Long Range Aircraft: the worst tech on balance?

@jgbarg Just remember, the China units (including airplane) can never LEAVE china. Not that china or the plane live long enough to make that matter…

I had planned on making it to Gen Con this year but I wasn’t able to get the time off work on the relatively short notice. Definitely going to try making it to Origins/Gencon next year though. I live on the US East Coast so the CA Tournaments, Young Grasshopper’s Tournaments, etc. are probably out of the question though, just as a logistics thing.

I’ve been lurking these forums for a bit and finally decided to join up. Anywho, just played the first A&A50 game in like 2 years a few weeks ago. Everyone went for techs. By the end of the game Japan had Radar, America had Heavy Bombers, and Russia had both Advance Artillery and war bonds.

We ended the game on German 4 when they took Moscow. America only used Heavy Bombers once, likewise Japan only used Radar once(same combat), and Russia despite having two techs still got crushed by combined German/Japan Moscow rush.

So the question is, in the long run are the techs worth the investment?

Personally I like having the options though I don’t normally bother are only buy like one tech dice a game. Still when people do get them it can have a great impact in some games, I’ve seen a G2 Sea lion a couple of times because of techs. From reading the forums most seem to favor ignoring them, but I just wanted to get a few options and see how most felt.

Having played some more games, I no longer really feel dat the Allies have a better chance of winning. Perhaps it just takes more games to learn how to play axis effectively.

Having NO’s on indeed makes the game more realistic and fluid, in the sense that fighting for something like australia for example really is worth the effort more. Perhaps we will try NO’s in the future, when all of our players are more experienced with the vanilla ruleset.

Thanks guys

I’ll give AA 50 a second look.

If one side play very aggressive and makes a do-or-die strategy, its often over after 4-6 hours. But if both are playing conservative, you often play at least 10 hours. After 10 hours, when our wifes are calling freneticly, we often decide together who would be ah probable winner, by the overall positions on the table.

@shifty:

What kind of “program” are you writing?  What equation/algorithm are you using?

It’s written in BlitzMax. The source below should (hopefully :)) not be too hard to understand - if you have questions, feel free to ask:

' Compares 2nd ed. A&A tech dev cost/rate with Anniv. ed. A&A ' 20 turns to test; record turn number that a total of 2 breakthroughs were achieved.  Test 1 & 2 rolls/turn. ' If two breakthroughs aren't achieved, "turn 0" is recorded (ignored for graphing & turn average) ' (When going for two breakthroughs, two aren't achieved in about 2% for both 2nd and Anniv.) Strict Local breakthroughs, totalCost, turn, totalTurns Local answer[21], prefix$, graph$ Local breakthroughLimit = 2 For Local rolls = 1 To 2 ' actual rolls for 2nd Ed, Researchers for Anniv. Print;Print; Print rolls + " Tech Roll(s)/Researcher(s) per Turn:" Print; Print "2nd Edition" totalCost = 0 totalTurns = 0 For Local c = 0 To 20 answer[c] = 0 Next For Local test = 1 To 100000 ' a hundred thousand tests for accuracy breakthroughs = 0 turn = 0 While breakthroughs < breakthroughLimit And turn <= 20 turn :+ 1 totalCost :+ rolls * 5 ' each roll costs 5 IPCs For Local c = 1 To rolls If Rand(6) = 6 Then breakthroughs :+ 1 Next Wend totalTurns :+ turn If turn > 20 Then answer[0] :+ 1 Else answer[turn] :+ 1 EndIf Next ' display results For Local c = 1 To 20 graph = "" ' divide results by 1000 so each asterisk represents one percent For Local cc = 1 To Int(answer[c]/1000.0 + .5) graph :+"*" Next If c < 10 Then prefix = " " Else prefix ="" ' extra space for single digits Print prefix + c + " " + graph Next Print "Avg turn = " + totalTurns / 100000.0 Print "Avg cost = " + totalCost / 100000.0 Print; Print "Anniversary Edition" totalCost = 0 totalTurns = 0 For Local c = 0 To 20 answer[c] = 0 Next Local researchers ' researchers accumulate from turn to turn For Local test = 1 To 100000 researchers = 0 breakthroughs = 0 turn = 0 While breakthroughs < breakthroughLimit And turn <= 20 turn :+ 1 totalCost :+ rolls * 5 ' each researcher costs 5 IPCs researchers :+ 1 * rolls ' accumulate 1 researcher per "roll" Local success For Local c = 1 To researchers If Rand(6) = 6 Then success = True ' only one regardless of # of sixes rolled Next If success Then researchers = 0 ' eliminate accumulated researchers when successful breakthroughs :+ 1 EndIf Wend totalTurns :+ turn If turn > 20 Then answer[0] :+ 1 Else answer[turn] :+ 1 EndIf Next ' display results For Local c = 1 To 20 graph = "" ' divide results by 1000 so each asterisk represents one percent For Local cc = 1 To Int(answer[c]/1000.0 + .5) graph :+"*" Next If c < 10 Then prefix = " " Else prefix ="" ' extra space for single digits Print prefix + c + " " + graph Next Print "Avg turn = " + totalTurns / 100000.0 Print "Avg cost = " + totalCost / 100000.0 Next

I release it into the public domain (modify it as desired/convert it to the language of your choice).  breakthroughLimit is initially set for 2, which generated the first set of graphs in this thread (I hand-rounded the accuracy to a single decimal place when copy/pasting results in the thread). Setting it to 1 (i.e. stopping after getting one breakthrough) produced the second set above. I also made another, slightly tweaked version to generate the “only buy Researchers on turn 1” version for wodan46.

I am beginning to wonder if the Heavy Bomber rule that has some people bent so out of shape is in there to compensate for the large boost that attaining National Objectives gives the Axis.  As a guess, it is going to be easier for the Axis to attain their objectives, and more productive to them than for the Allies to attain their objectives, which do not appear to give them anywhere the same boost.