Mission «Air Superiority»
Article · Mission «Air Superiority»
Mission «Air Superiority» in Hearts of Iron IV
The Air Wing button that actually takes the sky. Green on the map comes from here. The land penalty still will not always look like “minus a third of Speed” — that is not a bug.
One button on the air mission bar: Air Superiority. What it does, why you click it, whether you need it at all, and who gets the order. Written for someone who found the air map yesterday and sees a row of missions with no story behind them.
No plane designer here. You get the gap between the order and a green region, and why the enemy can still barely slow down under “your” sky.
What it is
The click path, short. A plane lives in an Air Wing. The wing sits on an Air Base. You assign the wing to an air region and give it a mission. Air Superiority is that mission.
The game is blunt: wings try to take the sky by engaging enemy Fighters first, then bombers and other planes. They fly the whole time the order is on. They do not wait for someone to show up and bomb.
Two different things. Everyone who just installed HoI mixes them up.
- The order Air Superiority is the button on the wing. Without it, Fighters in the region are not working the sky.
- The bar Air Superiority on the map is already the score. It adds up every active Air Wing in the region: yours and allied. Fighters, Close Air Support, bombers — every plane has an Air Superiority stat that feeds the bar.
Strategic Air map colors come from that bar. Green region: friendly Air Superiority. Red: enemy. Green does not mean “the bar is 100%”. Open the region and read the percentage in the tooltip. After hundreds of games I still see people judge the sky by paint: green sky is not perfect Air Superiority.
Weak region coverage cuts the bar. If the wing’s Range does not cover the whole area, the contribution drops: 50% coverage means the Fighters work at about 50% of their max Mission Efficiency. The tooltip says so. You can stamp out a thousand Fighters, park them on a base at the edge of a huge region — the button glows, the sky is still empty. Anti-Air buildings in states also shave the enemy score: each building level is −5 to the opponent’s Air Superiority.
Why
First job: kill their Fighters. While those live, your Close Air Support mission and your bombers often never reach the target. Break the Fighters, then hit the ground and the factories.
Second job: the ground. Enemy sky over a battle means a penalty on divisions. The cap in the game:
| What takes the hit | Cap | When it is full |
|---|---|---|
| Defense | up to −35% | Your Air Superiority is 100%, and the enemy has no Anti-Air in the divisions |
| Breakthrough | up to −35% | Same. Your Air Superiority is 100%, and the enemy has no Anti-Air in the divisions |
| Speed | up to −30% | Also scales with the share. Full cap at 100% Air Superiority |
| Paratroopers | at least 70% | Otherwise Drop Paratroopers does not run |
That is the maximum, not what the enemy always eats. The penalty scales with the region percentage. The region is already green, Air Superiority is 70% — they take about 70% of the cap, not the full −30% Speed. At 70% that is about −21% Speed, not −30%.
So why “the sky is mine and they barely slow down”. Three boring reasons. No mysticism.
- You read color, not percentage. Green = you have Air Superiority. That is not 100%. The −30% Speed cap only at 100%.
- Speed in the panel is km/h. Infantry base is 4 km/h. Full −30% is minus 1.2 km/h. Looks tiny. In percent it is already the cap. A tank at 12 km/h loses more on the eye; infantry still crawls either way.
- Divisional Anti-Air cuts the Defense and Breakthrough penalty. Support Anti-Air and the Anti-Air battalion give Air Attack. The game says it: high Air Attack also counters enemy Air Superiority effects. The cap on that cut is 75% of the Defense penalty. Naked infantry without Anti-Air eats it. A division with guns in the template barely “breaks” in combat even under your sky. The real hit on land is Defense and Breakthrough in the fight, not the Speed number.
If you lost the sky, same rules, the minus is yours. People stare at the template and cannot see why the front is crumbling. Often the answer is the region color, not the rifles.
Third: paradrops. Drop Paratroopers needs at least 70% Air Superiority in the region. A green “almost” does not count.
Fourth: let your bombers work. Strategic Bombing and Logistics Strike matter once their Fighters are busy with yours.
Do you need it
On a region where the war is on and the enemy has planes — yes. This is the default Fighter order. Without it the bar will not turn green by itself.
Over empty rear areas, with no enemy wings for weeks, the order just burns Fuel. This mission’s consumption multiplier is 1.0. Interception is 0.2. Exactly five times. Two thousand Fighters circling empty sky is a fine way to stop your own tanks on land: the cans ran out in the air.
| Mission | What it does | Fuel |
|---|---|---|
| Air Superiority | Flies constantly, hits Fighters first, paints the bar, applies the land penalty | multiplier 1.0 |
| Interception | Stops enemy missions: bombing and Close Air Support. Cheaper. Does not take the sky by itself | multiplier 0.2 |
Use Interception when enemy Fighters are basically gone and bombers or Close Air Support show up now and then. The moment a real fight for the front starts, switch back to Air Superiority. Interception will not buy you a green score or the land penalty.
A small country still needs the order, just not on the whole map. Close the one front region. Three ocean tiles “so it looks green” — no. A major cannot live on Interception alone: Germany and the Soviet Union have enough Fighters to make your front collapse before you even notice the bar.
Who gets the order
Fighter is the main customer for this button. The game says it: air superiority, escort, intercept. On the airframe the Air Superiority contribution is 1. If the wing is built as a Fighter, this is the order you put on the region you want closed.
Heavy Fighter gets it too. Contribution to the bar is higher: 1.25 instead of 1. More Range, heavier guns. Agility is worse: against regular Fighters they die faster.
Assign
- Fighter — default order on the front region
- Heavy Fighter — when regular Fighters lack Range
Not as the main order
- Close Air Support plane — that one wants the Close Air Support mission
- Tactical Bomber, Strategic Bomber, Naval Bomber — their own missions
A Close Air Support plane on Air Superiority is infantry sent to sea with no ships. Its airframe contribution is the same as a Fighter (1), so the score ticks up a bit. It is not hitting the ground, and enemy Fighters eat it. A Strategic Bomber contributes 0.01 to the bar — you will not paint the sky with those.
Do not mix “sky and ground” on one wing. Fighter wing: Air Superiority. Close Air Support wing: Close Air Support, and only once the sky is no longer red.
Bottom line
Air Superiority is the only order that lets Fighters take the sky: enemy Fighters first, everything else after. You want it on the region where the war is. You do not want it as a forever circle over empty rear: Fuel here is five times meaner than Interception. Land penalty is up to −35% Defense and −30% Speed only at 100% in the region tooltip and with no Anti-Air on the division. Green does not promise that cap. Paradrop needs 70%. Read the percentage, not just the paint on the map.