Full Guide To 2023 HOI4 PLANE META! 1939-1945
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00:00 - Plane Meta Guide In Hearts of Iron 4
00:55 - 1936 Plane Meta
02:00 - Gaining Air XP
04:25 - Early Tactical Bomber Meta
05:15 - 1936 Fight Plane Meta
08:00 - 1939 Fight Plane Meta
10:06 - 1940 Rocket Fighters Meta
12:59 - Tactical Bomber Suggestions
15:08 - Heavy Fighter Suggestions
17:04 - Strategic Bomber Suggestions
18:00 - All Meta Planes Summery
19:45 - Naval Bomber Meta
Produced by Duck Taped Studios:
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Edited by Pluton:
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Thumbnail by Feedbackgaming!
#hoi4 #heartsofiron4 #hoi4guide - Hry
It's kinda crazy how no matter how much pdx tries to balance their game, with every rework one of the stats always becomes irrelevant
And the AI somehow absolutely never has any problems with supply, which is infuriating and unfair
ai totally has supply issues in russia wym?
The AI is utter dogshit though, so it’s only unfair if you’re just as bad
@@aaronfalcon3152 it has issues because it doesn’t build Collabs so it has to push farther than most players do
@@aaronfalcon3152 That's the weird thing, AI has supply issues in some places only, in russia it does but on some other places no.
My current game has over 60 allies divs spammed into greece and nothing is upgraded supply wise, divs are fully stacked 40width and they barely consume any supplies in greece at all
AI is retarded, UK AI needs to actually defend from naval invasions
Just want to mention you can make a small bomber (small/medium frame), relatively cheap, it can take out the static AA, then you can have your logistic strike shenanigans
I've had a lot of success with multirole aircraft when playing minor nations. When you actually have a limit on number of military factories and air zones aren't teeny-tiny the meta changes so much.
When I heard about the plane designer I was eager to be able to make a One-for-All kind of plane, so I had no need to think too much. But as they removed the possibility of selecting more than one air mission per wing, there is no real reason to not specialize planes, with determining how many factories you want to put into making each kind of plane.
I like the idea of medium frames being more durable and having more range even if more expensive, but they lack too much on agility, and you can easily make small frames have decent range and durability. I'd like medium frames to be more viable. Just a tad, a bit less cost, a bit more power on the engines, a bit more agility
Frankly it's stupid AF that you can't make planes designed for multiple roles. Fighters SHOULD be capable of doing CAS, and vice versa, if you design them to be able to do them.
@@revanofkorriban1505 you can make them, but you can only give them one single opertion to do at the same time, so you would have to micro them tinny airwings. It's much better to have just specialized planes for specific missions
@@TheRewasder97 I was complaining about the limitation to a single type of air mission at any time. It just seems silly that a fighter can't strafe a column of trucks, or chuck a bomb at a bunker it comes across if it's equipped with one.
@@revanofkorriban1505 yeah, sorry, funny thing, I got that idea from OWB, the fallout mod, where planes used to be able to do many things. My ideal would be to do a flying fortress, able to do everything, with lots of hp, air attack, range, bombing etc, that would do everything at the same time.
@@revanofkorriban1505 It is frustrating. I’d prefer if the mission selection set that option on and off and the air wing swaps missions as situations require. It’d be slightly less efficient than micro-managing the wings yourself just like combat plans for armies. Maybe even add an option window where you can change the priority of each mission type for the air group.
Can't believe how paradox is still updating WW2 even though it came out 75+ years ago💀
You got a like a month my dude
@@mikeevans9207He's 2 ahead now
2:04 You can get xp by sending 200 tactical bombers as vols to Italy and bomb Ethiopia ( uget about 10 xp untill Spain or even more ) then u send to Spain and then to China/Japan, u will have max doctrine by 1939
Doesn't work. Won't meet the criteria to send one Airwing
@@FeedbackIRL send them to italy not to ethiopia
Ooooooooh
FutureDave is the happiest Dave
one tactic gives you is to do night only strat bombing on germany , if you fit radio , decent defense , some MG's and other bomb electronic thing , you can effectivly bomb enemy and get little to no loses and enemy wont able to shot you much back becouse night penalty who not applies to you
i belive one of air doctrines reduces it , and also there is rare advisor for night penalty or was it weather
kinda just cool way to play minor nation and strat bomb germany
There is one for weather and one for night
I like to play smaller countries, and I had my first successful communist Latvia run yesterday. Couldn’t have done it without the understanding you bring to the game!
9:23 This is my bread and butter fighter. It's got great range while still having insane stats. Rolls over the AI fighters even when outnumbered like 2 to 1.
Related to your comment at around the middle of the video about Cannons not being worthwhile.
I made a spreadsheet a while back using the exact formulae used in the game, related to how much damage a plane outputs versus takes, and factoring in cost as well. I tried a lot of designs (all with Light Aircraft Designer of course). In the end, the most optimal for damage/cost, and I think second best in damage inflicted overall (second only to some monstrosity of a plane with all Air Attack but very fragile and expensive), was 2xCannon I and double 4xHMG, with Engine3, 2 x Armor Plates, 1 x Drop Tanks (obviously, better stats if you drop the drop tanks, and go for Self Sealing, but I believe range is very important, since it directly affects the Mission Efficiency in most cases, and when investing a crap ton of Mils on Fighters, that +1 Rubber will have a huge impact to your econ).
Unfortunately, my free time is way, way too limited to run tests in-game, but I will gladly send you the spreadsheet if you want to play around a bit, and perhaps test the designs I included there, and who knows - perhaps I missed something.
I've found building dedicated CAS is very effective, you just smack on anti tank cannon 2 + two anti-tank cannon 1's. The CAS support with antitank cannons is insane
Really like this guide. Now, I'd like to see how to translate for France or other countries with 2-3 slots: what compromises are needed to win the air AND be relevant on ground.
Know its late to this but I have found once you get a new level in planes it can be worth creating an interceptor version of the older fighter by replacing the guns with cannons since you can't convert to the better airframe, while having the large stockpile of inferior fighters is good by the time you are in this position you should have thousands of fighters and producing hundreds a week.
That is one of the most understandable tutorial I have ever seen for that game. This is the only reason I understand the new Plane system
The only time I've ever used Naval Patrol was as USA to get recon on Japanese fleet in the Pacific. I used them on Mediums for the range, but it wasnt all that worth it. Since I usually use a fleet of Destroyers for patrol anyways. Also when you use spies to get naval intel, it further decreases the purpose, unless you forsake agencies altogether.
Naval patrol Missions allow you to concentrate your full fleet into a deathstack and avoid putting ships at risk on patrol missions, for the naval intel needed for naval supremacy.
Additionally, due to the flexibility of planes, you can put some on port strike beforehand to whittle down their naval supremacy for a naval invasion.
Due to the lack of range however on light airframes and the single torpedo limit, the medium airframe is likely the better way to go if you plan to go for sealion.
The medium airframe can load a second torpedo and you can use it as a Tac-naval hybrid.
With current designer I feel like most expensive fighter is reference to Do 335, most expensive tactical bomber - He.177(it's a heavy bomber 2 engine gondolas, but _technically_ it has 4 engines and is capable of dive bombing) and british Victory bomber(planned to have 6 engines) as strategic bomber. I wonder if there can be a new rule to annoy US players in that they're only allowed to use the most expensive designs?:D
Naval patrol greatly increases the amount of naval strikes per wing.
2:25 in the air force tree you can also get like 0.1 daily for how ever many xp it is with branch independence
Personally I always went with 1 armor plate, self sealing fuel tank and the night radar on my fighters (also full heavy machine guns).
So I just tested it against the model without radar, but with a second armor plate. The radar is slightly more expensive. So in my test I gave both sides 100k production worth of planes. I also gave both sides the same full doctrine and command for fair comparison.
I tested 2 scenarios.
First scenario: not all planes are deployed so losses will at first be replenished by planes from the stockpile. This test would simulate air fights in air spaces where you don't have enough airports to fill all your planes.
Second scenario: all planes deployed. This simulates fights in airspaces where you have less planes than you have space in your nearby airports.
In the first scenario my plane with the radio won.
In the second scenario the dubbel plated plane won.
So both templates are roughly equally good it just depends on the situation where and when you need them. An advantage for double plated would be less tech requirement. Advantage for radio design is more range, which is better for those large airzones and works well together with low amount of airports.
I didn't test night only, because it basically means you'll have red air for half the time and the other half you'll have yellow for a very long time. This might be good if you have a much smaller amount of factories on planes and need to trade very efficiently, but at that point you are probably better of with more aa in your divisions or make (better) tanks.
Branch independent spirit adds air xp over time, i mostly use that one in the beginning
I think the issue with that one if it’s the ticking xp is that it doesn’t pay itself off
its ok tbh but 0.10 is quite low, much prefer other ones, especially the 15% research speed for airframes
@@Symmonso96 it’s worth it as an air controller like Canada or Hungary since you don’t need to actually research the planes your side of the war can just give them to you
great video
That's a good point. Is there any difference between having machine guns or turrets. One would think that guns would only come into effect during superiority, interception or even CAS. But if it's all the same.... then turrets probably don't matter unless you decide the fill the upper slots and still want (more) attack.
I don't care about meta, its interesting but I do maybe the dumbest thing and have Medium airframe with Main and small ar mament medium bomb locks, 3x level 1 engine, self sealing and non strategic, and then one 2x light machine gun. I just use it as an everything role, and I really don't care about optimising it, just making a decent spam plane. This will surely trigger people but I don't care, and air is not my focus for my games. I do respect those who research and test this sort of thing, don't get that wrong.
Yeah, when I dont feel like complicating myself I do the same daam thing
I think Feedback is wrong about CAS and TAC bombers. I wish he'd do some data driven testing rather than looking at numbers and making a guestimate. Slapping some rockets on a fighter does not replace missing those two other elements of the air war.
Having a well designed CAS plane that's being escorted still reaps dividends in battle. The problem I think players run into is overbuilding on CAS. Having 2000 CAS planes is certainly great but not if it comes at the expense of tanks or fighters!
TAC bombers have always been a little controversial and remain so, as it's not a plane that many nations should/can afford to build, but Germany can afford to splurge there. There is something to be said about the usefulness of being able to slot a jack-of-all-trades TAC into Lower England from the Benelux and not lose out on mission efficiency. Also a case, as Italy, for using a smaller contingent of TACs when dealing with Gibraltar and Egypt. It's an expensive force multiplier but if you've got the IC to spare, worth it strategically.
So what I missing?.
@@FeedbackIRL Escorted CAS still can do significant strength damage to enemy divisions. It's worth building a dedicated CAS fighter and not cheap out on the modules over taking some of your dogfighting planes and retrofitting them that role.
TAC bombers with their greater range can supplement ground strike missions, naval strike/port strike missions, and do a little strat bombing when needed from airbases that smaller aircraft can't efficiently use. I've started leaning towards Operational Flexibility as my doctrine of choice as it makes TACS just a bit better.
IC cost of both need to be taken into account, for sure, but spending a little bit more is sometimes worth it. Germany can certainly afford it.
I don't understand what you disagree with me about
rockets in first slot makes you cas category so you get extra 20% agility from doctrines ;)
For the tanks you should make fast heavys(doctrin+traits+design for speed) with trucks to get early mechanised, 50% hardness
I want to make a specific note about Carrier Fighters and Carrier Bombers on Aircraft Carriers. You want the *best of the best* on your carriers because you can't hold that many of them, they don't reinforce mid battle, and they do a lot of damage. Since you ultimately don't need to produce that many of them, using things like self-sealing fuel tanks is worth it if enemy air cover or carriers are expected, since you will have more planes fly more missions during key battles. As far as I'm aware, this doesn't protect against ship AA though.
For me i like to create a fighter/ground attack aircraft with fuel expansion after i get the jet and just put defense on it
You don't need agility on these bombers. It can't go below 1 anyways. Just stack ground attacks and get air attack from the turrets. Range is very significant if you want to fight anywhere outside of Europe.
true agility for bombing is useless
I think he was trying to see if a tactical bomber would be any good at dog fighting? But idk why you would put the bomb bay on it in the first place if you want it to fight actual fighters
@@therealgaben5527 If you want to fight fighters, use your own fighters. Anything else is inefficient. The bombers do the CAS damage and having some air attack on them will allow you to inflict alot of casualties on fighters trying to intercept you.
I don't even play hoi4, but I love these stat videos, Love your content.
i made a cas design (this is when the new plane design came out initially)
Fighter 2, x2 heavy machine guns, self sealing and x2 rocket rack or i would have the same design but with x2 bomb locks or a fighter 1 with the exact same thing but one less of each module
I go survivability and extra fuel tanks first but heavy machine guns ain’t bad to rush
Having a couple hundred tac bombers is useful tool to have for any large nation. Just put 2-3 factories on them and give them the max tactical bombs and bombsights/radar to max out their strat bombing.
They can then be used to strat bomb forts and naval forts(great for getting through Czech, Switzerland, etc). Tac bombers have long enough range to cover nearly any naval invasion with CAS support as well as bombing out naval forts. Even just having small ground support makes a HUGE difference for winning naval invasions, they will do massive org damage which grinds the enemy down while your marines sustain the combat for a long long time with their high org stats. I've won battles like this vs even up to 20 divisions defending places like Gibraltar and Malta with just 6 marine divisions since air support just grinded them down.
We know having more guns makes a difference but what about having more bombs for CAS or Strat bombing? You also should take into consideration manpower. Having more means using more manpower. So maybe having better, costlier planes (or whatever) and be able to do more damage for less might also be something to consider.
...also to add. I think just as ground troops have a certain combat width, so do CAS in that combat. So wouldn't it be better to add as many bombs to a dedicated CAS airframe (to any that can afford to have dedicated CAS), as opposed to making many more cheaper CAS planes - in order to do as much damage as possible in that combat width limited combat?
Probably because they want you to use the actual ground attack cannon for ground attack. The 1-2 ground attack you get from the machine guns and cannons definitely is not enough to make logistical strikes worth it anyways when you could put on an anti tank cannon and get the like 16 ground attack or what ever the account number is. Although it doesn’t make sense that the machine guns and air to air cannons don’t help a bit for CAS either, with strategic bombing, you not going to do any significant extra damage to a city with a machine gun
In my experience, anything medium or above on a cas, tactical bombing, or naval bombing mission just gets shredded no matter what, even with air superiority. I wonder if agility needs to get buffed for tactical bombers. Dedicated single engine CAS by contrast is extremely cost effective and losses small. That said large airframe on strategic bombing missions seem to do just fine too. I think PDX needs to tweak things for medium bombers.
That 1936 "CAS" tactical bomber is actually quite good, you get an extra 9 ground attack compared to using actual CAS, and much more range and more air defense for about 80% more production cost.
Also, making rocket rail cas is actually super broken because they have 20% agility bonus from battlefield support doctrine. This is higher than what you get from light aircraft company on the fighters
I can see heavy fighter/interceptors being a decent pick for enemy naval bombers. Though the AI likes flooding those zones with fighters as well (at least over the English Channel) so it might be more for the pacific/Mediterranean
I have done a game with naval bombers, and basically UK/USA sent tons of fighters over to the med because AI germany doesn't produce any fighter i feel like
BF 110 became exclusively a night fighter later in the war.
US bombers operated in the day, UK at Night. Thats why UK gets all the night bonus options.
Love this content
What wizardry was that with the air wings in Spanish civil war? I attach them to the volunteers and they spend the civil war sunbathing in Magaluf
I wish you could start second air doctrine after finishing your fist tree in 1939
is cas with small airframe bad? or why do you only do medium bombers as cas
if you have good air superiority pure cas with lots of small bomb bays will absolutely decimate infantry, found that out accidentilly today, only 1600 over a region and had over 150 ground damage.
Edit : i was wrong heavy mg is 1939 not 1938 tech so rushing it is actually faster so the question is more do you want to waste one slot for better aircraft
Rushing heavy mg would finished at 1938 regardless(unless you have research boost) i would do it at late 1937 or early 1938 since they only take around 100 days in late 1937 and a mere 73 days in 1938
Even apart from the part of the ai that micros and whatnot, I think what needs a major overhaul for the ai is how they deal with division templates and equipment templates. Like, the ai generally knows how to make goos infantry divisions, that’s fine, but for the love of god they cannot make tank divs for their life, and they don’t even generally make a lot of tanks after a pretty low threshold of factories. Like in a majority of cases, Germany will cap at like 15 factories on tanks, and that’s not even mentioning how they aren’t even good tanks. When it’s to the point that the major ai is making 4-4’s (4 meds 4 mot, hell sometimes it’s 2 light 2 med) in 43, and their tank divs are easier to push than their infantry, it’s become a problem. And same issues with air and ai. They make grossly inadequate templates, and what’s worse, a lot of times, the ai only ever makes fighters, no matter how much more air they have over the enemy. Britain hardly capitalizes on it’s 10k fighter advantage late game bc they don’t really make bombers or cas, they just make more fighters, and shit fighters at that.
Anyway, I just commented this bc it came to me, and I figured anyone watching might be interested in it.
I would like to add that this isn't technically "future-proof" since you're playing a beta version, and A LOT can change from a beta to a release, including stats, numbers, modifiers etc.
For cas I cant help but build med airframes and stuff them with at cannons, just because I adore the Duck
I did max strategic bomber elements, and max turrets. If the enemy does not have a special counter, these planes deal massive damage and shoot down light fighters.
Now i would really see a video called "does strategic bombing only works"
With strategic bombers each new one should also have altitude as a stat. The higher you can fly and bomb from the less chance you get shot down.
And if you go higher accuracy gets worse and damage gets more spread across everything in the states
Can you Test anti Tank Cannons on planes and Build super cas
Good point, I forgot about anti-tank cannons
@@FeedbackIRL anti tank cannons on planes and extremely good especially putting missile launchers
Are scout planes worth it anymore since they use the medium air frame module
They help a lot finding enemy fleets. I had much better results finding Allied submarines when I used scout planes.
I make heavy fighters with 1 (2x)HMG and fill it out with bomb bays. Then I hire Rudolph Hess for his -15% heavy fighter production cost
Can you have both planes? Like the rocket CAS and the Fighter without the rockets? Or will that be too expensive
Could you bring on some of MP plains?
Does "air defense" stat on nav bombers/cas reduce damage from AA on ships/divisions or its only matters against planes?
Fromw hat I remember Speed and Air Defense helps everywhere, even Vs static AA (though there's a "minimum 1 kill" for static AA regardless), it's just Agility that only affects plane vs plane
dive brakes have been removed for naval bomber? i cannot put them on my naval bombers
Against AI Germany as Britain, I found dual HMG's with bomb locks was an absolute beast mode fighter-bomber. I think it also helps to have a single production line as Britain...allowing me to get around 2k+ planes before WW2 kicks off. I thought about using the alternative materials and against the AI as the UK it works very well. With the aircraft production cost reduction from the Focus tree, plus the alternative materials, you were able to spam out a stupid number of multi-role planes. In this way, I could basically saturate the airspace. I did suffer a lot of losses, but since as the UK you can tech much faster than almost anyone else...it doesn't matter because your tech helps to compensate for the reduced defense. Beside, you're producing so many planes, who cares? It's the Russian wave theory applied to aerial combat.
I would enjoy the video "strategic bombing does it work?"
Dave.
Actually you don’t need a lot of attack in your fighters.
You need your agility bigger than the enemy agility.
The attack bigger than the enemy defense and the defense of your plane bigger than enemy defense.
Just as cheap as possible.
Remember if you create a version of fighter with bombs the old crew won’t take the new plane because they only do fighter missions.
A made your meta fighter and lose badly because the enemy fighter was worse but cheaper and they made a lot!
max single engine plus 2hmg and double cannon with aa radar on fighter 2s shreds ai fighters, got a 1:8 casualty/kill ratio with germany over the english channel
CAS are... really soft to the aa. Support AA can decimate any cas that comes into battle support. I hope you would make some look into that too^^. A point I like to add is anti tank cannons are really good for cas(tested)and even for logical strikes where state aa is not present.
ok kraut
What mod are you using to be able to tinker with the game like this without waiting for upgrades and stuff.
Console commands
Plane designs are tough. I tried maxing out attack and defense, and my attack, speed, and agility were higher and I outnumbered the enemy. But I was losing 3-5 planes for every 1.
I think you had penalties for not having fuel and range.
How about medium airframe with all heavy machine guns? It has both good air attack and somewhat decent agility.
Do the Strat Bomber Only strat, please!
When I play major nations I just slap as much cannons to fighters as possible. They cost as much as tank, but have incredible firepower, so you can easy get kd ratio like 5/20 or 5/30 even if the enemy has twice as many figthers. And in the late game, like if you invade usa in 1945 from canada and you have thousands upon thosuands of those fighters, the kd numbers can go up to 10/100.
But maybe I should simply put heave machine guns and not cannons, never tried that before even though I know that a lot of people do that.
Germany has been somewhat nerfed in terms of airplanes at the start of the game. Paradox took away all the Stuka’s and He111’s and replaced them with Interwar planes. This means assigning 2 or 3 factories to CAS and TAC right at the start if you want to reach historical levels of those planes in 1939, which you will fail to do for He111’s, if your goal is to have air superiority/more fighters than the allies at the start of the war (which the Germans did have) and have your land forces properly/historically armed. A bigger problem I noticed is that when you upgrade your plane designs, for example adding machine guns to the Stukas, they will stop reinforcing your current air wings. A temp workaround might be to maintain your old design in production as well as the new one and mark your current air wings as specialized until you fill them out. This will still create reinforcement issues in the future. I’m not sure if this is a bug or if they did this to avoid people overpowering their air wings, but it turns a very interesting (and more historically accurate) plane design system into a bit of a nuisance.
I make about 1000 of best fighters i can possibly made before 1939 and that's it. Don't worry too much on CAS or Tacs. They wouldn't matter much on first years. Only in Operation Barbarossa
Do you have a template for a spy plane?
Oh man, I love you :D
Can i use Heavy Fighter as a Heavy Bomber protecter instead of
taking down bomber?
What about the Non-Strategic Materials usage?
For 1936-1939
I do medium airframes and completely disregard agility, in 1945 i fought all allies planes with all of my planes as italy (I was outnumbered 8 to 1) and was killing them roughly 10 to 1. Agility does not matter
Air attack got nerfed in last patch. Trust me it does matter
How can I get these builders
Man it's wild that armour doesn't mess with agility at all where as heavy cannons shit all over it, and HMG's don't effect it either despite not being significantly lighter than their cannon counterparts.
Honestly the stat allocation on air modules is all over the place. I'd expect mg turrets to count towards air defense rather than air attack, in my mind it makes it harder for enemy fighters to intercept your bombers but, i guess paradox thinks difficulty. And why mgs weigh more than mg turrets is wild to me, surely the extra materials required to give the mg a rotational axis would cause them to weigh more.
@@KingCrofty Well, the MG turrets still inflict damage and can shoot down planes, can’t they? The problem is with how the game works, the air defense stat means how much shots can the plane take before being shot down(basically survivability), air attack meanwhile means how much damage it inflicts on enemy aircraft(how capable is it on shooting down aircrafts, doesnt matter if it defends the plane from interceptors)
@@maximkopa3955 Yes I understand that, However if I were to be making a game, it's not the way I would do it.
Lol make a video on learning naval patrol. Ive never even looked at it twice.
Sure
If you want to make strats you just need to make them as damaging as possible, no need for survivability. You keep them on the ground, destroy the enemy air force with your fighters and then bomb them back to the stone age. It's great when you play against buffed up AI and want a fun challenge as USA or UK.
8:33 Why did you not pick the dubble engine, is it less cost effective?
Exactly. More cost for no meaningful stats
@@FeedbackIRL Okej Thanks Dave
As that a mattress in the background?
If you think I’m filling up a research slot for over 500 days with a 110 day tech, you’re out of your damn mind.
Cas is good when the nations around you have no, or very limited air capabilities
From my own experiences, strat bombing indeed works, but it is difficult to actually see the results because of how the game doesn't show you any kind of accurate damage info. Its impossible to see enemy factory damage and the mission info screen is just vague(it just says you're doing like .1-.5 damage whether its 100 or 1000 bombers).
That all being said, if you send a few hundred strategies bombers to consistently bomb major centre's of industry, which is easy vs Britain, Germa y, Japan, etc where most of their factories are in 1-3 provinces, they will constantly damage enemy factories and force them to use all their civs to repair and thus not be building new ones or improving supply lines.
Overtime, they will gradually be worn down and lose their ability to equip their units, just like what happened in history. It takes a couple of years and its really meant to just drive the nail in the coffin while you're fighting a multi year constant war of attrition. I think its only worth it for nations with the spare industry to casually devote 15-20 factories on the bombers and 4-5 on heavy fighters to escort. I try and keep the bombers production cost around 100. 1-2 bomb bays, a couple of cheap mg turrets and a bomb sight is all you need. Losses are minimal, unless you are trying to bomb britain(they will put 4000 fighters or more to defend) you don't need to focus that much on defense.
Yes
God bless Dave the WISE!
Turrets should add anti air because they had same purpose in bombers. It is ridiculous to use regular machine guns on bombers and developers should fix it.
what about cas planes?
So when BBA first came out, Air attack and defense was king, and we’re so much stronger than agility, agility was basically worthless, so heavy fighters with canons and HMGs were the META.
I take it they changed the equation so agility is now more important again?
Also, I tried looking at the wiki but I strongly suspect the equations it gives for how damage is calculated isn’t correct anymore. Have you or anybody else managed to find or figure out what the equation is now? Is speed at all important, for example, or am I better off slapping more stuff (and thus more weight, less speed) and/or going with an older, cheaper engine (less IC but I think slower base speed, plus less thrust so even less extra speed for equal weight)?
how do you deal with allied bombing while you are invading poland? it is so hard to disrupt them even by putting 500 fighters watching germany, and they break your war support.
Heavy fighters: use them when you need range, they get tons of range without extra fuel tanks... that's pretty much what they are good for. Tactical bombers are similar, long range CAS or logistics strike, you mention they are bad against AA and... ya, they are terrible but! The places where logistics strikes tend to be the most devastating are also those that are not very developed, and bombing the only rail line in area that has little... anything can do incredible damage. Tactical bombers also can be used for naval strike for large areas but don't? AA on ships with fuck them up and they just cost to much, use a really cheap naval bomber and throw some fighters up to keep the air superiority. Turrets go on heavy air frames, armor is nice but really, you want as many bombs as possible, which makes the plane heavy so... turrets beat armor, why not armor? because Strat bombing works, it can do incredible damage... but you need air superiority, full stop, that's why armor is kinda pointless, if you want a to strat bomb someone to death you have to have air superiority and once you have that... what do you need armor for?
Naval air patrol is incredibly effective, can't say what airframe is best for that, heavy works, medium works, production cost? Doesn't matter, because you only need a handful of planes but you also need those techs that make naval spotting from aircraft really effective. I've tested naval bombing with and without air patrol and it's not even close, naval air patrol *spots ships*; flying boat, radar, navigation, a dozen planes in a sea zone... done, sit back and watch those air naval bombing markers stack up.
Like clockwork, PDX makes an update that adds modules to old items and then makes almost every module not worth using... Opportunity cost balancing is so meh, please just use the design cost as the drawback. (New planes are also more expensive and it’s not like Germany produced 10’s of thousands of planes over this time frame)
Are recon planes not worth it anymore then?
What about Carrier Navs?
So no small airframe CAS bomber? Just go Tacticals?
Why does the plane meta look like the USAAF 1938-1944 lineup lmao. Kinda drives me crazy when there was a concerted effort to move to cannons over MGs, and heavy MGs were a US thing primarily because US cannons sucked (look up the US-UK slapfight over the HS404). Cannons should be notably more expensive, but overall cannons have an edge in weight and effectiveness vs a heavy machine gun array.
I have all the DLC but i dont have the plane designer. Did I miss something?
yes, by blood alone. its a new dlc
I only play solo. I always have issues pushing ussr. Never can seem to find the sweet spot for infantrydivisions. I usualy go fo 7 infantry, 2 artilary and 1 aa.
If you add support artillery, engineers and support AA that division sounds great to me
9 infantry, one artillery, with support artillery, support AA, engineers and logistics. 240 of those babies let you right click and forget about it.
BTW my start above works best if you make at least 120 inf and some 42 w tonks. Normally I put 14 mills on inf eq 1 at the start of the game and 7 in both support equipment and artillery and 2 on AA and 1 on trains. You need to put at least 18 on artillery 2and 20 on infantry equipment 2 once you research them and then put AA up to 7 once you get the mills (more if you think you are going to run out or put the extra in lane) and then everything else into medium tonk (medium cannon 2 radio 3 2 small cannons what ever you want for the last mod you know the drill make them good tanks) and then if it is a single player game put like 15 mills on fighters to begin with so that you can contest air for when you push back the Stalin line
I think that the 1936 basic small air frame has terrible range. So the first thing I research is range for the drop tanks. Then add a self sealing fuel thing for armor. A plane with only 500 range cant do anything but intercept in 1940, at which point it us super outdated, so slapping on some range and bringing it to 950 makes it so that the plane will have high mission efficiency and become more flexible late game.
For nations like Japan, where having air in China is important early in the game, range is all you need. Because the air zones in China were reworked, you never have the range to do much. The only airbases that matter are the one in Beijing, Shanghai and Hanoi. But as these are all on the coast, you cant reach inner china or some of the other weirdly shaped air zones.
Using carrier planes to get air crew veterancy for later in the game is also useful. Carrier planes always have lower base stats vs normal planes, including range and speed, which makes the early starter cv planes absolute trash for use in China, because they are inter war and have no real range.
For China war it is best to focus on CV planes if you want veterancy on them. Regular planes will only steal their exp as china has limited air power.
Getting exp from Ethiopia (or Spain if you dont want to cheese) you can build the A5M CV fighter with range for china, the B5N2 CV nav with bomb locks and range. CV cas is useless imo, a shame since I like the D3A Val and D4Y2 Suisei. Sadly, cv navs with bomb locks can do the job of cv cas and do actual damage in naval battles late game with exp gained from cassing in China. Adding bomb locks makes it more expensive, but also makes the plane very flexible. After all. Its stats are not affected by adding them (except weight and speed). This lets the cv nav have some agility while nav striking or fighting in cv battles.
As a Japan player, I go all in on Speed, Agility and range. The true Mitsubishi experience. Adding armor is something they never did (until it was too late). But in Hoi4 you can just add it and make any plane op. The Zero focus gives improved cv frame, cannons 1 and single engine 3. Making it possible to build decent, cv fighter and cv nav aircraft in early 1939 ish.
More air crews and centralized control boom. Range fixed
thank you sir, here is your coffee
super heavy cas/bombers have no spot currently in AI battles. you have to micro them to go to all enemy regions every few days so they make fresh damage.
personally I like heavy fighters, as they tend to survive longer, and grab XP. light attack without sealed fuel & armor usually die a lot, which makes your xp tank drain.
Nah what has worked for me every single time is light planes with heavy mgs and pure cas planes, it always works