AARHE: Phase 3: land Combat

[Imperious Leader]

This covers new ideas regarding the interaction of ground units in combat and retreats.

[Imperious Leader]

Land Combat Sequence Summary:

1. All attacking artillery units fire first preemptively on the first round and can conduct one of two forms of combat as follows: 1) artillery units can make a special attack that does not require that they move into the territory as follows: They may fire one “salvo” from a territory they reside and across it into an enemy territory for one round only. This attack is considered preemptive and the defender cannot roll in its defense. 2) They can decide to attack in conjunction with other attacking units and fight in multiple rounds of combat.However; only during the first combat round they fire in simultaneous fashion. Any ground forces hit as a result of the first artillery bombardment attack are now removed from play.

2. If the attacker has brought in air units, then they must engage defending air units separately each combat round until only one side has any air units left. This can be accomplished by one side destroying the enemy or retreating their own air units. During each round where ground combat continues and only one side has air units, those remaining air forces can attack ground forces with preemptive rolls each combat round. Land units cannot attack planes in any manner, except in territories that contain an Industrial Complex (this would be rolled before the start of the first combat round).All ground forces hit as a result of aerial attack are now removed from play and in this case the owner of those ground units has a choice of which ground units that may be taken as loses.

3. After each ground combat round the attacker followed by the defender rolls one D6 for each engaged unit trying to hit at or lower than its attack factor. Each hit caused by an Infantry unit can only be applied to an infantry unit, while armor unit hits must be applied to any defending armor units first before any other unit can be selected as causality. Armor units also include artillery types of units.

4. The defender then rolls for his defending units including those selected as causalities again trying to roll at or lower than each unit’s defense value. Second, each defending combat unit rolls for each unit using their defense value. Lastly, the defending player removes all hits first, followed by the attacking players’ casualties. The attacker must remove loses in the same manner as required by the defender.

5. The attacker followed by the defender can now make retreat declarations. All units engaged in combat have a voluntary retreat option. Full or partial retreats by either side are allowed after the first round of combat and only the currently engaged units’ can fire at each other. Retreating units do not get to fire as they retreat however; attacking units get one free “parting shot” roll on all defending units and they receive no return fire. The defender can declare to retreat a portion of his forces and leave a few units behind to “cover” the retreat. The retreating units do not get to fire, but the units left to fight still roll on defense. Additional casualties incurred are removed from those units that retreated. All units left to fight still roll on defense in the normal fashion.

6. If the defender is either destroyed or retreats, then the attacker automatically occupies the territory and a control marker is placed in the territory.

this is something that may help us.

[tekkyy]

If we were to model land units not able to attack air, we would have to either let antiaircraft gun participate in normal combat….and/or model the fact that planes can’t fight forever!

Attacking planes must retreat after 3 cycles. Defending planes must land. Defending planes cannot land if no defending land units left and must retreat.  :-D

[Micoom]

I like the rule that land units can’t attack air units! But I would like to see, that fighters can pick their targets also, but only if there are no defensive fighters left. Like you mentioned. They first have to fight it out!  I would like to see that the Bombers get a preemptive strike. Historically first the bombers and Long range artillery attacked, and then the ground units and maybe fighters came in.

To limit their attack to only three rounds of combat, is maybe indeed good enough to balance it again.

I like the retreat option for the defender also.

[Imperious Leader]

Hey Micoon nice to meet you and hope you will contribute to this project:

“To limit their attack to only three rounds of combat, is maybe indeed good enough to balance it again.”

This is something that could be looked at, however you know that once the side that has no air power to defend the sky will retreat or face defeat. That is why defender retreats are important. Like the germans pulled at the bulge you saw them try to continue to push forward even after they lost the sky to allied planes (due to weather and not the luftwaffe). they tried to sustain their attacks but got worn down by repeated sorties over the battlefield sapping the very strength of the mighty panzer army.

I like the idea of preemtive bomber hits, but under this sytem that is what they do unless they are tied up in aerial dogfights… I dont like the idea of selective targets for level bombers because they are basically saturation bombing and not precision bombing. They just drop the payload and leave. Fighters could have thie ability or divebombers… we have to look into this in a way that does not bring too much value to fighters or the price has to go up to 12 IPC… because they are too powerful…

[tekkyy]

Thats right! Level bombers shouldn’t be able to pick targets even if we let fighters dive bomb.

The three rounds plane limit thing should help model the fact that tanks carried 30 shells while fighters carried like 2-4 bombs. And both units can’t really rearm in the middle of battle unlike troops.

This is looking cool.
We can finally launch air strikes on poor little infantries.

[Micoom]

Bombers should indeed not be able to pick their targerts. Preemptive yes, picking their targets no.

[Imperious Leader]

Good ideas!

[tekkyy]

Its particularly useful in the pacific. You bomb the troops with fighters/bombers and then land with transports.

Though this would be interesting if Japan’s dug-in defenders tunnel network has some sort of advantage in defence against air strikes.

[Imperious Leader]

OK so your saying bombers just get that preemptive strike on land targets but defender chooses loses. Fighters get to choose their targets and also get preemptive strike capability?  I assume both are in effect provided the enemy has not contested the sky with planes and you have thus full air superiority.

[HMS Onslow]

Ground forces should have SOME ability to knock out planes. Fighters/dive bombers doing low-level attacks had to face machine-gun and even rifle fire which was no fun in large quantities.

We can’t forget that ground forces normally had some heavy AA (in British forces these were often a Brigade of 3.7s attached at Corps level). So there should be some small chance of taking out aircraft with ground forces; maybe 11+ on D12, or 1 D6 for every 2 ground units?

I reckon this is where the AA guns come in; they aren’t all that effective but they are pretty cheap, so you should be able to buy some mobile AA and use them to protect your ground forces from aircraft. A good NA is to allow Germans to use their mobile AA (which would include many 88s) as anti-tank. Then again I reckon we need anti-tank artillery units anyway (cheap, good in defence against tanks, bad against infantry) as this will reduce the power of tanks.

Out of interest, considering the duration of a turn (3 months) the fact that planes have to reload is not all that serious, is it, since so does everyone else over that sort of period. However, only allowing them a few rounds is quite a good idea because it sort of allows for the fact that it takes an enormous amount of supply to keep planes flying.

[tekkyy]

@HMS:

We can’t forget that ground forces normally had some heavy AA (in British forces these were often a Brigade of 3.7s attached at Corps level).

Hey hey thats more than what you are saying in the Units thread. AA at Corps level? Really?

I reckon we need anti-tank artillery units anyway (cheap, good in defence against tanks, bad against infantry)

Its going to be complicated to have different attacking value against different units. Its like the phase 1 draft destroyer having stronger attack when enemy contains sub. Its weird when 3 DDs attack 3 DDs + 1 SS.

Out of interest, considering the duration of a turn (3 months) the fact that planes have to reload is not all that serious.

Yeah it won’t be strangely powerful provided do the 3 turn thing to model how planes are powerful but can’t fight for extended periods of time.

[Micoom]

I think that Artillery units shouldn’t be able to occupy a country, if they are the only units left for the attacker. (or when supported by only air units) They should need infantry or tank units to take controll of the area, they can only bomb it  :wink:

[tekkyy]

But I feel an Artillery division/corp should be able to hold on its own.

[Imperious Leader]

Artillery should be able to occupy territories, because they represent the essential components of an infantry division. All three land units are the “rock, paper, sissors” of the game and to remove an essential feature of “control” from one unit takes too much away and is too much of a departure from what axis and allies players would accept IMO.

[tekkyy]

@Imperious:

All three land units are the “rock, paper, sissors” of the game…too much of a departure from what axis and allies players would accept IMO.

Its not much of a “scissors paper rock” really and its too earlier to say what people can accept but yeah.

[tekkyy]

Imperious Leader is getting B.Andersson to help with the project.
This is what he sugguested from the other thread.
@B.:

Shore Bombardment
In an amphibious assault…For each support shot one must put ashore one land unit

This is good. It gets rid of the strange situation where one off-loads one troop and bombard with 5 battleships against the defender…

Defend is upset “what a stupid game why do I have to send all my forces to the shore just because of 1 troop…!@#$%”

However I note that nothing logically can prevent a battlehsip from firing just because of a small amphibious attack force.

Maybe it should be damage capped to number of attacking land units. This is to model defender sending sufficient defending forces to the shore to expose them to shore bombardment.

[B.AnderssonGameMaster]

@Micoom:

I think that Artillery units shouldn’t be able to occupy a country, if they are the only units left for the attacker. (or when supported by only air units) They should need infantry or tank units to take controll of the area, they can only bomb it  :wink:

I totally disagree, artillery should be able to occupy a country! I can not see a singel reason for not!!!

[Micoom]

Ok, Ok… I got it….  :wink: Just taught of it, because I saw them as less mobile, but you all convinced me of my mistake!

[tekkyy]

More details on planes rearming we could have it like this…

Planes land every 4th cycles of combat.
(3 cycle of combat is quite a lot keeping in mind fighters carried 1 standard bomb or 2-4 small bombs and some machine gun rounds which is useful for air combat but useless against tanks.)

Attacking planes normally attack in cycle 1-3 and retreat. But may use 2 movement points to rearm and attack the same territory again in cycle 5-7.
(So distance reduces effectiveness of planes but long range aircraft can help counter it.)

Defending planes attack in cycle 1-3, 5-7, etc until it loses ground control on cycle 4, 8, 12 etc and must retreat. If it cannot it is destroyed.