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GAGA Extrem

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Is this approach also valid from a strategic bombing perspective? A concentration in industry also means fewer provinces to protect with AA, thus higher AA concentration against enemy strategic bombers. Will this be more effective than a distributed industry approach with less AA against each enemy bomb run but more industrial targets?
This is indeed an interesting question. Imo it depends heavily on nations involved and geographic situation.
In general, concentrating your industry makes it more vulnerable to enemy attacks, since damage done to concentrated industry is more severe (less synergy bonus = more IC lost per IC damage inflicted) and repairs slower (several provinces with IC overall repair faster than a single one).

A very important factor is the limit of 10 AA guns per province, preventing the defender from creating an AAA stack of doom. However, in AoD radar adds greatly to the firepower of AAA: I played as UK and Japan was late for Pearl Harbour, so I was able to fortify Hong Kong, reaching level 10 AAA and radar, resulting in 255% (!) AAA efficiency ('41 AAA and '43 radar tech) which discouraged Japan from any bombing of the province so far.

I loaded as Japan and made a few bombing runs on Hong Kong, using 4 of their TAC III bombers with ~40 XP (7 surface defence) and they suffered losses of roughly 40 strength per bombing run (10 per squadron). Now this result doesn't look bad, but (1) this was midwar tech level AAA/radar vs. early war TAC and (2) cost was not really equal here: 4 TAC cost roughly 1000 IC days, while lvl 10 AAA alone accounts for 10 x 150 ICd = 1500 IC days, plus 2x100 ICd = 2000 ICd from radar (however, AAA is one of the greatest beneficiary from gearing, so that IC cost would be up to 30% less if you consider a heavy AAA buildup). On the other hand: for a lvl 10 AAA province you could get 2-3 INT squadrons (but aircraft also have a "stacking" limit due to air base size!).

However what I have learned from the German bombing campaign on my homeland was one thing: AAA is a tool for long-term air defence (for example in an area that is constanly passed or raided by planes on ground attack / interdiction mission), not for short-term defence. If the enemy brings enough air units (and I would say 8 squadrons should be well enough to dispers AAA damage amont the units during a direct air attack), no AAA will save your day.

Concentrated air attacks will overwhelm any AAA and radar defence. Your AAA will inflict some losses to the enemy, but even 2 STR bombers deal ~1 AAA damage per (daylight) run when targeting installations. On the other hand, AAA can be repaired quickly, so even if the enemy knocks out your lvl 10 AAA, it will fully be back in action within a few weeks.

But thanks to the fixes in AoD, AAA can finally shoot at enemy planes that fly over the province, which makes AAA a great tool of aerial defence-in-depth: Putting a single AAA level in each German province allied bombers might cross will increase their losses significantly. Even if these lvl 1 AAA will only do something like 0.1 to 0.2 damage per attack (roughly estimated for 50% AAA efficiency, reduced damage for high altitude taken into account), the attacker will have to cross several provinces - and twice per raid. So if some allied bombers would make a run for, lets say, Dresden, they would suffer roughly 1% STR damage from lvl1 AAA per run. Considering that STR cost easily 2000 or more ICd during the early war, this would mean you have inflicted 200 ICd of losses to them. Although we should take into account that STR have somewhat higher surface defence, so that damage values could be a bit lower.

So what does AAA do?
(1) AAA discourages bombers, whether on strategic (including logistical strikes and installation strikes) or tactic (interdiction, ground attack) level and is esp. useful against weaker aircraft like TAC and CAS.
(2) AAA also discourages attacks deep into your territory, giving rear areas indirect protection. Obviously useful if many IC provinces are far behind the front line.
(3) AAA helps preventing the enemy from getting air superiority over your territory (since AAA also fires on fighters).
(4) AAA defende your position where you have no airforce of your own that could protect you - or where any airforce would be endangered by air port strikes.
(5) AAA damages the enemy and thus equalizes IC losses on both sides, as well as reducing effective enemy XP gain, preventing enemy bombers from becoming more dangerous over time.


So should you concentrate IC in few provinces if you take strategic bombardment into account?

Yes - If you can afford an adequate airforce to protect your homeland.
Yes - If you already have several high IC provinces and get massive syngery bonuses.
Yes - If the enemy will rely more on TAC than on STR for bombing.
Yes - If your provinces are out of range of enemy bombers or at least have several provinces in front of them.
Yes - If the enemy is an AI (which is too dumb to make any effective bombing campaigns)
No - If the enemy is human and can make massed attacks on single provinces.
No - If you have no adequate airforce, either because you lack the IC and techs to build one or your existing planes are out of range.
No - If you expect that the enemy will be able to gain air superiority.
 
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Yes, strats were more or less useless in vanilla (and DD/Arma). Like subs, you needed ridiculous numbers to have significant effects - and their horrent cost made them more a burden for you/I] than your enemy.

But in AoD, they are simply great.

I have played 2 games as USA and 1 as UK and used strat bombers as my main units against the germans. USA can devestate the whole german posessions from France to Poland with something like 40-50 strat squads and keep the germans down on 30 or 40 IC.

The trick is to start your campaign with airport strikes. Use squads of 4 strat and commence attacks on their airfields. Since air orders now have one (or two?) days of delay, any german plane caught on the ground will suffer tremendous losses to both ORG and strength! Although you will also suffer some losses, you can effectivly knock out 4 enemy fighter squads in an airfield using 4 STR.

Once the enemy airforce is crippled or destroyed, you can simply split into groups of 2 (as long as no more enemy air cover is around) and use strategic bombing (since this will reduce infra, industry AND installations) to bomb them back to the stone age...
 

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Also, I thought AoD had split strategic bombardment into industrial and installation strikes, but not both?
Actually it is split into "installation strik", "industrial attack" and "logistical bombing". But you can also assign a "strategic bombing" mission. This mission splits damage between all three components above.
Ideal for aras that have already been devestated.


I did a Germany campaign earlier where fighters attacked enemy airfields and wiped the RAF out within a week. So I'd imagine I concentrate my fighter/int force to attack airfields, tac/cas to blow up radars/AA[...]
Never tried fighters for airport strikes... Isn't that mission dependend ground attack value? From what I have seen, CAS is also quit good at killing planes on the ground.
 

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Tested, works surprisingly well!

...but, we went a bit OT, maybe a mod can move the last few posts to a seperate thread! :D
 

GAGA Extrem

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Sound like the distributed approch is better for Germany unless a lot of IC goes inte securing air space.
That really depends. During the early game in 39-40 concentrated IC might be a target for allied units, but from 41 onwards, you should either have expaned your air force to an adequate size or taken out UK by sealion.

The most important point is probably AI vs human. Against an AI, you can more or less do what you want, but against a human player in MP, I woudl definatly advice splitting IC.

I am interested to know what you would do as Germany to counter your own strategic bomber strategy. It sounds like it might become micromanagement hell - catch them on the ground before they catch you on the ground! If both players employ the airport strike strategy then it might be worth it to put a ton of AA and radar in the provinces with the airbases instead of the provinces with high IC!
1) Micromanagement is not that bad. In general it is enough to keep your planes in the air to avoid enemy air base strikes. In addition, attacking is easy since you can just assign airbase attacks on regional scale.
2) AAA won't help you much against air base strikes. An air base strike is a deceisive operation, often inflicting up to 100% ORG damage and sometimes over 50% STR damage in a single attack run. Radar on the other hand might be helpful. I have not yet tested it, but I *think* radar penalty should also apply during airport strikes for the attacker. And in addition, radar improves your air-to-air abilites, so, yes, a few levels of radar can definatly be useful.
3) A defence strategy and tactic would have been to build a lot of INT (I think 24-32 squadrons would have been sufficent), flying on 24/7 air superiority (thus denying the enemy catching air planes on the ground), placing several rear area airfield out of enemy bomber range (at least for enemy INT/FGT/CAS/TAC, a strategy that works well for early war UK) and add thick layers of AAA and radar among the frontier provinces. The early days of the bombing campaign were costly. On defence it is of utmost importance to protect your air units from the enemy. Which brings us to our next point:

Would you say it is worth producing airbases?
Definatly. Higher level airbases allow more units being repaired and reorganized at the same time, allowing you to stack units, which gives you better odds against airbase attacks. In addtion, some rear area air bases can save your ass, even if they are only level one: Even if the enemy catches you unguarded on the ground, you can still rebase after the attack and save all units. In addition, a massive bomber campaign needs many airfields. As UK, I had 40 wings of STR in 1944, with about 16 INT protecting the island (although that should have been many, many more). Plus the US had a lot of additional air units

I've always been one of those players who has mostly ignored airpower but I tried some airport strikes with int and ftrs and WOW they kicked some ass :D
Airbase strike is a bit OP imo, at least during the early war. The ORG loss is definatly okay, but STR losses are a bit(!) too harsh.
 
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