Divisional AA should do three things
- reduce the penalty from enemy air superiority
- reduce the damage from CAS (by 75% in vanilla but not sure how it works in Black Ice)
- shoot a few planes down

Well it does nothing as shown in the picture. Whenever I try to attack my divisions are melted by CAS regardless of presence of my AA. Plus Germany has the best fighters by speed and agility among all nations (up to 1943, only then US and GB has close or better fighters) so they will always have air superiority.

SoFV.., I have wondered about that for a long time. Actually, I have wondered about a lot of the changes that have occurred in BICE has not accounted for. But heck, its a great mod, but it was better a few short years ago.

Just so you know, that screenshot is useless. If you take a screenshot of the each of the combat factors when you rmouse hovers over it, that would be perfect. But yeah, that would be a pain in the butt. Just to be clear, did you hover over all of the combat figures and read the UI? I have never taken the time, but if you have that handy, that would be great.

PS - the numbers in the window with the two generals. Your mouse (the finger) is actually right next to them.

Taking screenshots is tedious, but I will write the modifiers for you.
German 27. Panzer-Divsion:
Org 13.0/24.1;
Strength 90%;
Terrain (the picture with mountains): Attack +1.9% Breakthrough +1.9%;
Division deals 100% of their damage through the armour of 2 enemy divisions;
Soft attack: 80.31 Base value 117.0 Modified to 68.6% due to
Experience -6%
Air support +7.4%
Terrain +1.9%
Night -50%
Country +10.2%
Commander Skill +4.5%
Planning Bonus +10.8%
Attacker Tactic Damage +5%;
Hard Attack 15.9 Base value 23.1 Same modifiers;
Breakthrough 116.23 Base value 94.1 Modified to 123.5% due to
Experience -6%
Air support +7.4%
Terrain +1.9%
Country +3.2%
Commander Skill +5.2%
Planning Bonus +10.8%.
Soviet 236-ya SD:
Org 14.2/21.8;
Strength: 68%;
Entrenchment (shovel picture): Attack +1.4% Defence +1.4%;
Terrain: Attack +0.7% Defence +0.7%;
Division deals 100% of their damage through the armour of 1 enemy divisions;
Commanded by Kirill Moskalenko Skill 2;
Soft attack: 67.6 Base value 110.3 Modified to 61.3% due to
Experience -3%
Intel Advantage +7.2%
Entrenchment +1.4%
Terrain +0.7%
Night -50%
Country +11.0%
Commander Skill +10.0%
Defender Tactic Damage -5%;
Hard Attack: 8.38 Base Value 13.6 Modified to 61.3% due to same modifiers
Defence: 179.71 Base Value 181.9 Modified to 98.8% due to
Experience -3%
Intel Advantage +7.2%
Entrenchment +1.4%
Terrain +0.7%
Country -11.3%
Commander Skill +5.2%
22-ya MBR is a small division so I wouldn't write it's stats.

P.S. Here is screenshot which clearly stated that my AA does NOTHING in preventing CAS damage:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3024120061

I've looked at screenshots like the last and they do seem to say 0 screening value.

They do shoot planes down but the rate is very low,

It is not the shutdown planes I care about. I care about the damage reduction which is not occurring at all. I managed to hold off till 1945 when draining both mine and Germany manpower to 0. But even when I disband half of my divisions to get the other half to proper manpower and fully equiped they are all melted again in a week because of insane CAS damage and still AA does nothing to reduce CAS damage. I do see that ocasionally it does shot down like 1-2 planes per 40-50 STR damage dealt but this is total BS. AA basically does not work in this mod.

There seem to be two defines that control the rate of damage reduction (and one that controls the maximum).

ANTI_AIR_TARGETTING_TO_CHANCE reduced from 0.07 in vanilla to 0.025
ANTI_AIR_ATTACK_TO_DAMAGE_REDUCTION_FACTOR reduced from 1.0 in vanilla to 0.5

So with the average of 15 air attack in your divisions you should be getting about an 18% reduction. Not the 75% that vanilla would have given.

I do see some reduction in long battles that get a lot of CAS. It would be interesting to see one of these battles where you get 40-50 STR damage as I am not seeing CAS anywhere near that effective,

In the stats you list it looks like the Germans are getting air superiority advantage to attack but the Soviets have no penalties because AA has negated that,

Originally posted by mk11:

There seem to be two defines that control the rate of damage reduction (and one that controls the maximum).

ANTI_AIR_TARGETTING_TO_CHANCE reduced from 0.07 in vanilla to 0.025
ANTI_AIR_ATTACK_TO_DAMAGE_REDUCTION_FACTOR reduced from 1.0 in vanilla to 0.5

So with the average of 15 air attack in your divisions you should be getting about an 18% reduction. Not the 75% that vanilla would have given.

Wow that does explain it. I thought that the line AA battalions (the ones that go into the template like light/medium artillery) were removed to force to engage in battle for air dominance. I didn't knew that it was further nerfed into hell by making it literally useless. I wasted so much IC trying to equip all my divs with both Heavy and Light AA so they would stand a chance, but it is totally worthless. Hell I though to rush light tank AA (which the soviets get only in 1943) or rush mech AA. I guess CAS is the true wunderwaffe. I would have to come up with some other way to counter that because as USSR the fighters and interceptors are trash by speed and agility. The Germany has the best fighters among all nations till 1943 models and still it would take a year or two to catch up to their numbers. I've read that the speed is more important in BlackIce air combat so I tried to rush the only speedy USSR plane (the mig-1) and upgraded it to max speed and agility with air XP and still I'm getting trashed with 15-5 to 20-3 ratios in air combat.
From what I saw the Allies are doing basically nothing. They have sent (in 1945) one air wing per air zone above France and are strat bombing Paris while Germany doesn't even contest that. No D-day happend, not even in Italy.

Originally posted by mk11:

I do see some reduction in long battles that get a lot of CAS. It would be interesting to see one of these battles where you get 40-50 STR damage as I am not seeing CAS anywhere near that effective,

It starts getting that effective on/after 1942/1943. I have ~244 HP divs, with one of them attacking I get 50 STR damage per battle on average. I did mispoke and when I checked the AA does shot down 10 planes, but still this is INSANE damage for 1 division. This is the screenshot: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3024282260 .
the 150k manpower I got from downsizing my divs is evaporated in one week by the wunderwaffe CAS.
P.S. Also the guards are broken. I could make all of my army consisting of guards battalions it would give me only slight increase in stats while massively decrese div's HP (-10%). I don't understand the purpose other that RP.
P.S.2. As seen it is not Air superiority modifier that kills me. It is the insane damage of CAS.

Interesting. So you screened off just under 30% of the damage and downed just over 10% of the attacking planes. Those figures sound like pretty effective AA and fairly realistic.

So the actual problem is that the CAS is too effective. How much of this is down to the AI not being restricted on aircraft builds by air assembly plants?

The result is that the division is a write off. What you see is around ~3-5k manpower loss from CAS alone for 1 division. Multiply that for a front and just in 1 combat you easily get above -100k to push just 1 tile. Such heavy losses from CAS never occurred historically. Historically CAS was most effective (in terms of killing/destroying) in attacking units on march not while in combat.
If I understand correcly that AI gets +6000 tank and aircraft assembly capacity then it is not it that limits Air supperiority and CAS. In the 1941 save that I took screenshot in the beginning of the topic Germany has 5953 air cap left, 445 total used, 162 for fighters, 48 for heavy fighters, 84 for CAS, 42 for medium bombers and the rest for nav, multirole and strat bombers. By that point Germany captures enough capacity in Europe to not be limited even without +6000 (in production of fighters and CAS at least).
The main problem are USSR plane characteristics. The best USSR could construct at 1941 is mig 3 with 59 Agility 639 speed vs Germany 64 agility 650 speed BF109F4 (which is actually better that Britain's spitfire in both of agility and speed). The problem IMO is that in historically on the eastern front the air combat was going on a much lower altitudes so 10km speed of BF109F4 would be much lower on 1-2km altitude most of the battles of the eastern front were fought. The speed of USSR aircraft was recorded on a lower altitude and therefore is a lower number. Historically since LA5 soviet pilots could simply run away from combat due to the speed of LA5 (not even F or FN versions)compare to BF109F on a lower altitude. Maybe there could be added a nerf of speed of -4-5% against the USSR to better represent lower altitude fighting and lower max speed of fighters on the eastern front (the same way there are modifiers of attack/defence against certain countries) or adjust USSR plane speed (though that would be less historical).
P.S. I play without "By blood alone" dlc so I don't have access to air plane designer if it is enabled in BlackIce. Other topics says that "By blood alone" is not needed.

I agree with the point about the Soviet aircraft being under represented in their stats.

The issue with aircraft numbers for the AI nations is tied up with all sorts of complications. Historically, Germany couldn't send its best aircraft to the East because they were needed as interceptors in Germany. Also, range was more important in the East,

As regards CAS effectiveness. Does the org damage breaking up combats seems fair so may be it is just LAND_AIR_COMBAT_STR_DAMAGE_MODIFIER that needs reducing? The values of LAND_AIR_COMBAT_ORG/STR_DAMAGE_MODIFIER are dropped from 0.032 in vanilla to 0.015 for org and 0.03 for strength in Black Ice so should the str damage also be reduced to reflect reduced effectiveness of AA and the increased aircraft numbers?

NB: These numbers are for Test build current build may differ.

Checked the current version and values are 0.035 and 0.0175 so dropped a little in the test build - I guess they are fine tuning them

I noticed something in the two screenshots. The first one, you do not see the AA icon in the divisional stats. In the second one (where AA is sort of functioning), you can see the AA icon. As stated, as time goes by, there are so many HOI features that do not work in BICE (not just nerfed, they do not work), it is becoming unfun for me.
I think due to all of the changes to HOI (patches, DLC) most older mods are not in sync with many features. Not sure what the solution is except -- HOI 5.