Developer Diary | Plane Designer

[Archangel85]

Will there be the option to choose between radial air-cooled and inline liquid-cooled engines? And will there be the possibility to add the methanol-injection kit that German engines had?

No, Engines are more or less a linear upgrade path. I didn't feel that the radial vs. inline choice offered enough tradeoffs to really be interesting at the level the player operates. Most countries - as far as I can tell - cared more about the engine performance and availability than its type. The Germans even went from a radial to an inline engine on the later models of the Fw 190.

any chance of adding WEP as a special module?

I thought about it but decided that these kinds of emergency boosts were widespread enough that they could just be rolled into improved engines.

 

[Archangel85]

So what if I make a large airframe and only mount several gazillion light guns on it? Kind of like an airborn AA fortress, or like they used to do max light-gun CAs in the naval designer?

well, large airframes only have access to guns in defense turrets, so you'd effectively building a B-17. And strategic bombers already have an absurd amount of air attack.

 

[Archangel85]

I want to ask. So in the last dev diary (also in steam store page) i see there's also Hs 293 guided bomb on the designer module, yet i don't see that in the special module list. Is that some kind of mistake or just WIP?

That is the icon for the guided anti-ship missile weapon module

As someone who tries to role-play on historical:
Does this mean that I will no longer need to spam an insane amount of bombers (1K+) as USA to model in-game the historical air-war campaign?

Depends on what aspect of the airwar you want to model and what you expect the outcome to be.

 

[Archangel85]

But I meant that B-17 is supposed to have other weapons and modules too, right? What I meant was would it be possible to fill ALL of the slots with AA guns on a large or even a medium airframe?

Mediuam Airframes can become heavy fighters, so yes. Large Airframes don't have access to fighter weapons (only defensive guns) and every design needs something in the primary armament slot, so large airframes can only become strategic bombers or maritime patrol planes through mounting large bomb bays or anti-ship weapons.

Are there special modules for transport aircraft?

No, transport planes will not be designable. We thought that allowing that would open up too many edge-cases.

Love. It. Question - factory trade off... If as per your example you can have dupicate planes designed with the same stats but with swapped primary mission types in the modules- does that mean i have to have seperate lines of factories and therefore efficiencies working on what is essentially the same design? That seems to be a frustrating hiccup in production management when wanting to create true multi role planes...or am i misunderstanding? All spectacular though... Thank you thank you thank you!

Those two designs would be considered separate pieces of equipment, yes. I'm not sure why you would want to build both side by side, though.

 

[C0RAX]

@Archangel85 Does the maritime recon also help spot convoys if you are wanting to run raiding missions? Otherwise I have been playing this game since its release in 2016 and with the amount of hours I have put in I have to say its been the best game I've ever played. Great job with this game and best of luck to you in the future

Maritime Patrol will take the naval detection from the wing and use it to augment the spotting progress calculation done by fleets in the matching naval regions. so you can use aircraft naval patrols to greatly increase spotting rates for your ships

 

[Archangel85]

@Archangel85 Does the maritime recon also help spot convoys if you are wanting to run raiding missions? Otherwise I have been playing this game since its release in 2016 and with the amount of hours I have put in I have to say its been the best game I've ever played. Great job with this game and best of luck to you in the future

Thanks! I'm not entirely sure how spotting interacts with convoy raiding in general. MPAs give effectively a bonus to spotting down by normal ships.

Hello, I help a friend who made a mod that add tank icons to the tank designer. You explain here that, instead of adding icons like for the tanks icons, you filled gaps with prototype.

My question is: you aren't adding icons, but can we modders, add new icons to airframes through the code?


Agree too, what about transport planes?

Modders can absolutely add new icons.

Nooooooo!!!!!! You mean that I can't replicate the legendary Boulton Paul Defiant?!?!?

Well, the Defiant would really be a small fighter, wouldn't it? You can make turret fighters in the game, but they will have to have at least a pair of forward firing light MGs. They will also be appropriately bad at anything involving air combat against other fighters, since the turrets carry pretty steep agility penalties. Ultimately, it would have been a bit silly to create a designer feature around making designs that turned out to be very bad ideas historically.

 

[Archangel85]

In naval battles dive bombers were very good at crippling unarmoured ships like carriers, while torpedo bombers were stronger against armoured ships. Will that be somehow reflected in the stats, or will carrier CAS remain just plainly worse?

The modules are meant to give bomb-armed planes a role in naval warfare. Torpedoes have a fairly low chance to hit, but do a lot of damage, while bombs have a fairly high chance to hit (especially when combined with dive brakes) but do less damage - bombs have more consistent damage, but torpedoes hit harder when they hit. I suspect the balance of it will still favor torpedoes for naval strike, but bombs also give you a lot of other flexibility like CAS missions.

 

[C0RAX]

Oh, quick question... For cruisers/battleships/cruiser subs that have naval spotter planes, will you actually have to have small float planes in production for them?

no

 

[Archangel85]

What benefit will I get from researching better versions of the same frame type, i.e basic to improved small frame?

Better base stats, like longer range and higher agility. It's the only way to get more agility, since there are no modules that add agility.

 

[C0RAX]

Great job.
2 questions.
1) a fleet scheduled "strike force" will be able to attack enemy fleet only with air detection? I mean, without any naval task force in patrol mission.
2) how carrier planes will interact with land based planes? Carrier fighters vs land based fighters or carrier fighters vs land based naval bombers for example?
thanks

1. aircraft can only improve the ship spotting of deployed ships, the planes do not spot in the absence of a fleet attempting to spot.
2. No changes from current

 

[Archangel85]

So the plane designer is doing away with the the old modification system completely instead of incorporating it like the tank designer did with engine and armor?

Yes.

Are suicide strike craft now available to all nations and not just Japan? Have missiles and intercepters been changed in any way? Are scout planes customizable? Has hanger space and float plane catapults been changed in any way? How do you research the modules? What are the different engine types, you never explained them. I have a lot of questions as you can see.

No, suicide craft are still unlocked via focuses. Missiles remain unchanged, rocket interceptors have been rolled into the system via rocket engine modules. Scout planes can be customized, but adding offensive weapons means they no longer qualify as scout planes (and instead become tac bombers or heavy fighters, which also means they could no longer operate over foreign territory in peacetime). Deck space on carriers has been changed to instead give air wing capacity (one carrier airwing = 10 planes). Modules are researched in the air tech tree, but some are unlocked in other tech trees.

I know this is stupid but any chance of a water-cooled engine? - it makes no sense but I would like to see the stats.

The designer does not differentiate between air-cooled or water-cooled, because we don't think it would offer meaningful choices for plane designs.

 

[C0RAX]

I don’t mean this to be read as a complaint because this is a cool dev diary but could we see some of the Italian art? Have been waiting years

we will be showing off Italy in some of our future streams on the paradox interactive twitch channel so keep an eye out for those and ask to see what you want to see there

 

[Archangel85]

i am overall satisfied. goodbye! Although slightly disappointed with the transport plane decision: all sides in the war used large number of planes for transporting, while the german ones have become popular for different reasons, even minor nations relied heavily on them. transport planes are overall underrated both in-game, and in popular historical knowledge. not to mention that bombers were also often used for resupply missions, or that after the war large number of bombers were converted into transport planes. aerial logistics should be simply just more important than it currently is. will transport planes change into similar numbers/ stats as singural planes? they are too survivable currently, and take up no space. not to mention that similar tiers of transport planes would be great, since the in-game one has terrible range, iand i would actually research better ones for that range needed for barbarossa...

Transport planes will become cheaper, and the connection of one plane - one paradrop division will be removed. Transports will need a full airwing to be able to paradrop.

Can we get an Allied Plane Pack -Type of DLC? I'd love to see planes like the F4F Wildcat or the Fairey Swordfish in the game

Have faith

Great DD and i wish you all the luck in your future. Will you remain in the games industry?
And can we expect weekly DDs from now on?

Yes and Yes.

Another quick question, but would it be possible to put drop tanks of Medium fighters as was historically done?

Not currently, but easily moddable.

 

[Archangel85]

You seem to imply all planes of the same type can reinforce others of the same type. What would happen if I had one fighter capable of CAS missions and one which wasn't? Would they reinforce each other, and if so what determines if the stack can conduct CAS missions?

No, in that case they would not reinforce. This was actually a major headache early in development, and we decided to filter reinforcements by mission profile.

 

[Archangel85]

Can you elaborate? Like what kinds of things it can do collectively?

Like multi-purpose CAS/Naval Bombers can reinforce into other CAS/Naval Bombers of different type?

Fighters with Air Superiority/Intercept missions available will not reinforce Fighter wings composed of fighters with Air Superiority/Intercept/CAS missions unlocked and vice versa.

How will these changes affect Japan's Zero focus?

Japan (and a couple of other countries with similar focuses) are granted a design template for their historical designs.

This is all great news and thank you very much for the work you have done. But I didn't find any information about hydroplanes for cruisers either. We have a catapult module. There is a plane there, but it’s not there)) Maybe, when adding a catapult, it’s worth making an analogue of an aircraft carrier for 3 hydroplanes? I understand that there are many conventions in the game, but there is no way to shoot down these seaplanes and with the new system we cannot improve these seaplanes (statistics are fixed even if we do not produce aircraft at all). For example, I have superiority at sea but not in the air. I can hardly lift a hydroplane into the air. but in the current version, I will have access to search for ships. Thanks again for your attention and sorry for my english. I just really want to share my opinion here))

I understand that it is mildly immersion breaking, but turning every catapult-equipped ship into a mini-aircraft carrier would add a lot of micromanagement for very little gain.

So, does it mean I can finally have armed recon aircraft?
Also, kind of on the silly side but is it possible to train a Air Wing of Suicide crafts? I wonder how does that work?

You can add recon cameras to any type of plane, which unlocks the recon mission. However, only if you put the recon camera in the primary slot and add no other offensive weapons can you designate the design as a scout plane. Scout planes can fly over foreign territory in peacetime and have bonuses to avoid detection.

One more thing I forgot to ask, what does the 2x and 4x mean for the guns and modules?

It's the number of guns. Mostly for flavor/historical immersion, but the 4x version has double the stats of the 2x version.

 

[Archangel85]

Question. If you set 2 or more mission to the same plane. It provides every bonus and every weaknesses at the same time?

No. Planes execute one mission at a time. They have a priority list that is (basically) left-to-right, so CAS will always take precedence over naval strike if both are active.

 

[Archangel85]

As a modder (Millenium Dawn): will there be the possibility to affect modules with modifiers? (This would very good to have for ships and tanks as well for MTG and NSB)
Also would you be able to add a way to check if planes/ships/tanks have certain modules as a trigger/condition?

It would be very useful to have modifiers for modules, but we found out during NSB that it's not really feasible.
There currently isn't a trigger for that specific case.

 

[Archangel85]

This makes me ask what's the difference between air attack and air defense. I though that the air attack is your main stat when your planes locate their enemies first and they have to defence themself with their air defense.

If a strat bomber that has a high chance to be spotted first should they have the bigger air defense possible or am i wrong with the mechanics of air combat?

Air attack is the damage output, air defense is (effectively) the HP of the plane.

 

[Arheo]

Looks great!

what's the owned/foreign panel on the right for?

It is the place where we put accidental spoilers.

 

[Archangel85]

Sorry, a little bit more clarification here. Can you add recon cameras as a secondary slot to a plane and it would still provide some recon bonus or intelligence gathering (but at a lower rate than a plane doing full recon missions?)
Because, I think this will still make scout planes suck (granted, a little bit less as we don't need to spend a research slot and we could in the end just assign them a single mil, but still...)

Edit: also, thank you for all the hard work, Archangel, and good luck in your next endeavour.

Yes, recon cameras can be used as secondary "armament"