@Vendetta said:

One of the unique techs I outlined for Germany in my set was “Flak Towers.” The effect I intend it to have is that if facility AA has a near miss against a strategic bombing raid (i.e. rolls a 2 by default, or a 3 if you have AA Radar tech), the bomber will be forced to abort its mission and go home without dealing any damage - but it will get to fly back without being shot down.

I also outlined a “Flying Fortresses” tech which would be available to everyone, but the US would have a bonus making it easier to develop. That tech would make any hit scored by AA fire against a strategic bomber require a hit on a second roll to confirm and shoot it down. If the confirmation roll misses, the bomber aborts the mission but survived and returns. The bonus would not apply against interceptions by fighters - if they score a hit, it’s a kill.

Allowing situations where the defense can succeed but the bomber can survive struck me as a good way to play with the balance of the strategic bombing game without giving the bombers extra hit points. It works easily enough on tabletop, whether it can be translated into the TripleA engine is something I’ll have to find out.

Could be a good way to fine tune the balance in your bombing war meta without ping-ponging between either the defenders or the bombers being wiped out in one sided massacres.

It would take some extra work to make it play nice with your multiple hit point system. One thought that comes to mind is having the AA/interceptors roll two sets of dice per turn. One set inflicts damage as normal, while the other forces a retreat if it hits. That way you’d end up with a range of possible outcomes - they might get through and bomb the target with or without taking damage, or they might get sent back to base with or without damage, or they might get shot down.

I don't know if you've played Axis and Allies Naval Miniatures. If you haven't, I'd strongly recommend it. It's a very good game.

The reason I bring it up is because it has the same "aborted" concept you are describing here. That game's combat system is a little different from normal Axis and Allies. Let's say you have an aa gun with a value of 8. That means you roll 8 dice. Each die roll is either a hit or a miss, except that a 6 counts as two hits. You then count up your hits and compare them against the plane's armor and vital armor. Maybe a plane has armor 5 and vital armor 7. If you get hits at least equal to a plane's armor, it's aborted. It lives, but it doesn't get to attack ships or subs for the rest of the combat round. If you get hits at least equal to the plane's vital armor, the plane is killed outright.

In my test games of Flames and Steel, I've noticed that most of the time air theaters are uncontested. The side with air supremacy is able to strafe the armies of the side which has lost control over the sky. But, some of the time, an air theater can be contested. In which case, things can get very destructive very quickly. I'm okay with that in and of itself. A game doesn't need 20 rounds of huge stacks building up to be a fun game.

I have two concerns about the way the air aspect of the game currently operates.

I can always tweak stuff for game balance. The deeper concern is the all or nothing aspect to air combat. Axis and Allies Naval Miniatures managed to avoid that problem. The sky was generally contested every round. Every round both sides' bombers would strike naval targets. I realize that Naval Miniatures is a simulation of an individual naval battle, not a world war. Even so, the "contested sky" aspect of that game is something I'd like to bring into Flames and Steel.

The way I see it I have two options.

Keep my current system. It isn't perfect, and it loses the "contested sky" aspect I would have wanted. But most aspects of the game are working as intended, and that's something which makes me very happy.

Completely rethink my approach to air. I don't know what the new approach should be. But I do know that I want the following:

@Vendetta Wouldn't make more sense for Flak Towers to reduce the damage roll for bombers.

Hey @alkexr

A friend and I have been testing out v3 and compiling feedback as we play it. We have played v2 dozens of times and are excited to play v3. I'll have more detailed feedback on the balancing as we play a couple more games of v3, but here is what we have so far.

We really like the new map layout. Rivendell seems stronger and not guaranteed to fall. Rohan is more open and harder to hold, but giving Arnor Tharbad counters Saruman well with this. I also like the new Gondor terrain and love that Cair Andros is a settlement now. We also really like the new units like the White Wolf and Ice Drakes.

The new Orc Holds faction is fun, but doesn't seem to add anything new from when it was controlled by Angmar. It also doesn't have any counter to Dwarves. As a result, it doesn't really go anywhere and ends up fortifying on Goblin Town and Mount Gundabad until a doom stack of Dwarven Halberdiers come.

Combining the Woodland Realm and Lorien into the Silvan Elves was overall a good choice since the Woodland Realm in v2 didn't really do anything unique for Good.

-Winged Nazgul (and maybe all flying units) prompt the attacker if they want to submerge submarines each combat round. This never happened in v2 so likely a bug from reworking the units.

-Settlements need a visual indicator for how many units can be placed on them. v2 had this.

-Rivendell visually had hills, but is not a hill terrain tile.

-Angmar and Moria might need a starting minor settlement because its pretty easy to max out their spawns on their capitols the first few turns until they expand.

-Druadan Forest in v2 used to be a neutral tile that shortened the route for Rohan to send reinforcements to Minas Tirith. This made the tile strategically valuable and worth fighting the neutral archers there. In v3, the shortened path is replaced by a hills tile already controlled by Gondor. This now makes the forest just another tile. Personally, we liked the unique value that the Druadan Forest used to have.

-We like that mountains and marshes slow down movement, but maybe it shouldn't slow down Dwarves as an added benefit for their race?

-Angmar and Orc Holds orc units are too similar of color. Since they often have overlapping frontlines against Arnor, the only way I can tell them apart is from the tooltips. The same applies for Mordor and Dol Guldor orcs now that Mordor has a settlement closer to Dul Guldor.

-The Gondor settlement of Calembel has an extra 1 income marker on it bordering with North Lamedon.

-Add the archer unit to the Gondor roster since Rangers don't have Anti-Air anymore.

-Spearwall ability references a Werewolf unit that doesn't seem to be in the map.

@Vendetta

Hmm ... very interesting. What say you @victoryfirst