Why CAS and Air are Worthless in Combat

[minimouse007]

First of all:
AA is a defensive weapon. Just like in the case of a tail-gunner, it s primary job is to give a fighting chance. They used them regardless how effective they have been in actually killing a plane, since it s primary job is to defend the plane/ ground units from the attacks. If as a pilot, you don t have to care about the enemy fighting back, you can choose to attack in the best possible way. Flying slowly as a cas plane heavily increases the time to aim the strike. Flying slowly also means, that you are a lot easier target for aa. SO aa in itself reduces the damage you can take. The same goes for planes: a fighter would like to spend as much time with as small speed difference behind the enemy plane to aim the strike as he can. Now if someone wildly fires at them from the enemy plane's ass, you really don t wan t to do that.
When Italy surrendered, hundreds of biplanes got into the hands of the luftwaffelllllll. They preferred these planes over the more modern ones in partisan warfare, since they could fly slowly, turn swiftly and had a great view from cockpit, so attacking partisans who had no aa guns you want a plane which can track it s target more easily, and had more time to aim the attacks.
Well why is that important?
Because aa guns are necessary in order to not get outright destroyed by the airforce, and forces the airforce to use the best planes for cas role: you can t use a strategic bomber at low level since it is an easy target for a proper aa gun. Also you can see that aa guns become "common" a lot earlier than at guns, even if we dont count those ww1 metaltubes. AA gun is something every modern army should have, but not something that can so easily counter the planes, as it's primary role is damage reduction, killing planes is more "optional".
In fact intense aa mostly "drove off" the attacks. Intense aa didn t murder huge-huge amount of planes, but convinced the enemy pilots that looking for another target may be a good idea. They just turned around and fled. AA shouldn t outright murder huge amount of planes, because that is not what it did irl. And no, i don t say aa guns should deal no damage, but that aa should never be that effective, that would stop the enemy from investing into ground attack planes or naval bombers. Sadly it is a rather large issue that damaged planes are not represented, because aa often worked like naval stuff: you damaged it, it had to sit in repair and was useless.
The polish army in 39 has 380 modern bofors aa gun, with 100 additional ww1 vintage. The total number of stukas at the start was 366 and they lose only 31 plane, despite the insane reputation they gain here.

 

[sterrius]

can we all agree that just a SUPPORT AA 1936 being way more than enough to counter CAs is a little too much? Why go for 1940 and 44 AA now? Why sacrifice land attack, hp , etc to get division AA if a small support is more than enough? Where this is balanced?

And can we also agree that fighters should be more effective at the job?

The main objetive of both land and naval AA is supression. Naval AA killed way less fighters and nav´s than people like to think.
Land AA same thing.

Killing the plane was a bonus.

 

[Denkt]

As far as I understand land based AA was far less effective than shipborne AA because land based AA tended to be light using hand driven mount while lacking fire Control and being spread out. Shipborne AA generally used maskin driven mount, central fire Control and ships probably had more concentration of AA guns.

Land based AA piece for piece should maybe be about 20% to 25% as effective as the similar piece on ship, not 2000% as effective as the ones on the ship.

In the game land based AA kills more Aircrafts by far compared to naval AA when it probably should be the opposite.

Aircrafts started to use rockets during ww2 which are probably very efficient against AA due to range making them very hard to suppress. Also allies started to search out german fighters long Before the bombers would hit the target which proved very effecitve against nullifying german fighters even attacking the airfields to destroy german Aircrafts on the ground.

 

[Monkbel]

Great discussion everyone.
Does anyone have suggestions what exact values should we set in defines in order to keep it balanced?

I want to have a game when it makes sense both to build CAS and to build AA.

 

[Denkt]

CAS give a ground support bonus in combat which nobody seems to talk about and I would say that bonus is probably more important than the damage CAS does because of how combat works but to exploit the bonus you need the correct divisions.

Mostly land based AA should be greatly nerfed in damage output. Maybe also make rocket research reducing the effectiveness of AA as Aircrafts during ww2 started to use rockets who could be fired from a distance and would make the Aircrafts very hard to suppress.

can we all agree that just a SUPPORT AA 1936 being way more than enough to counter CAs is a little too much? Why go for 1940 and 44 AA now? Why sacrifice land attack, hp , etc to get division AA if a small support is more than enough? Where this is balanced?

Also maybe add some sort of piercing mechanic so that low Tech AA is useless against high Tech Aircrafts. Stuff like the type 96 25mm, a weapon already obsolete Before ww2 should not be able to suppress air attacks at all by 1940 and especially 1944 aircrafts​

A few dozen AA guns spread across an entire division is not necessarily sufficient to counter dozens of aircraft. Most major powers didn’t have proximity fuses, so near misses were still misses. Consequently, when you straffed, bombed or rocketed a target - even if you missed you usually delivered collateral damage to other units or structures. It’s simply due to the nature of there being more to hit on the ground as opposed to in the air.

Only Heavy AA could use proximity fuses with ww2 technology.

WW2 attack aircraft (which is what we're talking about, like Stukas, Typhoons, P-47s etc) flew regardless of FlaK (AAA) in close support operations (no commander ever said "we won't fly cus there's too much flaK") and when it came to army-battalion AAA there was in either case no way of knowing exactly if, where or how many AAA guns there were in an area beforehand (just like it was hard to gauge the number of deployed tanks or infantry support weapons there were). Attack-aircraft did make a thing out of actually suppressing and/or killing said AAA during operations though if they'd proven a nuisance during previous missions though (both the Germans, Brits and US air forces had specific tactics with multiple aircraft collaborating to hound AAA emplacements).

Large bomber formations did avoid heavily contested AAA regions en-route to their targets but that's a completely different ballgame (both IRL as well as in-game).

German AA with the exception of the 88mm was probably pretty much useless as only the 88mm had some sort of fire Control system and radar access. Allied land based AA was perhaps even worse but it did not need to be good when you have 10 to 1 advantage in the air.

The most dangerous AA by far would be in the navy which probably was very seldom attacked by the enemy so the AA guns was silent for most of the time. But allies naval AA was several times better than the axis naval AA and that probably shows into how well the allies did against the axis on the seas.

The polish army in 39 has 380 modern bofors aa gun, with 100 additional ww1 vintage. The total number of stukas at the start was 366 and they lose only 31 plane, despite the insane reputation they gain here.

The land based version of the bofors gun was pretty much useless as far as I understand, atleast without fire Control computers and machine driven mounts which was lacking for land based AA.

The bofors gun reputation comes from its naval version which was much better than the land based version due to it having Everything it needed to be an effective AA gun. Without radar, fire Control and machine driven mounts the bofors gun was nothing.​

 

[sortulv]

Only Heavy AA could use proximity fuses with ww2 technology.

Light AA was usually machine guns and the like at the start of the war - so that would be part of normal infantry equipment. Not really useful to shot down any plane (planes lost due to light AA would be considered accidents, I guess), but sufficient that more modern planes actually makes for better bombers.

 

[Denkt]

Light AA was usually machine guns and the like at the start of the war - so that would be part of normal infantry equipment. Not really useful to shot down any plane (planes lost due to light AA would be considered accidents, I guess), but sufficient that more modern planes actually makes for better bombers.

I suspect Aircrafts shoot down even by 20 mm guns would be considered "accidents".

 

[Cavalry]

can we all agree that just a SUPPORT AA 1936 being way more than enough to counter CAs is a little too much? Why go for 1940 and 44 AA now? Why sacrifice land attack, hp , etc to get division AA if a small support is more than enough? Where this is balanced?.

Support AA is not enough. Play France and you will see! You can kill some CAS but you lose the battles, all the way to Paris!

 

[TheNexxus]

Great discussion everyone.
Does anyone have suggestions what exact values should we set in defines in order to keep it balanced?

I want to have a game when it makes sense both to build CAS and to build AA.

Alright. Here is what I'm going with for testing (note that I'm using a separate AA_defines.lua file in /common/defines/ as opposed to replacing the entire 00_defines.lua file). You can simply copy/paste this into your custom defines file or create a new mod with this file.

NDefines.NNavy.ANTI_AIR_TARGETTING_TO_CHANCE = 0.15
NDefines.NAir.ANTI_AIR_ATTACK_TO_DAMAGE_REDUCTION_FACTOR = 0.75
NDefines.NAir.ANTI_AIR_MAXIMUM_DAMAGE_REDUCTION_FACTOR = 0.50

This drops the AA targeting chance from 20% to 15%, the balancing value forAA equipment stats from 1.0 to 0.75 and the maximum CAS damage reduction from 75% to 50%.

Then in /common/units/anti-air.txt, I'm changing this value (which can be found under "support nerfs to combat abilities):

air_attack = -0.3

The reason for this is that the support AA unit requires 200 less manpower and 10 less AA equipment than the standard batallion (40% less manpower, 33% less actual equipment).

I'm also tweaking the base air_attack value of anti_air_equipment in /common/units/equipment/anti-air.txt from air_attack = 19 to air_attack = 15. In the event I have to dial the ANTI_AIR_TARGETTING_TO_CHANCE back up to 0.2 to offset any potential naval combat hit this should somewhat offset that.

This should help curb the OP aspect simply by adding a low-tech 1934/1936 support AA unit to a division template.

 

[DaleDVM]

I really enjoyed reading this thread. Thank you Tornadowatch and others for your thorough analysis.

To the people complaining that Germany should be using tanks in this example, to suggest that any country should not be able to win an infantry on infantry battle when the attacker outnumbers the defender 3 to 1 and the attacker has total air superiority and a huge amount of CAS support... Please, just drop it. You literally have no idea how to balance a game or notion of the realities in combat. Perhaps if you pretend that this is a battle between the communist and nationalist Chinese you might be able to grasp what is going on here and get over the armor distraction.

Who would imply that nobody should ever attack because of the lack of armor in the battle? Who is suggesting that infantry attacking infantry with CAS and air superiority should be worse off than attacking without the air support? Who is saying that a 1936 support AA gun should outclass advanced CAS aircraft and out duel them in combat? Because as of now this is what is happening in the game and it is game breaking!

 

[DaleDVM]

Support AA is not enough. Play France and you will see! You can kill some CAS but you lose the battles, all the way to Paris!

I suppose if the French put line AA in their divisions they would have been able to stop the Germans in 1940? What does an anecdote like this have to do with this topic?

 

[DaleDVM]

AA should protect units from damage based upon the quality/level and amount of AA and the quality/level of the bombers attacking it. Occasionally bombers should also get shot down. This is what happened in reality and this is how it should be in the game for balance reasons.

Now Paradox please fix this, because I shouldn't have to depend on gamers who paid you for this game to fix your errors! I don't want a mod. I want a patch. Since we are talking about just changing a few numbers around get on it!

 

[Cavalry]

I suppose if the French put line AA in their divisions they would have been able to stop the Germans in 1940? What does an anecdote like this have to do with this topic?

Some said 1936 support AA is all we need to overpower or ignore 1,000 CAS. Hell no! For France, one line AA is not enough, you may need 2 AA. But then it cost your both IC and room in templates, you infantry will be outgunned by their artillery. The German AI use 9 inf-3 arty and have 50% more artillery per width.

Not that simple to say one line AA is all we need.

 

[TheNexxus]

AA should protect units from damage based upon the quality/level and amount of AA and the quality/level of the bombers attacking it. Occasionally bombers should also get shot down. This is what happened in reality and this is how it should be in the game for balance reasons.

Now Paradox please fix this, because I shouldn't have to depend on gamers who paid you for this game to fix your errors! I don't want a mod. I want a patch. Since we are talking about just changing a few numbers around get on it!

To some extent, they do. The problem is that you have a support AA unit that requires 33% less actual equipment and 40% less manpower - but is still 80% effective. Also note that unlike the standard AA battalion unit there is no restriction on movement speed, so you don't need the motorized variant to keep up with your armor (all support units move at the fastest possible speed at all times - they don't need any motorized equipment to do so).

It's unclear what variables the game relies on for AA buildings, naval AA and ground AA (or if they all use the same 4 naval AA variables).

It should also be pointed out that anti_air also has offensive and defensive abilities - so it's not just limited to aircraft:

anti_air_equipment
defense = 4
breakthrough = 1
soft_attack = 3
hard_attack = 7
ap_attack = 25

artillery_equipment
defense = 10
breakthrough = 6
soft_attack = 25
hard_attack = 2
ap_attack = 5

 

[jju_57]

Also, as I pointed out in the main text: Fighters alone are not really worthwhile for ground combat either. Yes, they help a little bit against a pure no-air build, but the person with literally 0 planes isn't punished enough for it. They can still fight with huge walls of meat just fine; the defense debuff isn't high enough for the damage override to kick in.

You stated this but you didn't provide any real evidence as to why a fighter build is not worthwhile for ground combat.

So what happens if person A builds fighters but no CAS and person B builds AA for every division as you indicate? How would the losses look then?

In some short tests the side with AA did worse.

I'm not saying AA vs. CAS is not a problem. It clearly is. But that might be a simple balance fix on how many are shot down vs. how many are interrupted via lower efficiency. I'm specifically asking why the meta of "build no planes and just AA" is valid against a side that builds fighters. Leave out NAV's and strat bombers and let's focus just on ground combat.

 

[CrazyZombie]

Funny that land AA is also too good in comparison with such on ships. For it's cost, I mean.

As far as I remember, people still try to figure it out, what exactly does AA on the ships (and if it does anything at all).

 

[ruzen]

I agree about the multiplayer META builders balance ideas are too arbitrary; they don't want to deal with any complex stuff like strat bombers, paratroopers, fighter 2, etc.. the list goes on really.

With this small -1000CAS vs Sup AA- example, what Multiplayer's do they keep hanging on the issue rather than trying to go around it.

 

[Cavalry]

To the people complaining that Germany should be using tanks in this example, to suggest that any country should not be able to win an infantry on infantry battle when the attacker outnumbers the defender 3 to 1 and the attacker has total air superiority and a huge amount of CAS support... !

Infantry attack infantry is ok, but not the ways the test present. Because if he do it properly with artillery then he will won quickly not one month battle.
The true result from the test should be the side with CAS won even with high casualties, not the side of support AA won!

There are opportunity cost for the player to build thousand of AAs. The CAS user also have the option not to suicide his CAS if he detect high casualties.

 

[TheNexxus]

I'm specifically asking why the meta of "build no planes and just AA" is valid against a side that builds fighters. Leave out NAV's and strat bombers and let's focus just on ground combat.

I don't think you can - and that's the problem. There are air AA values that don't seem to be used at all and everything seems to now be tied to the naval AA values. So if you adjust those you also inadvertently affect anti-air buildings and the anti-air ability of ships. If Paradox would weigh-in and offer some explanations as to how these variables interact with each other in-game in these respective situations that would go a long way towards pinning down a solution without having to 'trial and error' it.

Then again, if they actually play-tested their DLC and patches before releasing them (as opposed to just making arbitrary changes) that would make everyone's lives a lot simpler. In any other game when you nerf or buff something - there's usually a detailed synopsis in any kind of patch or update.

 

[DaleDVM]

One support AA is all you need to make the Germans pay dearly for having CAS in the battle. Nobody said that it would make you win the war?

Cavalry what you are ignoring is that the way the game is currently, the German player is better off not investing in CAS at all. Why, because CAS is just an enormous added cost and takes terrible losses to cheap AA guns. The German should just research and build even more advanced infantry and armor. He should put a support AA in his units The Germans should let you waste your research and industrial capacity on aircraft and when he rolls over your French while ceding the air war entirely perhaps you will understand how silly this is.

Either way, Germany is going to roll your French...

However, I don't want to play a game where having CAS is detrimental to my war effort, the investment should be beneficial. I doubt you want to play that way either.