DEVELOPMENT PLAN #97 — Breaking the Air-Defense Net from Within: Sabotage and Ammunition Stores

This is a development-plan article: it describes something we want to build next. Nothing described here is implemented yet, and the details are still under consideration and may change before implementation.

In plan #89 we proposed making ground anti-aircraft guns, observation posts, ammunition stores and command posts work as one connected air-defense network that meets enemy air missions. Tonight's plan is the other side of that coin: breaking an enemy's air-defense network from the inside. A covert operation targets an observation post, a command post or an ammunition store, creating a weak link before the air attack comes. For the defender, how to split up and protect ammunition stores becomes a new question. This fleshes out improvement item AAD-003 (sabotage of air-defense facilities and secondary damage).

The current Region information screen (the actual Debug build screen, in a verification state started from the initial master with barracks removed for the capture). The Defense section on the right lists the AA observation post, AA ammunition store, AA command post and other facilities, and shows AA network 0 / 3 (observe, ammo, command).

Where things stand

Ground air defense has reached the point where research, guns and facilities are registered. In the current game:

• Air-defense research has four steps (ground air observation, airburst gunnery, predictive fire control, integrated fortress air defense), and there are five facilities: AA observation post, AA ammunition store, AA command post, AA emplacement and fortress AA emplacement. They can only be built in a region with barracks, and the Defense section of Region information shows "AA network n / 3" and the next step.
• Building the facilities does not by itself provide guns, crews, ammunition or firing capability. The processing in which AA guns actually fire on enemy air missions (AAD-002) is not implemented yet.
• The Operations page of Foreign intelligence offers three covert operations: hostile opinion campaign, incite domestic divisions and cultural influence. Each costs 100 per day from the covert budget and stops when the evidence passes a threshold. No operation damages the target's facilities.

Once an air-defense network exists, it behaves like a chain: losing any one of observation, command or ammunition drags the whole thing down. For an attacker, creating the weakest link in that chain starts to matter.

The plan: sabotaging the air-defense net

We are considering a new "Sabotage the air-defense net" card on the Operations page, where you pick a region of the target country and one facility to hit (observation post, command post or ammunition store). The draft starting values are:

• Preparation takes 15 days for an observation post, 20 for a command post and 25 for an ammunition store, at the same 100 per day as today's covert operations, paid from the covert budget.
• Exposure uses the existing formula (evidence = target's police capability × (1 − intensity × 0.5) × conspicuousness). Sabotaging a facility has conspicuousness 1.2, multiplied by another 1.2 if platoons are garrisoned in the target region. Against police capability 50, evidence is 36: "Exposure: moderate". As with today's operations, exposure stops the operation that day, and the facility is not damaged.
• On success, only the targeted facility loses function until it is repaired: an observation post halves the observation factor, a command post loses integrated fire and falls back to each gun's local fire, and an ammunition store detonates and loses rounds.

Concept mock (design under consideration). The Operations page lists, for each target facility, the preparation time and cost, the effect on success and the estimated effective air defense. Country, region and values are examples.

The effective air-defense estimate uses the formula from #89: gun power × availability × crew × training × observation × command × environment. In the example of four fixed AA guns, 36.3 drops to 18.1 if the observation post is knocked out, and to 24.2 if the command post is. Losing the command post does not stop guns from firing at what they can see themselves.

Keeping ammunition detonations finite

Hitting an ammunition store is dramatic, but we want the damage capped at the rounds actually in that store. A region's AA rounds are split across its ammunition stores, and a detonation loses "rounds in the store hit × (1 − protection)". Collateral damage is at most light damage to one AA emplacement in the same province, and one detonation never sets off another.

Concept mock (design under consideration). A region holding 1,200 AA rounds and using 150 per day of firing: rounds left after a detonation, by how the stores are arranged. Illustrative values computed from draft parameters.

With a single store all 1,200 rounds are lost and firing stops; with two stores 600 rounds (4 days) remain; with two stores protected by revetments (protection 0.5), 900 rounds (6 days) remain. For the defender, it becomes a choice between paying to build split stores and keeping platoons garrisoned to make saboteurs easier to expose.

Implementation steps and links to other systems

This operation only makes sense once AA guns actually fire (AAD-002: air-defense engagement and quantity settlement), so it comes after that. The planned steps: (1) add the operation type to the existing covert operations (reservation, daily cost, exposure, covert budget); (2) on success, save the facility damage and apply it to the observation and command factors of effective air defense, restored by repair through the existing construction path; (3) settle an ammunition-store detonation exactly once per operation, never removing rounds that are not in that store; (4) show the card in Foreign intelligence, and the damaged facility, repair days left and lost rounds in the defender's Region information (Japanese and English); (5) confirm that save/load round trips and same-day reprocessing never double-count damage or rounds.

The AAD-003 ticket now includes this article's proposal. Its recommended implementation order (after AAD-002) is unchanged.

Tell us what you think

As an attacker, which would you go for: the observation post, the command post or the ammunition store? As a defender, does splitting ammunition stores sound like an interesting decision, or a chore? Your impressions would help.

Image 1 was captured by launching the development Debug build without showing it on screen, in a verification state started from the initial master. Images 2 and 3 are concept mocks (design under consideration); the country and region names and values in them are illustrative, not actual game values.

The air-defense network plan: DEVELOPMENT PLAN #89 — Meeting Raids from the Ground: Linking Guns, Spotters and Command

Ground air defense registered: DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOT #88 — Watching the Sky: Ground Air-Defense Research, Guns and Emplacements

This morning's article: DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOT #96 — From Plan to Game: Command Capacity and the Adjutant

Check the files currently available and the development status on the download page