the fighter design you suggest is amazing, ive had like 1k against 3k fighters as italy vs the uk and their air force was decimated after half a year, ive tried the heavy fighters too and i only got 500 out, which didnt do nearly as well
Before any of this meta stuff came out I tried putting all heavy MGs on an otherwise agile small fighter, and it knocked out roughly 4 enemy planes for every 1 I lost. Basically you want your fighters to have high air attack + agility, adding air defence if you have rubber to support the production cost.
@@joelfilho2625 I believe 71cloak tested that in his vid and it traded worse than the design I was using, also that might not have been clear but I wasn't trading 3:1 I was trading like 5:1 minimum I rushed air technology and min-maxed as best as I could so that certainly had an impact
Honestly the meta is dependent on when in the war you are. In the Early game you want cheap AF planes just to get Air Superiority(I call them Bush Planes). But when you’re in the mid game, and the lines have stabilized you want Dog Fighters, to grind the enemy’s Air Force down. Then in the late game when you’ve achieved Air Dominance you want to refit your old plane into multi-role fighters, to help out in ground combat and swat away any remains of their Air Force if they put them up. I really like this new air combat. The only gripe is that I wished the Ai would name their plane designs. I’m tired of seeing my FW190’s go up against “Improved Fighter Airframe B”.
@@gamerdrache6076 I haven’t tested the multi role fighter. I just put that because converting old fighter into a multi role fighter is cheaper than converting those aircraft into CAS. So if you put a Multi Role Fighter on a CAS/Logical Strike mission, it doesn’t do anything? I’ll have to check that.
If heavy fighters beat light fighters, the game is balanced wrong. Heavy fighters are for shooting down bombers, and for long-range missions. They're not for dogfighting against the faster, more agile light fighters.
@@magni5648 the p-38 was more along the lines of a medium fighter. they were definitely not comparable to russias and germany's heavx fighters in size weight and armament. p38s were essentially just dual engine/rotor light fighters.
@@XpVersusVista ...twin engines is what's generally the defining feature of a heavy fighter by WWII standards - and there's no such thing as a "medium" fighter in that terminology. Oh, and btw? The P-38L, most numerous model of the P-38? Roughly same (slightly HIGHER!) max takeoff weight as the Me 410, and more than even late Bf 110s.
Are Heavy Fighters the meta for taking down heavily armored tac/strat bombers? Or do small fighters do just as fine? Same question with taking down the Naval Patrol Planes that seem to be getting quite popular.
One thing that matters in the context is detection. More fighters in the air means more detection, so light fighters have the advantage at detecting better, and thus intercepting more bombers. Even if they might not trade as favourably, but any fighter should trade favourably enough against bombers.
@@anderskorsback4104 I wonder how much building radar would swing it towards heavy fighters since they have the higher air attack. Otherwise yeah detection could be an issue.
Can light airframes equip the airborne radar, and how much does that affect interception? Bc Historically Heavy fighters were the ones that carried them, and it made heavy night fighters ideal for interception. Not sure how that's reflected ingame.
I've watched some test video and find that Paradox might have changed some Air combat machanics. The test show that now the planes are taken damage equally ( For example before BBA, 20 planes with 10HP taking 100 damage will cause 10 planes losses, but in BBA each plane will get 5 damage thus making the loss ratio much lower). The conclusion is that you put more planes in to a fight and you get lower plane losses. The test even shows that when you have 8000 planes against 2000 AI planes, not a single plane will be shot down. So now number of planes are a huge factor to air combat, especially when you outnumber the enemy like 2:1 and over.
Do planes have HP? Where do you see that? Even the wiki doesn't mention such a stat. It looks like a plane is shot down after a single hit, so damage can't be spread out. Could you link the video you're referring to?
So all these stat design analysis are pretty great when you need a quick answer, but would you consider doing an indepth video about aircraft stats similar to the one for division stats? I wonder if a fatal flaw of many aircraft designs is the fact that they overfocus on a single stat, but can't really confirm it as I don't know how for example air attack works against air defense. Thanks in advance, your videos are serious gems.
It would be nice if PDX gave us the agility damage reduction in the patch notes. It used to be 67.5% max damage reduction if your agility was at least 2.5x higher than enemy agility. They mentioned it was nerfed but by how much? Does it take a greater amount of agility to achieve max reduction or is it just that the max reduction is lower?
@@28lobster28 First, you can check that number in the define file in the game folder. Right now it is 60% at 3x more agility, so both. Second, there is another new modifier based on speed, that supposedly act similar to the agility that give bonus damage to the side with higher air speed. And last but not least, even count in these factors and other potential new modifiers, the air combat process/air damage formula defined on the paradox wiki is not accurate-the actual air combat loss randomness is much larger. So who knows? PDX never actually bothered to tell us how the actual air combat happens, and up to this point everything is basically educated guess.
@@28lobster28 The speed damage modifier is 0.45 maxing out at 2.5 times more speed than your opponents, so supposedly a 67.5% damage increase at maximum. And it seems that we also got a flat damage increase through air speed and my guess is 0.02% for each km/h but I don't find it to be significant in my test.
And you did not mention but on top of winning air war (IC×shut Down planes) because you had more planes you had Green air which gave your troops advantage while disadvantage to enemy. Thing people don't understand even though you shot down more planes that does not mean you have green air main objective of air is to get green air so if your enemy can produce at the rate you shot down them it does not matter if they have cartoons but 20k of them
If you shot down more, the enemy will quite possibly lose exp and aces faster which could snowball the advantage until you are facing rookie squadrons with your elite squadrons.
Green Air is not the main objective. You can have red air and still win, if you have killer divisions with good generals and doctrines, and high planning bonuses. You can also use CAS in red air (you'll just lose more). Or you can get AA support in your division templates, so red air hurts you less. However, if your IC is more efficient than the enemy, you will win. Even if they can replace the air losses, it means they need more factories on air, which means they'll have fewer guns and arty and tanks - so the ground fight will become easier regardless. And they'll probably need to spend more civs on trade and such.
@@MrNicoJac If your enemy also has killer divisions with good generals and doctrines and high planning bonueses .... and green air ... they will win. We are talking about the meta here. All things equal, having more planes is just better.
@@MrNicoJac your last paragraph is wrong. losing less IC doesn't automatically mean you'll win in the long run. If you destroy 3 IC for every 2 IC you lose, but the enemy has twice as big an economy, so produces 4 IC for every 2 IC you have, you'll lose. And in the meantime said enemy will level up his aircrafts and get aces, while yours are constantly replaced, so rather inexperienced, and this will after some time shift it to where you only kill 2 IC or maybe even just 1.5 IC per 2 IC you lose, and you still get out produced. The biggest issue with throw-away fighters is they eat the same amount of fuel per plane. Germany for example MUST build quality equipment (planes, tanks, ships) because they simply don't have enough oil to support the "cheap but mass is better" strategy. And the only way to keep fuel usage down is to go for a "quality over quantity" strategy. Which is what germany tried IRL, compared to USA and USSR spamming shermans and t-34s.
I watched a Chinese video on this topic and he has explained it very well. In his test, he used a control template to compare different designs, basically putting them against same target and see how they perform. Now the heavy fighter IS the meta in early games cuz light only offer two weapon slot and can’t compete with heavy fighter design, but as soon as 3rd gen light fighter which has 3 weapon module then the table is turned and meta is light fighter. Overall like the previous video, the optimal is to have big defense and big attack plus reasonable agility (>30 proposed by the Chinese video) and speed bonus is quite useless.
Thank you for this amazing video ! By far the best Hoi4 youtuber around when it comes to actual tips and tricks about playing the game all the other ones are rubbish when it comes to actually playing the game and what good or not ! Thanks for the amazing videos of rly high quality! Do you think that you could beat the heavy fighter with the basic small air frame?
@@MrLogistician Nah they are bad almost if any testing and they are aimed for singleplayer futhermore Feedback gaming is hardly a good player he plays single player in 5 speed and cheese it
Since we're on the topic of planes, which doctrine is the best now? I've always used strategic destruction as the 10% agility bonus was important, however since agility is no longer the only relevant stat are operation integrity or battlefield support better?
Both SD destruction and Operational Integrity give the same 30% air superiority mission efficiency bonus but Operation Integrity also gives a bonus to ace generation. Overall I don't expect the air doctrine meta to change, it was always Operation Integrity for air controllers and Battlefield Support for everyone else. In SP just take Battlefield support, your fighters are going to be better than the ais anyways so boost your cas instead.
Sensational as always! Is there any IC benefit to having the cheapest possible fighters VS the superior design you had? Eg could having 5000 of the crappy ones vs 1000 (or whatever the ratio is) of yours yield any benefit at all?
There's other tests and basically the cheap-o ones are bad because you're spending too much IC on producing the basic model of the plane and not enough on the modules, which is what makes the plane fight well.
I think there should be test of light air frame with twin engines and more air attack (because of putting full cannons not LMG/HMG) Vs light fighter design in this video. I think it would be really good to check maybe 2 engines worth more fuel and IC cost.
Hello very nice test, i would like do more testa about it. how did u do this test? Did u use console command tag FRA? But how did u build all that fighters to perform this test? Many thanks
I've run some tests of my own and I've come to the same conclusion.... for 1940 tech. Earlier though, the 1936 small airframe is so sucky, with only 2 weapon slots and abysmal range, that for 1936/1938 tech cheap-ish heavy fighters actually win out cost for cost.
@@tony-te7gd except that even at a 1.5x IC cost, the heavies still lose on efficiency as air def is the same and this test shows that the normal fighters used still trade favorably with that level of air def
You would still lose. I did do the test with HMGs. The HMG HF loses to the HF with 4 Cannons. On top of that the HF with 4 HMG also losses to the fighter in the video. It aalso loses to the fighter in the video if you were to swap an armour plate out for an extra fuel tank to increase range. HMGs just don't have enough air attack for how little agility HF have.
Agility is much better then people let on, a 3x agility advantage is 30% attacks taken and more damage dealt (How much agility you need to deal 3x damage is not clear.) So your fighter will trade well with cannon heavy fighters, but struggle more with a HMG heavy fighter (As a heavy fighter with ~40 agility 50 attack can be tanky while suffering small penalties versus the light fighter. A 20% attack penalty is more forgiving then a 70% attack penalty.) Regardless, light fighters with cannons can have similar air attack to the higher agility heavy fighters while also having 50% more agility then the best heavy fighters, its just that without taking one ahead of time research, producing the really good light fighters takes one more year then the medium fighters. A big part of this imbalance is that the light fighter designer types are extremely good (10 to 20% agility depending on your country,) where as the heavy fighters reliability bonuses from designer are abhorrently bad because reliability isn't even a factor in the air designer.
Heavy fighters are now pretty useful in their historical Sense. a) they have longer range and can act as an Escort for Distant areas. b) the Higher Air Attack is a great Help for Shooting down heavy airframes. Now against the AI this is probably Not as important but going for small fighters in Air superiority and heavy fighters in interception might be Worth it. Of course If the enemy is only using cas small fighters will be enough for interception.
Hey 71Cloak! Thanks for your video! It helped me a lot. But what am I supposed to use in early game since the Cannons 2 takes until 1941 or something to research when the battle is already over most likely at least in my games. What could I put on my planes in like 1938 when I try to produce?
Heavy fighter 1 is pretty good for range and costs 2 aluminium which can be eliminated now, my biggest gripe is getting resources to build these planes, rubber is easier to obtain than aluminium which means you better off getting a plane that uses as little resources as possible if you aint got either of the two and just go with it, AI is too dumb anyway to make anything decent.
one reason the heavy fighters aren't that good is that air attack is capped at 100. However those have 132 meaning almost a third of their dmg is just cut off
Would the heavy fighter be better in the long run by gaining XP from trading numerically better and the opposing air wing losing xp and aces due to this? Also heavy fighters dont rely on agility or extra mod slots on the 1940 airframe so you can use the same airframe all the way through the game and keep the production efficiency up by just making more advanced variants of the basic airframe.
Full 4× heavy machine guns with full armor plates and quad engine on medium airframe is current meta. It decimates anything. I obliterated soviet airforce with hungary.
Its all factored in, i have the best luck with combining 2 light designs, an agility speed design working with fighters stacking air attack. No fighter is truly bad. I played against a meta based on cheap planes and accepting losses yo maintain air superiority and it worked. There is no meta.
even though HF are obviously not meta, the changes to submarines justifies a production line for interception over sea zones beyond F range. watching sub 3s get utterly wrecked due to the improved spotting stats the DLC brought is a bit painful
Yes In A fair Fight 2000 Vs 2000 Heavy Fighther Wins (4 HVM 5 ARMOR PLATES ENGINE 2.3 ) It Wins Like 1 to 3 But It Has 2.5 Times More Expensive Than Light Fighters There İs A trade to Usually 10 to 21 When We 105x10 = 1050 But When we 21 x 42 = 882 Even In The Same Numbers Of Plane Light Fighters Win Alos If We take the calculation is your enemy is not dumb And They Will Put 2.5x More Planes Because They Produce 2.5 times more planes And When We Put that Heavy Fighter loses 8 to 10 SO IN THE SHORT ANSWER HF SUCKS DONT USE THEM
A good fighter is best speed and agility combined enoughly firepower heavy fighters will always lost to fighters even you trade 1v1 u r production cost is higher
Wtf is "meta" anyways? Overused, bullshit word. The only problem with this test is, airport space is not unlimited. Having 2 times more planes is not always viable because you can't always assume you can bring as many as you can into the battle. Sometimes you just need "best 2000". This is why there is no such thing as meta, imo. Almost always the right answer is -> "It depends".
that wrong it is viable to have 2 times more planes because the light fighter is is way cheaper 2 times cheaper there is such a thing as meta that the optimal thing and it true in every game! For exemple engeener sup company are meta because they are quite literally the best thing in the support companies tree and the second best support company after support aa
“People running bad tests” well maybe get the designs right. You dont go canons on the heavy fighter you go HMG and level 2 canons for the fighter is not realistic with maybe italy being the one exception but good lick winning in eqypt with 1k range. self sealing is only for countries like uk who has plenty rubber and good
Cannon 2s are not some super late game tech. They are 1940 tech with a base cost of 100. Any country that is going for planes will be able to research those before they can even get the 1940 airframe. Especially Italy considering it gets the airframes for free once you are at war with a major. There is 0 reason to not be able to research cannon 2s as a country going for air in MP. In SP it's probably overkill but that's just because the ai is bad. Some testing below of your "superior" design. Even replacing the cannon 2s with Heavy Machine guns and swapping the self-sealing tank out for more armour, the light fighters win. They trade about 150 losses to 110 losses which is a better trade for the light fighters. Light fighters are losing 5850 ic a month while the heavy fighters are losing 7400 ic a month. Even if you replace one of the armour plates for extra fuel tanks to give you 1300 range. Your still trade about 160 to 100 or 6200 ic to 6800. Which still favours the fighters and the heavy fighters only have 100 more range. I even redid the heavy fighter test with the HF with 80ic (no self sealing tank) vs HF 4 HMG plus max air defence. After a few months the trade was 343 to 427 or 27700 ic lost vs 29000 ic. HMG HF aren't even the best HF you can build let alone overall fighter.
@@71Cloak funny how your test is different from everyone else who have done test. I and so many of the high skill competitive players have done the tests and heavyvfighters win every time. And if you say replacing 1 armor for 1 fuel tank on the ligt fighter only makes aditional 8% looses then your test is wrong. It would be a huge decrease in defense so cassualties would be much higher. Did you consider numbers difference with lowered IC? Where do you read the looses? Only in the logistics tap can looses be accurately determined There is 1 thing that makes the heavy fighter unviable and that is fuel consumption but that is an axis problem not allies
@@alexanderholt4679 did youband your buddies remember that air doctrines exist? Also the comment on heavy fighters not be viable because of fuel makes no sense. If you have half as many planes that cost twice as much but only use 0.37 fuel vs 0.21 each. You are saving fuel. 2 fighters will use .42 fuel where as you heavy fighters are going to be using about the same amount. Homestly, not understanding that completely discredits the rest of comment. How high level can you be if you don't understand that?
@@71Cloak heavy fighters is not .32 they are 0.64 xD in other words twice the amount of fuel and that is not even the biggest issue. the biggest issue is you loose so few of them that italys production alone can replace looses so by end of game as axis you will have a max fuel consumption of around 100-150k fuel
Your test proved yourself wrong lol. The heavy fighter is twice as good as your light fighter. Your light fighter is extremely IC and resource efficient but, it does not win in a 1v1 fight. It's just like the Heavy/Medium tank debate. In late game multiplayer when IC and resources aren't as big of a consideration but, airbase space is the biggest limiting factor for the air war for the Allies, you would want the more expensive, BETTER heavy fighter over the vastly more efficient light fighter
Yuck this is exactly why HOI MP is trash What’s the point of the historical setting if players are just going to out gay each other like this with ahistorical garbage
Playing MP gives you an actual mechanical and intellectual challenge you have to think about what you are doing and more importantly know what you are doing way more fun to beat a player than a computer !
You can always troll with 10 width infantry or all artillery battalions if that's fun for you, other people like winning. Besides for achievement runs you need to have some grasp of what the meta is unless you want to have a bad time
Couldnt you argue that heavy fighters have some advantage in poorly built up areas, where you cant actually fit all your planes in the airports and therefor they wont be outnumberd?
i also think they would do better vs armored/defense bombers , especialy high defense strat bombers So it technicaly...aligns what old meta was , that heavy fighters dont trade well with light fighters , but will be possibly better for heavy/strat bombers But does really matter? even if you wont shot down as many bombers you will distupt them , i had cheap light fighter with just 1 slot MG's and they could disrupt bombers to 90% in equal numbers. tho i think its good they made defense matter as for "having equal numbers" , in most games i played you just build more airports , for most wars in europe , US and everywhere its easy , only exeption is russia , and enemy wont have much advantage ether as they will spread their planes thin tho also i dont think comparison is fair as 1939 fighter and pre war only has 2 slots ,i think fair comparison is comparing techs to at most 1939 becouse that year war starts , so what your fighter will be best if you cant produce it medium also gets 4 slots , light only has 2 that time period , best fighters on world wont matter if enemy has air supremacy or numbers advantage becouse he produced more planes sooner
Heavy fighters are amazing for any place that is not western europe. They can cover so much ground. You dont need to build any airports and they always have 100% effi
"just people running bad tests" should be carved into stone and placed at the entrance of every technical school or higher education, also every social sciences or humanities school. and every org responsible for standardization and regulation. some people just need to see this line at least once a day every day for the rest of their lives, and maybe, just maybe, we'll have a better society.
One thing I notice is that no one ever tests a Hi-Low mix. IRL using cheap and expensive together is best. So having half light fighters to get air superiority and half heavy fighters to get qualitative edge + better interception should work better than a mono-air strategy. But I have no idea if that's accurate for the game.
at my tests i found that all heavy mg jet fighter wins against anything. Also cheap to build. i do also put %20 night penalty radio on planes and instead of def add mg turrets even on light fighters. Huge air attack looks like key atm.
I kind of figured as much, though I am still wondering here in regards to what the best multirole CAS design is. (I.e. in the same venue as CAS was before the update where they could trade reasonably vs earlier fighters) so I suppose it's a question as to what combination of HMGs, Cannons, rocket rails, and bomb locks has the best outcome to that end, and for 1936, 1940, and 1944 techs. I've been using HMGs and rockets on my light fighters, and bomb locks and cannons on my heavy fighters, but I'm not sure if that's really the ideal or not.
My untested expectation is that with slots limited (and options for making the most out of slots carrying substantial agility penalties) that's tough to achieve. I'd consider going with the T2 anti-tank cannon (the first isn't worth the increased agility and IC penalty over bombs IMO) and max HMGs--coupled with the agility bonus CAS get from the close-support path that should have adequate agility and ground/air attack.
@@PikaPilot Agility has been nerfed, but it's still a factor and decides things such as order in which wings attack. In this test heavy fighter has only 11 agility, also cannons affect IC cost significantly, as well as weight which matters a lot for speed (although mostly in later techs)
You can repeat this test for yourself if you want switching the cannons to HMGs, not only would that plane still lose to the light fighter it would also loose to the HF with 4 cannons.
even swapping to Heavy machine guns and reducing the cost and upping your agility, the light fighter still wins. The heavy fighter I was using was the one that seems to win against all other heavy fighters. So if you expect to go up against heavy fighters then that is what you should expect to go up against.
Man i thought heavy fighter is the new meta based on the title. Glad i didn't change my fighter into heavy fighter before watching this video or that would be suck
i was thinking heavy fighters gonna be better for germany cuz one plane use less fuel than 2 but this heavy fighter meta use 0.64 and light fighter only 0.21 so not only i can build 2x more planes but i can keep in air 3x more fighters . i would use h.fighter as US to fight Japanese cuz range would be better at sea
I also did some testing. Your design is the best. It also gives a lot more air superiority than heavy fighters (%160). Plus, the best cas uses small frame too so you don't need to research another branch of frames. Some other things that I found out while testing: Thrust doesn't do anything. Only range (anything above 800 is fine), air attack (prioritize air attack) and defense matters. Stack as many air attack as possible with your current technology. Stack as many defense as possible as long as your range is above 800. You should only use bomb lock on cas to save IC but the IC you spend on air attack always pays off on fighters. Don't hesitate to put cannon 2s.
For nations that really struggle with manpower, I'd been thinking medium/heavy fighters might make more sense but really even with 20% more fighters going down the manpower drain is negligible and the easier production really leans towards still focusing on lighter fighters. The only other thing I can think of is if you are really hurting for efficient range, but I haven't found a situation where that was the case as of yet. Honestly feels a bit off design wise, why would you ever go with heavy/medium fighters? There is no upside. Though perhaps those airframes really are just meant for strat bombers and you'd only use them for fighters if you're really hurting for research slots.
Heavy fighters also didn't make sense historically, except for the longer range (Battle of Britain) Historically, it was found that heavy fighters worked best with a light fighter escort, which defeats the purpose of building heavy fighter.
Heavy fighters are the meta. I will make a vid about this, this week. This is a good way to look at the new dlc. Honestly some things have been skipped tho. This weekend I will explain what the meta is and what stats you should look at with this new dlc. yours sincerely, Mr. Kain
People running bad test has always been the meta
the fighter design you suggest is amazing, ive had like 1k against 3k fighters as italy vs the uk and their air force was decimated after half a year, ive tried the heavy fighters too and i only got 500 out, which didnt do nearly as well
Before any of this meta stuff came out I tried putting all heavy MGs on an otherwise agile small fighter, and it knocked out roughly 4 enemy planes for every 1 I lost. Basically you want your fighters to have high air attack + agility, adding air defence if you have rubber to support the production cost.
@@joelfilho2625 I believe 71cloak tested that in his vid and it traded worse than the design I was using, also that might not have been clear but I wasn't trading 3:1 I was trading like 5:1 minimum
I rushed air technology and min-maxed as best as I could so that certainly had an impact
Honestly the meta is dependent on when in the war you are. In the Early game you want cheap AF planes just to get Air Superiority(I call them Bush Planes). But when you’re in the mid game, and the lines have stabilized you want Dog Fighters, to grind the enemy’s Air Force down. Then in the late game when you’ve achieved Air Dominance you want to refit your old plane into multi-role fighters, to help out in ground combat and swat away any remains of their Air Force if they put them up.
I really like this new air combat. The only gripe is that I wished the Ai would name their plane designs. I’m tired of seeing my FW190’s go up against “Improved Fighter Airframe B”.
but multi role does not work
@@gamerdrache6076 depends if you really can't afford to produce a specialist ground-attack aircraft
@@theoheinrich529 what i meant was that they don´t do damage to anything ohterwise it would be meta
@@gamerdrache6076 I haven’t tested the multi role fighter. I just put that because converting old fighter into a multi role fighter is cheaper than converting those aircraft into CAS.
So if you put a Multi Role Fighter on a CAS/Logical Strike mission, it doesn’t do anything? I’ll have to check that.
@@arkad6329 i testet it it only does one mission
If heavy fighters beat light fighters, the game is balanced wrong.
Heavy fighters are for shooting down bombers, and for long-range missions. They're not for dogfighting against the faster, more agile light fighters.
Eh, that depends a bit. P-38s were heavy fighters, and yet quite able to throw down with lights.
@@magni5648 They were more the exception than the rule.
@@beefyblom We are meta players. We turn exceptions into the rule.
@@magni5648 the p-38 was more along the lines of a medium fighter. they were definitely not comparable to russias and germany's heavx fighters in size weight and armament.
p38s were essentially just dual engine/rotor light fighters.
@@XpVersusVista ...twin engines is what's generally the defining feature of a heavy fighter by WWII standards - and there's no such thing as a "medium" fighter in that terminology.
Oh, and btw? The P-38L, most numerous model of the P-38? Roughly same (slightly HIGHER!) max takeoff weight as the Me 410, and more than even late Bf 110s.
Are Heavy Fighters the meta for taking down heavily armored tac/strat bombers? Or do small fighters do just as fine? Same question with taking down the Naval Patrol Planes that seem to be getting quite popular.
One thing that matters in the context is detection. More fighters in the air means more detection, so light fighters have the advantage at detecting better, and thus intercepting more bombers. Even if they might not trade as favourably, but any fighter should trade favourably enough against bombers.
I build heavy fighters just for interception. Light fighters for air superiority and "medium" cas for heavy cas damage.
@@anderskorsback4104 I wonder how much building radar would swing it towards heavy fighters since they have the higher air attack. Otherwise yeah detection could be an issue.
Well this test had radar so i have that covered
Can light airframes equip the airborne radar, and how much does that affect interception? Bc Historically Heavy fighters were the ones that carried them, and it made heavy night fighters ideal for interception. Not sure how that's reflected ingame.
I've watched some test video and find that Paradox might have changed some Air combat machanics. The test show that now the planes are taken damage equally ( For example before BBA, 20 planes with 10HP taking 100 damage will cause 10 planes losses, but in BBA each plane will get 5 damage thus making the loss ratio much lower). The conclusion is that you put more planes in to a fight and you get lower plane losses. The test even shows that when you have 8000 planes against 2000 AI planes, not a single plane will be shot down. So now number of planes are a huge factor to air combat, especially when you outnumber the enemy like 2:1 and over.
Do planes have HP? Where do you see that?
Even the wiki doesn't mention such a stat.
It looks like a plane is shot down after a single hit, so damage can't be spread out.
Could you link the video you're referring to?
@@IsilionNELE air defense is HP. i think they have a base HP value, and air defense gets added to it.
So all these stat design analysis are pretty great when you need a quick answer, but would you consider doing an indepth video about aircraft stats similar to the one for division stats? I wonder if a fatal flaw of many aircraft designs is the fact that they overfocus on a single stat, but can't really confirm it as I don't know how for example air attack works against air defense. Thanks in advance, your videos are serious gems.
It would be nice if PDX gave us the agility damage reduction in the patch notes. It used to be 67.5% max damage reduction if your agility was at least 2.5x higher than enemy agility. They mentioned it was nerfed but by how much? Does it take a greater amount of agility to achieve max reduction or is it just that the max reduction is lower?
@@28lobster28 First, you can check that number in the define file in the game folder. Right now it is 60% at 3x more agility, so both. Second, there is another new modifier based on speed, that supposedly act similar to the agility that give bonus damage to the side with higher air speed. And last but not least, even count in these factors and other potential new modifiers, the air combat process/air damage formula defined on the paradox wiki is not accurate-the actual air combat loss randomness is much larger. So who knows? PDX never actually bothered to tell us how the actual air combat happens, and up to this point everything is basically educated guess.
@@chenyangli9777 Since you're looking at the defines, what's the speed modifier? I'm definitely interested in redoing air combat calculations!
@@28lobster28 The speed damage modifier is 0.45 maxing out at 2.5 times more speed than your opponents, so supposedly a 67.5% damage increase at maximum. And it seems that we also got a flat damage increase through air speed and my guess is 0.02% for each km/h but I don't find it to be significant in my test.
And you did not mention but on top of winning air war (IC×shut Down planes) because you had more planes you had Green air which gave your troops advantage while disadvantage to enemy.
Thing people don't understand even though you shot down more planes that does not mean you have green air main objective of air is to get green air so if your enemy can produce at the rate you shot down them it does not matter if they have cartoons but 20k of them
If you shot down more, the enemy will quite possibly lose exp and aces faster which could snowball the advantage until you are facing rookie squadrons with your elite squadrons.
Green Air is not the main objective.
You can have red air and still win, if you have killer divisions with good generals and doctrines, and high planning bonuses.
You can also use CAS in red air (you'll just lose more).
Or you can get AA support in your division templates, so red air hurts you less.
However, if your IC is more efficient than the enemy, you will win.
Even if they can replace the air losses, it means they need more factories on air, which means they'll have fewer guns and arty and tanks - so the ground fight will become easier regardless.
And they'll probably need to spend more civs on trade and such.
@@MrNicoJac If your enemy also has killer divisions with good generals and doctrines and high planning bonueses .... and green air ... they will win. We are talking about the meta here. All things equal, having more planes is just better.
@@MrNicoJac your last paragraph is wrong. losing less IC doesn't automatically mean you'll win in the long run. If you destroy 3 IC for every 2 IC you lose, but the enemy has twice as big an economy, so produces 4 IC for every 2 IC you have, you'll lose. And in the meantime said enemy will level up his aircrafts and get aces, while yours are constantly replaced, so rather inexperienced, and this will after some time shift it to where you only kill 2 IC or maybe even just 1.5 IC per 2 IC you lose, and you still get out produced.
The biggest issue with throw-away fighters is they eat the same amount of fuel per plane. Germany for example MUST build quality equipment (planes, tanks, ships) because they simply don't have enough oil to support the "cheap but mass is better" strategy. And the only way to keep fuel usage down is to go for a "quality over quantity" strategy. Which is what germany tried IRL, compared to USA and USSR spamming shermans and t-34s.
@@XpVersusVista
Good points!
I watched a Chinese video on this topic and he has explained it very well.
In his test, he used a control template to compare different designs, basically putting them against same target and see how they perform.
Now the heavy fighter IS the meta in early games cuz light only offer two weapon slot and can’t compete with heavy fighter design, but as soon as 3rd gen light fighter which has 3 weapon module then the table is turned and meta is light fighter.
Overall like the previous video, the optimal is to have big defense and big attack plus reasonable agility (>30 proposed by the Chinese video) and speed bonus is quite useless.
Is 3rd gen 1940 tech?
@@gabe75001 yeah
Thank you for this amazing video ! By far the best Hoi4 youtuber around when it comes to actual tips and tricks about playing the game all the other ones are rubbish when it comes to actually playing the game and what good or not ! Thanks for the amazing videos of rly high quality! Do you think that you could beat the heavy fighter with the basic small air frame?
Feedback gaming does decent analysis (or at least he used to)
@@MrLogistician Nah they are bad almost if any testing and they are aimed for singleplayer futhermore Feedback gaming is hardly a good player he plays single player in 5 speed and cheese it
I think Heavy Fighers have their place, and that place is FUCKING SIBERIA. Literally.
Since we're on the topic of planes, which doctrine is the best now? I've always used strategic destruction as the 10% agility bonus was important, however since agility is no longer the only relevant stat are operation integrity or battlefield support better?
Both SD destruction and Operational Integrity give the same 30% air superiority mission efficiency bonus but Operation Integrity also gives a bonus to ace generation. Overall I don't expect the air doctrine meta to change, it was always Operation Integrity for air controllers and Battlefield Support for everyone else. In SP just take Battlefield support, your fighters are going to be better than the ais anyways so boost your cas instead.
@@71Cloak Thanks for the info
10 agility vs 70 agility in a air fight, I wonder what people think would happen?
People saw that agility got nerfed and suddenly thought it was a useless stat. Turns out it is still pretty useful.
Also better against strat bombing as Germany against Ai because you can cover more airzones like this.
Sensational as always! Is there any IC benefit to having the cheapest possible fighters VS the superior design you had? Eg could having 5000 of the crappy ones vs 1000 (or whatever the ratio is) of yours yield any benefit at all?
His design was a compromise between cheapness and effectiveness
There's other tests and basically the cheap-o ones are bad because you're spending too much IC on producing the basic model of the plane and not enough on the modules, which is what makes the plane fight well.
Oh god
Edit: Nvm false alarm
I think there should be test of light air frame with twin engines and more air attack (because of putting full cannons not LMG/HMG) Vs light fighter design in this video.
I think it would be really good to check maybe 2 engines worth more fuel and IC cost.
Hello very nice test, i would like do more testa about it. how did u do this test? Did u use console command tag FRA? But how did u build all that fighters to perform this test? Many thanks
I've run some tests of my own and I've come to the same conclusion.... for 1940 tech. Earlier though, the 1936 small airframe is so sucky, with only 2 weapon slots and abysmal range, that for 1936/1938 tech cheap-ish heavy fighters actually win out cost for cost.
isnt meta hmg instead of cannon in the top row?
Yeah, I thought it was 4x4 hmg, dunno what kind of difference that would make in testing
@@logicalhazarda IC different is significant
@@logicalhazarda Cheaper. Air def is overpowered, and the top row doesnt matter for air def.
@@tony-te7gd except that even at a 1.5x IC cost, the heavies still lose on efficiency as air def is the same and this test shows that the normal fighters used still trade favorably with that level of air def
You would still lose. I did do the test with HMGs. The HMG HF loses to the HF with 4 Cannons. On top of that the HF with 4 HMG also losses to the fighter in the video. It aalso loses to the fighter in the video if you were to swap an armour plate out for an extra fuel tank to increase range. HMGs just don't have enough air attack for how little agility HF have.
I tend to make heavy fighters with torpedoes, to contest far away naval zones
Agility is much better then people let on, a 3x agility advantage is 30% attacks taken and more damage dealt (How much agility you need to deal 3x damage is not clear.)
So your fighter will trade well with cannon heavy fighters, but struggle more with a HMG heavy fighter (As a heavy fighter with ~40 agility 50 attack can be tanky while suffering small penalties versus the light fighter. A 20% attack penalty is more forgiving then a 70% attack penalty.)
Regardless, light fighters with cannons can have similar air attack to the higher agility heavy fighters while also having 50% more agility then the best heavy fighters, its just that without taking one ahead of time research, producing the really good light fighters takes one more year then the medium fighters.
A big part of this imbalance is that the light fighter designer types are extremely good (10 to 20% agility depending on your country,) where as the heavy fighters reliability bonuses from designer are abhorrently bad because reliability isn't even a factor in the air designer.
Heavy fighters are now pretty useful in their historical Sense. a) they have longer range and can act as an Escort for Distant areas. b) the Higher Air Attack is a great Help for Shooting down heavy airframes. Now against the AI this is probably Not as important but going for small fighters in Air superiority and heavy fighters in interception might be Worth it. Of course If the enemy is only using cas small fighters will be enough for interception.
They were quite OP IRL
Hey 71Cloak! Thanks for your video! It helped me a lot.
But what am I supposed to use in early game since the Cannons 2 takes until 1941 or something to research when the battle is already over most likely at least in my games. What could I put on my planes in like 1938 when I try to produce?
Air attack and strat atack have a limit of 100 everything above is wasted IC (it is in the code )
wait is that true I never heard of that
Heavy fighters are still the best defense against bombers tho right?
Heavy fighter 1 is pretty good for range and costs 2 aluminium which can be eliminated now, my biggest gripe is getting resources to build these planes, rubber is easier to obtain than aluminium which means you better off getting a plane that uses as little resources as possible if you aint got either of the two and just go with it, AI is too dumb anyway to make anything decent.
what is best fighter to shoot down armored bombers or fast bombers ?
Larp designs are still king
one reason the heavy fighters aren't that good is that air attack is capped at 100. However those have 132 meaning almost a third of their dmg is just cut off
Would the heavy fighter be better in the long run by gaining XP from trading numerically better and the opposing air wing losing xp and aces due to this?
Also heavy fighters dont rely on agility or extra mod slots on the 1940 airframe so you can use the same airframe all the way through the game and keep the production efficiency up by just making more advanced variants of the basic airframe.
I wonder how would a light fighter with 3 of 4x mg fare against the best heavy fighter?
How is kamikaze now with the new air changes? Would you just spam cheap ass planes and send them in like that. Or would you add air defense or thrust?
Better fuel usage as well thanks
Thank you for making this video, I was noticing the same thing as well
Yo bro sadly I am at work so I ll listen to it when I go back home
But I am waiting to see which one is better
This why pilots should be a mechanic
These guns are just for late game. But what is the meta early game?
Are fighter 1’s still completely useless and only good for building production efficiency, or is the gap between the fighter tiers less pronounced?
Full 4× heavy machine guns with full armor plates and quad engine on medium airframe is current meta. It decimates anything. I obliterated soviet airforce with hungary.
Thanks for good debunk!
What about that same fighter with 1 2x Cannon and the rest Bomb Locks? And just cas them to death with insane air def?
when is good to make heavy fighters?
So far single engine fighters with heavy machine guns and a lot of air defense seem to be the meta.
what if you put double engine for more speed if you are a country with a lot of oil?
@@ElRealista. double engines don't give More speed anymore I think. That was fixed
dude you are the legend
Its all factored in, i have the best luck with combining 2 light designs, an agility speed design working with fighters stacking air attack. No fighter is truly bad. I played against a meta based on cheap planes and accepting losses yo maintain air superiority and it worked. There is no meta.
Can you make a video about bombers and cas. please
even though HF are obviously not meta, the changes to submarines justifies a production line for interception over sea zones beyond F range. watching sub 3s get utterly wrecked due to the improved spotting stats the DLC brought is a bit painful
Yes In A fair Fight 2000 Vs 2000 Heavy Fighther Wins (4 HVM 5 ARMOR PLATES ENGINE 2.3 ) It Wins Like 1 to 3 But It Has 2.5 Times More Expensive Than Light Fighters There İs A trade to Usually 10 to 21
When We 105x10 = 1050
But When we 21 x 42 = 882 Even In The Same Numbers Of Plane Light Fighters Win
Alos If We take the calculation is your enemy is not dumb And They Will Put 2.5x More Planes Because They Produce 2.5 times more planes And When We Put that Heavy Fighter loses 8 to 10
SO IN THE SHORT ANSWER HF SUCKS DONT USE THEM
I guess it also depends on if you are playing against real people or AI. Because AI will obviously use neither of these.
it is not heavy fighter, but flying tank.
I’ll just make both in single player
A good fighter is best speed and agility combined enoughly firepower heavy fighters will always lost to fighters even you trade 1v1 u r production cost is higher
finally someone with a brain
build an Messerschmitt Me 262
Wtf is "meta" anyways? Overused, bullshit word.
The only problem with this test is, airport space is not unlimited. Having 2 times more planes is not always viable because you can't always assume you can bring as many as you can into the battle. Sometimes you just need "best 2000".
This is why there is no such thing as meta, imo. Almost always the right answer is -> "It depends".
that wrong it is viable to have 2 times more planes because the light fighter is is way cheaper 2 times cheaper there is such a thing as meta that the optimal thing and it true in every game! For exemple engeener sup company are meta because they are quite literally the best thing in the support companies tree and the second best support company after support aa
“People running bad tests” well maybe get the designs right. You dont go canons on the heavy fighter you go HMG and level 2 canons for the fighter is not realistic with maybe italy being the one exception but good lick winning in eqypt with 1k range. self sealing is only for countries like uk who has plenty rubber and good
Cannon 2s are not some super late game tech. They are 1940 tech with a base cost of 100. Any country that is going for planes will be able to research those before they can even get the 1940 airframe. Especially Italy considering it gets the airframes for free once you are at war with a major. There is 0 reason to not be able to research cannon 2s as a country going for air in MP. In SP it's probably overkill but that's just because the ai is bad.
Some testing below of your "superior" design.
Even replacing the cannon 2s with Heavy Machine guns and swapping the self-sealing tank out for more armour, the light fighters win. They trade about 150 losses to 110 losses which is a better trade for the light fighters. Light fighters are losing 5850 ic a month while the heavy fighters are losing 7400 ic a month.
Even if you replace one of the armour plates for extra fuel tanks to give you 1300 range. Your still trade about 160 to 100 or 6200 ic to 6800. Which still favours the fighters and the heavy fighters only have 100 more range.
I even redid the heavy fighter test with the HF with 80ic (no self sealing tank) vs HF 4 HMG plus max air defence. After a few months the trade was 343 to 427 or 27700 ic lost vs 29000 ic. HMG HF aren't even the best HF you can build let alone overall fighter.
@@71Cloak funny how your test is different from everyone else who have done test. I and so many of the high skill competitive players have done the tests and heavyvfighters win every time. And if you say replacing 1 armor for 1 fuel tank on the ligt fighter only makes aditional 8% looses then your test is wrong. It would be a huge decrease in defense so cassualties would be much higher.
Did you consider numbers difference with lowered IC?
Where do you read the looses? Only in the logistics tap can looses be accurately determined
There is 1 thing that makes the heavy fighter unviable and that is fuel consumption but that is an axis problem not allies
@@alexanderholt4679 did youband your buddies remember that air doctrines exist?
Also the comment on heavy fighters not be viable because of fuel makes no sense. If you have half as many planes that cost twice as much but only use 0.37 fuel vs 0.21 each. You are saving fuel. 2 fighters will use .42 fuel where as you heavy fighters are going to be using about the same amount.
Homestly, not understanding that completely discredits the rest of comment. How high level can you be if you don't understand that?
@@71Cloak heavy fighters is not .32 they are 0.64 xD in other words twice the amount of fuel and that is not even the biggest issue. the biggest issue is you loose so few of them that italys production alone can replace looses so by end of game as axis you will have a max fuel consumption of around 100-150k fuel
Your test proved yourself wrong lol. The heavy fighter is twice as good as your light fighter. Your light fighter is extremely IC and resource efficient but, it does not win in a 1v1 fight. It's just like the Heavy/Medium tank debate. In late game multiplayer when IC and resources aren't as big of a consideration but, airbase space is the biggest limiting factor for the air war for the Allies, you would want the more expensive, BETTER heavy fighter over the vastly more efficient light fighter
Yuck this is exactly why HOI MP is trash
What’s the point of the historical setting if players are just going to out gay each other like this with ahistorical garbage
Playing MP gives you an actual mechanical and intellectual challenge you have to think about what you are doing and more importantly know what you are doing way more fun to beat a player than a computer !
You can always troll with 10 width infantry or all artillery battalions if that's fun for you, other people like winning. Besides for achievement runs you need to have some grasp of what the meta is unless you want to have a bad time
Couldnt you argue that heavy fighters have some advantage in poorly built up areas, where you cant actually fit all your planes in the airports and therefor they wont be outnumberd?
i also think they would do better vs armored/defense bombers , especialy high defense strat bombers
So it technicaly...aligns what old meta was , that heavy fighters dont trade well with light fighters , but will be possibly better for heavy/strat bombers
But does really matter? even if you wont shot down as many bombers you will distupt them , i had cheap light fighter with just 1 slot MG's and they could disrupt bombers to 90% in equal numbers.
tho i think its good they made defense matter
as for "having equal numbers" , in most games i played you just build more airports , for most wars in europe , US and everywhere its easy , only exeption is russia , and enemy wont have much advantage ether as they will spread their planes thin
tho also i dont think comparison is fair as 1939 fighter and pre war only has 2 slots ,i think fair comparison is comparing techs to at most 1939 becouse that year war starts , so what your fighter will be best if you cant produce it
medium also gets 4 slots , light only has 2 that time period , best fighters on world wont matter if enemy has air supremacy or numbers advantage becouse he produced more planes sooner
Heavy fighters are amazing for any place that is not western europe. They can cover so much ground. You dont need to build any airports and they always have 100% effi
can you go into how to get the best cas?
"just people running bad tests"
should be carved into stone and placed at the entrance of every technical school or higher education, also every social sciences or humanities school. and every org responsible for standardization and regulation.
some people just need to see this line at least once a day every day for the rest of their lives,
and maybe,
just maybe,
we'll have a better society.
i forgot med schools, but i'm not sure it'll work there
One thing I notice is that no one ever tests a Hi-Low mix.
IRL using cheap and expensive together is best. So having half light fighters to get air superiority and half heavy fighters to get qualitative edge + better interception should work better than a mono-air strategy. But I have no idea if that's accurate for the game.
Paradox definitely gonna nerf Air Defense
I made a 1940 Strat Bomber with some insane defense and NOT ONE was ever shot down by the AI
they should rather buff ai designs
at my tests i found that all heavy mg jet fighter wins against anything. Also cheap to build. i do also put %20 night penalty radio on planes and instead of def add mg turrets even on light fighters. Huge air attack looks like key atm.
I kind of figured as much, though I am still wondering here in regards to what the best multirole CAS design is. (I.e. in the same venue as CAS was before the update where they could trade reasonably vs earlier fighters) so I suppose it's a question as to what combination of HMGs, Cannons, rocket rails, and bomb locks has the best outcome to that end, and for 1936, 1940, and 1944 techs. I've been using HMGs and rockets on my light fighters, and bomb locks and cannons on my heavy fighters, but I'm not sure if that's really the ideal or not.
heavy fighters should have both rockets and bomb locks
My untested expectation is that with slots limited (and options for making the most out of slots carrying substantial agility penalties) that's tough to achieve. I'd consider going with the T2 anti-tank cannon (the first isn't worth the increased agility and IC penalty over bombs IMO) and max HMGs--coupled with the agility bonus CAS get from the close-support path that should have adequate agility and ground/air attack.
CAS designs when
Try heavy machine guns only on heavy fighters instead of cannons so agility would not go down that much, also use best x4 engine possible.
Air combat is heavily weighed in favor of Air Attack, not agility. Cannon IIs are absolutely worth it rn
@@PikaPilot Agility has been nerfed, but it's still a factor and decides things such as order in which wings attack. In this test heavy fighter has only 11 agility, also cannons affect IC cost significantly, as well as weight which matters a lot for speed (although mostly in later techs)
You can repeat this test for yourself if you want switching the cannons to HMGs, not only would that plane still lose to the light fighter it would also loose to the HF with 4 cannons.
Maybe dont stack so much air attack on the heavy fighters? i mean you dont need 4 cannons to shoot down light as.
even swapping to Heavy machine guns and reducing the cost and upping your agility, the light fighter still wins. The heavy fighter I was using was the one that seems to win against all other heavy fighters. So if you expect to go up against heavy fighters then that is what you should expect to go up against.
Note to self: best design is shown at the 1:00 mark
Best thing about your videos is you do the test and show the results before coming to a conclusion which is apparently too much for others to do.
You should see if heavy fighters do better on interception duty vs tactical bombers/strat bombers.
This fighter design still kicks the AI's ass as of late November 2022.
Man i thought heavy fighter is the new meta based on the title. Glad i didn't change my fighter into heavy fighter before watching this video or that would be suck
i was thinking heavy fighters gonna be better for germany cuz one plane use less fuel than 2 but this heavy fighter meta use 0.64 and light fighter only 0.21
so not only i can build 2x more planes but i can keep in air 3x more fighters .
i would use h.fighter as US to fight Japanese cuz range would be better at sea
Paradox has ruined dogfighting.
Isn't air attack capped at 100?
Nothing in the math nor the defines suggest that air attack is capped at any point in time.
I also did some testing. Your design is the best. It also gives a lot more air superiority than heavy fighters (%160). Plus, the best cas uses small frame too so you don't need to research another branch of frames. Some other things that I found out while testing: Thrust doesn't do anything. Only range (anything above 800 is fine), air attack (prioritize air attack) and defense matters. Stack as many air attack as possible with your current technology. Stack as many defense as possible as long as your range is above 800. You should only use bomb lock on cas to save IC but the IC you spend on air attack always pays off on fighters. Don't hesitate to put cannon 2s.
For nations that really struggle with manpower, I'd been thinking medium/heavy fighters might make more sense but really even with 20% more fighters going down the manpower drain is negligible and the easier production really leans towards still focusing on lighter fighters.
The only other thing I can think of is if you are really hurting for efficient range, but I haven't found a situation where that was the case as of yet.
Honestly feels a bit off design wise, why would you ever go with heavy/medium fighters? There is no upside. Though perhaps those airframes really are just meant for strat bombers and you'd only use them for fighters if you're really hurting for research slots.
Heavy fighters also didn't make sense historically, except for the longer range (Battle of Britain)
Historically, it was found that heavy fighters worked best with a light fighter escort, which defeats the purpose of building heavy fighter.
@@PikaPilot heavy fighters are good during the early game when light fighters have no range/thrust to mount lots of guns
Does that mean prioritize agility over air attack then?
Air attack reigns Supreme, but the offense boost gained by heavy doesn't replace the ic required to get heavy out
Heavy fighters are the meta. I will make a vid about this, this week. This is a good way to look at the new dlc. Honestly some things have been skipped tho. This weekend I will explain what the meta is and what stats you should look at with this new dlc.
yours sincerely,
Mr. Kain