@malmessi said:
@KurtGodel7 said:
The next step is to allocate fighters (including fighters, advanced fighters, and jets). These are air superiority units. They can only shoot down other enemy aircraft. They can never attack land or naval units
Ok for a different approach but... this will decrease their utility. If I understood fighter can only help during Sbr (when defending or playing an attack) but not on land or naval battles... They should cost fewer IPCs...
Res.Cen. are not located on the map so hey cannot be bombed, Aa can hit whan attacker tries a Sbr plus, structures located deep inside enemy's lines are very hard to be reached and bombed so...
Also, Aircraft carrers, why should I still land planes (not defending) on them ?
These are good questions.
Imagine that Germany builds some dive bombers and Japan builds torpedo bombers. Germany plans to use its dive bombers to strafe the Red Army. Japan plans to use its torpedo bombers to attack the U.S. Navy.
It's very difficult for the Soviet player to defend against this threat with aa guns. If he had 6 aa guns in a territory, those would automatically take out one German dive bomber. (The 6 aa guns would produce 2 hits, and a dive bomber takes 2 hits to kill.) The problem the Soviet player faces is that he might have several armies which would need to be defended against dive bombers. Germany can choose which army to strafe. Unless each army had a bunch of aa guns, Germany would just choose to strafe an army that didn't have a bunch of aa guns. Or he could strafe individual Soviet units which weren't part of a larger stack. Land units do not fire back against air, except for aa guns firing. Therefore, it's very tempting for bombers to strafe land units. Dive bombers are especially good against land units, but really you can use any type of bomber for this.
The Soviet player has two options in a situation like this. 1) Concede control over the sky to the Luftwaffe, and absorb whatever damage the German dive bombers deliver. 2) Build air superiority planes, such as fighters, to fight back against the Luftwaffe.
Suppose the British player decides to dump cash into strategically bombing Germany. There are a number of German factories within range of British strategic bombing attacks. If Germany wants to defend against this using aa guns only, it would need to have 9 aa guns on each factory territory within range of those British bombers. Those 9 aa guns would generate 3 hits, killing a bomber per raid. Germany's other option would be to put fighters on the "bomb Germany" theater, thereby defending all its factories at once. A fighter costs 10 PUs, has a dogfight value of 3, and takes 2 hits to kill. A strategic bomber costs 18 Pus, has a dogfight value of 2, and takes 3 hits to kill.
There are three types of air theaters. Land, coastal, open ocean. To allocate air to a land theater, you need a landing spot within range of that theater. To allocate to coastal, you need either a land location within range of the theater, or carriers in that theater. For open ocean, it's carriers only.
Take the Pearl Harbor attack for example. Japan brought 6 carriers with it to Pearl. Those carriers allowed it to have 8 torpedo bombers and 4 fighters present for the battle. Had there been a dogfight, those 4 fighters would have played an important role. (Fighters dogfight on a 3, compared to a 1 for torpedo bombers or dive bombers.) After the (nonexistent) dogfight, the 8 torpedo bombers attacked, doing 8 hitpoints of damage to the Pearl Harbor fleet. All this happened during the air phase. On Japan's turn, its navy came in to finish off the Pearl Harbor fleet. But, without those carriers, Japan could not have launched the air attack on Pearl.
