Is naval AA worth it or not, trying to do some math?

[Secret Master]

I think that is too favorable for the Aircrafts or rather with such extreme focus on AA should not more Aircrafts be lost? And consider that not the whole fleet get to use its AA to shoot down Aircrafts, it was calculated that about 60% of the Aircrafts shoot down by US navy was not shoot down by the target.

I don't disagree with you in terms of historical stuff, but let's take a step back and think of the game as a whole.

Right now, carriers are essentially nerfed by the requirement that they be screened by capital ships. If you don't screen them with capital ships, they get sunk by naval gunfire if the enemy has capital ships of their own.

This means that in HOI4, carriers are far less effective than they were historically, since every carrier battle has a chance to turn into Taffy 3 with carriers getting hit by heavy batteries.

What I'm suggesting is that if you increase the value of AA guns any further, then we might as well retire CVs NAVs entirely. The relative IC value of CVs and their planes compared to capital ships will be lopsided in favor of the non-CV fleets.

It's a three body problem, not a two body problem.

 

[Denkt]

I can't Agree that Carriers are weak right now, they are actually very Powerful due to how powerful the naval bombers are and if you use them as floating airbases you can have result like this one in which 70 enemy ships was sunk by carrier based airpower alone in one month wthout losing a single ship on my own.

Spoiler: Screenshot

 

[Taghmon]

I can't Agree that Carriers are weak right now, they are actually very Powerful due to how powerful the naval bombers are and if you use them as floating airbases you can have result like this one in which 70 enemy ships was sunk by carrier based airpower alone in one month wthout losing a single ship on my own.

Sinking mostly Tier I ships with 1940ty planes is seal-clubbing. But I have to admit that's what AI is mostly floating.

Without refitting, which I haven't seen the Ai do yet, the big starting fleets will never survive in AI hands.
I'm not happy about "parking" CVs; I would have preferred a real navel mission for that and the AI to hunt them down. Guess they ignore them? They should be easy to spot and swarm with the Strike Force?

@mpop and @Denkt
Any idea why your tests with AA-BBs created so different results?

 

[Denkt]

Without refitting, which I haven't seen the Ai do yet, the big starting fleets will never survive in AI hands.
I'm not happy about "parking" CVs; I would have preferred a real navel mission for that and the AI to hunt them down. Guess they ignore them? They should be easy to spot and swarm with the Strike Force?

It depend on the detection difference and air superiority helps here and also the Carriers are not left unprotected.

 

[Secret Master]

I can't Agree that Carriers are weak right now, they are actually very Powerful due to how powerful the naval bombers are and if you use them as floating airbases you can have result like this one in which 70 enemy ships was sunk by carrier based airpower alone in one month wthout losing a single ship on my own.

You forced my hand.

I was going to post this at a later point, but I've been testing CVs in LaR, and my conclusion is that CV NAVs are a waste against any competent player.

You may read this pdf I prepared for my MP group that discusses what happened when two of us tested various configurations of carriers and planes at various tech levels.

Short version: You don't shoot a lot of CV NAVs down with CV fighters, but you can shut down CV NAVs fairly well with a few CV fighters and tier 2 AA.

 

[valisk]

You forced my hand.

I was going to post this at a later point, but I've been testing CVs in LaR, and my conclusion is that CV NAVs are a waste against any competent player.

You may read this pdf I prepared for my MP group that discusses what happened when two of us tested various configurations of carriers and planes at various tech levels.

Short version: You don't shoot a lot of CV NAVs down with CV fighters, but you can shut down CV NAVs fairly well with a few CV fighters and tier 2 AA.

That is so kind of you! Thanks (immediately adjusts build queue and CV Wings to all CV Fighters and no bombers)

 

[Denkt]

I made a new test to see how well a 1944 carrier (all stuff the best possible) with 100 1944 fighters would do against 1944 naval bombers and clearly not much better than the super Heavy battleships, however often 20 Aircrafts (Always 20 so probably a cap) was shoot down and these was Always counted as AA casulties so I'm not sure what is going on. The fighters on carrier was not on a misison.

Spoiler: Sunk Carrier

 

[valisk]

As a thought it may be worth it to try with fleet AA under radar observation. I've found if I build up Radar along the southern coast of the UK once I hit radar L3+ (sometime around 1940) I start to see an increasing number of bombers fall victim to the AA of my heavy patrol fleets (1xBC with 3 CLs each fitted with 2x AA mix of I & II depending on last refit time.)

 

[Denkt]

As a thought it may be worth it to try with fleet AA under radar observation. I've found if I build up Radar along the southern coast of the UK once I hit radar L3+ (sometime around 1940) I start to see an increasing number of bombers fall victim to the AA of my heavy patrol fleets (1xBC with 3 CLs each fitted with 2x AA mix of I & II depending on last refit time.)

That is interesting.

 

[Voigt]

You forced my hand.

I was going to post this at a later point, but I've been testing CVs in LaR, and my conclusion is that CV NAVs are a waste against any competent player.

You may read this pdf I prepared for my MP group that discusses what happened when two of us tested various configurations of carriers and planes at various tech levels.

Short version: You don't shoot a lot of CV NAVs down with CV fighters, but you can shut down CV NAVs fairly well with a few CV fighters and tier 2 AA.

Sadly the provided informations and especially the conclusion is quite incomplete. I quite strongly disagree that Pure CV Fighters is the way to go for Carriers right now. It needs quite a bit more testing before such conclusion can be drawn.

 

[pheonicia]

Maybe we could split up land based and carrier based air to work differently. My first idea would be to have land based planes work like torpedoes, where enough AA on screening ships could prevent them from attacking bigger targets, while a carrier based plane could bypass screens and target capital ships and carriers directly. This would stop land based naval bombers from flattening fleets (given enough AA screening), without nerfing carriers into the ground.

 

[valisk]

Just a snippet from a game I'm running now, the vast majority of the Italian bombers destroyed are dead as a result of ship and land AA and this ramped up once Radar II installation was completed. (This Malta has static AA 5 which might complicate things)
I may be imagining it, and need to test more but the Naval AA seemed to become more effective once Radar I was operational.

Frazer's fleet here as an example, has only AA I on a handful of unmodified ships, without Radar on the ships, and blatted 4 bombers.

 

[Denkt]

I did a new test with 10 flak platforms, I tested with and without radar coverage and my conclusion is that radar is not important, but take a look at these screenshot. In probably 3 out of 4 cases no Aircrafts would be shoot down but take a look what happen when the AA hit.

Spoiler: Screenshot 1

Spoiler: Screenshot 2

Spoiler: Screenshot 3

Spoiler: Screenshot 4

Spoiler: Losses from AA in just a few days

Spoiler: Aircrafts against 51 flak platforms

From what I can tell, AA is very random and most of the time will miss so very luck based, the more ships in the navy the more Aircrafts are shoot down on a hit and the more Aircrafts there are the more will be shoot down on a hit and shoot down Aircrafts wont get to damage any ship.

Spoiler: 10k naval bombers vs 120 flak platforms

Spoiler: Result

Spoiler: Cost calculation

• Naval bombers: 30*10000 = 300 000 MIC
• Flak platform: 34*18067 = 614278 NIC

However that consider the flak platforms did not retreat and repair which would have made them more cost effective.

I did Another test with 10 battleship that lacked AA but was protected by 40 AA destroyers. The naval bombers did not suffer any casulties while sinking the battleships so it is quite clear that only the attacked ship will shoot down Aircrafts but as soon as the naval bombers started to attack the destroyers the suffered Heavy casulties.

Spoiler: Destroyer against naval bombers

So overall I think two things are clear:

• The more ships in the navy more more Aircrafts can be shoot down and the more attacking Aircrafts the more will be shoot down on a hit, however at the same time the Aircrafts will deal alot more damage to the ships if massed.
• Only the ship that is attacked get to shoot down Aircrafts, thus it make more sense to have AA on capital ships than on screens as screens are seldom attacked by Aircrafts so their AA will mostly be for the damage reduction.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

• Only the ship that is attacked get to shoot down Aircrafts, thus it make more sense to have AA on capital ships than on screens as screens are seldom attacked by Aircrafts so their AA will mostly be for the damage reduction.

That means:
I. Carriers need (realistic) AA more than ever.
II. Dedicated CLAA crusiers (historical Dido or Atlanta class) are useless in the game.

 

[Zauberelefant]

That means:
I. Carriers need (realistic) AA more than ever.
II. Dedicated CLAA crusiers (historical Dido or Atlanta class) are useless in the game.

Quite the opposite. You need both. AA screens protect from bombing, Capital/CV AA shoots down aircraft.

It's also more economic to have +16% production cost for 8 AAs on a CL vs a Capital ship.

 

[Hemothep]

Wouldn't that imply that the best AA are AA-Destroyers or AA-CL in all Screen Fleets?

 

[Cavalry]

Wouldn't that imply that the best AA are AA-Destroyers or AA-CL in all Screen Fleets?

the best AA is the AA in the ship, not in other ship. Depend on the value of the ship, you put more AA on it but any minimum AA is Ok.

 

[Cavalry]

II. Dedicated CLAA crusiers (historical Dido or Atlanta class) are useless in the game.

You can try dedicated anti air CA (no armor and less gun) as cheap escort for CV. But the usefulness is limited.

 

[Riekopo]

I thought ships in a Convoy battle all contributed their AA when attacked by aircraft? Maybe I was wrong. But if there is a naval battle and all the ships are together and close to each other then they should be able to provide overlapping fields of AA fire against attacking aircraft. At least to some degree. Maybe not 100% effectiveness for every ship.

This is kind of a big deal. They need to get this right.

Ever play Battlestations Pacific? Attacking a group of ships with all their AA guns is dangerous. Especially if they have those Light Cruisers packed full of AA guns.

 

[Harin]

I did 10 test, using a "Flak Platform" which is just a superheavy ship with as much AA as possible, reaching a value of 86.2 AA and parked it in the English channel.

Spoiler: Flak Platform

View attachment 556507

I gave UK 1k 1944 naval bombers and set them to hunt ships in the english channel and made war with germany, ai was turned of.

Now you may expect that the aircrafts would take some losses, but only in 1 test out of 10 was aircrafts actually shoot down and in that test 20 aircafts was shoot down. The super heavy ship was sink in 1 or 2 air attack in every test, if not sunk in the first air attack it would lose about 95% of its HP. So on average this ship managed to shoot down 2 aircrafts before being sunk.

I think that is too favorable for the Aircrafts or rather with such extreme focus on AA should not more Aircrafts be lost? And consider that not the whole fleet get to use its AA to shoot down Aircrafts, it was calculated that about 60% of the Aircrafts shoot down by US navy was not shoot down by the target.

It must be quite bad Aircrafts given that 1944 naval bombers can pretty much one-shoot any ship.​

Thank you for the test!

Is it possible that the super battleship dies so quickly, because it had no screen ships to reduce the damage of the NAVs? Is there a way to test if screens really reduce NAV damage? Maybe use your super battleship screened by 10 or even 100 destroyers/CLs with maxed AA just to see if the damage is mitigated at all?