AA units did not historically have the ability to run around and chase planes in the sky.

They were (and are) point defense installations. They allow you to protect a single location, not large swaths of territory. If you want to protect large areas, you need something that can pursue and fire upon the aircraft. This task has been best served by other aircraft.

For the AA problem at sea, the game offers two solutions. The first is the Cruiser. With a AA value of 6 at L1, it is not bad as a point defense for your flotilla. The second option is the Aircraft Carrier. Bringing two Interceptor wings to the battle is not bad for a L1 CV.

Is it expensive to win an air battle from the sea versus land? You bet! This is why I can not think of any major encounter between naval air forces and land air forces that took on the characteristic of a daily slug fest. Carrier air raids were very much "hit and move" operations. Land based airfields don't sink, carriers do.

No, AA units were not known for forming up convoys and chasing airplanes around in the skies.

I guess one could argue there is a need for this range circle.

I would counter with a discussion of the scale of the game. The game currently allows all the ground troops in an area to be at one point. This means that units "stacked" with an AA unit get equal protection with out the added complexity of determining whether or not a given unit is inside the range circle.

For Art, the range circle allows the historically accurate tactic of bombarding with Art while not actually engaging with troops. I don't see a similar argument for AA guns. The AA gun, stacked with upwards of 10 units, protects all equally, effectively providing a "range circle" for units that are grouped with it.

One of the side effects of a range circle is the ability to create choke points and "no go" areas for units susceptible to attack by the unit with the range circle. One might argue that this could be a feature of AA guns but a counter argument is the relative time / distance interaction of aircraft and AA guns is on a much shorter scale than that of Infantry marching on an Art installation.

I believe the essential challenge here is the scale of the game mechanics. We are controlling units on an operational level, not a tactical level. Detailing the game down to a tactical level will immensely complicate many aspects of how things are done. For example, one could make an argument that every combat encounter could be broken out to a 'battle screen' that allows for units to be placed in flanking maneuvers, with held centers, fortresses and local terrain features such as rivers, bridges, mountain passes, open fields and the like. I feel that would grind game play to a halt.

Much of what I just described as 'battle screen' items are instead handled by simple ratio adjustments to relative unit strengths regarding how terrain in a province impacts unit performance.

The AA circle moves us in the direction of a tactically organized game. While those are fun, they are difficult to play on a map board that encompasses all of Europe and N.America from the Urals to the Mississippi River.

Just my thoughts. I could be either right or wrong about the correct way to model various military interactions. I have a lot of game experience ranging from squad level tactics in cities to capital ships on boards representing the Atlantic and Pacific parts of WWII. Each game system has to gloss over certain aspects to remain playable. A good game system retains the feel of the desired level of command while not dragging the player down into the unlimited details that could otherwise make a game a slog through reams of rules and days of planning the smallest details. This game seems to focus more on economics and campaign level decisions, not the equally interesting details of laying out an adequate AA defense.

How about some surface to air missiles? The Germans had a handful of these planned and develop but never became operational. Manned AA is like firing handguns at a fast moving targets, deadly at closer ranges but suck at distance. You could develop and place SAM units that would have SAF missiles you would also have to develop and produce as well.

Sure. Here is the Nike system:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike

It was a stationary system that came on line in 1953. I suppose it could have come on line earlier if the war had not ended. Getting to mobile systems took a while longer. These things were not small.

The AA circle of effectiveness just does not seem like it adds to game play in a fashion that reflects WWII combat.

Air superiority was the method to do AA. The rest of it kind of worked but only as additional parts of air superiority.

For example, toward the end of WWII in the Pacific, the USN had a problem with folks flying planes into their ships. While they definitely beefed up the AA guns on their ships, the part that really mattered was the combat air patrol. Those thunderstorms of flak were impressive but the kill records show the friendly guys in the sky were taking out many more before they ever got in range of the guns.

I agree that it is painful to build all those Interceptors. They are useless for anything else. If only someone would figure out how to strap a bomb to the stupid things so they could do bombing runs...

Anyway, good exploring the options and ideas. The design space constraints of the tech during WWII are interesting to examine, if only to see how things have changed since.

THANK YOUUUUUUUU!

I love this idea. I've wondered it since they reworked planes back in, I dunno, May of last year... Why didn't they add this? Of course, it may not be easy to code, but... Come on! Planes would be very balanced should this be the case. AA and SPAA would not be almost totally useless.

I believe (but can't readily prove) that this (AA attacks within a "range circle" of the AA unit) is working already. I have a game currently where a maybe-recently-inactive enemy neighbor has two Tac Bombers circling just out of range of my ground stack in Odessa (i.e. their patrol doesn't bring them in range to attack me.) However my artillery in the stack have a range bubble that intersects the bomber's patrol bubble, and artillery have a small AA value. The bombers have been whittled down to 24 and 26% condition. I thought they were much higher yesterday. (I'll watch what happens to them from here... If they keep going down while not fighting anything it will prove my theory.)

I think I've also seen cruisers defend a nearby city that was within their range bubble, even when the city was attacked rather than the cruiser, but again that's hard to prove.

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Edit - My little experiment continued for a few hours with the artillery's range bubble intersecting with the patrolling tac.bombers, and sure enough the bombers didn't take any further damage. So I was wrong about that... I guess?
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Of course in this game AA gun units (and infantry, AT guns etc) don't have a range bubble. They probably should be able to protect units in an area around them (troops landing on the nearby beach, artillery that are detached from the melee stack, etc), especially if anything can. (It certainly wouldn't make sense for artillery units to be more effective ranged AA than AA guns.)
The large cannons depicted on the higher-level AA units were not just to shoot down dive bombers at point-blank range - They were filling the sky with flak that made the whole area unsafe to fly through.

It would be good to hear definitively from someone who knows the details, when exactly surface-to-air combat occurs.
- When planes or L1 rockets directly attack a stack having AA defense - Of course
- When planes/rockets attack a stack that is on the move - Yes?
- When planes on patrol do their 15-minute "tick" attack on a stack in their patrol circle - Of course
- When planes patrol over a stack in their patrol circle but don't attack (i.e. fighters) - AA attack? Every 15 minutes?
- When planes fly over a stack - No? Even if it has a range circle, like a cruiser?

Your point regarding area AA defense vs. point AA defense is well taken. That said, the range of WWII-era anti-aircraft weapons was a fraction of the 30-50-70-km ranges you mentioned above. Even the Germans' big 88 mm flak cannons mounted on flak towers could only reach the bombing altitude of 8,000 to 9,000 meters, with a horizontal range of about 15,000 meters. Most other AA guns had ranges that were a fraction of that.

AA are already powerfull enough. and each unit here has a range. AA has ca. 3 - 4 KM range. Even if enemy airforceunits fly over (exactly over AA) to other point they will lose a little bit HP's.
If Someone cant use AA's he would not be able use arealdeffence AA's too. If you need areal deffence AA vor win against your enemy now, you will lose it even with areal deffency later, cause enemy will have areal deffence too.

This thread is a duplicate and will be closed. Please visit this thread to continue the conversation:

Adding range to Anti air units.