How does Air Combat actually work?

[Stalker0]

I thought I knew how Air Combat worked, until I saw 5 full health air units mercilessly slaughtered, from my mind was no reason at all. So either I have a fundamental misunderstanding of air combat, or there is a bug somewhere we need to trace down. Lets dig into it.

Air Defense: By default, aircraft suffer damage equal to their target's air defense. So for example a bazooka has defense 15, so a plane would take 15. Now how static is that number? Can it vary, lets say 10-20...5-30, etc? How much variance is possible?

City Defenses: Cities have buildings that increase their own air defense. Does this protection extend in any radius around the city? Are cities similar to AA guns in that respect?

AA Guns / Mobile Sam: This unit provide 1 interception per round to targets within a given radius. Is that all they do, or do they add any special extra air defense to units around them?

Destroyers: Destroyers get a 40% interception chance. Do they still only get 1 interception per round, or can they get interception after interception if the 40% chance keeps coming up? Does an air sweep take out their interception innately, or only if they get the 40% chance?

Air Sweep vs Fighters: Air sweeps soak an interception from units like the fighter. Does a fighter only attack the sweep if they are on intercept, or will a fighter attack the sweeper regardless? This one is particularly important because I had a target that showed no interceptors in the UI....but nearby planes kept attacking the air sweepers.

Also, how is air sweep damage determined when two planes dog fight?

Interception Damage: When your plane is intercepted, what determines the damage?

 

[Enginseer]

Gimme IGE and 20 aircrafts units to experiment with.

 

[vyyt]

All good questions, I would like to know too.

I am pretty sure the fighters intercept only when set on interception, but their range is quite wide, so even the fighters from the neighboring cities might participate in some cases.

And regarding the mysterious destruction of your planes, could there be a Flak/SAM hiding in the fighters of war? Their range is 3 if I remember correctly.

Also, do you have quick combat / no animations on?

 

[psparky]

There is a filthyrobot video about air combat which I believe is still fairly relevant:

Also, I believe the UI only tells you about units (fighters, anti-air) that you can see.

 

[Stalker0]

There is a filthyrobot video about air combat which I believe is still fairly relevant:

Also, I believe the UI only tells you about units (fighters, anti-air) that you can see.

Thanks for the video. I'll note a few things that video noted, to see if they are still true in VP.

1) Mobile Sams / AA Guns: Gain all of their ranged combat promotions when doing interception. So being in a fort, having cover promotions, fortified, etc....increases their interception strength.

2) Which unit that is chosen for interception is "random" if there is more than one intercepting unit available.

3) Mobile Sam / AA Guns: Have a range of 2. I know that is extended in VP, AA guns have 3 and Sams have 4.

4) Interception Chance (Destroyers for example) only triggers once per turn. If the destroyer missed its 40%, it won't do anything more for the turn.


You mentioned about the UI not noting units you can't see....hmm, maybe that is the mistake I'm making. Its possible he had some fighters in a city farther away that I couldn't see, might explain some of my losses.

 

[vyyt]

You could save before the bombing raid and if your bomber is mysteriously destroyed, you can reload and sweep the area with fighters first (maybe better with the map revealed with IGE to make sure you see everything) and see if a fighter from a neighboring city or an AA gun hidden in the fog of war played a role in your bomber's destruction.

 

[amateurgamer88]

From the few times I experienced with air combat, it seems rather odd. Defending against air attacks seems far easier with the AA guns, fighters on interception and such. There is even a Military Base that does additional damage to air units and force them to heal more often. Personally, I feel like a fairly viable strategy is focus mostly on a powerful army while have a decent air force to just defend your units. If your opponents attack or sweep, they run the risk of their air units being shot down. If their air units remain passive waiting for a good opportunity, you will win since your land forces will plow through the enemy as you focused more on it.

I had this situation in my Portuguese game where I was just pushing forward and added a few AA guns to cover along with some triplanes in the front line cities. Given that a city can only hold 6 air units before you get Airports, my opponent has to theoretically sweep using all the planes to avoid get intercepted. I shot down a number of enemy planes with my simple deployment. I don't know if the intention is to make it so defending is drastically easier than attacking but it certainly felt that way. Maybe it's just the AIs lack the ability to deploy their AA units effectively.

I also noticed that it doesn't take much. Usually 1 interception is all you need to take out a Bomber. Maybe with proper promotions, a Triplane/Fighter can stand a better chance but the damage you can inflict is brutal.

 

[kkkitten]

I've had my b17 upgraded Freedom (stealth) Bombers one-shot by upgraded enemy zeros; not always, but often enough to hurt