I believe there is something in the Japanese focus tree, the focus called strengthen the divine wind, which unlocks a module called fixed explosive charge, which I would assume is for kamikaze.
@@thesexyprince5830 They have less naval attack, but triple the naval targeting. So while torpedos hit hard, the targeting is 5. Guide bomb has less naval attack than a torpedo, but it has triple the targeting, which is 15. AND YOU CAN STACK THE BOMBS. They're expensive, though.
When it comes to cannons, they were used by most countries on all their airframes by the end of the war. The german Bf109s normally were equipped with two light mgs and one cannons, with their heavier bomber interceptors using larger cannons, i.e. 30mm compared to 20mm. The main advantage of cannons was their significant explosive filler that could destroyer aircraft. The soviets even put cannons on I-15 biplanes
Also, the faster your plane is going, the less time on target you have, so having a more destructive weapon wasn't that useful right at the start/before the war, but by the end of the war. and especially during the jet age, machineguns, even the heavy mg's the USAAF prefered were very much on the way out for any sort of anti air use.
@@rm2569 That wasn't the case. Smaller airframes with weaker engines, alongside cannon technology being largely in its infancy compared to what it would become later in the war
@@rm2569 HMGs were definitely on the way out during the jet age, but note that raw firepower from guns is only one factor among many ; the M2 Browning for example got a higher muzzle velocity than the MG FF, MG 151/20 and MK 108 cannons in service with the Luftwaffe, so the trajectory is flatter and makes range estimation errors less of a factor for hit probabilities. F-86's over Korea also had radar gunsights to greatly improve hit probabilities. The extreme counterexample is the Ho-301 cannon used by the Japanese with a muzzle velocity of 245 m/s and an effective range of 150m. Heck, the WWII US Bombers channel even has videos about the B-29 detailing its gun system using a mechanical computer to compensate for parallax between the gunner and the gun turrets and calculate a firing solution, with an effective range of 900 yards versus 400 yards for enemy fighters. Because of the parallax, the gunner wasn't distracted by firing a gun and could aim more accurately too. The result was that the B-29 ended up with a higher KD ratio against enemy fighters than the P-51... And of course, things like logistics, reliability, stability and manufacturing capabilities are why the U.S. sticked to the M2 Browning for nearly all the guns on its aircraft. An example of bad engineering was the Yak-9T with the NS-37 cannon, a 37mm gun. The recoil was excessive for the planes, which meant only the first shot could be aimed, and firing sometimes damaged parts of the firing aircraft... And if the Yak-9T was such a bad idea, it didn't deter the Soviets from creating the Yak-9K with the NS-45 gun in 45mm...
@@KenshiroPlayDotA how dare you speak ill of the yak-9t. That 37mm is a sniper rifle, that's why they only carried like 30 shots, definately not the weight. Now, the 45mm they tried out, that might be a little much, but god bless them for trying
Yeah that would make a lot of sense, would be nice if there was a tech for shallow depth torpedoes to improve the port strike action with naval bombers specifically
Would also be cool if they added armour piercing bombs to naval CAS to either cause fires on battleships or to prevent carriers from launching more aircraft.
Its its own thing really. The needs of a sub launch, a ship launch, and a aerial torpedo are not all the same thing. I could see a core technology to research then the launchers being their own things. That way if you are going hard on the air launch aspect you can optimize that but be stuck with garbage ship launching systems.
If you go down the battlefield support doctrine, you could make a CAS plane that can do dogfights with extra 20 percent agility. also, I think the bombs states get dropped when switching to air superiority mission.
yes except for the bomb bay. anything that's just mounting points will not count negative when not in said roll (aka not inside the hull takine up space).
My go-to right now is an advanced light air frame with (First Row) Bomb Locks, Dual Cannon II, Quad Heavy MG, Bomb Lock, (Second Row) Dual Engine III, Dive Brake, Single Heavy MG Turret, Armor Plate, Self-Sealing Fuel Tank. The thrust is high enough for fast speed, and while the agility takes a hit the Air Attack and Air Defense are so high that you can use these any role. I've had 400 secure green air in Europe against Britain+France on CAS because they'll shoot down more fighters than they lose. It's essentially a Ju 87 Junker with P-38 engines, Me109 nose cannons, P-51 machine guns, a TBF Avenger defense turret.
@@KurastWolf Cannon IIs are not Bf-109 guns. Cannon Is are guns in the 20mm range. Cannon IIs are 30mm range, like on specialsied interceptors and the ME-262.
I have looked at the Japanese focus tree and, under the focus Warrior Spirit (which allows kamikaze strike), there is a focus called Strengthen the Divine Wind. I have not looked into it, but it says that it enables a module called "Fixed Explosive Charge", which I take increases damage on kamikaze missions.
It makes your plane a "Suicide Striker" which allows it to carry out Kamikaze missions. This is the equivalent to the dedicated Suicide Craft variant that you get without BBA. However, you can install this module on any small airframe, meaning you can make carrier-based suicide crafts or cheap suicide crafts based on the inter-war airframe.
@@RealPeoplePerson Also considering Japan's crippling lack of resources, I imagine Non-Strategic Materials would be usefull on these type of planes since you're not expecting them to survive anyway.
@@KanzlerOttoVonBismarck The focus has, but previously the focus allowed you to do kamikaze missions. Now, however, it gives a module that instead allows you to do kamikaze missions, assuming you have it installed on the planes on that mission.
Hopefully not. That would make no sense, early nukes were way too heavy and the missle tech wasn't sufficient enough to be able to deliver a warhead that big. it's possible they could've made it work if they devoted everything to it, but it's a pretty far reach
@@ThatZenoGuy Yeah but it's so hypothetical, idk in my opinion Germany should have to do a focus to be able to research nukes because in real life they would've needed to start in like 1933 if they even wanted a shot at making one.
I think espionage is more important now, if you know the enemy fighter design you can create a counter to it depending on how much air defence or agility it has
Me too. Last game I tried to focus on the medium airframe only, building insanely expensive but also effective heavy fighter filled with aa cannons and a tac bomber with different cas weapons + protection. I barely lost any planes in the whole game up until 1950.
@@burkanov I was able to convert most of the medium airframes i produced over the war into flying boats for naval detection, then used those to hunt ships. After i was done i redesigned back to the cas/bomber/fighter and destroyed the rest of germany's fighters.
What I noticed is from the light MG's you can stack 2 of the 2MG Module and get the Same Damage as the 4 MG's module for less cost, would need to check if that's also for the Heavy MG's or some of the other Modules where smaller ones but more of them will be cheaper for the Damage Output
Sheesh I can check that when I get back to my room today in 4 ish hours I have a maxed out air tree as the USA in 1939. May or may not have a large navy too….. and a Mexico….. And a Japan….. and a Canada…. Air is king. On a side note support AA doesn’t seem as effective as just slapping AA into the main division area
I'd say that's to balance out the cost efficiency vs slot efficiency. Not unusual in other games where you can customize your vehicles, upgrading is less cost efficient, but you can get a higher total stat count. It really comes down to how expendable you want your stuff to be and how important total stats are.
It's the opportunity cost of being unable to then fit on an extra module without having to replace both MGs with a quad MG. e.g. You produce an inexpensive 1936 fighter with one slot of 4x MGs, later when you unlock cannons or HMGs you can fit one on in that empty slot.
@@johnuthus Not sure if this is still a thing but support AA can´t shot down aircraft they can only tell them to bugger off. the line AA can shot down Aircraft.
I love rocket rails, for me they are straight up a replacement for bomb locks on CAS planes, sure they don't give naval attack bonuses, but they are very lightweight and have no agility penalties. I particularly like slapping an AT Cannon 2, loading the rest of the weapon slots with rockets, putting self sealing fuel tanks, dive brakes, and as much armor (thrust willing) as I can for a dedicated ww2 a10 knockoff CAS plane.
You said it at the 6:40 mark the "anti-bomber bomber" = the Ju-88, the best German night-fighter WAS a bomber, converted into the anti-bomber, it had a primitive radar too...
4:14 its so funny to me that Feedback asks "Whats the point" when i am sitting here, having just designed a fighter using 4MG's, 2 cannon 1's, and Radio nav, seeing my armada of planes gaining complete rule of the skies
They nerfed the damage reduction from agility a bit, so that air attack is a bit more important. I think it's historically justified because by the end of the war having only machine guns is severely underpowered for most mainstream fighters.
Me and my buddies noticed it's better to just ignore agility and get the most air defence possible and ground attack for CAS and not completely sure about other planes but air defence seems to be the deciding factor. Also medium airframes seem to the best of the 3.
The use of rubber in self sealing fuel tanks is the actual reason they’re self sealing to begin with. I find it really cool that they added that extra cost, however extra it is.
A build i like I’ve dubbed the Death Star or AC130. I go for as much armor as I can match that with as much ground attack as possible. Usually it’s incredibly expensive but I don’t even bother putting MGs on them. It’s for when you have total air supremacy.
I guess the thing about being able to add only one improved AT gun VS multiple basic ones on a plane is a way to emulate how some ground attack plane would sometimes mount a 75mn gun in the nose (like the B25H or HS129) whereas 47mn canons would be mounted in pairs
13:47 Most airforces had radio in fighters at the start of the war. Airborne radar wasn't used on lighter aircraft until later. The early war sets were quite heavy and expensive to produce. 15:05 In fact, the main purpose of the Tizard Mission was for Britain to convince America to produce airborne radar sets, which it lacked the industrial capacity for despite having cutting edge designs available.
yes and no most nations aircraft had receiver radios (aka they could hear radio orders but they could not send it usually only the squadron command had a radio that could send). until like 1940 or something like that aircraft did communication whit signal flags. Tanks also did not have radio for the most part and if they did it was a receiver radios whit the command tank been the only one whit a transmitter radio.
If you're intrested here's some intresting stuff: The small bomb bay on fighters is a feature added for the Yakovlev Yak-9B which had a small bomb bay behind the cockpit. Other single engine fighters didn't have a bomb bay, and also other variants of the Yakovlev Yak-9 lacked this feature. Historically, the heavy machine guns and light cannons are the most common, and best armament. You never want to use light machine guns, if you have anything else. The German bombing doctrine is based on speed. The Junkers Ju-288C (A plane that is insanely hated in War Thunder) Is a perfect example for that. It uses 3 heavy mg turrets and 1 20mm cannon in the tail. The base Idea for german bombing, is that your plane is fast enough, that if the enemy wants to intercept them, they gonna need to tail them, which exposes them to heavy firepower. Basically, while American and British bombers fly, they're in a strict formation, flying slowly, and firing at any enemy that moves, trying to win by number advantage. On the Other hand, German and Soviet tactical bombers basically run in, bomb, and run away, and if somebody tries to intercept them, they just shoot them down with backwards facing cannons. This also means, that German and Soviet bombers are much easier to kill, and relative to US and UK Strategic bombers, they aren't good with survivability. Meanwhile the Japanese Strategic bombers are basically flying battlecruisers. They are relatively slow and heavy, and they pack a fuck ton of cannon turrets to delete anything that comes near, the price for that, is that they die to nearly any slight hit in true japanese fashion. As for Radios, It is historical. The British with the Beaufighter used radars for night fighting, and the Germans used......God damn it.....The Messerschmitt Bf-110, the Messerschmitt Me-410, the Dornier Do-17(not sure in that one), the Dornier Do-217, the Heinkel He-219, the Focke-Wulf Ta-154, Junkers Ju-88, and Junkers Ju-288, and even the Messerschmitt Me-262 had a few Radar using versions. The Bf-110G-4 was also used by the Royal Hungarian Air Force for Night Fighting missions. I might also add, that all these aircraft were twin engined planes. The only single engine radar using Night Fighter I know of is the Grumman F6F-5N Hellcar, which had a radar strapped under it's wing. Aerial Minesweeping is the mastery of Britain. They used Vickers Wellington bombers by installing a wide ring around the aircraft, and a smaller engine and generator inside the plane. This created a magnetic field under the aircraft, that exploded naval mines. This tough limited the Wellingtons to doing this mission and only this one. Rockets are extremely useful. Not just in HoI4. The thing is, that Rockets are easy to install, and very multipurpose. IMO they should make it so that it adds Air Attack too. That's because Japan and Germany especially did develop Air to Air unguided rockets, that exploded after travelling for a distance and could heavily damage bombers from relatively large range without a direct hit. A lot of purpose built fighters got Rocket Rails because their cheap and easy install, especially Seafires (Naval Spitfires). In the Navy a single purpose fighter isn't worthwhile, and the British adapted the Spitfire, which was a plane nearly unable to CAS, into a Naval aircraft, which needed some way to attack something else other than just aircraft. Given the fact that the Spitfires were never designed to carry heavy bombs under wings, and one bomb is lackluster in the Navy, The Seafire got 16 rockets on rails. 8 on each wing, which worked really well. Rockets also have the ability to Penetrate. AP and HEAT rockets were, and still in use in air forces and navies, in WWII, AP rockets were a preferred way to attack a ship without a torpedo. The Japanese though, had a funnier Idea. "Let's take this armor piercing battleship shell, put some fins on the end, and put it on a Nakajima B5N2 bomber." That's how Armor Piercing Bombs born, and these bombs were used by aircrafts on the Kaga, that dropped them on the USS Arizona in the Attack on Pearl Harbor. The AP bombs could penetrate the ship's hull, and blew up the ammunition, leading to the destruction of the Arizona. Rockets are lightweight, and effective.
@@sol2544 There was also the Henschel Hs 293, a guided glide bomb with a rocket engine slapped on that qualifies it as a missile. The US created a somewhat more refined model in the ASM-N-2 Bat. Both saw combat, although the latter only did once.
It's important to note that Cannons also provide a bonus to ground attack while on Logistics Strike missions. The bonus isn't listed on the tech, but it is listed when you hover over the module in the plane designer window. This way, you can put bomb locks on a heavy fighter with cannons and they can do quite good logistics bombing when interception or escort duties aren't needed~
Bomb locks are really sad because while they allow your fighter to have both CAS and fighter mission, you can't set the fighter to fight for air superiority when there is enemy air superiority, but also to do cas when left unattended. This gets really strange when you look at fighter airframes where you have slots that have to go to air superiority, and ones that have to go to wing mounted weapons.
yep feels like aircraft should be able to have two air mission. Primary and as opportunity strike. like most Fighter aircraft that was doing air superiority would also carry light CAS weaponry for when there was a lul in the air war (or no air target was found) and strife ground targets. and I mean just strife them whit the 50 cal gun even if it did absolutely nothing beyond making the officer spit his tea.
The module you missed is not in the tech tree: Japan gets a SECRET TECH through foci that gives them a kamikaze module. Be warned, it crashes your game if you unlock it as anyone other than Japan.
The issue of representing range of rocket engines in HOI4 is that in HOI4 you have 1 massive airfield, where as in the real world you would have many dotted around. Especially the rocket interceptors of Germany was rather easy to move around and launch from pretty much wherever.
About cannons: 20mm were very common in higher numbers, but bigger cannons (30mm and about) rarelly was used more than 2. Check Zero and Ju 87 G-1 for reference. About cannon turrets: cannon turrets were used by a lot of allied bombers late war, when heavy fighters were better armored and a bigger risk to bombers. In game, when you attack planes, the planes attacks back. So having high Air Attack on Bombers means more fighters down, and easing the fight for your own fighters and escorts. About rails: Rockets were used mostly for light, secondary ground/surface attack weapons. For that role, it does fit well being cheap and without downsides. I really like how they implemented that.
Rockets engines are there to reproduce Messerschmitt Me 163 and its derivatives... Mostly a rocket with a joy stick to steer it and ducktaped gun on it with not much thrust control... I guess the idea was to intercept bombers on short notice... Light up the engine, climb up, do two or three runs on bomber formation and once fuel runs one, glide down and hope for the best.
For anti tank cannons, a lot of countries experimented with large tank cannons on aircraft. The reason in game I believe you can only mount one on an aircraft is that it matches up historically with what happened with these planes. You’re mounting sometimes a 75mm cannon meant for a tank into an aircraft, it can barely hold the thing and fly properly. Meanwhile light anti cannons in aircraft were much more common, like the twin 37mm gun pods on some JU 87s, and the 37mm nose cannon on the p39 airacobra. It comes down to the fact that the light anti tank cannons are so many times lighter than a single heavy anti tank cannon.
In WW2 the main participants in the war began adding heavier armor in critical spots to increase the survivability of their planes to light and heavy machine gun fire. When everyone was struggling to get through the armor, they began developing a system that could handle plane cannon rounds that could pierce the thicker armor. There was only so much armor you could put onto your planes before your engines for the time couldn't take off.
My guess for the meta: -A dedicated Air Superiority fighter that stacks as much agility as possible with some air attack, maybe even with bomb locks thrown on since they're cheap to do basic CAS when not doing AS -A dedicated Interceptor that stacks as much air attack as possible to take down bombers, with agility being the next most important stat, meant only for interception duty -Either an extremely cheap CAS light air frame with as much ground attack as possible without it being expensive, or a medium Tac Bomber that stacks as much ground attack as possible -A medium Naval bomber with as much air defense as possible with some naval attack -A strat bomber with as much air defense as possible
Blend of cannons and LMG 4x are the sweet spot for weight/air attack from what I can tell. At a certain point, bombers have 1 agility. They're not going to dodge much of anything, so the cannon becomes even more valuable. Cannon turrets are more air attack per weight if I did the math correctly, so shooting down attacking fighters with armor becomes more realistic.
I think when I looked the trade off was a single heavy turret was the best value. The dual lights aren't as efficient, and the dual heavies are too expensive/heavy.
17:36 Most Subs (particularly WW1) relied on gunnery for anti-shipping. A few 88mm or 127mm shells into a freighter cost less than a Torpedo. It was only when nations started arming their shipping, and rolling out auxiliary cruisers with hidden guns, thaf it really became dangerous for submersibles. Then it finally became cost effective primarily using torpedoes, purely because loosing a whole sub is expensive... Subs still used deck guns in WW2 ofc. But little to none of the 105mm, 127mm, 152mm monstrosities they slapped on WW1 cruiser type subs.
Small Bombay =Cas Medium Bombay = tac Large Bombay = strat Bomb locks = extra bombs Also air attack on à nommer shoots down the intercepters/ fighters.
@@SirPlotALot but they do turn your Naval bombers into the most horrifying thing on the Atlantic. Get a large airframe, fill it with that shit and watch as ships get sunk left and right.
I don't know if dave reads comments, but this is how Air Attack and Air Defense work (for turrets, in this instance) Air Attack is not just damage, it is your ability to damage air targets, PERIOD. This includes when defending against enemy fighters. The air attack stat on a turret for a bomber is the damage your bomber will be able to inflict on fighters trying to intercept it. Air DEFENSE, on the other hand, is basically an HP stat. Essentially it's your plane's life bar, and how much damage it can take before being destroyed. This is why turrets add air ATTACK, and not DEFENSE. This is also why putting fighter weapons on a tactical bomber can help it defend itself against enemy fighters.
As far as cannons on planes go small caliber cannons (20mm-57mm) are usually given to light to medium fighters in the hopes of being able to shoot down planes faster or better. Large caliber cannons (anything larger than a 57mm) is usually put onto a medium to large aircraft for the purpose of ground attack (IE German duck plane)
I love how he went crazy about the unguided rockets on planes but it was definitely a thing later in WW2, the US I think were the first to mass produce a plane with them for anti tank roles.
3:25 small fighters can get 1 turret, mediums can have 2. Its a nice way to boost your air attack if you have spare slots and thrust and don't care about agility. 8:35 yes, heavy bombs are stupidly heavy, you actually cannot fill all your weapon slots with them until engine 3. But once you do, you get like 120-150 strat bombing stat. It doesn't leave spare weight for turrets xD
To answer your question about anti-tank cannons: The anti tank cannon 2 is literally a tank cannon (think 60-120mm) and irl has such a high recoil that it has to be mounted center line on the airframe since you need enough space and also otherwise risk tearing the plane apart with torque or spinning it and losing control. The anti tank 1 is just small anti tank cannons in wing mounted pods (think 20-30mm) and produce much less recoil. This is why you can only mount one cannon 2 but multiple cannon 1; space and power.
Entire P 47 squadrons were retrofited with rocket rails to do close air support once P51s arrived in numbers to take over bomber escort duty. P38s were fitted as well to give them a more relevance late in the war. In the game retrofit old fighters with rockets for a new mission since they are outclassed. The p36 and p40 for example. It's better than throwing them away.
From testing it looks like the meta pushes towards air attack and air defense on fighters being higher than previously. So cannon can be worth it to beat fighters let alone bombers. This is really valid in the historical context, where armor and self sealing fuel tanks were starting to become near standard by about 1940, and rifle caliber machine guns did very little. In the pacific, for instance, Japanese rifle caliber turret guns didn't do much at all to American fighters, but the bombers that had 20mm turrets in the tail were a genuine threat. Module balance in general looks really weird to me though. Like turrets and fixed forward guns are actually fighting for the same role somehow, and fixed forward guns are pretty much strictly better at increasing air attack, medium bomb bays have such terrible stats that they seem to always be the wrong pick compared to bomb locks, and so on. Also module mission gating can get pretty weird. Anti-ship missiles don't enable the naval strike mission, you have to drag a torpedo for that. In a gimmick game I'm using six engine bombers to get very long range on 1940 and 1944 bomber chassis so I can bomb Germany from Maine, and on the 1944 plane I don't even have to have suicidally low air defense.
I think fitting the bomb modules on your main fighter only loses its agility if it's on ground mission like CAS,but retain their agility if they're on Air Superiority or Interception,the only downside to it is its increased cost
Bomb-bays on fighters are useful from the prospective of a minor or otherwise low-industry power who still want to be able to Strat bomb, the small airframe is cheaper than medium and when you only have 1-10 factories, even small ic changes go a long way...
The MG turrets allow strategic bombers to shoot down enemy fighters. This is because air combat happens in two steps: first air vs. air is processed where all planes in the region regardless of mission "shoots" at all the detected enemy planes (using the air attack stat). This can result in your bombers killing fighters. Additionally, any air-wings on air superiority will also apply disruption on air-wings that are doing ground missions. In the second step ground missions are processed where any surviving planes, minus those that got disrupted, dealing damage.
The torpedo-less submarine is more viable than you'd think. At the beginning of the war the magnetic detonators on torpedoes from all nations were incredibly unreliable. The problem was epitomized with the Mark 14 torpedo (Drachinifel has a good video on it "The Mark 14 Torpedo: Failure is Like Onions") and it wasn't fixed until mid-1943ish. Torpedoes were so unreliable, a lot of American subs would surface and use their deck gun to shoot at unarmed merchants, especially small ones typical in the Pacific. The U-boat commanders would use the deck gun a lot too because of the limited torpedoes they could carry and difficulty in going back to France or Norway to get more.
Heavy Bombers decked in extra guns without bomb loads were a thing, was an attempt to make up for lack of fighter escorts. Yes, they took B -17s and added MORE guns and metric butt loads of ammo several added extra turrets most had extra gunners some even had fixed guns for the pilot to use(like a fighter by pointing the whole plane) As with most crazy ideas it was thought up by the mad lads in the fight so these were improvised and none were exactly the same.
Small airframe and x4 heavy fighter guns were pretty good(getting like 60 planes down for 30 losses when outnumbered and 1v1 everything others got England Germany).i still have to test small guns and the medium frame.
I've had a 4-1 K/D with 3 twin cannon 2s on an airframe. It's pricey, but as USA it's a great way to make everyone run out of planes fast. Agility and speed seem to not matter if you have 60 air attack.
The "anti bomber bomber" you described was absolutely a real thing, they were called "interceptors" or "gunships" not manueverable enough to go toe to toe with most fighters, but absolutely big enough to survive the big guns on a bomber, and hit them hard enough to get passed their armour.
"Maybe we can make a naval aircraft that have sad air defence but huge range" **meanwhile japanese Navy, 1920's**= Gentlemen, what if we make our planes as light as possible, load it with extra fuel and external tanks, and send them to the enemy? Thus A6M2 Zero and entire imperial japanese naval bomber line was born. The survival rate is HORRENDEOUS.
The air attack on turrets Dave represents the attack damage they do at enemy fighters attacking them and air defence would be amount of damage they can take before dying. So if you follow off this, it means if your air attack it great enough your bombers wont need escorted as they will shot the interceptors down, but you then have to think about AAA so you have to chose do I want to out right kill a plane but die to flack or have enough armour to survive fighters and flack but enough air attack to deal damage to planes over time.
Cannons coming after survivability reflects irl development. Aircraft development was mostly constrained by engine development, and while fighters had to be relatively light and small for agility and logistics, bombers could be massive things with four engines and a ton of lift. Because of this, bombers could fit a ton of protection, being heavily armed and armored, flying super high and in tight formations. At first, a lot of fighters could even reach them, and when they did, they got short windows with which to actually fire on the bomber before they'd be forced away by turret fire. Improved power to weight ratios for the engines allowed them to carry heavier firepower, to to deal out more damage in that short period of time. The range advantage also helped extend that window, and 30mm cannon rounds are large enough that you can't reasonably armor a plane against it. Anyway, it makes perfect sense if they're trying to force a sort of window where bombers are much stronger and fighters weaker.
6:25 the historical context on cannons and machine guns: Basically by the mid- to late-war both sides were looking for ways to put cannons and heavier machine guns on both fighters and bombers. It was getting harder to shoot down anything with the low caliber machine guns of the early war. I think in HOI4 "air attack" is the ability to damage aircraft (so, for example, a fighter intercepting a bomber, but also a bomber shooting down an attacking interceptor), while "air defence" is the ability to take damage from AA or enemy aircraft (so, armour, self-sealing tanks, etc). However, the heavier the cannon, the less agile the aircraft (look up the Hurricane tank buster variants for example). Aircraft with heavier cannons typically had very few rounds (as low as a few seconds of firing) for those weapons, supplemented by more ammunition for lighter armament. Historical variants for the Spitfire (fighter variants) using HOI terminology: Spitfire Mk. I and II (8 x light machine guns) Spitfire Mk. V (4 x light machine guns + 2 cannons) Spitfire Mk. IX (2 x light machine guns + 2 cannons with more ammo for both) Aircraft design is all about balancing power or armament with weight. Some engine upgrades even "slowed down" planes because early chassis were not designed for such heavy engines...
Being able to navigate in the dark accurately is a plus. Ground radar or a spotter gives the coordinates of the enemy. Then the night fighter proceeds to intercept.
Considering 5cm and 7.5cm cannons were used in the ground attack role it prolly explains why you can only have a single gun with the anti tank cannon 2, as opposed to the 37mm guns on aircraft like the Stuka which invariably came in pairs.
Now maybe I haven't tested it enough but what I've found is agility doesn't matter if you have air superiority no planes in the sky to shoot down your bomber? No need to be able to dodge them. What u really need is armor to help against AA
Attacking bomber formations as a fighter pilot was actually terrifying, because they were armed with (usually) heavy machine guns in the turrets - and big nose-mounted guns. Nose mounted guns are far superior to wing mounted guns.
I’m a big brain brain and I know everything that’s why I watch RUclips videos to tell other what’s I know. As for photo recon I haven’t used it a ton yet, but I was pumping them out on out of interwar frames to help scout the ocean as Britain. I just didn’t put then anywhere that Germany could reach with planes.
I've found a fighter with the 4x heavy MG's (they dont lower agility or speed compared to light) and a tier 3 engine absolutely shreds what the AI builds. On a fighter 3 with 2x heavy mg and 1 cannon 2 so far has been the best. It can shoot down anything, and if you get the designer the agility will still go up over a plain template even with the cannon. It seems to be worth the trade off. Keep in mind they have to be able to shoot down bombers - not just fighters. Unless you build something specifically for interception. That might be more of an MP thing though. This seems to work incredibly well in SP.
Paradox said in patchnotes that agility gives less bonuses now, altough no specific numbers were mentioned. I would priotarise AA, AD, PC, Speed and only then agaility, ofc depending what plan you are making.
for bombers agility is useless more or less. for light fighter I say Agility is still importent (as agility on aircraft are a lot cheaper then trying to make a light fighter that can tank (air defense) damadge). also im not sure but my guess is depending on how planes enter combat a glass cannon will still be shutdown (trading blows/ mutual destruction) whit a cheap aircraft, as long as the cheap aircraft can get in one shot and that is enough. and having 10K damage is not going to matter if the target only got 10HP as the rest is just spend shoting at a wreak that yes will probrbly not even be a wreak falling from the sky but a mist of grey, black and red.
Regarding rocket rails: If you're playing a country that is on a budget, you can create dual-purpose fighters. Slap quad lmgs paired with rocket rails and you have a fighter that can also cas if you achieved air superiority. No penalty to agility either and almost no weight.
There is also the anti ship missile under guided missile 3 [15 production, -10 Agility, 8 naval attack, 15 naval targeting, 10 weight] no limit to number you can attach to a plane
13:36 Yes, because ground radar and sighting stations† can return information to fighter command. In turn fighter command can direct squadrons. Or simply, squadrons can communicate between themselves, rather than relying on handsignals at 2am... † Britain even built sound stations. Giant concrete mirrors for hearing aircraft before radar was used as effectively as it was.
Feedback, when you equip a strat bomber with mulitple air-ground radars (its possible) and go down stratigic destruction doctrin with the -50% night penalty you get easily over -100% penalty reduction. So my question is when you get - 120% penalty reduction, does it act like a 20% buff then?
No. Even if paradox didnt think to specifically cap the night penalty reduction, i just dont think the game is coded in a way where that bug would happen.
Radio Navigation is OP. I played as Romania and i only used small airmframes, my fighter would have cannons and twin engines with RN and air to air radar, the improved small airframe only started taking loses after 1941. Also CAS naval bombers are OP. You could make a multirole CAS plane that does EVERYTHINNG: CAS, Naval bombing, port strike (not as effective) and STRAT BOMBING. They actually obliterated the soviet black sea fleet for me in less than a year, only 200 CAS and 100 intercepting fighters
Germany experimented with heavy anti tank cannons under the wings on the Stuka, going as large as 76mm. They found that any failure in the synchronization of the firing mechanism led to a catastrophic spin.
this feels like a note under the anti tank level 2 gun saying consideration was taken for mounting it under the wing.... early testing reminded us of the second law of motion... aka the wing clocked at a speed of about 2,600 ft/s going backwards pushed by a object weighting in at around 25 lb and is not detached from the rest of the aircraft. the only place on the aircraft that can survive the recoil of the large anti tank gun is under the main body.
I mean, my last SP USA play through had me fighting China and Russian Federation in '47 as WW4, (USSR was 3) so I got to use Jet Aircraft to make the slow crawl through China slightly less horrible. But only slightly.
Air to air radar was for night fighter. See I think the P 61 Black Widow. Didn't have many but used for night intercept of bombers. So like make a heavy fighter wing to intercept, set it only at night and don't make a lot. Not really that useful for sp but maybe meme protection for mp?
Remember, most HoI4 players are retards who see no issue with setting their day fighters to conduct day/night mission cycles, and then are really, really surprised that they get lots of extra losses during night missions... which they don't even know exists, because apparently every single one of them is epileptic, and turns off the day/night cycle visuals, so they can play at speed 5 all the time
Realistically to this videos credit. A lot of the updates feature common sense to aircraft of the time. Faster heavy front end aircraft with two engines and cannons were usually the way people intercepted bombers that were in small formations. This kinda leads to the question of how air fights ground with reliability. If you want to test whats good with the changes with CAS vs ground
too funny that in real life jet engines where not only cheaper to produce than piston engines, but also you needed less man hours and materials, they're lighter too, the design is ingeniously simple
In 12.2 they added (? or moved?) the guided anti-ship missile to advanced rocket tech which is a 1946 tech, has very high production cost, slightly worse naval attack than torpedoes, but better naval targeting which means you will never build them. HOWEVER there is also another big difference: you can only have one torpedo per plane, but there is no such limit for guided missiles which means you can theoretically stack them as much as you want and make a monster of naval bomber. The limits on how many modules you can have on a plane is not a bug, they are intentional as they are defined in the code. The anti-tank cannon has also different limits depending on the airframe: small airframes can have a max of two AT cannon 1 and a max of one AT cannon 2; medium airframes a max of 3&1 and large airframe a max of 4&2 which is interesting since I don't believe large airframes have a CAS weapon slot at all...
Funnily the jet engines being higher production cost than a late-war prop engine is entirely unhistorical. The main reason Germany wanted the jet fighters aside from the higher speed potential was the fact that a Jumo 004/BMW 003 engine took less than half the manhours to build of a piston engine. Also funny anecdote about rocket fighters and range. The Me 163 Komet had maybe 6 minutes worth of fuel in flight.
Cannon 2 is actually really good on small airframe 3 and engine three which you can get all by 1940 best war plane template you need seems to be 2 cannons 4 heavy machine guns and one engine three on small airframe three Also i don’t think you have to research fighters past that jet engines are not really getable until 1943 and would be not that much more usefull because of there cost too makes sense irl jet fighters could be made but to make them well it was too expensive and not worth it.
Early testing suggests agility is no longer king, and a combination of air attack, air defense, and speed are far more important. Air attack matters against any engagement, even against fighters a bomber is defending against. Also, bomb locks appear to be king right now, multirole heavy fighters with cannons, bomb locks, self sealing fuel tanks, a bit of armor, and defense turrets seems like the way to go right now. On the whole, testing is also showing quality being far more important than quantity in the air, so I don't think your minimum IC light fighter will pan out, outside some weird "just grab air superiority for a month or two with sheer initial numbers" strat that bleeds you IC in the long run.
after doing some testing it seems like Tac bombers cannot deliver nukes, even with medium bomb bays. My guess is the game needs the airwing to be a Strategic bomber and Paradox kept the Large Airframes coded as Strat bombers to make sure all the research and doctrine buffs apply correctly. Hope they patch it soon so we can pump out nukes in small nations without rubber.
You didn't talk about the hidden module of guided anti ship bombs, useful for tactical and strat bombers as naval bombers. it's currently buggi and disappears your design, but it's still in the game, just need to be patched in
Anti-ship missiles were added in the beta patch so didn't make it into this video :(
I believe there is something in the Japanese focus tree, the focus called strengthen the divine wind, which unlocks a module called fixed explosive charge, which I would assume is for kamikaze.
Any radio or radar guided glide bombs?
Are they any good?
@@thesexyprince5830 They have less naval attack, but triple the naval targeting. So while torpedos hit hard, the targeting is 5. Guide bomb has less naval attack than a torpedo, but it has triple the targeting, which is 15. AND YOU CAN STACK THE BOMBS. They're expensive, though.
balistics computer in the electronics tree
When it comes to cannons, they were used by most countries on all their airframes by the end of the war. The german Bf109s normally were equipped with two light mgs and one cannons, with their heavier bomber interceptors using larger cannons, i.e. 30mm compared to 20mm. The main advantage of cannons was their significant explosive filler that could destroyer aircraft. The soviets even put cannons on I-15 biplanes
Except Americans who strapped m2s into everything.
Also, the faster your plane is going, the less time on target you have, so having a more destructive weapon wasn't that useful right at the start/before the war, but by the end of the war. and especially during the jet age, machineguns, even the heavy mg's the USAAF prefered were very much on the way out for any sort of anti air use.
@@rm2569 That wasn't the case. Smaller airframes with weaker engines, alongside cannon technology being largely in its infancy compared to what it would become later in the war
@@rm2569 HMGs were definitely on the way out during the jet age, but note that raw firepower from guns is only one factor among many ; the M2 Browning for example got a higher muzzle velocity than the MG FF, MG 151/20 and MK 108 cannons in service with the Luftwaffe, so the trajectory is flatter and makes range estimation errors less of a factor for hit probabilities. F-86's over Korea also had radar gunsights to greatly improve hit probabilities. The extreme counterexample is the Ho-301 cannon used by the Japanese with a muzzle velocity of 245 m/s and an effective range of 150m.
Heck, the WWII US Bombers channel even has videos about the B-29 detailing its gun system using a mechanical computer to compensate for parallax between the gunner and the gun turrets and calculate a firing solution, with an effective range of 900 yards versus 400 yards for enemy fighters. Because of the parallax, the gunner wasn't distracted by firing a gun and could aim more accurately too. The result was that the B-29 ended up with a higher KD ratio against enemy fighters than the P-51...
And of course, things like logistics, reliability, stability and manufacturing capabilities are why the U.S. sticked to the M2 Browning for nearly all the guns on its aircraft. An example of bad engineering was the Yak-9T with the NS-37 cannon, a 37mm gun. The recoil was excessive for the planes, which meant only the first shot could be aimed, and firing sometimes damaged parts of the firing aircraft...
And if the Yak-9T was such a bad idea, it didn't deter the Soviets from creating the Yak-9K with the NS-45 gun in 45mm...
@@KenshiroPlayDotA how dare you speak ill of the yak-9t. That 37mm is a sniper rifle, that's why they only carried like 30 shots, definately not the weight. Now, the 45mm they tried out, that might be a little much, but god bless them for trying
I feel like upgrading your torpedo tech should DEFINITELY make your naval bombing torpedos better but I don’t think it goes which is pretty sad
Yeah that would make a lot of sense, would be nice if there was a tech for shallow depth torpedoes to improve the port strike action with naval bombers specifically
Would also be cool if they added armour piercing bombs to naval CAS to either cause fires on battleships or to prevent carriers from launching more aircraft.
On the flip side nav bombers already mess with ships a lot so it would make them just **a little** too op
Its its own thing really. The needs of a sub launch, a ship launch, and a aerial torpedo are not all the same thing. I could see a core technology to research then the launchers being their own things. That way if you are going hard on the air launch aspect you can optimize that but be stuck with garbage ship launching systems.
Well don't expect your carrier naval bombers to do jack shit except 1 damage.
“They made laying mines so much easier than sweeping them”
You know who else did that?
The people who make mines
Mines really are the most destructive and cruel device ever made. They not only damage now, but forever into the future
@@bioemiliano i mean, _most_ might be a bit of a strong word. dirty bombs come to mind.
If you go down the battlefield support doctrine, you could make a CAS plane that can do dogfights with extra 20 percent agility. also, I think the bombs states get dropped when switching to air superiority mission.
yes except for the bomb bay.
anything that's just mounting points will not count negative when not in said roll (aka not inside the hull takine up space).
My go-to right now is an advanced light air frame with (First Row) Bomb Locks, Dual Cannon II, Quad Heavy MG, Bomb Lock, (Second Row) Dual Engine III, Dive Brake, Single Heavy MG Turret, Armor Plate, Self-Sealing Fuel Tank. The thrust is high enough for fast speed, and while the agility takes a hit the Air Attack and Air Defense are so high that you can use these any role. I've had 400 secure green air in Europe against Britain+France on CAS because they'll shoot down more fighters than they lose.
It's essentially a Ju 87 Junker with P-38 engines, Me109 nose cannons, P-51 machine guns, a TBF Avenger defense turret.
@@KurastWolf Cannon IIs are not Bf-109 guns. Cannon Is are guns in the 20mm range. Cannon IIs are 30mm range, like on specialsied interceptors and the ME-262.
I have looked at the Japanese focus tree and, under the focus Warrior Spirit (which allows kamikaze strike), there is a focus called Strengthen the Divine Wind. I have not looked into it, but it says that it enables a module called "Fixed Explosive Charge", which I take increases damage on kamikaze missions.
It makes your plane a "Suicide Striker" which allows it to carry out Kamikaze missions. This is the equivalent to the dedicated Suicide Craft variant that you get without BBA. However, you can install this module on any small airframe, meaning you can make carrier-based suicide crafts or cheap suicide crafts based on the inter-war airframe.
@@RealPeoplePerson Also considering Japan's crippling lack of resources, I imagine Non-Strategic Materials would be usefull on these type of planes since you're not expecting them to survive anyway.
As far as I know, it's always been in the game
@@KanzlerOttoVonBismarck The focus has, but previously the focus allowed you to do kamikaze missions. Now, however, it gives a module that instead allows you to do kamikaze missions, assuming you have it installed on the planes on that mission.
There's a nuclear icon above the V-1 and V-2 missiles in the research tree. Has that always been there? If not, that's a nice addition.
It is a new addition. I'm excited about that change!
Yeah it makes sense for the early ICBMs to be nuclear
Hopefully not. That would make no sense, early nukes were way too heavy and the missle tech wasn't sufficient enough to be able to deliver a warhead that big. it's possible they could've made it work if they devoted everything to it, but it's a pretty far reach
@@currahee
The V2 could carry a nuke (with far less range) by trading fuel weight for warhead weight.
@@ThatZenoGuy Yeah but it's so hypothetical, idk in my opinion Germany should have to do a focus to be able to research nukes because in real life they would've needed to start in like 1933 if they even wanted a shot at making one.
I think espionage is more important now, if you know the enemy fighter design you can create a counter to it depending on how much air defence or agility it has
I had success with the medium airframe, also the most fun designs.
Heavy fighter mosquito, medium bomber B-25.
Me too. Last game I tried to focus on the medium airframe only, building insanely expensive but also effective heavy fighter filled with aa cannons and a tac bomber with different cas weapons + protection. I barely lost any planes in the whole game up until 1950.
@@burkanov I was able to convert most of the medium airframes i produced over the war into flying boats for naval detection, then used those to hunt ships.
After i was done i redesigned back to the cas/bomber/fighter and destroyed the rest of germany's fighters.
What I noticed is from the light MG's you can stack 2 of the 2MG Module and get the Same Damage as the 4 MG's module for less cost, would need to check if that's also for the Heavy MG's or some of the other Modules where smaller ones but more of them will be cheaper for the Damage Output
Sheesh I can check that when I get back to my room today in 4 ish hours I have a maxed out air tree as the USA in 1939. May or may not have a large navy too….. and a Mexico….. And a Japan….. and a Canada…. Air is king.
On a side note support AA doesn’t seem as effective as just slapping AA into the main division area
I'd say that's to balance out the cost efficiency vs slot efficiency.
Not unusual in other games where you can customize your vehicles, upgrading is less cost efficient, but you can get a higher total stat count.
It really comes down to how expendable you want your stuff to be and how important total stats are.
It's the opportunity cost of being unable to then fit on an extra module without having to replace both MGs with a quad MG.
e.g. You produce an inexpensive 1936 fighter with one slot of 4x MGs, later when you unlock cannons or HMGs you can fit one on in that empty slot.
@@johnuthus Not sure if this is still a thing but support AA can´t shot down aircraft they can only tell them to bugger off.
the line AA can shot down Aircraft.
I love rocket rails, for me they are straight up a replacement for bomb locks on CAS planes, sure they don't give naval attack bonuses, but they are very lightweight and have no agility penalties.
I particularly like slapping an AT Cannon 2, loading the rest of the weapon slots with rockets, putting self sealing fuel tanks, dive brakes, and as much armor (thrust willing) as I can for a dedicated ww2 a10 knockoff CAS plane.
Also historical. Well they should give naval attack as they work wonders on lighter ships.
You said it at the 6:40 mark the "anti-bomber bomber" = the Ju-88, the best German night-fighter WAS a bomber, converted into the anti-bomber, it had a primitive radar too...
IRL early war fighters were notorious for struggling to shoot down early war bombers, so the early survivability definitely tracks IMHO
4:14 its so funny to me that Feedback asks "Whats the point" when i am sitting here, having just designed a fighter using 4MG's, 2 cannon 1's, and Radio nav, seeing my armada of planes gaining complete rule of the skies
A version of the B25 Mitchell actually had a 75mm howitzer mounted in it to use as a ground attack roll.
Even better, the Italian Piaggio P.108 had a version with a 102mm cannon for attacking submarines.
They nerfed the damage reduction from agility a bit, so that air attack is a bit more important. I think it's historically justified because by the end of the war having only machine guns is severely underpowered for most mainstream fighters.
Me and my buddies noticed it's better to just ignore agility and get the most air defence possible and ground attack for CAS and not completely sure about other planes but air defence seems to be the deciding factor. Also medium airframes seem to the best of the 3.
Yeah just 1940 speed and cannons makes a plane kinda overpowered against the ai templates.
@@axelrye5921 thats true 71cloak has done a small amount of testing and found the same thing
@@axelrye5921 IL-2 Sturmovik moment
Small bomb Bay is for strong CAS
Yepp
Also can be a lot cheaper putting them om small airframes instead of mediums.
Like like anti tank but better
The use of rubber in self sealing fuel tanks is the actual reason they’re self sealing to begin with. I find it really cool that they added that extra cost, however extra it is.
2 rubber per factory on already expensive planes is quite a cost for nations that aren't in the Allies or Japan after overrunning South East Asia.
@@magni5648 just build synthetic refineries
@@swety2962 That's also expensive, both in civ useage and building slots.
Thanks for the massive unpack across the whole new aircraft tech tree/everything. Cheers man.
A build i like I’ve dubbed the Death Star or AC130.
I go for as much armor as I can match that with as much ground attack as possible. Usually it’s incredibly expensive but I don’t even bother putting MGs on them. It’s for when you have total air supremacy.
I guess the thing about being able to add only one improved AT gun VS multiple basic ones on a plane is a way to emulate how some ground attack plane would sometimes mount a 75mn gun in the nose (like the B25H or HS129) whereas 47mn canons would be mounted in pairs
It does seem to be the difference between an in-built cannon and cannon-pods mounted to the exterior.
13:47 Most airforces had radio in fighters at the start of the war. Airborne radar wasn't used on lighter aircraft until later. The early war sets were quite heavy and expensive to produce.
15:05 In fact, the main purpose of the Tizard Mission was for Britain to convince America to produce airborne radar sets, which it lacked the industrial capacity for despite having cutting edge designs available.
yes and no most nations aircraft had receiver radios (aka they could hear radio orders but they could not send it usually only the squadron command had a radio that could send).
until like 1940 or something like that aircraft did communication whit signal flags.
Tanks also did not have radio for the most part and if they did it was a receiver radios whit the command tank been the only one whit a transmitter radio.
If you're intrested here's some intresting stuff:
The small bomb bay on fighters is a feature added for the Yakovlev Yak-9B which had a small bomb bay behind the cockpit. Other single engine fighters didn't have a bomb bay, and also other variants of the Yakovlev Yak-9 lacked this feature.
Historically, the heavy machine guns and light cannons are the most common, and best armament. You never want to use light machine guns, if you have anything else.
The German bombing doctrine is based on speed. The Junkers Ju-288C (A plane that is insanely hated in War Thunder) Is a perfect example for that. It uses 3 heavy mg turrets and 1 20mm cannon in the tail. The base Idea for german bombing, is that your plane is fast enough, that if the enemy wants to intercept them, they gonna need to tail them, which exposes them to heavy firepower. Basically, while American and British bombers fly, they're in a strict formation, flying slowly, and firing at any enemy that moves, trying to win by number advantage. On the Other hand, German and Soviet tactical bombers basically run in, bomb, and run away, and if somebody tries to intercept them, they just shoot them down with backwards facing cannons. This also means, that German and Soviet bombers are much easier to kill, and relative to US and UK Strategic bombers, they aren't good with survivability. Meanwhile the Japanese Strategic bombers are basically flying battlecruisers. They are relatively slow and heavy, and they pack a fuck ton of cannon turrets to delete anything that comes near, the price for that, is that they die to nearly any slight hit in true japanese fashion.
As for Radios, It is historical. The British with the Beaufighter used radars for night fighting, and the Germans used......God damn it.....The Messerschmitt Bf-110, the Messerschmitt Me-410, the Dornier Do-17(not sure in that one), the Dornier Do-217, the Heinkel He-219, the Focke-Wulf Ta-154, Junkers Ju-88, and Junkers Ju-288, and even the Messerschmitt Me-262 had a few Radar using versions. The Bf-110G-4 was also used by the Royal Hungarian Air Force for Night Fighting missions. I might also add, that all these aircraft were twin engined planes. The only single engine radar using Night Fighter I know of is the Grumman F6F-5N Hellcar, which had a radar strapped under it's wing.
Aerial Minesweeping is the mastery of Britain. They used Vickers Wellington bombers by installing a wide ring around the aircraft, and a smaller engine and generator inside the plane. This created a magnetic field under the aircraft, that exploded naval mines. This tough limited the Wellingtons to doing this mission and only this one.
Rockets are extremely useful. Not just in HoI4. The thing is, that Rockets are easy to install, and very multipurpose. IMO they should make it so that it adds Air Attack too. That's because Japan and Germany especially did develop Air to Air unguided rockets, that exploded after travelling for a distance and could heavily damage bombers from relatively large range without a direct hit.
A lot of purpose built fighters got Rocket Rails because their cheap and easy install, especially Seafires (Naval Spitfires). In the Navy a single purpose fighter isn't worthwhile, and the British adapted the Spitfire, which was a plane nearly unable to CAS, into a Naval aircraft, which needed some way to attack something else other than just aircraft. Given the fact that the Spitfires were never designed to carry heavy bombs under wings, and one bomb is lackluster in the Navy, The Seafire got 16 rockets on rails. 8 on each wing, which worked really well.
Rockets also have the ability to Penetrate. AP and HEAT rockets were, and still in use in air forces and navies, in WWII, AP rockets were a preferred way to attack a ship without a torpedo. The Japanese though, had a funnier Idea. "Let's take this armor piercing battleship shell, put some fins on the end, and put it on a Nakajima B5N2 bomber." That's how Armor Piercing Bombs born, and these bombs were used by aircrafts on the Kaga, that dropped them on the USS Arizona in the Attack on Pearl Harbor. The AP bombs could penetrate the ship's hull, and blew up the ammunition, leading to the destruction of the Arizona. Rockets are lightweight, and effective.
There are also guided anti ship missiles in the last rocket tech
Wut
ah yes, the ace combat method lol
@@sol2544 look up Fritz-X
@@stoirmslw7195 That was a guided *bomb*
@@sol2544 There was also the Henschel Hs 293, a guided glide bomb with a rocket engine slapped on that qualifies it as a missile. The US created a somewhat more refined model in the ASM-N-2 Bat. Both saw combat, although the latter only did once.
It's important to note that Cannons also provide a bonus to ground attack while on Logistics Strike missions. The bonus isn't listed on the tech, but it is listed when you hover over the module in the plane designer window. This way, you can put bomb locks on a heavy fighter with cannons and they can do quite good logistics bombing when interception or escort duties aren't needed~
“I’m a big brain, I know everything” -guy who is rewatching the video
Something I noted as I was checking the changes in-game was that rockets (like the V-2) can now be used as nuclear missiles. Scary.
That's a nice change. Makes rockets actually worthwhile now.
Small, medium, large bomb bay. But the real question: where is sapphire bombay?
The ASM's added in the last update (if you can get them fast enough) are a crazy good way of clearing out navies in a sea zone
Bomb locks are really sad because while they allow your fighter to have both CAS and fighter mission, you can't set the fighter to fight for air superiority when there is enemy air superiority, but also to do cas when left unattended.
This gets really strange when you look at fighter airframes where you have slots that have to go to air superiority, and ones that have to go to wing mounted weapons.
yep feels like aircraft should be able to have two air mission.
Primary and as opportunity strike.
like most Fighter aircraft that was doing air superiority would also carry light CAS weaponry for when there was a lul in the air war (or no air target was found) and strife ground targets.
and I mean just strife them whit the 50 cal gun even if it did absolutely nothing beyond making the officer spit his tea.
Did you ever mention the new Chinese province types and the yellow river flood event?
The module you missed is not in the tech tree: Japan gets a SECRET TECH through foci that gives them a kamikaze module. Be warned, it crashes your game if you unlock it as anyone other than Japan.
The issue of representing range of rocket engines in HOI4 is that in HOI4 you have 1 massive airfield, where as in the real world you would have many dotted around. Especially the rocket interceptors of Germany was rather easy to move around and launch from pretty much wherever.
Level 2, 3, 4 etc airfield should increase airplane range representing multiple airfields per province
About cannons: 20mm were very common in higher numbers, but bigger cannons (30mm and about) rarelly was used more than 2. Check Zero and Ju 87 G-1 for reference.
About cannon turrets: cannon turrets were used by a lot of allied bombers late war, when heavy fighters were better armored and a bigger risk to bombers. In game, when you attack planes, the planes attacks back. So having high Air Attack on Bombers means more fighters down, and easing the fight for your own fighters and escorts.
About rails: Rockets were used mostly for light, secondary ground/surface attack weapons. For that role, it does fit well being cheap and without downsides. I really like how they implemented that.
Rockets engines are there to reproduce Messerschmitt Me 163 and its derivatives... Mostly a rocket with a joy stick to steer it and ducktaped gun on it with not much thrust control... I guess the idea was to intercept bombers on short notice... Light up the engine, climb up, do two or three runs on bomber formation and once fuel runs one, glide down and hope for the best.
The Raj should get a bonus to strategic and tac bombers because they have BombBay
For anti tank cannons, a lot of countries experimented with large tank cannons on aircraft. The reason in game I believe you can only mount one on an aircraft is that it matches up historically with what happened with these planes. You’re mounting sometimes a 75mm cannon meant for a tank into an aircraft, it can barely hold the thing and fly properly. Meanwhile light anti cannons in aircraft were much more common, like the twin 37mm gun pods on some JU 87s, and the 37mm nose cannon on the p39 airacobra. It comes down to the fact that the light anti tank cannons are so many times lighter than a single heavy anti tank cannon.
In WW2 the main participants in the war began adding heavier armor in critical spots to increase the survivability of their planes to light and heavy machine gun fire. When everyone was struggling to get through the armor, they began developing a system that could handle plane cannon rounds that could pierce the thicker armor. There was only so much armor you could put onto your planes before your engines for the time couldn't take off.
*Sees Hoody*
(to screen) "It will be done my lord!"
"Oh, sorry.... Force of habit"
My guess for the meta:
-A dedicated Air Superiority fighter that stacks as much agility as possible with some air attack, maybe even with bomb locks thrown on since they're cheap to do basic CAS when not doing AS
-A dedicated Interceptor that stacks as much air attack as possible to take down bombers, with agility being the next most important stat, meant only for interception duty
-Either an extremely cheap CAS light air frame with as much ground attack as possible without it being expensive, or a medium Tac Bomber that stacks as much ground attack as possible
-A medium Naval bomber with as much air defense as possible with some naval attack
-A strat bomber with as much air defense as possible
Blend of cannons and LMG 4x are the sweet spot for weight/air attack from what I can tell. At a certain point, bombers have 1 agility. They're not going to dodge much of anything, so the cannon becomes even more valuable.
Cannon turrets are more air attack per weight if I did the math correctly, so shooting down attacking fighters with armor becomes more realistic.
I think when I looked the trade off was a single heavy turret was the best value. The dual lights aren't as efficient, and the dual heavies are too expensive/heavy.
17:36 Most Subs (particularly WW1) relied on gunnery for anti-shipping. A few 88mm or 127mm shells into a freighter cost less than a Torpedo. It was only when nations started arming their shipping, and rolling out auxiliary cruisers with hidden guns, thaf it really became dangerous for submersibles. Then it finally became cost effective primarily using torpedoes, purely because loosing a whole sub is expensive... Subs still used deck guns in WW2 ofc. But little to none of the 105mm, 127mm, 152mm monstrosities they slapped on WW1 cruiser type subs.
Small Bombay =Cas
Medium Bombay = tac
Large Bombay = strat
Bomb locks = extra bombs
Also air attack on à nommer shoots down the intercepters/ fighters.
Bomb locks are external mountings for dive bombing/CAS useage.
You missed the guided anti-ship rocket bombs! Their naval targeting is INSANE
What? Where they are?
@@mazur5379 guided missile 3
@@mazur5379 They're unlocked by researching "Guided Missile III." Incredibly late game, sadly
@@SirPlotALot but they do turn your Naval bombers into the most horrifying thing on the Atlantic. Get a large airframe, fill it with that shit and watch as ships get sunk left and right.
@@SirPlotALot SO late that is probably useless
Torpedoless submarines be like: "My goals are beyond your understanding"
Heavy fighters had rudimentary radars mounted on their noses for night fighting.
I don't know if dave reads comments, but this is how Air Attack and Air Defense work (for turrets, in this instance)
Air Attack is not just damage, it is your ability to damage air targets, PERIOD. This includes when defending against enemy fighters. The air attack stat on a turret for a bomber is the damage your bomber will be able to inflict on fighters trying to intercept it.
Air DEFENSE, on the other hand, is basically an HP stat. Essentially it's your plane's life bar, and how much damage it can take before being destroyed.
This is why turrets add air ATTACK, and not DEFENSE. This is also why putting fighter weapons on a tactical bomber can help it defend itself against enemy fighters.
As far as cannons on planes go small caliber cannons (20mm-57mm) are usually given to light to medium fighters in the hopes of being able to shoot down planes faster or better. Large caliber cannons (anything larger than a 57mm) is usually put onto a medium to large aircraft for the purpose of ground attack (IE German duck plane)
I love how he went crazy about the unguided rockets on planes but it was definitely a thing later in WW2, the US I think were the first to mass produce a plane with them for anti tank roles.
The ussr did it on the il2 and some other biplanes iirc
3:25 small fighters can get 1 turret, mediums can have 2. Its a nice way to boost your air attack if you have spare slots and thrust and don't care about agility.
8:35 yes, heavy bombs are stupidly heavy, you actually cannot fill all your weapon slots with them until engine 3. But once you do, you get like 120-150 strat bombing stat. It doesn't leave spare weight for turrets xD
To answer your question about anti-tank cannons:
The anti tank cannon 2 is literally a tank cannon (think 60-120mm) and irl has such a high recoil that it has to be mounted center line on the airframe since you need enough space and also otherwise risk tearing the plane apart with torque or spinning it and losing control.
The anti tank 1 is just small anti tank cannons in wing mounted pods (think 20-30mm) and produce much less recoil.
This is why you can only mount one cannon 2 but multiple cannon 1; space and power.
Entire P 47 squadrons were retrofited with rocket rails to do close air support once P51s arrived in numbers to take over bomber escort duty. P38s were fitted as well to give them a more relevance late in the war.
In the game retrofit old fighters with rockets for a new mission since they are outclassed. The p36 and p40 for example. It's better than throwing them away.
From testing it looks like the meta pushes towards air attack and air defense on fighters being higher than previously. So cannon can be worth it to beat fighters let alone bombers. This is really valid in the historical context, where armor and self sealing fuel tanks were starting to become near standard by about 1940, and rifle caliber machine guns did very little. In the pacific, for instance, Japanese rifle caliber turret guns didn't do much at all to American fighters, but the bombers that had 20mm turrets in the tail were a genuine threat.
Module balance in general looks really weird to me though. Like turrets and fixed forward guns are actually fighting for the same role somehow, and fixed forward guns are pretty much strictly better at increasing air attack, medium bomb bays have such terrible stats that they seem to always be the wrong pick compared to bomb locks, and so on. Also module mission gating can get pretty weird. Anti-ship missiles don't enable the naval strike mission, you have to drag a torpedo for that.
In a gimmick game I'm using six engine bombers to get very long range on 1940 and 1944 bomber chassis so I can bomb Germany from Maine, and on the 1944 plane I don't even have to have suicidally low air defense.
I think fitting the bomb modules on your main fighter only loses its agility if it's on ground mission like CAS,but retain their agility if they're on Air Superiority or Interception,the only downside to it is its increased cost
The bomb locks do (as do torpedos and rocket rails), but the bomb bays reduce it permanently.
Bomb-bays on fighters are useful from the prospective of a minor or otherwise low-industry power who still want to be able to Strat bomb, the small airframe is cheaper than medium and when you only have 1-10 factories, even small ic changes go a long way...
The MG turrets allow strategic bombers to shoot down enemy fighters. This is because air combat happens in two steps: first air vs. air is processed where all planes in the region regardless of mission "shoots" at all the detected enemy planes (using the air attack stat). This can result in your bombers killing fighters. Additionally, any air-wings on air superiority will also apply disruption on air-wings that are doing ground missions. In the second step ground missions are processed where any surviving planes, minus those that got disrupted, dealing damage.
The torpedo-less submarine is more viable than you'd think. At the beginning of the war the magnetic detonators on torpedoes from all nations were incredibly unreliable. The problem was epitomized with the Mark 14 torpedo (Drachinifel has a good video on it "The Mark 14 Torpedo: Failure is Like Onions") and it wasn't fixed until mid-1943ish. Torpedoes were so unreliable, a lot of American subs would surface and use their deck gun to shoot at unarmed merchants, especially small ones typical in the Pacific. The U-boat commanders would use the deck gun a lot too because of the limited torpedoes they could carry and difficulty in going back to France or Norway to get more.
Heavy Bombers decked in extra guns without bomb loads were a thing, was an attempt to make up for lack of fighter escorts. Yes, they took B -17s and added MORE guns and metric butt loads of ammo several added extra turrets most had extra gunners some even had fixed guns for the pilot to use(like a fighter by pointing the whole plane) As with most crazy ideas it was thought up by the mad lads in the fight so these were improvised and none were exactly the same.
Small airframe and x4 heavy fighter guns were pretty good(getting like 60 planes down for 30 losses when outnumbered and 1v1 everything others got England Germany).i still have to test small guns and the medium frame.
I've had a 4-1 K/D with 3 twin cannon 2s on an airframe. It's pricey, but as USA it's a great way to make everyone run out of planes fast. Agility and speed seem to not matter if you have 60 air attack.
The "anti bomber bomber" you described was absolutely a real thing, they were called "interceptors" or "gunships" not manueverable enough to go toe to toe with most fighters, but absolutely big enough to survive the big guns on a bomber, and hit them hard enough to get passed their armour.
That's really cool! Any examples of them?
@@Zorro9129 The German BF-110 C-7 is one example, it’s classified as a Strike Aircraft but is really a bomber hunter
@@Zorro9129 Dual 20mm cannons too, an angry boy for its era
@@thestarscape2446 That's the quintessential heavy fighter though. I was thinking a B-29 type bomber designed to shoot down other planes.
@@Zorro9129 theres also the DO-217
"Maybe we can make a naval aircraft that have sad air defence but huge range"
**meanwhile japanese Navy, 1920's**= Gentlemen, what if we make our planes as light as possible, load it with extra fuel and external tanks, and send them to the enemy?
Thus A6M2 Zero and entire imperial japanese naval bomber line was born. The survival rate is HORRENDEOUS.
The air attack on turrets Dave represents the attack damage they do at enemy fighters attacking them and air defence would be amount of damage they can take before dying. So if you follow off this, it means if your air attack it great enough your bombers wont need escorted as they will shot the interceptors down, but you then have to think about AAA so you have to chose do I want to out right kill a plane but die to flack or have enough armour to survive fighters and flack but enough air attack to deal damage to planes over time.
Cannons coming after survivability reflects irl development. Aircraft development was mostly constrained by engine development, and while fighters had to be relatively light and small for agility and logistics, bombers could be massive things with four engines and a ton of lift. Because of this, bombers could fit a ton of protection, being heavily armed and armored, flying super high and in tight formations.
At first, a lot of fighters could even reach them, and when they did, they got short windows with which to actually fire on the bomber before they'd be forced away by turret fire. Improved power to weight ratios for the engines allowed them to carry heavier firepower, to to deal out more damage in that short period of time. The range advantage also helped extend that window, and 30mm cannon rounds are large enough that you can't reasonably armor a plane against it.
Anyway, it makes perfect sense if they're trying to force a sort of window where bombers are much stronger and fighters weaker.
6:25 the historical context on cannons and machine guns: Basically by the mid- to late-war both sides were looking for ways to put cannons and heavier machine guns on both fighters and bombers. It was getting harder to shoot down anything with the low caliber machine guns of the early war. I think in HOI4 "air attack" is the ability to damage aircraft (so, for example, a fighter intercepting a bomber, but also a bomber shooting down an attacking interceptor), while "air defence" is the ability to take damage from AA or enemy aircraft (so, armour, self-sealing tanks, etc). However, the heavier the cannon, the less agile the aircraft (look up the Hurricane tank buster variants for example). Aircraft with heavier cannons typically had very few rounds (as low as a few seconds of firing) for those weapons, supplemented by more ammunition for lighter armament.
Historical variants for the Spitfire (fighter variants) using HOI terminology:
Spitfire Mk. I and II (8 x light machine guns)
Spitfire Mk. V (4 x light machine guns + 2 cannons)
Spitfire Mk. IX (2 x light machine guns + 2 cannons with more ammo for both)
Aircraft design is all about balancing power or armament with weight. Some engine upgrades even "slowed down" planes because early chassis were not designed for such heavy engines...
Being able to navigate in the dark accurately is a plus. Ground radar or a spotter gives the coordinates of the enemy. Then the night fighter proceeds to intercept.
Considering 5cm and 7.5cm cannons were used in the ground attack role it prolly explains why you can only have a single gun with the anti tank cannon 2, as opposed to the 37mm guns on aircraft like the Stuka which invariably came in pairs.
Now maybe I haven't tested it enough but what I've found is agility doesn't matter if you have air superiority no planes in the sky to shoot down your bomber? No need to be able to dodge them. What u really need is armor to help against AA
You joke about the heavy howitzer on a plane.
The AC 130 has entered the chat.
Attacking bomber formations as a fighter pilot was actually terrifying, because they were armed with (usually) heavy machine guns in the turrets - and big nose-mounted guns. Nose mounted guns are far superior to wing mounted guns.
My new go to naval bomber is a heavy fighter with dual LMGs, 2 Torps and Camera, it can do the naval patrols and it rips boats apart for just 39 IC
I’m a big brain brain and I know everything that’s why I watch RUclips videos to tell other what’s I know.
As for photo recon I haven’t used it a ton yet, but I was pumping them out on out of interwar frames to help scout the ocean as Britain. I just didn’t put then anywhere that Germany could reach with planes.
I've found a fighter with the 4x heavy MG's (they dont lower agility or speed compared to light) and a tier 3 engine absolutely shreds what the AI builds. On a fighter 3 with 2x heavy mg and 1 cannon 2 so far has been the best. It can shoot down anything, and if you get the designer the agility will still go up over a plain template even with the cannon. It seems to be worth the trade off. Keep in mind they have to be able to shoot down bombers - not just fighters. Unless you build something specifically for interception. That might be more of an MP thing though. This seems to work incredibly well in SP.
Paradox said in patchnotes that agility gives less bonuses now, altough no specific numbers were mentioned.
I would priotarise AA, AD, PC, Speed and only then agaility, ofc depending what plan you are making.
for bombers agility is useless more or less.
for light fighter I say Agility is still importent (as agility on aircraft are a lot cheaper then trying to make a light fighter that can tank (air defense) damadge).
also im not sure but my guess is depending on how planes enter combat a glass cannon will still be shutdown (trading blows/ mutual destruction) whit a cheap aircraft, as long as the cheap aircraft can get in one shot and that is enough. and having 10K damage is not going to matter if the target only got 10HP as the rest is just spend shoting at a wreak that yes will probrbly not even be a wreak falling from the sky but a mist of grey, black and red.
Regarding rocket rails: If you're playing a country that is on a budget, you can create dual-purpose fighters. Slap quad lmgs paired with rocket rails and you have a fighter that can also cas if you achieved air superiority. No penalty to agility either and almost no weight.
There is also the anti ship missile under guided missile 3 [15 production, -10 Agility, 8 naval attack, 15 naval targeting, 10 weight] no limit to number you can attach to a plane
13:36 Yes, because ground radar and sighting stations† can return information to fighter command. In turn fighter command can direct squadrons. Or simply, squadrons can communicate between themselves, rather than relying on handsignals at 2am...
† Britain even built sound stations. Giant concrete mirrors for hearing aircraft before radar was used as effectively as it was.
Feedback, when you equip a strat bomber with mulitple air-ground radars (its possible) and go down stratigic destruction doctrin with the -50% night penalty you get easily over -100% penalty reduction. So my question is when you get - 120% penalty reduction, does it act like a 20% buff then?
No. Even if paradox didnt think to specifically cap the night penalty reduction, i just dont think the game is coded in a way where that bug would happen.
Radio Navigation is OP. I played as Romania and i only used small airmframes, my fighter would have cannons and twin engines with RN and air to air radar, the improved small airframe only started taking loses after 1941. Also CAS naval bombers are OP. You could make a multirole CAS plane that does EVERYTHINNG: CAS, Naval bombing, port strike (not as effective) and STRAT BOMBING. They actually obliterated the soviet black sea fleet for me in less than a year, only 200 CAS and 100 intercepting fighters
Germany experimented with heavy anti tank cannons under the wings on the Stuka, going as large as 76mm. They found that any failure in the synchronization of the firing mechanism led to a catastrophic spin.
this feels like a note under the anti tank level 2 gun saying consideration was taken for mounting it under the wing.... early testing reminded us of the second law of motion... aka the wing clocked at a speed of about 2,600 ft/s going backwards pushed by a object weighting in at around 25 lb and is not detached from the rest of the aircraft.
the only place on the aircraft that can survive the recoil of the large anti tank gun is under the main body.
When playing sp now it makes literally 0 sense not to just make flying battleships that rain death.
FINALLY SOMEONE HAS FOUND OUT ABOUT IT. Put as many rocket rails to yours fighter 2s with 2 dual cannon and unleash the beast!
Tbh a heavy howitzer mounted to a plane is basically what an AC-130 is 😂
I mean, my last SP USA play through had me fighting China and Russian Federation in '47 as WW4, (USSR was 3) so I got to use Jet Aircraft to make the slow crawl through China slightly less horrible. But only slightly.
For CAS I love the heavy AT cannon and then 2 small bomb bays on a fighter 3. It’s not very agile but it does lots of damage
Air to air radar was for night fighter. See I think the P 61 Black Widow. Didn't have many but used for night intercept of bombers. So like make a heavy fighter wing to intercept, set it only at night and don't make a lot. Not really that useful for sp but maybe meme protection for mp?
Remember, most HoI4 players are retards who see no issue with setting their day fighters to conduct day/night mission cycles, and then are really, really surprised that they get lots of extra losses during night missions... which they don't even know exists, because apparently every single one of them is epileptic, and turns off the day/night cycle visuals, so they can play at speed 5 all the time
I wish they’d do the same thing that they’ve done for rocket trucks on infantry tab and radio on support tab for cross tech for tanks/ships/airplanes.
there's the Japanese kamikaze module which i think its the only one you missed.
I like using light airframes with cannons and rocket rails.
Realistically to this videos credit. A lot of the updates feature common sense to aircraft of the time. Faster heavy front end aircraft with two engines and cannons were usually the way people intercepted bombers that were in small formations. This kinda leads to the question of how air fights ground with reliability. If you want to test whats good with the changes with CAS vs ground
Putting bomb bays on fighter frames makes for good CAS. Big thing is nit having to research another whole tree
survivalbility studies have a super interesting background... they neraly went to armor the wrong sections, a person corrected them.
too funny that in real life jet engines where not only cheaper to produce than piston engines, but also you needed less man hours and materials, they're lighter too, the design is ingeniously simple
In 12.2 they added (? or moved?) the guided anti-ship missile to advanced rocket tech which is a 1946 tech, has very high production cost, slightly worse naval attack than torpedoes, but better naval targeting which means you will never build them. HOWEVER there is also another big difference: you can only have one torpedo per plane, but there is no such limit for guided missiles which means you can theoretically stack them as much as you want and make a monster of naval bomber.
The limits on how many modules you can have on a plane is not a bug, they are intentional as they are defined in the code. The anti-tank cannon has also different limits depending on the airframe: small airframes can have a max of two AT cannon 1 and a max of one AT cannon 2; medium airframes a max of 3&1 and large airframe a max of 4&2 which is interesting since I don't believe large airframes have a CAS weapon slot at all...
That drip with the hood, Dave😎😎
Funnily the jet engines being higher production cost than a late-war prop engine is entirely unhistorical. The main reason Germany wanted the jet fighters aside from the higher speed potential was the fact that a Jumo 004/BMW 003 engine took less than half the manhours to build of a piston engine.
Also funny anecdote about rocket fighters and range. The Me 163 Komet had maybe 6 minutes worth of fuel in flight.
Cannon 2 is actually really good on small airframe 3 and engine three which you can get all by 1940 best war plane template you need seems to be 2 cannons 4 heavy machine guns and one engine three on small airframe three
Also i don’t think you have to research fighters past that jet engines are not really getable until 1943 and would be not that much more usefull because of there cost too makes sense irl jet fighters could be made but to make them well it was too expensive and not worth it.
Early testing suggests agility is no longer king, and a combination of air attack, air defense, and speed are far more important. Air attack matters against any engagement, even against fighters a bomber is defending against.
Also, bomb locks appear to be king right now, multirole heavy fighters with cannons, bomb locks, self sealing fuel tanks, a bit of armor, and defense turrets seems like the way to go right now.
On the whole, testing is also showing quality being far more important than quantity in the air, so I don't think your minimum IC light fighter will pan out, outside some weird "just grab air superiority for a month or two with sheer initial numbers" strat that bleeds you IC in the long run.
after doing some testing it seems like Tac bombers cannot deliver nukes, even with medium bomb bays. My guess is the game needs the airwing to be a Strategic bomber and Paradox kept the Large Airframes coded as Strat bombers to make sure all the research and doctrine buffs apply correctly. Hope they patch it soon so we can pump out nukes in small nations without rubber.
You didn't talk about the hidden module of guided anti ship bombs, useful for tactical and strat bombers as naval bombers.
it's currently buggi and disappears your design, but it's still in the game, just need to be patched in
I wish you could set the wing size, large wings is a slow plane, but it has better agility. Add a second wing even for much better agility.