Destroyer AA

[Molve]

I always thought a destroyer should be able to switch to AA mode and shoot at planes. DD's have good AA capability and were used for that purpose to protect capital ships. Maybe give them just a 1 range, though, since they have 6 movement and an Air Attack value of like 7 or 8.

Destroyers have an Air Attack rating of [3] and a range of zero.

To work as an AA unit, automatically protecting adjacent units, you would as a minimum need an active, unbracketed, Air Attack rating and a range greater than 1. (Barring exceptional units like the StuG infantry support which despite its range 1 can shoot two hexes)

That said, I don't think naval units should need to switch modes for this purpose. The AA guns weren't the same guns as used for naval combat, they were different (much smaller but more numerous) guns. Remember that every turn you shoot at planes is a round not spent shooting at boats; that is plenty of opportunity cost in itself - essentially, the two modes you speak of are already there, since the ship can't shoot both its naval and its AA guns at the same time (which is probably not a restriction in real life).

I can understand if you want the AA range to be shorter than the naval range, and I do see how you could implement this through a mode shift. But that would make a shifted Cruiser a sitting duck (if its range were reduced to 1) while a Destroyer would actually get a bigger range!

In summary, I can understand why the devs settled on the bracketed AA ratings for ships. That avoids all kinds of problems, and besides, naval combat is peripheral to the Panzer Corps experience anyway (so it doesn't matter as much if the naval modelling isn't perfect).

[spiritxx]

ships in wwII most times defend against Aircraft, they are more mobile than ships

with offensive attack against Aircraft ships can hunt down Air units, not useful... 1 Bomber atack an ship, next round 4 AA destroyers atack the aircraft, that´s not the best idea with the limitations of turn based combat, arcraft are only in danger as long as the atack is going on, rest of defens for fleets are your own aircraft

Big Ships like CL CH BB BC ... used ALL their weapons against Aircraft - they shoot sector fire with their main guns - with timed explosion of the salvos (the german navy used this version of air defense, don´t know about others)

but to AA of Ships: one version that defend other ships i know: the british AA-CL like the Dido(named after the founder and first queen of Carthage, not the singer )