Hearts of Iron IV

Hearts of Iron IV

Blackice HOI IV TEST
Sheriff1904 14 Mar, 2020 @ 3:33am
Air Range German "Luftwaffe"
Imo German planes need a little bit of rework in terms of air range, especially heavy fighters:

For example:
BF 109 G range with drop tank 850km, ingame 665km. I think, this is ok (as with the other figter, interceptor, multi role and CAS).

BF110 C range 1300km, ingame 590km. This is less than the H112 B2 (645km).
Me 210 range 1610km, ingame 980km.
Imo that's the problem with all german heavy fighters. They were often used as long range escort fighters but with that ingame range they are useless and not worth building them. They were also often used with drop tanks but heavy fighters are lacking this upgrade (Imo drop tanks should increase range more than 10%).

Another thing: FW 190 G is the long range version of the FW 190 F with 2x300l drop tanks, that doubles the amount of fuel so imo air range should be quite more than 565km (F 560km).

Anyway, the air rework is fantastic. Great job!
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Elouda  [developer] 14 Mar, 2020 @ 7:54am 
Theres a very important distinction to make (much like for naval) between Range and Radius.

What is labelled ingame as Range is actually operational Radius, which is typically 40-45% of Range.

The Bf 110C has a maximum economical range of ~1050km, which would translate to a Radius of ~500km. Its a little higher ingame, as the formula is forgiving on the low end to work with HOI4s stupid 'aircraft operate from the center of the airzone' thing. You're right that the He 112 seems off in comparison, as they should be fairly similar, so I will doublecheck that.

Same deal with the Me 210; Range of ~1800km, Radius of ~980km ingame.

109 G with drop tank is also ~1100km Range, so Radius in the ~650km range.

For the 190G, it can either take the 2 drop tanks, or instead 2x250kg bombs in addition to the 500kg on the centerline. I chose to use the latter configuration as this makes it the more attractive option rather than lower ground attack and higher range (~1270km range, ~750km radius)
Sheriff1904 14 Mar, 2020 @ 12:59pm 
Thx for your answer... :-D

Yeah, i understand... But this makes german Heavy Fighter useless and in 1940 no German aircraft is capable of reaching the UK from Norway or even Denmark, what i find a little bit unsatisfying. ;-)
SmoothOperator 14 Mar, 2020 @ 1:49pm 
Why not have both the FW 190 G and F and let the player choose ? The FW 190 G could be a heavy fighter?
Sheriff1904 15 Mar, 2020 @ 2:05am 
Did a small test:

Distance from Herning (Denmark) to London is 787km. Imo if i have a Tac Bomber unit with an ingame range of 790km (Do 23), what is operational radius, stationed in Herning they should reach London.
They cannot even reach Amsterdam which is 495km away.
An ingame range of about 1400KM makes them capable of reaching London...
Elouda  [developer] 20 Mar, 2020 @ 5:59am 
This is actually an interesting case, and investigating it revealed something that I didn't know about HOI4s map system.

The map is what appears to be a mercator projection - and the air (and probably naval) ranges dont scale to account for this.

This means at if an aircraft has 800km 'range' (actually radius) listed - it will indeed fly to provinces 800km away - at the equator. North or South of that, it will be less, because while the range number is the same, each 'km' of that range is less on the map, as the map scale is expanded towards the poles. So at Denmark/Central England latitude of ~55N, each 'real' km is actually ~1.74km on the map, so your 787km real range is actually ~1370km on the map in HOI4. Or to put it another way, the range on the aircraft in terms of 'real' km is ~460km. This is why that Denmark -> London flight only makes it a little past halfway.

Now, this is partly already compensated by the 'low end' of the radius calculation, but most likely will need an additional factor applied as most combat happens away from the equator. I didn't have time to rejig the math for this update, but will account for it in the future.

Here's what the Do23 looks like with a fully 'latitude corrected at 55N' range of 1370km;
https://i.gyazo.com/9fb1cdd1895be2a290b549c8fed0b274.jpg

Thanks for the feedback
Last edited by Elouda; 20 Mar, 2020 @ 6:00am
Dunestyler 14 Apr, 2020 @ 8:29am 
the actual problem Germany has is not the range of the aircraft.

BICE went pretty realistic in hoi3 with the ranges and it doing so now is not the issue.
the issue is the difference in how aifields work.
in HoI3, you could build plenty of airfields nearly anywhere you wanted, which meant that, if you prepared a bit, you could concentrate air power where you needed it.

in HoI4, that is not the case.
in HoI4 the actual factor, which limits your concentration of air power, and leads me to always get foreign aircraft with the longest range, if playing as Germany, is, that you cannot concentrate their air power as needed, because of the limits in air field size, number and placement.
so, where other nations are able to spam out fighters and have them join in a region and outnumber or at least meet the enemy with equal numbers, the German airforce is found lacking, because it cannot field the amount of aircraft with the operational range to use them on much.

production and manpower are no issue, simply the amount of aircraft which can be fielded per airfield and the amount and placement of airfields is.
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