GAME MANUAL - Steam

HEARTS OF IRON DARKEST HOURagainst that province, regardlessof whether he happens tofeel that it is a sortie that islikely to have a favourableoutcome. No matter whatmethod you use, yoursquadron will never targetyour own forces.Air Combat &Air MissionsAir orders and combat areintegral to one another, sincethe type of mission willdetermine the overall typeof combat. The generalmechanism of combat is thesame as the one used in landcombat, although each airmission has a specific type of“target” for its attack. I willdescribe each mission in turn,indicating the purpose of theattack type and the type ofdamage it inflicts.Orders are issued by rightclickingon a province to bringup a context-sensitive list ofpossible missions, or byselecting a squadron and thenclicking on its order box in theinformation panel to issue anew order. If you use the lattermethod, you will usually beasked to specify a location(province or area or region) asthe target for your mission.The list of locations will befiltered and colour-coded bythe range of the selectedsquadron. You may select thetarget region, area or targetprovince from the list, or youmay click on the map toassign it.Air missions are flown in aseries of sorties. Each sortiemay attack any target that iswithin the range of thesquadron, but all combats arelimited to a five-hour duration,after which the air unit willbegin to run low on fuel andbe forced to break off theattack. Be careful whenassigning a mission to asquadron since an orderwill be available for thatsquadron as long at least onewing in the squadron has avalue greater than zero inthe primary attack typeprerequisite. For instance,many fighters have at least asmall tactical attack capabilitybut are generally veryineffective at conductingground attacks against eventhe most vulnerabletargets. Makesure you select anappropriate type ofmission to assignto a squadron.Beware of enemyAA batteries. Anytime that a squadronenters the airzone above aprovince with AAbatteries, they willbe subjected to aburst of fire as thewings pass, even ifthe wings aremerely flying to orreturning from amore distanttarget. This willusually result in alimited amount ofstrength loss andsomewhat more organisationloss. If you are attackingtargets in a province thatcontains AA, the batteries willcontinue to fire during eachand every round of thecombat, which can add up toquite a lot of damage overtime. Fortunately, air missionsuse the same mission parametersinterface as can be seenin naval missions, so you canspecify a minimum strengthlevel below which the nextsortie will be delayed until thewing has been suitablyreinforced.Air CombatThree different types of aerialcombat are likely to occurduring your game: air-to-air,air-to-ground, and air-to- ship.All three use the standardcombat mechanism that we’veseen before, with the appropriateattack and defencevalues being determined bythe type of target selected.Example: If a squadron spotsand attacks a fleet, thesquadron’s wings will use theirnaval attack and surfacedefence values (which is usedwhen both naval and landforces return fire), while the146