Russian air defense

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Russian air defense - 9/27/2000 4:54:00 AM

zombie

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Hello all, I am play the motherland campaign and was wondering how to defeat German airpower, i have bought all the various kinds of air defense units and nothing seems to knock those pesky stukas down. I was wondering A) Does LOS affect air defense units, i.e. if you are behind a hill and the air attack is on the hill can you shoot over it? B) Which air defense units give the best bang for the buck?

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- 9/27/2000 6:44:00 AM

Bonzo

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Yes, LOS is required to see & fire upon aircraft. The AA unit will fire upon aircraft if it has shots left, can see the aircraft & is in range. There isn't a whole lot you can do about how well your troops fire, unless you monkey with troop qualities, etc in the preferences. You can choose your AA (& all other units) wisely though. Read page 53 of the V4.0 manual. For any unit, check out the encyclopedia & look at the fire control & rangefinder numbers. Higher numbers mean more accurate. also look at the rate of fire. bigger number means more shots, can mean more chances to improve hit percentage. Balance that against cost & damage the unit can dish out. Bonzo ------------------ Robert (Bonzo) Lindsay, Coordinator 28th (North-west) Battalion Headquarters http://dreadnaught.home.icq.com [email]nwbattalion@icqmail.com[/email]

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- 9/27/2000 8:23:00 PM

Charles22

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You may not have enough time to beef up AA defense with a shorter campaign like Motherland, but the more kills you get with the units against other ground units, the quicker they'll become useful against air ones (as long as the crew isn't taking losses as well). If you have non-mobile AA, attach the cheapest vehicle able to tow it alongside it. When the enemy has withered away largely and it seems pretty safe, advance the vehicle forward while towing the gun and drop the gun. Leave the gun there non-firing for the most part, until you've knocked down some targets set up to be eliminated; like infantry squads with only two or three men left, but try to keep it beyond range of infantry fire.

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- 9/28/2000 5:52:00 PM

Arralen

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quote:

Originally posted by Bonzo: Yes, LOS is required to see & fire upon aircraft. The AA unit will fire upon aircraft if it has shots left, can see the aircraft & is in range

Had similar experience lately .. my 20mm AA didn't even try to shoot at the StuKas .. and looking around I found that the range for the guns was set to "7" as default. I don't know how this happened, but after setting range to 20 (visibility was 18) 4 guns shot down 2 Ju87 and damaged 1 of 2 Ju217 .. pretty good for "newbie crews" I think

So go and check not only for good LOS but set the range of all your guns (not necessarily only the dedicated AA guns - there are lots of AA-MG on vehicles as well) to a appropiate value. holpe this is helpful Arralen

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- 9/28/2000 8:10:00 PM

Charles22

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It's always been my theory, that terrain doesn't block AA-to-air LOS very much, because the air is 'above' the AA unit, not at the same level or below. I've always tried to put my guns with good LOS, hopefully on hills. I suppose one could experiment and buy only one AA unit, whilst playing both sides, and have the air fly fairly close to the AA and see if the AA will spot it, if the AA has practically no LOS out of it's hex. My guess is that it will open up. It also seems to me that AA units ignore the range set on them and fire beyond that, against air.

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- 9/28/2000 8:19:00 PM

Fredde

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Another little advice, perhaps obvious.. but the best way to defeat air attacks is to deploy your ground troops as good as possible. Keep the distance between your units, don't mass them, especially not on clear ground. Use the terrain, forest, rough, buildings etc etc are great protection against air assaults. The AI loves to bombard tanks, keep your AA guns close to the tanks with the range tuned down so they will take close range shots with higher percentage to hit (haven't tried this in SPWAW but worked perfectly in SP3).

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- 9/29/2000 12:35:00 PM

Grisha

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Like Freddie says, keep your units in good terrain. Also, if you can buy one 37mm platoon as part of your core, and buy another as part of your auxiliary forces. With two platoons of AA you should be doing damage to the Luftwaffe. In one game I shot down 2 Ju 87s (but only after they dropped their ordinance). Also, remember from 1942-42 the Luftwaffe owned the Russian skies. Only from 1943 on, did the VVS begin to become effective in contesting the skies from the Germans. So, expect to get beaten by the Luftwaffe a few times until 1943. [This message has been edited by Grisha (edited September 29, 2000).]

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- 9/29/2000 11:03:00 PM

Kluckenbill

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I too got pounded by German planes in the Motherland Campaign. I found (as earlier posted) that the opportunity fire ranges were set too short so my AAA didn't fire. I reset the ranges and replayed the turn; it was somewhat better, I damaged the planes but I still got pounded. I have an observation and a question: The 37's seem to be much more effective in the anti-aircraft role than are the 76's (I have 2 sections of each) this is historically accurate against low flying aircraft, but my experience is that German 88's are MUCH better than the Russian 76's against aircraft. I suppose this is reasonable based on gun and crew quality. My question is; is the effectiveness of the aircraft's bombing run reduced when the plane is damaged? I don't think damaged planes return, but that's not particularly important since most planes only have one bomb load anyway. It seems to me that the planes bomb with the same effectiveness whether or not they are damaged, which seems unrealistic.

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- 9/30/2000 1:39:00 AM

Ballan

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THE CHANCES OF AN AA GUN SHOOTING DOWN A PLANE IN WW2 WAS REMOTE. FOR EXAMPLE THE AVERAGE RATIO FOR AN 88mm GUN WAS 15,000 ROUNDS PER ENEMY PLANE DESTROYED OFFICALLY. THE BIGGER GUNS WERE MAINLY USED AGAINST THE SLOWER MOVING BOMBERS, THE JABOs WERE AGAIN MUCH HARDER TO DESTROY. THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE AA WAS DETERING THE ACCURATE BOMBING AND DISRUPYING THE FORMATION OF THE BOMBERS

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- 9/30/2000 10:07:00 AM

Kluckenbill

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I agree that it was hard for an AA gun to shoot down a plane. I would not place too much credence on the rounds per plane number however. Remember those 88's were mainly shooting at high flying B17s and Lancasters, often at night. I am curious about how SPWAW handles AAA. 1. Are the big guns (76, 85, 88, 90 ets. better against level bombers and poor against fighter bombers? They should be. 2. Can bombers and fighters be pinned or disrupted by hits or near misses? It seems reasonable that a pilot being shot at by a couple of light 20mm or 40mm AAA guns will be less enthusiastic about carrying home the attack, certainly if he's taken a round or two through the wing. During my misspent youth, I spent a few weeks (at Todendorf on the Baltic Sea) learning to shoot .50 cal (M2HBs) at airplanes. I shot thousands of rounds at towed target sleeves (about as much fun as a guy can have standing up) and I can tell you, even at slow speeds under controlled conditions, it is pretty hard to hit a plane a couple of hundred yards away going a couple of hundred miles per hour. I imagine it would be easier to hit if it was coming right at you, but then there would be some psychological factors at play too.

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- 9/30/2000 10:19:00 AM

Paul Vebber

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Planes are planes in SP:WaW - all are basically the same. They can acquire suppression during their run in if they take damage, reducing their chance of a "direct hit" but close is good enough for most bombs.

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- 9/30/2000 2:00:00 PM

Grisha

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Paul, It is a little strange that 88mm AA is as effective as it is against fighters, or tactical bombers. Like people have stated above 88mm AA was mainly for high altitude attack, or at least a level bombing attack like those done by B-17s, B-25s, Ju 88s, etc. It was very ineffective against tactical bombing, simply because it could not track low, fast moving targets, much less try to pre-assign a good distance for the fuse to detonate. The smaller AA, like 40mm and below, were mainly for the purpose of defending against tactical bombing. Maybe SPWAW code could be modified to make 75mm and above AA mostly effective against medium bombers, while the 40mm and below AA would have much better chances of hits against tactical fighters/bombers. Kluckenbill, Shooting a plane coming right at you is a lot easier to hit, especially if they are dive-bombing. In fact, by 1943 the Luftwaffe discontinued dive-bombing, because the newer, high velocity AA (37mm, usually) was devastating. [This message has been edited by Grisha (edited September 30, 2000).]

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- 10/1/2000 1:19:00 AM

Bonzo

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"Maybe SPWAW code could be modified to make 75mm and above AA mostly effective against medium bombers, while the 40mm and below AA would have much better chances of hits against tactical fighters/bombers." Great Idea, but this isn't a bug & at this stage of development, trying to add this to SPWaW is probably not possible or would add an inordinant amount of bugs/development time to this free game. Is this something that should be considered for their next game of this genre? YES!! Do I think that SPWaW should be considered "done" after the V4.1 patch? yes. Why do you think that the patch is taking so long to come out? It is "Mature code". it's been pulled and tweaked and stretched to the limits. Change one thing, something else breaks. Fix that, three other things act odd. It is an amazing game now, considering where it started. But that original game is still the foundation of the game & certain decisions made at the start of the project have set the limits on what is possible today. Bonzo ------------------ Robert (Bonzo) Lindsay, Coordinator 28th (North-west) Battalion Headquarters http://dreadnaught.home.icq.com [email]nwbattalion@icqmail.com[/email]

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- 10/3/2000 4:06:00 AM

zombie

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Okay guys, thanks for all your helpfull comments, that cleared up my question. P.S. I won a decisive campaign victory anyway

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- 10/3/2000 4:22:00 AM

Charles22

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In 1943 the Luftwaffe stopped dive-bombing due to more effective AA? Where's the source for that info? The Battle of Kursk (7/43) was well known as an attempt at en masse dive-bombers attacking, but was fouled up by so much smoke from the ground battle. I have a book on Rudel at home. You'll have to explain to me how he knocked out an IS3 without dive-bombing on it ('45), which a picture shows clearly destroyed.

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