@Baron:
Any POV on giving TcB A4 D3 M4-6 C12, SBR A1 damage D6 access to bombing ICs or Factories?
For me, it simplify things, less exceptional rules. No more distinction on SBR (IC or AB or NB) vs TcBR (AB or NB).
It increase the possibility to use at full potential all bombers units available.
That way, it is an incentive to more SBRs and dogfight. TcBs is not an optimized choice, for sure, but you have no special irregular inability to not throw TcBs in Air Raid.
(12 SBs gives 12 D6 compared to 5 TcBs giving 5 D6 damage)
For instance, I’m thinking of some Russian Ukrainian IC with no AB or NB.
Of course, it gets A1 like other Fg escort, but it cost 12 IPCs now.
And TcB will not be use as a fodder to protect StBs A0 C5. (YG often dislikes this feature of 11 IPCs TcBs.)
The advantage of cheaper StB is that it is becoming the main cannon fodder in dogfight, as it always should be the prey of intercepting Fighters.
In addition, TcB A1 can also be seen as attacking landing fields, which can explain why it still get A1 vs Fg D1.
Is there any reason to forbid TcBs to attack IC?
From a game POV I don’t see.
From an historical POV? Stukas were not deploy against Stalingrad or London?
From a historical standpoint, what Axis and Allies calls tactical bombers didn’t typically make large scale attacks on cities and production facilities (which is represented in game as ‘Strategic Bombing’). Couple reasons being that tactical bomber/medium bomber aircraft didn’t have the payload capacity to effect a sufficient amount of damage (and thus would have required an inefficient and impractical number of aircraft) and also that they didn’t have the range for such attacks.
There are minor exceptions, such as the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and the Germans using tactical bombers (fighter bombers - i.e. Stuka - and other medium bombers) to attack Eastern Front cities like Stalingrad. There are caveats with those instances too. The Doolittle Raid wasn’t intended to inflict large scale damage; it was a super long range strike against military targets in Tokyo intended to send a political message. This wouldn’t be an example of what the game calls strategic bombing. The German examples are also poor in that: the Germans didn’t really have a large strategic bomber fleet and the urban bombing they conducted tended to be coupled with a ground offensive aimed at destroying military targets, rather than a long distance strike on industry.
All that said, I don’t see why it would be necessary to give Tacs at Strategic Bombing ability. I think it muddles the roles even more because even though it would be simpler to remember that both Tacs and StratBs can bomb the same stuff, it brings up the question of why two units can do the exact same thing, except the StratB now can’t attack regular units… and why even buy Strategic Bombers then? There are reasons, but the amount of unit crossover ability (with the Tac having the better abilities) will give rise to in-game questioning.
Obviously their attributes are slightly different, but consider this:
Under San Francisco Rules (with Air Base +2 move), a Tactical Bomber has a move of 6. That is one space less than a (non SF Rules - OOB) StratB from an Air Base. Under SF Rules, a TacB cost 12… same as non-SF Rules StratB. From a very basic, net-value view, what we have done is keep the OOB Strategic Bomber, downgrade its movement by one space and increase its defense from @1 to @3. Oh, and it can also now land on carriers, which in certain cases, gives it effectively a move 7.
We have not changed the physical map or base income or altered budgeted spending (TacB is filling the 12 IPC spot vacated by the OOB StratB). If we are most concerned about Dark Skies threat projection, the only things SF Rules do at this point (on a net scale) is take one move away from the StratB unit and also remove industrial bombing ability (plus adding the attributes mentioned above). Does this seem a sufficient fix to curb the Dark Skies implementation? Simply put, I fear we may have done little to limit Dark Skies and perhaps done more to enhance it. That will definitely be true if we give a strategic bombing ability to the SF Rules Tac… at least with a 1-D6 roll.
The crossover ability between Tacs and StratBs would make the StratBs less relevant and unique, thus de-incentivising purchase of them, even if slightly. Tac strategic bombing with A1 and 1-D6 is also better than and equal to a StratB, which should not be the case. IF this were to be pushed, I would say Tacs should roll 1-D6 modified to either half the roll rounded up (EDIT: or maybe even rounded down) or 1-D6 (-2)… this would put them on far inferior standing to a full StratB and reflects the fact that they are much smaller aircraft with fewer bombs. That should also dis-incentivise their use for strategic bombing considerably.
