I was thinking of making a army of divisions, with each division made up of 6 inf and 6 AA sitting behind the line. When a enemy uses close air support, or tactical bombing they have to target a area and not individual units. In this way I can save division brigade slots for front line units for other things.
Massed AA
- Thread starter paperhero
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Piggybacking off of this discussion. What is the advantage, if any, to having both Support AA and an SPAA battalion in a division?
I've seen the design online that adds SPAA to add armour bonus to infantry divisions, but if so then why keep the Support AA too?
I've seen the design online that adds SPAA to add armour bonus to infantry divisions, but if so then why keep the Support AA too?
Not my favorite configuration, but I can explain the reasoning.
1) More AA = more air attack = more enemy plane losses. You could just put line AA and support AA, but some folks want space marines, so they slap AA guns on tanks.
2) While the damage reduction from AA caps out at 10.7 air attack, the impact of air superiority requires much more air attack to overcome completely. So, if you plan to fight under red air all the time, stacking air attack makes sense.
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Units not in combat don't get bombed so they won't do anything
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Based on 1940 tech (but with rather more advanced MIOs) we get the following basic scores for AA and a typical basic AA tank designed to give an armour bonus. Support AA is often used because it provides essential AA and sufficient piercing with no tungsten usage for a standard infantry division. The problem with the AA tank is it doesn't provide the piercing element. The natural partner might be to use support AT instead of the AA but that requires tungsten. I believe this is the real motivation for this division design. I prefer to use TD rather than AA-tanks but the use of AA-tanks has the benefit of lower vehicle counts and less of a reliability penalty for the gun making it rather more economical for giving a division an armour bonus.
To illustrate the point, as the Soviets I can deploy a great deal of these starting manufacture from almost the beginning of the game
but if I make it an AA tank
It is cheaper and I only need 36 vehicles rather than 40. (note that using the AA version has a greater vehicle count benefit for medium and light).
I prefer the TD option because everyone gets excellent piercing and I'm not trying to squeeze out modest improvements in production.
Note that there are slight anomalies in the above because of the MIO state later in the game when I picked up and looked at these designs.
So, whilst @Secret Master is right, I think the combination of AA-tank plus regular AA is more usually about getting the piercing from regular AA and the fact you get it without tungsten.
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