Planes from Airbases or carriers scrambling to defend adjacent territories.

At first glance, it makes sense (and more if you think that a turn is around 3-4 months).

I know the scrambling rules evolve from island only to all Air base, but it was always to protect a SZ.
AB were like a fixed carrier without the risk of exposing in a given SZ a 16 IPCs unit with a only a few escort ships.

Now, you are going in the other way, from SZ to land territory.
In certain way, it becomes like it was always forbidden since the beginning of A&A, providing a defensive air cover from an adjacent territory.
It gives a defensive boost without the risk of exposing vulnerable units such as fighters.

For sure, it is required that, as any other units on defense, no retreat is allowed for any incoming scrambled fighters.

And once the combat is over, contrary to the scramble rules, I will force the plane to land on this specific territory (no return to AB nor CV.)

If you allow Fg on a carrier from SZ to the bordering territory, would you allow a scramble in the adjacent SZ too?
If, yes it is like the carrier can defend all the SZs around the one he is effectively on.
Seems a big defensive cover when you have 3 CV and 6 Fgs.
The air cover of the CV will be like they were almost 3-5 place at the same time.
It becomes a complex matter for the attacker.
I would not allowed this for my part.
Only from SZ to adjacent ground territory.
(Just imagine it is harder to find the enemy in open ocean.)

I think it is probably this side effect of extended protection zone with carrier and ground territory around AB which make a problem. Usually there is up to 2 SZ, rarely 3 SZs around an AB, but sometimes there is up to 4 adjacent territories next to an airbase.

A weaker way to test this can be to limit this extension ground territory to 1 scrambled fighter only (per carrier and per AB).

It can be a way to play-test with less risk of creating an havoc and ruining the game your playing.
It would help you really figure out what happen and give some hints to why the rules never evolved in this direction.

I am against to let carrier planes scramble into adjacent seazones, for one reason. The islands on the Pacific will lose its strategic value. In the real war this islands were important to protect the supply chain, but in this game the units are not depended on supply and support, making the islands useless. The Airbases gave this islands an strategic value again, so don’t mess this up with house rules, even if a carrier would scramble in the real world

But one rule suggestion I do support, coming from the new 1914 game, is to let planes land in a newly captured or contested territory. So more when imagine a turn is 3 or 4 months. It would be crazy not to protect your attacking army with air patrols. Come to think about it, the current OOB rules do let you protect your army in a newly captured territory with planes, but the planes can not belong to you. If Germany capture Ukraine, you can not land German planes there this turn, but you can land Japanese planes there. Now how crazy is that. The Rulebook need to be re-written ASAP

Yes, it seems logical to me. It would even be logical if planes from a territory with an airbase could scramble into all adjacent territories and SZ’s.

But I agree with Razor. Perhaps for other reasons, but still (mine would be balance, as Japan for example would have a mighty scramble force as well).

@ItIsILeClerc:

But I agree with Razor.

Off course you do  :-D

The rules have always been that you can’t land planes in a territory you just captured, or liberated (w/exception of AA1914 where planes really don’t def well, and there is no NCM phase), maybe it is an obsolete rule though. Maybe you should have some limited ability to land in a newly acquired territory. Maybe 1 air unit for a normal territory, or 3 air units if the newly acquired territory has an operational AB. Could possibly link how many air units can stay to the territories IPC value (value somewhat shows infrastructure). The thing is to not allow the attacked territory to be a ligament landing space when considering a planes range. You don’t want this to extend an air units range in this manner, and basically allow for kamikaze runs.

I have also wondered about a couple other things:

1. Why aren’t planes given a retreat option after each round of battle (both attacker and def). Attacker would pull out, and land in NCM, staying with-in the planes range. Def is allowed to pull out, and after all battles are done can move up to one space to find a safe landing spot (destroyed if no such place exists)

2. Why do def ftrs get a higher roll then attacking ftrs (other then for game balance). Wouldn’t the attacking party have an edge, or at least the same equal ability in the air where the edge goes to the side that has more planes (i realize the attacker has some control over this). Maybe ftrs should def at 3, but some combined arms could raise a ftrs def value?

I also know that radar would give a warning to defending ftrs, so maybe only ftrs that are on an operational AB should be allowed to def at 4 which would including scrambles (kinda a combined arms rule), other wise ftrs def at 3. This would show the AB comes with radar capability, and an early warning system. Maybe allow the defender to scramble up to 3 air units to adjacent land territories as well as to the sea from an operation AB (def at 4). Allow 1 plane to scramble from an adjacent carrier, or land territory (w/o AB) at a roll of 3 (to land/sea). This would weaken the over all defense of a carrier having fts def at 3, but if you could call in air units from adjacent sz’s, or territories it could off-set. Another thing that is cool to use is that defending carries still roll at 2, but is an AA defense only and must be applied to an air unit if it gets a hit.

@WILD:

The rules have always been that you can’t land planes in a territory you just captured, or liberated (w/exception of AA1914 where planes really don’t def well, and there is no NCM phase), maybe it is an obsolete rule though. Maybe you should have some limited ability to land in a newly acquired territory. Maybe 1 air unit for a normal territory, or 3 air units if the newly acquired territory has an operational AB. Could possibly link how many air units can stay to the territories IPC value (value somewhat shows infrastructure). The thing is to not allow the attacked territory to be a ligament landing space when considering a planes range. You don’t want this to extend an air units range in this manner, and basically allow for kamikaze runs.

I bolded the points which I found very good.
Any Fighter would have at least 1 movement point to be able to land in the just conquered territory.

1 Fg or 3 Fgs for a just conquered AB, seems an interesting limit.
The AB should be operationnal (0,1 or 2 hits). A damaged one (3-6 hits) should allow only 1 Fg (as if there was no AB).
Of course, it is possible to divided 1-2 hits, 3-4 hits, 5-6 hits also.

@WILD:

I have also wondered about a couple other things:

1. Why aren’t planes given a retreat option after each round of battle (both attacker and def). Attacker would pull out, and land in NCM, staying with-in the planes range. Def is allowed to pull out, and after all battles are done can move up to one space to find a safe landing spot (destroyed if no such place exists)

Retreating attacking planes only is possible in an amphibious assault. The ground units must fight to death, however.

Allowing an aerial retreat to defender make planes immune to attack until the last territory.

You need to integrate some direct fire between planes, even when there is still ground unit, so it could make defending planes vulnerable somehow.

The retreat option could be:
at the end of the combat round for attacker as OOB but
at the beginning of the combat round for defender, so it must suffer from attackers while doing no defense roll.

@WILD:

I have also wondered about a couple other things:

2. Why do def ftrs get a higher roll then attacking ftrs (other then for game balance). Wouldn’t the attacking party have an edge, or at least the same equal ability in the air where the edge goes to the side that has more planes (i realize the attacker has some control over this). Maybe ftrs should def at 3, but some combined arms could raise a ftrs def value?

I also know that radar would give a warning to defending ftrs, so maybe only ftrs that are on an operational AB should be allowed to def at 4 which would including scrambles (kinda a combined arms rule), other wise ftrs def at 3. This would show the AB comes with radar capability, and an early warning system. Maybe allow the defender to scramble up to 3 air units to adjacent land territories as well as to the sea from an operation AB (def at 4). Allow 1 plane to scramble from an adjacent carrier, or land territory (w/o AB) at a roll of 3 (to land/sea). This would weaken the over all defense of a carrier having fts def at 3, but if you could call in air units from adjacent sz’s, or territories it could off-set. Another thing that is cool to use is that defending carries still roll at 2, but is an AA defense only and must be applied to an air unit if it gets a hit.

Here is a few things which can provide an answer:
@Baron:

Compared to the Global 1940, SBR rules in which all planes (StB, TcB, Fg) roll once a regular @1.

I find too much uniformity between all aircrafts compared to historical accuracy.

Compared to the other Interception rules, I prefer by far the 1942.2, which I found more historically based and I rationalize this rule that way:

The preemptive first strike for raiders can really be seen as a surprise situation.

Sometimes, defenders are caught off-guard on the airfield but once the interceptors are in the air, they get the advantage:
they are flying over a known homeland territory,
pilots have spent less time in the air, are more concentrated and less tired,
planes have plenty of fuel and less restricted on combat maneuver than attacking escorts fighters,
and defenders can stay longer in the area to patrol against slower or lost attacking planes,
all this can be exemplify by the UK’s pilots experience known via the air Battle of Britain in 1940-41.

In game terms and statistics, defending fighter (D@2) are also better than StB (A@1 First Strike) which is not the case in G40 SBR and interception rules, where all is the same.

@Baron:

Sometimes, defenders are caught off-guard on the airfield but once the interceptors are in the air, they get the advantage:
they are flying over a known homeland territory,
pilots have spent less time in the air, are more concentrated and less tired,
planes have plenty of fuel and less restricted on combat maneuver than attacking escorts fighters,
and defenders can stay longer in the area to patrol against slower or lost attacking planes,
all this can be exemplify by the UK’s pilots experience known via the air Battle of Britain in 1940-41.

This is correct, and since Baron mention the Battle of Britain, that was a special case since the planes had to cross the Channel, giving the German fighters only 10 minutes of operation over Southern UK before they had to return home again. The British fighters could of course stay up in the skies for hours, since their Airfields were close. And since the British defending fighters had plenty of fuel and time, they could fly high and attack from out of the sun. Germany would attack with more than 2000 planes, but because of the long range, they had short time on the target, giving the 700 defending British fighters the advantage.

But with that said, when the range was the same for both escorts and interceptors, the battle value would even out. To house rule this get complicated. You could let a fighter hit on 3 or less in his own territory, and modify one less pip for every space it moves. So a fighter that start in Normandy, lose one pip over the Channel and one more pip in UK, giving it an attack value of A1, while the UK fighter in UK roll a D3. Same when scrambling. If the UK fighter need to scramble into an adjacent seazone, it lose one pip because of the movement, giving it a defend on a D2.

@Razor:

(…) You could let a fighter hit on 3 or less in his own territory, and modify one less pip for every space it moves. So a fighter that start in Normandy, lose one pip over the Channel and one more pip in UK, giving it an attack value of A1, while the UK fighter in UK roll a D3. Same when scrambling. If the UK fighter need to scramble into an adjacent seazone, it lose one pip because of the movement, giving it a defend on a D2.

Interesting!
I like that. That would solve my personal problem with the ridiculous long range on TAC and FTR. Now those German planes cannot stay in West Germany anymore to raid/escort into the UK. They should rebase into Holland or Normandy for that.

In that case I would argue (for game balance reasons) that all aircraft loose 1 pip for each territory/SZ flown beyond half their range (loading more fuel and less ammo) but do not loose a pip if only flying half or less of their range to attack a territory/SZ. In the game I reckon it is already very bad for Germany if it needs to rebase its slower aircraft into Holand/Normandy. Also loosing pips then would kill every opportunity GE has westwards.
Also, the killing of the RN GE1 will be a tiny bit tougher. Most of the luftwaffe will remain within half their range except for 1 TAC starting in Berlin IIRC.

I think it will be difficult to keep track of

I had a similar rule in a set of house rules I developed several years ago, but that system used D12s in combat.  Each fighter (there were no tactical bombers back then) lost one attack or defense factor from a base of 8 for each space that it traveled to the fight.  The only exception was that carriers could support two fighters in the same sea zone and keep them fighting at 8.

We kept track of it with the flight range markers from Revised.  It worked well.

@WILD:

The rules have always been that you can’t land planes in a territory you just captured, or liberated (w/exception of AA1914 where planes really don’t def well, and there is no NCM phase), maybe it is an obsolete rule though. Maybe you should have some limited ability to land in a newly acquired territory. Maybe 1 air unit for a normal territory, or 3 air units if the newly acquired territory has an operational AB. Could possibly link how many air units can stay to the territories IPC value (value somewhat shows infrastructure). The thing is to not allow the attacked territory to be a ligament landing space when considering a planes range. You don’t want this to extend an air units range in this manner, and basically allow for kamikaze runs.
I have also wondered about a couple other things:

1. Why aren’t planes given a retreat option after each round of battle (both attacker and def). Attacker would pull out, and land in NCM, staying with-in the planes range. Def is allowed to pull out, and after all battles are done can move up to one space to find a safe landing spot (destroyed if no such place exists).

Maybe, one way to simulate an air-cover of a just conquered territory is to simply allow 1 plane per adjacent territory to scramble in the just conquered territory (maximum should be 3 planes).
If an operational Air Base is adjacent, then all 3 planes could come from this single territory.
So no need to provide special movement rules about landing in a just conquered territory.

About a 1 space aerial retreat option for defending planes, maybe it could be limited to 1 plane or up to 3 planes if the territory under attack have an operational AB. The retreat option should be used at the beginning of the round, once the attacker announced that he will continue the battle.

And if it is the case, then this retreat option should also be allowed to 1 single plane amongst those scrambled into a SZ.

The game already allows a 1 movement space for defending planes which cannot land on a carrier.

In regards to the opening post,

I believe the idea was that all defending ships were in dock near the airbase in question (i.e. along the coast) so the difference between scrambling over the territory or along the very edge of the coast.  Not saying it WAS, nor am I saying that historically naval engagements were with one side in dock (sometimes, i.e. Pearl Harbor, but not always - i.e. Bismarck vs. Hood.)

Just my opinion on why the rule allows for Cover Air Patrol.

Now, that said, I could agree that carrier based aircraft could scramble over the land as well.  Makes sense if good for the goose, good for the gander…

@knp7765:

Okay, I know this goes against the rules, but it seems to me that your planes stationed on an Airbase or even on an Aircraft Carrier should be able to scramble to defend adjacent territories. Now, planes on a regular territory (no Airbase) could not do this because they are considered “in the field” and would not be available for a quick response (lack of communications, etc.).

Still, doesn’t this seem logical to you guys? That an occupation force would call for air cover from a carrier or air base if counter-attacked?

Here is the HR I can probably use:
An adjacent operational Air Base provides up to 3 planes (Fg or TcB).
Each carrier can provide 1 plane in an adjacent land territory (Fg or TcB).
An adjacent territory can provide 1 plane (Fg or TcB).

In any situation, keep this limitation:
it is up to 3 planes (Fg or TcB) max which can be scrambled into an adjacent territory under attack.

In addition:
any territory under attack can allow an aerial retreat for 1 single plane (Fg, TcB or StB) or up to 3 planes (Fg, TcB or StB) if there is an operational AB, the range is only 1 territory or SZ move.

Does anyone see some specific drawback to this limited two ways: inward air-support/ outward air retreat?

If the rule is kept within the same limit as the scramble rule in a SZ, players are already taking account of this special air reinforcement, it shouldn’t be difficult to watch it even if it is applied on land territories. What do you think?