AAA question: Arrows vs. Autocannons

[mbear]

While answering another thread I noticed the TRO:3145 Mercs gun trailer section has an entry for a AAA trailer that uses Arrow IV launchers.

My question is why not use autocannon instead?

[Fireangel]

My guess would be range.

[Maelwys]

Because they wanted something that was dual (if not more) purpose? Not only can the Artillery/AAA gun trailer work as an anti-aircraft weapon, but it can also be used to support ground forces with artillery fire, and with 6 tons of ammo, can easily carry a mixed load of Arrow IV ammo if it needs to do other jobs as well.

Also Artillery being used as Flak can hit targets on the Low-Altitude map, something regular ACs can't.

[Daryk]

So a better question might be why not use Thumpers?  The vastly increased ammunition capacity would seem to be worth it for a dual-role system.

[Maingunnery]

Air-Defense Arrow Missiles have better chances for hitting then regular artillery flak.

[Daryk]

I'm not so sure of that... the +3 for artillery flak against aerospace units isn't characterized as a range modifier.  Am I missing an errata?

[Weirdo]

ADAs have vastly superior range. Normal artillery can only target aeros flying over their own mapsheet, essentially the same hex as far as the Low-Altitude Map is concerned. ADAs can hit aeros up to two Low-Altitude hexes away.

Note that when people talk about using Arrows for AA work, they're usually talking about the specialized Air Defense Arrow munitions as described on page 353 of TacOps. If you're using normal Arrow missiles to shoot at air targets, they use the same rules and ranges as gun artillery does.

[Daryk]

I'm still not seeing an explicit range limit for aerospace targets.  All the "direct fire" references I see on page 185 of TacOps (and the v3.5 errata) appear to refer to airborne ground units.  There are altitude modifiers for airborne aerospace units, and there's a reference to the High Altitude map, implying artillery can reach out to 18km.  Was this asked in the rules forums somewhere and never incorporated into errata?

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Aren't Arrow IV SAMs more for when you want to swat Dropships out of the sky than ASFs?

[glitterboy2098]

they don't really o enough damage for that. they are fairly effective at actually hurting a fighter though rather than just plinking it and hoping it fails a lawn dart check.

[Jellico]

Aren't Arrow IV SAMs more for when you want to swat Dropships out of the sky than ASFs?

There are times I advocate nukes as minimal requirements for swatting ASF. And I don't think that ASF are overpowered on the ground map.

[Weirdo]

They're pretty good for swatting any aero, though the more I think about it, the more I think they work best at the extremes. Light fighters are the ones most likely to be seriously hurt by even a single missile, while mediums and larger will need multiple hits to lose appreciable amounts of armor. On the other end of things, spheroid ships hate lawn-dart rolls more than anything else. Because of their limited options in atmosphere movement-wise, if you can guess where they're likely to try to land and can manage to hide an Arrow unit or two in the area, it's perfectly reasonable that you'll be able to get multiple salvos off before they can move out of range.

[mbear]

ADAs have vastly superior range. Normal artillery can only target aeros flying over their own mapsheet, essentially the same hex as far as the Low-Altitude Map is concerned. ADAs can hit aeros up to two Low-Altitude hexes away.

So the ADA missiles can cover a radius of 3 Low-Altitude hexes?

[Weirdo]

A diameter of five. The hex directly above it, the ring of hexes adjacent to that one, and the ring of hexes just outside that. It looks just like the blast radius of a standard Long Tom shell on the ground map.

[Scotty]

They're pretty good for swatting any aero, though the more I think about it, the more I think they work best at the extremes. Light fighters are the ones most likely to be seriously hurt by even a single missile, while mediums and larger will need multiple hits to lose appreciable amounts of armor. On the other end of things, spheroid ships hate lawn-dart rolls more than anything else. Because of their limited options in atmosphere movement-wise, if you can guess where they're likely to try to land and can manage to hide an Arrow unit or two in the area, it's perfectly reasonable that you'll be able to get multiple salvos off before they can move out of range.

Do ADA Arrows hit in groups of 5 or one big chunk of 20?  If it's the latter, then nothing likes taking threshold crits, and that thresholds almost every aerospace fighter currently existing.

[Weirdo]

ADAs are simply listed as damage type F, which means we need to ask in the rules forum. If it were a single slug, it would probably need DB or M, and if it were in groups, it would need C. We also need to know if F means it gets a -2 to-hit against aeros, or if that's just because it's fired from an artillery piece.

[Scotty]

You know the rules a lot better than I do (and my question was one of idle speculation, not actual familiarization). O0

[Weirdo]

And right now, the rules don't say. I haven't gone through the rules forum to see if this has already been asked, though.