Air combat

From Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Air combat is simulated every eight[1] hours (at 08:00, 16:00, and 24:00 local time). Each of the following phases is completed for from the perspective of each country before the next phase begins.

Detection, damage and disruption[edit | edit source]

In this phase, own air wings will try to attack the enemy, both by directly damaging them and, in the case of enemy ground missions, disrupting them. Enemy countries are any that this country (Waking the Tiger or the host country of air volunteers) is at war with. The prerequisite for attack is the ability to detect the enemy.

The detection chance depends on multiple factors

  • Occupation: Occupying land in the strategic region enables spotting planes from the ground and yields a chance of up to 10% (when controlling the whole region).
  • Radar: Radar coverage yields up to 50% detection chance (at full radar coverage)
  • Air missions: Planes operating in the region yield up to 80% detection chance (with 3000 planes, non-fighters only counting half)
  • (above chances stack additively)
  • Night-time: reduces detection by 20%
  • Bad weather: reduces detection by up to 90%

Only this percentage of enemy planes will be visible. The number of visible planes can be further modified:

  • If the enemy side includes both ground missions and superiority fighters, the latter will be fully visible. The fighters and bombers don't need to be from the same enemy country.
  • Regular bombers on strategic bombing mission and carrier-based bombers can reduce their visibility with the "Strategic bombing visibility" modifier (Infiltration Bombing doctrine: -50%).
  • Planes on close air support mission are twice as visible.
  • Planes on port strikes are ten times more visible.

At most three times as many own planes can attack as enemies are visible, so good detection is important to fully utilize available air wings, especially when the enemy has fewer planes.

If the country does not send ground missions, enemy intercept missions will be ignored as targets. Likewise, if the enemy has no ground missions, own interceptors will not attack. Carrier fighters actively take part in air combat (as superiority fighters) and all types of enemy carrier planes are available as targets if their carrier is in a naval battle.

Air wings sortie in descending order of air attack and agility against detected enemies, so fighters and heavy fighters will generally do most of the damage dealing. If enough enemies are detected, bombers can also deal air damage though.

The planes of each sortieing wing are allocated against enemy wings proportional to their visibility (against all wings for damage and only against ground missions for disruption). The following components contribute to the final damage value:

  • the attackers' base damage: number of attackers ✕ air attack ✕ 0.2
  • penalty from agility disadvantage: base damage ✕ 30% ✕ min(agility difference ÷ attacker agility, 2)
  • bonus from relative speed advantage: base damage ✕ 60% ✕ min(speed difference ÷ defender speed, 1.5)
  • bonus from absolute speed advantage: base damage ✕ 2.5% ÷ 100 ✕ attacker speed ÷ 800
  • the defenders' air defense
  • carrier factor: 1 for normal and 5 for carrier combat (if both the attacker and defender are carrier wings)

The following components contribute to the final disruption value:

  • speed effect: attacker's speed ÷ 800[2]
  • detection chance
  • carrier factor: 4 for normal and 8 for carrier combat (if both the attacker and defender are carrier wings)

This makes detection critical for disruption as it increases both the number of fighters acting against enemy bombers as well as the disruption effect of each individual one.

Equipment loss and escorting[edit | edit source]

Fighters on escort/air superiority mission counteract the disruption that bombers received from the enemy in the disruption phase. Bombers of allied countries don't get escorted. The following components contribute to the escort's disruption reduction:

  • base: 2
  • speed factor: speed divided by 800
  • agility factor: agility divided by 100
  • attack factor: attack divided by 100
  • detection

This ratio gets removed from the received disruption of all bomber wings. The number of active escort planes is not recalculated for this phase and is used as the last country in the previous phase left it in, causing some countries to have arbitrarily worse escort efficiency.

If a wing lost at least one plane and has an ace, there is a chance that they die as a result of the air combat. The chance is the number of lost planes times 0.001 times 0.1 plus 0.003. Due to rounding issues this is effectively just 0.3% unless the wing loses ten or more planes in a single sortie.This means an ace can be expected to survive 230 sorties with losses.

Each point of damage received in the previous phase results in the loss of one airplane. Damage is rounded statistically, e.g. 1.2 damage received causes 1 plane to be lost in 80% of combats and 2 planes in 20% of combats resulting in 1.2 average losses per sortie.

Ground missions[edit | edit source]

Other planes perform their missions, such as close air support, strategic bombing etc. Disruption reduces the effectiveness of these missions. Wings may take additional losses in this phase from state, naval, or divisional anti-air.

All ground missions except para drop and mine planting/sweeping require the selection of a specific target. If multiple missions are selected, they are tried in the following order:

  • close air support
  • strategic bombing
  • naval bomber/kamikaze
  • port strike
  • air supply

Only the first category that produces a valid target is used, but a single wing can handle multiple targets within the same category in one sortie. It is not necessary to split up wings to support multiple land combats for example. But a large naval bomber wing can for example not send any remaining planes on a port strike when another part of the wing executed a naval strike.

Night time's "Ground Bombing Targeting" modifier (-50%) causes a corresponding probability of the wing being unable to find their target. They are still subjected to state AA.

State anti-air[edit | edit source]

Chance to damage attacking bombers

Strategic bombing, port strike and air supply missions are affected by state anti-air (AA).

The probability that a damage event occurs (C) and the number of planes destroyed (D) depend on the following components:

  • damage base chance: 10%
  • hit chance modifier: the "Static Anti Air hit chance factor" modifier (three radar technologies provide +20% each)
  • a random number R between 0.0% and 100.0%
  • damage factor: 0.8
  • anti-air factor: for air supply missions, the AA value of their target's state (even when that state is friendly) divided by the maximum AA level (5). For the other two mission types, the average AA level in enemy states in the strategic region, divided by the maximum AA level (5).
  • effective number of planes
Expected bomber losses in different scenarios
  • damage modifier: the "Static Anti Air damage factor" modifier (+10% each from anti-air 2 and 3 technologies)
  • air wing's defense stat

If R is smaller than C, a hit occurs with the following damage (in number of planes destroyed):

Or averaging the random number to :

Small bomber wings and especially strategic bombers (having high air defense) will be frequently affected by the minimum-one loss.

Disruption damage factor[edit | edit source]

The ground mission wing can reduce any disruption left over after the escort phase further using its own stats. Finally the disruption produces a damage factor that scales the damage the mission can actually do. It uses the following components:

  • disruption: value after the escort phase
  • defense factor: air wing's defense divide by 200
  • attack factor: air wing's attack divided by 200
  • speed factor: air wing's speed divided by 1500
  • air wing's number of planes (not reduced by mission efficiency)

The value that gets reported as "Planes disrupted" in the statistics of an air region is accumulated over all missions and sorties in the time frame.

Guided missiles always have a disruption damage factor of 100%, ignoring any disruption applied against them.[3]

Experience[edit | edit source]

Wings executing their missions gain experience for themselves (wing experience) and their country (country air experience).

All wings taking part in air-to-air combat (not just fighters and even if they don't get selected for damage dealing) gain 0.4 wing experience. This gain gets reduced if there are not enough enemy planes to allow all planes to attack. Wings completing their ground mission gain 0.28 wing experience.

All wings taking part in air-to-air combat (as described above) produce 0.001 country experience per effective plane. Additionally, they gain the same amount of experience for each country attacking them. This means an air force getting attacked by multiple countries gets a multiple of experience.

Country air experience from other missions per effective plane:

  • Close air support: 0.0005 (only counting planes actually joining land combats)
  • Strategic bombing: 0.0002
  • Paradrop: 0.03 (only counting planes actually needed for drop)

If the wing is lacking fuel, both types of experience get reduced proportionally. If the wing contains aircraft produced by another country and that country currently sends any lend-lease, it gains up to 50% as much country air experience, depending on the proportion of equipment present. This shared experience is not further shared with attachés and does not diminish the experience of the country operating the planes.

Example[edit | edit source]

The UK has a wing of 100 strategic bombers bombing West Germany at 90% mission efficiency. 40% of the bomber are US-made and the USA still have an active lend-lease to the UK. The bombers get intercepted by German and Italian fighters.

The UK gains the following country air experience:

  • from air-to-air fight: 100 * 90% * 0.001 = +0.09
  • from being attacked by Germany: 100 * 90% * 0.001 = +0.09
  • from being attacked by Italy: 100 * 90% * 0.001 = +0.09
  • from strategic bombing: 100 * 90% * 0.0002 = +0.018
  • Total: 0.288

The USA get 50% * 40% = 20% of this experience, i.e. 0.0576.

  1. Defines NAir HOURS_DELAY_AFTER_EACH_COMBAT = 4 (double because of roundtrip)
  2. also scaled by Defines NAir DISRUPTION_SPEED_FACTOR = 1. DISRUPTION_AGILITY_FACTOR and DISRUPTION_ATTACK_FACTOR are 0 by default, preventing these stats from having a corresponding effect
  3. forumpost:26559207