Help with air power

[amossin]

if allied side has 1 inf and 1 plane, japan has 3 infantry. first round ally looses inf and japan looses one. can japan shoot down the plane or do they capture the land , or must they withdraw since they cannot shot the plane with only infantry?

[SilverAngelSurfer]

Battle continues until one side has lost all units unless the attacker chooses to retreat following a complete round of combat (all units have been rolled for).  All land units can hit air units and vice versa.  All sea units can hit air units and vice versa (except subs): subs can never hit air units, and air units can only hit subs if they have a destroyer friendly to the air units in the same battle.  The subs/planes exception is the only one.

Despite seeming illogical, infantry can hit planes with the same precision that they hit anything else. :|  The explanation in the past has been that the infantry units carry small amounts of anti-aircraft type weapons that they can use to hit planes, but not as significant a number as an actual anti-aircraft gun unit.

[amossin]

just for the record the people i was playing against said infantry could not shoot planes. they also said artillery could not fire without infantry to fire them. so 1 inf to each gun, if gun is hit so is inf… then they tried to attack my artillery and killed both with the inf since they said they could, then they all attacked my tank. i said wait i get to fire my tank first since it has not fired yet. they said the first part of the attack was tanks vs artillery, now second part is tanks vs tank…all in the same country by the way…then when i said they could not shoot twice until after all my units fired they said i was a cheater

[special forces]

Seems to me that théy are the cheaters…

[SilverAngelSurfer]

All units participate in a single round of combat.  The only exceptions to this rule are subs, which get to fire a shot before any other naval units if there are no opposing destroyers in the battle, and AA guns, which get to fire at any attacking planes before the battle even starts.

Covering offensive mortar fire allows the infantry divisions to be more effective than they are on their own, but they are still separate divisions and can operate on their own if one or the other is destroyed.  Artillery units represent completely separate artillery divisions from the infantry divisions (if that helps convince your friends).

Again, the rules are greatly simplified to reflect the large scale that this game represents; it does not cover all the intricacies of individual battles.  So try to explain to your friends that it is a simplified game and to try not to overthink it and just to work through the steps given in the rulebook one at a time and do exactly what the words in the rulebook say.  Of course, you might want to put it a little more diplomatically or they might accuse you of being a condescending cheater instead of just a cheater. :wink: I’ve gotten that one in real life games. :-P

[SilverAngelSurfer]

@special:

Seems to me that théy are the cheaters…

Not necessarily.  In my games the people who argued with me about very similar stuff to this were not cheaters at all, we were just all completely new to the game and trying to figure out how to play.  I made some rule interpretation mistakes as well and sometimes it’s a little easy to get carried away with the combat representations and add stuff that isn’t actually in the rulebook.

If it also helps, point out stuff in movies like Mulligan’s mortar fire for Kelley’s group in Kelley’s Heroes and Cuba Gooding Jr. shooting down fighters with a machine gun in Pearl Harbor. :mrgreen:

[Tralis]

@amossin:

just for the record the people i was playing against said infantry could not shoot planes. they also said artillery could not fire without infantry to fire them. so 1 inf to each gun, if gun is hit so is inf… then they tried to attack my artillery and killed both with the inf since they said they could, then they all attacked my tank. i said wait i get to fire my tank first since it has not fired yet. they said the first part of the attack was tanks vs artillery, now second part is tanks vs tank…all in the same country by the way…then when i said they could not shoot twice until after all my units fired they said i was a cheater

Your partners seem to be extremely unfamiliar with the rules. That does not sound anything like how combat should actually be resolved in A&A.