Scramble from airbases

Good thinking, Auto. It should be like an AirBase can only scramble 3 aircrafts when fully operational, and one less for each damage point.

By the way you can put an AB on Ceylon to protect your Indian (UK) fleet. I think that New Zealand will prove to be more important as time goes on because of its AB (last stand) with the US coming over to assist. The US will try to keep Japan from being on there side of the map. If Japan does come over then after Hawaii, yea US is in trouble, but has like 50 IPC’s that’s a lot of inf to go with your fighters. If the allies are attacking Japan itself then that means Japans has lost most of its holdings, its income would be very low. The AB kinda levels things out. With that said I hope there is an exception for the UK in the Euro side. With their advanced radar and the RAF they should be able to scramble. I also think it would be a cool tech for all AB to scramble even into adjacent land tt. It might be to powerful though.

@Razor:

Good thinking, Auto. It should be like an AirBase can only scramble 3 aircrafts when fully operational, and one less for each damage point.

This sounds pretty good Razor. Gives you another reason for SBR. You could even carry the idea over to NB where they can repair 3 ships per turn less one for each damage point.

I like that, Variable, + karma to you, buddy  :-)

A Question about scrambling fighters;

Can/do allied fighters scramble together? For instance, Japan attacks the US fleet in the Hawaii seazone. On Hawaii there are US and ANZAC fighters. Do they scramble together, or are the ANZAC fighters excluded from this fight?

Hope someone can shine a light on this…

Defending air units belonging to any power may scramble.

I would have to agree with Autarch on this one.

The coasts of the USA and Australia were vast when compared to some of the tiny pacific islands.  If you look at the aerial photo’s of places like Iwo Jima and Tarawa the entire Island was basically the airfield and AA and other defenses.  The Idea of the scramble off the Island is to allow airpower to protect your fleet when it is cruising off the coast of the Island and serves as a carrier that can land unlimited aircraft as well as bombers (although they don’t scramble).  The extra range bonus given by the airfield also makes the aircraft’s movement operate as if they were on a carrier in the surrounding sea zone.  The airfield also helps the defender to keep the island by making it more difficult to destroy the surrounding and defending naval fleet for the invader before they can land any units to attack the Island.  This is also advantageous because you can now park a fleet outside of your island airbases and reinforce it with fighters and tac bombers much faster than ferrying infantry to it by transport.

I think that perhaps it would have been better to have created maybe two types of units, the airdrome and the airbase.  The airdrome would operate exactly as the current airbase does in AA PAC 1940 giving the scramble ability on Islands only as well as the +1 movement bonus.  The new “airbase” would not allow scrambling but would give a +2 to aircraft range if they flew two and from an airbase or airdrome, using the airbase either upon launching or landing.  This airbase would be more useful in light of the inability for scrambling on non-island territories, especially in the upcoming Europe with UK, Moscow, and Germany.  I would guess it could be developed into a house rule with Airdromes being cheaper, 12 IPC’s I guess and Airbases remaining 15.

if you have 6 planes on an AB do they all have to scramble or can you hold some back?

rulebook needs to be thicker.

Good point MaherC!

@MaherC:

if you have 6 planes on an AB do they all have to scramble or can you hold some back?

Just as with fighter interceptors for SBRs, you may scramble some, all or none of your fighters and tactical bombers from an island airbase.