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When it comes to close air defence, anti air infantry (like the Mistral) currently offers the best defence per hex. I have often seen anti air infantry take down whole groups of incomming rockets when trying to hit the hex they are located in. THey are currently so effective because they combine a high strength with medium anti air statistic and a high initiative. Especialy the high initiative makes it very effective for intercepting rockets since it allow the unit to respond to incomming rockets almost instantly. This is wrong in my opinion because in contrast to dedicated close air defence systems (like the Shahine) they do not poses dedicated integrated radar systems which allow detection and active tracking of incomming missles. I therefore suggest to lower the initiative of anti air infantry to medium strength. THis will enable them to still shoot down cruise missles flying over their head, but too littles to act as a close air defence system. To compensate this loss in initiative, we could give them the ability to hold their ground (like the Rapier). Whith the high number of personal this unit requires, they should be able to defend themself effectivly.

I am sorry, but this has been mentioned before a few times.

Do a search with the button above this post

Take your pick;

http://www.bgforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5980

http://www.bgforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=4585

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

On the subjet of the initiative, currenlty all MANPADS have a high initiative because they are quick to reload and fast to fire. The Rapier do not "hold ground" that I have seen, they may take longer to kill but that would be because they are a hard target with a higher defense value. I do not think they would have much ability to defend themselves, these are soldiers with surface to air missiles, not much use in a ground confrontation. You mentioned they have a medium air statistic, not sure what you mean by that. They cannot hit medium air targets, only close air targets, and they can only shoot next hex, no further.

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

Sorry for the misunderstanding. By medium statistic I ment a air air attack ration of about 60% of dedicated specialised close AA units, like the rapier. What I ment to say is that if you combine their high strength number (70) with their relativly high anti air statistics 45 and initiative ability (high) you get a very powerfull and cheap rocket defence meachanism. If it would be so effective in the real world, why havent we seen it beeing using in the real world also? The reason I think is because it simply isn't.

About AA units capturing ground: Meabee this is a bug, but certain close AA unit are capable of capture enemy territory. THis makes them perfect for capturing enemy airports and airstrips with lots of enemy air planes.

About the unit initiative attrbute, am I right that units with high initiative respond faster to incomming missles than units with medium initiative (with the same rang)? If so, it would be a perfect tool to give certain unit a better missle defence ability over other systems. Although missle infantry missle system are relatively easy to reload (a few seconds) it cannot shoot in burst (like the rapier) and only poses limmited capability to detect and track incomming air targets. They would therefore be most effective in shooting down helicopters. If they are lucky, they may manage to shoot down an attacking fighter bomber or shoot down a cruise missle flying directly over their position. By lowering the AA infantry inititive from high to medium, you will accomplish exactly that, making it a lot more realistic.

I realise we are not seeing this in the real world, but we're not seeing it in game much. Both in dev games and the games I've palyed with users on the net, I have seen few ppl use the man portable systems. Everyone wants the longer range stuff.


The game is coded that AA and artillery units cannot capture territory. No one has reported a bug with this and I've never seen AA capture territory. That is not the role of anti air battalions to be able to capture.


Yes



I'm still not sure that this needs changing. Larger systems such as Patriot/SA-10/S-300 take longer to reload, MANPADS crews drop the launcher and pick up another one. That's why they are "man portable". I still see no problem with these units against helos, planes or cruise missiles. The cruise missile question is certainly one covered in the other thread...

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

you are right that currently AA infantry is not ideal for a human player on the offensive. They a slow moving and transporting them by truck simply is too much micro managing. Howerer, the computer seem to use them frequently defending large cities. I have seen them used in large numbers near their capital where they act as superior rocket defence screens.



well in that case it must be a bug because I have definetly seen AA unit capture teritory



Well I agree that they should be able to shoot down planes or cruise missles flying overhead but because of their heigh initiative they respond so fast, that they can even shoot down cruise missles that target the hex in which the AA infantry unit is located in. for any AA unit, shooting down a cruise missle targeted at himself, is a lot more difficult to shoot down then a cruise missle flying through his covered airspace.


Well the other treads mainly deals with the effectiveness of AA unit in general, in this tread am talking only about the anti cruise missle effectiveness of AA infantry.

These where likely units they bought from the World Market. Try maps such as China or Russia and you'll find they use much more advanced AA untis.


Do you have savegame of this? This has been tested extensivly. Until I see a savegame, I believe you are mistaken and the land was captured by another unit.


Not sure I agree with this. At only an 8km range for most of these units, firing at something cruising overhead or directly incoming does not seem to make much difference to me.

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

Well, it is easier simply because the AA unit gets twise the amount of time shooting down a cruise missle flying overhead than a cruise missle targeting the AA unit. That is also one of the reasons why shooting down balistic missles are so hard to soo down. They travel a very high speed toward the earth, giving the AA unit a very small window of opertunity since the the balistic missle will pass trough it zone of attack for a very limited time.

I've got to say(even though others have said it alot) that I also think that missiles are generally to easier to stop.

I'd like specialised units to do it, a missile is a small and very fast moving target not at all like a helicopter

The Russian-American attempts at missile defense resulted in a armanents agreement because it was costing the countries so much to maintain the Star Wars project inolves alot of countries including mine and huge amounts of money and effort.

For these such reasons it seems unrealistic to me, however I don't know much about it and I like not having to stuff around with missiles as a top military priority

So if you do make changes may I plead you to do so only once missile loading, firing and other orders are much quicker, easier and simplified

Some of this is being addressed in update 3. There is a new missiles related screen where you can tell the unit what type of role it has, Anti Ship for example, and then tell it to get it's own missiles to fill that role. Also, when roles are turned off, units will not engage those types of targets. We can finally keep our interceptors at mid air

I'm still not convinced the missiles are too easy to shoot down, but I don't consider myself an expert either. We have put some of these questions to our military consultants and their comments support our current way of doing things. Perhaps I'll send out another e-mail...

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

cool, you guys really played down update 3. These details your dropping hear and their sound great! When you guys said no significantly new content I didn't expect much, so the many mentions of features fixes etc for update 3 is a nice suprise.

Not only that, because the move faster, the AA unit has to respond very fast. Therefore the lower the respond time the higher initiative should be.

Since the tracking of an incomming target cannot (yet) be integrated into a infantry AA unit, the response speed is slow and therefore should also have a low initiative in the game

Another reason why this kind of systems are ineffective versus cruise missles is because there targeting system is based on infrared
and the cruise missle exaust is behind the rocket rendering the targeting system less ineffective

As you heard it....

I'm playing Venezuela in the South America scenario. I'm at war with Brazil.
I have a F-16A (INT) squadron with the attack ground units role deactivated and it is loaded with frefall bombs. It has patrol order over a brazilean city in the midle of the amazon jungle, defended by one Garrison btn and nothing else. Time to time the F-16A drops some bombs over the garrison btn and I can see them firing at then bombs. Neither the F-16 or the Garrison Btn are taking damage.

I don't know you guys, but I think that freefall bombs are quite hard to intercep, specially by a poorly trained infantry btn....

if this is the newly added "freefall bomb" unit, we notice the other day that it's defense values are all wrong. We have made changes to those values which will be part of update #4. That unit was actually added for test purposes but left in for update 3. Still not sure If I should have pulled it until I had reviewed the balance but oh well, what's done is done.

_________________
Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com