Talk:Land Base Aerial Support/@comment-26410405-20160522201549/@comment-861160-20160523102155

There's two important factors for air defense it seems:

1.  Air control state

2.  Intercept/anti-bomber stats

If you don't get a good air control state (which can be calculated like normal with a caveat for land fighters), your air defense won't be incredibly effective. Unfortunately, this requires typically 2 land bases to get air superiority/supremacy. This is also why 1-base air defense seems better on easier difficulties, because the enemy bases have far less air power compared to hard mode maps.

However, if you also use only carrier-based fighters without the extra stats then it won't give as good as a result if you use some of the specialized planes.

The bottom line is though that since you need two bases to make air defense good you're usually better off eating the plane/resource losses and going fully offensive.