@@Marxist-Nixonist-Bidenist not just but how he does tests , even looks up game code is just spot on , speculation of other content creators can be tiring when you want proper info. Especially hoi4 not explains most game mechanics at all
Sorry if this is a noob question, but you don't discuss putting Naval Bombers on both missions at once (Naval Attack + Naval Patrol). Is Multiple Missions not viable? I use it for Air Superiority + Interception Mission, because I was hoping (naive I know) the Airwing would perform whichever action is 'needed' at the time...
and yes, love your videos too, best source of actually tested information on HOI4 by a long shot. I don't think you overestimate yourself when you speculated that changes in the game are implementing because of your findings
Air wings only perform 1 air mission at a time from left to right. They will perform the left most one unless that one isn't currently possible. Such as if you select cas and strat bombing missions, it will cas first and if there are no battles going on then it will strat bomb.
@@71Cloak Thank you for your answer! But wouldn't that work in our favour? As in they would Naval Attack first, unless they have no spotted targets in which case they go on to Naval Patrol.
Technically agility makes ship AA have a slightly lower chance of procing but yeah it hardly matters. A 30 agility difference would mean your planes are 3% less likely to get shot down. Hardly enough to matter.
So what about the air to ground radars? They seem to be significantly increase your detection. Do they only work on patrol mode, or also on naval strike? Are you better off making a scout/radar cheap wing to patrol and another with raw naval attack stat to just attack, or use the same plane type to do both?
Some changes to navy and playing Japan could be pretty interesting with all the plane and naval designs you could use. Though it's a pretty easy country to play anyway.
Considering you can conquer most of the world by 1939 as Japan, yes. But if you do not cheese it, you can have 250 mills in 1940 as Japan by occupying China in 1937, remember to get two collabs on it though.
So air defense does nothing against ship AA and Flying boats don't give you naval patrol... Yup that's peak Paradox right there, what else could we honestly expect at this point
Well to be fair, putting armor plates on a mid sized aircraft is not going to be able to stop a WW2 battleship flak. Thousands of 20mm, 57mm or even 100mm rounds, they're going to melt your aircraft anyway, you can't put 20+mm thick armor plate on a thing that relies on piston engine to flight (usually for ship guns they say you need 50mm of armor to 'stop' a 50mm round). So they have a point there, armor plate can only stop small caliber guns. Agility and speed on the other hand should definitely play a role...
What if you use the medium frame to make a patrol bomber that you use only on naval patrol (say a single air wing per sector) and then use the light frame to make your actual naval bombers? Does the added range of the medium frame give you any advantage in spotting that you can then capitalize on with either the light frames (or your navy) for actual damage? I guess the real question here is whether naval spotting by plane can also feed over to actual naval attacks.
Well yeah. You need some form of intelligence to spot the ships but you don't need anything with more range than the naval bomber your using if the naval bomber can't reach what does it matter if the patrol bomber can spot it?
@@71Cloak that's where if you have a navy they could potentially hit it? I've always wondered how intelligence works for strike force, for example- does it attack ships detected by air?
@@wom1320 that effects mission efficiency for all missions. More range than what is required won’t help when covering an air zone, so use the same airframe that you need for naval bombers.
really good video, would love to see one for carrier planes, and whether fighters can compete with air defence, since in my own testing they were really helpful to have a few on the carriers instead of going all bombers. there is a mod out that fixes the current carrier plane issue so I used that to test.
Air changes aren't liking me, I end with a lot of models, the names are so generic I confused. They didn't added the historical name like they did with tanks. And the miniatures are always so wrong. So if I want CV fighters, CV bombers plus naval bombers, fighters and CAS, I have 5 almost equal small frame planes every few years which is tiring me.
I tried building naval patrols with 3 torpedoes and max range for the Pacific. But they get slaughtered by naval AA for some reason, and since they are so expensive they are definitely not worth it.
Torpedo bombers have to fly low and slow enough to drop their torp without it breaking up. It stands to reason they would be toast for AA. Worked that way in real war. Shitty job, a torpedo plane crewman.
The final thing you just HAVE to do, is to investigate scout planes. Preferably, in all situation where they may be useful. Dedicated scout planes I mean.
Dedicated scout planes are never worth it imo because so much of the cost is in the base frame not the scout module. Better to just throw on guns or torpedoes on them so they can do other roles for a tiny cost increase.
The only reason you want *pure* scouts is because they are the only scout type allowed to do air recon while at peace. If you are already at war then there's no reason to not build say, normal fighters, or fighter bombers which also have the cheap recon module on them.
Do you have to have a 50/50 split between bombers on patrol and Naval strike? Also, are there any diminishing returns with the amount of air wings on patrol?
No not necessarily 50/50 but you definitely need something there to spot there to spot the ships for you. Without at least 1 or 2 your just not going to hit anything.
Very interesting stuff! I tried large airframe naval bombers earlier today and I did find that they didn't strike often at all. Also they took a lot of damage from AA. I have a question about naval patrol for planes: does it do the same thing as the patrol mission for ships? As in, if I have spotter task forces with radar and plane catapults, can I just put all my naval bombers on naval strike or do I still need to do the naval patrol air mission? And if I have full land-based radar coverage, does it help naval bombers detect enemy ships for naval strike? If it does, is it sufficient for my naval bombers on naval strike to hit enemy ships alone or do I still need the naval patrol air/naval missions?
A question id love to see you test is if radar actually does aid in finding naval task forces, playing sweaty hist games I always build radar to find units but never really does anything for me at sea
That might be also the Reason why Logi.-Strikes are so costly now, because i was wondering if my CAS has not enough Defense or Agility. I might test it more but with small Airframe its not good against AI that use Armored Trains. So far iam starting to like Medium-CAS, yes its more expensive, but u get way more damage to the Battle and the losses seem lower.
He has a video from a while back which indicated that Armoured Trains just straight up took zero damage from logistics strikes. Unless that has changed (maybe you can overwhelm the armour with high enough ground attack?) it sounds like very risky business.
Do you happen to know if you lose any efficiency from running different missions on the same air wing? (Naval strike and naval patrol simultaneously, for instance)
Alright, so I looked into this with some own testing and I got some remarks regarding your 2nd test for 'naval targeting' (starting in 2:47): In your test, you changed two variables compared to the 1st (“agility”) test: Your planes get Dive Brakes for +4 Naval Targeting AND you start using Naval Patrol Mission. You say (imho correctly) 'Targeting is your chance of hitting something'. I understand that you argue that encounters happen more often when hitting chances are increased (since the popups only show when one side got damaged, e.g. when the planes hit something - without AA it’s never vice versa). Thus the time for x encounters (in your case 6) is shorter when planes have more targeting. Now what I don't understand is why you put up planes for Naval Patrol, and why you claim this improves the results = shortens the time to 6 encounters. Why do you think Naval Patrol airwings 'help' the Naval Strike airwings through/with their targeting? I ran similar tests with 10 identical Airwings putting them on Naval Strike vs Naval Patrol in a 10:0, 7:3, 5:5, 3:7 and 1:9 split (0:10 means no encounters), planes were the simplest naval bomber (basic light airframe+torpedo only). I found that the Naval Patrol did nothing for increasing the encounters, I counted the days for 10 encounters to happen and the time increased (=the result got worse) with every airwing I switched from Naval Strike to Naval Patrol. Later I repeated the test giving these 10 airwings Floats for 5 surface detection (before it was 0) to see if they would “spot” the enemy fleet - they did not and I got exactly the same results, with very comparable timespans. => Imho, Naval Patrol does nothing to help with Naval Strike efficiency! Furthermore the description of Naval Patrol Mission (mouseover tooltip) reads: "Patrol the sea, without engaging enemy ships, and help friendly task forces patrolling in the area spot enemies." Wait, “help”? Well... I found this to be exactly the only thing Patrol Mission does: If (and ONLY if) I have also a fleet on patrol mission in the same region, that region's "Base detection in region" value of the Patrol Mission gets a buff named "Air Mission in Region". This buff only appears with Float devices installed (so 0 surface detection planes have no effect). The buff also gets applied by planes with surface detection on other (than Naval Patrol) missions, but the value is weaker (tested on Naval Strike, buff is factor ½ smaller in a ballpark). Without a fleet on Patrol, airwings on Naval Patrol did NOT spot even a stationary enemy fleet well within their reach. So Naval Patrol does not replace/extend the range of naval Patrol Mission! Personally I feel disappointed about that - I feel that the buff to already existing patrols is rather weak to justify the mission/even designing planes for that (and requiring torpedos as for a non-engaging mission?). I was hoping for Naval Patrol to take the role of spotter planes as they were used in historical WW2 for fast and extended reconnaissance to spot the enemy fleets. Paradox giveth', and Paradox taketh' away :/
So I Hear there's been some changes recently in fighters and I don't know how I could or should be building them compared to when the expansion first came out. Fighter video soon? Or even just basic overall fighter/interceptors etc maybe even include a small segment about Fighter-bombers and if and when they might be useful
What is the best ratio of Naval Patrol to use? Should you just put one air wing on NP or 50% of your air wings and the other 50% on Naval Strike? Have you tested this?
Random question if on nav patrol do the planes get shot down? Edit: second question do planes sink trade convoys if you put them in trade convoy zones?
I think you're right - from back in the day, when I was trying to work out what navy to build, I do seem to recall that naval AA decreased your ships' chances of getting hit. But it can only decrease by like ~45% (iirc), and that's if you build a superbattleship with nothing but AA (max level). Which means you still get hit, and that super expensive ship still gets sunk. So I stuck with SS-3s and naval bombers ever since MtG came out....
It makes sense that air defense doesn't matter against AA (ground or naval). AA guns are orders of magnitude higher caliber than guns mounted on aircraft!
Plane Agility decreases the CHANCE of Ship Based AA firing back, with chance = 27% - .1% * Agility. Planes Lost = 1%* Ship Anti Air. That is why you keep seeing 45 or 90 planes lost, 5 wings attacked (determined by fleet frontage), and 2 wings flubbed their roll. More Agility would decrease the rate of the wing flubbing the roll, but not by much. Your Smalls have a 22% chance of getting whacked, Mediums 23.5%, and Heavies about 25% or the full 27%. Air Defense does fuck all. Do NOT put Air Defense on your torp bombers unless they are in contested air space, as your tests show. Also, notice your damage per strike went WAY DOWN after the first 2 or so strikes from the lights, while the Larges kept hitting hard. I believe that is because the large juicy fleet is in repairs. So taking more time between strikes is less relevant if you are trying to smash capital fleets. I believe there is a frontage trick that means the SAME NUMBER of planes will be launched regardless of size. Detection is the thing I don't understand. Do Naval Strike Missions follow the same rules as surface spotting? How much does each modifier do? Is the base 4% chance per day best? or is flying boat + Air to Ground radar worth it? Does intelligence matter?
The fleet is set to never repair, it's not moving away in these tests. Where are you getting your data mining from? The testing here seems to indicate quite strongly that air defence DOES significantly reduce losses. The light frames are flying roughly 2x as many wings per strike, but taking roughly 4x the casualties in total. It seems like it impacts the chance of AA firing in the same way you suggest agility does.
I tested nav bombers on 50% intelligence and they had abysmal atack chance, even if i add 33% of naval spotters planes. When i put radar lvl 5 to cover whole sea zone, nav bombers killed fleet so fast that i dont bother using nav spot mission or intelligence.
At start i re-use old planes and make them naval bombers. Or tactical naval bombers. I only build some new large airframe naval patrol planes. Those fly in groups of 10 planes and can fly 3000 miles to naval patrol large sea zones. Where my subs operate. The refurbished old naval bombers have short range for coastal sea zones only. Im only guessing that my naval patrol bombers are helping my subs to hunt more efficiently? They are expensive but only 100 planes can cover 10 sea zones for subs i was thinking.. I try it so i can use all ports to build subs only and i dont need to build patrol boats?
Maybe a stupid question, couldn't try the dlc out myself yet: Scout Planes, are they still a thing? As you say Naval Patrol helps to shorten strike intervals. Are dedicated scout planes better at providing that Intel/allowing more strikes? The dedicated Production line is a drawback but they used to be cheaper then naval/cas. No idea how it is with the planebuilder now
Scout planes are designated when you equip the camera to them. All plane types have gone up in price due to the ability of the editor. Mission efficiency and scouting effect how all missions go, whether it be air superiority or otherwise. So be it radar or any sort of recon patrol will make your wings be faster at detecting and engaging targets.
It is so irritating that you can not create true medium naval bombers. It is also irritating that you cannot create light airframe recon. You hvae to use medium airframe with two engines. Yet the game calls the German scout for the Fliesler Storch (1 engine light recon IRL)
And that you cannot spot naval targets without being a flying boat/have floats. Yeah, tell that to the RL FW200. And Germans also used many 2 and 3 propeller naval bombers/patrols
Dedicate whole wing for naval patrol is A bit waste, maybe do test with small naval plus dedicated scout wing which is size 10. In this case there is a purpose for scout planes
This isn’t relevant to normal play but I found that using a faster (jet) large airframe strategic bomber / naval strike / naval patrol worked very very effectively with 1 wing in patrol and one in strike strike. I wonder if speed is a determining factor in effectiveness
I wonder how carrier fighters interact with land based Naval bombers it never really came to me how they interacted if at all. It’s also interesting how the AA is based off of the ship not the entire fleet, as that is where I put most of my AA. I assume it will be best to setup your naval bombers with naval patrol aircraft to improve efficiency.
@@71Cloak I'm not on my Steam PC at the moment, but doesn't the Air-Ground radar give you naval targeting? Not available for light frames and could give the mediums an edge.
71Cloak: "The AI does not put AA on its ships" Brown France me, having lost 409 naval bombers to AA in the English Channel in the last 30 days DESPITE controlling all Britain save North Ireland and Isle of Mann: *single eyebrow raise*
Ok, just realized I wasn't ironman so tag switched to UK and every single ship design, including their starting ships, have AA, and newer ships have newer AA. Strange comment - did they change AI ship building in the last year?
how do you even put more than one torpedo? everytime i build a carrier naval bomber I could only put one torpedo main armament and it locked me from putting more, so my naval damage was capped at 14.9
small airframe can only carry 1 torpedo. medium could carry 2 and large can carry 3-4. its case of the aircraft is physically not big enouth to carry multiple torpedo (like on some aircraft one torpedo was about 1/3 of the aircraft size.
Afaik naval patrol was only supposed to affect spotting chance for naval task groups operating in the region. Did you try using all the wings for naval strikes vs half and half? Could be you're just wasting planes on patrol, and they'd confer the same increased chance of spotting if they were on the naval strike mission.
Can anyone tell me if Japan is currently bugged? I cannot make naval carrier planes after having taken the Zero focus. The zero is only plane from the upgraded frames that I can produce that fit on carriers, even after having researched later frame techs. I specifically looked around in my productions tab, but there is no upgraded carrier frame available, only the basic naval carrier frame Japan starts with. Is this a bug or am I missing something? Edit: I had to modify the Zero frame to a naval bomber and now it fits on carriers. I now have two lines producing airplanes. Kind of an ambigious method Paradox meant for us to use I guess.
Tnx for this really good explanationary video. one thing I do not realy understand: how can you get the role naval bomber? I could only choce between fighter and tactical bomber role.
Hey, can you revisit this guide? I've found quite some shenanigans regarding NAVS and the naval patrol mission, seems like it really makes non-small airframe NAVs usable when you have multiple NAVs in naval patrol, for example 3 naval patrol wings making naval strikes from non small airframes really more frequent
Hmm, I wonder. With how the disparity between the light and medium NAVs seems to come from having more airframes on patrol. How well would the medium airframe naval bombers combined with seperate wings of cheap patrol aircraft to spot targets for them work out? (In a situation where you don't have a fighter swarm spotting everything anyway. So, the Pacific.)
What does Naval Patrol do on its own? Does it help your patroling ships to find enemy fleet faster, or does it just reduce the time of your Nav Bombers to strike?
for a full test maybe it should be one with 4 with agility, no agailty, then air defence and no air defence, what you did here is one plane had agjilty and the other had air defence, so it degrades the quality of the test.
I'm wondering if the Air defense didn't help because it was lower then thr air attack of the ships? If you had more air defense would the losses be lower?
Is there any difference between cv naval bombers and normal naval bombers (besides stats, in which normal nav bombers come on top), primarily combat? As in if they were to make more/less sorties than their counterpart that would justify building carriers and cv nav bombers for the mediterranean?
I hate how tedious it is to find the meta in this game, because it doesn't ever reflect reality. Doing "historic" things is basically always awful from a gameplay perspective. I honestly hate how many options there are in this game when there is always clearly 1 option that's better than all others, that should be the only option. The fact that air wings wait weeks to do missions when you have them assigned is fucking ridiculous, every wing should be flying at least 2 missions a day. Air Force is just way too complicated to be worth it anymore, fuck it, I'd rather just invest a little IC into AA and never make a single plane because they fucking suck and don't even operate when you have them assigned to.
I’ll be honest I’m really not feeling all these new designer add ons. I find that they add a crap ton of things but overcomplicate a game that really doesn’t have that long of a time like.
bro I've come across your videos so many times trying to figure out this new dlc and every time it helps so much, subscribed ( kinda overdue on my part
Thanks so much for these videos! I've watched other HOI 4 tutorials, but they always managed to leave me with more questions than answers with their opinion-based approach. You always do the testing and explain each mechanic clearly and factually.
hey 71 doubt you will read this but im still going to ask my question. Considering that in real life making your planes have more than 1 role was quite effectve, what worries me about this update is it seems like having a multirole is not only not good their performance seems to take a massive hit. my overall question is Can you make planes with a minimum of 2 roles with ought making it suffer greatly in a way. ie Effective tactical bombers that can be heavy fighters, fighters than can do cas or nav respectively, or even a cheap all around good plane.
The only plane that can really work well as a multi-role plane are tactical bombers. They seem to be the only one that can perform multiple rolls well. Or I guess you could put torpedoes on your heavy fighters and that wouldn't be the worst thin but not particularly useful either. Fighter bombers tend to be bad at one or the other or both depend on the design. Putting torpedoes on cas could kind of work but would probably make it way more expensive. Honestly its really expensive to have multi roll in a lot of circumstances. Having more cheaper planes gives you more air superiority which is a nice benefit. Idk i don't really do multi role.
i have a question would it make sense to make naval bomber from basic 1936 model since top slots not matter you Just put drop tank and dive breaks and put about 3 Factorys and tata all the planes you need
Sure if range isn't an issue for you. Those basic air framers have really short ranges though so they aren't particularly good in the pacific or any other large naval regions.
I did an air only run as canada a few times. dedicated the whole production to large chassis flying boats. with 3 torp 2 bomb bays. had advanced airframe by mid 40 then strongest piston by 41. with radio nav, airground 2, extra fuel and 2 twin cannon turrets, 2 large bomb bay and 3 torp. put them on port strike in the bismarck sea. and saw great success with them. the bomb bays helped with port strike. Had sunk the japanese fleet by 42'-43' roughly then was just convoy sinking. They halted the japanese in the pacific quite successfully. Multiplayer experience will likely differ.
Large air frames have been nerfed since BBA came out. Previously multiple torpedoes would give more targeting which made them really good. Now you get the same amount of targeting regardless of number so smaller air frames get more targeting with their dive brakes.
@@71Cloak I think they changed it as Dive breaks dont work on torps (if you got torps and bombs it will work but it will not apply for the torpedo). the game straight up tells you if you try and put dive breaks on a pure torpedo/fighter plane.... and historically and how dive breaks works is how they worked. dive breaks was used by fighter/bombers because they would dive towards the target drop them and pull up whit the help of the dive breaks. torpedo bomber would do the equivalent of the trench run in starwars 4 (where the source of that ide came from).
