Only AA icon type conducts AA combat.

[l0ww]

Hello. I'm working on the scenario called "AGS 42-43". My problem is that any land units, except Anti Aircraft icon type units don't shoot down enemy aircraft.

For the test purpose, I've created a scenario. I made a infantry regiment which has 50 37mm AA guns, and 50 88s, and attacked it with 50 IL-2s,
Then what happened? No AA guns in the inf regiment fired against aircraft and the regiment took some damage. However, when I change the regiment's icon type to AA unit, it conducts AA combat properly and shot down few planes (I checked in "TOAWLOG" log file too. ). It all happens the same way whatever I change, the time/ hex scale, AA weapons, or whether.

So, here is my question: Is there anyway to get land units, except AA icon ones, involved in AA combat?

Thanks.

[Telumar]

Not yet. This will be fixed in 3.5.

However, there's a workaround. Modify the unit icon graphics, replace the AA icon with the infantry icon. 

[USXpat]

Thanks Telumar, was about to post asking much the same thing.

[l0ww]

Thanks for the answer. I'm waiting to die for 3.5 patch![:D]

[Curtis Lemay]

We were really hoping to get 3.5 out before this got noticed. Yes, sadly, this bug was introduced in about the middle of 3.4 development and never spotted till it was too late. I had a good chance to spot it when I checked out the AAA scale factor feature in the editor, but, of course, used AAA icons on the test units - and they worked. We didn't spot it till testing Naval AAA in 3.5 and found no ships ever did any AAA (and Telumar's work around won't work for that).

It is fixed in 3.5, though.

By the way, I'm posting this from the NE corner of Kenya.

[r6kunz]

Re:  US M16/19 AAA.  Take a look at the antipersonnel strength of the US M16= 63.  Seems high.  It is a halftrack mounted quad .50, whereas a generic track mounted quad AA has an antipersonnel strength of 14.  

[ColinWright]

Getting to be a while...it'd be an exaggeration to say the game won't work without it, but AA is a component of combat.

If you are going to take your time, rather than simply restoring the AA system that doesn't work, why not think about coming up with something that actually simulates AA's effect?

[ColinWright]

My. Things are really hopping over here.

Anyway, don't forget that sea roads also need to be restored.

[ColinWright]

Since you are taking your time, I might as well cite some figures I just ran across that support my point about AA.

In April 1942, Malta had 112 heavy and 144 light AA guns. Most of these were concentrated in an area measuring nine miles by six, covering the harbor and the airfields, which were also the principle targets.

The Germans were conducting raids with up to 250 aircraft, and while the total number of sorties isn't recorded in my source, there were 284 alerts in April, which suggests at least several thousand total sorties. 'Between 24th March and 12th April over 2000 sorties were made against the Grand Harbor' -- only.

Total Axis losses to AA for all of April for all raids on Malta came to 13 aircraft -- however you set up the simulation in TOAW, inconsequential losses per 'attack.' This under -- for the AA -- close to ideal conditions. Excellent fire control, experienced gunners, permanent emplacements, a lavish ammunition supply, clear skies...

No one is suggesting the British could have just stripped Malta of AA without consequence -- the point is that AA does not work by shooting down aircraft. However you want to set this up in TOAW, and whatever rationalizations you want to cook up, the AA is just not shooting down very many planes. Say you go with half-week turns for a test scenario covering April and mount 34 'attacks' -- or two per turn. Between zero and one plane should go down per 'attack.' Make it one or two if you want to allow for damage. This against a hex or hexes that will have units with staggering AA values in them.

Go ahead. Set it up. The results TOAW will feed back (or would feed back, once it's 'fixed) will bear no relationship to reality at all. AA does not work by shooting down aircraft. Not in the real world.

[ColinWright]

Since I suppose the response will be that attacks on Malta aren't what TOAW is designed to simulate, blah, blah, blah, I'll quote some other data from the same source (I.S.O. Playfair's The Mediterranean and the Middle East.)

This covering Rommel's successful assault on Tobruk on 20 June 1942. The initial assault went in with heavy air support. Tobruk was another target with lavish fixed AA defenses -- and by 1942, the defending infantry units would have had quite a bit of AA themselves. However you slice it, there should be some pretty respectable AA values in those defending hexes. The Axis flew 757 sorties in support of the assault, and it went through to the harbor, so the AA would seem to have had a chance to fire.

The Axis lost three aircraft in the day. Two Stukas collided. A Bf-110 crashlanded for unspecified reasons, so I suppose we can chalk up one (1) kill to the AA.

Have the two Stukas as well if you like. AA does not work by shooting down planes.

[ColinWright]

There are only two exceptions I can think of -- both of which are rather anomalous, and neither one of which furnishes sufficient justification for keeping the current paradigm.

The first are torpedo bombers. Those have to fly low and slow, and flak did indeed massacre them on several occasions. However, TOAW is not primarily about correctly simulating the vulnerability of torpedo bombers.

The second is early World War Two. It took a year or so for aircraft to learn to respect flak. While they were climbing the learning curve, flak gunners exacted some pretty respectable tolls. There's the bridge at Sedan, and I'm also thinking of the French attempt to apply their low-level bombing doctrine against a German column in Belgium on May 11th or so -- spectacular results all around.

...but they didn't try that again, and that's the point. Once air forces had evolved more appropriate tactics (in the case of the French, they were bombing from altitude by the next day), AA kills fell off sharply. Of course, the value of flak is that it forces those tactics. The more AA, the more circumspect the aircraft have to be. AA attenuates bombing effectiveness rather than shooting down planes. I suspect that is why -- for example -- the German army was able to function in Normandy at all, given the blizzard of Allied aircraft. Plenty of flak. Conversely, it's at least part of reason the Luftwaffe was often able to have a dramatic effect on the Eastern Front in 1941-42. Not so much flak.

But it's all not a matter of the planes actually getting shot down, per se. Any paradigm that attempts to have AA function by shooting down planes is doomed from the start. I mean, AA does shoot down planes, and that's a pleasant or unpleasant side effect, depending on your point of view, but it's very much a side effect. The point is that since the plane wants to survive to drop its bombs (and ideally to fly home thereafter), flak forces the plane to weave, to fly fast rather than slow, to pop up and let fly at the first thing moving rather than leisurely surveying the options, to bomb from altitude, to avoid selected points of especial vulnerability or value, etc. It cuts into the plane's effectiveness, and that is how -- at the level TOAW operates at -- it works. If one has an artillery battery with no flak at all, once it's found it, a fighter bomber can just play 'where's Waldo' with the fleeing gunners until either it's out of ammo, or there are no more gunners. If there's a 2 cm AA piece on site, the fighter bomber gets to streak over once, fire a hopefully-lethal burst, and get out of there with a nasty bang or two somewhere far too close to hurry it on its way.

Note that although in neither case is the fighter bomber shot down, the outcomes as far as the artillery battery are concerned are dramatically different. AA should work like cloud cover. Depending on the scale, etc, so much AA in a hex should divide what would otherwise be a rather generous air attack value by some other value. It's not an easy change to make, but I don't see any fundamental problem, and assuming the desire is to actually simulate AA, I don't see any alternative.

...and if someone wants to work out reasonable values for actual plane losses, that would be good too. But those losses can't be what determines how effective the AA is at stopping the attack. It just wasn't that way.

[ColinWright]

Another way comes to mind -- which would have its drawbacks but which might be simpler.

As I understand it, Curtis 'fixed' flak at one point by multiplying its effect 100-fold. Of course, that had impressive results, and a way round was hastily devised -- but there is a germ of a possible solution there.

One could have the actual losses as they were before the change -- as I recall, they were perhaps somewhat excessive but not spectacularly so. Then one could have the second calculation as Curtis attempted to have it -- only with the planes merely not counted for the attack in some way but without being permanently shot down. Immediately returned to the unit after the round?

The relative difficulty of programming this solution aside, the only problem I see with this is that the effect might not correctly simulate the actually considerable value of even modest flak. I mean, even if not many planes are shot down even with the way Curtis was knockin' 'em out of the sky, those four dual AA MG's mounted on lorries are still quite an improvement over nothing at all. One really wants a system where forces that are utterly helpless against airstrikes suffer a lot more than those that are able to put up at least some defense.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

As I understand it, Curtis 'fixed' flak at one point by multiplying its effect 100-fold.

The lie repeated. As I've told you before, I had nothing to do with that mistake, other than getting it removed. It was already in TOAW III by the time I came onboard. Nor was it anything like 100-fold.

[Oberst_Klink]

Colin,

I discovered during my Kharkov '43 pep-up version testing that AAA is working not as bad as everybody claims. Especially the interdiction routine, a/c to land and land AA defence to a/c seems to work as designed. -> tm.asp?m=3053630&mpage=1&#3056540
However, there seems to be some iffy behaviours when one uses air groups for direct support missions, but I can't pin them down or verify them in detail. As far as my scenario update/tweak is concerned, the AAA system seems to produce results *literally*.

Klink, Oberst

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

As I understand it, Curtis 'fixed' flak at one point by multiplying its effect 100-fold.

The lie repeated. As I've told you before, I had nothing to do with that mistake, other than getting it removed. It was already in TOAW III by the time I came onboard. Nor was it anything like 100-fold.

Charming guy. You indeed had nothing to do with the 'mistake.' I never said you had anything to do with the 'mistake.' It was your 'repair' that was the problem. I did note that it being a matter of a 100-fold change was only my understanding, whatever it was the change was certainly excessive, and you (rather predictably) attempted to defend the results. It'll be interesting to see if you continue to attempt to do so. At a guess, you probably will.

However, I'd rather not fight with you. Believe it or not, my primary interest is in seeing TOAW improved, not in going around in circles with Curtis.

[ColinWright]

Incidentally, I found out the total number of sorties flown against Malta in April. It was 9500 -- as a pure guess, in the form of about fifty major raids. As noted, firing against those raids, 112 heavy and 144 light flak pieces were able to score a total of 13 kills.

The gist would seem to be that 200+ flak pieces should be able to shoot down about one plane in a given TOAW 'attack.' More or less. Maybe two if you want to allow for damage. That's probably a bit excessive, but something along those lines would be starting to approach historical accuracy.

[Shazman]

Only 13 kills? There were probably more mechanical losses than kills. [:D]

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Shazman

Only 13 kills? There were probably more mechanical losses than kills. [:D]

I suspect you would indeed find that non-combat losses exceed losses to AA.

But that's really just the point. AA is very nice to have, and has a significant effect. That effect is just not expressed in planes shot down.

It's a bit like judging a police department. The mark of a good police force is the extent to which it causes criminals to change their behavior -- not how many shootings it logs. Similarly, AA works by forcing planes to change their behavior more than by actually shooting them down. Naturally, it's nice if the planes are shot down -- but that's really only a secondary effect.

THEREFORE, any system that attempts to model the effect of AA solely by having it shoot down planes is doomed to fail as simulation. Either (a) it will shoot down only a few planes, and have a negligible effect, which is inaccurate, or (b) it will shoot down a wildly ahistorical number of planes, which is also inaccurate.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

ORIGINAL: Shazman

Only 13 kills? There were probably more mechanical losses than kills. [:D]

I suspect you would indeed find that non-combat losses exceed losses to AA.

But that's really just the point. AA is very nice to have, and has a significant effect. That effect is just not expressed in planes shot down.

It's a bit like judging a police department. The mark of a good police force is the extent to which it causes criminals to change their behavior -- not how many shootings it logs. Similarly, AA works by forcing planes to change their behavior more than by actually shooting them down. Naturally, it's nice if the planes are shot down -- but that's really only a secondary effect.

THEREFORE, any system that attempts to model the effect of AA solely by having it shoot down planes is doomed to fail as simulation. Either (a) it will shoot down only a few planes, and have a negligible effect, which is inaccurate, or (b) it will shoot down a wildly ahistorical number of planes, which is also inaccurate.

Here you go. A bit of validity to your comment. The last two paragraphs are to the point.

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt/ ... lanes.html

[sPzAbt653]

... command should not depend wholly upon antiaircraft fire, but should take care to use field artillery in protecting its combat formations. In this way the effectiveness of enemy air raids is greatly reduced.

[X(]