the Anti-aircraft guns

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    • the Anti-aircraft guns

      Should AA/SP AA be buffed? 21
      1.  
        yes (13) 62%
      2.  
        no (8) 38%
      after a lot of wars against plane spammers, i found the anti-air/SP anti-air to be kind of mixed choice for situations against plane spammers. for example, anti-air has slightly weaker damage to planes than interceptors early, an it has 2 times lower health than interceptors(interceptors have 20 health...), which can make them worthless against bigger numbers of aircraft.
      (time for a small AA lesson!)
      now, in theory, anti-air guns are supposed to cover your armies against tactical bombers, or to defend cities from strategical bombers, and in order to do that:
      the normal anti-air (in real life) uses air-burst shells (the ones included in COW probably do), which are on a time fuse. in that theory, the shell needs to blow up close to the aircraft, and destroy/damage it. this was kinda effective against anything in high altitude.
      the SP anti-air (the ones included in COW) uses machine guns, which are specialized against planes. they were used in a rather simple way, they were shooting at spotted enemy planes. they were effective against planes which are flying low (3000> alt.),
      (lesson ends there.)

      But, in practice (in the call of war universe), the AA does not do its job well against tactical bombers, they may do good if there are more AA's than tac. bombers, but AA will ALWAYS lose in a equal fight, no matter what.

      (and now, my little rant about the COW AA)
      in other words....AA and SP AA are really underpowered, and literally serve as an desperate attempt to hurt the enemy aircraft, not for actual/reliable air defense, they really need some kind of buff to make them at least decent in the COW meta.....because they cant compete against interceptor's power against air and health, the AA should get a health and damage buff!
      well, i have not seen how well do anti-air guns perform against planes, but according to my war thunder experience (its the closest thing i got that can be called a "simulator" game), AA (using air-burst shells and in good numbers) can easily shoot down bombers (same goes for SP AA for bombers at low altitude)
      This player may have been reactivated in October 27th 2017

      The post was edited 1 time, last by King Draza Mihajlovic ().

    • Yes, they are underpowered. That's why you mix in all other kinds of items for the air to hit (yes I know it is no real-world fix).

      For example, air hits lots more normal inf than aa guns, so add those to the stack. And other stuff.

      I know it's not the kind of fix you wish, but maybe make AA guns upkeep cheaper could help also. Although I am sure they'll be more effective on next fix. On smaller stacks I just use more aa (but as I stated upkeep is high).

      On enemy if there's only 2-4 aa's I can use my single sbde air wing to waste'em without much opposition (if there is no inf with them, tanks usually don't matter and sp at-s should but don't really). Then I expect about 1 tac and 1-2 fig losses.

      Sukaton
      Peaceful sleep for u in death X/ when I grab your lands !
    • I disagree that aa are underpowered. Aircraft are expensive, and cause the player building them to sacrifice in other areas. You are suggesting that a cheap, easy to build unit should be on equal ground with an expensive (in many more ways than one) unit. As soon as aircraft were invented, they became the very strongest weapon of war ever brought into a conflict. The game reflects this, and is one of the things that CoW does correctly. If anything, planes (esp strats and nav bombers), should have more range and destructive power.

      I suggest you AA guys that dont want to build interceptors (after all, they're expensive...) either change your strategy (instead of asking the game to change to fit YOUR strategy), or build lots more AAs (after all they're cheap, right?).
      “I am the flail of god. Had you not created great sins, god would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”


      Genghis Khan
    • Dixie wrote:

      build lots more AAs (after all they're cheap, right?).
      if you spam normal anti-air, then you will quickly run out of manpower...but, in other resources, yes, they are quite cheap, but, saying that planes are expensive isn't a reason to not buff the AA, SP AA costs almost like interceptors, but they are much worse than interceptors...
      This player may have been reactivated in October 27th 2017

      The post was edited 1 time, last by King Draza Mihajlovic ().

    • true draza, but spaa/aa dont have refueling times which leave the units vulnerable, nor do you have to build airbases to move them to battle. for aa/spaa you only have to have infrastructure to build, which helps economy anyway. building airbases across your territories does nothing for economy, only lets you get air units to the scene. And, just logically, shouldn't machine guns with wings be stronger than machine guns on wheels?
      “I am the flail of god. Had you not created great sins, god would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”


      Genghis Khan
    • I was not going to answer here any more.

      But: you are both right. IF they are cheap, build more. So what of certain stuff to build'em, just do it. Don't read MANUALS-I've never done so despite given info (by lower ranked players) to do so.

      Maybe I will when higher-ranked players will tell me to read manual X. Probably will.

      They do cost a lot of upkeep (nobody but me has said so), although they're fast to build. But my style of play needs that stuff they eat.

      Maybe in future aircraft could be make to target certain units as favorable targets or so, but until... I manage. I have, I will and I will conquer you.

      S.
      Peaceful sleep for u in death X/ when I grab your lands !
    • Remember that CoW is not a real simulation, there is no attack against individual targets within a stack.

      And there are much more different ground units than air units that can be mixed in a stack to increase damage and HP, therefore a player who mixed useful stacks has never needed to be afraid of airplanes. :thumbup:

      Now praise the Lord, soon the AA will be increased, then also the last one will have no more reason for complaints... :00008040:
      *sarcasm off*

      Browser games are an ingenious business idea to lure out money ..
      ..... >> more or less cleverly camouflaged as a real game <<
      .... .. so beware of caltrops, spring-guns and booby traps. :00008185:
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      The post was edited 1 time, last by Restrisiko ().

    • Personally I think the mix is about right. AA damage and destroy some planes, but remember those planes are moving at 200+ mph, which makes hitting them very difficult when the technology of the time was an iron sight on the AA gun and some mechanical swivel mechanism. Try hitting a wood duck moving at 100 mph with a shotgun sometime. The shotgun is much more movable than the AA gun of WWII and chances are good you will still miss the duck.

      If you really want to increase the effectiveness of your AA put an interceptor on patrol over the AA gun. That is what interceptors were for.
      "A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." - General George S. Patton, Jr.

      "Do, or do not. There is no try" - Yoda
    • Peter Mat wrote:

      Try hitting a wood duck moving at 100 mph with a shotgun sometime. The shotgun is much more movable than the AA gun of WWII and chances are good you will still miss the duck.
      I found accounts of male wood ducks hitting 100 mph in level flight, but color me skeptical. I've done a fair amount of bird hunting in my lifetime -- quail, grouse, pheasant, geese, and various ducks -- and I've never seen anything flying remotely that fast, especially not when they've just been flushed and are rising. Most water fowl and other game birds fly at 40 to 60 mph, and I have no problem whatsoever dropping 8 out of 10 at 50 to 75 yards.

      But, yeah, it was a lot trickier to hit a Mark XIX photo reconnaissance Spitfire with the throttles wide open. For fast-moving birds, the AA tactics often involved throwing up a wall of proximity-fused AA shells in front of them and letting the enemy aircraft run into them.
    • "Bomber Command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4 percent death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. This covered all Bomber Command operations including tactical support for ground operations and mining of sea lanes"

      Are we seeing a 44% loss of planes when faced with AA defenses?
    • F. Marion wrote:

      Are we seeing a 44% loss of planes when faced with AA defenses?
      @F. Marion, you need to get the loss rate per sortie. It was nothing like 44% losses for each mission. If the losses had been that high on each mission, RAF Bomber Command and the U.S. 8th Air Force would have been wiped out in two or three missions, or they simply would have quit flying.

      If you keep flying the same plane forever, eventually it's going to get hit. That 44% loss rate was a lifetime loss rate. Big difference. The all-time worst mission loss rate I could find for U.S. heavy bombers was 60 of 376 B-17s on a single mission in 1943, or about 16%, at a time when U.S. long-range P-51s were not yet available to escort the heavies all the way to their targets.
    • @MontanaBB

      I am not convinced "sortie" is the right measure. The time scale on the game is awkward, at best.

      I would look toward the monthly casualty rates. From your source above:

      "Through much of 1944, the Luftwaffe sustained uncontrolled hemorrhaging, reaching 25 percent of aircrews and 40 planes a month. "

      We might consider the 15 minute tick as the equivalent of a sortie and look for casualty / loss rates to be comparable at that level.

      For me, this is the kind of stuff that a war game should have built in from the beginning. If, after putting all of that together, play balance suffers, then tweak things to improve play balance. It is just plain ugly to do play balance first and then try to figure out how to make it a better simulation.
    • F. Marion wrote:

      It is just plain ugly to do play balance first and then try to figure out how to make it a better simulation.
      the thing is, some people would like it if COW becomes more arcade-ish and balanced, instead of going for more realism, i wish that the COW devs would split the maps into "arcade/realistic maps", so one side can enjoy realism, the other one balance and stuff.


      it doesn't sound like a good idea, MANY things would need to be changed, added, removed, edited, but playing realistically would be fun....i doubt that the COW devs will ever do anything about realism tbh
      This player may have been reactivated in October 27th 2017