraft design parameters...
 
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I may not be the best example of a HOI Player. Compared to other plaers who have hundreds of hours in the game, i maybe have only one hundred. I am more of Stellaris or CK2/3 player, have more hours in them and do play them more often. I do own (i think) every HOI DLC and usually buy them at release or shortly after.

I have to say this "diary" is the most beautiful thing i have ever seen.

Compared to other people here, i dont want or need an aircraft designer like we have a tank/ship designer. i just want to manage and place my aircrafts to not be a pain in the butt.

Also gone is that unlogical behaviour that intercept planes can not see planes just flying over the region to the region behind. Where you had to place airplanes on intercept duty on every single region so you dont miss planes flying into your territory and then send you killer squad to whichever region lights up red. Essentially playing WW2-airplane-whack-a-mole. God is that annoying.
 
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It would be good if, during the modernization of the aircraft, the old ones would not go into reserve, but simply disappeared.
Or they were automatically sent to puppet countries (if there are any) that have not investigated the aircraft that is being replaced.
If there are no puppets, then he would just go to the aircraft carriers.
But if they are not there, they simply disappeared.
Under the pretext that they went to civil needs. For the flight of citizens around the country.
 
What about a separate man pool for pilots? Sort of like it eu4 with sailors. This will require the player to spend time and resources into training pilots.
Right now it's a bit too easy to dump a large number of planes where its needed without the concern of pilots.
I think this would be a brilliant addition to the game as its will shake up the multiplayer meta of just having one nation producing planes and having it as their 'job' to deal with air.
Also having scarce pilots will mimic what happened as well at the start and at the end of ww2.
And lastly this will making obsolete planes a bit more valuable as well. As you would need to have a reserve of planes for training new pilots.

This will also leave it open for extra buffs. For example: top 1% of the man pool is selected for pilots. That would be the best and brightest. However if the player is running out of pilots they can easy the restriction and raise it to top 5%. This may give you more access to the man pool however at a drop of quality.
 
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Other than the attack and accuracy stats for fighters dogfighting other fighters and intercepting bombers with different main weapons (Machine Gun, Machine Cannon, Rocket, Schräge Musik, Anti-Air Bomb )

Please also add turret attack and accuracy stats for bombers and heavy fighters to defend themselves against other fighters and their ability to intercept bombers.
 
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It would be nice if players could use different doctrines for different wings to conduct various missions like Curtis LeMay chose to use low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing Japan instead of high-altitude precision bombing, which would be ineffective in cloudy weather.
 
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Otti87 said:
What about a separate man pool for pilots?
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That missing is what feels really strange in the game. Your army is a manpower sink draining your recruits but planes is like "Ok, just give me a couple of thousand of random recruits and i will win the air war for you".

Now, i dont know how much fun a "realistic" implementations would make (its a game after all), but the current model just feels off.
 
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If it is really possible plz make the plane models like machine guns and engines as finite resources that need to be produced separately. Many planes like Fw190D, S-199, and Ki-100 were the products of engine shortage or surplus.
 
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Also, there were already flying boats used as naval bombers since the launch of the game. But in-game they are no different than any land base planes which are only able to land on Air bases. Please add a flying boat airframe, that is able to land on Naval bases and conduct naval rescue missions that would reduce the casualties of the covered strategic sea regions(like current Shark-infested waters mechanic but reduce the crew casualties)
 
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If the pilots pool is included in the next update, please make the Pilot exercises mission allows players to set up the maximum number of pilots players want to train and able to graduate the trained pilots and train the new rookies routinely.
 
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Currently we have an option to assign wings to follow one army. Will there be an option to assign wings to follow a field marshals' army groups?

The current air wing assignment and follow system is a tedious nightmare.
 
Historically, there are many heavy bombers (B-17, B-24, He-111, Halifax, G5N2, and He-117) that were converted or used as transport planes, and some transport planes (Ju-290, DC-4E, and Ju-52) were converted or used as bombers.
Would transport planes be included in the Air Designer in the next DLC and would there be a capacity stats to limit how many supplies (larger capacity can send more air supply) and what unit( like you need transport planes with capacity stats over 10 to transport motorized infantry) one type of plane can deliver?
 
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wagnerleung0079 said:
It would be nice if players could use different doctrines for different wings to conduct various missions like Curtis LeMay chose to use low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing Japan instead of high-altitude precision bombing, which would be ineffective in cloudy weather.
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No offense but the bombing of cities in Japan was a war crime.

So don´t talk about incendiary bombings. FFS.
 
Beagá said:
No offense but the bombing of cities in Japan was a war crime.

So don´t talk about incendiary bombings. FFS.
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The point is not incendiary. The point is, historically a bomber air wing used low-altitude nighttime bombing instead of high-altitude precision bombing, which was a norm air bombing doctrine of the USA. Therefore, it would be great if we can also allow different air wings to use different doctrines in different missions in the next air change.
 
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wagnerleung0079 said:
Historically, there are many heavy bombers (B-17, B-24, He-111, Halifax, G5N2, and He-117) that were converted or used as transport planes, and some transport planes (Ju-290, DC-4E, and Ju-52) were converted or used as bombers.
Would transport planes be included in the Air Designer in the next DLC and would there be a capacity stats to limit how many supplies (larger capacity can send more air supply) and what unit( like you need transport planes with capacity stats over 10 to transport motorized infantry) one type of plane can deliver?
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I would love customizable transport planes, but the main balancing stats would be range versus production cost. Perhaps an extra stat like capacity could be introduced, but that may require some tweaking of game mechanics. Would surely be interesting though.

Transport planes should also use the same airframes as strategic bombers. IRL they may be slightly different, but in game, this is a close enough approximation.
 
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The Limitation to 100 Planes per Wings are very good. I make that too in my Games with different Limitations. As Examples:

- Seaplanes for Rescue, Minelaying, Torpedoruns etc. about 20 per Wing!
- Fighters about 50 to 100 per Wing, if there are lesser pre-war-Fighters like the Ar 64 with 30 then 20 with 10 Reserve planes.
- all Type of Airforce-Bombers about 40 to 60 per Wing with more Wings for Attack

That are only examples there are more Planes we have (Recon, Fighter-Bombers and similar). But to make an realistic Number of Wings and Planes are nessecarry to reduce the CTD- etc. Things. The same get done with Army-Devisions too.

For that case I play Mods, which do that already or integrate it to the Base-Game.
 
twillie96 said:
I would love customizable transport planes, but the main balancing stats would be range versus production cost. Perhaps an extra stat like capacity could be introduced, but that may require some tweaking of game mechanics. Would surely be interesting though.

Transport planes should also use the same airframes as strategic bombers. IRL they may be slightly different, but in game, this is a close enough approximation.
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Transport planes were built in all single, twins, triple, and quadruple engines airframes. Maybe countries would able to build Transport planes with more engines with the progress of Transport planes technology?
 
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