Anti-Air or Interceptor / Rocket Fighter?

Ok, let's try to be more helpful

There are times when air power is not working for you. The opponent has built up critical mass. They have the numbers. They have technical superiority. I've been in these situations. It's not easy. When this happens, you have 2 options.

1. Skip the propeller fighters on the Air tab. Go to the Secret tab and leapfrog the opponent with jet fighters. You are going to need a lot of rares, and high level secret plants, so this is not for poor countries. It helps if you have allies who can feed you thousands of rares per day. Jets have a short range, but this is not an issue if you are playing defense. They don't have far to fly. Bombers are coming to you. Patrol over their strike locations or patrol to intersect their patrols. Kill the enemy fighters first, and then focus on the bombers, if you can. It's possible to come back and win air superiority this way.

2. Give up on the air force completely. Research and build the best AA defense you can. Most players neglect AA guns completely, or walk around with a handful of level 1 guns as a show of force. That's not going to work against a determined air force. If the enemy is flying level 3 bombers, you should be building level 3-4 AA guns. This is not a sideshow, this requires serious investment. And in some cases it's a better option, especially if you already have high level ordnance plants but lack high level secret factories. Play to your strengths. Keep your AA in stacks of 5-10 and stack them with your armies. The opponent will not be able to hurt your units. Push the border out, beat the enemy on the ground, and their air force will not be able to stop you.

It's hard to play when the enemy has air superiority. But it is possible. Good luck!

z00mz00m wrote:

Ok, let's try to be more helpful

There are times when air power is not working for you. The opponent has built up critical mass. They have the numbers. They have technical superiority. I've been in these situations. It's not easy. When this happens, you have 2 options.

1. Skip the propeller fighters on the Air tab. Go to the Secret tab and leapfrog the opponent with jet fighters. You are going to need a lot of rares, and high level secret plants, so this is not for poor countries. It helps if you have allies who can feed you thousands of rares per day. Jets have a short range, but this is not an issue if you are playing defense. They don't have far to fly. Bombers are coming to you. Patrol over their strike locations or patrol to intersect their patrols. Kill the enemy fighters first, and then focus on the bombers, if you can. It's possible to come back and win air superiority this way.

2. Give up on the air force completely. Research and build the best AA defense you can. Most players neglect AA guns completely, or walk around with a handful of level 1 guns as a show of force. That's not going to work against a determined air force. If the enemy is flying level 3 bombers, you should be building level 3-4 AA guns. This is not a sideshow, this requires serious investment. And in some cases it's a better option, especially if you already have high level ordnance plants but lack high level secret factories. Play to your strengths. Keep your AA in stacks of 5-10 and stack them with your armies. The opponent will not be able to hurt your units. Push the border out, beat the enemy on the ground, and their air force will not be able to stop you.

It's hard to play when the enemy has air superiority. But it is possible. Good luck!

Putting in a real effort to have AA can basically make planes useless. It’s not a bad strategy to have 5 AA of high level in important cities, and placing SP AA with your stacks is a too often ignored strategy.

Speaking of SP AA, I feel it’s not too often mentioned. If you don’t want an Air Force, then you must have SP AA in all your land stacks. They do even more damage to planes and won’t slow down your army. They are especially good for reinforcing the Shoot and Scoot strategy-unlink interceptors where you have to be active to move them in place to defend against air, they can always be attacked to your stacks, so you can be less active, and even if planes manage to dodge your ints, they will still be able to defend.

Either way, planes have counters. With gold spammers like this one, they won’t be privy to strategies; they’re used to domination by spamming gold. You can outsmart them, and you can win.

I think I have air superiority, since Russia has stopped attacks on my airbases. I am losing a lot of ground but yesterday I set up a defense line on the Reich's border. I now continuously bomb their airports with rockets so they can't go as far into my territory with nearby planes. Me and my ally Italy tried to recapture Belgrad and Sophia for their precious steel resources, but the operation failed. Neither of us can make anything that requires steel, but before we ran out I made some more interceptors and rocket fighters. Thanks for the help, I wil try my best to implement them in this game and in the future. Although I would disagree with you on me winning. I might defend against the Russians for a little bit longer, but him and his ally Romania destroyed 2 of my railroad guns and tons of my offensive units in the south. I am forced to withdraw almost all soldiers from the western front where I am still fighting Spain, Morocco, and the UK. The Ukrainian government in Prague has also lost most of its army and navy in the Mediterranean, so Italy is forced to retreat from all islands to the demarcation line in Naples or Rome. There's no possible way we can win or even cause any significant damage. Russia keeps spamming railroad guns and we still have to fight all the nations of Romania, Morocco, Spain, UK, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States.

Rockets are a rich man's weapon.

z00mz00m wrote:

Rockets are a rich man's weapon.

That's a lot of resources and manpower for a one shot weapon.

z00mz00m wrote:

That's a lot of resources and manpower for a one shot weapon.

For a bit more, you can build a rocket artillery. Use it well and inflict damage in the enemy every 30 minutes the whole game. Available day 2 (1 for Comintern).

Rockets are a niche weapon, used when you have everything, and you just want to get a temporary edge, knocking out an airfield at a crucial time.

They can be very annoying, true. But they don't win wars.

z00mz00m wrote:

For a bit more, you can build a rocket artillery. Use it well and inflict damage in the enemy every 30 minutes the whole game. Available day 2 (1 for Comintern).

Rockets are a niche weapon, used when you have everything, and you just want to get a temporary edge, knocking out an airfield at a crucial time.

They can be very annoying, true. But they don't win wars.

But this example is a very good one of when they should be used, holding back enemy planes and such.

Rockets are cheap as hell. The only expensive part about them is the infrastructure which can be built over time. Me and my allies have all contribute the rare materials into my economy so I can produce the secret weapons which I am the only one who has researched them. Every few hours I make more than enough for a new rocket. There's only a few hundred of every other resource in a rocket, which is kinda surprising since it's so ahead of it's time.