What do you use for Air defense against the AI? I used to always build SAM's in my cities... but lately I have gotten in the habit of defending my cities with fighters instead. I've found that in some cases they can defend much higher than a defensive unit behind a SAM. For those of you who didn't know, if a bomber (any other air units?) attacks a city and your fighter defends, your fighter recieves something like a 1600% defense bonus. Granted, in democracies thsi won't work too well, but in something like communism/fundy, it could work well. What do you guys think?

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Fighters can scout.

Fighter can deftly sneak your other units through any zone of control.

Fighters can successfully attack spies, subs, transports, freights, engineers, etc., and attack multiple times per turn across any terrain.

Fighters can hunt down bombers hanging outside the cities, including any bomber that successfully whomped one of your units elsewhere.

The scrambling fighter gets quadruple strength, giving it an effective strength of 4 x 2 x 2 x 4 = 64, plenty strong enough to defend against enemy bombers' 12 x 2 x 2 = 48, especially after it wins a fight and goes veteran, which the bombers rarely are.

Granted, the SAM is a "permanent" city improvement while the fighter has to be replaced if it loses a fight. But the fact is, even with a SAM, most units are MORE likely to lose to a bomber than a fighter is. Even mech infantry fortified in a city with a SAM defends at only 6 x 3 x 1.5 x 2 = 54, compared to the fighter's 64. Even veteran alpine troops are slightly weaker than the novice bomber. The fighter may get destroyed occasionally, but much less often than whatever else the SAM is supposed to protect.

Fighters can move forward along with the border instead of being stuck in one city.

You get flight before rocketry.

Fighters are cheaper (they do require shield maintenance, but SAM requires 2 gold).

Using fighters to sneak through zones of control? That's sheer brilliance! I'll have to try that.

Blaupanzer,

You're units can be in any friendly city or in a fortress within three squares of any friendly city. It doesn't have to be in it's home city.

"Is it true that say a Paris musketeer in Lyons won't cause any unhappiness in Paris under a democracy?"

That's quite true.

How does terrain affect matters (if at all)? Does the bomber get the terrain bonus of the square it stands upon and the scrambled fighter the bonus of the city square?

I have been used to building SAMs in all non coastal border cities but will gladly go over to a defence based on scrambling fighters if I can get my head around this quad defence bonus notion.

debeest: I think that when a Fighter scambles, its defense value is quadrupled, not its attack value. IIRC, Fighters have D=3 so their strength (good concept, btw) is 3 x 2 x 2 x 4 = 48 - same as the bomber.

Another drawback of using Fighters is that you need to have an expensive Airport in the city or else the next Bomber wave will crush them before they repair.

I generally use vet Mech Inf. If there's any terrain advantage, they can often win against even a vet bomber. Other advantages:

a) You probably already have a barracks for repair.
b) Faster and easier to reinforce from almost anywhere via rail.
c) Fighters are too good to waste on defense.
d) MI perform triple duty of also being good defenders against ground and sea.

I have seen cases when a Fighter is fortified within a city, but does not defend when that city is attacked by a bomber. I used to build SAMs too, but not anymore, as I'd rather have Fighters for some of the reasons listed above. Has anybody seen this happen. I think it this situation is different in MGE, too. I remember that if I actually fortified a Fighter, that fighter never scrambled to defend.

EST: That explains why your fighters can easily lose to bombers. Fair fight! And yes, as far as I can tell, any unit gets the defensive bonus of whatever terrain it's on, even if it makes no sense whatsoever.

Bohlen: Yes, the fighter has to be the strongest defensive unit in order to be the unit that defends. Normally, if it's scrambling, it WILL be. However, there are flaws in the system. Strong ships will often preferentially defend, even though they're going to get Pearl Harbored. Really irritating when some bomber takes out my helpless fortified cruiser while the fighter sits out the action.

Bohlen, I never fortify my fighters, because I always want them to come up in the move cycle and go looking for meat. So I've never noticed them failing to scramble. But it does make sense. Too bad you can't get the added defensive strength, though.

Chainsaw: SDI is not SUPPOSED to affect defense against anything but nukes. Heaven forbid there should be an error in the documentation....

quote: Originally posted by debeest on 01-10-2001 03:07 AM Chainsaw: SDI is not SUPPOSED to affect defense against anything but nukes. Heaven forbid there should be an error in the documentation....

Maybe I'm imagining this, but I could swear that SDI combined with SAM will give a x5 defense multiplier against cruise missiles and cruise missiles only (I found this out because I tend to use the cruise missiles I capture from bribing AI cities, on _other_ AI cities).

Anyway, I'm certain the SDI has no effect on bombers or fighters. I suppose the designers felt that a missile is a missile, be it cruise or nuke, and the SDI should work against both?

STYOM

Apparently fighters are good for more than scrambling and scouting...