I tested Tommy's plane today, it totally dominated but it had an unfortunate side effect The AI stopped putting their planes up to contest me, just like when you put too much AA in division's the AI won't put up their CAS. After 6 month's the German airforce flew away and never came back.
@@Cerabelus That's because the new system is unbalanced. Literally Broken . Its always had issues . But even worse now . Kinda sucks paid 20 bucks and the game plays worse LOL Paradox never thinks how war actually works . The reason for dedicated fighters is to counter Air Bombing,Cas Nav Bombing It's not surprising . A country that's not been at war since colonial times .
I just did some retests with TK's design following the exact ruleset + modified and TK's plane still seems to be on top (as of 1.12.7.8fc8) (what I modified: 10.000 IC instead of 5.000 IC, from the 1.1.1936 to 1.1.1937) I tested his plane's against basically the same design except the turret was replaced by a self-sealing fuel tank. My planes start out strong but then dip. TK's plane come out on top after 3 months. By the end of the year I have to yield air superiority because my stockpile would run low.
Should have put a better engine on it, but I was under the impression that speed does not matter (while agility does) so I went with a cheaper engine to squeeze in a couple more extra planes. I shall call it the "Goodenough"
There is even a case that you made the best plane here. copy pasted from my comment: another good comparison would have been the ic tradeoff. Tommy would win here too and Taureor would still be 2nd here. and for smaller nations where every ic loss hurts way more than for a great power the overall ic loss would be a good comparison. Taureor would make the best plane here, where tommy would land in 4th. so while tommy made the best dogfighter, there could be a case that Taureor made the better plane - atleast for smaller nations.
Had this been on the patch we made our designs on, me and Dankus would have been 1 and 2 hæhæ. Air attack was completely busted prior to the patch and you didn't need agility :^)
@@Litterbugtaylor it's just not played on the right patch. Him and Bo made their design for the last patch and air attack just recived a nerf. So their position in this top means nothing
Tommy won because he puts "." at the start of his division names giving them a +30% attack this is common knowledge please do the test again without this bias
I remember somebody saying that it is way easier to achieve air superiority with heavy fighters, despite them trading bad. So maybe multiplayer guys use them to gain bonuses to land combat, instead of waiting to grind opponents' airforce down? Makes no sense tho why they would send them here when rules specifically say it's about dogfights.
they probably just sent whatever they used most often instead of testing out the best of the best like some of the number crunching ytbers or they are coping on their MP builds idk
I found heavies were useful in north Afrika and Asia, especially if your trying to do force projection in areas with very few airfields; 2000 fighters aren't useful if you can only fit 200 and that's when heavy fighters are king.
Heavy Fighers if I recall correctly have longer range then regular fighters. and I think they can also Archive a faster speed (intercept or how fast they can get to the battle space) then the fact they turns like a A-10 is another thing meaning in a 1 vs 1 fight they will usually lose. does not matter if your plane can shot down 10 enemy fighter if it takes a week for it to get to the fight. and I seen that happen (mostly in china) where a intercept plane would take off and the mission would conclude before the plane got there (meaning it did nothing in that air engagement) and thats why the german was looking at the rocket airplane seriously. because if you can get a plane up in the air and to the target faster then the enemy can get its mission done it does not really matter that the first report of said enemy air wing was from a farmer at the french coast and not on the other side of the English canal (Brits and there radar). then the fact that the rocket plane had a habit of becoming a maned rocket missile was another thing.
Well at least you didn't call me Pie Gin. It's Pydgin (pronounced like pigeon) if anyone doesn't know. Anyways, I'm glad they made agility more of a factor now. The plane I had clapped any design at the release of BBA. Bo's and Dankus' design and the higher IC designs would have been up there too. The IC cost didn't matter because you didn't take many losses with high enough air attack and defense.
Keep in mind these are fighters designed to take down other fighters. So what would the results be if they were intercepting bombers plus what is the type and design of said bomber?
I have a feeling that for normal in game circumstances, range significantly helps with finding the enemy planes to dogfight, but for this matchup there was radar and presumably a smaller distance, making it useless except to increase plane cost and drag down viability
That is a good way to design a plane. It wasn’t fully optimized for testing, he added the fuel tank. Speed (and agility) is the 2 most important things for dodgefighting. They keep balancing the stats, but I feel it’s worth going for double engines on small frames. When speeds are relatively close the IC cost will hurt you more, but otherwise, they gonna demolish them.
The problem with Tommies' design is the range is so damn short. Sure in Europe it will be very good, but anywhere else, even in USSR's further tiles this fighter won't even cover whole zone, and I'm not even talking about Asian tiles or Pacific Ocean's tiles. I want to also add that some of the planes are using that thingy that add defence but increase a rubber cost by one. Surely for UK it won't be a problem with their puppet Malaya, but for other planes, especially Germany, this will add up the cost by either building additional synthetic oil or extra civs for trade ( I'm speaking solely from single player, maybe multiplayer guys has mod that fix this issue)
Okay but you're ignoring all the parameters that were set for this test. You can't invalidate the results of this test by fabricating new scenarios in which the effectiveness is reduced, or adding extra parameters in which the losing planes do better.
Tommys plane doesn't use extra rubber so he also wins in that regard and i'd argue that you should be building airstrips along the way when your coming up against say the USSR as 1) transport planes can still turn the tide in any battle 2) they are quicker to build than entire railways and brand new hubs
@@ronanwaring3408 Transport planes are so bad now, 100 give .2 supply or something now. So an airport with 2000 would only give 4 supply to the region. Wonder if it was over nerfed by accident. Was one of the first things I noticed when trying to push into russia was my transports were not doing much.
Two interesting takes on these results: -the heavier airframes have significantly more range. That doesn't matter over the Benelux, but in most theaters outside of Europe, this will make a difference. -Although Taureor came in 2nd, he has the lowest IC loss in total, meaning that if you really want to preserve your planes (and experience, and aces), his design might be the best one
The IC lost can be quite misleading if you want to factor in experience and aces. He's potentially losing more planes, thus pilots, but since his are so cheap he wins on the IC lost category.
Could you do a video like this but with ship types? I would love to see everyone's ship builds and see what's effective. It would help me learn the navy better too lol
@@terasa73 sleeping for too long. We haven't been on sub spam meta for two major patches. Subs are still good but won't net you as much naval supremacy anymore
@@miguelrodriguezcimino1674 you're right but I think you can isolate the testing to what the ships purpose is. An example being: what destroyer build is best at killing subs or absorbing damage as a screen. Can just look at raw stats for intended purpose and throw them against the AI navies. Or maybe Dave can use his own designs as the opposing navy. Idk just an idea
11:50 that's why, in scientific research, subsequent studies happen, mistakes can be spotted after the fact and analyzing results allows for better fitting of test subjects
I would be interested to see longer engagements, like a proper war time. since the planes that traded a little less efective in IC but much better in raw numbers, will get and maintain much more aces and xp. That could tip the balance, since xp is a massive increase in performance.
Let’s do this with tank design as well, the best design to crash infantry divisions, will you go for more speed to overrun your enemy? More soft attack? More armour? Or breakthrough? It’s gonna be interesting
Before i watch the video. I think Pravus, Dankus and Bokoen will have the best ones with Dankus and Bokoen winning in air superiority but in long run and in terms of IC cost will Pravus win.
If you care about IC destroyed vs IC cost, it would make sense to calculate how much more did you destroyed vs. loss. So I calculated IC destroyed - IC loss for each one and the ranking are as follows: Tommy -> 31959 Taureor -> 20525.5 Bitter -> 13440 Discard -> 12828 71Cloak -> 11339.5 Pravus -> 9631 Pydgin -> 4596 Alex -> -8955.5 Ludi -> -10413.5 Bokoen -> -26228.5 Daukus -> -52634.5
I often put priority on range, because many places in the world lack airfields or the airzones are huge. Tommy's plane is nice, but with 700km range you would strugle with it outside of europe but yeah, the pinned comment goes over this. You always have to consider your IC output, resources and what you want to do with your planes
If you want to recreate my test taking into account those varibles be my guest. We had to take out some varibles out to not over complicate the challenge
Would be interesting to see how veterancy fits in to this - high quantity yet high losses means you lose veterans, would be interesting to see if a higher survivability wins out long term
Tommykays plane is insane it has 2,5 kill/lost IC ratio and does not cost extra rubber for self-sealing tanks. I would be interested in how much worse my favorite plane would do against it. just change the extra turret for the drop tank.
I find interesting that both the second and third plane design maximized the thrust/weight ratio, one went for the cheap plane the other maximized the attack. Also, while I find the analysis of this test useful, the take away point being do not underestimate agility and speed in the latest patch; the actual designs are not what I would consider "meta" (something you can use everytime and expect good results). The stated goal of the most recent HoI4 updates was to break the meta, not just change it into a new meta. Meaning that specific scenarios need specific designs. Take for example 71cloak design, if he had knew his design was to be tested over the low countries flying from France/Germany, he would have removed the extra fuel tank as airbases in full range are plenty, that would have saved him some IC lost. Also, when you create a plane design, you need to consider your goal. Are you trying to completely destroy the enemy industry? Are you only trying to have green air long enough so your land forces can take enemy territory? Do you have the industry to soak up loses and pay the price for green air?
I absolutely did *not* expect Alex, 71Cloak and TommyKay taking places they took, but Bokoen1 was absolutely predictable lol (sorry Bo). Also it would be great to have a similar video on tanks/ships! P.S. but my all-time favorite design will always be the one by ISP, called “I don’t care”.
@@FeedbackGaming he’s just not a meta guy, and he never shows designs, but if he does, those usually are the meme-ish ones like 100 IC strat bomber or a super-heavy battleship. Also I’m almost sure he did say that he doesn’t care about meta designs/compositions a couple times.
I enjoyed this video and really appreciate your fostering comadre amongst your fellow YouTubbys. I hope you continue with this informal and fun 'competition' series.
Alex's Design is really good for executing a Tank blitz, ie, Encirclement with Tank Divisions and Quick Wars. The IC lost in Air can be compensated with what the enemy loses on the ground(given that you have a supirior armour-mobile force) and the support, that your Air Support gets. For the grind on the Eastern front though (or any other war of attrition or Infantry based Armies) the TommyKay is definetly the King, ie, cost effective light frames.
I would argue that that the deciding factor should be decided by Total IC destroyed divided by Total IC lost, to represent the attrition of a long war. Alex's design specifically sticks out as a build that fails to kill enough planes over the long run even though he wins exchanges in the short term. Of course all those numbers are now skewed thanks to the 1 agility fighters being sitting ducks that that reward high attack planes with some agility to shine. If you ever try a round 2, I suggest you let them know that 1 agility is terrible and choose Total IC destroyed/Total IC lost as a deciding metric
Superior German engineering Which is ironic cuz it looks like he made Il-2 or some other Soviet fighter with a turret that actually existed but it was shit irl
It's funny how i have been thinking about adding turret to my small fighters just 2 days ago. But since i didn't have any actual dogfights happening, i just went into CAS designs, and left it hanging for future wars.
Awesome comparison! Just wanted to add that while heavy fighters didn't do amazingly, that's kind of expected. They have the advantage of superior range (and less importantly better air base capacity efficiency). So nice to see that they are at least almost competitive to light fighters, because I really like them for the improved range. TommyKay's fighter was awesome for the scope of this competition, but if used in a real game 720km range just seems really inflexible.
The only problem with tommy's design is the 720 range is very low. It absolutely wouldn't be able to used to attack other air tiles. Although I guess if you're only going to be defending then it's ok.
If you have a big enough industry you could focus on both defense and offense. Take Tommy's design and attach them Frontline units, while using the #2 plane for longer range engagements. Two effective planes
@@mrsaanes except if you're gonna be attacking then you need to have all your planes up against all of theirs. If you only have say half your planes fighting but they have all their planes fighting then your planes will get shredded.
@@victordiaz6892 well that's why I said if you have a big enough industry. I at times find myself with more military factories then I need as a major. As a minor Id take Tommy's design. But if I'm playing a major, or if I manage to do unify Austria Hungary, or the Swizz. Then I find a big enough industry to support both my units with anti air and air
@@mrsaanesThat point is moot. if you have enough Industry that you can win the air war with half your air force then you've just won the game. Splitting up your air force is always a bad idea and should only be done if you have no other option. Better to just make all your fighters longer range so they can all fight together rather than fight split up and suffer from defeat in detail
I really like this "tier list!" The only thing i would change is also take into consideration the manpower cost of losing the planes because there are nations like greece or bulgaria that start smaller and cant field a massive amount of expendable pilots
I play lotsa flight simulators. Speed is indeed a key factor, for one quite simple reason: You get to decide if you want to have the fight. Enemy has superiority in numbers and you're out of ammo, but your plane is faster? Cool, you can escape and they can't catch you. Enemy is unaware of you, below you, and your plane is faster? Give him a chase and shoot him down, he can't escape. You and the enemy are both aware of each other, but his plane is faster? He will climb above you, will obtain both potential and actual energy advantage and eventually shred you with dive & climb attacks. You can't escape because your plane is slower. Glad they made speed a bigger factor.
Taureor usually has good strategies in his videos. I like him, but he always seems like he can't be bothered to min max or even do a little micro, for that matter. I'm surprised he came up with a design that performed that well.
The win/loss totals for AlexTheRambler were swapped. He had 2-8, not 8-2. That brings the overall win/loss to 54-54 instead of 60 wins and only 48 losses and fits the IC totals.
another good comparison would have been the ic tradeoff. Tommy would win here too and Taureor would still be 2nd here. and for smaller nations where every ic loss hurts way more than for a great power the overall ic loss would be a good comparison. Taureor would make the best plane here, where tommy would land in 4th. so while tommy made the best dogfighter, there could be a case that Taureor made the better plane - atleast for smaller nations.
It may be worth then, creating the cheapest planes possible, just a rubbish air frame and a few guns and small engine, because although it would likely get bodied hard, the production advantage might make it a winner over all
That is pretty much how the Soviets beat Germany in the air. The German planes were far superior models with veteran pilots, easily worth 5 soviet planes each. Unfortunately for them, the soviets were fielding a 10-to-1 advantage.
@@FuelDropforthewin Unless you consider IL-2 to be a fighter, then Germany had way more Bf-109's than any of the Soviet models. Combining Bf-109 and Fw-190, Germans had way more fighters than Soviet union. German superiority my ass