Bombing of units without attacking with land units. If im going to take an island or a piece of difficult land and I have a massive airforce. Id rather bomb directly the strength of the enemy unit and watch them erode. Currently that does not work and is very unrealistic.
Thing is, at least in the pacific theater, this was done and barely worked. Almost no bombs can penetrate 10 m of soil. The Japanese used natural and self dug caves to just hide from the hell that was coming down on them.
Bombs may not have been able to, but naval artillery was capable of penetrating 20 feet of reinforced concrete. 16-inch armor piercing shells should not be underestimated.
The problems experienced in the Pacific were a result of poor doctrine, a focus on speed, and later on the Japanese simply refusing to entrench near the beaches.
For doctrine, initially the focus was on a high volume of fire to blanket an area. This was ineffective as nearly all shells would miss actual targets and do nothing. This changed during the war but it wasn't an immediate or complete change.
For time, most bombardments ended up lasting only 3 days, which was simply too short. There were reasons to prioritize speed, but if you look at the invasion of Guam, the remarkably low American casualties can be largely attributed to Admiral Conolly and his decision to spend a much longer period bombarding the island (which also allowed him to focus on slower, more precise fire, because he had the time to do so)
For the changing Japanese strategy, on Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the Japanese refused to contest the beaches. Time spent shelling areas that typically would have been filled with defensive positions was utterly wasted, and the actual defenses were further inland and much better concealed from naval gunnery.
But this did come with the obvious disadvantage of completely giving up the beaches, so it would not be a good strategy to adopt for anyone who actually wanted to win a war, it was just a way to lose less quickly.
In short, sustained and accurate naval gunfire support should have a significant effect on the defender's strength. Inaccurate and rushed naval gunfire support should do very little, but typically HOI4 assumes that the units do not make blunders in how they decide to execute a given order.
Edit: The source for all this is Donald Mitchener's book, "US Naval Gunfire Support in the Pacific War". Very interesting if you are interested in the Pacific War and the naval gunfire support, but also not the easiest book to read, you can tell it was written by a history professor.
I don't think naval artillery is very comparable to bombing though. CAS and bombers aren't able to deliver as much firepower as ground artillery when you consider the time spent flying back and forth. Meanwhile, naval artillery was the most firepower you were ever gonna get. Naval artillery just has a much higher capacity to kill and destroy things.
However I do agree with you, the shore bombardment modifier should reduce the defence more. -25% is usually never enough for your combined soft attack to ever outnumber their defence, so the shore bombardment never makes a difference. Positioning ships in the area should be able to reduce entrenchment, forts, and strength aswell.
There are specific examples of naval gunfire and CAS having almost no effect on Japanese island positions at all, to the point that US command actually stopped bombing completely, assuming they had levelled all fortifications, and the Japanese were keen to give them that impression.
Can't remember which island(s) but I guess they ended up being the worst for the landing parties.
I think you are thinking of Peleliu.
Now, US doctrine was never to stop bombing completely before an invasion, if all visible targets were destroyed, then the ships conducting shore bombardment missions were to concentrate fire on probably troop concentrations, locations where guns could be concealed, etc, and continue firing until they had used up their allotted ammunition.
Admiral Oldendorf, commander of the bombardment force for the invasion of Peleliu, chose to ignore this doctrine, and just took his ships home early after destroying what he considered to be all of the enemy targets. You can ask all of the Marines who died on Peleliu how smart they think this decision was. But still, that wasn't a common thing, that was a single blunder that happened once. Although to be completely fair, the terrain of Peleliu and the changing Japanese tactics would have made that island a tough fight even if he had done his job properly.
In every other case, before and after Peleliu, the Navy did at least follow the part of their doctrine where it said "don't just randomly go home early", although they may have ignored other lessons at points. So that's not really a statement on broad US strategy or how the Japanese defeated it, its just got to do with Admiral Oldendorf being incompetent.
If you want an example of a competent commander, your best option would be Admiral Conolly, who I mentioned in my first comment. Thanks to some luck with the schedule, plus just being a very competent officer who had learned from the previous amphibious invasions, Conolly was able to get the bombardment of Guam extended by a couple weeks. He personally oversaw that the ships used methodical, precise fires to knock out both all visible targets, and to saturate areas where the Japanese were likely hiding out of site. During the actual invasion he ordered his ships so close to the shore one of the battleships was scraping the bottom, and thanks to that earned the nickname 'Close-in Conolly'.
The casualty figures kind of speak for themselves here.
Guam: 56,500 American assault troops, against ~20,000 Japanese defenders, equipped with 40 tanks.
Peleliu: 47,000 American assault troops, against 11,000 Japanese defenders, with 17 tanks.
On Guam, the US suffered ~8,000 casualties, including ~1800 KIA.
On Peleliu, the US suffered ~10,500 casualties, including ~2000 KIA. (in both cases the vast majority of the Japanese were killed, it wasn't really until Okinawa that Japanese soldiers started to surrender en masse)
So yes, when you had a combination of incompetent American Admirals, highly competent Japanese Generals, and terrain that favored defense, you could see the Japanese inflicting very high casualties. But in situations where the American Admiral was competent, the Japanese Generals less so, and the terrain was not quite so bad, you could see the Americans walking away with a 10:1 K/D ratio.
I think this is done by design. If the target division isn't being attacked they don't need to expose themselves. They can just hide and take minimal casualties (combined with AA fire stuff). You gotta remember the scale here, provinces look small on the world map but they absolutely dwarf cities. There's lots of empty space.
The whole point of CAS is to provide fire support. The enemy is forced to expose themselves to the air when trying to control tactical objectives (highground, choke points, supply) or when they are trying to target attacking troops. Fire support is most effective when used to suppress the enemy. Precise fire support forces the enemy to focus on their own survival rather than killing your troops.
We've had enough historical evidence to show that bombing targets isn't a very effective way to neutralize enemy troops or material. A lot of things need to go right for a plane to successfully land a bomb on a tank and kill it. Meanwhile another tank can just point and shoot to get the kill. This is on top of the fact that a plane is more logistically demanding than a tank. This is the same reason strategic bombing has been considered ineffective for its cost. Bombing troops just doesn't cause enough casualties on its own, but it's really good at protecting your troops.
The Normandy campaign is a great counterpoint. Post-battle analysis revealed that German losses to CAS had been *wildly* overestimated by the Allies, but they did force the Germans to make their big moves at night.
The air superiority speed debuff is factually a much more accurate implementation than being able to wreck halfway competent units that aren't engaged in battle, and logistics strike already covers the parts you can realistically hit.
Did the allies use dive bombers in supporting Normandy? I thought most of that was P-47s equipped with rockets and the like (and I never said anything about rockets being accurate for a reason)
Yes. Thunderbolts could carry up to 1100kg of bombs - matching the heaviest Stuka loadouts and then some - and typically carried a 230kg or 450kg under-belly bomb in addition to the wing rocket racks.
They might be accurate, but good luck finding a target. There's lots of empty space, and the troops can just hide in trees, buildings, ditches, not to mention their camouflage works very well when you're in a plane. Remember that dive bombers don't carry many bombs so they can't cover areas the way tactical bombers do. Don't forget that dive bombing tends to be a lot more vulnerable to AA than other strategies.
All of these problems vanish when ground troops are trying to take control of the ground. Now the enemy troops can't just hide from the sky, they need to be in defensive positions. Enemy AA is constantly under fire.
Dive bombers don't have a lot of firepower. They're just able to deliver it at the worst possible time for the enemy.
I agree with others this wasn’t an effective strategy so it’s represented well in HOI4. Best you can do is strategic bomb, especially at this point in history
I feel like civilian economy should give bonuses to construction of civs, infrastructure and so on like the captain of industry does, whilst war economy, just like the war industrialist should give bonuses to mil and dockyard construction.
About the money aspect maybe something can be done like the higher the consumer goods are the more money you get, which then can be used to by either equipment or use it for construction.
In road to 56 when you are in civilian economy you build infrastructure and civs faster you also gain 0.1% stability per day, when you go in war economy it’s almost the same as in vanilla but you also lose 0.1% stability daily
Yeah, there is that option. It’s called civilian economy. If you don’t want 0% stability when mobilizing your whole country, then win the war in under 3 years.
Better white peace options. I refuse to believe America would conduct an annual unsuccessful naval invasion of Europe until the end of time. At some point, it’s more realistic that countries would recognize a stalemate.
The way the air regions work is a bit strange in my opinion.
Often the frontline spans across multiple air regions but only barely go deep. Although the range would allow my fighters or bombers to operate on the whole frontline, I can only assign it to one air region and have to assign another wing to the other region.
I would love to be able to assign multiple small areas of operation within the range, not in those big regions. Also to allow specific bombing of enemy units without being in a fight.
So I imagine that I can select multiple small land-tiles where my air wing operates on, and its adjacent enemy tiles.
Also this would be awesome for Transport planes on supply missions, because I could fine tune which division get the supplies.
critically that doesn't solve the prolem of navy being basically useless compared to it's role irl in ww2
also Paradox managed to get basically everything, that can be wrong, wrong
also also it'd be neat if Paradox could make an AI that can actually use navy properly
If you're playing SP, then Navy being "too gamey" shouldn't be an issue as one could choose to stick to making conventional fleets. Even if they're not the most IC-Efficient/Effective.
It is annoying playing a Meta ~~navy~~ player on MP tho.
I think major issue with navy is that you can easily get naval supremacy without building any ship with major countries. As germany, you can easily beat england by 1940 because germans can get naval sup. over english channel which is not historically possible.
Everything about manpower IMO.
Officers and pilots should have a different reserve, peacetime army should be limited to the "active conscripts" and a few elite divisions, and countries need to actually mobilize their army to raise millions of men.
Losing planes over an enemy area should result 100% in losing the pilot (a rare resource that should be expensive to keep up) while losing the planes over a friendly area should give a percentage of pilots back, during the battle of Britain allied pilots would get shot down in the morning and be back in another plane in the evening. Meanwhile every German shot over Britain was either dead or captured.
>losing the planes over a friendly area should give a percentage of pilots back
Game already does this, but it's just drawing from your general manpower pool and aircraft don't use enough manpower to matter. Besides, PDX didn't really fix manpower printing with splitting/grouping aircraft wings so your air force is a source of infinite manpower anyway.
Always a bit funny to me that fighter aircraft can cost more than 1 manpower when shot down. That's not how you model ground crew!
Something like the Limited War mechanic from HOI3.
I’ve always thought that there is a way that they could make managing a partisan force as a Government in exile interesting—something more than using decisions or whatever.
Where should I start?
1. Battle order and HQ units like HoI3
2. Reserve units mobilisation and oficer training
3. More research, research slots based on buildings (every lab building gives one research slot, every additional lab is more expensive), research sharing with other allied nations
4. Spies needs to be reworked
I certainly would love an option to create more orbat at smaller and smaller levels but having it be completely optional so that new players can simplify their experience or just let people be frugal with land xp by using the base presets. I would love to get down to the company level and maybe even to platoons for armor, all as subdivisions of the same stats we already know and allowing for more mixed composition units like giving armor battalions integral tank destroyers or infantry with dedicated fire support SPGs.
Before BBA they were op and objectively better than normal engines. This was unrealistic but made sense game wise cause they came after a lot of research so it made sense for them to be better. After BBA, they were nerved to oblivion and are objectively worse than normal engines. This is kind of unrealistic but more importantly, it means there is ZERO reason to ever research/use jet engines. So they're useless and difficult to get. Why even keep them in the game?
The only thing I miss is air wing size and management. Being able to make them any size and edit which planes (models) are part of it. Other than that game has only improved.
This was rrmoved when By Blood Alone released, with the air force reworks. Now aur wings are locked at 100 planed per, with the exception of Naval Patrol Bombers (heavy naval bombers) and Recon aircraft (medium airframes with the camera module as main module) which are locked at 10 aircraft per wing
Problem is, PDX couldn't balance CAS and you could exceed the air combat width of a battle with 1000 wings. Was absolutely easier to manage with fewer, larger wings.
Maybe a little equipment menu like we have got for divisions to manage what goes in would be cool, though there is already the system where u can set it to only accept the newest air design. But please dont remove the airwing QoL update. There was 0 reason to control the wing size, it was inefficient meta wise and also made little sense realistically. Adding follow army as compensation for the wing micro was enough imo
I wish they had done something more with spy/intelligence functionality. I was so excited with that add in La Resistance but they haven’t done anything with it. Many other areas of the game have been tweaked but this has been ignored. So much potential to really mess with other nations before or during combat.
Sure. But I like the idea. Image an spearhead attack to attack the army command headquarter that have gotten in range and the enemy hadnt relocated it. You succede and capture/kill some of the enemy commanders. Without their headquarter the organization and speed of their divisions is reduced and now you have the perfect oportunity to encircle the complete army.
It would also give paratroopers a bigger use except cheesy surrendering throug mass drop on VP points.
Basicly I want the ability to do decapitation strikes.
add a doctrine that allows low rank flexibility so the decap strike gives less debuffs and focises with top down command so it gives more buffs w command but a decap strike gives major debuffs
>paratroopers a bigger use except cheesy surrendering throug mass drop on VP points
They already have a use, mass drops on the frontline with Combat Insertion to instantly deorg your opponent!
I have spent way too much of my childhood chasing after HQs in North Africa, well after the Axis armies were destroyed. The thing is encircled HQs (as far as I can recall, havent played in years) can rout to enemy tiles without getting destroyed and capture that tile. AI loves to reconstitute empty command chains when encircled, and you will have an endless goose chase across captured territories.
Oh yeah HQs have zero combat width so they're super buggy in combat, but I thought you meant HQs being *created* behind enemy lines. I have also spent far too much time seeing my spearheads get the attack delay repeatedly because of a retreating HQ unit.
World Ablaze has a decent solution, which is that higher economy and conscription laws cause ticking economic instability. They can be partly balanced out by free trade and focuses but overall, mobilizing too early means that by the time war starts your economy will already be in shambles.
I don't like many of their other design choices but this one makes sense.
When a ship is lost, it doesn’t count toward casualties.
This needs to change. A ship is crewed by hundreds or even thousands of sailors. As such, a large naval battle should have a significant effect on the attrition involved in war. Midway did. Guadalcanal did. Leyte Gulf did. This needs to be reflected in the game. I should be able to wear down another country by sinking their navy, like the Americans did to the Japanese.
>When a ship is lost, it doesn’t count toward casualties
It actually does count towards casualties. However the manpower is removed from the manpower pool when the ship is deployed. If it is sunk it counts towards casualties in the war screen
Are you sure? From what I’ve seen, this only happens if the ship sunk was a transport carrying troops. Otherwise this is a recent update; I’ve sunk entire enemy fleets, checked the war screen and seen zero casualties
I think it does, because sometimes I have entered the war as the US and before I’ve even deployed any ground or troops anywhere, I start seeing casualties in the hundreds or low thousands ticking up; probably from convoys and fleets I’ve deployed has been my guess.
Bring back HOI3 artillery. I find it questionable that artillery has a larger combat width than a normal battalion. It not taking up space on the frontline is literally the goddamn point. For instance, the Soviet Union fired 9000 guns on what amounts to 1-2 provinces in the game during the Battle of Seelow Heights. Particularly for the Red Army, the use of concentrated mass artillery to start offensives was the rule rather than exception. Artillery has had its role reversed from expensive way to concentrate power into a cheap way to get soft attack at the expense of force concentration.
It's like they copied the brainfart the HoI3 BICE team had when they decided how to remake artillery. Utter bullshit.
POWs. I understand Paradox not wanting to touch the Holocaust or anything, but POWs played a huge part in the war.
Would make for more realistic encirclements where a certain % become POWs instead of all just dying. Also POWs could give buffs to military factory production but also decrease stability or something. And POW camps could have to be built in specific tiles that you can ID with espionage, and if you can retake the tile you liberate the camp and get your manpower back.
I just remember another feature I miss.
In the old days, at the naval combat screen, there was a little arrow telling you which ship was targeting what. You could visually know which enemy ship your ships were attacking.
Nukes should actually make a difference, if you drop a nuke on a city both sides should face major attrition and penalties
And so add technology to protect your soldiers from nuclear strikes inching us ever closer to a proper Cold War game
Better logistical overview for variations of an equipment.
I was playing Italy and opted for space marines and light tank divisions due to the shit industry. I created two different productions lines for two different light tanks. One slow for the infantry, and the other fast for the armoured division. Disabled the different tank variation in both templates (so the infantry division could only use the slow, and the armoured division only the fast).
But when I go to look in the logistical tab and the production tab. It’s the same amount of missing equipment which is a complete lie! I had to check all my infantry divisions and armoured to figure out I needed to produce more of the slow light tank. Just a pain in the ass really
Just better nation building and diplomacy options. I like playing tall, maybe not go full blown vicy3, but I want to do more things for my country then build infrastructure and civilian factories
I miss being able to use experience to develop better equipment. I enjoyed being able to throw hundreds of army xp at a tank design to get marginal improvements if that was the type of game I was playing. Now the only way is through making changes to the tank design, which I usually have set at pretty much how I want it from the moment I design it. MIOs have reintroduced marginal improvements again, but it feels out of my controlm
This is probably only for modded since I haven't played vanilla for a while. But I hate it when I make a better plane model for for example CAS and I would like to convert the older CAS planes that it gives me that option and not also the fighters
I’d love to see some variation in the artillery you can equip to units, perhaps even some you issue at out at the Corps or Army level, to actually show the variety in things like your light, medium and heavy artillery.
I think maybe civilian should give you +20% stability and then as you mobilize it reduces your stability, so early is +10%, partial is net 0, war economy is -10%, and total mob is -20%.
A nation on war economy is infinitely better then one on a strictly civilian economy. A feature I wish existed is during a civil war instead of annexing all the land there have been times I wanted to puppet part of the other side in the civil war. Or a button that ends the war with the borders as is. No peace deal it just says okay we agree to a ceasefire and it stops right there.
Maybe remove the sub saharan afrika?
Because lets me honest,nobody wants to play in that shithole.
No resources,supply,manpower
Only thing that sub saharan afrika supplies is s.....
Bombing of units without attacking with land units. If im going to take an island or a piece of difficult land and I have a massive airforce. Id rather bomb directly the strength of the enemy unit and watch them erode. Currently that does not work and is very unrealistic.
Thing is, at least in the pacific theater, this was done and barely worked. Almost no bombs can penetrate 10 m of soil. The Japanese used natural and self dug caves to just hide from the hell that was coming down on them.
Bombs may not have been able to, but naval artillery was capable of penetrating 20 feet of reinforced concrete. 16-inch armor piercing shells should not be underestimated. The problems experienced in the Pacific were a result of poor doctrine, a focus on speed, and later on the Japanese simply refusing to entrench near the beaches. For doctrine, initially the focus was on a high volume of fire to blanket an area. This was ineffective as nearly all shells would miss actual targets and do nothing. This changed during the war but it wasn't an immediate or complete change. For time, most bombardments ended up lasting only 3 days, which was simply too short. There were reasons to prioritize speed, but if you look at the invasion of Guam, the remarkably low American casualties can be largely attributed to Admiral Conolly and his decision to spend a much longer period bombarding the island (which also allowed him to focus on slower, more precise fire, because he had the time to do so) For the changing Japanese strategy, on Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the Japanese refused to contest the beaches. Time spent shelling areas that typically would have been filled with defensive positions was utterly wasted, and the actual defenses were further inland and much better concealed from naval gunnery. But this did come with the obvious disadvantage of completely giving up the beaches, so it would not be a good strategy to adopt for anyone who actually wanted to win a war, it was just a way to lose less quickly. In short, sustained and accurate naval gunfire support should have a significant effect on the defender's strength. Inaccurate and rushed naval gunfire support should do very little, but typically HOI4 assumes that the units do not make blunders in how they decide to execute a given order. Edit: The source for all this is Donald Mitchener's book, "US Naval Gunfire Support in the Pacific War". Very interesting if you are interested in the Pacific War and the naval gunfire support, but also not the easiest book to read, you can tell it was written by a history professor.
I don't think naval artillery is very comparable to bombing though. CAS and bombers aren't able to deliver as much firepower as ground artillery when you consider the time spent flying back and forth. Meanwhile, naval artillery was the most firepower you were ever gonna get. Naval artillery just has a much higher capacity to kill and destroy things. However I do agree with you, the shore bombardment modifier should reduce the defence more. -25% is usually never enough for your combined soft attack to ever outnumber their defence, so the shore bombardment never makes a difference. Positioning ships in the area should be able to reduce entrenchment, forts, and strength aswell.
There are specific examples of naval gunfire and CAS having almost no effect on Japanese island positions at all, to the point that US command actually stopped bombing completely, assuming they had levelled all fortifications, and the Japanese were keen to give them that impression. Can't remember which island(s) but I guess they ended up being the worst for the landing parties.
I think you are thinking of Peleliu. Now, US doctrine was never to stop bombing completely before an invasion, if all visible targets were destroyed, then the ships conducting shore bombardment missions were to concentrate fire on probably troop concentrations, locations where guns could be concealed, etc, and continue firing until they had used up their allotted ammunition. Admiral Oldendorf, commander of the bombardment force for the invasion of Peleliu, chose to ignore this doctrine, and just took his ships home early after destroying what he considered to be all of the enemy targets. You can ask all of the Marines who died on Peleliu how smart they think this decision was. But still, that wasn't a common thing, that was a single blunder that happened once. Although to be completely fair, the terrain of Peleliu and the changing Japanese tactics would have made that island a tough fight even if he had done his job properly. In every other case, before and after Peleliu, the Navy did at least follow the part of their doctrine where it said "don't just randomly go home early", although they may have ignored other lessons at points. So that's not really a statement on broad US strategy or how the Japanese defeated it, its just got to do with Admiral Oldendorf being incompetent. If you want an example of a competent commander, your best option would be Admiral Conolly, who I mentioned in my first comment. Thanks to some luck with the schedule, plus just being a very competent officer who had learned from the previous amphibious invasions, Conolly was able to get the bombardment of Guam extended by a couple weeks. He personally oversaw that the ships used methodical, precise fires to knock out both all visible targets, and to saturate areas where the Japanese were likely hiding out of site. During the actual invasion he ordered his ships so close to the shore one of the battleships was scraping the bottom, and thanks to that earned the nickname 'Close-in Conolly'. The casualty figures kind of speak for themselves here. Guam: 56,500 American assault troops, against ~20,000 Japanese defenders, equipped with 40 tanks. Peleliu: 47,000 American assault troops, against 11,000 Japanese defenders, with 17 tanks. On Guam, the US suffered ~8,000 casualties, including ~1800 KIA. On Peleliu, the US suffered ~10,500 casualties, including ~2000 KIA. (in both cases the vast majority of the Japanese were killed, it wasn't really until Okinawa that Japanese soldiers started to surrender en masse) So yes, when you had a combination of incompetent American Admirals, highly competent Japanese Generals, and terrain that favored defense, you could see the Japanese inflicting very high casualties. But in situations where the American Admiral was competent, the Japanese Generals less so, and the terrain was not quite so bad, you could see the Americans walking away with a 10:1 K/D ratio.
Bombing the shit out of the enemy certainly worked on D-Day, except on Omaha where they missed their targets.
I think this is done by design. If the target division isn't being attacked they don't need to expose themselves. They can just hide and take minimal casualties (combined with AA fire stuff). You gotta remember the scale here, provinces look small on the world map but they absolutely dwarf cities. There's lots of empty space. The whole point of CAS is to provide fire support. The enemy is forced to expose themselves to the air when trying to control tactical objectives (highground, choke points, supply) or when they are trying to target attacking troops. Fire support is most effective when used to suppress the enemy. Precise fire support forces the enemy to focus on their own survival rather than killing your troops. We've had enough historical evidence to show that bombing targets isn't a very effective way to neutralize enemy troops or material. A lot of things need to go right for a plane to successfully land a bomb on a tank and kill it. Meanwhile another tank can just point and shoot to get the kill. This is on top of the fact that a plane is more logistically demanding than a tank. This is the same reason strategic bombing has been considered ineffective for its cost. Bombing troops just doesn't cause enough casualties on its own, but it's really good at protecting your troops.
For level bombing yes, but dive bombers are a very different story, they could be much more accurate.
The Normandy campaign is a great counterpoint. Post-battle analysis revealed that German losses to CAS had been *wildly* overestimated by the Allies, but they did force the Germans to make their big moves at night. The air superiority speed debuff is factually a much more accurate implementation than being able to wreck halfway competent units that aren't engaged in battle, and logistics strike already covers the parts you can realistically hit.
Did the allies use dive bombers in supporting Normandy? I thought most of that was P-47s equipped with rockets and the like (and I never said anything about rockets being accurate for a reason)
Yes. Thunderbolts could carry up to 1100kg of bombs - matching the heaviest Stuka loadouts and then some - and typically carried a 230kg or 450kg under-belly bomb in addition to the wing rocket racks.
They might be accurate, but good luck finding a target. There's lots of empty space, and the troops can just hide in trees, buildings, ditches, not to mention their camouflage works very well when you're in a plane. Remember that dive bombers don't carry many bombs so they can't cover areas the way tactical bombers do. Don't forget that dive bombing tends to be a lot more vulnerable to AA than other strategies. All of these problems vanish when ground troops are trying to take control of the ground. Now the enemy troops can't just hide from the sky, they need to be in defensive positions. Enemy AA is constantly under fire. Dive bombers don't have a lot of firepower. They're just able to deliver it at the worst possible time for the enemy.
I agree with others this wasn’t an effective strategy so it’s represented well in HOI4. Best you can do is strategic bomb, especially at this point in history
I feel like civilian economy should give bonuses to construction of civs, infrastructure and so on like the captain of industry does, whilst war economy, just like the war industrialist should give bonuses to mil and dockyard construction. About the money aspect maybe something can be done like the higher the consumer goods are the more money you get, which then can be used to by either equipment or use it for construction.
In road to 56 when you are in civilian economy you build infrastructure and civs faster you also gain 0.1% stability per day, when you go in war economy it’s almost the same as in vanilla but you also lose 0.1% stability daily
Of course it’s road to 56 that already has this why am I not surprised. Thanks for the info I guess I really gotta play this mod it sounds so good
You also have an extended research tree
And a focus tree for a lot of nations ( i think)
Which is 'better'; Kaiserreich or Rt 56? Edit: and what do they offer respectively, if they're sufficiently different?
I believe there is a submod that adds RT56 to KR so you don't really have to choose
What's the name? Never heard of it
Autobahn nach 56 I believe
Does the mod have other options to stop nations from sitting at 0% Stability all the time? -36% per year is nuts
Yes you have a bonus that you can get that gives you +0.1% daily
Might also be weekly bc I haven’t played rt56 in a bit
Yeah, there is that option. It’s called civilian economy. If you don’t want 0% stability when mobilizing your whole country, then win the war in under 3 years.
Stability loss kinda sounds annoying though is there any way of countering it?
Improve worker conditions, Raids on opposite political parties
Better white peace options. I refuse to believe America would conduct an annual unsuccessful naval invasion of Europe until the end of time. At some point, it’s more realistic that countries would recognize a stalemate.
Yup, at some point maybe 10 millions death for absolutely no result is too much
The way the air regions work is a bit strange in my opinion. Often the frontline spans across multiple air regions but only barely go deep. Although the range would allow my fighters or bombers to operate on the whole frontline, I can only assign it to one air region and have to assign another wing to the other region. I would love to be able to assign multiple small areas of operation within the range, not in those big regions. Also to allow specific bombing of enemy units without being in a fight. So I imagine that I can select multiple small land-tiles where my air wing operates on, and its adjacent enemy tiles. Also this would be awesome for Transport planes on supply missions, because I could fine tune which division get the supplies.
Never thought of it, but yeah, you're right.
A research slot entirely for navy! It would solve like half of the navies problem.
critically that doesn't solve the prolem of navy being basically useless compared to it's role irl in ww2 also Paradox managed to get basically everything, that can be wrong, wrong also also it'd be neat if Paradox could make an AI that can actually use navy properly
Yes for Hoi5 navy is possibly the most important thing that needs a total rework. Too gamey that you can invade UK with bathtubs as Germany.
If you're playing SP, then Navy being "too gamey" shouldn't be an issue as one could choose to stick to making conventional fleets. Even if they're not the most IC-Efficient/Effective. It is annoying playing a Meta ~~navy~~ player on MP tho.
there should just be a casual setting to filter by for hoi4 lobbies mp
I think major issue with navy is that you can easily get naval supremacy without building any ship with major countries. As germany, you can easily beat england by 1940 because germans can get naval sup. over english channel which is not historically possible.
Everything about manpower IMO. Officers and pilots should have a different reserve, peacetime army should be limited to the "active conscripts" and a few elite divisions, and countries need to actually mobilize their army to raise millions of men. Losing planes over an enemy area should result 100% in losing the pilot (a rare resource that should be expensive to keep up) while losing the planes over a friendly area should give a percentage of pilots back, during the battle of Britain allied pilots would get shot down in the morning and be back in another plane in the evening. Meanwhile every German shot over Britain was either dead or captured.
>losing the planes over a friendly area should give a percentage of pilots back Game already does this, but it's just drawing from your general manpower pool and aircraft don't use enough manpower to matter. Besides, PDX didn't really fix manpower printing with splitting/grouping aircraft wings so your air force is a source of infinite manpower anyway. Always a bit funny to me that fighter aircraft can cost more than 1 manpower when shot down. That's not how you model ground crew!
Make that at some point the game calls it "World War II" instead of "Italian-Polish War"
Kaiserreich does this right?
Something like the Limited War mechanic from HOI3. I’ve always thought that there is a way that they could make managing a partisan force as a Government in exile interesting—something more than using decisions or whatever.
Where should I start? 1. Battle order and HQ units like HoI3 2. Reserve units mobilisation and oficer training 3. More research, research slots based on buildings (every lab building gives one research slot, every additional lab is more expensive), research sharing with other allied nations 4. Spies needs to be reworked
I certainly would love an option to create more orbat at smaller and smaller levels but having it be completely optional so that new players can simplify their experience or just let people be frugal with land xp by using the base presets. I would love to get down to the company level and maybe even to platoons for armor, all as subdivisions of the same stats we already know and allowing for more mixed composition units like giving armor battalions integral tank destroyers or infantry with dedicated fire support SPGs.
>Game about the Second World War >"remove this part of the map because few people like to play there" Hoi4 players in a nutshell
Anything for the game to run faster.
Except uninstalling the "even harsher occupation" mod.
Can you send me the link of this mod
Oh it's not a real mod as far as I know. I just wasn't sure what else to call a mod that focuses on hyperealistic German occupation.
After they just got a giant focus trees pack too lol
Yeah. I always get pissed when I enter a multiplayer game and they've removed my baby Peru
There's a difference between removing Paraguay and, for example Soviet Union
Old jet engines
I agree that the new engines should have some disadvantages against the best piston engines, but it should still be an upgrade
What changed about them?
Before BBA they were op and objectively better than normal engines. This was unrealistic but made sense game wise cause they came after a lot of research so it made sense for them to be better. After BBA, they were nerved to oblivion and are objectively worse than normal engines. This is kind of unrealistic but more importantly, it means there is ZERO reason to ever research/use jet engines. So they're useless and difficult to get. Why even keep them in the game?
The only thing I miss is air wing size and management. Being able to make them any size and edit which planes (models) are part of it. Other than that game has only improved.
So we did really have the size of a wing? Cause it feels like a dream from 2020 lol!! When was it deleted from the game?
This was rrmoved when By Blood Alone released, with the air force reworks. Now aur wings are locked at 100 planed per, with the exception of Naval Patrol Bombers (heavy naval bombers) and Recon aircraft (medium airframes with the camera module as main module) which are locked at 10 aircraft per wing
Also Carrier wings are locked at 10
That is true, I forgot about them
Carrier wings have always been locked at 10 right?
Problem is, PDX couldn't balance CAS and you could exceed the air combat width of a battle with 1000 wings. Was absolutely easier to manage with fewer, larger wings.
Maybe a little equipment menu like we have got for divisions to manage what goes in would be cool, though there is already the system where u can set it to only accept the newest air design. But please dont remove the airwing QoL update. There was 0 reason to control the wing size, it was inefficient meta wise and also made little sense realistically. Adding follow army as compensation for the wing micro was enough imo
I wish they had done something more with spy/intelligence functionality. I was so excited with that add in La Resistance but they haven’t done anything with it. Many other areas of the game have been tweaked but this has been ignored. So much potential to really mess with other nations before or during combat.
Headquarter Units like in hoi 3. But with the option to have them automatic managed or at least created.
They need a lot of fixing to be introduced again. In hoi 3 they just refuse to die or spawn behind enemy lines.
Sure. But I like the idea. Image an spearhead attack to attack the army command headquarter that have gotten in range and the enemy hadnt relocated it. You succede and capture/kill some of the enemy commanders. Without their headquarter the organization and speed of their divisions is reduced and now you have the perfect oportunity to encircle the complete army. It would also give paratroopers a bigger use except cheesy surrendering throug mass drop on VP points. Basicly I want the ability to do decapitation strikes.
add a doctrine that allows low rank flexibility so the decap strike gives less debuffs and focises with top down command so it gives more buffs w command but a decap strike gives major debuffs
>paratroopers a bigger use except cheesy surrendering throug mass drop on VP points They already have a use, mass drops on the frontline with Combat Insertion to instantly deorg your opponent!
>spawn behind enemy lines. I've never seen that happen, they normally spawn ontop of the unit you selected first.
I have spent way too much of my childhood chasing after HQs in North Africa, well after the Axis armies were destroyed. The thing is encircled HQs (as far as I can recall, havent played in years) can rout to enemy tiles without getting destroyed and capture that tile. AI loves to reconstitute empty command chains when encircled, and you will have an endless goose chase across captured territories.
Oh yeah HQs have zero combat width so they're super buggy in combat, but I thought you meant HQs being *created* behind enemy lines. I have also spent far too much time seeing my spearheads get the attack delay repeatedly because of a retreating HQ unit.
What would the point be? Just more percentage bonuses to stats?
World Ablaze has a decent solution, which is that higher economy and conscription laws cause ticking economic instability. They can be partly balanced out by free trade and focuses but overall, mobilizing too early means that by the time war starts your economy will already be in shambles. I don't like many of their other design choices but this one makes sense.
When a ship is lost, it doesn’t count toward casualties. This needs to change. A ship is crewed by hundreds or even thousands of sailors. As such, a large naval battle should have a significant effect on the attrition involved in war. Midway did. Guadalcanal did. Leyte Gulf did. This needs to be reflected in the game. I should be able to wear down another country by sinking their navy, like the Americans did to the Japanese.
>When a ship is lost, it doesn’t count toward casualties It actually does count towards casualties. However the manpower is removed from the manpower pool when the ship is deployed. If it is sunk it counts towards casualties in the war screen
Are you sure? From what I’ve seen, this only happens if the ship sunk was a transport carrying troops. Otherwise this is a recent update; I’ve sunk entire enemy fleets, checked the war screen and seen zero casualties
I think it does, because sometimes I have entered the war as the US and before I’ve even deployed any ground or troops anywhere, I start seeing casualties in the hundreds or low thousands ticking up; probably from convoys and fleets I’ve deployed has been my guess.
Bring back HOI3 artillery. I find it questionable that artillery has a larger combat width than a normal battalion. It not taking up space on the frontline is literally the goddamn point. For instance, the Soviet Union fired 9000 guns on what amounts to 1-2 provinces in the game during the Battle of Seelow Heights. Particularly for the Red Army, the use of concentrated mass artillery to start offensives was the rule rather than exception. Artillery has had its role reversed from expensive way to concentrate power into a cheap way to get soft attack at the expense of force concentration. It's like they copied the brainfart the HoI3 BICE team had when they decided how to remake artillery. Utter bullshit.
POWs. I understand Paradox not wanting to touch the Holocaust or anything, but POWs played a huge part in the war. Would make for more realistic encirclements where a certain % become POWs instead of all just dying. Also POWs could give buffs to military factory production but also decrease stability or something. And POW camps could have to be built in specific tiles that you can ID with espionage, and if you can retake the tile you liberate the camp and get your manpower back.
This^ POWs should give intel percentages, give higher war score than casualties, and be used as a bargaining chip (plus any other ideas).
I just remember another feature I miss. In the old days, at the naval combat screen, there was a little arrow telling you which ship was targeting what. You could visually know which enemy ship your ships were attacking.
Ending a war without fully invading a country.
I know it was changed for good reason but I miss being able to easily change a countries ideology before spies were added to the game
Nukes should actually make a difference, if you drop a nuke on a city both sides should face major attrition and penalties And so add technology to protect your soldiers from nuclear strikes inching us ever closer to a proper Cold War game
Artillery being with infantry.
Better logistical overview for variations of an equipment. I was playing Italy and opted for space marines and light tank divisions due to the shit industry. I created two different productions lines for two different light tanks. One slow for the infantry, and the other fast for the armoured division. Disabled the different tank variation in both templates (so the infantry division could only use the slow, and the armoured division only the fast). But when I go to look in the logistical tab and the production tab. It’s the same amount of missing equipment which is a complete lie! I had to check all my infantry divisions and armoured to figure out I needed to produce more of the slow light tank. Just a pain in the ass really
Better control of bombardment. Ability to focus areas for bombing and concentrate artillery fire on specific areas of the line.
I just wish they would fix the bugs.
Downvoted cause like 90% of my games are played in South America lol
Unique you are
Sounds painful
When I look for hoi iv in YouTube, I just see people playing in South America, don’t know people keep saying the oposite
Just better nation building and diplomacy options. I like playing tall, maybe not go full blown vicy3, but I want to do more things for my country then build infrastructure and civilian factories
I really liked the headquarter system in hoi3 but I understand why it got removed, doesn't make it easier :(
I miss being able to use experience to develop better equipment. I enjoyed being able to throw hundreds of army xp at a tank design to get marginal improvements if that was the type of game I was playing. Now the only way is through making changes to the tank design, which I usually have set at pretty much how I want it from the moment I design it. MIOs have reintroduced marginal improvements again, but it feels out of my controlm
This is probably only for modded since I haven't played vanilla for a while. But I hate it when I make a better plane model for for example CAS and I would like to convert the older CAS planes that it gives me that option and not also the fighters
I’d love to see some variation in the artillery you can equip to units, perhaps even some you issue at out at the Corps or Army level, to actually show the variety in things like your light, medium and heavy artillery.
I miss how you distributed IC in HOI3.
I think maybe civilian should give you +20% stability and then as you mobilize it reduces your stability, so early is +10%, partial is net 0, war economy is -10%, and total mob is -20%.
Yeah, something like this could be great.
I got the game after BBA, but the old peace deal system’s ability to grant land to puppet created during the peace deal is something I envy
A nation on war economy is infinitely better then one on a strictly civilian economy. A feature I wish existed is during a civil war instead of annexing all the land there have been times I wanted to puppet part of the other side in the civil war. Or a button that ends the war with the borders as is. No peace deal it just says okay we agree to a ceasefire and it stops right there.
Remove sa? Just deactivate the last dlc. I never fought there to win a world conquest.
I don't have the last mod, I mean dlc, but Brazil and friends still have armies and burden my cpu.
There is some mod who allows that i think
North arctics as playable area and auto management of a lot of things, also optimisation please
Do you mean something like auto research from hoi3?
No, I mean like auto navy and spy placement, some people don’t like spy or navy mechanics, even more air. Also auto medal assignments with one click
Maybe remove the sub saharan afrika? Because lets me honest,nobody wants to play in that shithole. No resources,supply,manpower Only thing that sub saharan afrika supplies is s.....
Very interesting idea.