Attacking Transports - eligible for taking casualties???

@rookeries Welcome to the forum :slightly_smiling_face:

Moving the UK plane to SZ 5 to attack the German transports there indeed is a valid combat move. The battle will be resolved according to the “defenseless transports”-rules on page 19 of the rulebook, sometimes referred to as “autodestruction”.

Scramble is not part of the ruleset here (you might mix that up with the rules for Global 1940).
Also there is nothing in the rules saying that planes must be accompanied by attacking ships.
So never leave your transports unprotected :smile:

If you play with tech, radar and increased factory production can both strongly discourage SBR.

I have never been in a game of who can roll the most ones since classic, with 3 dice heavies.  I play a variety of opponents and rarely get SBR’d.  And it’s not because I have techs or interceptors on.

Like axis said, sometimes you get sick of these kinds of games (I can imagine), but since I’ve never had an opponent bomb me much, I look forward to the day that someone does.

In AA50 I’ve never seen someone use SBR as an attacking strategy.  Many players don’t do anything at all with their bombers some turns, when they could be SBR’g.  I even played someone who had heavy bombers from round 1 with Germany, and some turns let 3-4 heavies sit there idle while UK remained untouched (yes, this mystified me).  But people don’t want to lose their bombers to AA fire.  SBR is very risky.  You can take in 2 bombers, and it seems like I usually lose 1, so I’ve lost 12, and the recipient loses 1d6.  Now I know that’s not the way to run an SBR campaign or anything, but I’m just saying why a lot of folks won’t bother, if there’s an AA gun.  Besides, the cap on damage limits efficiency in many cases (reduces average below 3.5 per surviving bomber) and you don’t bomb money directly anymore, so the victim does have some options many times.

What I’m trying to say is, I’ve only seen SBR when people don’t know what else to do with their bombers for a turn, or there is no defense (no AA gun).  Bombers are extremely useful in attacking military units, and that’s the way I and most of my opponents use them.

thanks krieg

DAAK has a pretty good LL system for AAR, it would need some modification for AA50 for reasons mentioned above (changed BB CA bombard rules, changes to sub rules)

http://www.daak.de/indexe.php3

I would agrue that for AA50 to BB and CA should fire with the ground forces and subs should only fire separately if no DD present, to reduce the variance.

DAAK use an SBR table where the attacker loses 2-3 IPCs (50% chance for each) per turn, from your starting cash pool (as in AAR bomber loses 2.5 IPCs on avergae vs AA gun [cost $15 in AAR]) and inflict 2-3-4 (33% each) IPCs damge to an IC in a 6+ territory since bombers inflict on average 2.92 IPCs per SBR vs AA gun. If no AA then attacker loses nothing and inflicts 3-4 IPCs (50% each)

Different damage tables handle different scenarios (max IPC caps for terrirory value and also with/without AA firing).

Pretty annoying for F2F games though, I personally prefer LL online but ADS in F2F since the calculations really make a live game drag on for ever and ever.

If you have $120 to spend, chances are you’ve won the game anyway.

In the light of day I understand you better now, and it’s right that you can calculate your defences/attacks better in LL, so you will end up using lesser resources for “just in case” or “just to be sure” situations. And ofcourse, if there’s a huge pile of trns on a “just enough to keep 1 DD left” fleet, someone made a mistake, because you have to calculate your losses if things go wrong in too. It’s like a 30% chance to take Ger with UK, no one would doubt about that, since the potential gains far outweigh the potential losses, thus tilting the average gain in your direction. That aspect is still in LL though, be it less severe (it’s a question of adding 1 DD instead of 1 BB “to be sure”).

@Telamon:

But as long as you have fun, that’s all that matters.

I couldn’t agree more! (and sry for my tendency to overreact :oops: )

Thanks for the prompt replies.
Looking at some moves for my first game with my new AA50 this weekend.

Q. On page 29 it says that your aircraft may hit enemy submarines if you have a destroyer in the sea zone, but it doesn’t say anywhere in the rules that aircraft can’t hit submarines without a destroyer present. Do you always need a destroyer in a battle in order for your air units to hit enemy subs?
A. Yes. Air units can only hit subs if there is a friendly destroyer on the battle board, otherwise hits made by air units must be applied to units other than submarines. If you’re the attacker, destroyers in the same sea zone belonging to your ally don’t count, since they’re not involved in the battle.

THX Kriegshund, you are right!

I apologize to all readers of my previous posts for having answered without this important information.

In this case the subs would sink the transport without interference of the fighters.