Concentrated vs Dispersed Bombing Affects

[pro.gamer.69]

For the past few years I've been playing under the assumption that, like so many other mechanics, the "factory bombing vulnerability" mechanic from dispersed industry techs was broken and had no affect on bomb damage. I'm pretty sure this came from testing done a few patches back, maybe by @el_nora, on this forum. However I just tested it myself in the current patch, by building up mils in the airzone in northwest Germany to the max, and then putting 1k UK strat 3s over them, and seeing how many factories were destroyed after 4 months on concentrated vs full dispersed. I queued up a bunch of supply hubs in Germany so they'd only get free repair on the damaged factories. The bombers were set to prioritize civs and mils only (though I think the modifier affects dockyards too, not sure).

With dispersed, Germany had 39 factories damaged by April, and only the dockyards and a civ or two in the airzone were left undamaged. The only non-factory damage left was to a supply hub. With concentrated, not only were 51 factories (all of the ones in the zone) damaged, but the bombers had started to wipe out the railways as well.

I'm not sure if anyone else knew dispersed's vulnerability mechanic used to be broken (or mistested, but I doubt it), but if you did hopefully you'll find this information useful. Admittedly it was only one test, but the difference is far outside the margin of error, or any disparity which could be caused by weather differences.

 

[el nora]

if that was how it was understood then i think there may be a slight ill-explanation on my part. it's not that bombing vulnerability modifiers dont work.

it's that they're useless. if you care about bombing vulnerability, you put aa in your states. the damage reduction from bombing is reduced by the maximum between your bombing vulnerability and your aa. you can get a max of -55% bomb vulnerability from dispersed with 1943 tech (excluding nations such as japan which get additional bombing vulnerability modifiers). you can get 60% damage reduction from aa right at the start of the game.

not only does aa provide better damage reduction, it also shoots down enemy bombers, which dispersed doesnt do.

the point is that if you're relying on dispersed to protect your industry, rather than aa, you're going to be disappointed. If you've already got more damage reduction from aa than from what dispersed will give then dispersed gives no additional damage reduction. if not, then build more aa, it's cheap and fairly effective at countering bombers for its cost.

 

[Terracos]

Shouldn't dispersed and AA stack? That way going down dispersed and building AA would actually counter strat bombing. At the moment, strat bombing is either useless (because too little bombers) or OP because when the critical mass is reached it just destroys everything. Actually being able to counter strat bombing but not making it useless would be a good way forward.

 

[Egodeus]

Shouldn't dispersed and AA stack? That way going down dispersed and building AA would actually counter strat bombing. At the moment, strat bombing is either useless (because too little bombers) or OP because when the critical mass is reached it just destroys everything. Actually being able to counter strat bombing but not making it useless would be a good way forward.

But should it though? If you have concentrated industry you can also concentrate your AA assets and thus have easier time countering the air raids on the industries, while having them dispersed means you will need to have much more AA to provide all factories the same kind of defense. As is you can build just a little AA to cause damage to bombers even if you don't go over the limit of giving more bomber defense than plain dispersed, but then again as mentioned, AA is cheap and if you intend to build it, why not go all in.

 

[KRBLACK]

you can get a max of -55% bomb vulnerability from dispersed with 1943 tech

Technically you can exploit tech stealing to dupe dispersed industry.
That will yield a theoretical maximum of -110% bombing vulnerability.

But other than that you are right.

Also, I don't think it is worth it to build state AA preemptively since it costs just as much as 2 MILS and only provide slightly better protection than full dispersed

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

But should it though? If you have concentrated industry you can also concentrate your AA assets and thus have easier time countering the air raids on the industries

Sending all 1000 strats to damage small lonely factory is kind of counterproductive, so they would be spread around. Besides, back in the day best you could hope for is for strats to hit a correct city district, which makes huge industrial complexes a much better target, AA or not.

Technically you can exploit tech stealing to dupe dispersed industry.
That will yield a theoretical maximum of -110% bombing vulnerability.

Using enemy strategic bombing to help your construction effort is a pretty ingenious idea

 

[el nora]

Technically you can exploit tech stealing to dupe dispersed industry.
That will yield a theoretical maximum of -110% bombing vulnerability.

slight problem with this: you need to steal a tech from a nation that currently has said tech in order to dupe it, and the only ai nation in the game to research dispersed is Germany. Germany normally has strong counter-intel, not quite nsb soviet level, but still strong. Germany also researches a bunch of industrial techs that you don't want to steal, meaning you're going to whiff often. imo it's better to dupe tools + concentrated from minors that have no counter intel, and no synthetics / resource extraction techs.

 

[duke engin]

you can get 60% damage reduction from aa right at the start of the game.

I see on the wiki that there are some modifiers averaging the state AA level in the states located in an air zone being bombed.

Can you elaborate on this? Is it enough to build one state AA in one state to get 60% damage reduction for all the states in the air zone at the start of the game? Where does the 60% come from? Where can we read more?

 

[el nora]

I see on the wiki that there are some modifiers averaging the state AA level in the states located in an air zone being bombed.

Can you elaborate on this? Is it enough to build one state AA in one state to get 60% damage reduction for all the states in the air zone at the start of the game? Where does the 60% come from? Where can we read more?

tbh i'm away from my notes right now, so i'm going off of memory here, @bitmode would probably be the better person to ask.

but iirc, the aa in a specific state protects the buildings in that specific state, by providing them with damage reduction, but not in other states in the same airzone. they do however shoot at planes bombing that airzone even if the bombers are targeting nothing within the state. additionally, if presented with available targets in multiple states within a single airzone, bombers will prefer to bomb the state closest to their airfield. as such, anti-air is many times more valuable in states closest to your opponent's airfields than in states further back (within the same airzone).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

According to the wiki, you need to average level 5 across the entire region to get maximum damage reduction/output from state AA, and state AA does influence most missions in the zone (it seems air supply is checked at state level). That seems prohibitively expensive.

Every time I have used state AA, even lots of it + radar techs + radar constructed that covers region, the number of bombers shot down was unimpressive. It does mitigate damage significantly, although AI will often just switch target zones. Also doesn't this modifier weaken if the enemy manages to bomb the AA itself? I'm not sure how much it matters if you're getting bombed this hard because it implies all kinds of other problems and you still lose a ton of industry time, but dispersed resistance can't be similarly removed.

 

[Secret Master]

it's that they're useless. if you care about bombing vulnerability, you put aa in your states. the damage reduction from bombing is reduced by the maximum between your bombing vulnerability and your aa. you can get a max of -55% bomb vulnerability from dispersed with 1943 tech (excluding nations such as japan which get additional bombing vulnerability modifiers). you can get 60% damage reduction from aa right at the start of the game.

This was more or less how I understood it, with the caveat that the AA guns will also actually try to kill bombers, while dispersed doesn't cost the attacker planes. This makes AA slightly attractive in an additional way. (And yes, I know that a proper strategic bombing campaign might focus on blowing up airfields and AA first to negate these advantages.)

But I was also going to mention that, depending on what ahead of time research is allowed/possible in a particular game, concentrated makes more sense than dispersed for many countries on the grounds that once you get 1940 fighters into production, they might be in production for quite some time, so you want the maximize the impact of ahead of time research by maximizing the impact of production efficiency. And those fighters might save more factories than dispersed ever could while killing enemy planes.

 

[bitmode]

Where does the 60% come from?

It comes from this define

AA_INDUSTRY_AIR_DAMAGE_FACTOR = -0.12,                -- 5x levels = 60% defense from bombing

Despite what the name of the define implies, state AA protects all types of buildings.

The Factory Bomb Vulnerability modifier only works for CIC, MIC, NIC, rocket silo, refinery, and fuel silo. Other than that, el nora has already said everything, I think.

Using enemy strategic bombing to help your construction effort is a pretty ingenious idea

This should actually work and end up healing the building. (Unless if running in -debug mode. That's why one does not make assert()ions about user inputs.)

 

[pro.gamer.69]

Despite what the name of the define implies, state AA protects all types of buildings.

i know (?) you don't have any of the more recent DLC, but do you know if state AA protects against logistics strikes too?

 

[Fulmen]

I'm not sure if anyone else knew dispersed's vulnerability mechanic used to be broken (or mistested, but I doubt it), but if you did hopefully you'll find this information useful. Admittedly it was only one test, but the difference is far outside the margin of error, or any disparity which could be caused by weather differences.

I'm fairly certain it worked back when I played this game a lot in MP in 2016-17 and a fair bit in 2018-19.

 

[twillie96]

The best counter is still fighters with radar. You should prioritize radar construction over state AA.

 

[bitmode]

i know (?) you don't have any of the more recent DLC, but do you know if state AA protects against logistics strikes too?

From a superficial look, it doesn't seem to protect against logistics strikes.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

The best counter is still fighters with radar. You should prioritize radar construction over state AA.

does radar do anything beyond 100% detection?

 

[Zauberelefant]

does radar do anything beyond 100% detection?

I *think* the tech upgrades AA efficiency. Recall a tooltip in that general sense. Don't know if that is affected/depending by building radar on map

 

[Anaraxes]

I *think* the tech upgrades AA efficiency. Recall a tooltip in that general sense.

The centimetric radar techs (last three, 1940 and onward) each say they provide +20% static AA hit factor.

 

[PancuterM]

Well, I always take dispersed not because of the bombing vulnerability thing, but because in most cases it's More efficient than concentrated (unless you plan on producing the same outdated stuff for years and getting no new factories).

Bombing vulnerability is just a small, secondary bonus that I rarely take into account