Air Defense: flaks vs. fighters?

[Lord Jimbob]

What's better for defending against enemy bombers- flaks, w/ "def 6/ anti-air 2" (whatever that means) or fighters w/ 4/2/3 A/D/B?

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Fighters have a bigger range and have a better chance of shooting them down, 4 instead of 2, but they can be shot down by the other aircrafts defense and are totally hopeless when attacked by ground units. Flak i believe are cheaper, only guard the tile they are on, one shot kill, so if it fires at the plane and hits the plane goes down, and has rifleman equivalent defense stats.

 

[Lord Jimbob]

great- thanks CPZ. I'll try a mix of the two with a few flaks on my critical resources w/in range of his bombers- that'll put a little sting into his bombing runs! BTW- is there any advantage to having stacks of flaks- i.e. if one bomber flies over, do you get multiple shots at the plane, or is it one-on-one, and if you had lines of flaks, would they shoot down bombers flying overhead, or does the tile w/ the flak have to get attacked? Thanks!

 

[kb2tvl]

I do not think you need a barracks for flak and flak can not be destroyed but they are not as powerful as a fighter nor as moble.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

I think stacking flaks in a city increase the chance of the plane being intercepted. As the RNG would run through every one of your flak and say wether it will hit or not, and as mentioned before 1 shot kill with flak.

 

[homeyg]

Originally posted by kb2tvl
I do not think you need a barracks for flak and flak can not be destroyed but they are not as powerful as a fighter nor as moble.

A flak can be destroyed because of the lethal bombard (the flak has hit points). Multiple bombers could bomb the square (the flak can only shoot down a plane once per turn, just like the fighter can only attempt to shoot down a plane once per turn) with the flak in it, reducing its hit points until it is destroyed. Technically, a whole stack of flaks could be destroyed once every flak got its chance to attack an incoming plane.
You do need a barracks to make veteran flaks. When it's not using its air defense component it's treated like a regular unit (all of this goes for mobile sams too).

 

[Speedo]

Flaks advantage is that it isn't limited to cities/airbases. If you're sending an attack against an enemy that has bombers, you'll want that flak.

Ideally in a city I'd have flak and fighters, but if you can only have one... *shrug*