Flak woes.

[stormbringer3]

I'm beginning to think that I'm either incompetent in my use of Flak units or they're one of the more ineffective units in the game. Here's how it goes for me. Watch the AI aircraft beeline for the Flak units, watch them blaze away and almost never hit, and then watch them get destroyed. If I have a Flak unit in my core it almost never gets to veteran status because it dies too quickly. The one advantage I see in Flak units is since the AI seems to like destroying them, my other core units are left alone. I place them in open terrain and only move them when I need to. I would appreciate any thoughts on how to improve my performance in the Flak area.
Thanks.

[iCaMpWiThAWP]

place flak some 500m of things you want to defend, better to form a ring, or U shaped curve, with the open side towards your rear area, place them in the open(maybe in a solo tree), or in a high place with no LOS blocking things.
And, yeah WW2 flak wasn't that good, but not useless...

[_Tim_]

Don't rely exclusively on AAA units for air defense. Make sure as many vehicles as possible have an AAMG. Hit probabilities are low for all AA types in this period so you need volume of fire to increase the probability of something scoring a hit.

Also worth bearing in mind that some countries have infantry AAMG units. These are cheap and mobile to supplement fixed AA guns.

Despite relatively poor performance AA units have a useful capability against ground units, especially infantry and soft vehicles, so they aren't totally useless. But it is inevitable that some planes will get through. If AA defenses had been really effective the significant contribution of Allied airpower to victory could not have happened.

cheers,

Tim

[Imp]

Flak is very poor you need numbers once first air comes in try to guess when next might turn up & where. Anything with AA capability should be stationary when they come in so blast away at max accuracy. A few of your less important vehicles can try moving around so spotted easier & ending turn near units you dont want hit, decoys. If lots of air consider leap froging your units keeping AA close. i.e. only move in couple of turns after airstrike has come in. AA is not very good in WW2 buy units with best rangefinder as a rule of thumb but even so need to be on flight path or within 12-15 hexes of target to be any use. I quite often keep most of my units reasonably together if expect lots of air late war germans n good visibility for instance & fight the air war before I worry to much about the ground one the last thing I want to do is be in a firefight when the air joins in. If I have halftracks there early game role if air is around is to support AA units & or park a couple of hexes from them in hopes of drawing fire. Late war Germans rarely used them as troop transports in heat of battle anyway to valuable moving supplies to lose as not enough vehicles or petrol for that matter AFAIK

[runequester]

Unless you have a pile of them and are lucky, AA fire is likely to be pretty hit and miss, with a lot more of the missing.

If you have a group of guns covering the same area, they will bring down the occasional plane, which is rather useful. By and large, don't count on it too much though.

A few salvo's of 40mm also does wonders in encouraging enemy forward elements to keep out of your business