HOI4 Fighters vs Heavy Fighters | Which are Better? (Hearts of Iron 4 Guide) 

Hoi4 game mechanics: pilot dies, the entire ground crew also die

Heavy fighters are just flat-out better for defending against strategic bombing because they can actually DESTROY enemy bombers, not just DISRUPT them. That means they defend against the attack AND cost the enemy the resources spent producing the bomber, which is more valuable in the long run than what light fighters do. Light fighters just deter, and the bombers go home, and come back in larger and larger numbers.

Level 1 stock heavy fighters are competitive against level 1 stock fighters. At level 2 and 3 the fighters pull ahead. The reasons for this is that level 1 fighters frequently have insufficient range for 100% coverage and the gap between speeds gets wider at higher levels. Heavy fighters are good for covering areas that are otherwise too far or large to cover effectively and can be tasked as defensive bomber interceptors when not needed for long range missions.

Y'all comparing heavy fighter and fighters when im here inventing medium fighters

One of your constants that you are using for your formula is favoring heavy fighters over regular fighters. It is the range. Using northern France is bad because 100% range is for heavy fighters, less than 100% efficiency for regular fighters. Try using a smaller theater where both fighters have one hundred percent range efficiency. That will assist with more accurate numbers.

Your tests aren't accounting for the fact that there are 8 anti-air guns over Northern France. Weather might also be a factor in the tests as well as the range of the fighters (varying degrees of mission efficency). You'd need to do multiple controlled tests across a wide variety of air regions in order to get accurate data to formulate a precise answer, and even then you'd have to compare each tier of aircraft plus incorperating air experience to better simulate a multiplayer mathc. Loads more work to be done dude but I'm glad we have Hoi4 content creators questioning ingrained doctrine! Keep it up.

Comparing 500 fighters to 500 heavy fighters is not entirely fair, since they have different production costs. If there get to be more fighters, since they're cheaper to make, i bet the fighters would win air superiority.

From an Historic Point of View Planes were most vulnerable during the take off and landing. Due to the larger Range of the Heavy Fighters they could just wait until the Fighters are out of fuel and stalk them to their Bases and take them down in the approach to land. I don‘t believe that HOI 4 has an historical Accuracy to consinder such Things but under real Conditions it would make Sense to me.

do a vid about super heavy tanks and if them can be use efectivly in mp somehow

Only the OGs of the channel remember the times when RU-vid Hero was the only patreon

As a general rule I only do regular fighters if I want a carrier fleet due to research. If you're not in western Europe the range and air superiority per airfield capacity becomes more important than every other factor except perhaps manpower.

I personaly like heavy fighters better with TAC bombers, then light fighters with CAS. You can get air sup higher , you can free up front supply,, has a better resource balance for refinery, also covers advencements better, you not have to secure airfields

Range is usually a big decider, in air combat. The more range your aircraft have covering the zone the more efficient they are

I experience it before. Was playing Japan in single player and my carrier based tier3 fighter numbering 200 or so got wiped out by heavy fighters. I already upgrade their engine to level 5 so that I can have better agility but I still got wiped out. Aniwae, another good video from you that always create more question and healthy discussion.

Earlier I used to get Fighter III with upgrades as quick as possible. Recently (a few days ago) I decided to use Heavy Fighters with upgrades. It can be a tie but I am not sure...

Well the thing is, at the start of the game the gap between a Strat's Air Defence and Regular Fighter's Air Attack is not huge compared to late models. That's one difference. But the main thing about Regular Fighters is less production cost, less plane loss, more air superiority. Since with a Regular Fighter you have the chance to further upgrade its agility via upgrades but for Heavy Fighters you would prefer increasing their Air Attack since it's already greater than a regular fighter. So in the end of the day you would use Regular Fighters to gain Air Superiority in normal situation because it would cost less and you would lose less fighter to gain Air Superiority in terms of cost/efficiency. But especially at late game you have no chance other than Heavy Fighter to intercept enemy strats since enemy also would upgrade his strat models and only Heavy Fighters have the capability to further upgrade to intercept strats. Also while doing that you would use Regular Fighters to gain Air Superiority to prevent more loss in the region while intercepting enemy strats or CAS or Naval Bombers or Tactical Bombers. It's not a bad habit to always have some amount of Heavy Fighters and reserve some factories to product them since you can use interception against all sorts of Air Missions that includes some sort of bombing and transporting.

Here is the thing though. Because of superior range of heavy fighters you don't need to invest in it, so your heavies will only get better while upgrading range for regular fighters will result in loss of reliability.

One thing I think is missing is the difference in aircraft speed. In 36 both heavy and light fighters are at 500km/h, but jump to the next tier and light fighters are at 650km/h compared to heavy's at just 550km/h. Air combat damage gets huge modifiers based on the difference between speed and agility of the opposing forces. So early heavy fighters with no bonuses are very much the equal of early lights of the same. However once you start moving up the tech tree and add design companies (Upgrades would add a ton work for testing optimally) things swing lights favor of crushing heavy's and with some upgrades doing and ok job against bombers to make them better overall, unless maybe dealing with mass Strat bombers. The production difference is fairly minor but might amplify the effect, particularly in the bomber test.

Interwar fighter is better

Here I am at 3am watching tutorial on HOI4 ...again

Dustin Heavy fighters are all about insurance but it becomes vulnerable to enemy bomber fire light fighters are agile fast and less vulnerable to enemy fire what I do is use heavy fighters to fight for air superiority and light fighters for bomber interception.

Heavy Fighters being better at killing fighters is actually not surprising since a heavy fighter was often sent for bomber escort to deal with the fighters that intercept. This is why they had that huge range, so your test makes sense.

This is what I like about your videos! You actually ask confimation from the community. It gives great read ups for me and strengthen my game.

Does anyone else get overwhelmed by the all the notifications once your war starts.

Have you tried to check if the difference changes when you reaserch fighter 2/3 and heavy fighters 2/3? Maybe the fighters get some inhanced bonuses in the following models

You can see a difference in mission efficiency and detection, so its somewhat unfair for the fighters

You calculate the resource cost wrong. The real resource cost is the resource cost multiplied by the production time. So is's 24 vs 28 oil, 24 vs 28 rubber, 72 vs 56 aluminium. To have a good test, you should be testing 560 fighter ones vs 480 heavy fighters.

I want heavy fighters to be connected to a jet pathway like tactical bombers, strat bombers, and fighters. I'm sure there's a modern equivalent to it.

Shouldve done it in the Benelux region due to same efficiency and they'd both have 0 AA guns while still having the same range over such a small zone

So I did a full game as Germany with heavy fighters, just to see for myself what would happen. Turns out Germany has a focus that gives bonus research to heavy fighters, that worked out nicely, so I had 1940 heavy fighters by the time war rolled around. Keep in mind all my findings are skewed because I didn’t aim for fair testing or anything. Also a major point I was playing against a fully boosted France and England. but here’s what I found: 1. The fighters were killing A LOT of enemy fighters and bombers. Like, I was noticing at least 10 fighters dead every day and 4 or 5 CAS. that might have been because of the level difference, but I think that was only part of it. 2. The combat was progressing a lot slower even though this happened. I’ve played allies-boosted games before, and I’ve never struggled cutting through the Benelux, but it was hard getting through Belgium. The game said I had really high CAS damage amount, but it felt like I was trying to wade through an enemy controlled air zone. Of course, this could all be the boosting, but I’m not sure. All in all, it didn’t really affect the victory in France or england, but air combat just didn’t seem right. I think it has to do with something you said in the video, that the heavy fighters did more damage but let more get by them. Keep in mind most of this is my opinion, I didn’t keep any factors constant, just played a normal game. It was fun to see so many dead Spitfires, but I think I’m gonna stick with regular fighters, there’s something that I really can’t grasp that’s better.

At the start, heavy fighters winning is probably due to having the range advantage, having a higher % of coverage over a reigon buffs your aircraft. That's why range is the most important of the 4 upgrade a abilities

When I play this, I have always thought the fighters secure the air close to home. And are better in dogfights. While Heavy Fighters Escort and secure air space further away. They can escort strategic bombers better, they should is what i think. I build and use heavy fighter when I'm using strategic bombers. I use either tactical bomber or CAS planes with fighters.

Heavy fighters reign supreme if you are in large areas like Russia and focusing heavily on air where you can get like 4K fighters over an area but 8k heavy fighters. Europe and countries with limited research and lots of aircraft carriers favour fighters though. Range is not at all to be underestimated especially since upgrading it means forgoing weapon upgrades or having abysmal reliability.

Your first test turned out like it did because the heavy fighter side had a huge (relative) advantage in detection -- 20% versus 11%. Since both sides had the same number of fighters in the air, this was either from radar or controlled territory bonuses. Of course the heavy fighters won, they had effective numerical superiority due to the detection advantage. The other thing is that the fighters didn't achieve full coverage efficiency, probably due to range issues, but I think other people here have already commented on this. It would be hard to make a completely balanced air battle in HoI4 without doing something extreme like modding the game to remove some modifiers. For example, if you had done the battle over Belgian airspace, to ensure they were in range, they would have detection advantage from controlled territory at least (if not also radar.) Post-La Resistance, there's also intel advantage to consider. The old encryption-decryption mechanic is easier to control for, by simply ensuring both sides have the same tech, but a lot of things can affect intel levels.

The equation for damage dealt during air combat is basically: airwing strength / 100 * ratio of attacker air attack and defender air defense * (1 + a multiplier based on agility and max speed explained below) * (1 + agility disadvantage multiplier) The 'stats multiplier' is a ratio of -0.3 to 0.3 that compares the max speed / 1500 and the agility /100. Heavy fighter vs fighter attack vs defense is a 3.6:1 ratio, but when you take in the malus from agility (-7.5% from stats ratio and somewhere around -50% from agility disadvantage) works out to about 1.53 damage per fight per 100 fighters Flip that with the counter attack and you have 18 attack/13 defense (approx 1.385) and a stats multiplier of +7.5% and no agility malus, and you end up with about 1.49 per 100 fighters. If you expand that to enough combats to down 32 fighter 1s (32/1.53) its about 21 combats, which would see about 31 heavy fighters downed. They are roughly equal in a dogfight due to agility. Now, compare the two against a strat 1, which has 50 air attack, 25 air defense, 400 km/h speed and 5 agility. The attack math works out to be: Fighter 1: 18/25 * (1 + 0.3*(0.0667 + 0.45) = 0.72 * 1.155 = 0.83 damage per 100 fighters per combat H Fighter 1: 32/25 * (1 + 0.3*(0.0667 + 0.2) = 1.28 * 1.08 = 1.38 damage per 100 H fighters per combat Meanwhile, the bomber's counterattacks are: Fighter 1: 50/10 * (1 - 0.155) * agility malus (since the fighter has more than 2.5x the agility, this is -67.5%) = 1.373 damage to fighters per 100 bombers H Fighter: 50/13 * (1 -0.08) * agility malus (even the h fighter has 2.5x the agility) = 1.15 damage to fighters per 100 bombers. So heavy fighters against regular fighters is about a draw in a dogfight, but against strat bombers, they deal about twice the damage and take about 30% less damage. Now, this is, of course, at the cost of higher production and manpower needs. the 1.2 air superiority value and longer range also make them better for supporting bombing in an escort role.

the biggest reason I build heavy fighters is RANGE, they can protect a LOT bigger area with fewer planes

Conclusion: Air superiority- BF110 Bomber interception-BF109

I have read a post on paradox forum about that fighter are good at defending land while heavyfighter are good for escort bomber using air superiority to let some better ground support as air superiority is used for ground forces modifier so heavy fighter is used on offense and fighter on defense due to the inferior cost and range. And for number it's the efficiency/range that say if you need 400 fighter at 50% fight the same level as 200 at 100%. So called prod advantage is then negated. Airplane then for the best efficiency should be in the middle of the air zone for fighter as possible. Heavy one can be on the border range compensating the location.

After reading some of the comments, you should reconsider doing another test. I'm really interested. For the following video, can you try testing different tiers (Fighter 2 against Heavy Fighter 2)? Their stats have of course changed between tiers and I want to see how much those changes affect their performances. Also, maybe list down the cost of 500 fighters against 500 heavy fighters and put it onscreen for everyone to see? I feel that's also pretty important information. And how about seeing what happens when the two nations have both maxed out the same air doctrine tree? If you have more time of course. It might affect long-term gaming strategy. Maybe a certain type of plane does better in the early game but does worse in the late game?

In road to 56, heavy fighters can also perform cas missions, making them far superior

8.30 yeah but Aluminum you got plenty of anyway, especially as Germany. More than you could ever use cause most of your factories are used for Tanks and Infantry weapons anyway.

Strategyfact:fighters are cheaper than heavy fighters, fighters can destroy enemy fighters and bombers but heavy fighter can dealt heavy superiority and ofcourse it depends who is winning superiority

All this people talking about how they use their fighters and if one is better than another, while I’m here, just recently figuring out planes are actually worth it in this game...

Heavy fighters were designed to shoot down fighters as there role was essentialy escort (Hence the ong range) where as light fighters where designed as your defence against bombers. Hoi4 seems to have it correct from a historical stand point from your tests.

I think if you use the equationsn for damage dealt that Reeman's Paradox has figured out, they might show that the higher Air Attack of Heavies gives them the edge in air combat. That would be a modelling mistake by paradox. Although heavies have more range and cost more and so on so there is more that has to be factored in.

6:42 I believe the reasoning behind is this, pound for pound dogfighting, the heavy fight def vs. The fighter's atk is a smaller difference than the reverse. While the bombers are presented with a bigger target against the heavies which are also less maneuverable

Outside "vanilla" scenarios, HF are far superior to LF as general multi purpose aircraft to the end of the game. Can save a lot of air xp upgrading guns, engine and speed by using the +20% reliability designer, keeping the massive range intact. Also there are focus tree research bonuses (Germany) where you can be mass producing HF III before 1938. In addition they take less slot "space" when attacking Russia, and 200 HF + 200 CAS assigned to each army, are more than enough to give air superiority anywhere in the map the army goes. Also when trying to attack over the Channel, Me-109s die like flies to the AA gun, while they cannot support the Naval Bombers in the North Sea.

It makes sense. Fighters are good for getting altitude in real life, making them good bomber hunters. But if you're trying to get air support over a battlefield, the fighters UFO'ing at 5km up aren't contributing to anything if the enemy has heavy fighters between them and the battlefield. The fighters will have to come down to the heavy fighters' level, where they have the advantage with their turrets, more spread out crew, and dual engines. Add to that they could have more wing load like rockets and small bombs.

Others already mentioned, but I think the differences were probably due to fighting over friendly territory (detection and mission efficiency advantages), and the force exchange ratio likely would've been reversed if fighting over the Benelux or Southern England air zones. That said, I too was surprised how well the heavies fared vs light fighters. I perceive that their much farther range is worth the relatively modest production cost increase. I haven't used heavies before; didn't really have anything against them, was just trying to simplify how many simultaneous production lines I had going. Now am motivated to give them a try.

Have planes in netherlands vs planes in belgium to get the best possible answer, no AA and 1 airzone!

Jeah figured this out about 3 games ago. Fighter planes are good in high numbers, great surpression. I think it is good programming for air force. Small agile planes can be in more places at any time. Heavy fighters however will have the advantage in direct combat up to 2 times the ammount of normal fighters. Which is logical, agility and speed vs a slower type of fortress fighter. I recon it is the air 1.2 stat. 20% damage bonus in air contact + double the ammount of firepower. It calculates to 2 to 1 win plus 20% = 1000 HF vs 2500 F ? or so...

heavy fighters are afaik used for ESCORTING bombers due to their high range vs regular fighters who will not be able to escort nearly as far as hvy fighters will. also... your test does not take into account PRODUCTION COST pr unit - Manpower used PR unit. meaning as you pointed out you would likely be able to field a whole lot more regular than hvy due to manpower/production costs

Also they need a mode where you can try different olanes tanks etc without having to play the whole campaign so to speak.

Strats r usually banned in mp so I usually just make normal fighters

Well I’m not sure that this applies, but heavy fighters can go father distance which means they carry more fuel, meaning they have more air time than the normal fighter making them being able to shoot down your normal fighters when they have to withdraw for a refuel, ... also heavy fighters have a tail gunner while a regular dosent

I tested in multiplayer,my engine 5 range 2 and relaibility 3 fighters shredded range 2 attack 3 reliability 3 heavy fighters. They had air superiority at first,but they kept dying and shot down. I won it quickly

I made a test on fighters vs heavy fighters myself. i chose Belgium and Netherlands as my test nation and gave them both full research and a full upgraded rader in both countries. Belgium had the fighters while Netherlands had the heavy fighters. Before i gave them both all research i gave Belgium the light planes research bonus and i gave Netherlands the medium fighter research bonus to make a more realistic outcome on what the planes would look like after they had started production. When everything was prepared i gave each nation 4k planes of the newest type and put half of them in each airport where i set them to superiority focus in the shared air zone and turned the ai off. When i finally declared the war the heavy fighters got shredded in a 1- 3 ratio which means heavy planes was definitely not worth it in my test

The 1936 heavy fighters are worth using, they are equally fast, a bit less agile but have a much greater range. This changes 1940 and 1944 there is no use going for heavy fighters anymore at all. And for your testing: Over a large area like Northern France, the size of the area is impacting on how good planes work, as lacking of range will impact mission efficiency. In that case it might be useful even to build additional air fields to increase coverage. Give it a try and test it again above BeNeLux - there all planes should have full coverage. Just put one squadron into Belgium and the other into the Netherlands. In the end: If you are not min-maxing: go with the planes that you like more. They might not do the job perfectly but you might have more fun =)

The thing is, heavy fighters required twice the amount of manpower to fighters, and way more cost. Regular fighters would be way more useful in general, but heavy fighter could provide escort for bombers, which should be the only reason why you would want to use heavy fighters

You need to make sure both types have 100% efficiency and detection in the air zone for an accurate test.

@3:35 The reasons the heavies are winning this time is because they have 20% vs 11% spotting bonus and 90% vs 75% mission efficiency. What exactly the cause of that is, I'm not sure. Could be troops on the ground. Could also be air doctrines (1st tier is usually unlocked for majors, right?). So please check that and show the ENG and GER tech tiers so we know it's balanced. You can test what caused the spotting and range increases by having the air wings switch places. Do a UK fighter vs GER heavy wing first, then do a UK heavy vs a GER fighter wing from their old airports. That'll give you some comparison. You might have to console cheat your way into a very specific scenario. Like having France and Yugo battle it out over the Alps, so neither has units below, who might give spotting bonuses. Or maybe an airzone that's even smaller. I can't think of one that's both smaller and as easily accessible by two nations right now.... Anyhow, great test and would love to see your response video on what everybody said, and just trying out different nations over different air zones to see if the results remain consistent.

The reason why you are getting better results as germany is because you have better air coverage, its further away to send fighters from netherlands to france than from france to france

A little late but, I thought their trade off Agility stat and Air Attack stat, Fightet has x2 Agi so they tend to persist longer than HFighter though HFighter has x2 Air Attack so they will shot down low Agility targets like the Bomber. So in a dog fight for Air Superiority I will choose Fighter, and HFighter is meh imo cuz x2 cost.

Good comparison but you should have waited until around June-July to conduct this experiment as the bad weather from March-April may have played a part in it somewhat. Other than that good video 👏

Mayne should go by resource amount instead of 1 for 1 or do both fighters take the same resources

It seems to me that heavy fighters may be better for air superiority and light fighters for interception missions.

You had aa over Alsace. You should try this test over Germany so there wouldn't be that advantage. Also you failed to take account detection, but this is a very useful video never the less

i did a one v one (with that german vs Soviet union mod) and only produced heavy fighters and destroyed the Russian airforce easy. ( I only use heavy fighters and 90% of the time i always win)

Dont forget to check those naval stats. In completion it sounds to me that using a combination is the best.

You should compare the Tier III aircraft. Those are the ones that are generally rushed and mass produced.

yeah this is a shit tier test as the base premise is flawed. whlile they both can perform the same role, they are both ment for totally different roles. fighters are for air superiority, beafy fighters are for interception, naval spotting, covering the air sup role when the fighters cant reach. but will lose usually in a one on one. they shine in shooting down heavy bombers where even upgraided fighters will struggle to gain kills, they will be able to disrutp the bomber formations, they usually lack the air attack to kill heavy bombers. the range bonus for heavy fighters get a bonus to efficancy of operations where they can gain 100% coverage of a air zone where normal fighters may not which can lead to you getting a skewed result but that still does not change the fact that fighters will tear up heavy fights if all things are equal.

In my experience, heavy fighters great for superiority missions while regular fighters are good for interception. If attacking a region use heavies (primarily) and use regular fighters for home defense. Then again, I play single player mostly. It could just be bad AI.

keep up the good work my friend

Whatever happened to multi-role fighters? Aren't they supposed to be a cross between fighters and close air support - a kind of all-purpose "small frame" just like tactical bombers are all-purpose "large frames"???

You had AA in alssas witch is why you shot down more fighters than heavy fighters you lost in a dog fignt

Is there a way to make fighters go where the bombers are going and try to intercept them wherever they go instead of me having to spread my fighters out and can never concentrate them all where the bombers are?

I tried this before I tried putting 500 heavy fighters vs 1000 fighters . And the result was the heavy fighters were to hold for a while (yellow air) which I was surprised

So, because there isn't much difference beetwen the 2 on combat stats; Heavy are clearly beetter due to long range (unless you have problems with manpower). Most teathers (America, Africa, Scandinavia, Asia) have long distances with few airports slots, making Heavy great for operating there. That's mainly the reason why i preffer Tactical over CAS/NAV (despite it's versatibility), i have found that range it's the principal problem for air combat outside Europe.

the "air designer" for light fighters give 10%agility and speed, that has a hughe impact i think.

the thing is hard to say if heavy fighter is better then fighter and by the stat you can see heavy fighter is better against larger bomber were fighter are better for cas and heavy fighters.

jet fighters: I don't have such weaknesses

Mission efficency, regular fighters have lower range, so less fighter can join in so heavys have numerical advantage in the air

Keep in mind that you should test in areas like belgium where both types can reach every point. You might have decreased the amount of fighters in combat because they werent able to get 100% mission efficiency which makes tests worthless :/

I'm trying not to be to stuck on heavy fighters but sinking your resources into them isn't to bad of an idea, yes their a little more expensive but their so much better for your border security and expansion.

I just mass produce heavy fighters to maintain air superiority hahaha

What makes you think it needs fixing? And the heavy fighters not only hit harder but they can take more damage. Sure the fighters are better at dodging but it seems to take a lot less hits to destroy a fighter compared to a heavy fighter. Whenever I play I place a focus on heavy fighters then rush for jet fighters. But heavy fighters have the better range, can take more hits, do more damage and are better at keeping air superiority they are hands down better.

So it appears to me that Heavy Fighters have a significant advantage in Air Attack to Fighter 1 Air Defense as opposed to the opposite direction of Fighter 1 against Heavy Fighter. But the caveat is that I don't know how agility factors into the equation or if it already somehow factored into the Air Attack and Air Defense Values. Obviously the Fighter 1 has better Agility. Anyway, just factoring in Air Attack and Air Defense then it would seem that the Heavy Fighter has a significant advantage. But that doesn't seem logical to me. Who knows.... Another excellent video that may have pointed out some realism problem with HOI4. Thanks Dustin.

You should use production time parity instead of number parity, as a heavy fighter is much more expensive

vGuess what? I played as Iceland, use the command "annex"> get on cheatland.net and typed a random country, like "annex GER" i became a superpower after annexing europe and africa

It should be 583 fighters vs 500 heavies if you count production cost. fighters should win in such a matchup

Where this test fails in my opinion is production wise. The test should be 1 Heavy Fighter vs 1.1667 Fighter or 500 heavy vs 583 fighters. How ever regarding resources, production should be based on your resources. If you are in oil shortage you should go with Heavy fighters, since lvl 2 and 3 Heavy's use 1 less oil that lvl 2 and 3 Fighters. Heavy Fighters vs Fighters just as Artillery vs Rocket Artillery should result on your resources. With abundance of oil you can cherry pick your production and I usually go for Fighters due to reduced research time by skipping Heavy Fighters, the 16.67% larger fighter output counters the stat difference(in my opinion). How ever, with limited oil supply I usually go for Heavy Fighters at the cost of lost research time. For Research strong and oil starved countries like France the Heavy Fighter is a god send, while for the US with it's late game research boom and massive oil supply should aim for the Fighter.

Heavy Fighters are better then normal fighters thats normal m8, i often build them and air superiority with no prob

Heavy fighter 1 is better because of the agility is close to the same to fighter 1. However fighter 2 gets a significant bonus jump in agility from fighter 1 but heavy fighter agility does not increase nearly as much. Please test fighter 2 vs heavy fighter 2.

The agility is a very important skill for the fight

Depend on the range, to protect bombers heavy No airfields Heavy The rest normal fighters

I have seen this tested on the forms and heavy fighter 1s are actually better then fighter 1s much to everyone's suprise. I think this is due to their range being so much better then fighter 1s allowing them to have a much higher mission efficiency. The problem is heavy fighter 2/3s are much worse then fighter 2/3. This is because the range on fighter 2/3s range improves a lot from teir 1 to 2 resulting in almost 100% efficiency in most airzones. Also since most of your planes your going to produce will be the teir 2/3 version depending on the rules you stick with fighters. Also the doctrines will probably improve fighters more as well and by the time ww2 starts the UK/Canada and Germany will have completed them. So I would have those done for the test as well.

I agree that 500 vs 500 is not fair due to the production cost increast of 4 per heavy fighter, the production numbers should be equal, also no bonuses isn't exactly right either, you should run tests for each possible doctrine combination, 1st vs 1st 1st vs 2nd 1st vs 3rd 2nd vs 1st etc, to rule out hidden bonuses or better bonuses for fighters or heavy fighters 10% increase for fighter and heavy fighters can mean a difference since heavy fighters have higher base stats. So far my opinion is that heavy fighters are helpfull in 2 situations, when your target area is to far away, udssr or china vs japan where normal fighters wouldnt reach or germany vs the US from the Islands like cuba. or if an area has to many enemy planes and all airbases are filled with fighters you can put in more fghter by using heavies from further away, also straining the front line a little less in terms of supply if they are somewhere else. What is the supply difference between 500 heavies and normal fighters?

I thought most players knew this already, lol. Personally, I'd prefer to spam a bunch of fighter 1s.

Quantitatively the fighters vs heavy fighters test was biased in favor of the heavies because of 2 factors. Fighter detection 20% (Heavy) vs 11% (Fighter). (Detection matters since you are much more likely to get a 2 v 1 sortie). The second stat is mission efficiency 90% (heavy) vs 75% (fighter) I advise you fight over the english channel with fighter/heavy fighter 2s as the spotting will be more even on uncrowned terrain and the range more equidistant. Let me just add that heavy fighters are very useful to china.

Heavy are Much better for Bomber Interception cause of better Weapons. Light are best for AirSuperiority (fighters vs fighters combats).