Slitherine

Why can't he detect the fighter?

Now if I move him 1 hex away, or if I simply move him 1 hex, he will then detect the fighter.

Is this a bug? Is it being fixed?

You need to toggle "Ground/Air Surface". That was an intentional change which came with 1.14.

Maybe I am not making clear what happens.
I finish my turn with AA in air position. The enemy takes its turn and moves air units within range of my AA (88). On my turn I select the AA in air firing position and no enemy air bulls eye target thing appears on enemy air. The AA will NOT fire until it is physically moved one hex over.
Are you saying hit the "tab" key???? Why?

There are two modes in the game. Air mode and ground mode. Each highlights the corresponding units. It makes no difference for single units but if an air unit and a ground unit occupy the same hex, air mode will show the air unit and the ground unit is minimized, and the other way around for ground mode.

Now... before the patch any AA unit would ALWAYS fire on an enemy air unit when targetting that hex. That made it impossible to NOT fire and move the air unit on that hex instead. To solve this problem the rules were changed. Now you fire at the air unit if you are in air mode. You move to that hex when in ground mode.

And you switch between air and ground mode either by hitting the button in the UI or by hitting the TAB key (this was true since the game came out).

I hope this made it clear, otherwise I might try to make you some screenshots but I don't think I have a scenario ready, so maybe someone with more experience in the editor could make something up or link to a forum post were it was explained by images already.

But really its just switching between those two modes, try it. In ground mode your unit will move, in air mode it will fire.

To help clarify, I think some of the confusion comes from the fact that the 88mm FlaK is also switchable between AA (anti-air) and AT (anti-tank) modes, with the 'switch' button. The switching that is talked about here is not like that; it is switching between moving and firing instead, with the 'Tab' key (the button to change the view from air to ground). This is the button that you use to view and select an aircraft that is in the same hex as a ground unit. If you toggle this function, you can choose to move the anti-aircraft gun or switch to fire at something in range.

What KeldorKatarn explained is correct; in earlier versions your AA gun could not be moved to a hex containing an enemy aircraft that was already in range, you had to fire at it and only then could you move the gun. The problem was that sometimes players wanted to move to a hex containing an enemy airplane so they could shoot at another airplane. This was impossible without first 'removing' (destroying) the first aircraft. This sort of situation is not uncommon if the enemy attacks with a group of aircraft and there is a mobile AA gun nearby.

This was very annoying if, for example, one hex had a bomber and next to it were escort fighters. In the older versions, a mobile AA gun with short range that started the turn within firing range of the bomber but not the escort fighters ould only shoot at the bomber, you could not move it underneath the bomber to get within range of the fighters. Maybe you could move the AA gun somewhere else but then you had to practically devote your entire turn arranging your ground units so the AA unit could move somewhere to shoot at a better target. Not very practical.

All in all, some situations arose that were really annoying (well, for me at least), and made the AA units even less useful then they already were. Continuing with the above example, if you wanted to shoot at the escort fighter with the AA gun, but only the hex underneath the bomber was available because of the positions of the other ground units, the bomber would have to be destroyed first by other means... By fighters. But then it would make more sense to first destroy the escort fighters to prevent them shooting up your fighters, but I wanted to use the AA gun for that! So what did I buy that AA gun for again? It's nice to protect a group of ground units against attacks, but being unable to properly pick out a useful target makes it even less desirable to buy.

And this is now fixed; and with the same air/ground function paratroopers on foot can now be deployed on the ground or in the air, instead of forcing the player to deploy them in their transport airplanes. A very nice feature for defensive scernarios where the opponent has the first turn.

The illustrated version:

Note the Air/Ground Unit toggle position on the lower right:



^ View Ground Units = Movement




^ View Air Units = Fire at Air Units



(although my preference would be to change it to shift or alt + click as more streamlined)

Understood. Thank you.
Salute with heal click.