are SAM sites useless?

[JoseM]

tell me the true, has anyone here seen a SAM site shoot down a bomber? i have never seen that yet and im a person who likes to bomber cities.. also i think the 16 defense to cities is crap, bombing cities is a pain in the *** now... since its hard to destroy an improvement or kill citizens. So in other words all ur bombers get destroyed by fighters before u do a real damage to any big city.

But anyways has anyone here seen a bomber destroyed by a SAM site? i havent.

 

[Mr Spice]

Me neither.

 

[napoleon526]

I've never had a SAM site do anything. I usually only build them to get the SDI defense.

 

[D. Boon's Ghost]

I am trying to think if an AI has ever bombed one of my cities, actually. It seems that they focus on shelling roads and resources, so the SAM has never been used.
Odd.

 

[romelus]

i've built 4 sam sites in all my games, for the sdi small wonder. i've never seen the sam site doing anything for me or the ai.

i've heard that in 1.18 bombard to kill is an option, and if the ai is also instructed to prefer bombing cities to roads, then sam sites may become useful again, like civ2.

 

[marshal zhukov]

Sam sites are really useless because it only protects the city square, while the jet fighter actually fights off and protects the whole of the city radius.
Jet fighter rules

 

[warpstorm]

I've had them shoot down bombers before. The big differences between the jet and the SAM site are:

The jet can intercept in a 3 square radius
The jet can only intercept once per turn

The SAM site protects only the city square
It can fire any number of times a turn