I’m not one who’s prone to calling something “game-breaking”, but I’ve pretty much concluded that the way airbase attacks works at least approaches that territory.
To be fair, there is some disagreement here. Of the four of us who regularly play here, Jason thinks the airbase attacks are fine. As far as I know John really doesn’t have an opinion, and Peter and I think there are problems – problems enough that we’re talking about going back to allowing airbase attacks only in conjunction with a ground attack in or adjacent to the base being attacked, or even doing away with them altogether.
Quite some time back when I asked why the movement rates for ships were less in the Pacific than in the Atlantic, the response was that invariably the games wound up with two large fleets eventually going at each other instead of the more historical island hopping. This is pretty much the same thing we’re seeing now in Europe – two great big stacks of airplanes going at each other. Instead of air battles being waged across the front you have one large stack of aircraft trying to corner a smaller stack (as the owner of that side frantically tries to grow his stack); if he refuses contact the side with the larger stack uses them as ground support in attacks with sometimes 15-20 aircraft. It’s gotten to the point where it’s really dropped the “fun factor” down a couple of notches. In real life you had to have aircraft spread out across the whole front; with the airbase rules as they are now players just try to have a bigger stack of aircraft than the opponent.
I think one of the issues here is the scope of the game. An air system like this one works in a game like World in Flames because with the far greater number of hexes covering the same geographic area you can’t concentrate too much without leaving large areas of the front uncovered (I can’t remember since it’s been too many years since I’ve played – was there a stacking limit for planes in WiF?). In The Struggle, there are territories in Eastern Europe where you can have all of your aircraft in one territory and have almost the entire front covered, which when combined with the airbase rules gives an incentive to bunch them up. Having so few territories (compared to the hex grid of WiF) artificially increases the operational range of aircraft (especially fighters). A Me 109 in the Battle of Britain only had about ten minutes of loiter time over a given target, and this was within 200 miles of its home base. A fighter in The Struggle in the right spot might be able to hit a target well over 1000 miles away.
Another thing I remember about WiF is that planes were a lot harder to kill than they are in The Struggle – you were far more likely to generate an abort than to get a kill. I remember quite some time back there was discussion on here somewhere (Craig, if you’re reading this was that you?) about changing the rules so that air combat had the possibility of generating aborts instead of kills. This was before the airbase rules were introduced, and I was against the idea at that time since the defender had the ability to refuse combat if too badly outnumbered. With airbase attacks now in the rules I think perhaps something like this needs to be revisited.
Some of the ideas I’m kicking around:
1) Defenders do not have to fly against the attackers. This way they’re prevented from being used, but can’t get slaughtered the way they are now.
2) All aircraft (attacker and defender) have a -1 to their values in making airbase attacks. I’m not sure that this would really do much, but it’s an idea.
3) Say that any AA units in that same territory get to shoot normally at any attacking aircraft in an airbase attack. Again, this probably wouldn’t change much.
4) When the attacking planes roll, any result of a 5 or 6 results in an abort for the defender; aborts are scored before any kills can be recorded. In other words, if there are two defending aircraft and the attacker rolls two 5’s or 6’s, it doesn’t matter how many other dice result in kills – the aborts mean that the defender may retreat his aircraft.
5) Building on the present airbase rules, say that every clear territory is a Level 3 airbase and every flag territory is a Level 5 airbase. I don’t know if this would solve the problem or not, but it would at least force players to be a little more historical in the deployment of aircraft. I know some might carp about it, but this wouldn’t be the first time stacking limits were used in a game to force historical play. If this limit is too harsh, you could allow Level 5 airbases to be built in clear territories and Level 3 airbases to be built in flag territories; this would up the stacking limits in a clear territory to 5 and 8 in a flag territory.
Of these I think the last might work the best. I really like the idea of aborts, but in a D6 system where a fighter has a 50% chance of a kill I don’t think a one out of six chance is enough to have much effect, but a two out of six chance may be too much.
In our games we are currently using all of the airbase rules, with the addition that aircraft on a coast or island block supply into or through that sea zone unless there is a combat ship in that zone. We also allow the defending aircraft to react to an amphibious assault, and allow the attacker to send aircraft into the sea zone containing transports for the amphibious assault to fly CAP.
I’d really like to hear everyone’s thoughts on airbases. I think airbase attacks are realistic, but I’m real tired of the unrealistic situations they’re causing in our games due to the way aircraft are being deployed – enough that I’m to the point of sacrificing a little realism to get back some of the playability.