No fear of airplanes

[Make_It_Round]

Hi Krieghund,

I like where you’re going. By way of response, I have what I think is a refinement on your idea for making aircraft tougher, which doesn’t require adding an extra step to an already complicated combat sequence. It is as follows…

Aircraft that are hit with '1’s [or 2 x '2’s] during the Attack Air Units phase are removed as per usual.

Aircraft that are hit with single '2’s during the Attack Air Units phase are flipped over and get to stick around and fire during the Attack Sea Units and Attack Land Units phases before they are removed at the end of combat [this gives aircraft an ersatz ‘Resilience’ ability, but without the possibility of repair/retrieval].

What do you think?

Best,

Make_R

[Krieghund]

This is an interesting idea, but it makes air units even more powerful by allowing some them take two hits to destroy.  This protects another air unit from taking the second hit.  It also doesn’t differentiate between air attacks and ground attacks on air units, reducing the value of defensive air cover versus my methods.

[Make_It_Round]

Krieghund,

Let me see if I’m getting this right: you’re saying that giving planes resilience [making them 1.5 times tougher] reduces the value of defensive air cover?

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense at all. My idea makes air cover 1.5 times more powerful!

Since the topic of this thread is ‘No fear of airplanes’, I thought that we were trying to find ways to make air units more effective…

Best,

M_I_R

[Krieghund]

Yes, it reduces the relative value of defensive air cover compared to my methods.  In my methods, hits by air units register against other air units immediately, whereas hits by land or sea units against air units are delayed in their effect.  That makes air unit hits versus air units more powerful than land or sea unit hits versus air units, decreasing the relative strength of AA versus air cover and making air cover more important than in the box rules.

Your approach is to make air units stronger, while mine is to make AA fire weaker.  Both make air units more powerful with regard to attacking surface units, but yours also makes them more powerful with regard to other air units.  The effect is that in your approach the balance of effectiveness of AA fire versus air cover is the same as in the box rules, while in mine air cover becomes more effective versus AA fire.

[legion3]

It does seem like you have the two options, make aircraft tougher or make AA fire less potent.

It has always seeemed to me that the AA fire is to fierce in this game. As I stated before, aircraft have to run to great of a gauntlet, all at once. I do think a step where air combat and air  (raid)attacks are seperate is needed.

I like the idea of an airplane only battle phase, would simulate the attacking wave meeting the CAP (which at this time was not super strong) away from the fleet. Planes shot down then would be shot down, no questions asked. Planes damaged then could do one of two things;

1. continue on to the fleet and make an attack but then be lost (removed/destroyed - IE Torpedo plane shot down after it launches) because of the damage, loss of fuel…whatever,

or

2. the player could decide to return the plane to base (abort/turn back due to battle damage) where it could live for another day. And if not enough surviving non damaged planes were left the entire mission could be scrubbed - which happened a lot.

Then have the air attack phase where the surviving planes, bust through the cap and now face the ships AA.

At this point in the war neither the USN or the IJN could repel a determined air attack. Either by the use of CAP or AA fire, ask the Carriers at Santa Cruz and Eastern Solomons.

In 1944 US Air defenses were much stronger in 42-43.

[dinosaur]

I like M_I_Rs idea.  Aircraft don’t get real resiliance as a ship because if they are hit by a 2 they are still removed (killed).  They are just getting one final shot before they are done.  In this way, they could launch their weapon before getting shot on the way out.  That is perfectly reasonable to me.  I could consider having the “first AA roll” be fighters only, with 1 or 2 being an immediate kill and the “second AA roll” being ship/land based AA fire, with 2s allowed to make their attack.  This allows fighter CAP to be highly effective.  I think there are some interesting tweaks for air combat rules on the table here.

[Krieghund]

@dinosaur:

I like M_I_Rs idea.  Aircraft don’t get real resiliance as a ship because if they are hit by a 2 they are still removed (killed).  They are just getting one final shot before they are done.  In this way, they could launch their weapon before getting shot on the way out.  That is perfectly reasonable to me.

My biggest concern here is that increasing aircraft survival rates and increasing their effectiveness too much may have an impact on game balance.  Their survival rate is inceased simply because “pseudo-resilience” as proposed by Make_It_Round gives one plane the ability to absorb two hits, if the first one is a 2.  As I’ve already pointed out, pseudo-resilience increases effectiveness by nerfing air-to-air fire as well as surface-to-air fire, leaving even more planes to attack surface targets.

@dinosaur:

I could consider having the “first AA roll” be fighters only, with 1 or 2 being an immediate kill and the “second AA roll” being ship/land based AA fire, with 2s allowed to make their attack.  This allows fighter CAP to be highly effective.

This is the same as my Method 1, except that AA hits on a 1 are immediate kills.  It still nerfs AA only, but not as much as my idea does.

@dinosaur:

I think there are some interesting tweaks for air combat rules on the table here.

Yes, there are.

[Guest]

I keep looking at the aircraft rules, and keep thinking that I might simply plug in my WW2 operational effectiveness data on aircraft accuracy, AA fire effectiveness, and effectiveness of aerial weapons on naval targets.  Basically, the takes the US bomber out of the antiship business, so I will need to plug in US Navy attack planes instead. I will need to dig out my US carrier models for the Dauntless dive-bombers.  The Bettys were good torpedo bombers, but did take heavy losses. May have to paint some Dauntless brown to give the Japanese some single-engine attack planes, and use the fighters strictly as fighters.  Other option would be to use some 1/350 scale planes for the attack planes, as that is pretty close to the scale of the Hellcat and Zero.  For fighter verses fighter combat, I am thinking of using a D6 for the Zero and a D8 for the US fighter, as the Wildcats that were actually in use had the advantage of early warning to get position at Guadalcanal.  If not covering Guadalcanal or a carrier, a D6 for each, winner shots down looser, tie, both go home damaged to the base island box, and can return the next turn.

[dinosaur]

I bought some Hell Cats and some Corsairs from a 1:350 set produced in either Japan or China.  They even have tiny Navy insignia to decal the wings.  I only wish I could find the bombers used in the Dolittle raid.  I’d just love to see the game with two of them sitting on the Solomon Islands.

On another note, my home computer is down.  I can still access my e-mail and thse boards using my wife’s notebook, but I don’t have acess to my spreadsheet.  If I ever get things sorted out, I hope to finish one or two more air attack comparisons.

[Guest]

You might want to check the Tamiya and Hasegawa websites.  Tamiya is still listing a 1/700 scale Mitchell that would fit in perfectly, and Hasegawa is still listing early and late war 1/700 Japanese Navy planes, and US Navy planes.  The Mitchell is about perfect for the A&A games in general, as the bombers scale out at at between 1/600 to 1/720 scale.  I also have some 1/700 scale B-29 bombers and Japanese Emily that a got quite a while ago.  I have been thinking about adding the B-25 into the games in some way, either as a cheaper heavy bomber with the same range as a fighter to using them as an attack plane in A&A Pacific with an attack of 3 or 4, and dropping the fighter ground attack to 2.

Trumpeter of China also makes a clear plastic B-25 in 1/700 scale along with 1/350 and 1/700 scale US Navy planes.

[Krieghund]

@Krieghund:

Method 1:

The current Attack Air Units step is divided into two steps: Air-to-Air Combat and Anti-Aircraft Fire:

Air-to-Air Combat - This step works in the same way as the Attack Air Units step in the Operations Manual, except that only air units may fire.

Anti-Aircraft Fire - This step works in the same way as the Attack Air Units step in the Operations Manual, with two exceptions.  First, only AA guns and sea units may fire.  Second, casualties are resolved in the normal fashion, but they are not removed immediately.  Each air unit that is hit is turned upside down on the board to mark it as a casualty.  These units will remain on the board and attack in the Attack Sea Units or Attack Land Units and/or Airfields steps, after which they will be removed along with those casualties.

I played a game the other day using this method, and I liked the results.  This method is simpler than the other one I proposed, and it preserves the property of the combat system that allows attacks to penetrate deeper into the casualty chart with more attack dice when attacking land and sea units.  This retains the sort of “combined arms” effect inherent in the system, as attacking with land or sea units together with air units works better than attacking with one type alone.

This method gives air units more punch without disrupting the existing combat system overly much by diluting that same effect when attacking air units.  It also allows fighters to better protect bombers, since the dice attacking air units are split into two separate attacks.  This has the effect of having more of the air-to-air casualties being fighters, while the bombers survive at least long enough to attack land or sea units.

[Guest]

The problem with this whole discussion of combining air and sea units into a single attack is that it NEVER HAPPENED IN THE ENTIRE GUADALCANAL CAMPAIGN.  It only happened once in the entire Pacific War, and that was the action by the escort carriers and Little Boys at Leyte Gulf.  If you need to use sea units in combination with air units to attack enemy surface units, the game is badly broken and needs fixing.  That is why I am pretty much discarding the whole system and using my own.  If the Japanese get clobbered by air, that is EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.  If US AA fire chews up half of the Japanese planes, that is what happened.

As far as victory conditions go, I am leaning on using whoever controls New Georgia at the end of the game wins, and forget the victory points.  Then I do not have to deal with airfields on islands where no airfields could be built.  I have been there and hopefully will be going back.

[legion3]

If you make the game to historically accurate;

1. It would not be A&A.

and

2. It would not be fun to play as the Axis.

And in the current game the AA fire chews up everybodies planes. One of the beauties of A&A is the ability to tweak the game, however, if you came up with a set of rules that made the Japanese player face a huge disadvantage, unequal results, I wouldn’t play with you…unless I could be the Americans  :wink: . I would tell you to take your toys and go home.

Its a game not a historical recreation.

Heck if you want reality, limit the US to only 4 Aircraft carriers (I suppose you could add the Ranger but that would not be historically accurate  :-o) as that is all they had at anyone time during the campaign. Limit the number of BB’s and CA’s to the number both sides had operational in the solomons.

Our favorite way to play is to scrap the VP’s and play until one side controls all 6 islands…takes a while but makes for some great battles.

[Guest]

Actually, since the Guadalcanal game is sufficiently close to the tactical level, I am also tempted to break out my SeaPower III naval rules set, and use those for the naval and air-sea engagements.  Another option would be to use the Fletcher Pratt rules, as those are a bit faster to use.  Just assume that each carrier and battleship represent one ship, each cruiser represents two, and each destroyer and transport represents three ships.  That would scale pretty closely to the actual campaign, and you could use the data for the Kongo, Haruna, Hiei, and Kirishima for the Japanese battleships.  For the heavy cruisers you would need to decide if they were the Furutaka and Aoba classes, with six 8" guns, or one of the larger heavies with ten 8" guns.  For the US cruisers, you could use one nine 8" gun heavy and one fifteen 6" gun light.  I just am not at all happy with the combat system.  It simply does not “feel” right.

As for the comment that it would not be fun to play as the Japanese, the historical campaign was about as touch and go as you could get.  One reason why I have been studying it for 46 years now.  The naval actions were some of the most murderous on record.  At the Bloody Ridge action, Kawaguchi’s forces came very close to breaking through Edson’s Marine line to Henderson Field, although if they could have stayed there once daylight arrived is another story.  I suspect that they would have been driven back very quickly.  Ichiki’s attack on the Tenaru River (actually the Ilu, but the mistake has never been successfully corrected) was a classic piece of Japanese arrogance and stupidity, which did characterize them throughout the entire fight for Guadalcanal Island itself.  They did better further north at avoiding stupid attacks.  That is why in a very real sense, control of the island of New Georgia is decisive.  Once the Allies controlled that island, Bougainville could be successfully invaded in the central section, bypassing both Japanese concentrations at the north and the south ends of the island.  Once airfields were in place at Empress Augusta Bay on Bouganville, Rabaul’s time as a major Japanese offensive base was over.

Thinking of that, Bougainville actually should have spaces for three airfields, one in the south, one in the central region, and one in the north.  During the war, we never bothered clearing the Japanese from either the north or the south of Bougainville, just left them until the surrender.  The one time they attacked the Allies positions in the central region, they were thoroughly hammered.  When I was there in May of 2002, the local people assured me that if I went up to Bougainville, there were hundred of caves with Japanese equipment still in them for me to study.  There is still an enormous amount of equipment scattered about the islands.

Finally, if you want a faster game, require the Americans by turn 12 to have control of both airfields on Guadalcanal, both on New Georgia, and one on Bougainville, and forget about Choiseul, Santa Isabel, and Malaita.  If they do not, the Japanese have done better than history, and won the game.

[Builder_Chris]

The ideas that I’ve read on this thread about “how to make fighters more of a threat/realistic” are pretty cool and do seem to be more…in line…with “history”’ but unless I’m misunderstanding all of the cool stats that dinosaur has put together for us, with out “redesigning” the game (some might call it…tweaking the game) the only way to make the aircraft in the game (as the game is designed) more of a “threat” is to have the fighters used as “escorts” for the bombers, right?  :?

Granted, I’ve only played this game twice so far,  :oops: (so pardon my limited experience) but those stats seem to be in line with what I experienced with the aircraft so far.  :|

I was expecting for the fighters to be much more of a threat in the game (as they arguably were in the real pacific)  :roll: and found in short order that you need a lot of them to make them any kind of “real threat” on their own merit (as was arguably the real case)  :roll: .

Barring any “redesign/tweak” to the rules, if dinosaurs rule of thumb (as I understand it) is to have one bomber for every “target” you plan to hit and to have 3 or 4 fighters per bomber to help the bombers “do there job” than players would need to make forces something like this….

1 or 2 bombers, that would need 1 airstrip on the board to launch the bomber(s) from (if they planned to attack anything further away than sea zones C, E, F, G or  the islands of Bougainville or Choiseul for the Japanese or sea  zones D, H, I, K or the islands of Guadalcanal or Malaita for the US) and they would need anywhere between 3 and 8 fighters for escorts and for those fighters to match the range of the bomber(s) they would need 2 to 4 “forward” airstrips or aircraft carriers or some kind of combination of forward airstrips and aircraft carriers, right?

I don’t know about other players experiences, but 1or 2 bombers and 3 to 8 fighters is not an air force that is any kind of “real” threat on its own merit in this game.  :-o Unless these aircraft have a large fleet that they are “escorting” or that is “attacking with them”, a force this size just is not a threat.  :roll: I have yet to have enough aircraft from a force this size survive the attack air phase to be any real threat on the attack sea or attack land phases.

Following dinosaurs rule of thumb, that would mean that a player wanting to make their airpower any kind of real threat (on its own merit), would need to send in about 6 bombers.  Those six bombers would need three airstrips to launch them from (if they planned to attack anything further away than sea zones C, E, F, G or  the islands of Bougainville or Choiseul for the Japanese or sea  zones D, H, I, K or the islands of Guadalcanal or Malaita for the US) and those six bombers would need about 18 to 24 fighters to escort them, and those 18 to 24 fighters would need 9 to 12 aircraft carriers to launch them from to match the bombers range.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but in my limited experience,  :oops: that would be one HUGE force in this game and that size of air force  MIGHT be a real threat (on its own merit).  But as far as I can tell it’s a force size that is near to impossible to build before the US would roll over the Japanese. (I’ve only played the Japanese so I can’t say if the US could make that kind of air force in and hold off a Japanese force that is island hopping).

The reinforcement points alone that would have to be spent just to build such a force are enough to make any player question the threat and usefulness of airpower in this game.

3 airstrips = 18 points
9 aircraft carriers = 63 points
18 fighters = 54 points
135 points divided by 22 (the “average” points that can be collected per turn 10 + 4 per island) 135/22=6.14 turns.

WOW, 6 turns just to build up a force that size?  The Japanese are way dead by than!

Those “rule of thumb” and “point costs” lead me to believe that aircraft (as the game is designed) are only useful on “defense” and since fighters get 2 dice on air attack (probably the only phase aircraft will survive/be used in anyway) bombers are pretty much unless since they only get 1 die on the air attack phase and cost 2 points more than fighters.  And if fighters are only good for defense that makes AA guns and loads of ships the better buy for air defense because they can attack air units on the attack air phase and suffer no losses in that phase, assuring their survival for use in attack sea or land units.

Like I said, I’ve only played this game two times so far but something seems…flawed?…with the mechanics of the air units?

I know I will play it a lot more before deciding about “tweaking” any of the rules or making my “final decision” about this subject, but so far, I think something does need to be…tweaked?

[timerover51]

I guess my problem with reducing the effect of air power is that it is totally non-historical.  Air power was THE dominant factor in the Solomons campaign.  Japanese ship-based antiaircraft fire was abyssmal in effectiveness, to be generous.  If you are trying to reduce that, why call the game Guadalcanal.  Read a good history of the campaign, and then argue that air power was not the decisive factor.  I guess I would not worry about victory points and simply see if you could do better or worse than history, like the old Panzerblitz scenario victory conditions.

[dinosaur]

Builder Chris,

It appears I was not adequately clear in my earllier post about the “rule of thumb.”  To determine the number of fighters planned in a raid, multiply the enemies expected number of AA dice by 0.75 to compute the minimum recommended number of fighters to bring.  An example:
You decide to bomb New Georgia airfield which has 3 infantry, 3 artillery and an AA gun, with 2 fighters at the airbase.  The Japanese also have 4 carrier squadrons that can be dedicated to New Georgia.  Therefore, you have to expect to resist (2 FIGs + 4 FIGs) x 2 + 3 = 15 AA dice in the raid.  15 x 0.75 = 11 FIGs and probably 2 bombers to have decent chances.  The problem, as you correctly noted is the FIGs have to be carrier squadrons which requires six carriers, although at this scale you probably have good enough chances with 5 carriers, 10 FIGs and 2 bombers.  You will probably lose a bomber and another 4 or 5 fighters too, but you have a huge chance of taking down the airfield.  When one victory point can let you win, this is not an impossible scenario.  Just remember to have some other FIGs to defend your own airfields.

As an aside, my computer bit the dust back a few months and I lost my spreadsheet to compute the air battle “value”.  I have been using a notebook just to surf, so I don’t expect to do any more rigorous calcs for some time.

[frimmel]

Okay so for the most part the problem is largely that a force of planes can’t attack a fleet of ships on its own? That is what is meant by ‘not a threat.’  :?

Just so I’m understanding correctly.  :-)

[Krieghund]

@timerover51:

I guess my problem with reducing the effect of air power is that it is totally non-historical.  Air power was THE dominant factor in the Solomons campaign.  Japanese ship-based antiaircraft fire was abyssmal in effectiveness, to be generous.  If you are trying to reduce that, why call the game Guadalcanal.

Ummm, we are trying to increase the effectiveness of air power here.

@frimmel:

Okay so for the most part the problem is largely that a force of planes can’t attack a fleet of ships on its own? That is what is meant by ‘not a threat.’  :?

Just so I’m understanding correctly.  :-)

You’re understanding correctly.  The problem seems to be that planes are wiped out by AA fire before they can inflict much damage, making attacks with only air units very costly and not very effective.

[frimmel]

Thanks, Krieg. I was just rereading the thread (which started in Feb!) and I’m back on track.

I think the problem is one of scale (at least on the conceptual level.) How much material does each piece actually represent? How much space is each space? Which frankly is the real difficulty with A&A or at least IMO is what causes most of the tweak the rules discussions.

So while I’m not much for tweaks (I think the game (note not the ‘simulation’ is fun as is) or even offering them I’m going to ask this one: What about reducing the cost of fighters and increasing the fighter basing capacity of AC’s and airfields?

Leave all other things unchanged? Or would you need to then cut back on Fighter naval attack dice?

I think Krieg’s Method One is the most elegant solution– reduce the effectiveness of AA.

But it seems it might just need more fighters?