Is SPAA worth it? Comparing it to Motorized AA. Hoi4

Do you need to make spaa or can you just put motorized aa into the division? Is there any real benefit to making a separate tank type with a separate production line.

[Marillenmarmelade]

"use the SPAA for Space Marines"
I believe you meant to say SPA-Ace Marines

[PikaPilot]

I don't think we can fault PDX for this one. SPAA is confined by the size of the turret, while towed AA has the entire truckbed to play with.

The real benefit of armored AA is resilience against artillery, but there is no good way to simulate that in HOI4 other than the 'hardness' value.

Maybe that's why PDX decided to make SPAA 2 width? For the overall increase in hardness?

[drmythbusters]

I think one thing that could potentially matter is doctrines.
SPAA counts as a tank variant, where as mot AA counts as line artillery. This mainly matters if you go down Mobile Warfare, because the tank variants get a few buffs, particularly if you go R/R, which almost halves the breakthrough malus for SPAA variants, where as the only buffs mot AA gets is in Superior Firepower (in the Dispersed Support lol and S&A branches). Because you only need a few units of SPAA, relatively speaking, you can skimp less on reliability to buff up their stats as well, to which I would reference your reliability video.
After some very rudimentary testing, if one does R/R, which I dont do MP so idk if its 'meta' but regardless, the trade-off for the extra 22 air attack is that your sacrificing hardness, a lower armor value, however much breakthrough you were able to cram in that variant so long as its greater than 12, and a little bit of org, but with tanks you could say every org matters. And, as well, you can do the tank refitting trick, and theoretically make it cheaper IC-wise at the cost of having to make a new line.

So, in vacuum, or for basically any other doctrine, yes, I would agree that mot AA is better. But if youre doing MW R/R, and/or the enemy tanks scare you more than their CAS, which is admittedly moreso a MP problem, then arguably SPAA is a good alternative.

Edit: After some thinking and rewatching the video, the main crux of the matter is:
Is the breakthrough the SPAA provides, alongside with the better armor and hardness, able to counteract the air superiority malus your tanks may have?
MW R/R potentially is able to do that. In all other cases, more than likely not.

[MrNicoJac]

I really like that your final conclusion was basically based on a practicality argument, rather than pure stats.
This game is full of diminished returns, but few people realize (sometimes they go for divisions that are 3% better, but cost 2x as much😆)

[beefyblom]

they really should've done what they did with flame tanks and made it a support company

[gigaus]

Relevant for single player only: after about 70~90 Air Attack on a division, the AI will remove it's cas from the field. It's coded that if they're taking too much damage in a week, they will take a break and try again. In theory, pure fighter combat will do this too, but you only really see that in SCW. If you place a few units with 80~ A-Att along a front line, they AI just stops.

For MP and those pesky humans that will just yeet their entire economy at you, the same unit will start emptying entire wings. As said near the start, it's RNG, but there seems to be a significant bias towards A-Att; the more you heap on, the more you get out of it by orders of magnitude.

[jiawenzhu]

heavy SPAA in an infantry unit can provide armor for the whole unit. Not all AI units have Anti-Tank.

[murderouskitten]

for infantry, i use line AA, because there is better use for support company slots.
also line AA takes only 1 cb, and fits me perfectly in 25 cb, because i love me some mountan warfare :)

[mighij]

Is there a benefit to use motorized instead of normal line AA?

Edit: in an infantry division like in the test
Motorized Antitank is stronger then normal antitank. Was wondering if its the same for AA.

[lancekelley]

No mention of hardness... 2 motorized as could make you take significantly more soft attack, especially when using mech in your tank divisions where >70% hardness isn't hard to achieve. Going from 80 to 70 hardness means taking 50% more soft attack which is a massive deal and the spaa pays for itself in that situation. However if you are using motorized infantry in the tank divisions and have 60% or lower hardness, just use motorized AA.

[somefancycashews]

If you don't mind, could I request a test?

On the wiki concerning AA in naval battles, it states that the amount of planes shot down by a ship is a percentage of the airwing determined by the amount of AA on the ship; if you have 10 AA, you can shoot down up to 10% of the attacking airwing. This begs the question of what happens if all the planes on your carrier (or NAVs based on land) are in airwing sizes of 1 single plane? Since you can't shoot down a percentage of one plane, will you take no losses?

Further, does having single size airwings mean every plane will successfully hit the ship (or no planes hit the ship), since only a percentage of the airwing is able to actually hit the ship during the naval attack calculation?

[SMGJohn]

I put 200 armour SPAA medium for trolls in a no-hist game that had no rules, funny as heck seeing even tank divisions having issues penning my infantry

[thomasjones]

Can you test if a division 40+ width division with tons of AA does a lot of damage to CAS or if it is worth it to kill CAS

[cosmo]

fucking bunch of planes flying from paris at 3:08

[jaisummons]

You could transfer the AA to make
Medium AA tanks slap on armor and
Medium Flame tank support
Light tank for recon
Increase defense and hardness by a few

2 Medium AA tanks
1 half width light tank for recon
1 half with medium flame
Most countries can't make a special template.
They would be moving at a speed of infantry
7 infantry 2 Medium AA tanks
1 medium flame support
1 light recon
Make lights from 1936 till research medium and AA
Cut light tank production
Don't make AA if so sell when Medium and AA are researched.

When have lots of truck mobile infantry
7 trucks
2 Medium AA

Supports
1 light recon
1 medium flame tank

Production of medium is good
50% hardness
7 trucks
2 Medium AA tanks
5-7 medium tanks

Supports
1 light recon
1 medium flame tank

[ahmedrazick]

Do we know what is the best amount of air attack?

[deilusi]

What I am missing is AA as component giving you like 3 AA atack per tank.
a lot of tanks had SOMETHING that was capable of short range plane hits.
maybe machineguns should give one point in AA or smoke should let tank hide from enemy cas. (giving you that cas damage reduction without AA) there are at least few things you can do to fool airplane, like decoys, and historically they worked well.
what do you guy think DECOY army, that take only rubber, does nothing except sinks some cas damage, if their intel about your army is under 30%....

[kilianfirebolt]

can you make a video on carrier fighters doing some testing if they use kamikaze, if they shoot down enemy carrier navs during naval combat, and their general usefullness

[chinchillaruby]

SPAA will not tank the org as much and can be used as a poor mans artillery as many use line AA as a poor mans AT. You can also slap on dozer blade or fuel tubs to support the division as a whole. Still situational at best but in an mp with red air on the defense, like soviets, perhaps.

[maxxgrumpy]

why motorized aa on infantry? cannot be simple aa?