Unit AA capabilities discussion (Spilt from AAR)

[mattpilot]

(1936 suffers like all the SR game do in the anti ai domain, every unit has AA capabilities).

just wanted to highlight this....

very annoying. It devalues real AA units and makes planes less useful. For a game that has such great unit and stat diversity, it shouldn't generalize in this department.

I'm not against some units having SOME AA capabilities in the low-air target area, but it shouldn't be more than 10% (at best) of its regular attack values (rounded down to 0, if not high enough).

[George Geczy]

I agree about the AA capabilities, we need to do some across-the-board rebalancing in that area. We've had a few internal-studio discussions on this, generally around the concept of whether infantry weapons were of any danger to ground-attack planes, and I am of the view that they were not a serious threat and as such we need to make adjustments.

Regarding the Nuke event, haven't seen that one before, we're gonna need to look for that, it's clearly a broken event record of some sort.

Usually when I let the AI play it out, Germany doesn't get defeated, but when it is not running on a historical script it does seem to turn out different every time.

[barkhauer]

I agree about the AA capabilities, we need to do some across-the-board rebalancing in that area. We've had a few internal-studio discussions on this, generally around the concept of whether infantry weapons were of any danger to ground-attack planes, and I am of the view that they were not a serious threat and as such we need to make adjustments.

Regarding the Nuke event, haven't seen that one before, we're gonna need to look for that, it's clearly a broken event record of some sort.

Usually when I let the AI play it out, Germany doesn't get defeated, but when it is not running on a historical script it does seem to turn out different every time.

I've spoken to my father, who did several tours as an intelligence officer in the USAF. According to what they told him in the service, the airframe loss rate to SMALL ARMS ground fire for ground attack/interdiction missions was one per 1200 sorties in WW2, and approx. one per 950 sorties in Korea and Vietnam when the US signed the cease-fire. He emphasized several times that this was several orders of magnitude less than losses to pilot error and maintenance casualties. The main threat to ground attack/interdiction aircraft was, roughly in this order, enemy air attack, specialized AAA, maintenance losses, pilot error (particularly the phenomenon of "target fixation"), and that the positions of them were more or less the same through the three conflicts.

I feel that general ground unit effectiveness vs air attack is overstated, and that AAA is modestly underpowered. We also could benefit from an "air defense suppression" type of mission. The initial phase of any conflict in the sky should be about making things safe for your pilots to operate unmolested, so fighters should try to sweep the skies, and attack aircraft go after AAA while taking care not to sustain catastrophic losses.

Naval vessels, on the other hand, probably don't perform well enough vs most NON-MARITIME aircraft.

EDIT: Balthagor, if you see this, would you please split this post off for feature discussion? Thanks.

[Balthagor]

Thread split.

[Fistalis]

I agree about the AA capabilities, we need to do some across-the-board rebalancing in that area. We've had a few internal-studio discussions on this, generally around the concept of whether infantry weapons were of any danger to ground-attack planes, and I am of the view that they were not a serious threat and as such we need to make adjustments.

This is something that the general player base has agreed on for a few iterations now. We've just been waiting for you to catch up