When should I use Fighters or Heavy Fighters

[RGB Socks]

Does anyone have an idea when it would be more appropriate to use Heavy Fighters as opposed to normal Fighters? Because so far I can't find a use for them. Thanks.

[Kastuvas]

in theory heavy fighters are meant to be paired up with bombers for escirtubg. However you will rarely find yourself lacking range of regular fighters and regular fighters are cheaper to produce. In short, there's no point to even bother with them.

[rhettrongun]

They're not very useful in most of Europe for the reasons Pengu gave. They come in handy in regions like Scandinavia, north africa, and to a lesser degree Russia to the west of the urals. I think they're most useful in the real desolate areas though. Places like sub-saharan Africa, central asia, and Siberia.

I usually build them at about 1/4 to 1/3 the rate of my normal fighters so I've got some long-range air sup options in the types of place I listed.

[ColonelWilson]

Heavy Fighters are meant for interception missions, so use them to defend airspace from enemy fighter or bombers.

[soontir fel]

Originally posted by Colonel Wilson:

Heavy Fighters are meant for interception missions, so use them to defend airspace from enemy fighter or bombers.

I thought it was this not escort

[ColonelWilson]

Originally posted by soontir fel:

Originally posted by Colonel Wilson:

Heavy Fighters are meant for interception missions, so use them to defend airspace from enemy fighter or bombers.

I thought it was this not escort

In real life during WW2, they were supposed to be escorts, but didn't have the range or capacity to defend the bombers, thats why we had the P-51 Mustang. So, for HOI4, use Heavy Fighters to defend airspace against Bombers, and use normal ones to escort them.

[soontir fel]

Originally posted by Colonel Wilson:

Originally posted by soontir fel:

I thought it was this not escort

In real life during WW2, they were supposed to be escorts, but didn't have the range or capacity to defend the bombers, thats why we had the P-51 Mustang. So, for HOI4, use Heavy Fighters to defend airspace against Bombers, and use normal ones to escort them.

mid-late war they were night fighters for the most part to shoot down bombers though werent they?

[ColonelWilson]

Originally posted by soontir fel:

Originally posted by Colonel Wilson:

In real life during WW2, they were supposed to be escorts, but didn't have the range or capacity to defend the bombers, thats why we had the P-51 Mustang. So, for HOI4, use Heavy Fighters to defend airspace against Bombers, and use normal ones to escort them.

mid-late war they were night fighters for the most part to shoot down bombers though werent they?

Believe so.

[ancienthighway]

The additional range, meaning more fuel carried, reduces the maneuverability of the heavy fighter, i.e, agility. For this reason alone, heavy fighters are poor choices for air superioriy unless it's outside of the range of the lighter, more agile fighters. Useful in gaining air supremecy for log range bomber runs and paradrop missions. If you don't plan on bombing or paradrops outside of fighter range, you probably don't need heavy fighters. A fighter variant extending the range may meet the needs if you do plan on bombing and paradrops.

Interception would work also, disrupting bomber missions sent by the enemy.

As Italy, I have used heavy fighters to gain air superiorty over Czech to paradrop onto their capital and end my war with them quickly. Beyond that, they really haven't been useful.

[Scharny]

On reddit a little while back there was someone who made extensive test of fighters vs heavy fighters. And Heavy fighters vs close air support.
And the conclusing was that heavy fighters suck big time. They will do even worse at air to air combat than close air support because of their low agillity.
The test was made without any of the air doctrins researched.

So never use heavy fighters. You can paradrop most places with tier 1 figthers (not inter-war).
Maybe on strategic bombings runs they are worth it. If you make sure that they are only on interception. But i doubt it since heavy fighters are so expensive. I would rather just push more production into strategic bombers and lose a few more bombers when bombing.

[dasaard200]

Y'all are missing a point; P-38s shot down Yamamoto over the Pacific, as ONLY P-38s had the range to pull it off .

I don't know what y'all think about Heavy Fighters, BUT, their outstanding uses are island-hopping, and carrier umbrellas based on coastal areas !!

Your CV fleet took a licking, and are still ticking ?, fall back to a 13th USAAF port for repairs !!

[ancienthighway]

The Yamamoto was in a battle that consisted of over 280 naval bombers and torpedo bombers attacking the Japanese fleet. F6F Hellcats cleared the skies of enemy fighters. The P-38 may have been involved in that, and possibly strafing runs on the ships, but not in any bombing attacks.

[soontir fel]

Originally posted by ancienthighway:

The Yamamoto was in a battle that consisted of over 280 naval bombers and torpedo bombers attacking the Japanese fleet. F6F Hellcats cleared the skies of enemy fighters. The P-38 may have been involved in that, and possibly strafing runs on the ships, but not in any bombing attacks.

you are thinking of the yamato yamamoto was a japanese admiral

[soontir fel]

Originally posted by dasaard200:

Y'all are missing a point; P-38s shot down Yamamoto over the Pacific, as ONLY P-38s had the range to pull it off .

I don't know what y'all think about Heavy Fighters, BUT, their outstanding uses are island-hopping, and carrier umbrellas based on coastal areas !!

Your CV fleet took a licking, and are still ticking ?, fall back to a 13th USAAF port for repairs !!

the germans didn't have island hopping and their fleet wasn't exactly the kind you want your fighters flying over to cover and yet they had plenty of heavy fighters even after the 110 was determined to be not good enough to protect bombers from spitfires and hurricanes

[glythe]

The first thing to learn when playing a game like HOI is that history often gets thrown out the window.

1. You use heavy fighters as a luxury item when you are lazy about max range. This is marginally helpful when pushing into certain countries that have sparse airfields (namely russia after you push in deep). Having longer range means you need to rebase the planes less often.

2. Heavy fighters can be used to defend island outposts better than fighters due to longer range. Note that in the same way as naval bombers are better at killing ships than tactical bombers fighters are better at killing fighters than heavy fighters; the difference is primarily range. To make a long story short fighters+naval bombers can defend 1 sea zone away from an airfield and tactical bombers+heavy fighters can defend up to 2 sea zones away from an airfield.

3. Heavy Fighters are a luxury because they are essentially a technological dead end (there is no jet heavy fighter). Note H. Fighters also have no carrier variants which is a problem if you are Germany and want to fight the USA (often the navy of Japan is reduced to nothing and the americans have 200+ ships). Not researching everything in the tree is one of the things that separates a smart human from the stupid AI.

4. Heavy Fighters cost more production than light fighters. There is a bonus for having more planes than the enemy (even if 75% of your planes are from 1936). Your production is always limited by something. Your army must have CAS+fighters of some kind to be effective. If you have coastline or your allies have coastline (read as any member of the axis or allies) then you can help defend that coastline with naval bombers. [But weren't CAS better than killing ships than torpedo bombers? Yes they were but remember wht I said about throwing history out the window]. So essentially you always need fighters, CAS and navy bombers. If you are making 2 different kinds of fighters then you lower your production twice. You need to spend air experience to make both planes good (and you already have CAS and naval bombers wanting xp too).

5. Put all this together and you should realize that you should not use H. Fighters. This is similar to the idea that even though light tanks are in the game you should probably not use them either or stop using them as soon as you can switch to medium tanks.

[mk11]

Just my guess but Avalanche revamped air war and BBA added extra options so necroing an old thread is not a sensible thing to do.