Scrambling - Too strong?

@Battlingmaxo:

Sounds like my game…scrambling option is ridiculous and should be limited to 2-3 aircraft for islands. Also why can’t costal territories scramble?

Yep, that was you!  Why don’t you tell everyone how ridiculous the airbase rule is OOB and how your opponent successfully exploited the rule.

And yes, if Japan can scramble, why can’t California and Australia?  Makes no sense.

@gamerman01:

Yep, that was you!  Why don’t you tell everyone how ridiculous the airbase rule is OOB and how your opponent successfully exploited the rule.

And yes, if Japan can scramble, why can’t California and Australia?  Makes no sense.

I’m not doing such a shabby job of exploiting the rules  considering what I have in the Carolines and the Philippines

@Battlingmaxo:

I’m not doing such a shabby job of exploiting the rules  considering what I have in the Carolines and the Philippines

Well, at least these rules give us lots of opportunities to say “impregnable fortress”, which is a fun thing to say.  :lol:

The only thing better than an inpregnable fortress is an inpregnable woman.

One thing I can’t understand is why some people devote so much time to finding holes in the game that THEY believe are unfair and complaining about them.  Just try playing the game and enjoying a different version of A&A than before.  Put yourself in the designers’ place.  It is impossible to please everyone and you can’t just keep producing games with the same rules everytime.  I’m not saying that this game is flawless, but maybe more time spent trying to find a suitable strategy to combat scrambling would be more constructive.

I do think it is a bit overpowered, but it doesn’t break the game or anything.

I was playing as the US two weeks ago and my opponent decided on a J3 attack that went into Hawaii hard.
After a few turns of me making sure my coast was protected he took most of his navy down to Australia leaving 2 inf and about 6 fighters in Hawaii.

I had built a few bombers and in order to retake Hawaii I had to put my whole navy there and invaded with 3 inf 2 art & 1tank, but because of his scramble ability I had to split my bombers between attacking the land and sea zones.  I put one too many bombers into the land and not enough in the sea, he scrambled his fighters and killed my whole navy except the transports which I retreated.

now just the threat of scramble alone made my split my forces, and though we eventually won that game, it sucked to lose my whole damn navy because of it.

Not quite sure I follow…if your surface ships were wiped out how could all the trannies retreat unless the last hit was applied to your last surface ship

Maxo -
He didn’t say all of his transports survived - he just said he retreated remaining transports.

Transports are not always all killed.  Say he was down to 3 transports and a bomber, and he took two hits.  He would lose the bomber and 1 loaded transport if that happened, and could retreat the other 2 loaded transports.

@gamerman01:

Maxo -
He didn’t say all of his transports survived - he just said he retreated remaining transports.

Transports are not always all killed.  Say he was down to 3 transports and a bomber, and he took two hits.  He would lose the bomber and 1 loaded transport if that happened, and could retreat the other 2 loaded transports.

I understand that. I just wasn’t sure from the post if all or some of the trannies retreated.

what ive always had in mind as to why planes cant scramble from coastal territories is the distance from the airbase to any point on the coast is MUCH farther than on an island

A plane on an island at a central base can get to any point on its coast faster than a plane could get to any point on a coast while on land

This may sound strange, but to me it makes sense. Less area for your fighters to fly, and more ability for them to condese on a central location where the battle is happening

The Green represents area an airbase and its units could be patroling, yellow represents the area they need to be patroling because friendly naval units are likeley there, red represents where scrabling cant occur due to fuel concerns and the fact that friendly vessels likely stick close to shore

@oztea:

what ive always had in mind as to why planes cant scramble from coastal territories is the distance from the airbase to any point on the coast is MUCH farther than on an island

A plane on an island at a central base can get to any point on its coast faster than a plane could get to any point on a coast while on land

This may sound strange, but to me it makes sense. Less area for your fighters to fly, and more ability for them to condese on a central location where the battle is happening

OK, that’s cool, oztea, but then it doesn’t make sense that scrambling is allowed on Japan, or some of the bigger islands, like Java, Sumatra…… or why scrambling is not allowed from Hong Kong or Singapore, where there would be a small amount of coastline to defend…

This reminds me of one of the crazy things that can be done in AA50 legally….

Once I counterattacked France with the Italians from the Med right after the UK had taken over Paris from the North.  The offshore bombardment of my Italian battleship and cruisers had a range of several hundred miles, from the French Riviera to the northern beaches of France!  :lol:

Similar absurd things can be done, like bombarding Australia from the West (when realistically there are no significant armies over there).

Since they’re making the 1940 game more realistic than previous installments (what with the convoy zones and capital ships that don’t auto-repair anywhere) they should have put in bombardment zones, so you can’t bombard from just any coast…  Sorry, a bit off-topic, I know - but it’s kind of related to the scramble rules in a way…

@oztea:

what ive always had in mind as to why planes cant scramble from coastal territories is the distance from the airbase to any point on the coast is MUCH farther than on an island

A plane on an island at a central base can get to any point on its coast faster than a plane could get to any point on a coast while on land

This may sound strange, but to me it makes sense. Less area for your fighters to fly, and more ability for them to condese on a central location where the battle is happening

The Green represents area an airbase and its units could be patroling, yellow represents the area they need to be patroling because friendly naval units are likeley there, red represents where scrabling cant occur due to fuel concerns and the fact that friendly vessels likely stick close to shore

I always play so coastal airbases can scramble

I think the scramble rules are a little off.

1. Unlimited scramble from islands is not realistic or good for game play. It also creates super stacks. (6 units max)
2. Limited scramble should be allowed from coastal tt to adjacent sz (3 units, more area to cover).
3. Limited scramble should also be allowed on land tt (3 units). If Moscow has ftrs they should be able to def adjacent tt.
4. Scramble probably shouldn’t stop bombardment if there are no def surface ships. Scramble was meant to aid def, not be the only form of def.

It would be easy to bring in these limits simply based on minor IC, and SBR damage would follow.

What I don’t like is when AA40E comes out only a few islands in the Med, and like Iceland will benefit. I don’t see any of the Chanel or Scandinavian isles being in play, and Larry said no Azores, or Danish Zeeland. England not being an island, but Japan able to scramble really doesn’t make any sense. If you make an exception for UK , why not the other coastal tt?

@gtg21:

It just seems odd to me that airbases can be limited via damage - but they aren’t limited in terms of max capacity for scrambling purposes.  Or that the island of Japan can effectively scramble as many planes as Midway.  It just seems strangely off scale.

The Japan-Midway comparison seemed way too funky for me at first too.

After time, I just decided to take the game for what it was, and not worry about the realities of it all.

Its A&A, and there has always been a certain amount of “gamey-ness” to it.

I wouldn’t mind it at all as long as the game is balanced, which I’m not sure it is.

I say let planes scramble from any airbases anywhere anytime, even land lock airbases.  The defending player still has to make the same choices of where to use his planes to benefit him the most.  Capping it at 6 would be easy to accept and figure out.  Just so long as you make it 1 plane for 1 point of damage on the airbase, so like 5 damage points on an airbase limits it to 1 airplane that can scramble.  You could make exceptions for airbases on capital cities or even for VCs in general, like unlimited scrambling.