How to use paratroopers FAQ (2024)

Paratroopers are only unit type in HoI2/DD allowed to be transported by transport planes and perform airborne assaults. In this short FAQ we'll take a look on how to perform airborne assaults, or transports by plane in general.

To make use of their unique ability, you need these things in addition to paratrooper division herself:

• transport plane(s) (trp)
• Battlefield Interdiction Doctrine (can be found in Air Doctrines tab)

While need of transport plane is self-explanatory, you need that air doctrine to enable you 'Airborne Assault' mission. I don't mention need to research technologies for paratroopers themselves and transport planes. It should be clear you need them

When you have all you need - that is paratroopers division, transport plane and doctrine enabling you to perform 'Airborne Assault' mission - you put paratroopers to the same province where your transport planes are based in. Once your paratroopers are fully organized (their organisation has reached maximal value) and the same applies to your transport planes, you are ready to perform mission. To carry out 'Airborne Assault' mission, take the following steps:

1. yet again check whether your planes have full organisation
2. load paratrooper on planes using loading button
3. make sure air path to the province you are going to drop your paras in is free of enemy fighters
4. make sure weather is clear over destination province, you can't perform paradrop in bad weather
5. click on destination province, choose 'Airborne Assault' mission and set time of attack
6. wait until your paras drop

I hope this little "FAQ" will help new players to get used to non-problematic use of paratroopers.

Of course, most of the folks who start the threads pleading for such answers, as with most of the frequently asked questions of the game, never actually check for a FAQ.

When I first saw the thread title, I thought you were posting a treatise on the more effective applications of paratroopers you'd employed. Doctrines to consider and try out. Ah well.

Brasidas said:

Of course, most of the folks who start the threads pleading for such answers, as with most of the frequently asked questions of the game, never actually check for a FAQ.

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Well actually even if those who lay questions about paras looked at FAQ subforum, they'd find nothing. So I posted basics as a start.

Brasidas said:

As Heidle said, its in a FAQ I'll admit it wasn't in the first FAQ I thought it was in, though.

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Yes, it is in the wiki's general FAQ. I meant FAQ on this forum.

2 Most effective use of Paratroopers to Date:

A. Attack a province; Force the opponent to retreat then Airdrop on them to prevent them from taking it back immediately; or reinforcing it. This is great for places like Sicily or any island where it can be troublesome to get your men across the ocean/river. As well as little Islands such as Crete where you don't want to move a Naval force all the way around. However is the province is defended in any sense of the word; They become useless.

B. Sealion. Dropping a Paratrooper on England - if Range is an issue conquer Belfast and place a single Airbase on the island then rebase to it. To any province with a port but no infantry means that you can instantly land large numbers of divisions without a costly and sometimes impossible beach assault.

Other than that; Paratroopers largely have no use and are well... quite ineffective.

I usually deploy paratroopers for one more use in addition to yours, and thats to do encirclements.

Dropping 2-3 para's behind a front scattered and simuntaniously attacking head-on from your bulk army, can do some fast suprise pockets. Best situations are in static fronts, and just prior to war, as you can have the time needed to move them in place, waiting for full org. In fast moving wars tho its not too good as your planes cant really keep up, usually beeing out of range before they are ready. So static fronts, fortified positions like objectives etc are good places to have a little suprise encirclement and force your enemy to move the troops around.

Para's are not useless

I mostly uses para's to speed up incirclements.

1. Attack province b and c with regular troops. when these two batless has been won wait some hours to allow for the 24 hours time delay for new attack

2. Drop paras in province b and c. So now province A is instantly surrounded.

3 Use groundforces to kill of enemy troops in province A.

This is a very deadly way to use para's especially in MP where the russian player tends to stack troops in provinces.

Regards Gormadoc

pedal2000 said:

B. place a single Airbase on the island then rebase to it.

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This is false you cannot rebase a TRA with PAR on board, you have to move the PAR independently, once the division is at the mission launch airbase it can be loaded on to a TRA, but not with the intent of rebase, because once a TRA is loaded, rebase is no longer available as a mission.

Shahed said:

This is false you cannot rebase a TRA with PAR on board, you have to move the PAR independently, once the division is at the mission launch airbase it can be loaded on to a TRA, but not with the intent of rebase, because once a TRA is loaded, rebase is no longer available as a mission.

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I think he meant that you would rebase the TRA after you had dropped the PAR, captured the province as a result, and finally, built an airbase there. The rebase order is so that you can retrieve your PAR with the TRA afterwards.

Of course, this is all in the context of invading England across the English Channel, capturing a non-beach province, I believe. Not much room to maneuver once you're there, and you certainly don't want to use the PAR as frontline troops, hence the suggested airbase after a successful follow-on invasion by sea. You gotta get the PAR outta there, and this is the best way unless the invasion happens to net you a port facility.

I often use them to add a bit of punch to two sorts of attacks. 1. Coastal Landings because it tends to double the number of troops you can throw without overstacking (3 marine + 3 paras) and 2. Attacking forts because they ignore land fortifications.

I've never actually measured or analysed how much effect they have when used like this but they seem to help.

Paratroopers can definitely swing the balance in an invasion or campaign. For example attacking the Low Countries as Germany in 1940, paradropped 2 divisions onto Utrecht which acts as a bridge for your armoured units, meaning that they don't have to attack across rivers.

Started Operation Sealion (in 1947!) by dropping six para divisions into unguarded Cardiff allowing me to quickly ship in 36 divisions. Which probably wouldn't have made much headway against the eight divisions dug in guarding the beaches.

When attacking Gibraltar I dropped in three divisions of paras to support the attacking army by ignoring the large land forts

CurleyFurley said:

Paratroopers can definitely swing the balance in an invasion or campaign. For example attacking the Low Countries as Germany in 1940, paradropped 2 divisions onto Utrecht which acts as a bridge for your armoured units, meaning that they don't have to attack across rivers.

Started Operation Sealion (in 1947!) by dropping six para divisions into unguarded Cardiff allowing me to quickly ship in 36 divisions. Which probably wouldn't have made much headway against the eight divisions dug in guarding the beaches.

When attacking Gibraltar I dropped in three divisions of paras to support the attacking army by ignoring the large land forts

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If you think Utrecht is such a big problem why don't you just ignore it? You can easily not attack the Netherlands at all until the Vichy event, or you can just post a few infs in the Netherlands holding back the Dutch troops behind the rivers. This way you can have your tanks bulldozering towards Paris without dealing with those pesky rivers.

Hi, I'm just getting into HoI2 after a long time of never playing any Paradox games (I played EU2 and a very little bit of HoI2 years ago). Playing the tutorials, I had several problems with using paratroopers as directed by the instructions. First, it wouldn't let me drop them on two of the three enemy provinces. Second, there didn't seem to be any way to simply *move* your paratroopers using air transports (the "move" mission didn't appear). I did not have any analogous problems with amphibious assaults or with moving troops around using naval transports; those both worked fine.

Go easy if these are very noobish questions, I'm effectively new at this. (I did win my first try at a "real" game - Spanish Civil War scenario as the Republicans - but it was on Easy so it probably doesn't count o ).