- Static AA (aka state, province) must have a radius (aka range). Just like air wings and radars static AA must have a range that determines in which limited area the guns can effectively fire at air targets. Just as radars provide intelligence as a percentage of the number of provinces covered by radar from the total number of provinces in a strategic region, AA should reduce the effectiveness of enemy aircraft in the region. In this regard, we need to determine exactly where the AA will be located, from which exactly province the range is calculated. It may be worthwhile to transfer AA building to 'Building in province' section and limit the number of buildings in the state or limit building by terrain as experimental facilities. It will be possible to expand the range of AA by building more AA in the region maybe and by technologies.
- AA buildings must attack all planes. Not only the bombers with the active mission, but also fighters, CAS, just all enemy planes active in the region. But since fighters, CAS, bombers etc have different speeds, agility, and altitude (which is not simulated in the game atm) there should be a different chance of damage for each type of aircraft. For example, researching and using of larger-caliber guns can increase the 'range of fire', which will help attack enemy bombers at an altitude of several thousand km. Of course in the game this is all abstract and simply increases the chance of damage to a certain type of aircraft.
- Divisional AA should also play a role in the air defense of the region. The game has a trigger (num_divisions_in_states and num_battalions_in_states) that checks how many divisions (battalions) of a certain type there are in a region. Thus, we can find out that there is an divisions with AA-battalion in this region. And then it will work the same way as static AA, that is, it will attack all aircraft in the region, but with a very small chance and/or radius, since the range of unit air defense in life was very small and limited to a dozen km. During ground combat, AA primarily focuses on the defense of ground units in combat, which negates attacks on other targets outside of combat. It also means we need to make changes to the work of AA in division during ground combat. Now the AA-battalion provides bonuses for both soft and hard attack, piercing and air attack at the same time. But it is worth noting that AA guns can't really fire at ground and air targets and the same time. Air targets should be given priority. For example, we can say that if there are enemy aircraft in combat, then AA only deals air damage against air units, and vice versa, if there are no enemy aircraft in combat, then air defense damages ground targets.
These are some of my raw thoughts on how we can make AA important and brake CAS-Fighters meta. I haven't really thought about how to implement this in the game, these are my abstract considerations. I think many of you also have some interesting suggestions. Let's discuss!
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