Cheap/Weak Fighters on Expensive Carriers?

  • 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18 '17 '16

    One reason why people don’t get much use out of the central Pacific islands (or Malta, Ceylon, Madagascar, or Gibraltar, for that matter) is that fighters can be freely moved between carriers and land territories and are treated exactly the same. There’s no in-game distinction between the elite, hard-to-train pilots who could take off from carriers and the more ordinary pilots who could only take off from paved airstrips.

    Worse, islands function as a way of limiting the range of planes, rather than extending them. In the board game, a plane taking off and leaving an island has a shorter round-trip range than a plane taking off and leaving a stationary carrier, even if the island has an operational air base! The air base only gives +1 to movement, but the plane has to travel 2 spaces further (“out from” and “back onto” the island from the sea zone). Historically speaking, that’s crazy. A plane that’s taking off from a nice flat strip of land with a shed nearby that can store some fuel is likely to have a longer range than a plane that has to takeoff from a carrier and draws its fuel from the carrier’s relatively limited stores. If nothing else, the carrier-based plane will have to be shorter and stubbier in order to achieve its rapid takeoff – that’s an engineering compromise that limits the carrier plane’s maximum fuel-efficiency.

    Has anyone played around with fixing this by having weak but cost-effective fighters that can only fit 2 at a time onto relatively expensive carriers? What if you paired this with more effective air bases, that provided +2 or +3 to movement, and allowed players to scramble up to 5 planes (or 3 planes in 1942.2?) I feel like that would help suggest the limited carrying capacity of carriers relative to the carrying capacity of an island.

    For example, you could have:

    Fighter: C7 A1 D3 M4
    Tac. Bomber: C9 A3 D2 M6
    Airbase: C12 [facility] 6 max damage; goes offline after 3 damage; +2 move for outbound fighters, +1 move for outbound bombers, can scramble up to 5 planes total in adjacent sea zone(s) on each enemy turn.
    Carrier: C16 A1 D2 M2 2-hit; carries up to 2 fighters or 1 tac. bomber.

  • 2024 '22 '21 '19 '15 '14

    The only rule I ever actually played that is somewhat similar, was one that my friend Oddie tried in Classic. The way he had it, carrier based aircraft were essentially attached to their carriers. The carrier came with 1 free fighter that could not be replaced.

    So the carrier was like a 2 hit unit, on defense. The carrier fighters could only be used on the carriers, and so were always taken as casualties before the deck on defense. On attack they had to return to the same carrier. So basically there was no carrier fighter switching of any kind.

    Allies couldn’t land fighters on a teammates deck. Land based fighters couldn’t replace lost carrier fighters etc.

    It really was like the aircraft were just an extension of the carrier deck.

    Of course these were cheaper in relative terms than the land based fighters, but their use was narrower. All the attack/defense values were otherwise OOB classic.

    The idea at the time was that carrier would be a cheaper/effective way to carve through sub/transport fodder. It was just slightly less expensive than a transport/sub + regular land based fighter combo (which then cost 20 total ipcs), but unlike the land based fighter it was pretty much attached at the hip to its carrier, and could only operate at sea or along the coast.

    This was 3rd edition, with 2 Hit battleships and subs submerging as I recall. The 1 fighter carrier at 18 ipcs, was a good buy relative to the OOB carrier + 1 fighter, which cost 30 ipcs, or the OOB carrier +2 fighters which cost 42! So it was kind of an attempt to really bring down the cost of fleets. Kind of a cool concept when I look back on it.

    I only played it that way a few times, and it was in early days. I thought it was too rough on UK/US, which really seemed to require fighter switching to make the Atlantic workable. And on Japan which needed to change their fighters from land to sea or vice versa the most. I also though it made German naval ambitions even more impossible hehe, but that was kind of a pipe dream anyway. In any case, I didn’t really know the game as well as I would later come to know revised.

    I honestly haven’t experimented much with aircraft changes. Usually it’s been messing with the economy for me. The whole idea of altering unit values is something I found a bit daunting. Though I’m starting to warm up to the idea more recently. Mainly owing to the fact that the OOB values have changed over time.

    The fighter unit still seems somehow sacrosanct though. I have a really hard time considering changing its values, ever since it was dropped from 12 to 10 ipcs in Revised. I guess because 10 just felt right. Since then its a bit like infantry at 3 for me. Hard to change without messing a lot of other things up.

    The carrier by contrast still feels all over the place hehe.

    It went from 18 ipcs and 1 hit, attack at 1, defend at 3
    To 16 ipcs and 1 hit, attack at 1, defend at 3.
    To  14 ipcs and 1 hit, attack at 1, defend at 2.
    Back to 16 ipcs but 2 hits, attack at 0, defend at 2.

    Not sure how much any of that is useful to the current question of cheap/weak fighters on expensive carriers. It’s almost the opposite I guess. But when you say expensive carrier that’s the thing that came to mind for me. I remember those damned expensive Classic carriers where the stacked deck cost more than any Nation’s economy in a single turn haha. And I remember this dude struggling to find a way to make them somehow more affordable, to cut through chipped out transport fodder.
    :-D


  • I use 1/600 aircraft so my P-40 or P-51 can not land on carries but my F4U and F6F can, they also have different values….all my nations who can possess carriers have naval fighters and tac bomber with tac bomber being either torpedo planes or dive bombers


  • Naval vs. Army aircraft:

    Certainly not all aircraft and pilots could land on a carrier.  So, need to make a distinction on the purchase.  Naval vs. Army.  Cost is same, but capabilities are not:  Naval tactical bombers and fighters can land on carriers, Army cannot. Army tactical bombers get the combined arms bonus, Naval do not.  Naval fighters change to D3 on non-island territories, it remains D4 on islands and sea zones.   Any type scrambling fighter defends with D4.  Also as an option;  Air superiority rule in effect only if both planes in their native environment - Army/territories; Naval/sea zones-islands.

  • 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18 '17 '16

    Well, sure, guys, if you have enough sculpts and the kind of players who relish small details, then you can just have separate unit types for naval planes and army planes, and then the problem is solved. You’re right about that.

    My question is more about what do you do when you only have enough sculpts or enough attention span to play with one type of fighter. Is there a way to keep island bases vs. carrier bases balanced with only one type of fighter?


  • @Argothair:

    My question is more about what do you do when you only have enough sculpts or enough attention span to play with one type of fighter. Is there a way to keep island bases vs. carrier bases balanced with only one type of fighter?

    Or to put it another way: introducing a special extra unit simply for the sake of creating more unit variety is one thing, but introducing a special unit in order to fix a perceived problem with the game map or with the game rules is something else.  It’s not necessarily a bad idea, but perhaps an adjustment to the rules would be a more direct approach.

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