AAs and carriers and engineers

[LLv34Mika]

Dear experts

How exactly are the AAs working? Let's say I place one IN London.
Now a German unit scouts or bombs a Hex next to London. What value is used? Is the AA attacking (attack value) the incoming German air unit or is the AA defending (defend value) because the German unit is the attacking one. Same question applies to fighters I think. Do they intercept and attack or do they intercept and defend?

Pretty important for me because I'm still thinking about what is best to defend London. If the AA attacks first then I get one free shot at any incoming unit. If London is the target do I get an additional hit (if lucky or upgraded) because then the defend value applies after attacking the air unit?

I hope that is clear what I mean. In SC2 blitzkrieg a strategic bomber was a good unit to be in London. In SC3 I'm still uncertain. What do you place there? Corps? Army? Fighter (probably not) or AA? One last detail: to what level do you upgrade or research?

Now to my carrier question:
do you upgrade your carriers? Having more scout range is a nice thing but I'm not certain how the attack values are affected. I want to hit subs harder and surface ships too. I've had situations in which my carriers did NO damage to a sub. That is somewhat strange since subs are most vulnerable to air units. Of course my carriers are set to tactical/naval mode. When I upgrade the aircraft level does that change anything? Not sure if my carriers are more dangerous for subs too or only for surface ships. IIRC that upgrade also upgrades my "tactical bomber" capacity for carriers too. But I'm not sure.

Last question:

UK engineers. Just a strategic question. Do you build any? Are they worth building? And if yes, do you make the UK a fortress or do you build them early and send them to Egypt to dig in around el Alamein.

Thanx for your help in avance.

Mika
(win-loss-ratio 0-2 so far)

[Leadwieght]

Hi Mika,
Judging from what the Manual says, AA units use their Attack values when firing at air units trying to attack hexes adjacent to the AA unit. Similarly, I think fighters use their Attack values when intercepting. However, I'm pretty sure the results of an attack by an Air unit directly on an AA unit are calculated using the AA's defense value instead. And I know the AA unit does NOT get an extra "roll of the dice" chance to do damage to the Air unit in that case.

I always try to place in Army in London as long is there is even a remote chance of Sealion. Usually it's the BEF, assuming I've evacuated it from France in time An entrenched Army in London, with and AA upgrade, is very hard to root out.
I also put an AA unit on the hex that is adjacent to London, Dover, and the Port of London, so it can protect all three. I generally invest in AA- Level 2 for the British, again as protection against Sealion (and also for Malta).

I generally do upgrade my carriers. Naval weaponry upgrades make them significantly more effective vs. surface ships, Advanced Aircraft upgrades make them more dangerous to land-based air. Range upgrade, apart from the obvious, gave them bigger spotting ranges.

Subs, unless they are in low supply, are generally not too vulnerable to aircraft attacks in the game. One can debate the historical accuracy of this, I suppose. My own impression, from reading accounts of the Battle of the Atlantic, is that in most cases, aircraft were useful for spotting subs, forcing them to dive and leading ASW ships to them rather than sinking subs by themselves. I know it happened, but I just don't think it was that common for aircraft alone to score an unassisted kill. Even the Allied air campaign against the sub routes in and out of the Bay of Biscay mostly had the effect of forcing the U-Boats to run submerged or take circuitous routes along the Spanish coast.

The game simulates this rather well, I think. Range-upgraded carriers, escort carriers, or Maritime bombers will spot U-Boats, possibly do some damage, but mostly serve to tell your destroyers, light cruisers and MTBs where to concentrate.

If I build the British Engineer (I sometimes do, sometimes don't), I use it to shore up Egypt. I don't bother fortifying Britain; there are lots of towns that can serve as strongpoints. Some people recommend shipping the FRENCH engineer unit to Egypt as soon as it's built in late '39 to help out in fortifying El Alamein line. If the French unit is in British territory when France surrenders, there's a small, but not insignificant, chance it won't surrender, but will instead become a Free French unit. Nice if it happens, but I prefer to use the French engineers to strengthen the Paris region and slow the Germans a bit.

[LLv34Mika]

Thank you

I was a bit surprised. A few turns ago in my game vs KZ (see AAR forum) Malta was captured. I had a nice tech 2 AA there. I thought it would cause some more damage and would be harder to destroy.

And the carriers are somewhat useless vs subs. Making no damage at all (in tactical mode) is strange.

Look here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: ... y_aircraft

I know, it is an abstract game and no historical simulation but one third of all German u-boats were sunk by aircraft. I think the biggest problem with carriers hunting u-boats should be their vulnerability. Any submarine attacking a carrier has a big advantage. I think in WW2 the British pulled back their carriers from escort duty/u-boat hunt after the first one was lost. Shipping through the seas running into a submarine is the worst thing that can happen.

But thank you for your help... makes sense now!
Mika

[Leadwieght]

Hi Mika,

Thanks for pointing me to the Wikipedia entries on the fates of individual U-Boats. Fascinating (and chilling) reading!

Two things I noticed:

1. In some of the cases of "U-Boats sunk by aircraft," it's clear that the kill was a joint effort between surface ASW vessels and an air unit, with the air unit getting credit for the kill because it administered the coup de grace. In other cases it's hard to tell form the Wiki entry if surface units were involved, but even if these are all examples of ASW aircraft scoring unassisted kills, the fraction is more like 1/4.

2. The majority of the kills credited to ASW air units occurred in 1942 or later, with a big cluster in May 1943--"Black May" when ULTRA intercepts were particularly strong and the Allies were sinking U-Boats daily.

Again, I think the game simulates this rather well. When you as the Allies have built up your ASW level to 3 or more, and your LR Aircraft to Level 3 as well, and have several Escort Carries and Maritime Bombers, then you will start killing or neutralizing U-Boats with air alone.

One other thing to note is that "fleet" carriers, as opposed to Escort Carriers, can't get ASW upgrades. Again, I think that's accurate. Fleet carriers were generally tasked with attacking surface ships or doing recon, not attacking subs. In all the Wiki listings, I only saw one or two instances of subs sunk by aircraft from a fleet carrier.

I know several players have expressed some frustration with the way the game simulates the U-Boat war, but IMO, it actually does it rather well, at an abstract level.