Anti-aircraft as area denial

This is a general proposal that is not really intended for CoH2, since it's too late to shut the gate once the horse has bolted. But I've been thinking about an alternate way to implement anti-aircraft in a "CoH style game".

Area Denial
Instead of AA guns firing at planes and having a probability to destroy them, what if air abilities such as strafes and recon passes could not be used on areas where there was an AA unit. So for example, you could not cast a stukka dive bomb within a certain radius of a USF AA halftrack, and you could not throw down an incendiary strike within a certain radius of an Ostwind flakpanzer.

I would like to reiterate that this is just a concept, and there would be a mess of balance issues if you just tried to shoehorn this into the current game. There's all sorts of nightmares like the Flak base for OKW and questions of what happens to loitering planes. But I feel like it would add more certainty and usefulness to AA in these games, which can be a total crapshoot that often harms you more than it helps with enemy planes crashing at random, and the general inability to guarantee that it will even shoot anything down. AA is not "really" AA, these units are just anti-infantry platforms mostly that also have the ability to shoot down aircraft. A doctrine in the fashion of CAS, where it's heavily based on airstrikes, would be easier to counter if you could actually establish something resembling a defence against enemy aircraft that could protect your units against them.

idk. it sounds simple but it makes it hugely effective (or AA very ineffective). there's also the issue of what happens when you move AA into the target area before the plane hits.

like it

i think that planes would be more interesting if every faction had more access to them (more commanders/abilities with various plane globals) as that would lead to more use instead of them being a gimmick that's very hard to balance.

idk. it sounds simple but it makes it hugely effective (or AA very ineffective). there's also the issue of what happens when you move AA into the target area before the plane hits.

In my opinion, every plane should be a single pass in the style of CAS, rather than a loitering strike. It would make things more deterministic (which I'm a fan of). In which case, the strike would hit as normal if you moved the AA into the zone after the plane has shown up, but the window would be so small it wouldn't "really" matter much in terms of looking weird.

You could still make AA function as normal and try to shoot down loitering planes if you decide you want to keep loitering (conceptually), but then still have the AA gun's "zone of control" being the small (or large depending on the specific gun I guess) radius around it being a safe zone that the enemy can't summon the planes towards.

The main thrust of the idea here is really to make airstrikes and AA sort of complementary mechanics that are part of the core game. Currently the interplay between them is, to be frank, garbage. You could even, in theory, make a small air-strike or bombing run or something part of a faction's core tech tree as long as other factions had the tools available to protect themselves from it in theory, which could be interesting.

If you want to take a case study for why I think this might be useful, stuff like the Pak43 would be actually somewhat resilient even in its current form as long as it was supported by anti-aircraft units. But an unsupported stationary emplacement would be child's play for an allied bombing run otherwise. The counterplay options might consist of the AA units being relatively fragile, and a raid with armor is targeted at dislodging or destroying the AA gun, which then allows them to instantly hard counter the Pak43 without its support.

Similarly, on-map artillery (should there be any? That's another question we might actually be able to discuss!) could be defended from the two-click recon-stukka counter, which imo is very frustrating when whole doctrines become useless because of the CAS meta. Rather than just making them so tough they can withstand a 50kg bombing run, you give the allies options to allocate extra resources to defending these vulnerable positions, at the expense of spending resources elsewhere.

so basically the mechanics of WiC strikes (which are great btw but hard as fuck to use; very much skill planes) and AA would just lock off an area from those strikes so you could, for example, protect your FHQ.

sounds like a solid idea.

Single pass planes should arrive inmediatly, faster, after call but forced to do a "scout" pass so it can be countered by AA.

anything absolute goes against one of the foundational pillars of the game, but i'm glad people are brainstorming ways to make AA more consistent/useful.

Would also be cool to have a doctrinal ability called like "air superiority" or something that grounded enemy aircraft for the duration. So it would essentially be like a blizzard, but only affecting the enemy, for a munitions cost and a shorter duration.

I like this, because all these aircraft abilities need some sort of counter, and if keeping an AA truck behind your troops will keep them safe from strafes, boming runs etc, and your tanks from p47/mark target/stuka, then it could be a great change, because currently AA guns cant deal with fast plane strikes

How big a radius are we talking about? As far as the vehicle can normally shoot?

I imagine it would be really irritating to plane users if they were not able to call in a strike because some invisible force they can't identify is preventing it from beyond the fog of war.

To clarify what I mean, let's say you can't currently see the AA unit, but its denial radius blocks your strike. What does your HUD look like? Do you get a highlighted area where you can't fire? (something that would reveal the AA unit to you) Do you just keep failing to call in the strike until you find a spot where you can?

How big a radius are we talking about? As far as the vehicle can normally shoot?

I imagine it would be really irritating to plane users if they were not able to call in a strike because some invisible force they can't identify is preventing it from beyond the fog of war.

To clarify what I mean, let's say you can't currently see the AA unit, but its denial radius blocks your strike. What does your HUD look like? Do you get a highlighted area where you can't fire? (something that would reveal the AA unit to you) Do you just keep failing to call in the strike until you find a spot where you can?

I don't know how the specifics would work exactly. In terms of radius I'm thinking perhaps "30" range (less than the standard tank shell distance) for a mobile AA's zone of control, with an increased radius to 40 or 50 if it goes into some kind of lock down mode perhaps? Not sure. Could be less than that.

Air strikes generally cannot be cast in the fog of war, except recon. When you clicked on an air ability, you would have enemy ZoC highlighted on your screen to let you know where you couldn't cast it. But only in the parts of the map without fog of war. This would theoretically allow for intel you "shouldn't" be able to have, however we already get a bit of that in other ways like when your units somehow psychically know they can't go a certain land route because it's blocked, or when you can see enemy structure placement through the FoW because of the foundations, etc.

I think that if you cast recon into the FoW, you can do that regardless of ZoC, but it risks getting shot down.

The USF AA HT can shoot at everything on the entire map when locked into AA mode (that is anything in the sky). But yeah this idea would make the game unplayable on smaller maps were planes would be totally unable to be called in.

Would also be nothing stopping you from just making a Soviet AA HT follow you around giving you plane proofing, high dps, suppression, and reinforcement all on one platform.

I can make an army consisting entirely of Soviets AA halftracks in it still would not help against CAS.

How big a radius are we talking about? As far as the vehicle can normally shoot?

I imagine it would be really irritating to plane users if they were not able to call in a strike because some invisible force they can't identify is preventing it from beyond the fog of war.

To clarify what I mean, let's say you can't currently see the AA unit, but its denial radius blocks your strike. What does your HUD look like? Do you get a highlighted area where you can't fire? (something that would reveal the AA unit to you) Do you just keep failing to call in the strike until you find a spot where you can?

No m8. You call in the airstrike and it gets shot down if in aa radius.

As much I appreciate the fact that you wanted to find a solution for a better AA role, I don't like it. Sounds strange. Ok, I know I'll be back to that "but in real life" argument, still, in WW2 pilots were attacking areas where several AA were guarding the skyes. Sometimes they succeed to fulfill their mission, other times they were shot down. It was war, they had orders and of course courage. An AA presence doesn't mean instant sky total denial. I think the AA role now is quite ok, in WW2 AAs where indeed use as AI platform though their primary role was to shot down planes. Sometimes they were used as Anti-vehicle / Anti-tank platforms. In fact, when armies had'n enough AT guns or haven't AT guns at all to defend a certain area, heavy AAs were fulfilling that role.

Instead of making abilities unable to use + (if you want to risk and waste resources, please, go on) + kinf of scout cause if you cannot use it right there, you know there is AA around. I would rather see AA units shooting down plane before strafe if AA is around 0-50 distance from the place where plane is heading.

I know nothing about coding, but I think it's not hard to search for AA unit in radius of 50 since and from the first flare. If there is AA, plane is going to be destroyed. If there is not, simple strafe with chance to kill it after strafe.

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Although thats all true, I think concessions on stuff like this should be made to improve the game.

Regarding alex's post, there would be major imbalances and as the OP stated its not really possible to implement as it would impact so many things.

As a simple hypothetical solution though, you could easily remove reinforcing from the M5 when it is upgraded.

I'd have liked the AA units to deploy into 'Anti Air Mode' or something like that which would create a relatively small area where all planes are shot down before dropping payload but give it a substantial packup / teardown time and be unable to hit ground units while in the mode.

Then you'd be able to defend important areas / on-map arty but be unable to stop air strikes while yoloing round the map.
It'd reward preparedness and not make planes redundant by its simple existance on the field.

I can make an army consisting entirely of Soviets AA halftracks in it still would not help against CAS.

I just meant using the OP's idea of making air abilities not being able to be called in around AA units.

I don't like the idea of being unable to bomb a B4 hiding in Soviet base with a M5 AA-HT nearby. I also don't like the idea of a Pak43, behind some buildings being protected by a OKW Flak emplacement.

Nice try, but keep brainstorming.