Matrix Games Forums

Well, my strategy is rather simple:

1. Destroy Egyptian runways, as many as possible, but the highest priority is given to the ones closer to me or having the MiG-21s. Exception - small airports, in their cases I'm destroying planes on the ground first.
2. The second wave, not long after the first one drops rockets and bombs to destroy enemy planes on the ground.
3. Locate the Egyptian general and shoot him down - not that hard fortunately.
4. Rinse and repeat, further and further away from the border.

Doing this results in a pretty high degree of destruction for the Egyptians and very few planes manage to take off. The AAA, however, seems pretty effective, and out of my first wave, more than 20 planes were lost. The number is higher than Israeli loss figure for the entire operation - 19 planes lost. Could you tell me what I am doing wrong?

1. My planes are flying the min altitude, normal speed. They are not flying over any Egyptian AAA or SAM positions and I am trying to approach airports from the weakest side if possible.
2. I am not targetting AAA so every rocket and bomb hits an important target instead.
3. I am only targetting runways, and later hangars and tarmacs with bombs and rockets (hangars only with bombs).
4. Fighters are ready to intercept enemy fighters upon taking off, and those are not a problem at all. All of my losses are to AAA fire.
5. I am maintaining ECM planes but SAMs are not really a problem.

Anything else I can do to minimize my losses?

the most important part of not dying to AAA is not entering the WEZ of AAA.

i'm not sure if there's much more to do than that, assuming you cannot utilize weapons with a standoff greater than it's maximum range, utilize PGMs to drop through clouds, or redefine your objective set such that only knocking out the runways is required.

if your objective requires you to continue to facecheck the AAA and your greatest technology level is low-level dumb bombing then by definition you're pretty much going to just have to pray to RNG to save your bacon.

you could try dropping from above the range of the triple A though (which is AFAIK, possible by setting manual altitude controls and then commanding the drop) the scatter will be wide but the PK% of any guns pointing at you drops to 0% as long as you stay above them.

AAA can be murderous in Command and there's not much you can do about it. There's pretty much a 1% chance of a hit for every AAA shot and that can add up quickly where the flak is dense. The scenario author can compensate a bit by making AAA crews less seasoned, so their time to engage is slower, or other methods that reduce their efficiency. But once the lead starts to fly it gets hard.

Remember that light flak is not effective above 10k feet or so. One method to use, if the aircraft has the climb/dive speed, is to approach the target low, climb outside AAA range and then dive in to attack at 2-4k' AGL before climbing again on your egress. It minimizes your exposure to flak but requires a lot of hands-on. Alternatively you can do a low fly-by with a recon a/c followed closely by some flak suppression flights before the main attack arrives.

I'm not sure what kind of guns you are facing, but some of them will likely have a ceiling (12.7/7.62mm) and some will have a floor (the big burst flak types) with a little recon you can determine which are most numerous/dangerous and try to minimize your exposure to the strongest one. i suppose the real imperative is not to fly at a range/altitude that will put you within the crosshairs of both types.

but yeah, like primarch says they are very dangerous. ironsighted triple-A accounted for most of the losses in vietnam, far more than SA-2 IIRC.