You’re welcome. Enjoy the game.
Stupid A&A G40 Rules
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@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:
@Young:
@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:
I agree about the stupid victory conditions for the allies.
I always simply had it where the Allies win by controlling 3 originally Axis victory city territories at the end of Italy’s turn, thus you only needed one capital at minimum.
That seems like a pretty good alternative, better than the oob rule for sure.
I just realised after all this time, that this rule doesn’t help much. Shanghai is not an originally Japanese victory city.
Alternate victory conditions:
Allies win the game by either:
Control Paris, London, Moscow, and 1 originally European Axis victory city territory (Europe Allied Victory)
or
Control Calcutta, Sydney, Manila, and Shanghai/Tokyo (Pacific Allied Victory)Have either of these completed, at the end of Italy’s turn, to win the game as the Allies.
That seems reasonable, but you should probably keep the whole “hold for one complete round” so the US can’t just win the game after taking Shanghai even if it’s counterable.
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Having just learned that 2 AAA against 2 aircraft is only 2 shots makes no sense to me! It just feels wrong! It should be 4 shots. Surely?
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@Private:
Having just learned that 2 AAA against 2 aircraft is only 2 shots makes no sense to me! It just feels wrong! It should be 4 shots. Surely?
Nope, that would make AA guns go from “meh” to “holy shit wow”. They are only “meh”.
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“Meh” indeed tes. Why can’t both AAAs fire at each plane? Where is the sense in that?
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@Private:
“Meh” indeed tes. Why can’t both AAAs fire at each plane? Where is the sense in that?
I’m not sure I understand your argument, which seems to be saying that the number of shots that can be fired by weapons in a given amount of time depends on the number of targets rather than on the number of weapons being fired. Let’s say that we have two AAA guns and one target plane, and that each gun can fire one shot in one unit of time, which is fine. Now let’s say that we have the same two AAA guns, but that we now have two target planes. Why would the rate of fire of the weapons suddenly double from one shot per unit of time to two shots per unit of time? The amount of time hasn’t changed and the number of guns hasn’t changed – so why would the guns be pumping twice as many shells into the sky?
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Well that’s how it works now… any number of AA guns from one to infinity still works out to one shot per plane total.
My guess is that the theory is that since WW2 era AA was basically “spray and pray”, not precisely targeted like current AA, it didn’t pump out more shots, just the shots that it did pump out were likely to hit something in proportion to the number of targets available to hit.
It might be interesting to see what happened if each AA gun got to fire, people would definitely buy them whereas they don’t now. It would severely decrease the value of air in land battles, making it nearly worthless with enough stacked AA. You’d have to have AA guns at a cost of 15 or more to balance that out and remove a lot of the starting AA.
In the current setup with AA, a cost of 3 would be more appropriate and get them used/purchased more often. If we removed their ability to take a hit in combat a cost of 2 might even work. WW2 AA weren’t sophisticated or expensive weapons, they were basically medium caliber machine guns. They certainly didn’t cost almost as much as a tank or a sub!
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As is, AA guns shine at scaring your opponent into thinking “what if”. That is their main benefit, do not forget this.
At a cost of 5, AA guns are often not worth purchasing over 1.66 infantry units, even if your opponent has lots of planes, assuming you have a large defensive stack. For instance, if Germany has 15 planes coming, and Russia already has 4 AA guns to shoot at 12, they’re actually very likely better suited to buy infantry than an AA gun + infantry.
At a cost of 4, AA guns would become absolutely better than infantry, but not by a huge amount, in large battles with lots of attacking planes.
At a cost of 3, AA guns would fucking amazing, and you’d be seeing them be purchased much, much more often. A cost of 3 would be game-changing.
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My guess is that the theory is that since WW2 era AA was basically “spray and pray”, not precisely targeted like current AA, it didn’t pump out more shots, just the shots that it did pump out were likely to hit something in proportion to the number of targets available to hit.
It’s a good point that the WWII-era weapons we’re discussing here were used in (by our modern-day standards) a fairly crude “firehose” manner, and it’s true that firing a shot a large formation of planes has a higher chance of producing a hit than firing a shot at a single plane, in the same way that firing a rifle at a line of massed infantrymen has a higher chance of producing a hit than firing a rifle at a single infantryman. But it has to be remembered that, when you’re firing at any group of targets, a single shot will (in principle) still only hit one target and miss all the others, no matter how many targets there are. The chances of a hit will go up, but it will still remain just a hit; it doesn’t become multiple hits.
The OOB rule which says that each AAA gun (on the firing end) in a territory can fire three shots, but that every plane in the air over that territory (on the receiving end) can only be fired on once is pretty bizarre from a real-world perspective. And in gaming terms, it means that the defender on the ground only gets the maximum possible benefit out of his AAA guns if the number of enemy planes is precisely three times the number of AAA guns he has. If the number of enemy planes is larger than this, then the defender doesn’t have enough shots to take a shot at all of them; if the number of enemy planes is smaller than this, then the defender’s excess shots are wasted because they aren’t allowed to count. Frustrating. Perhaps necessary to prevent AAA guns from being overpowered, but still frustrating – at least from the point of view of the defender. From perspective of the planes overhead, it’s a very welcome situation.
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Hi Marc.
@CWO:
I’m not sure I understand your argument, which seems to be saying that the number of shots that can be fired by weapons in a given amount of time depends on the number of targets rather than on the number of weapons being fired.
No - I am saying that the number shots should depend on the number of guns. If 1 AAA at 1 plane = 1shot, then 2 AAA at 1 plane should be 2 shots.
@CWO:
Let’s say that we have two AAA guns and one target plane, and that each gun can fire one shot in one unit of time, which is fine. Now let’s say that we have the same two AAA guns, but that we now have two target planes. Why would the rate of fire of the weapons suddenly double from one shot per unit of time to two shots per unit of time? The amount of time hasn’t changed and the number of guns hasn’t changed – so why would the guns be pumping twice as many shells into the sky?
Eh? The number of guns has changed! If the number of guns doubles, then the number of shots also doubles in the same unit of time.
With precision weapons and high hit rates this might not be true, but with “spray and pray” (very good Mr Elk) the probability of a hit increases in proportion to the number of shots. The less precise the weapon, the greater the correlation between number of shots and number of hits.
That argument is based on no knowledge of AAA. My only qualification is being reasonably adept with statistics. Rant over! Now how do I get myself out of the mess I am in, in my current game of 40G …… :?
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As is, AA guns shine at scaring your opponent into thinking “what if”. That is their main benefit, do not forget this.
At a cost of 5, AA guns are often not worth purchasing over 1.66 infantry units, even if your opponent has lots of planes, assuming you have a large defensive stack. For instance, if Germany has 15 planes coming, and Russia already has 4 AA guns to shoot at 12, they’re actually very likely better suited to buy infantry than an AA gun + infantry.
That’s a good summary of why AA guns as-is are poorly balanced in the negative direction. Even in optimal circumstances it’s not worth buying one, ever.
At a cost of 4, AA guns would become absolutely better than infantry, but not by a huge amount, in large battles with lots of attacking planes.
Shouldn’t they be, though? Enemy has lots of airplanes, you need to defend - if that’s not what AA is for, what is AA for?
At a cost of 3, AA guns would ����ing amazing, and you’d be seeing them be purchased much, much more often. A cost of 3 would be game-changing.
I think it’s worth a shot. As you noted even at a cost of 4 it would only be in specific battles way late into the game where an opponent commits a huge air force that it would be worth buying, and then only marginally so. So we have to bring the cost down to 3 to make them worth buying at all in any circumstance. If a unit exists in the game there should be some circumstance in which it’s worth buying it, no? There’s the threshold - cost of 3. It’s worth testing to see what happens IMO.
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Also a gun can only shoot so fast, so this limits the amount of planes that can be shot. Hence only 3 planes for each gun but more guns can shoot more.
Perhaps it is me not understanding you guys, but I don’t think so.
Max 3 planes per gun is fine. But more guns should shoot more as you say. That is what I am saying, as I thought my previous post made clear.
@Private:
I am saying that the number of shots should depend on the number of guns. If 1 AAA at 1 plane = 1shot, then 2 AAA at 1 plane should be 2 shots.
But the rules say not. As confirmed by Kreighund.
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Just for fun, I tried to imagine what an air-defense network would look like in the real world if it replicated the OOB rules. The result goes like this.
The network would consist of one or more AAA guns. Each gun would have an ammunition allowance of just three shells. The guns would all be tied to (and remotely operated by) a centralized fire-control system. The system would be coupled to a radar surveillance system that would track an enemy formation of planes as it arrives over the network’s territory. The network would assign a unique identification number to each plane, and would attach to each ID number an initial status code of 0 indicating that the plane it identifies has not yet been fired upon.
Now the battle begins. The network fire-control system targets one of the planes with one of the AAA guns and fires one shot. If the plane is hit, it’s detsroyed. If the plane isn’t hit, the network changes the status code of the lucky plane (identified by its unique ID number) from 0 to 1, indicating that it’s been fired on. The centralized fire-control system then orders the fired AAA gun (which now has only two shells left in its ammunition load) to stop tracking the lucky plane (in whose direction the AAA gun’s barrel is conveniently still more or less pointing) and to point itself at a completely different plane whose status code still reads 0. The firing-and-retargeting process is repeated until the first AAA gun runs out of ammunition. The network then orders a new AAA gun (if there’s more than one gun in the network) to go through the same routine, making sure that it scrupulously fires only at planes whose status code still reads 0.
This process continues until one of two things happens: the last AAA gun fires its last shell, or all the surviving planes overhead have been fired upon once and therefore now all have a status of 1. If, at the point where all the surviving planes overhead now have a status of 1, any of the AAA guns on the ground still have shells left in their ammunition supply, they are ordered to cease fire at the available targets overhead. Why they would be ordered to cease fire is beyond me. Perhaps it’s considered unsportsmanlike conduct for an entire air defense network to fire at any single enemy plane more than once. Perhaps the battle is being treated similarly to (one-half of) a pistol duel in which the two opponents – each armed with a pistol containing only one bullet – stand back to back, walk ten paces apart, turn and fire the single shot they’re allowed; if they miss, they call it a day and go home.
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I find it funny that we went from discussing ridiculous rules for the game, to which AA gun rule is better.
Anyway, I found capital rules in each game to be more and more lackluster.
I’d prefer instead, if you lose your capital, for just that one round you may not make any movement of sorts, including scrambles. After that, you may produce only infantry, but on any territory you control, but up to 3 only. China has a capital now, Shanghai, their situation regarding it, is that their “paralised” round has already gone by. If your capital is liberated, you produce up to 12 IPCs of non-Infantry units if you’re an allied power, if you’re an axis power, it is 20 IPCs worth, this is for the first time only when this particular capital is liberated. The French objective is disabled and replaced with a +10 IPC objective for controlling all of their original territories on the Europe side (in case France survives round 1, to allow Germany to save face). National Objectives may still activate even if your capital is occupied. The country that takes your capital may still plunder your IPCs for the same round they took it.
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@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:
Alternate victory conditions:
Allies win the game by either:
Control Paris, London, Moscow, and 1 originally European Axis victory city territory (Europe Allied Victory)
or
Control Calcutta, Sydney, Manila, and Shanghai/Tokyo (Pacific Allied Victory)Have either of these completed, at the end of Italy’s turn, to win the game as the Allies.
Obviously, it should be for one full turn. Surely you did not mean to deprive Germany and Japan a chance to recapture a victory city (unless you were counting on the Italians liberating Shanghai and saving a Pacific victory!).
But more fundamentally, with Allied victory conditions like this the Axis will need a bid – Rome is far too vulnerable to the US. The US will throw its entire economy at Italy, and Italy will fall. Forget any chance of the Axis winning in the Med, because Italy will need full defensive builds for the entire game (and it will still not make a difference). Once Rome falls, the fall of Paris is certain.
Marsh
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@Marshmallow:
@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:
Alternate victory conditions:
Allies win the game by either:
Control Paris, London, Moscow, and 1 originally European Axis victory city territory (Europe Allied Victory)
or
Control Calcutta, Sydney, Manila, and Shanghai/Tokyo (Pacific Allied Victory)Have either of these completed, at the end of Italy’s turn, to win the game as the Allies.
Obviously, it should be for one full turn. Surely you did not mean to deprive Germany and Japan a chance to recapture a victory city (unless you were counting on the Italians liberating Shanghai and saving a Pacific victory!).
But more fundamentally, with Allied victory conditions like this the Axis will need a bid – Rome is far too vulnerable to the US. The US will throw its entire economy at Italy, and Italy will fall. Forget any chance of the Axis winning in the Med, because Italy will need full defensive builds for the entire game (and it will still not make a difference). Once Rome falls, the fall of Paris is certain.
Marsh
Yeah I meant to say that, I’m not really good at expressing ideas.
Give Italy 1 cruiser and 1 destroyer in the Taranto sea zone, and add 1 more infantry in Tobruk.
Eliminates the Taranto raid, and allows Italy some options in Africa.
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@CWO:
Just for fun, I tried to imagine what an air-defense network would look like in the real world if it replicated the OOB rules. The result goes like this.
The network would consist of one or more AAA guns. Each gun would have an ammunition allowance of just three shells. The guns would all be tied to (and remotely operated by) a centralized fire-control system. The system would be coupled to a radar surveillance system that would track an enemy formation of planes as it arrives over the network’s territory. The network would assign a unique identification number to each plane, and would attach to each ID number an initial status code of 0 indicating that the plane it identifies has not yet been fired upon.
Now the battle begins. The network fire-control system targets one of the planes with one of the AAA guns and fires one shot. If the plane is hit, it’s detsroyed. If the plane isn’t hit, the network changes the status code of the lucky plane (identified by its unique ID number) from 0 to 1, indicating that it’s been fired on. The centralized fire-control system then orders the fired AAA gun (which now has only two shells left in its ammunition load) to stop tracking the lucky plane (in whose direction the AAA gun’s barrel is conveniently still more or less pointing) and to point itself at a completely different plane whose status code still reads 0. The firing-and-retargeting process is repeated until the first AAA gun runs out of ammunition. The network then orders a new AAA gun (if there’s more than one gun in the network) to go through the same routine, making sure that it scrupulously fires only at planes whose status code still reads 0.
This process continues until one of two things happens: the last AAA gun fires its last shell, or all the surviving planes overhead have been fired upon once and therefore now all have a status of 1. If, at the point where all the surviving planes overhead now have a status of 1, any of the AAA guns on the ground still have shells left in their ammunition supply, they are ordered to cease fire at the available targets overhead. Why they would be ordered to cease fire is beyond me. Perhaps it’s considered unsportsmanlike conduct for an entire air defense network to fire at any single enemy plane more than once. Perhaps the battle is being treated similarly to (one-half of) a pistol duel in which the two opponents – each armed with a pistol containing only one bullet – stand back to back, walk ten paces apart, turn and fire the single shot they’re allowed; if they miss, they call it a day and go home.
Or you could say, that AA guns take up space. one AAA in the game might represent one cluster of AA-Guns and one Plane ingame might represent one squadron of planes:
Then we could say that planes can “stack” on top of each other up to 3 times, whereas AA guns cant (no 3d-arrangement possible).
So now when they enter the territory, they can be shot by those aa installations.
The reason the next AA-installation can’t fire upon them is because the range of those AAguns isnt big enough to shoot at targets that much further away.
So the only reason why BOTH aa installations would fire is because the invading airforce is so big, they are spread over a bigger surface-area.
And that is why i find it quite convincing :-D -
Problem I see with those new allied victory conditions is that it would now be possible for Japan to win in the Pacific on the same round that the Allies win in Europe.
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I agree, We made it a house rule that you can fly over the Sahara and the Himalayas.
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I agree, We made it a house rule that you can fly over the Sahara and the Himalayas.
Changes a lot of strategies, but I agree it shouldn’t have been a restriction to begin with.
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Another stupid Rule.
You cannot fly planes over impassable terrain, Sure the pipet marches and the sahara are impossible for ground forces but a plane isnt really bothered by forest or sand.
If you can fly over the atlantic ( which has about as much features as the sahara ) then you should be able to fly over the sahara right.I agree with you about the Pripet Marshes – the German army avoided it for a very good reason, but the Luftwaffe had no reason to do so. However, from a historical perspective, it was very risky to fly over the Sahara and most of the aircraft used in WW2 were not capable of handling the altitude and weather conditions in the Himalayas. While an individual aircraft might actually make it through, operations in force would have been extremely risky.
Marsh
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