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Increased 33% AA "effectiveness" was changed patch, partially undoing a previous 50% reduction. The issue I am now seeing is an all-or-nothing response from HQ AA SUs supporting their subordinate units. That is to say, the first time an air mission activates HQ AA SUs, the guns will show up, whether being distributed to targeted hexes or as a flyover. However, subsequent missions will be completely uncountered. The obvious problem with this system is that one recon flight will completely disable non-intrinsic/attached AA. Indeed, surveying a front line of ground bombing shows that there is reasonable activation for one battle every 5-10 battles, and then silence except for organic guns.

I believe the issue arises after AA was made to use ammo. I don't have hard evidence (can be tested by inducing enemy ground support and putting AA in the way), but I believe that the SUs currently use all of their ammo if they are activated. My evidence is that AA SU supply detail window always adds up to them having zero ammo at the beginning of the turn, even if they only fired once. Some adjustment would be appreciated to return to what I imagine was the mini-game was in 11.xx, detection of AA concentration and then setting up staging bases to fly around them.

The current game state means recon basically disables flak SUs and imposes a non-insignificant drain on rail. It's always possible I'm misinterpreting my observations, so feel free to chime in. [:D]

Actually, here is some evidence. 4th army had 7 heavy AA SU assigned to it for a total of 168 88 mm and 42 20 mm guns.

The image shows that three recon flights highlighted in red were intercepted by all of the 88 mm's, and then they participated in only one more battle with ~150 enemy planes. The next battle in the hex, they were probably out of ammo, and the 48 20 mm guns participated. Most of them ran out of ammo, and 24 participated in the next battle in the neighboring hex. After that, nothing besides intrinsic antiair from attached support units. Of course, this represents only about 5-10% of the German AA capability, but extrapolated, this is still quite underwhelming in terms of the in-game cost of supply transport and out-of-game micro time to set up antiair.

Panels on the right indicate that all of the ammo in the units were received this turn, implying that they ran out of ammo. Again, comments appreciated. I don't expect miracles but I also think 300+ units worth of micro and decision-making shouldn't just be shoved to obsolescence. Clearly, the same mechanics affect the soviet player as well, as they will have to spend AP to save or create AA units, although to a lesser degree because it's highly unlike germans will be able to carpet bomb as we see here.