Scramble against lone transports?

@Tall:

(…)Everyone should make certain they have the 2nd Edition rules as there are many differences(…)

Darn, I should have mentioned this ;-). Yes, 2nd ed. rules. If you play 1st edition, the whole thing is different…

Basically, when the Amphib Assault is declared, the ground units are trying to unload off of the transports.  The defender is then(before dice are rolled) given the option to scramble its planes and thus start a naval battle that must be concluded before before the units offload and attack the beaches.

Maddog, I disagree with your earlier statement. You defiantly should be able to scramble against any amphib regardless if the transports are escorted of not. An airbase provides coastal defense to adjacent sea zones, and those scrambling planes are surly not going to pull back just because the enemy didn’t send in any surface warships. I can hear the pilots it now……

“Hey Schulz look at those enemy ships coming ashore in Normandy with infantry and tanks, should we try to sink them. No Albert they don’t have any warships for us to attack so we will just let them be.”

This goes back a ways, the transport rules in the last few versions of AA have changed rather dramatically and are much better IMO (took awhile to get used to though). Now that transports no longer have a def value, and don’t absorb a hit you must defend them with surface warships. In earlier versions the transports basically defended your fleet rolling at 1, and taking a hit. I can’t tell you how many times empty transports were used as casualties in major sea battles (they were like inf of the sea).

The later editions of AA have forced you to protect your transports, as it should be. When the defensive action of scrambling made its way into the game the theme of protecting transports carries through. It is similar to how you can’t perform an ampib with only transports if there is an enemy sub in the sea zone you are amphibing through.

@Maddog77:

That’s where I’m discovering there’s just too much to this game. In this situation, USA had two transports that moved 2 SZ’s to unload into an undefended Norway. Germany put up fighters from Berlin into the SZ. There is no navel battle, there is no land battle, just blitzing, yet scrambling fighters apparently stops that. Even if there were warships w/ the x-ports, there was no navel battle, so in my opinion, there was no battle for the fighters to be scrambled for. I just think that this is wrong. I know the game designers made it possible w/ the rules, but I think it just wrong.

I see where your confusion lies. You feel since the US transports were invading Norway, and not West Germany, that the airbase on West Germany shouldn’t be able to scramble against the US Transports. The thing is that air bases protect the SEA ZONE that is adjacent to the territory that the airbase is in, no matter how many other territories are also adjacent to that sea zone. In your case, you are talking about Sea Zone 112 which borders West Germany, Denmark and Norway and thus the air base on W Germany can defend against invasions of any of those three territories.
Another example would be the air base in Japan defending against an amphibious assault on Korea because both territories border sea zone 6.
A further example is the air base in United Kingdom can scramble into Sea Zone 110, which would protect the territories of United Kingdom, Holland/Belgium and Normandy/Bordeaux.

Just curious, where did your US transports come from? You mentioned they moved 2 spaces. If they started from SZ 109, you could have used the United Kingdom naval base and moved them 3 spaces up to Sea Zone 125 and attacked Norway from there. That way you wouldn’t have to worry about the German fighters in Western Germany.

If the planes scrambled against the transports, wouldn’t the transports just auto-die? I thought now that they have no defense value, naval battles were basically over once all (combat) surface ships are destroyed, with transports assuming to be destroyed eventually. Although now that I think about it, they perhaps should be able to retreat if attacking.

The planes still have to hit the Transports. If any Transports survive, they can elect to retreat.

Only defending defenceless Transports are eliminated, as only an attacker can retreat from a battle, not a defender.

@wittmann:

The planes still have to hit the Transports. If any Transports survive, they can elect to retreat.

Only defending defenceless Transports are eliminated, as only an attacker can retreat from a battle, not a defender.

Gotcha, makes sense.

Sometimes I find the units on the transports more valueable to eliminate than the transport itself.

In a RARE occassion, someone might opt to NOT scramble against such an attack, and let the infantry be destroyed instead!  :evil: