Unit Air Attack Ineffective?

[GeneralDad]

I am trying to gauge the effect of air attack on supporting ground operations. For example, a given stack of Axis units in Italy has 127 defense factors. If I drop 300+ bombers from 15th AF + 400 FB and LB from Tactical Air on the unit it still has 127 defense factors after the strikes. The defensive cv is 128.7 if I select units and mouse over the defenders.

If I do not attack the stack by air, the defense factors remain at 127 and the cv is the same at 128.7. So, it appears that the air attack had no effect. Is this a Fog of War thing or is something broken in air attacks? Without FOW, as I remember, the unit stack value goes down when hit by a big air attack.

I am not proposing this tactic as a substitute for interdiction, though perhaps it is best to combine some unit attack with interdiction. I just want to ask why the air attack seems to have no effect. None at all?

Thanks,
GeneralDad

[cfulbright]

GeneralDad,

If you have FoW turned on, then you won't see any change in the defense value before or after unit bombing. If you turn off FoW temporarily, you should see the impact.

You also can look at the bombing results by using Shift-D and then clicking on the relevant AD to display the various days' results.

Cary

[loki100]

Just to add, the key gain to the unit attack is not really stuff directly destroyed but elements damaged and disrupted. Now you can get a feel for this (your detection level will help) by looking at the detailed combat tabs, I think its the third one that shows ground losses at this level.

In a way disruption/damage are as useful as destroyed IF you are going to attack this turn. Reason is they take no part in the ground combat. If you have a GS mission to support the attack you'll produce another round of this.

You'll see the reward when you attack, quite often a unit that has been hammered from the air will show a radical fall off in CV as the disrupted etc elements drop out. How much depends in part what you hit, clearly here its rifle squads, artillery, tanks etc that matter not the support elements (though they do more damage into the longer term).

As an aside, this is related to how sometimes you will see airpower added to a battle even if you fly no GS. If the hex has been hit by GA (unit or interdiction), for display purposes that combat is added into the display for the ground combat - no idea why this happens but it can be confusing first time you encounter it