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

Speed is essential both in real wars and in wargames.

Speed, speed and more speed is vital if you want to grab the initiativ and win the game.

Your friend do the opposite, he save money to build a fat sittin duck.

To me that kind of strategy might seem derogatory…just a bit.

@Baron:

The usual situation of casualty picking in A&A is aircrafts hitting ground targets, hence a Stuka is far more effective than a Spitfire to destroy a tank. And I should add that a Helldiver TcB is far better than a Hellcat Fgt to destroy a IJN Musashi Battleship.

Even if your facts are correct, and I agree with you most of the time, the trick will be to make a HR that is so smooth, elegant and simple, that the casual A&A player that happens to be in your basement, agree to play by it, and not the lame OOB rulebook.

Combat in the real world seems to have some kind of sequenced fire phases, where specialized weapon systems can target specific units, and kill them before they can return fire. A Battleship have big long range guns, and can sink a Cruiser before it reach the range to shoot back. The artillery barrage loop shells into the infantry trench, and there is no way the infantry can kill that artillery. Heavy Bombers can carpet bomb infantry from high altitude and the infantry have no way to defend against it.

We can of course use the rules from hex and counter games like WiF etc, and resolve air to air combat, then resolve air to ground combat, followed by artillery barrage phase, mechanized blitzkrieg phase, and at last the infantry charge phase. But then it will not be A&A any more. Should we let artillery target other artillery in duels, like in the real world ? Or let Tacs target Tanks, like they did in the real world ? Or should each unit have several different combat values, like the counter units that can have up to 4 values depending on what kind of unit it target in a battle. Give the infantry one value against air, and another value against tanks, and another value against other infantry ? Because it is obvious that the infantry is stronger against other infantry, than against Heavy Bombers. But then it will not longer be A&A

@Baron:

It is possible to get both world : fun, historical, and balance.
Fg A3D3C9 all the rest as OOB.
TcB A3D4C11 all the rest as OOB.

I think the game designers missed a great opportunity here. The new Tac should get the old fighters stats, A3D4 C10, just with a new name. Then the new fighter could be a A1D2 C8 unit, that was needed in the Air to air combat in SBR, and for scrambling, and fodder in big battles.

Crime is to Ukraine what Texas is to Mexico. They don’t belong. Crime belong to the local Cossacks and Tartars.

Too bad it was only 10 seconds

In the real world, US and UK did in fact occupied neutral Iceland and Greenland, in order to secure the shipping lanes, and they did in fact occupied neutral Persia and Iraq in order to secure the oilfields. And all this happened in 1940 before USA had declared war to the Axis.

I think it will be difficult to keep track of

@Baron:

Sometimes, defenders are caught off-guard on the airfield but once the interceptors are in the air, they get the advantage:
they are flying over a known homeland territory,
pilots have spent less time in the air, are more concentrated and less tired,
planes have plenty of fuel and less restricted on combat maneuver than attacking escorts fighters,
and defenders can stay longer in the area to patrol against slower or lost attacking planes,
all this can be exemplify by the UK’s pilots experience known via the air Battle of Britain in 1940-41.

This is correct, and since Baron mention the Battle of Britain, that was a special case since the planes had to cross the Channel, giving the German fighters only 10 minutes of operation over Southern UK before they had to return home again. The British fighters could of course stay up in the skies for hours, since their Airfields were close. And since the British defending fighters had plenty of fuel and time, they could fly high and attack from out of the sun. Germany would attack with more than 2000 planes, but because of the long range, they had short time on the target, giving the 700 defending British fighters the advantage.

But with that said, when the range was the same for both escorts and interceptors, the battle value would even out. To house rule this get complicated. You could let a fighter hit on 3 or less in his own territory, and modify one less pip for every space it moves. So a fighter that start in Normandy, lose one pip over the Channel and one more pip in UK, giving it an attack value of A1, while the UK fighter in UK roll a D3. Same when scrambling. If the UK fighter need to scramble into an adjacent seazone, it lose one pip because of the movement, giving it a defend on a D2.

@cyanight:

Interesting Razor… Assuming the axis goes first you would be letting Italy go before UK.  That’s going to change the game for sure.  It would make for an interesting invasion of USA.  If you let both Italy and Germany attack before USA and UK then Italy is going to have a Navy and will take Gib round 1.  With USA still out of the game for 3 rounds I think Germany would have no problem pulling off an attack on USA with Italy poised to intercept any blocks USA or UK try to setup.  The way the game is setup you give whoever starts first a consolidated navy.  If Axis goes first the Italy consolidates their entire navy otherwise UK consolidates their entire navy.  The staggered order of play is designed to allow the opponent a shot at the ships first.

That is correct. The set-up is designed to be balanced when you play with the current turn order. If you want to change the turn order, it is obvious that the set-up need to be slightly changed too. Just remove some Italian and German ships, and strengthen the British navy. And if you fear that the Axis may attack USA, just use the rules from Pacific map, that says if any Japanese ship is closer than 2 seazones to USA mainland, then USA can declare war and mobilize before the Nazis can put their boots on the beach. Maybe even trough in a few extra infantry in the set-up, and the Canadian Shield will not be so easy. It should be harder than the Sea Lion anyway, even if this is just a game, and ideally all options should be equal balanced.

In case you ask me, I think the turn order is the problem. It would be better with an all Axis turn, followed by an all Allies turn, and then an all Neutrals turn. Now that would solve a lot of the issues that I got with the current game rules

@ItIsILeClerc:

But I agree with Razor.

Off course you do