Posts made by Razor

The headline is very clear on this being the G40 game, so infantry A1D2, Artillery A2D2, Tanks A3D3 etc etc. My suggestion is that all landing units attack on a 1 in the first round of combat. You are correct in noticing that the infantry will not be affected since it attack on a 1 in every case. My philosophy is that infantry fight in close combat, with short range, and the infantry fighting power will be almost the same no matter if he fight in a city, on a field, in a forest, in mountains, or he swim ashore doing an amphibious assault. The infantry will always be a man with rifle, walking on his feet.

Artillery and Tanks are another issue. An Artillery piece can not barrage an enemy position when it is still on the landing craft, it need to be towed across the beach before it can do something useful. And when a tank drive off the landing craft, it has the same fighting power as an infantry. The tanks A3 is when it do a Blitzkrieg attack, not when it is stuck on the beach as a helpless whale. But from the second round of combat, they are being organized in their usual combat formations, and then they attack on 2 and 3.

Yes, I of all people know so far too well that the defending artillery preemptive roll come from the 1914 game, indeed. But I love that rule, and want to see it in a HR.

I was not talking 1914 here

I love pure and simple rules, so no additional infantry in my HR.

the way I see it, landings can be resolved in two ways

Round 1. The attackers are debarking from ships, and swim ashore to establish a beachhead. And they cant roll dice when swimming. Only Battleships and Cruisers that do Shore Bombardment roll dice, and this may feel like preemptive if other units than artillery are taken as casualties. Attackers from adjacent territory don’t participate in this round.
Defending artillery roll D2, since this is the only unit with range to hit invaders in boats. Infantry rifles don’t have the range until the invaders hit the beach. Since the invaders did not roll dice in this round, it feels like preemptive fire, but it is not.

Round 2. All attacking land units roll at standard values, no matter if they come by ship, from adjacent territory or were airdropped.
All defending units roll as usual

The other suggestion is
Round 1. All units that are amphibious assaulting only hit on a 1. Except Marines and Paras, that hit on 2 or less. Battleship, Cruiser and Destroyer shore bombard boost one matching unit + 1. Attackers from adjacent territory attack as usual.
All defending units roll as usual.

Round 2. General combat as usual

No offense taken, man. I love to discuss  game mechanism with you

Maybe you should try this in the House rule forum.

@Baron:

Maybe just give a +1A to any Inf or Art in the first round is the Max to keep a balance vs other warships.

If you look at the firepower a Destroyer can project on an enemy position at a set time, and compare it to a real Artillery unit, or a fighter, then you will see that the true Artillery unit, which is actually designed to barrage an enemy position with indirect fire, with high accuracy and quantity, is far more effective in this job, than a destroyer with small gun direct fire, designed to sink ships, or a fighter with a tiny bomb. Funny enough, in this game it is the opposite.

Yes, I think a Destroyer should be able to boost a matching land unit +1 during the first round of Amphibious Assault, but the Destroyer should not Shore bombard.

I think this doctrine fit all A&A editions, so no need to start another thread about 1914, since it probably fit there, and here too, man

@Baron:

On a gameplay perspective, however I think this will be less interesting.
You will see the StB 10-12 IPCs playing sitting suck during Dogfight: plain boring.

I don’t agree

You have a Tranny that roll A0D0, and nobody say that is boring. But back in the days with Classic and Revised, where Trannies defended on D1, and nobody would buy warships, just a huge stack of Trannies and a huge stack of Infantry, now that was boring. Luckily that is fixed. Now if you don’t want your Tranny to be sunk, you buy warships for escort. Same thing in dogfight, if you don’t want your St.Bomber to get killed, you buy fighter escorts. Exactly what is boring about that _

Yes, and I think fighters should be A1 D2 both in Dogfight and in ground combat too. They were designed for dogfights, not for sinking battleships or carpet bomb infantry stacks, to that we have divebombers and heavy bombers that do a better job. And since the hits in dogfight are preemptive, I think 8 IPC is a correct cost

1. The attacker declare an attack on  a territory and commit escorting fighters.
2. The defender commit intercepting fighters, both from the territory being attacked and by scrambling from adjacent AirBases

3. Dogfight
Escort fighters A1
Interceptor fighter D2
This is preemptive fire that target aircrafts only, and all casualties are removed from play.

4. AA fire. The attacker commit his surviving aircrafts to SBR facilities or general combat.
Facility AA gun fire D1+D1+D1 to SBR bombers, and each AA gun unit fire D1+D1+D1 in general combat. Preemptive fire, so casualties are removed from play

5. General combat

After this round of combat is finished, the attacker press Attack, Contest or Retreat. If he press Contest or Retreat, the combat ends. He can press Attack as many times he want. If he press Attack, this include all steps from 1 to 5 again.  Yes, you must do dogfight and be exposed to AA fire before every time you use your aircrafts in combat.

I think only fighters can roll dice in the Dogfight phase, both because of playability and historical issues. If all planes can roll a 1 in dogfight, it would be like the old Tranny that defended on a D1. So you buy nothing but Trannies, and they roll a D1 like ten times, and sink the attacking Battleship. You can do the same in dogfight, buy nothing but Bombers, and they roll a A1 like twenty times and kill all intercepting fighters. This is gamey, and not historical correct either. Real life transport ships never sank a battleship, even if they had a small gun on deck, and real life heavy Bombers was slaughtered when on a mission alone, even if they had a machine gun in front and rear. That’s why it was so important to develop long range escort fighters. If the B 17 bomber had been strong in dogfights, the P51 Mustang would never have been made. Same with real life ships, they all had some ASW ability, but for game purposes only the A&A Destroyer can negate submarine first shot and submerging in this game. If all units had the same abilities it would not be fun.

Based on this, let only fighters be allowed to roll dice in the Dogfight, and make it preemptive
It is also important that the AA gun fire is resolved after the Dogfight. Interceptors meet the enemy at the border far away, and AA guns is close defence, when you actually see the white in the enemy eyes

@Baron:

Strafe is a separate phase than ground battle. This forbid ground to hit aircrafts.
During strafe, Fg can choose to crashed down other planes instead of ground units.

Ground cannot shoot any aircraft (as in 1914), except for AAA guns preemptive strike during the Air-to-Air phase or a previous Flak only phase.

This I can like.

But after reading a lot about air combat during WWII, I figure that only fighters and AA guns should be able to hit other aircrafts. Most of the Dive bombers did not have weapons to fight other aircrafts, and even if some of the heavy bombers, like the B 17 Flying Fortress, did have some machine guns in rear and front, it was very rare that they killed other fighters. All stats show that bombers without fighter escorts was an easy target to interceptors. To give fighters Anti Air ability is the same as only the Destroyer unit has Anti Sub ability, since in the real world all ships have some ASW capability. I say, give the fighter an unique ability, like the Destroyer unit have

Then I suggest a preemptive air to air combat phase as followed.
Fighters A1 and D2, must target aircrafts before land
Tacs A3 and D4, can not hit fighters
St. Bombers, carpet bomb infantry stack A1+A1+A1, D1. Or SBR facilities
AA guns target aircrafts A1+A1+A1, limited to one die for each plane
Then remove casualties, and since all hits are preemptive, they cant return fire any time.

Or a more innovative idea, say aircrafts can not kill land units, only lower their combat value. So when a plane roll a hit, then a matching ground unit is removed to the casualties board, but can not return fire to other ground units for the duration of that turn. This look historical correct.
In the case where two inf and 3 planes attack the lonely inf, and the planes hit, then the inf can not return fire to the attacking inf.

Or what about this. Each plane can absorb one hit in the ground combat, modelling that air supremacy suppress the enemy. This will be in the same alley as tanks absorb hits with the blitzkrieg tactic, which also suppress the enemy.

I think maybe fighters can boost artillery to A4, but not boost tanks.
Tactical Bombers should of course boost a matching tank to A3, since they act as ultra long range artillery, the same way as artillery boost infantry

The naval combat can go as OOB.
Fighters A1 D2, must target other planes before ships
Tacs A3 D4, and get a boost to A4 if paired with a fighter
St. Bombers D4

Battleship A4 D4
Cruiser A3 D3
Destroyer A2 D2

Maybe the inherent Carrier defense value should be boosted, to compensate for the weaker fighter. Let say you can land 2 planes on the Carrier, but the Carrier itself has a little fighter force just to close combat self defense, making the carrier defend on D3 ?

I am just brainstorming, man, just want to see if there can me made rules that are slightly more advanced than OOB, but not go as far as the http://ww2wargame.com/, that is a very advanced A&A style game, as you probably know. So I don’t like rules that depart too far from the OOB. But since we are talking house rules, you are of course free to do what ever you want. I just don’t love the 3 place carrier. And I don’t want to glue counters with 4 different combat values under my ships, like the WWII, struggle for Europe game does. I want it simple, but at the same time as historical correct as possible.

I think only the Strategic Bombing Raid should be one round only. General combat, air to air combat and naval combat cant have fixed limits, except if there was winter turns or mountain terrain, in which case the winter and mountain make it difficult to supply the land units for more than one round of combat. But whit the current game, it is the players choice to press continue attacks for one more round, or quit fighting but stay in the territory to contest it, or just retreat, after each round of combat, since this model the real war in a correct way.

So we should not adapt the one round of combat rule from the 1914 game. Napoleon walked from Poland to Moscow on his feet in less than 3 months during his war in 1812, and used 3 more months to walk home again. If combat is one round only, and a turn is 3 months, the motorized German panzer army would need several years to reach Moscow, and that would be derogatory. I don’t wanna play that game. Actually, I think infantry should move 2, and Mech move 4 spaces.

Yes, aircrafts will be weaker than the OOB, but I always said the A&A planes were unhistorical strong. There were no case in WWII where a squadron of fighters would even kill a 14 000 man strong infantry division, not to mention a corps or army group, which is common to see in the A&A game when 2 inf supported by 3 fighters kill 3 or 4 infantry. Actually I think aircrafts should not kill land units, they should be ultra long range artillery that boost up a matching tank to A4. But I realize that would be too advanced for the casual player

@knp7765:

I know that you are right that destroyers often shelled Japanese positions in support of landings.

Yes, one thing is to shell a position, another thing is exactly what did that shelling accomplish ? If it was common during WWII that small gun fire from destroyers whipped out army corps from the surface of earth, then yes let destroyers shore bombard on4 or less. But if they at best killed like 2 or 3 men, of a 50 000 men strong corps, then no. We cant loose touch with the ground. I read about a Romanian destroyer that was in a duel with a Russian tank during the first week of Barbarossa, and the destroyer won. But since this only happened one time during the war, I don’t want to make a house rule that allows destroyers to hit tanks, or tanks to hit destroyers in an adjacent seazone. I also know about a sub that shoot down an airplane, a heavy bomber, with the small gun on deck. This too only happened one time in history, so I don’t want to make a rule where subs can target aircrafts, that would be too much, even for me. end of line, let the destroyer bombardment go

@SS:

Then have 3 plane carriers that can have a combine of fighters, tac, dive, and torp.
Fighters cant attack ships. Fighters just support air space.
Tac,dive and torp can attack ships.
Battleships attack at 4 but were they better at attacking ships or planes and did they sink alot of subs :|

Since we are talking house rules, you are free to load your carriers with as many planes you want. But myself, I prefer the classic 2 plane carrier for several reasons. First, its standard so everybody are used to it. But more important, since the A&A carrier unit represent 6 real life carriers, and a WWII carrier had from 50 to 70 aircrafts, then 6 carriers can have a max of 500 aircrafts. The 6 carriers at Pearl had 350 aircrafts. Lets say an A&A fighter represent 250 real life fighters, then it feels correct to place two fighters on a carrier. 3 is one too much. Some people would even say one fighter is enough, since it looks like the A&A plane unit is more than 500 hundred real planes, judging from the set up.

Of course fighters too can attack ships, but not on A3 and D4. Fighters can do A1 and D2 against ships, I am fine with that, no problem

No, real life battleships were far too big and slow to do effective sub hunting, and to my knowledge no sub was sunk by a battleship, and only one sub by another sub. And for game purposes, warships and planes need a destroyer to hunt subs. Lets just pretend the battleship hit was assigned something useful

@Baron:

Don’t forget these two units are fighting against Inf A2D3C3 not OOB A1D2C3.

Basic Infantry unit is much more powerful here.

The true problem is that the infantry use the same combat value for all purposes. It defend at 3 or less against both other infantry, artillery barrage from far away, tanks and heavy bombers high up in the sky. This is to keep it simple. A&A is a game, not an in depth war simulation.

The best fix the way I see it, is to divide general combat in two phases.
Flak, Dogfight and ground strafe phase.
Fighters A1 and D2, can target other aircrafts, or strafe ground units.
Tacs strafe ground units A3 and D4
St Bombers carpet bomb infantry stack A1 + A1 + A1, limited to one die for each unit
AA guns fire at aircrafts D1 + D1 + D1, limited to one die for each plane

All hits are preemptive, so ground units cant kill aircrafts in the ground unit phase
Surviving ground units go as usual. Tanks get a boost with a matching Tac

The same with Naval Combat
Fighters A1 and D2, can target other aircrafts or strafe ships
Tacs, in this case dive bombers, strike ships A3 and D4
St Bombers should roll one die with 4 or less a hit, since you don’t carpet bomb ships

All ships do Anti Air fire. Each ship roll one die, every 1 a hit.

Remove casualties
When one part is out of planes, then start surface combat with the usual combat values

@Baron:

However, you will have another balance issue with 2 planes carriers because Fighters will not be very effective vs TacBs. And carriers with 2 Fgs on it vs warships will not get a real chance.

Yes, I like that, its just how it was in the real war. Carriers had a small fighter screen for protection against air attack, not to sink enemy battleships. Actually I don’t think a fighter can sink any ships with its machine guns. Only torpedo bombers, dive bombers, medium bombers and heavy bombers can sink ships, fighters can not. Was it the UK carrier Glorius that had fighters only, and got sunk by German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in 1940 ? And how many waves off carrierbased divebombers against Tirpitz, before she was sunk by Avro Lancaster heavy bombes. And were it medium bombers that sunk Prince of Wales and Rodney, and how many fighters attacked the battleships at Pearl Harbor and Taranto ? None, only dive bombers, yes. You need a torpedo to sink a ship, not a small machine gun.

It is correct that Carriers become the capital ship of this time, pushing battleships down to a second place. But it is not correct that fighters had more firepower than warships. A divebomber slowed Bismarck down, but it took battleships and destroyers to sink her. And submarines sunk far more ships than planes did. The main difference between a battleship and a divebomber, is that the divebomber come out of the horizon, and the enemy ships are out of sight, making it an air to sea battle. The divebombers torpedoes against the warships AA gun fire. Most of the hex and counter games have different values for a warships ability to fight other ships or aircrafts. But the A&A warship have only one combat value, that it use for all purposes. The A&A battleship hit on a 4 or less to other battleships, subs, aircrafts and shore bombarement. This is the problem.

To the game, to let fighters sink warships is in the same alley as sub attack other subs, which only happen one time during WWII, when a UK sub sank a German sub. Attack submarines did not come until the 1970 s. Down the same alley is the classic tranny that could defend on a roll of 1. Buy 10 trannies, and they would sink any battleship. And a transport sinking a battleship never happened in any war. Luckily that is fixed now, since the G40 trannies must be taken as casualties after the warships.

@Baron:

My slightly different version:
Fg A2D2M4C8 Always hit an enemy planes first, if there is any. Get +1A/D when there is no enemy planes (Air Supremacy bonus).

This way with Fighter presence, there is no need for a dedicated air-to-air combat phase.
The battle can be simultaneous with the ground combat.

I dont like the air supremacy bonus, but the rest look intriguing.

If fighters can target enemy aircrafts, that will model a continuing dogfight every turn. I also suggest AAguns fire every round, together with the rest of the defending units, and not preemptive, not in land combat anyway. SBR is another business

It will go like this
One time air to air combat and one time SBR of facilities

Naval combat and landing, with defending artillery preemptive fire, modelling the coast fortress, and Battleship shore bombardment

Debarked land units all attack on 1 the first round. Marines A2 alone or A3 with Battleship support
General combat
Inf A2 alone or A3 with Art, Art A3, Tanks A2 alone or A3 with Tac, and absorb two hits
Fighter A1 and can target enemy aircrafts, owners choice
Tacs strafe land units at A3, and Strategic Bombers carpet bomb the infantry stack by rolling 3 dice, A1 + A1 + A1 targeting the infantry

Defenders roll
All land units defend on 3 or less
AAgun roll a die to every plane, limited at 3 dice pr AAgun, the OOB rules,
Fighters roll D2 and target enemy aircrafts, owners choice
Tacs D4 and Strat Bombers carpet bomb the infantry with D1 + D1 + D1

Then attacker press Attack, Contest or Retreat
And Defender should do the same too

I don’t think it will be to strong to let the AAgun fire every round, since its no longer preemptive, and AAguns can be taken as casualties and the fighters new cost will be 8 IPC. Come to think about it, it always was unfair to let the AA gun only fire one time, but the aircrafts could fire every round.

All great ideas, Baron, good thinking.

To wrap it up, I suggest that all territories under attack should start with a one round air to air combat, or dogfight if you like. Defender should be able to scramble fighters from adjacent territories with airbases. Surviving Strategic Bombers should now conduct a one time SBR on facilities or a one time Carpet bombing of an infantry stack. During Carpet bombing if the AAgun unit miss, then the Bomber roll 3 dice, every 1 a hit, and this is preemptive, the inf are removed immediately. Defending Strategic Bombers originally in the contested territory, that survived the dogfight, also Carpet bomb infantry that attack from an adjacent territory, but not infantry still on the trannies at sea.
Now the bombers land. The fighters and Tacs stay for the general combat.

Naval combat as usual. Planes that was in action during air to air combat can not join the naval battle.

Defending artillery roll one preemptive strike at the landing party, all casualties be removed.

All warships should now be able to do a one time shore bombard, even if they just had a naval battle. If we analyze all landings during WWI and WWII, the battleships were never short of shells, even if they engaged in naval battles before the landings. For simplicity all warships hit on a 2 or less.
Since we now use the 1914 Battleboard where inf attack on 2 and def on 3 etc , we can now make amphibious assaults as difficult as they were in the real war. Let all land units attack on 1 for the first round of combat, and tanks do not absorb hits in the first round, and no combined arms bonuses neither. Remember this guys are wading ashore and need time to get organized for combat.

Marines should hit on 2 or less, and 3 if paired with a warship that can shore bombard. For the next turns they act as  common infantry.

Fighters should strafe land units with A1 and D2, and Tacs with A3 and D4. Tacs should also boost tanks from 2 to 3. But I don’t think air supremacy should ever boost artillery to 4, that’s not how it worked during WWII.

From now its general combat, inf A2 alone, and A3 with artillery support, art A3, tanks A 2 alone, and A3 with Tac support, and absorb two hits. All units should defend on D3 or less.

After every round of land combat, the Attacker should press Attack, Contest or Retreat.
Then the Defender must press Defend, Contest or Retreat. If the defender retreat, he can not roll dice that round, only retreat the surviving units to an adjacent territory that is friendly, and not contested .

@Baron:

My question was more on this line of reasoning about scrambling planes from AirBase for adjacent ground territory.

Is it on this thread that this idea get a first appear?

No, the first suggestions for AirBases to scramble into ground territories come in Larry Harris game design forum back in 2009 when A&A Pacific 40 was released the first time, and people did not understand why only islands could scramble. The designer turned down the idea for balancing reasons

@ossel:

the “no landing in newly captured tt’s” rule.

That rule has always bothered me. If you capture Ukraine, your planes cant land there that turn. But you can land Italian planes there, or even Japanese planes. I never got the fully grasp of this. Everything in a turn are supposed to happen simultaneous. So why are German fighters not allowed to defend their own infantry and tanks in newly captured Ukraine against the Russian counterattack, when Italian and Japanese fighters are ? Beats me.

You could say it is a balancing issue, but then your allied planes should not be allowed to land in your newly captured territory neither. If Germany capture Ukraine in turn 5, then Italian and Japanese planes should not be allowed to land there that turn, since the German planes are not allowed. The current OOB rule don’t make sense.

Luckily the 1914 OOB rules are far more realistic than the G40 rules, so we should start to play by that rulebook, with some modifications to make it fit WWII. Of course the G40 fighters must move 4 spaces, and not 2. But fighters should always be allowed to land in newly captured and contested territories.

@Baron:

From a game consistency perspective it is very strange that any airplane cannot scramble to protect an adjacent land territory but can do for an adjacent SZ.

In the first edition of Pacific 40 you could scramble from islands only, and at that time up to 6 fighters. After in depth discussions at the designers forum, he fixed it so for later editions you can scramble from land too, and not just islands. But now the limit is 3 fighters only, for balancing issues.