Public Sillyness

[Jennifer]

Actually, they did fix shore bombardment in Revised.  Which is good.

As for the statement that the shore bombardment flies just over the helmets of the landing infantry, D-Day was preceeded by how many hours of Shore Bombardment?

Also, defending infantry can dig in to avoid bombs from bombers. And Artillery can shower a more precise area.  Maybe bombers should be Att: 2, Def: 1, Cost 8 and Artillery should be Att: 4, Def: 2, Cost 12 (and have no bearing on infantry’s attack ability)

[Nightmare]

@Jennifer:

Also, defending infantry can dig in to avoid bombs from bombers. And Artillery can shower a more precise area.  Maybe bombers should be Att: 2, Def: 1, Cost 8 and Artillery should be Att: 4, Def: 2, Cost 12 (and have no bearing on infantry’s attack ability)

Yes but than a bomber would do less damage than a tank or a fighter and only less more than Infantry.
That doesn´t sound so realistic to me too.

[Jennifer]

It would do less against combat units.  It would still do full damage on SBR.  Reward for making bombers. :)

[U-505]

The problem is that the most important factor in these cases is that a game turn consists of many months and the size of the territory your units are operating in. If you want to look at it in a semi-realistic way then that is what you have to take into account.

When you lose a fighter, for example, it can be assumed that, over the course of those many months, that it has taken many losses due to a variety of factors such as AA fire, mechanical failures, resupply interdiction, sabotage, and loss of competent pilots. You don’t lose 1500 fighters in one day but you have lost enough aircraft over time that it ceases to be an effective fighting force and that the surviving aircraft and men have been reorganized into other units to replentish their losses.

The same goes for ground and naval units. A naval battle takes hours not months and an inferior force isn’t going to stick around to be decimated either. The way you have to look at it is that the larger force is making opportunistic attacks over time to inflict more casualties, by attrition, that it takes.

As far as I’m concerned the game is balanced to within a unit here or there and a couple IPC’s. If you want more realism you need to make an entirely new game. It would take a larger map, more territories, resource and supply chains, naval and air bases, unit limits per turn and a new combat system.

I can’t say how many times I have seen a US fleet operating deep into the Japanese controlled South Pacific when the closest base is Hawaii or German units in Southern Africa when the Allies control North Africa. In both of those cases those units would be under heavy amounts of resupply interdiction and should be a lot less effective than their numbers or combat ability would indicate.

[88 Millimeter]

Amen.

There are an infinite number of holes to poke in this game when it comes to realism. But no other game covers the scope of A&A and remains as playable. A suspension of disbelief is needed, and we’re all playing by the same rules after all.

One suggestion would be to switch to a d20 and try to make the numbers more realistic- i.e. make infantry hit 20% of the time, or make transports hit only 10-15% of the time etc. At the least the effect of bad dice would be diminished.

[Nightmare]

Yeah d20 would be fine, but I don´t like low luck because it´s too predictable and also much less realistic than normal luck.
A general could,t just say “OK I´ve got 10% more troops than the enemy, so its 100% sure that I´ll win.”.
Armies were influenced by experience, moral, supply, leadership,…. there are enough examples in history where a weaker army won a big battle agianst a stronger enemy.

[Jennifer]

Actually, no luck would fit your example.  Even in low luck you can out number the enemy and loose.  Just the odds of 5 infantry vs 1 infnatry loosing is exceptionally smaller.

Also, low luck changes the strategy.  You actually end up using more for your attacks then you normally would, to guarentee a hit.  So instead of 1 inf, 1 art vs 1 inf, you might see 1 inf, 1 art and a fighter, just to break the “6” barrier.

[way2slo]

@88:

One suggestion would be to switch to a d20 and try to make the numbers more realistic- i.e. make infantry hit 20% of the time, or make transports hit only 10-15% of the time etc. At the least the effect of bad dice would be diminished.

Bad dice are part of the game.  The swings in luck are part of what make the game fun.  When I say “fun” I mean it adds tension, suspense as a battle unfolds.  Without it, battles turn into algebra equations that are solved, not fought.

Luck is a big factor in real battles.  It reminds me of a story I once heard about Napoleon:

Napoleon’s aides came to him to recommend a man to promote to general. They went into detail extolling the man’s virtues and why he would make an excellent addition to Napoleon’s staff. Napoleon cut them off half way through their speech. “Yes, yes, I understand he’s brave, he’s smart, he knows tactics, he is loved by the men. But I only need to know one thing.”

His aides nervously looked at each other. “Yes, Emperor?”

“Is he lucky?”

[Jennifer]

Yes, bad dice can be part of the game.  They can also ruin a game.  If you’re always lucky with the dice or always unlucky with the dice in a game it ruins the fun.

good dice rolls beat good tactics

unfortunately is true.  However, Low Luck still uses the dice, it just reduces the luck factor by allowing you to strategically place units, buy the right units and prepare for counter attacks.  LL makes it more like chess.  ADS makes it more like Yahtzee.

Point:

2 German Fighters, 1 German Submarine vs one British Battleship (2h):

Battleship damaged, all attackers destroyed.  YAHTZEE!!!

9 Infantry attacking 2 infantry:

1 defender killed, all attackers killed.  YAHTZEE

Eventually you have to sit there and say what are the odds?

Personally, I like the idea of keeping all the odds open.  So I’d say, with the online calculators out there, figure out the odds of success and failure then roll 1d100.  Speaking of which, I always wanted to see if the dicey could handle other dice, so I’m going to test it below.

Percentile Dice
Rolling 1 100-sided dice:
20

D20
Rolling 1 20-sided dice:
10

D10
Rolling 1 10-sided dice:
10

D8
Rolling 1 8-sided dice:
8

D4
Rolling 1 4-sided dice:
1

D2
Rolling 1 2-sided dice:
1

[Jennifer]

oh Snap!  :evil:

Anyone wanna play a game with D100’s?  heheh

4 Infantry at 20% vs 8 Infantry at 40%

Attack:
Rolling 4 100-sided dice:
26, 45, 88, 28

Defend:
Rolling 8 100-sided dice:
75, 4, 21, 53, 86, 87, 4, 86

[88 Millimeter]

Sweet! Nice job, Jen. My friend and I have been working on a d20 variant of A&A, so this is nice to know. %dice is obviously the best choice, but it gets a bit clunky in FTF games to roll so many dice…

And yes, luck is a part of the game, but I’ve had a beautiful 20 turn game go south in a hurry on one turn of bad luck. It was a game that had been picked up and written down multiple times- the kind you spend ALOT of time thinking about. Bad dice killed it. It sucked the fun out of the best game I’ve ever been a part of for both winner and loser.

When you win on crazy dice do you ever truly feel like you outplayed your opponent?

When you lose on bad dice do you truly feel like you were out-strategized?

No, and no. So as Jen alluded to, sometimes it feels like you might as well play yahtzee.

[way2slo]

@88:

So as Jen alluded to, sometimes it feels like you might as well play yahtzee.

Remove the luck factor of the dice, and you might as well quit playing A&A and go play chess.  :wink:

[Guest]

Singing to the choir, Way!  :mrgreen:

[Jennifer]

But in LL you don’t remove the luck factor.  You just minimize it.  There’s still luck involved.

Also, I wanna start working on a d100 variant.  I think we’d have to round off to the nearest 5% to make it easier to remmeber what units have what percentage chance to hit.

But I do think that AA guns should have a higher percentage to hit then attacking infantry.  Especially over capitals!

[Guest]

Further discussion on a d100 variant (or any other variant) needs to be under House Rules.

[Squash]

Doesn’t anyone else see the irony of talking about using low luck dice’s, because good or bad luck could ruin a game… And the unrealisms in the game, in the same conversation? Take Midway for example, that was an incredibly close, unbalanced, and purely lucky thing.

[Guest]

And do not forget that the code name for the position selected for the US fleet at Midway was…
Point Luck

[way2slo]

@Jennifer:

But in LL you don’t remove the luck factor.  You just minimize it.  There’s still luck involved.

Also, I wanna start working on a d100 variant.  I think we’d have to round off to the nearest 5% to make it easier to remmeber what units have what percentage chance to hit.

But I do think that AA guns should have a higher percentage to hit then attacking infantry.  Especially over capitals!

A few thoughts:

• Low Luck (LL) is still too close to straight math, IMHO, which dosen’t give you the thrill of the great battles.  With LL, would the 101st Airborne have held Bastogne in the Battle of the Ardennes?  No.  Would the RAF have fought off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain?  No.  Would the Russians have held off Germany at the Siege of Leningrad?  No.  Come to think of it, the Allies got pretty lucky in Europe.  :-D

• d100 rounded off to the nearest 5% becomes d20

• While I agree that there should be better defenses against strategic bombing other than a puny AA piece, AA guns in and of themselves were really not that effective, historically.  I believe the game rules reflect night-time air raids, which means they were shooting at the dark and hoping the bombers would run into their shells.  In that case, I would say that the attack rating of 1 is very generous.

  What is an effective Defense against WWII bobmbing raids are Fighters.  If I were going to modify the rules, I would allow Fighters to shoot once, like an AA gun, at each Bomber in a SBR entering the territory.  This would reflect Day-Time air raids.  One Fighter per territory.  The Fighter would hit on 3 or 4. (I would have to play-test it.) However, a 50% or 66% chance of losing your Bomber would be a huge deterrent.  Would you even bother doing SBR’s?  Even with Heavy Bombers?

[Jennifer]

Yes, d100 rounded to the nearest 5% is a d20.  So?  It’s just way cooler to throw 20d100 then it is to throw 20d20……IMHO

[way2slo]

You like throwing d100?  Well, I guess that is ok.  I personally think they are too hard to read (are you sure its not “that” number on top??) and they tend to crack over time.  d20 have some coolness to them, even if it is only because they are not d6.

If you want to throw d100, I suggest that you don’t round.  Make the values odd percentages that don’t divide evenly into each other for the units.  For the people that like to calculate everything, that will drive them crazy.  :lol:  ( Make them all different prime numbers if you can.  Infantry 13/23, Tank 37/31, Artillery 17/29 and give Inf +10 :evil: )