Air Changes | Developer Corner

[adski42]

This is what the current aviation system requires. During World War II, an attack by 500 planes was defined as a massive raid. Currently, AI issues thousands of aircraft. Moreover, in the crucial day of the Battle of England, the Germans lost 80 machines, which was a devastating blow for them. In HoI IV, the loss of 80 machines is a statistic.

I couldn't agree more. I think part of the reason is that if you look at the numbers of aircraft produced the numbers are staggering, but that doesn't take into account the way aircraft were lost. Excluding the aircraft that were shot down, huge numbers were lost in accidents (something like a third IIRC) and then loads were written off with combat damage that was too severe to allow them to fly again. Production numbers should be huge, but only to allow the numbers you quoted in actual combat.

Part of the problem comes down to game mechanics and AI of course. If you don't have to defend everywhere (because the AI does a bad job at bombing) and the game mechanics allow it then why not concentrate your force over one region?

 

[adski42]

I'd really like the capability to select a bunch of air regions when Strat bombing, prioritise the regions and allow the AI to assign missions to an air group on a (weighted) randomised basis. This would take the micro out of strat bombing and setting up fighter defences (following the bomber force around with interceptors) as well as forcing players/AI to guard all key targets with fighters.

 

[GianpietroU90]

I couldn't agree more. I think part of the reason is that if you look at the numbers of aircraft produced the numbers are staggering, but that doesn't take into account the way aircraft were lost. Excluding the aircraft that were shot down, huge numbers were lost in accidents (something like a third IIRC) and then loads were written off with combat damage that was too severe to allow them to fly again. Production numbers should be huge, but only to allow the numbers you quoted in actual combat.

Part of the problem comes down to game mechanics and AI of course. If you don't have to defend everywhere (because the AI does a bad job at bombing) and the game mechanics allow it then why not concentrate your force over one region?

Maybe a good idea is to increase the cost of producing a proper air force. That will penalize minor nations; but to be honest not many nations had a proper air force during the WWII. So maybe less but better. Having an air force will have a big impact on the battlefield and on industry ( both destruction and cost of producing airplanes ) but you can't have thousands and thousands of air on every region in the world ( yes USA I'm looking at you! ). In that way small nations can make a relevant impact with 100 planes if they are uncontested or more strong then the enemies planes. Does this make sense for you guys?

 

[D.Knight]

Does this mean that there are only going to be two size settings hardcoded in and you can change them in the defines or something, or will modders be able to set individual wing sizes per plane type? The latter would be pretty desirable for some mods that really like flavor/order of battle detail.

Per plane type per country would be important as well yeah.

 

[Hansag]

I'm guessing it is a no, but I am still curious.

Heavy Fighters and Light Fighters. As it stands now, only the Light Fighter evolves into the Jet Age, though when looking at the war, it seems that Heavy Jet Fighters (e.g. Me 262, Gloster Meteor) arrived earlier [during the war], and the one-engine Light Jet Fighters (e.g. He 162, F-86 Sabre, Mig-15) came later, even after the war.

Further, being able to research and then upgrade (e.g. older airframes) to fighter-bombers able to perform limited CAS missions.
Something that has been seen in some mods out there.

Would this type of QoL and immersion improvement be possible to implement?

 

[Dimebag]

Let's say you have 2400 planes in reserve and want to deploy them all. There should be a way to deploy all of them fast across 2-3 airfields in groups of 400 let's say.

 

[safe-keeper]

Please please please rework home defence for planes - just let me assign planes to a garrison order and let them figure out the best way to defend against enemy bombers rather than the cat and mouse required now

This.

 

[rcf31415]

Wouldn't it be better to just let the player set up the default number as they want? and then allow them to micro other wings if they want to? I know you said that the number would be moldable but why not just add a toggle in the UI to allow the player to change the number?

 

[bl00dw01f]

Will the new sort by plane let you select specific model of the plane instead of just type? One problem everyone ends up with, especially late game is having 30 different variants and captured planes of the same type you have to scroll through just to get to the one you actually want to use. Can I set the UI to somehow only display local produced planes or just Fighter IIIs for example?

And also, any chance for a plane designer?

 

[Sniperdude626]

How will Air volunteers work now that air wings are fixed at 100?

 

[GrandVezir]

How will Air volunteers work now that air wings are fixed at 100?

At a guess: air volunteers will be one of the cases where wings are sized in multiples of 10.

 

[Eddie121]

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!

Nice QoL improvements, but a “Man the Guns” style rework of air combat and aircraft design is exactly what many of us are looking for!

 

[Toybasher]

5) balance the stats, air is the most important part of the game (it should be important but not decisive), CAS damage is to hight, strategic bombing is to strong, Naval bombers are the best way to conter submarines or any fleet (except for kamikaze which are even better, how can kamikazes so effectively sunk submarines? will always be a mystery)

Well the submarine has to surface now and then to refill air and recharge the battery for electrical engines for underwater operation. Submarines still take a bit to dive and I imagine kamikaze ramming the submarine might be easier than circling around and trying to line up a good bomb run.

The main balancing concern I have is with AA. Support AA (even at '36 tech stuff) is way too effective at shredding CAS to the point where it becomes almost nonviable. Fighting Germany becomes a slog since they love spamming support AA, and the supply rework has nerfed tanks very hard.

Another small change that would be nice is to not have the game spam events every time I get an ace.



RIP the days of the devs claiming that, no really, wing size shouldn't matter when it comes to air combat, that 10 wings of 100 planes should behave the same as 1 wing of 1000... even as players proved time and again that it did matter in lots of janky ways. Like how you could spam aces if you made tiny 1 plane wings, or that you could vastly exceed combat width of CAS bombings with larger wings.

Probably for the best honestly.

I agree division level AA needs to be looked at. A single support company of AA pretty much caps the CAS damage reduction bonuses. There's little reason to add more AA. I think division AA should be able to have more impact, possibly even on the strategic level outside of battle. Currently there's no reason to build a dedicated AA division and I feel there should be a reason to have 1 or 2 sprinkled into your army on a front.

 

[Cavalry]

It is excellent if the air force to auto stop flying in bad weather, and can set the air force to stop operate against high odd, like fleet. Perhaps resume 7 days later. We can manual stop, but that require too much work to check every air zone

 

[España]

Hi, thank you very much for the work on improving the Air gameplay in HoI4. I believe the Air game is a feature which needs improving in Hoi4.
This is my first post so apologies in advance if this comment has been addressed before.

When an airbase with planes is captured by enemy forces, the same planes show up in another friendly airport without any punishment whatsoever. My point is, if the enemy captures your airports then either all your planes or a part of them would be destroyed by enemy forces, instead of just moving them to another airport. There must be some penalty. There could be factors which influence whether all planes are gone or not, such as i) air superiority in the region, ii) distance to the next friendly air base, iii) how much supply and oil there´s in the region where the airport is located, etc.

In my humble opinion, improving this feature would result in higher engagement from players in the Air game as well as identifying Airports as strategic positions which must be defended.

Thank You!

 

[Jays298]

Wouldn't it be better to just let the player set up the default number as they want? and then allow them to micro other wings if they want to? I know you said that the number would be moldable but why not just add a toggle in the UI to allow the player to change the number?

I really like this. If anything I'd like to see everyone set their own wing sizes that make sense.

I realize they are trying to correct AI overcrowding but that is kind of a micro issue (they should lessen the overcrowding penalty for airfields and encourage AI to build airfields.

I'd like to think NAVs and TACs should be like 25 or 50.

Fighters and CAS may be produced in the thousands for some countries and big wing sizes make sense.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Glad you're adding the ability to intercept planes as they re-base. This should make it a little riskier to constantly re-base bombers in order to avoid enemy fighter coverage.

 

[Chiantozzo]

View attachment 840453

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.
View attachment 840448


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.


View attachment 840449

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
View attachment 840450

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

I think since you're not planning to add Air Marshals you should add a combat bonus specifically for air force Generals such as Kesserling and Italo Balbo

 

[Louella]

@YaBoy_Bobby

I've had a couple more thoughts, about how the air warfare might be changed.

Something I've thought about, is how air warfare is largely separate from everything else, and I think it might be interesting for some more interdependency between the tech trees.

If we look at the naval tech tree, then having techs for torpedoes, should also improve the attack values of NAV & TAC bombers on naval missions, representing improvements in air-dropped torpedoes (Note that Germany did not have any air-dropped torpedoes at the start of the war, and only developed some after purchasing some Italian ones - this could then be modelled there).

Similarly, the rocket artillery techs, should improve air attack of Heavy Fighters and Interceptors (modelling the air-to-air rockets used by the Luftwaffe amongst others).
And also improve the ground attack of CAS, (modelling air-to-ground rockets).

I think also, that Fighter-Bombers (combination of Fighter & CAS) should be considered, to model the differences between using light attack aircraft like the Il-2 Sturmovik and the Ju-87, as opposed to using fighter-bombers like the P-47 and Typhoon/Tempest, which could also function as fighters.

Any thoughts on this kind of thing ?

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

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.

Speaking of improvement of overall experience: any plans to take a look at carrier overcrowding? especially if you insist on limiting control over airwing sizes? Currently it's one of the most convoluted mechanics there is with little to no information (until the actual battle - and even then you are expected to make sense of tooltips.... somehow).

Also, I'd like to know if there are any plans to sort out the whole mess with "Mission Efficiency", "Air Mission Efficiency", "[insert mission type here] Mission Efficiency", "Sortie Efficiency", or the newer "Force Projection" and "Home Defence" factors - those could really use a rewording, at the very least. Ideally, with extensive tooltips explaining actual differences and application. For example: does "Home Defence" apply to carrier battles, seeing how "airbase" is in actual battle and in the same airzone the battle is taking place? or should it be "Force Projection", because actual battle happens in the void (although nothing mentions that)? What about external airstrikes participating in naval battles (provided airbase is in the same airzone)? what about non-battle naval strikes (again, in same airzone)?

Also, there are minor QOL-related things like knowing when planes sortie, exactly (even fact that they can sortie only at 8 hour intervals, up to two times a day - is not a readily-accessible knowledge) or knowing where airbase will be built, exactly (during war, you can even manage to build airbase in enemy territory), or exact points planes are taking off from? I mean, few would expect something like this without prior knowledge:

would be nice to see these addressed too.

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.

There is also a "small" issue of transporting equipment: Allies had to run carrier convoys in order to bring airpower to Malta (planes would get shot down otherwise). What we have instead is instant creation of ariwings anywhere in the world, nearly instant reinforcement from stockpile and infinite ariwing transfer range without fear of interception (noting in dev diary states that transfer between bases is subject to interception).