How many planes needed for effective ground attacks?

[st0815]

Hi,
I just started the game and am fighting a war with italy against jemen in Africa. My 10 infant. Divisions are getting rekt by 5 infant and 1 horse-cav sitting in the mountains. So i'm trying to bomb them. I have 70 tact. Bomber, 50 Close-air support planes and 10 strategic bombers. They are bombing the country for month now but I never saw anny effect or loss of troops. What do I have to do to kill divisions with planes?

[PeaceMaker12]

Air support is useless unless you're are actively attacking those divisions and even then is typically ineffective for a buff. Invest into artillery and recon, apply them into your infantry templates, and shell them into a new stone age. Engineers too if they have bunkers.

[ilham FREEMONEY.NET]

thousand years reich need a thousand of planes

[rainedr]

You can't kill a division with planes - only impact their strength (damage) and organization. (The green and yellow bars). To remove a division you have to either overrun it by being faster on the attack than it can retreat or by encircling it and destroying it by having nowhere to retreat to.

CAS and Tac on ground support will only do missions when you have divisions in combat and will support by providing additional buffs to your side and debuffs to the enemy while simultaneously damaging the above mentioned attributes of the enemy divisions.

Anyone who says "air is useless" doesn't understand how all the combat multipliers in the game work. (Air alone can provide an excess of +/- 25%).

You likely also have an issue going with supply or in how you're attacking.

The game has many modifiers from terrain, weather, naval, doctrine, air support, supply that affect combat.

[zzirSnipzz]

! Nutella روبي の投稿を引用：

thousand years reich need a thousand of planes

i had over 1 million strategic bombers as britain at one point lol

[Mourdeeb]

Generally speaking, you just need to have a larger number of air craft to gain the bonuses.

[Shore]

The most important thing is actually preventing the bombers from being interrupted. Even a slight bit of damage on a factory is enough to temporarily disable it. In theory you need just enough bombers to out pace the enemies repair speed.

[mark.r.hendrickson]

Put bombers on CAS, and attack. You only need enough to get green air, to get the breakthrough bonus which is what you really want.

When you attack, open up the combat screen. It will tell you the max number of bombers which can support the attack. It’s based on combat width. More combat width = more bombers. Anything above that number is useless.

The other thing you might try is not attacking into mountains. With or without bombers you are going to lose an awful lot. Better to surround them and starve them out.

[Lawgun]

In comparison with HoI2 in HoI4 you simply can't kill enemy troops with your aicrafts, you only get a buff (totally idiotic) when attacking with an army, So it's just an option. I only use heavy aircrafts, naval bombers and some strategic bombers in late game since it's the only types of aircrafts which really do something without army. You should spend your resources on artillery or tanks instead. Also good defense is much better than mediocre offense with a buff from an air support. Ideally you shouldn't base your tactics on difficult attacks with heavy losses. If your opponent has armies in mountains it's better to incircle them.

[Mikey]

How many you need "effectively" depends on your frontage. The wider your possible combat width in a given action the more planes can be used in it. You can use anywhere from a couple hundred to a few thousand in an air zone depending on how much action is going on there.

There are some factors you seem to be misinformed on though

Strategic attacks: Only available for strategic and tactical bombers. Attacks and damages buildings in the given air zone. Damage is repaired over time and you need a LOT of bombers for it to have any noticeable effect.

Ground attacks: Only available for CAS and tactical bombers. Attacks enemy troops that are engaged in combat killing men and destroying equipment. If there are no combat actions in the air zone your CAS missions will not launch any attacks either.

Neither of the above require air superiority over an air zone which is the so called "green zone". Air superiority (AS) is a term showing you wether enemy planes are being supressed or your planes are being supressed.
This gives a negative modifier to your ground crews combat effectiveness, reducing their attack, defense and breakthrough values to simulate being harassed by enemy planes, but otherwise has no negative effect that I am aware of.
Note that if the enemy holds AS then your bombers are likely being shot down or prevented from bombing their targets effectively.

[Blobberu]

for best results attach 100 Fighters and 100 Dive Bombers to an army group

[mk11]

If you have limited number of aircraft providing close air support then don't launch too many ground attacks at the same time. You want the aircraft to concentrate on the one (or few) attacks and not be spread thinly.

[Drax]

PeaceMaker12 の投稿を引用：

Air support is useless unless you're are actively attacking those divisions and even then is typically ineffective for a buff. Invest into artillery and recon, apply them into your infantry templates, and shell them into a new stone age. Engineers too if they have bunkers.

VERY much wrong. Every 50 fighters (- the enemies fighters) is equal to a 1% debuff to enemy defense and breakthrough. Capped at 20%, or 40% with the right research, possibly even more.

On top of this, with CAS active, the damage to org stacks up hard. I've brought the USSR down to 50-ish divisions within a MONTH because of heavy CAS. They just can't survive a second. And offensives usually screech to a halt when they reach the next airzone.

If anything, the airforce is extremely broken. Especially against AI who won't defend against the 10k dive bombers you have at all. And in multiplayer, you're going to get wrecked just like the AI if you don't at least build interception fighters. I'd trade recon or arty for a good airforce in a heartbeat, the issue is, one costs an arm and a leg in regards to both production and research, and also takes a long time to start reaping the benefits from.

In regards to ops question: Strat bombers are not meant for troops. They just bomb buildings. CAS attack an enemy divisions org, you can see their effect on the top right of any given skirmish. Tac bombers do a bit of everything but aren't great at anything either as far as I remember. The benefits of the airforce come from extremes however, and you don't have enough of any one thing to reap much benefit. Strat bombers are good, but you need 1000-2000 and possibly escorted by heavy fighters to see a major advantage. They can disable enemy infrastructure, destroy production, target forts, etc. They can really hurt the enemy. One major benefit from them, however, is the ability to get significant warscore without having to send troops at all. In a democracy game, you can just build bombers and still get a lot of land.

If you want to do an airforce with limited production, only build fighters. 500-1000 fighters on air supremacy will give you good benefits for attacking an enemy defensive line. But, if the enemy has 1000 fighters of their own, you won't see any of these benefits. If they have 2000 fighters, they get the benefit. Once you have a better industry, you can start with CAS. Ideally you want to have around the same, 1000-2000 in a region to start seeing major benefits, but 500 will still help. And the strongest point of air is naval bombers, or noobs navy. If you don't know how to build a navy, or don't want to bother/can't. NV Bombers will disable an enemy fleet very fast. In a French alt history game, I sunk the entire British, Italian, US and Japanese fleet with NV bombers. The AI doesn't counter them and it lets you naval invade with ease.