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Just having support AA about cut it in half (depend on the AA technology).
Adding line 1/2 line AA will reduce it even further.
It will also reduce the damage from CAS (on top of shooting down enemy CAS).
It doesn't reduce the bonus the enemy get from it tho.
It is also realistic. Air power was an important factor in the ability to conduct offensive. CAS was deadly in WW2 and air superiority was an important factor.
Except, no, you couldnt. CAS is massively overtuned in this game, to the point of it being a joke. Direct air support was in its infancy in WW2, and there are very few identifiable examples of it being used in close proximity to friendly troops in an actual battle. It was used about 3x as often in the Pacific as it was in Europe, and even then the examples and effectiveness are scattered.
Majority of air missions were flown inbetween battles, or on the edges of battles, away from friendly troops.
In August 1944, the RAF claimed to have destroyed 135 tanks in the Goodwood area (Battle for Caen). In order to analyze the weapons and tactics employed and to evaluate the damage that was done on given targets, a small team of researchers was usually dispatched to the corresponding battleground, a common practice in most armies of that time. The British “Office of Research and Analysis” conclusion was eye-opening and contradicted the RAF pilots’ over enthusiastic display: Of the 300 examined vehicles, only 10 were actually hit and damaged by the Typhoon’s RP-3 rockets. (Allied Fighter-Bombers versus German Armour in North-Western Europe 1944–1945: Myths and Realities, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 14, no. 2 (June, 1991)
Mortain is another candidate of such over-claiming, between the 7th and 10th August, the 2nd Tactical Air Force of the 9th USAAF claimed to have destroyed 120-140 tanks, yet of the 46 Axis tanks lost, only 9 of them could be attributed to aircraft. In fact, in the entire Normandy campaign, the Germans lost no more than 100 tanks to Allied sorties. 13 Tiger tanks were affected, however seven of them lost to massive high altitude bombing on the 18th of July and only 6 of the German heavy tanks could be attributed to the low altitude air raids of the Allied pilots. (P. Moore, Operation Goodwood, July 1944; A Corridor of Death)
The PTAB (Russian ПТАБ, which stands for Противотанковая Авиабомба, “Antitank Aviation Bomb”) was a hollow charge bomb filled with 1.5 kg of explosives, capable of penetrating up to 70 mm of armour.
The effectiveness of these bombs proved to be limited. West of Belgorod, the Soviet Air Force claimed to have destroyed over 270 tanks of the 3rd Panzer Division on one single day. The 6th Regiment of the 3rd Panzer Division possessed 90 tanks in total (on the 1st of July). Ten days later, on the 11th of July, 41 operational tanks were reported, a difference of 49 tanks. Similar statements appear about the bombing run on the 17th Panzer Division, which had only one tank battalion with 67 tanks committed to the fighting in the Belgorod-Kharkov area (the only unit not assigned to a defensive role). Here, the VVS stated to have destroyed 240 tanks in just a few hours. German combat reports show a larger concern about concentrated AT positions (and minefields), which caused the majority of AFV losses during Operation Citadel. Air strikes were usually described as “a mere nuisance”.
Between the 5th and 14th July, the 2nd Air Army dropped 69,000 PTABs alongside 7448 RS-82 rockets during the defensive phase of the Battle of Kursk. The Soviet Air forces claimed to have disabled 3147 tanks and assault guns in the same period (actual losses amounted to 849 tanks for the whole month of July). If we accept the Soviet numbers this would still indicate that PTABs had to be dropped in large clusters to cause any significant damage.(Sovetskie Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily v Velikoy Otechestvennoy Voine 1941–1945)
The OKH (“Oberkommando des Heeres”, German “Supreme High Command” or “High Command of the Army”) was aware of the notoriously exaggerated claims their combat units would report and applied a correction system (i.e. 30-50% for ground units and usually 50% for the Air Forces). Inflated numbers and errors could result in a misjudgment of enemy forces.
From January 1944 to September 30th 1944, the German Army reported to have destroyed 23,070 AFVs (actual, irrecoverable losses for the RKKA amounted to 23,700 AFVs, 29,009 “evacuated”, during the entirety of 1944, around 18,000 up to September). During the same period, the Luftwaffe claimed to have destroyed 1847 tanks and SPGs. Correcting this figure with the given methodology would lead to 923 destroyed vehicles, a number that may be still over-inflated. Assuming that the Luftwaffe destroyed or damaged 80-100 tanks on a monthly basis (depending on the combat intensity, which peaked in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of ‘44), this would indicate that not more than 4-6% of all tanks on the Eastern Front were destroyed by air strikes. (Militärarchiv Freiburg Fremde Heere Ost, IIc, 10.10.1944, BA-MA RH 2/2101)
This is all information by direct sources. CAS in this game is a death star, when in reality it wasnt used in direct support of troops on any consistant basis, and accounted for less than 10% of all vehicles destroyed, and even less than that in manpower casualties.
At Kursk, the Soviet 1st Tank Army lost 648 tanks with 82 breakdowns. German aircraft destroyed only 11 of their tanks.
In the Ardennes offensive, the Germans lost 101 tanks from the 16th December of 1944 to the 16th January of 1945, (39 were abandoned), of these only 6 to Allied sorties.
Consequently, given reports and combat analysis indicate that air strikes were responsible for 2-7% of all tank losses during WWII. It should be pointed out that the Western Allies were probably the most successful at this task. However, it must be also stressed out that the effectiveness of such attacks depended on the circumstances and quantity of planes involved in the respective size of the front. To illustrate the dimensions, it is wise to compare the amount of aircraft available for ground support in proportion to the area and enemy units it had to cover and engage.
During Operation Barbarossa, the Luftwaffe had at its disposal one airplane for every 2500 enemies. Each German plane had to cover an area of 500km² (195 sqmi). In Normandy, the Allied Expeditionary Air Force could field one plane for every 100 enemy soldiers. On average, there was one Allied aircraft for every 1km² (0,39 sqmi).
I'll just quote Wikipedia on this one:
"General Heinz Guderian, one of the creators of the combined-arms tactical doctrine commonly known as "blitzkrieg", believed the best way to provide cover for the crossing would be a continuous stream of ground attack aircraft on French defenders. Though few guns were hit, the attacks kept the French under cover and prevented them from manning their guns."
In game, it's not equipment that CAS destroys: it's organisation. It makes the enemies position untenable and they must retreat. Which, if you understand that quote.. is why CAS was/is effective.
The fact is CAS is way more effective than it should be, to the point that it's one of the main factors in success.
Even your quoted example is more a representation of the HOI logistic strike, which is presently worthless in game.
CAS is overturned, the end. It was never used in the numbers or concentration it is in game, to this effect.
In addition to the above the AI seldom seems to use CAS where a unit has 50+ air attack on its template so it's easy for a player to nerf the effect by adding AA.
I'd have to go with that, CAS should really provide a large movement penalty and a mediocre org penalty, as with any air based issue the claims made were always exaggerated and the air lobby reluctant to accept more realistic figures. This still holds true today, nobody has ever won a battle, let alone a war through airpower alone but still the air lobby claims it's possible.
One aspect that's missing tho' is the shock effect, early war there are plentiful examples of troops pulling back/running simply because they thought tanks/CAS were on the way, by the end of the war then this occurrence is practically never recorded.
A good example of CAS effects is the Falaise gap, huge casualties were inflicted from the air on effectively stationary, exposed, tightly packed units. This was used as an argument for air power. However, that same air hadn't taken out those units when more "normal" conditions prevailed, merely inhibited their ability to move freely, which raises the question of which opinion is more valid.
Nice to see some actual primary research being quoted btw.
I should have, I made the mistake of investing all my factories into fighters/CAS when I should've just had AA with 200 ish fighters on interception to counter CAS.
This post was 100% just me being tilted and needing to vent, that being said, I do agree with the fact that CAS is misrepresented.
I'm not convinced it is.. a fair bit of the arguments seem to be on moving the stats around instead of actually making a change:
Not good on front line attacks -> better on trucks and trains
So we move it from organisation damage to logistics damage -> the unit is defeated through attrition and low supply instead of organisation damage. End result: division will break and retreat.
Aircraft are already expensive to create and to fly: even as Germany you are basically dedicating all of your industry to aircraft to get anywhere near air superiority against the Allies. I'm also pretty sure they did tone down the CAS from what it used to be at some point.
But Air power is and was really powerful in reality!
Blitzkrieg worked as long as the Germans did have air superiority. When Allies did get air superiority it did practically end Germany chance to fight at all unless the weather was too bad for effective air force usage.
In reality Air forces should be even more powerful, but also it should be more expensive in economy, man power usage and weather should have bigger role.
How does shifting the damage to supply change the game mechanically? The end result is the unit retreating. If CAS missions get nerfed to "be realistic" then they need to be buffed for logistics strikes for the same reason.
You moved stats from A to B, and the result is always going to be the unit retreating. In terms of gameplay, you changed the button I push to achieve this goal.
Except that, even if the data you got were to be correct (I saw no reference, except you stating that someone else said so), you’re still missing a few key factors.
First of all division combat in HOI4 is by necessity an abstraction of how things worked. IRL divisions are not blocks fighting one another in their entirety and, as a result, you might very well have a regiment or a brigade or whatever smaller-sized unit involved in battle, even in close quarters, whilst the rest of the division was nowhere near the action. In this case the idea that ground attack missions were flown away from friendly troops, whilst perfectly sensible, means very little because (once again due to the necessary abstraction) in HOI4 divisions to behave as blocks; in the same way that we cannot target the enemy artillery with counter batteries, direct our infantry against enemy’s AT guns to make it easier for our own tanks to push etc etc some allowances have to be made.
Secondly, the effect of pounding the ground cannot be estimated exclusively in terms of “how many tanks did that plane kill”. A big issue for tanks driving under fire, from artillery or from an air attack, is that whilst they can survive to almost anything short of a direct hit (and sometimes even that doesn’t kill the tank) the commander / spotter cannot do its job sitting outside the turret hatch; the ability to locate enemies is thus hampered and it might very well be that the tank is killed by an enemy that they could (and would) have seen otherwise. The kill is thus not attributed directly to the plane but it’s still a consequence of its actions. Then you have the psychological effect on the crew, sitting in a big metal box with bullets and shrapnels constantly sounding on the hull and hoping the enemy plane doesn’t score a direct hit is not the nicest of experiences; repeat that for days, weeks and months and the overall combat effectiveness of the vehicle, of the squadron and ultimately of the division is eventually reduced to a shadow of its former self.
Then you have to consider that even if an hit doesn’t kill the tank itself it still has the potential to create a lot of damage: a bent or even slightly damaged barrel puts the tank out of action as surely as the ammo storage blowing up, even though the tank is not counted as a “kill” and certainly would not remain on the battlefield to be counted as such; a track or a few wheels being damaged during the approach to the battlefield likewise eliminate the usefulness of the tank without being counted as a straight up kill; supplies being hit results not only in fewer rounds being delivered but also, and critically on spare parts, which means that targets that would have been “saved” need to be abandoned or put aside.
All of the above and countless other factors significantly and critically reduce the effectiveness of any division and the effects of ground attacks would be felt tenfold for infantry or lightly armoured divisions. Whilst tanks can survive the hit, the poor bastard walking beside them cannot and no armoured division ever attacked without some form of support from infantry and for a very good reason.
Granted, close air support was not a well developed doctrine in WW2, which is a large part of the reasons why Germany was so successful in the early phase of the war: just like Napoleon did, they were pioneering something and their enemies did not know how the react. And the success the Germans drew from their very effective air support did not come from the amount of targets the Luftwaffe destroyed; thus it’s simply absurd to say that “air support was not effective because it did not kill thousands of tanks” since that was never the target nor the intended strategical and tactical value of that tool.
When we go into comparison of how the different air forces handled things, the matter is further complicated by the obvious difference in equipment, mission objective and even doctrinal use (the Axis typically had experience pilots always on the frontline, hence why we got men like Rudel with more than 500 tanks on his kill list; the Allies generally withdrew them and put them on training duty so that new pilots started with a bit more knowledge etc etc).
TL;DR: close air support was in fact vital, particularly in the early war when there was no doctrinal counter to it and even if its efficiency was reduced in the latter phase of the war, the ultimate goal of air support was never “kill as many enemy tank as you can” but rather “improve the efficiency of the ground force by forcing enemies to relinquish strong positions, hamper their ability to move around and react to our own actions and prevent counterattacks being mounted”. It’s therefore absurd to judge its effectiveness by a single parameter, particularly when that parameter was neither the single nor the most important objective of ground attack missions.
Sadly (of luckily, depending on the player) HOI4 is a game that does away with overcomplexity and a number of abstractions have to be managed and factor in. Air support dealing damage to the division instead of individual squads / vehicles is just one such approximation since divisions operate “in block” and there’s no way to represent an air attack being conducted on a tank brigade sitting 15 kilometres behind the frontline.