HOI4 Dev Diary - Airplanes and Lootboxes

[xtfoster]

Speaking historically it would make sense if CAS and Fighters merged into jet fighter-bomber which evolved late war when fighters became larger and got more powerful engines as well as rockets became more effective and reliable. When jet-planes rolled around neither Soviet nor USA had any dedicated models for CAS ( USA using fighters instead and Soviet favoring tactical nuclear weapons ).

Hmm, so the A-1 never existed? What about the, Su-7B, Su-17, and Su-25?
The major reason that there weren't any dedicated Jet powered CAS early on was because the Air-to-Ground targeting systems weren't up to handling the speed of a jet aircraft. The A-1 (and Soviet Il-10) were MORE effective in the Air-to-mud role than any jet aircraft simply because they could A) hit what they were supposed to, and B) loiter over the target for longer. Add in the fact that the Army Air Corps was removed from US Army control (1947) and became the US Air Force whose primary mission was NOT to support the Army (which to this day can't legally arm a fixed wing aircraft), and you see the reason that every Air Force aircraft is primarily a bomber, bomber killer, or bomber escort. Any Ground attack ability is merely secondary.

 

[Porkman]

Hmm, so the A-1 never existed? What about the, Su-7B, Su-17, and Su-25?
The major reason that there weren't any dedicated Jet powered CAS early on was because the Air-to-Ground targeting systems weren't up to handling the speed of a jet aircraft. The A-1 (and Soviet Il-10) were MORE effective in the Air-to-mud role than any jet aircraft simply because they could A) hit what they were supposed to, and B) loiter over the target for longer. Add in the fact that the Army Air Corps was removed from US Army control (1947) and became the US Air Force whose primary mission was NOT to support the Army (which to this day can't legally arm a fixed wing aircraft), and you see the reason that every Air Force aircraft is primarily a bomber, bomber killer, or bomber escort. Any Ground attack ability is merely secondary.

Second this. The reason that the CAS line was not developed in the US was that the Airforce saw it's independence as based on its strategic bomber arm and the making of all other forms of combat obsolete.

Making CAS would be a tacit admission that the army still had a role.

The only thing that got them to develop the A-10 was that congress threatened to strip the Airforce of responsibility for the close air support mission altogether.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Hmm, so the A-1 never existed? What about the, Su-7B, Su-17, and Su-25?

From a HoI4 perspective, Correct they did not.

A-1 (like the Il-2) was propeller powered 1944 "model" CAS and the others introduced too late to matter in a HoI4 context game ( With the SU-25 being introduced as late as 1981 ).

The simple fact that the propeller powered A-1 saw service into the 70s in USA and 80s elsewhere should tell you clearly if they were replaced by jets / later models or not.


What I'm saying is that I'm not against techs upgrading the capability of 1944 prop CAS ( which the A-1 well fits as seeing how it first flew in 1945 ). Techs like improved airborne radars, rockets, better bombs and even basic early missiles could well fit within the 1945-53 time span I was proposing.

But speaking of new airframes no CAS airframe was developed from 1946-55 ( prop or jet ) that made significant improvements to what existed in 1944.

 

[Porkman]

From a HoI4 perspective, Correct they did not.

A-1 (like the Il-2) was propeller powered 1944 "model" CAS and the others introduced too late to matter in a HoI4 context game ( With the SU-25 being introduced as late as 1981 ).

The simple fact that the propeller powered A-1 saw service into the 70s in USA and 80s elsewhere should tell you clearly if they were replaced by jets / later models or not.


What I'm saying is that I'm not against techs upgrading the capability of 1944 prop CAS ( which the A-1 well fits as seeing how it first flew in 1945 ). Techs like improved airborne radars, rockets, better bombs and even basic early missiles could well fit within the 1945-53 time span I was proposing.

But speaking of new airframes no CAS airframe was developed from 1946-55 ( prop or jet ) that made significant improvements to what existed in 1944.

Ok, but to take it another way.... Could you have built an A-10 (or even an A-6) within the timeline of the game. Yes, it's much later in real life, but how much of the delayed production was due to actual technological limitations vs. just not wanting to do it.

(To use a much less complex piece of technology, if we were to drop an AK-47 into 1913, pretty much any power in Europe could reproduce it and start mass producing it... it was a conceptual barrier rather than a lack of technology that had it come out in 1947.)

Similarly, if you had told a plane designer in 1945 to design a purpose built CAS plane, what would the jet/armament technology of the time allow? (The A-1 isn't the answer, nor is the A-4. Those were both built for other things than the CAS role)

 

[grandad1982]

Well attack helicopters are really the new CAS aren't they? I know very little of military history, when did they start to use helicopters in a ground attack roll?

 

[Porkman]

Well attack helicopters are really the new CAS aren't they? I know very little of military history, when did they start to use helicopters in a ground attack roll?

I think part of that though was that the Army was allowed to have helicopters while they are forbidden to arm fixed wing aircraft.

 

[Reinner]

Well attack helicopters are really the new CAS aren't they? I know very little of military history, when did they start to use helicopters in a ground attack roll?

Korean War was the first time where helicopters were used heavily, but most of them would serve as transports for soldiers, supplies and medicine, aswell as for scouting.
Where they started using them for combat role and ground support was in Vietnam, if we are talking about large scale conflicts.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Ok, but to take it another way.... Could you have built an A-10 (or even an A-6) within the timeline of the game. Yes, it's much later in real life, but how much of the delayed production was due to actual technological limitations vs. just not wanting to do it.

(To use a much less complex piece of technology, if we were to drop an AK-47 into 1913, pretty much any power in Europe could reproduce it and start mass producing it... it was a conceptual barrier rather than a lack of technology that had it come out in 1947.)

And... there are very good reasons why you can't research AK-47s as a 1913 tech in HoI4 so I think you proved my point perfectly fine yourself. No reason for me to add anything.

 

[Porkman]

And... there are very good reasons why you can't research AK-47s as a 1913 tech in HoI4 so I think you proved my point perfectly fine yourself. No reason for me to add anything.

Alex, perhaps I misphrased my question.

According to wikipedia, the A-10 was the first plane that the US ever built solely dedicated to the CAS mission.

You said... these two quotes.

Speaking historically it would make sense if CAS and Fighters merged into jet fighter-bomber which evolved late war when fighters became larger and got more powerful engines as well as rockets became more effective and reliable. When jet-planes rolled around neither Soviet nor USA had any dedicated models for CAS

and

The simple fact that the propeller powered A-1 saw service into the 70s in USA and 80s elsewhere should tell you clearly if they were replaced by jets / later models or not.

What I'm saying is that I'm not against techs upgrading the capability of 1944 prop CAS ( which the A-1 well fits as seeing how it first flew in 1945 ). Techs like improved airborne radars, rockets, better bombs and even basic early missiles could well fit within the 1945-53 time span I was proposing.

But speaking of new airframes no CAS airframe was developed from 1946-55 ( prop or jet ) that made significant improvements to what existed in 1944.

From this statement, you seem to be implicitly making two arguments. (Please do correct me if I'm misconstruing this)

Argument 1) No new CAS airframes were developed.... because it wasn't possible to improve on the basic CAS airframe (missiles, rockets, radar, yes, but not the airframe.) with 1946-1953 technology.

Argument 2) The fighter bomber was optimal at the CAS role.

I take issue with both arguments.

Rebuttal to Argument 1) The reason that the Americans (don't know about the Soviets) didn't develop dedicated CAS aircraft was because they thought their current planes were "good enough." You corrected me on how military transports were mostly DC-3's throughout the war. This was because the DC-3 was "good enough." It doesn't mean, however, that transport planes weren't improvable with late war technology.

My argument is that governments certainly could have built a dedicated CAS craft that was better than the existing prop planes using jet engines, but no one wanted to dedicate scarce resources to CAS when the zeitgeist was intercepting high flying strategic bombers with nukes.

Rebuttal to Argument 2) Fighter bombers are not ideal for the CAS mission. This was why the A-10 was developed.

A good CAS craft has to carry a ton of ordnance, be able to put it on target, be survivable, and be able to loiter in an area for a long time. When the A-10 was developed, they explicitly cited the Il-2, the Hs-129 and the A-1. Essentially, CAS aircraft development had been stopped at the end of WW2 and the A-10 was just restarting a train that had been stopped for 20 years.

A plane designer in 1948 could certainly make a slow flying plane, with high wing loading so it could loiter over the target, surround the pilot in a metal bathtub for protection (see the aforementioned Hs-129), load it up with the latest machine guns and rockets, and then use jet engines to keep the whole thing airborne in a way that a prop driven propulsion system couldn't.

No one acted on the thought of using jets to compensate for the added weight of making a slow, armored, heavily armed plane before the A-10 was developed, but there is nothing say they couldn't. (Especially the Germans as they loved CAS and they knew that the Hs-129 was underpowered... had the war gone differently, they certainly would have stuck jet engines on one.)

 

[Leutnant Walker]

Do you plan on releasing the Update and DLC this year or the begining of 2018?

 

[Alex_brunius]

From this statement, you seem to be implicitly making two arguments. (Please do correct me if I'm misconstruing this)

No that's not the arguments I'm making.

Argument 1) No new CAS airframes were developed.... because it wasn't possible to improve on the basic CAS airframe (missiles, rockets, radar, yes, but not the airframe.) with 1946-1953 technology.

Argument 2) The fighter bomber was optimal at the CAS role.

The second argument is impossible engineering wise because a dedicated airplane will always be better at it's dedicated role then an airplane developed with both that and other roles in mind. ( Assuming equal tech and investment ).

The key question here is how much better will it be?

In the early 30s fighters could bring along maybe 50kg or at best 100kg bombs in a CAS mission and were armed with machine guns that had very little impact vs ground targets. These limitations were due to increased drag, weak engines and that machine guns was enough to bring down other airplanes. A dedicated CAS airframe could easily bring down 10 or 20 times as much "pain" on a ground target after taking aiming into account.

By the end of WW2 and into the early 50s however prop and jet fighters were armed with 20mm cannons and carried up to 1800 kg of bombs/rockets/torpedo ( like the Hellcat ), which is similar or in some cases even more then what airplanes mainly meant for CAS could carry!

Rockets also meant that hitting ground targets without dedicated aiming and diving techniques was much easier.



Regarding argument #1 I'm not saying improving on a CAS airframe would be impossible, I'm saying it would yield very little result and cost alot as well as impact other real and important considerations like flexibility and economy of scale, which is why to my knowledge not a single nation on earth historically choose this path. If you really want it in the game I guess you could mod in a 1950 model propeller or jet CAS with 1 extra defense and 1 extra ground attack as well as high research cost and being vastly inferior in aircombat stats ( compared to a 1950 model jet fighter-bomber ), but I don't think many players would be interested in researching it either... Just like it didn't make sense to go for it historically.


The A-10 being introduced 25 years after the time period is about as relevant to the argument as talking about airplanes made in 1911 ( 25 years before the game start ).

Can we steer the discussion back towards talking about the features in the dev diary now perhaps instead of postwar air technology?

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

The only thing that got them to develop the A-10 was that congress threatened to strip the Airforce of responsibility for the close air support mission altogether.

So true. One of the few positives that combat veterans can say about the US Congress.

Well attack helicopters are really the new CAS aren't they?

I think part of that though was that the Army was allowed to have helicopters while they are forbidden to arm fixed wing aircraft.

That is also correct. Though "officially", the US military views helicopters as flying artillery. Compared to the Soviets, who viewed them as flying tanks.

Porkman made some excellent points about Fighter-Bombers and CAS. I'm still a newbie to HoI4, but I don't really see anything for a Fighter-Bomber aircraft in the game. Is that something if you want, you would create a aircraft variant for? Since Fighters don't directly attack ground targets, does that mean I should take a CAS aircraft and make it more of a fighter? Or is my Tactical Bomber my Fighter Bomber?

Regarding potential CAS development, assuming Germany won, can't we just look at what the Soviets did?

"Can we steer the discussion back towards talking about the features in the dev diary now perhaps instead of postwar air technology?"

You're right. Wrong thread for the above. Sorry.

 

[Porkman]

Which is why to my knowledge not a single nation on earth historically choose this path.

The amount of nations doing any independent aircraft development from 1945 to 1955 can be counted on one hand.

I want to continue this on another thread because it irks me to disagree with someone I respect as much as you.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I want to continue this on another thread because it irks me to disagree with someone I respect as much as you.

I think we mostly agree. I can certainly agree with statements you made like the CAS that were at hand being "good enough" but the points I am trying to make is mostly that multirole fighter-bombers also were "good enough" in the CAS role, and that there were good reasons why development of slow flying CAS did take a pause ( one of them being increased AA firepower rendering slow flying "armored" airplanes ineffective ).

 

[Porkman]

I think we mostly agree. I can certainly agree with statements you made like the CAS that were at hand being "good enough" but the points I am trying to make is mostly that multirole fighter-bombers also were "good enough" in the CAS role, and that there were good reasons why development of slow flying CAS did take a pause ( one of them being increased AA firepower rendering slow flying "armored" airplanes ineffective ).

The "good reason" was that both the Soviets and the US made the wrong bet in the 1950's that the next "real war" was going to be about flying in and dropping tactical nukes with fighter bombers.

Then the next 20 years of fighting real wars where this didn't happen made them develop the A-10 and the SU-25 in the late 60's - early 70's.

 

[redcoat22]

Isn’t it about time we get Ju-52 artwork for production page and a sprite? That Dc-3 picture and Ju-88 stand-in make me cringe

 

[fabius]

Bombing:

1. Does anybody know if Strat bombing of infrastructure scales? Just wonder whether sole target in Infra could be OP

2, Is there a case to model interdiction -targeting Infra- to cause some units in state to loose some equipment and manpower? Perhaps a mid to late war sub doctrine tech.

 

[Louella]

They should also be impacted by the 'remoteness' of the fort. A fort built in El Alamein or the Burmese Jungle should cost more per level than one on the atlantic wall.

You might be able to mod this, for factories, there's an "infrastructure_construction_effect=yes" entry, which I think, if you added it to forts, would also make fortifying areas of low infrastructure (like the desert or jungle) take a lot longer, unless effort was put into improving the infrastructure there first.

 

[Wesserubung]

Air supply as a part of DLC , my weekly dose of LOL.

You need to understand one simple rule here at Paradox's. Cristism isnt taken lightly here, even if done via sarcasm, in which they are Swedes. They have rules for every turn of events that might smeel like critism. For the record, I think that Paradox are the best programmers in the world - massively into threadprogramming, the most historical accurate game creators ever and HOI IV is a vast improvement over HOI III.

 

[PrimePossum69]

Ummm.... Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't air supply possible in HOI3? And we are not required to pay for it?