32. Air Defence

Often players concentrate all of their anti-air defences; don’t do that, unless you are fighting concentrated t3 or t4 gunships without air superiority over your base. Each type of air defence has it’s advantages, you should take advantage of them.

Surface to Air Missiles: Often inappropriately used as the final solution in concentrated air defence. SAM launchers when used in very large well spaced grids with slightly overlapping ranges can saturate huge areas of land or sea making it impossible for enemies to operate aircraft in the area.

Anti-Aircraft Artillery: Flack is the best solution for hardened concentrated air defence.

Mobile Anti-Aircraft Artillery: Completely ignored by the vast majority of players, yet they have become my primary form of land based air defence. T1 and T2 mobile anti-aircraft artillery can always be reorganized to maximize their affect if a region becomes important or irrelevant, you can simply move your air defence. They can also quickly arrange themselves into a well spaced grid when a group is instructed to defend other units or in my case a single wall segment used as an air defence point.

Interceptors: T1 and T3 fights are fantastic for eliminating bombers and other fighters, and as a last resort bringing fire upon gunships.

Gunships: Apparently intended for attacking land based forces, however most players are unaware of their fantastic capacity for destroying other gunships. T2 and T3 gunships are the ideal mobile solution for other T2 and T3 gunships and especially T4 gunships.

31. Surface to Air Missiles vs Anti-Aircraft Artillery

The SAM launcher is two and a half times more expensive than the AAA and the SAM launcher deals eight times as much damage per second as the AAA. At first that may look like a fantastic return ratio, but it’s deceptive. The SAM launcher and AAA can only target one aircraft at a time, however the AAA deals splash damage and the SAM does not.  

Two SAM launchers and five AAA are equivalent in price. Two simultaneous targets vs five simultaneous targets. The two SAM launchers deal three and a quarter times more damage, however the AAA will often have overlaping which makes them ideal for defending against massed aircraft attacks. The SAM launchers true strength is area defence. It’s range is twice that of AAA and it will likely kill most aircraft that fly within it’s range do to exposure time.