It has always somewhat bothered me that fighters on both sides of a battle would choose to engage only the borderline-ineffective enemy infantry rather than each other. The meta strategy of “infantry meat-shield” is dumb as shit from a perspective of realism; from a game design perspective, it is only marginally better. It means that the defender will strongly be disadvantaged in loss ratios, since the attacker, if played right, won’t lose anything more expensive than infantry.
So, how about limiting hit choice by combat ability? Hits have to be assigned to the class by which they have been inflicted. Tank hits have to be assigned to tanks, fighter hits have to be assigned to fighters, and only once you run out can you choose to assign hits to your infantry from these high-value enemies. Essentially, if you use it, you lose it. Armor and aircraft attrition would go through the roof, and actually start to match their utility.
Only a basic concept at the moment, the idea needs firming up. Thoughts?
@KraytKing @General-6-Stars has a game that addresses this. It gives 1 rd of targeted attack on certain units I believe.
The concept of air units fighting against air units is described in the Axis & Allies Global 1940 House Rules Expansion pg. 23 & 24.
Concerning the game mechanisms of Axis & Allies games - especially Global 1940 - it is important to remember the scale on which all units are based.
A Tank unit represents a large number of tanks, anti-tank units, support units, anti-aircraft units etc.
Most likely a Tank unit represents a unit equivalent to a complete Panzer Division.
We would suggest that you play test your idea multiple times - against multiple players.
Our experience shows that a new rule - depending on its complexity - should be play tested at least 20-25 times.
During play testing, changes and improvements are made to the rule - and it also allows players to adapt the rule during multiple games.
The final outcome will show if the rule is popular - and if it is balanced during play.
We’ll look forward to your play test results.
If your referring to G40 games not much I can help with you there. My game with my ways is different when it comes to air battles. Planes are dog fighting and attacking and defending at same time. You can retreat your planes after one round of combat for either the attacker or defender.
As far as a tank must hit a tank is not really correct based on inf and other units do die from tank shells missing enemy tanks.
I do have some pieces firsts striking units with no return shot but then you would need to offset rest of pieces in away in game as far as values and costs. IMO.
You could go by my forced retreat chart in game I use for Advanced Battle of The Bulge game.
You would remove casualties in order.
Be like Inf, Mech, Artillery, Tank, Truck, fig and supply. Kinda like that.
As the Captain says you need to play test it a bunch of times.
Good idea, but I agree with @General-6-Stars and @The-Captain here.
Tanks don’t represent just tanks (otherwise your argument would be valid), but whole armored units (in my opinion it’s a unit between a division and corps in terms of size). There’s ample evidence of such large scale units engaging large scale infantry units. Plus, the tanks have enough utility in-game, you don’t need to add more abilities.
Air battles are a valid point though. An idea would be to co-opt World War 1’s system and have a separate pre-land battle air battle.
All attacking fighters, tactical bombers, and strategic bombers engaging all defending fighters and tactical bombers (defended strategic bombers will be treated as if they’re on the ground, hence their low defense), rolling until one side wins.
Then we get to the regular land battles. Surviving aircraft participate. Depending on how you interpret their contribution, it might be more realistic to add an air superiority benefit (not sure what the benefit would be exactly).
I think I’m going to rebuild the idea ground-up and implement it in a different ruleset, but for the sake of the discussion, these are my thoughts.
I do recognize that a tank piece does not represent a single tank, or even a large all-tank unit, but rather a combined arms unit that includes tanks, artillery, dismount infantry, and of course fuel trucks and other add-ons. My objective isn’t to “increase realism” (without increasing realism) by having tanks mostly engage other tanks, but rather, give the defender some way to even out the loss ratio in terms of cost. If the attacker has the firepower advantage and brings lots of infantry, then the defender will lose expensive aircraft and expensive tanks without attriting enemy air or armor. THIS is the problem. Aircraft and tanks can effect damage without taking it. In the simple concept outlined in the OP, that would be partially remedied. The attacker could lose all of their planes and still win the battle.
Overall, I think it’s too simple a method for targeting attacks. Tanks WILL be somewhat protected by their infantry. Strategic bombers are not going to shoot down fighters. I had a slightly better idea a while ago, that for fighters, a roll of a 1 hits an enemy aircraft, and a tactical bomber rolling a 1 hits an enemy tank. Again, though, the objective isn’t entirely to tunnel-vision onto realism for specific units, but rather to improve the strategic decision making. In too many games, German aircraft fly constantly against the Soviet Union, never taking losses while German infantry get torn to pieces. On the strategic level, any piece of equipment that sees action is going to be regularly lost, and need replacement, but this is not always seen in A&A.
I appreciate the discussion, all. At the moment, I’m still in the brainstorming stage, but once I have a few games to report on, I’ll write up a ruleset and share it. Thanks everyone.
I think the system is fine as it is. Sure, the attacker has the advantage 90% of the time. But when it’s their turn, the other side can do the same thing.
I’m also not sure how making the system more complicated will make it better when again, when it’d their turn the defender becomes the attacker and the attacker becomes the defender.
On the strategic level, any piece of equipment that sees action is going to be regularly lost, and need replacement, but this is not always seen in A&A.
Excellent point. I see this imitated in the game in two ways:
Replacements are too small to portray.
As I said earlier, the attacker-defender mechanics work for both sides (hypothetically equally, more on that later), so if defending aircraft and tanks are being destroyed by attacking infantry as often as you say, then you will need replacements.
In too many games, German aircraft fly constantly against the Soviet Union, never taking losses while German infantry get torn to pieces.
I’ll admit this is my one weak spot and is a great point. My defense assumes both sides equally attack, but the game’s dynamics probably mean the Axis attack more than the Allies do. If your real problem is balance, I suggest you should admit that and we can better understand your ultimate goal.
I wish you luck on your further planning.
