The new SBR system

Great question Razor. +1

Yes, good question, Raz.

The order of events is:

1. All combat moves are completed
2. Defensive air units scramble
3. SBRs
4. Amphibious assaults
5. All other combat

You can’t prevent a scramble by attacking the air base in the same turn.  If you could, a single bomber could tie down several fighters.  It’s up to the defending player whether he wants his fighters to defend the air base or the fleet, or some of each.

Personally, I think this is brilliant!  I hated the old unrealistic system of Bombers being able to hit IC’s pretty much at will with only a 1-in-6 chance of an AA hit.  It used to frustrate me to no end to have Fighters in a territory with an IC just sit there and be unable to do anything about it.  And I’m glad they made it an official rule instead of just an option.  Now if you want to pursue a real strategic bombing campaign, you better make a real investment (fighters for escort and extra bombers to take your losses)!  And the fact that defending fighters roll on a 2 is ‘accurate’ in the sense that they are defending their own territory and can sortie multiple times as opposed to the escorting fighters having to fight far from their own bases.  LOVE this rule!!!

This rule has been needed since the game’s inception.

Let’s look at a typical scenerio. 1 escort, 1 bomber attacking 1 defending fighter and 1 AA gun.

The odds say that the escort will hit 1/6 so on average you will do 1.66 ipc damage(kill defender 1/6 of time)
The odds say your bomber will do 3.5 ipc damage.
Total average of 5.16 ipc damage.

The odds say the defending fighter will do 3.33 ipc damage( kill escort 1/3 of time)
The odds say the AA gun will do an average of 2ipc damage. (kill bomber 1/6 of time)
Total average of 5.33 ipc damage.

You lose when you do SBR. Of course if you have a larger # of escorts then it becomes in your favor…slightly. But really wouldn’t your efforts be wasted? The smart move is to use your fighters on another target if you got extra fighters to spare anyway.  So what is the point?

The old rules show that you would win with 1 bomber vs 1 AA gun. 3.5 to 2. It’s simple math guys. You think it’s better because it sounds cool to send up interceptors. Not really. But what do I know.

I think it will cut down on SBR only missions for sure. Its like when the defender gets radar (AA @ 2) SBR slows down or comes to a halt. As the attacker you don’t want them firing @ 2, because if they hit then the SBR campaign was a bust. You may have lost more then the defender. Now you could have a greater risk then reward. As the attacker you will need to be more selective about the facility you are attacking. Find the weakest link and attack it. As the defender you can’t possibly put ftrs on all your tt containing a facility, so it could defiantly change some strats.

Its going to be a big change for Germany/Russia. Do you hold your ftrs on your IC or bring them up to the front lines for attack/def purpose. You may find your self basically assigning ftrs to certain tt. It will be more help to a power that is playing more defensive with the battle coming to him, because his ftrs based at his IC/capital will be able to protect him from SBR and be in range to attack the enemy. Could say the same for the island nations, because there is normally ftrs based there.

I wonder if ftrs should have had yet another reduction in cost. If your in a game with a lot of SBR going on. and carriers not able to land planes if damaged, there could surly be a lot ftrs going down. Each power is getting more income now though, so maybe its all good.

I agree with Raz, this game is designed to have more detail and a higher level of thought and planning. With that said the best part is that through house rules you can change that base level up or down according to how your group wants to play. I would suggest you play several games as intended though before you pass judgment. I remember in AA50 I hated the new transport rules at first. Even tried to force feed some house rules early on. Now having to protect your transports makes more sense to me, and I wouldn’t go back. I like the fact that each game has evolved a little more.

@Razor:

I dont know why I keep bother answering this questions, butt here we go:

Dear mr. F. Tiger.

We the community want escort and interceptors because it is cool to send em up.
And they used them in the real war too.
So they pretty much belong in an advanced game in this scale. In AA42 the basic game they dont.

And guess what. Back in 1940 they said the same as you. It didn’t pay off to SBR Germany as long as they got a lot of fighters to intercept. Butt after 1944, when the Germans were short on fighters, then it was good business to SBR Germany. Get it ?

Sounds like we agree completely. If there are defending fighters then there is no point to do a SBR. If there are none then you simply go in with only Bombers and the old rules apply.

The new rules favor the defender too much. If you look at the statistics I am right. The #s I have seen show that when the Allies were bombing there was only a 1.2% chance of being shot down (that’s per sortie). Here in my example it stands at 33% for each defending fighter. Too much power since SBRs are not overpowered unless going in with mass bombers and even then it’s limited to 20 points of damage.

The reason that the statistics are in your favor is because most of the SBR’s were done when their was a lack of fighter to intercept the bombing raids.

So based on that you want a rule that applies the odds of what happens with no defense to apply when their is defense. Sorry but that is not realistic.

I agree that basically you want to strat bomb if you can afford to at least send about twice as many escorts as there will be interceptors – and if you want to trade fighters for fighters. And yes, the old guideline seems to apply: If there’s a real battle, you probably want to be in that instead.

However, a bomber only does an average of 3.5 damage if it always survives the AA gun. You have to factor in the odds of a bomber doing 0 damage because it was shot down. Plus, what kind of factory/base are being bombed? How much damage do they have? What are their maximum damage amounts?

I think there are a lot more numbers to be crunched before we can say how much these new rules have changed the effectiveness of SBRs.

I really like these rules, as I feel in the past if you were going to play with the interceptor optional rule you should just remove the ability to SBR as it did almost the same thing.  This also puts more choice into the actions, and allows it to be a bit more of a mainline strategy and make getting those airfields nearby to send escorts very important.  I like the fact that it adds more detail I guess, and it balances out the numbers nicely.

@Brain:

The reason that the statistics are in your favor is because most of the SBR’s were done when their was a lack of fighter to intercept the bombing raids.

So based on that you want a rule that applies the odds of what happens with no defense to apply when their is defense. Sorry but that is not realistic.

Over 40,000 Allied aircraft were lost over Europe and you say the Germans had no defense? Farmers with shotguns maybe? The old rules work just fine. IDK but when I see the bomber unit I think a group of bombers escorted by fighters already. When I see the AA gun I think AA fire and interceptor planes. I think these new rules would apply better to DDay or BOTB. I realize I am in the minority on this But I feel it’s going to reduce SBRs on factories too much, when in fact it was a huge part of the war effort.

If there are no fighters present for defense, then it will be just like old times.

(Rank = 80)

@hyogoetophile:

I agree that basically you want to strat bomb if you can afford to at least send about twice as many escorts as there will be interceptors – and if you want to trade fighters for fighters. And yes, the old guideline seems to apply: If there’s a real battle, you probably want to be in that instead.

Exactly what I am saying. At least someone has math skills. So what is the point of it then? It would be moronic to attack against defending fighters. It’s very comparable to using only infantry to attack infantry, practically #1 on the no no list. So basically this will reduce the amount of SBRs which will reduce the game experience.

OK,

My take on a couple of different points raised here

1)  In a bomber vs AA scenario, the actual expectation is ~2.91 IPCs versus 2 ipcs.  This accounts for the 1 in six chance of the bomber being shot down and never getting to drop it’s payload.

2. I think the defending at 2 vs escorting at 1 for fighters is just fine.  The thing that’s important to remember is that as the attacker, you can choose where and when to attack, concentrating your forces, whereas the defender has to spread themselves out among multiple key locations.  Some have complained that some countries (Japan, for example) will only have one target to bomb, and will therefore be able to defend themselves too strongly.  I think that by the time a major SBR campaign is initiated, both Germany and Japan will have at least two legitimate targets.  Japan will have the home island, and most likely a complex in Korea or Manchuria.  Germany will have the Germany complex (possibly two, there is more than one Germany territory) plus two former French Complexes.  Russia will have probably three complexes to defend (Russia, Leningrad, Stalingrad),  US is pretty much immune to SBR.  Only UK and Italy will likely have a single complex.  Also, as others have mentioned, the opportunity cost of holding your planes back for defense and not using them at the front will make an interesting balance for the defender.

3)  The problem all along was that SBR was always too much in favor of the attacker, who was usually the allies.  I love this rule, it’ll go a long way towards tilting that balance a little more towards even (which it needs to be for game balance, regardless of how things played out in reality).  In fact, if you look at every innovation in the history of A&A SBR, each step has favored the defender, which tells me that the developers recognize the imbalance and are trying to fix it.

4. Another flaw that this rule addresses is that even if you were worried about SBR, beyond buying a single AA gun, there was nothing you could do.  You couldn’t defend better, you just had to hunker down and take it.  Now you can defend better, which is hugely valuable.  Now, you can make them buy planes or take additional losses.  And every plane they buy is 84% of a bomber that they didn’t buy.

5. Someone mentioned preferring a distributed economy (three minor complexes) over one major complex.  There are some advantages in that, but improved defense isn’t one of them.  Imagine I have 6 bombers.  I can send all six at one major, or two each at three minor.  In the first case, 1AA fires 6 shots, in the other 3AAs each fire 2 shots.  The expected effectiveness is the same.  The only advantage you have is that my bombers might hit less efficiently now.  The bombers on one complex could roll a 1 and a 3 and on the other complex, a pair of 5s.  That extra damage is lost in the distributed scenario, but the penalty you pay is that you now can’t use all your fighters to defend a single location.

6. Someone posted the 1 bomber, 1 escort, 1 AA, 1 interceptor scenario and showed that the expectation very slightly favors the defender.  I believe that if you are the allies, particularly the US, it’s a good idea to SBR even if it’s slightly against you.  Consider this question.  If you could, as the US player, give some amount of money to Russia every turn, how much would you give?  I believe that the correct answer to that question is “all of it” or, upon a little thought “as much as they can spend”.  The reason is that because Russia is closer to the front, and doesn’t need to buy a navy to project power, they can buy land troops more efficiently than you.  In fact, I’d probably be willing to give them money at 70 to 80 cents on the dollar, due to that efficiency difference.  Since I can’t give my money directly to Russia, the next best thing is taking money directly away from Germany, and SBR is the closet thing around to docking their paycheck. It’s also the fastest way for me to apply my economic output against them, so even if SBR cost me 15% more than it cost them, I think I’d still do it.

5. Someone mentioned preferring a distributed economy (three minor complexes) over one major complex.  There are some advantages in that, but improved defense isn’t one of them.  Imagine I have 6 bombers.  I can send all six at one major, or two each at three minor.  In the first case, 1AA fires 6 shots, in the other 3AAs each fire 2 shots.  The expected effectiveness is the same.  The only advantage you have is that my bombers might hit less efficiently now.  The bombers on one complex could roll a 1 and a 3 and on the other complex, a pair of 5s.  That extra damage is lost in the distributed scenario, but the penalty you pay is that you now can’t use all your fighters to defend a single location.

I said it. If you send all 6 at one you can only kill 6 IPC, if you send only 2 at each of the three, i have the possibility that i can get an advantage against your attacking escorts. I also make it possible that some of my minors are out of your range. If i just had one major it would be a target for the allied efforts. I think Japan can hold its own in China, and another in FIC, and a third in India or in China somewhere or even some island. Anyway now i got 3 built in AA guns rather than one with is the last point.

also, Having 3 allows the units to appear at different parts of the map and thats is huge compared to just one location.

So by spreading out the minors, you could get a local advantage, but as Japan to spend the same amount on just one makes it a real target. also China can destroy factories by occupying them, A minor in Manchuria is a smaller risk. Japan already starts with one major in japan. They don’t need more, but they need little factories to protect the various parts of the map.

Welcome, purplebaron!

Very insightful first post!

Don’t forget as well that the map is even larger than in AA50.  To keep defending fighters in berlin they won’t be fighting on the front lines.  Also, if the US going for a dedicated SBR campain cannot afford to send in escort fighters from say, carriers that are defending there transports, there is something wrong.  Even in aa50 as the US I typically end up with atleast a 3 to 2 ratio of 3 us fighters per 2 german fighters, and since i cannot lose the figs to aa fire I would send them as escorts hoping the germans send up there fighters for me to shoot down.  This new system forces everyone to make choices, just like the new two hit rules and sub/dd rules force choices in navel battles.  Now if we can just find a way to make land combat more obvious than it is.