Is it worth it to have different models of aircraft?

[retsof]

For instance, having short-ranged fighters optimised for CAP and longer-ranged ones optimised for escort. or carrier based bombers optimized for load and land based bombers optimised for range.

Or is it just better to generalise and skip the micromanagement?

[aeson]

You cannot control which squadrons are assigned what aircraft beyond specifying the squadron's role, I believe only the most recent model within a role is actively produced, all squadrons will eventually be reequipped with whatever aircraft is the most recent model available for the role that they were assigned, and restricting CAP to specific squadrons would be difficult at best. I would therefore suggest that developing specialist aircraft within a role - for example distinct escort and interceptor fighters - is unlikely to produce useful results. Additionally, the game does not make much allowance for concurrent development of aircraft - you can only have one request for proposal active at any given time - so developing additional types within a role would delay guided development of modern types in other roles. Even if the aircraft management system did easily allow you to have for example specialized escort and interceptor fighters, the delay that producing such specialized types would impose on the development of modern aircraft for other roles might very well be serious enough to kill the concept.

Beyond that, even very large aircraft carriers and airbases can only host a limited number of aircraft, and if you have too many different types of specialists then you may have problems with your air groups as attrition wears down the strength of various specialized squadrons, because you simply won't have enough aircraft to make an effective group for what you want to do using only the specialists.

Also, if you want a specialized land-based bomber, the game has Medium Bombers and Flying Boats for that. They may not be as good in the Naval Strike role as Torpedo and Dive Bombers are, but they'll typically have significantly superior range and if you use one of those roles then you won't need to worry about the 'wrong' aircraft being assigned to a squadron.

[retsof]

I see. thanks for the clarification!

[jwsmith26]

retsof , I find that I often have several models of fighters available. In my current war there are 4 models deployed in squadrons as shown in the attached image. I have everything from 8 year old prop planes to modern jets with over 500 kts of speed. I certainly did not intend for this to happen but it is the natural result of the speed of aircraft production as opposed to aircraft development. I have 620 fighters in total but only 134 of my latest jets are deployed to squadrons.



As aeson pointed out you don't control how the game assigns plane models to squadrons but once they are deployed you can move the squadrons equipped with a specific model to the airbase you want, or if carrier-trained to a carrier. While I did not go out of my way to request different combinations of traits to satisfy specific roles you could probably do this over the course of several years. However, you cannot stop the gradual replacement of older models with newer ones so you would have to revisit your assignments on a regular basis to insure that the right type of model is still assigned to the correct base.

Of course, you have no control over how the AI handles your aircraft at an air base, so it is probably as likely as not that the AI would ignore your preferred assignments and use any fighter squadron at the base for any role. You have a bit more control over carrier based fighters but even here the AI decides which fighters it will place on CAP duty, so you'd have to assign fighters escort missions on turn 0 to make sure the fighters you want for escort are actually assigned that role, leaving any short ranged fighters to fly CAP.

So yes, you can kind of do what your want but it is certainly not a set-once-and-forget solution. You can probably make partial adjustments that will work for a few turns, but the AI makes a lot of new assignments so you would have to be quite vigilant to maintain your preferred assignments in the location you wish. To me, it is much too much work but everyone's tolerance for micro-management is different.

[wknehring]

I would say, that´s only slightly usefull between 1935-1945 (and it is very difficult, as mentioned before). As an example, what I did in the past (1 year ago or so):

It was a KuK-Game. Somewhere in the early 30s I thought, I need some fighter bombers for my CVL (32 slots, 2x16 planes) to withstand the upcomming threat from above and to have something fast for convoy raids. I had to develop 3 different types untill I managed to get a bomb carrying type (heavy 200lbs, medium 2x60lbs- honestly? what garbage^^). One of the earlier designs I stationed at land bases.
I had to put all squads to several bases, wait untill they were equipped and than switch to ther final base/carrier. That was a lot of management!
Than this one convoy attack came, 3 CVL with 48 "fighter bombers" for attacking and 48 "fighter bombers" for CAP. Than I noticed the big mistake I made- compared to TB or DB, they had a bad range. So my CVL had to operate near the enemy escorts to start their planes- turning into wind (missing deck catapults) and the first BC shells droped near my carriers (without damage). After the strike I was sobered- level bombing fighters were crap. Not that I lost a third for the next wave, I managed to land 2 60lbs bombs on TR without any severe damage! That was frustrating and ruined about 4 years of work. Luckily a quick DD raid managed to land a few torpedos and sink 2 TR what was enough to win the battle (now it is 6 TR).
So fighter bombers without glide bombs or skip bombing are not worth any time to think about. Later, especially when the jet aera comes, any fighter carries bombs, up to 1x 2000lbs or 2x1400lbs. They can skip bomb and hit something with a much bigger payload. And perhaps they start to use some gliding bombs, but that´s nothing I have noticed so far.
So, if you want to specialize your fighters (even for fast interceptors with much firepower, or the jack of all trades-CAP-fighter), think about the time you have to manage ingame and what afford they will bring you. And for fighter bombers, wait for a plane with about 500lbs bombs- in case they hit, they do a bit damage. And at last, think about the developing costs for every model and the delay of newer TB, DB, PB and MB. Don´t underestimate MB when they start glide bombing or carry 2 torpedos!
I tend to develop the standard dog-fighter (speed, manouverbility- later speed, firepower) and chose the one with the best toughness and range in addition.

[aeson]

Apr 1, 2020 1:20:57 GMT -6 wknehring said:

And for fighter bombers, wait for a plane with about 500lbs bombs- in case they hit, they do a bit damage.

While I agree that the 500lb and heavier bombs are in general enormously better than lighter bombs, I would comment that it's inadvisable to completely dismiss the effectiveness of light bombs - I recently lost a carrier to a single 300lb bomb hit that started a fire amidst aircraft being readied for a strike mission, and I've on rare occasion managed to sink ships while using first-generation dive bombers that could only carry 130lb bombs at heavy load, though most of the time the main contribution of such light bombers is suppression or distraction of enemy air defenses while torpedo bombers do the real killing (130lb and other similarly light bombs may be useless against armor, but LAA and MAA guns aren't well protected, and the dive bombers can still attract enemy fighters away from the torpedo bombers even if they can't actually hurt the ships that they're attacking). I can't say that I'd recommend opting for fighter-bombers, seaplane bombers, or dive bombers with such light bomb loads, but they're not completely worthless - just mostly. And as bad as the dive bombers are with such light bombs, they're still a lot better than the fighter-bomber and seaplane bombers with similar bomb loads since they're much more likely to actually hit the target if you haven't yet developed glide bombing.

[wknehring]

Apr 1, 2020 10:12:43 GMT -6 aeson said:

Apr 1, 2020 1:20:57 GMT -6 wknehring said:

And for fighter bombers, wait for a plane with about 500lbs bombs- in case they hit, they do a bit damage.

While I agree that the 500lb and heavier bombs are in general enormously better than lighter bombs, I would comment that it's inadvisable to completely dismiss the effectiveness of light bombs - I recently lost a carrier to a single 300lb bomb hit that started a fire amidst aircraft being readied for a strike mission, and I've on rare occasion managed to sink ships while using first-generation dive bombers that could only carry 130lb bombs at heavy load, though most of the time the main contribution of such light bombers is suppression or distraction of enemy air defenses while torpedo bombers do the real killing (130lb and other similarly light bombs may be useless against armor, but LAA and MAA guns aren't well protected, and the dive bombers can still attract enemy fighters away from the torpedo bombers even if they can't actually hurt the ships that they're attacking). I can't say that I'd recommend opting for fighter-bombers, seaplane bombers, or dive bombers with such light bomb loads, but they're not completely worthless - just mostly. And as bad as the dive bombers are with such light bombs, they're still a lot better than the fighter-bomber and seaplane bombers with similar bomb loads since they're much more likely to actually hit the target if you haven't yet developed glide bombing.

Yes, but the torpedomagazine prevents you from spamming torpedo attacks a whole day long (what is fully OK btw). You have to think about when it´s worth to send them in. DBs I send for "aggressive scouting", when I try to separate the different enemy forces and hope they bomb some CV/CVL/TR/AMC (TR/AMC are often misidentyfied CV/CVL) instead BB/BC/CA. Than my TB go all in.

And any bomb can be a CVs nemesis- I lost an early CVL-convertion by a single 60lbs HE-bomb (I wrote it down in the fun-thread), because I readied TBs and forgot them to stand down as weather went bad/or night came (I don´t remember correctly). Must have been a nice little fire on deck But you can´t win wars just by such lucky hits. And one single heavier bomb (equal a BB caliber hit) always does more damage than a few light hits (equal DD/CL caliber hit).

The thing with the floatplane scouts I didn´t tried out. I started a game where I have built some AV-raiders, but than I moved and I started a new game, because I was out of the game. But somebody of dev-team tried a whole playthrough with loads of floatplanes and it didn´t work. So I don´t wan´t to try it anymore

[cabusha]

I will sometimes keep concurrent designs if they're of similar ability or "good enough" while I wait for the reliability scores to kick in. Since new air craft typically have unknown reliability, I keep the older ones active until I know otherwise. If the new birds are unreliable, I'll decomission them and request a new study.