Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

I notice that the Japanese 25mm AA guns, units 031 and 167 shoot at planes when they are a long way away.
The same guns when emplaced, units 480 and 481 only fire at planes when they are really close.
The different engagement ranges might be about 30 and 5 hexes.
In the Italian OOB
Emplaced units 295, 390, 391, 392, 393, 570, 571, 572, 573, 575, 576, 577, 578, 580
I've checked some of these, they dont seem to fire their AA MGs or their 20mm AA at all.
Maybe one AA MG fired once.
Italian emplaced 37mm AA fires at about 700m Range but not a lot.

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

The un-emplaced guns are class AA and the emplaced guns are classed as bunkers and bunkers are coded to hold fire until units are close

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

AA assets IMHO are waste of points,unless they be mobile for anti-infrantry.
You might as well spit and hope you get a damage result,same as spending loads on A/C units they seem never deliver anything good,and sometimes it's bad on you:eek:

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

Hmm, the half dozen AAA I usually buy in the core must be a real waste then...

Actually AA does do for planes, mobile units tend to be better, but if I buy ground mounted Flak then I usually buy light trucks or halftracks to shift them about the map with.

The key to AA is having them close to what the planes are attacking - within 10 hexes or so seems best. So they do have to keep up with the advance, which is SP Flak's advantage. But then the OPFOR may see them and shoot them up, which is annoying:hurt:

All I really ask of my AAA is that they at least take a damage point off any passing plane - then it won't be coming back to annoy me.

If you play as Germany of course, then the sheer numbers of Allied and Soviet air in the end war is a pain. But that was historical, so the end war German army should probably look to converting some core units that say used to be AT assets into SP-AAA.

cheers
Andy

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

Never had an issue with emplaced AAA guns not firing though dont use very frequently.
I would not want a bunker to open up against air giving away its position unless it was virtually on top of it.

I find dedicated AAA a necessity in WWll as planes can easily make 8-12 passes if you dont wing them, thats way to much info to give away.
As Mobhack mobile even if by truck, guess flight path & have them stationary near it when the attack occurs, rather get good shots after the attack than try & intercept before it occurs. If lucky enough to have standard halftracks armed trucks they can try putting the attacker off & hoping for a lucky hit.
As late war Germans if I have one expensive bit of kit with a big gun & superior range finder fire control etc all my AAA will start round it. Its going to be one of the first units to fire as it can pick off at range. That means its going to be a plane magnet & they are most likely the only thing thats a danger to it, sometimes its hard to resist the odd German toy.

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

Ive been looking at classes and things in Mobhack, and thank you for this very handy application.
Ive been running spotter planes over AAA gun emplacements for different nations on flat maps keeping visability at 80
The USMC AAA gun emplacements unit 129 fires at a range of over a kiometer.
The Italian AAA gun emplacements units 578 and 573 fires only when the spotter is within about 300m.
I noticed the USMC unit is a fortification class and the Italian AA is in Bunker class. So I put Italians in Fortification but that didnt seem to make a difference.
So maybe someone who knows what they are doing can make the Japanese and Italian AAA emplacements the same as the Marines emplacement so they can shoot at planes like all the other AAA?

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

I hope you set the morale, experience, art command, fire control, range finder, weapon range, etc and (possibly) those of the aircraft to the same, and used same size aircraft before running "tests" as ALL these will affect sighting/firing ranges.

There is a HUGE difference in how the game handles bunkers (they specifically won't fire unless stuff is close) and other stuff. Remember, too, they won't fire if they have no chance to hit/hurt the target.

Buy proper dedicated AA and dig it in (almost always better than bunkers/fortifications, IMO - in fact that's probably true of inf and AT guns too!).

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

Fortifications have their use in early WW2. And on up til when ATGM and 100+mm tank guns are common in MBT - then they are one-shot wonders. Which is why modern armies dont really go in for such any more, unless using HESCO against small arms and mortar threats from insurgents.

The bunker classes aren't primary AA classes. A few OOB designers though plonked FLAK in them for their own purposes, probably primarily anti-tank use?. You would have to ask the original designers as to why!. Bunkers basically fire AA in self defence only - and unlike AAA classes, cannot have EW values so any SAM in them are particularly pointless.

As Scorpio said, an ordinary AA gun, or even SPAA vehicle, which will be dug into an emplacement for free in the defence, is what you want if AAA is your goal.

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

Well the USMC 1.1 AA gun emplacement will fire at a spotter plane so I dont think that is in self defence? Someone seems to have made this bunker Unit a primary AA class
I don't think any of the AA we are talking about have EW values or SAMs?
You might like to replace emplacements with dug in guns but a dug in AA gun (or even dug in on the back of a truck) has turret armour values of 0 while an emplaced AA gun has turret values of 1.
So the dug in gun can be destroyed by any weapon on the battlefield while the emplaced gun is immune to all weapons with a HE Kill value of 1, most weapons on the battlefield.
So when shooting at aircraft, the emplacement is much more likely to survive straffing than the dug in AA gun or AA truck.
To be fair the Marine AA emplacement should be broken or the Japanese and Italian AA emplacements fixed.
If the Axis bunkers were fixed to be the same as the marine 1.1 emplacement then this type of AA bunker would clearly be very valuable to Italians and Japanese when the allies have Air superiority. Much better than a dug in AA piece because of the turret armour of 1

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

You have made a lot of, what I understand to be, erroneous statements/assumptions in the above post... (some already answered by the good folks whom replied to you earlier).

You need to look again at armour values, what they actually mean, the effect of open topped vehicles, how stuff is affected by HE and what the kill value means...

Did you run your tests again with all the variables identical? what were the results? You have to compare "apples" with "apples". I don't think things are necessarily "broken" because an "apple" doesn't act like an "orange".

In my experience dug-in stuff (especially softskins and infantry) is much less fragile than a bunker.

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

The list of things you posted into an irrelevant thread in another forum should have given you a clue.

One of the most important characteristics of a unit is the Unit Class. It is the first thing one should look at, if comparing items.

One of that list was a particular unit class, the rest are not. Both were of the fortress types (there are 2 in WW2, one in MBT). But - different unit classes may do things differently. Like preferring to hold AAA fire till closer.

Fortification <> Bunker.

And, as pointed out previously - neither of the 2 fortification unit classes is a primary AAA unit, so they will only fire in self defence generally. AAA units will generally try to fire at the first opportunity. If your scenario is an assault/defend pair then any defending flak get dug in in an emplacement for "free".

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

Oh yes - fortification armour is not steel armour.

Forts are assumed by the game to be concrete logs, whatever. They are semi-permeable to all HE fire, the larger the armour value, the less so. The larger the HE Warhead size, the more so. The steel value is only relevant if firing at them with AP, Sabot, HEAT - i.e. anti-tank ammo.

Feel free to set up a test scenario with some riflemen shooting up a fort or bunker (outside range of any AT weapons they may have - the AT weapons do different effect as mentioned). Eventually they will start to get casualties on the fort's crew. Especially when the hit chance rises. Don't complain about it - that is an original SSI game design decision and it's been baked into the code from SP1 days.

The fortification classes were never meant to be flak towers. That some of the OOB designers decided to make some AA equipped is their own design decision. They are only armed for local AA defence.

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

1) In most cases a dug in AAA unit especially if its in good protective terrain like rough has much more chance of surviving than a fortified one. As said attacking with standard infantry weapons is slow so just get any sort of AT weapon in range. Generally not worth attacking if you moved wait till next turn, more accurate more chance of a kill or damage as you hit a vulnerable spot like the vision slit or door.

2) Things that effect in particular accuracy & hence range for AAA fire by guns machineguns etc.
One of the few units where I will check that I have not bought a lemon in WWll

Experience - not a lot you can do as normal the higher the better.
Unit characteristics - weapon accuracy & range, firecontrol & rangefinder.
The higher these are the better as your hit chance will improve & hence the initial range the gun wiil engage increases.
Target - targets size makes it easier or harder to hit & its speed effects how often it is shot at.
A large slow target is easier to hit & if it stays in range will be fired at more frequently in its move with the increased chance to hit it as its acquired. Put another way unsurprisingly small fast planes are harder to hit than big slow ones.

Re: Bug? AAA fire from emplacements
 

Well I see the value of repeating what I do, the USMC 1.1 emplacement long range shooting was a fluke it does happen but only very occasionally. I will be more thorough in future. I am learning.
I lined up 4 dug-in twin 25mm AA and 4 emplaced twin 25mm AA and shot at them from 150m with 30 cal MGs. In 2 turns the 4 dug in AA were destroyed in 4 turns the 4 gun emplacements were undamaged.
So a dug in AA gun is not a substitute for an emplaced AA it is much more vulnerable because the turret armour is 0 while the emplacement turret armour is 1.
So the emplaced units are very valuable when the enemy has air superiority, because they are much harder to destroy.
Maybe change fortification class so it fires at greater ranges and put all the AA into that class and put non AA units from fortification into bunker class?
For the Marine and German OOB the bunker class is empty.