German flak values in TBs

[K62_]

The Axis player has a wide variety of flak units available in the campaign game, ranging from companies to regiments, with variation such as motorized, self-propelled, army, LW etc. This thread will not go into the details of how to effectively employ these on-map.

A question that does frequently arise, however, is whether a particular AA unit could be more effective in a theater box than on the map. I believe that, in many cases, the answer is "yes". There are, however, a number of undocumented formulas that impact how effective a flak unit is in a TB. After doing some extensive testing I've figured out some of these formulas and would like to share them with the community.

(This thread only covers German flak units. Finnish AA can't be moved. Romanian AA can only go to the Soviet Garrison, where it is not terribly relevant. Soviet AA is almost always better on-map.)

Flak values in the UI

If hovering over an AA unit in a TB you will see a text such as "Flak L 3.7 : H 7.3". I will call these "unit flak points". The unit in the example has 3.7 low flak points and 7.3 high flak points.

If looking at the TB status you will see text such as:

GROUND
...
Flak (low) (8%): 15.37 (15.37)
Flak (high) (2%): 5.76 (18.58)

I will call these "total TB flak values". This particular TB has a total low flak value of 15.37 and a total high flak value of 18.58. (The high flak value is maxed out and only 5.76 points are actually contributed to the TB Ground value; see Der Kuenstler's excellent screen guide for more details).

The relationship between unit flak points and TB flak values is relatively straightforward. Unit flak points are divided by 10 and then summed up across all the AA units in the TB to generate the total TB flak value. In our example, the unit mentioned above contributes 0.37 points to the total TB low flak value and 0.73 points to the total TB high flak value. Should this unit be withdrawn from the TB, the total flak values would decrease to 15.00 and 17.85 respectively.

[jasonbroomer]

Soviet AA is almost always better on-map.)

In what role? In the front line or as AA guns?

[K62_]

Soviet AA is almost always better on-map.)

In what role? In the front line or as AA guns?

Any role. The air values in the Soviet TBs are never checked for events.

[K62_]

Unit flak point calculation
Unit flak points only depend on the weapons in that unit. Here are the values for the German AA weapons at the start of GC41:

Code: Select all

Weapon system                   Flak (low)      Flak (high)
=============                   ==========      ===========
20mm Flak38                     0.04
SdKfz-10/4 (20mm halftrack)     0.05 
20mm quad Flak38                0.17
SdKfz-7/1 (quad 20mm halftrack) 0.33
37mm Flak36                                     0.05
SdKfz-6/2 (37mm halftrack)                      0.10
88mm Flak18                                     0.10
105mm Flak39                                    0.08

[K62_]

A worked out example

My North Africa TB is not doing very well:

TBAf.png (445.01 KiB) Viewed 925 times

I wonder if sending over this unit would make a difference:

125th mixed flak.png (432.49 KiB) Viewed 925 times

Calculating based on the table above:

Unit low flak points = 15 * 0.17 + 21 * 0.04 = 3.3 (rounded down with 1 decimal)
Unit high flak points = 12 * 0.10 + 9 * 0.05 = 1.6 (rounded down with 1 decimal)

So, after transferring this unit to North Africa, I can expect:

TB total low flak value increases to: 0.64 + 0.33 = 0.97
TB total high flak value increases to: 0.32 + 0.16 = 0.48

Additionally I can expect the Ground(base) value to increase by the CV of the new unit. TB CVs are half of on-map CVs, so:

Ground(base) increases to: 40.68 + 0.53 / 2 = 40.94

The maximum contributions that the total flak values can make to the Ground value are:

Max low flak contribution = 40.94 * 8% = 3.27
Max high flak contribution = 40.94 * 2% = 0.81

So the Ground value will benefit fully from increases in both values!

New Ground value = 57.49 + 0.26 + 0.33 + 0.16 = 58.24 (85%)

The Air Day value will also increase, but in this case the low flak contribution hits the 10% limit and is capped at 0.82:

New Air Day value = 8.20 + 0.82 + 0.48 = 9.50 (79%)

So overall the transfer of this mixed flak battalion to North Africa increases the Ground value by 1% and the Air Day value by 3%. (What did you expect from a single battalion? ) This helps, but I will clearly need to do a bit more here!

Hopefully this all makes sense, let me know if you have any more questions about flak units in TBs.

[neaugustus]

Soviet AA is almost always better on-map.)

In what role? In the front line or as AA guns?

Any role. The air values in the Soviet TBs are never checked for events.

Though Flaks in TB still contribute to land CV requirements

[K62_]

Though Flaks in TB still contribute to land CV requirements

Yes, they do. But the Soviets still make only very inefficient use of AA units in TBs, for two reasons . First, looking at the worked out German example above (which is somewhat typical), the unit provides about 3x more to the air value than the ground value; so that AA unit will only provide ~25% of its benefit in a ground-only TB. Second, the Soviets are really deficient in low flak units, at least in '41. (You can build the AAMG units but that's about it.) And the TB high flak limit of 2% (for ground value) will be reached very quickly. So, really, the vast majority of Soviet AA is better used on-map, where they are quite effective in either AA or AT roles.