JimmyC wrote:Cost/performance wise, what is the best AA unit in this mod?
I think it has to be the "88" for most of the time. But it depends on many factors, the year, the available prestige, etc. The 8,8cm FlaK should be the best long term investment as apart from having long range AA attack it can also be used as a fairly good anti tank unit on defense when the allied tanks get closer. But it is quite expensive and if the player is short of prestige the 3.7 cm could be a better deal. Even if it has only 2 hex range, which means it will be able to reach and attack less enemy air units. And then there are those mobile AAs which can go after a specific enemy air unit, but are more expensive. So it is not easy to answere this question, IMO.
Also, when an aircraft attacks an AA or unit adjacent to an AA, i believe there is some bonus modifier for the AA to cause more damage (compared to the AA attacking the aircraft in its own turn). Can anyone tell me what this is and how it works?
I have no idea.
I'm very interested in AA recently as i am facing many Allied bombers over France!!
Well, historically the Germans made a huge investment in AA guns. Some sources claim that as much as 25% or even more of the defense budget went to producing AA guns and ammunition. However, their effectiveness was not that good and it is well reflected in this mod, which uses deducter's reduced attack stats for the AA instead of the highly effective AAs of the base game. One of the main reasons for such an investment was propaganda: they beleived that having hundreds of heavy AA guns firing in rage on the streets of the main cities was better to show the population that "we do our best", than having less visible, but more effective high flying figther planes. For most of the war the Luftwaffe shot down a lot more enemy bombers than the AA batteries. The AA arm only started to claim more enemy planes destroyed from late 1944 when the Luftwaffe had become mostly inoperational due to the high losses and the lack of fuel. Wikipedia has a really nice article on the air defense of the Reich which worth reading if you have the time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_the_Reich
Uhu wrote: I never upgrade the 37mm's to 88mm, because the difference in the performance is almost nothing, while the upgrade price and the reinforcement price has a big difference.
Which is true, but as I wrote the 88 has two big advantages: longer range, meaning it will be able to attack more enemy air units during its lifespan and the switch to AT mode.
But the fundamental problem here is with the game engine itself: there should be low flying and high flying air units as in OOB:Pacific and "low firing" and "high firing" AA guns accordingly. Historically the 3,7 cm AA guns were useless against enemy heavy bombers as they could not fire that high.
- I always transport the Italian and Romanian stationary guns with train to Germany. Even, if they needed later elsewhere, until that they add their power to the defense of the key German cities and gather a lot of xp's.
Ah, yeah and I would really like to make the players defend those vital targets instead of moving those guns away, but I have no more free AI zones.
If I had I could define them similarily to the German cities and give a penalty for allied bombers hanging over.
) , but if you know their regions of activity, you can set up guards and they will mostly handle them alone. 
