Perfect AA system
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Thinking of a perfect AA system for Global. While I agree that the capturable AA gun sucked, inbuilt AA is also backward step. For Classic through v5 you could just have a non-capturable AA gun and no inbuilt AA but no map works like that to my knowledge. No idea why. You can't do that in Global because of the multiple facilities which can be targeted and AA fire should also target the attacking groups individually.
I feel that inbuilt AA guns in factories/harbour/airbases reduce strategic depth and I don't like them much at all.
I'm guessing such a change requires an engine change because you're radically changing the way the AA fire works. Anyone got any suggestions which differ?
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@simon33 Well, AA representation has never been a strong point of WWII (A&A) games. I agree in-built AA guns are dumb, but really the matter has been always there, in the moment you only need one and it shoots at infinite, that's not really that much deeper.
If we start looking at realism, the first thing one would have to consider is ammunition consumption, as the cost of the gun itself eventually becomes very minor compared to the cost of the ammunition it consumes (you need to fire an enormous quantities of shells to even down a few enemy aircrafts). The impact and cost efficiency of using AA artillery itself is debatable.
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@simon33 said in Perfect AA system:
Thinking of a perfect AA system for Global. While I agree that the capturable AA gun sucked, inbuilt AA is also backward step. For Classic through v5 you could just have a non-capturable AA gun and no inbuilt AA but no map works like that to my knowledge.
In TWW we designed AA Guns to be normal units. They only fire once per combat turn (per AA Gun present) at aircraft and are stackable like any other unit. They can be taken as casualties during combat and defend a territory as well like any other unit. This means there are no more nonsensical rules attached to the unit any longer and you have to invest in buying more AA Guns if you want to build a strong air defense system to protect a valuable territory.
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yea I like using aaGuns that way too. it'd be nice to have an option where they would work against sbr the same as well instead of the built in auto shoot at every plane way it is now.
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I do feel the classic AA system is one of the weakest part of Triplea. It is kinda ok for small maps but definitely it is dull in big maps.
Enemy air units are undestroyable without them but on the other hand you can't really use them in battles for to take on enemy fighters since if they are in your main stack it won't matter because enemy already won't attack there and if you move AA to another place then enemy will retake without using air units then it will force you to retake it without using your own air units.
AA is the least useful unit in big maps because can't even fulfill their main mission in non-factory zones.
The solution would be making some land and sea units that slighly more expensive versions of classical units they would be way better counter if enemy using air units too much. There should have been units that has AA ability on the ground and sea. With that if you have more these kind of units in the same stack, they increase the hit chance of enemy air units.
In this case one unit shouldn't have 1/6 change to hit an air unit of course it would make air units useless.
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@beelee That is exactly how they work in TWW. They only shoot once... regardless of how many Bombers SBR a territory.
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@Hepps
cool I'll have to read up on what you did -
@beelee Here is the design...
<attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="britishAntiAirGun" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type="unitType"> <option name="defense" value="1"/> <option name="isAAmovement" value="true"/> <option name="isAAforCombatOnly" value="true"/> <option name="isAAforBombingThisUnitOnly" value="true"/> <option name="mayOverStackAA" value="true"/> <option name="isAAforFlyOverOnly" value="true"/> <option name="maxAAattacks" value="1"/> <option name="maxRoundsAA" value="-1"/> <option name="typeAA" value="AntiAircraftGun"/> <option name="targetsAA" value="germanAdvancedTacticalBomber:germanAdvancedNavalFighter:russianAdvancedTacticalBomber:russianAdvancedNavalFighter:japaneseAdvancedTacticalBomber:japaneseAdvancedNavalFighter:britishAdvancedTacticalBomber:britishAdvancedNavalFighter:italianAdvancedTacticalBomber:italianAdvancedNavalFighter:americanAdvancedTacticalBomber:americanAdvancedNavalFighter:germanFighter:germanAdvancedFighter:germanNavalFighter:germanTacticalBomber:germanStrategicBomber:germanHeavyStrategicBomber:germanAirTransport:italianFighter:italianAdvancedFighter:italianNavalFighter:italianTacticalBomber:italianStrategicBomber:italianHeavyStrategicBomber:italianAirTransport:japaneseFighter:japaneseAdvancedFighter:japaneseNavalFighter:japaneseTacticalBomber:japaneseStrategicBomber:japaneseHeavyStrategicBomber:japaneseAirTransport:brazilianFighter:swedishFighter:spanishFighter:turkishFighter:chineseFighter:chineseTacticalBomber:russianFighter:russianAdvancedFighter:russianNavalFighter:russianTacticalBomber:russianStrategicBomber:russianHeavyStrategicBomber:russianAirTransport:britishFighter:britishAdvancedFighter:britishNavalFighter:britishTacticalBomber:britishStrategicBomber:britishHeavyStrategicBomber:britishAirTransport:americanFighter:americanAdvancedFighter:americanNavalFighter:americanTacticalBomber:americanStrategicBomber:americanHeavyStrategicBomber:americanAirTransport"/> <option name="movement" value="0"/> <option name="isLandTransportable" value="true"/> <option name="attackAA" value="1"/> <option name="requiresUnits" value="britishFactory"/> <option name="canBeGivenByTerritoryTo" value="Britain"/> <option name="transportCost" value="2"/> </attachment>So it operates as an AA Gun when defending a territory... but it can only shoot once per combat turn. The main difference of this design is that...
The AA Guns will fire at aircraft in every round of combat... so when a territory is attacked during normal combat you get to try to shoot planes down each round so long as the battle persists... and so long as you still have AA Guns that you have not taken as casualties during said engagement.
AA Guns are also capable of defending the territory verses direct attack and improve defensively through Tech Advancement.
If you are playing dice... then each AA Gun will fire once but if you stack 5 of them then you get 5 rolls... regardless of the number of attacking aircraft.
If you are playing LL then you just have higher chances of attaining a hit each round they survive.
Under this design SBR are pretty much the same... with the exception that you only get one roll... regardless of the number of bombers... so if your opponent is massing bombers... a single AA Gun protecting a territory is likely not going to provide adequate protection for your facilities.
Now this is also combined with escort and intercept rules... so there are also other ways to mount an aerial defense other than to mass AA Guns. Additionally there are Techs that improve the AA Guns (as well as all the other units)... so there is a multitude of strategic & tactical options for both sides.
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Awesome ! Thanks Man !
I especially like this part... so there is a multitude of strategic & tactical options for both sides.
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@beelee Something told me you'd like that part.
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The other main element is that you can virtually divide WW2 AA guns into two main types. On one side, you have the AA artillery (like the famous german 88); on the other side, you have the AA autocannons (like the famous Swedish 40). The AA artillery is very scarcely effective and very costly, but allows you to hit aircrafts at whatever altitude they may be performing their bombing (of course, it may happen that very high altitute bombers may be not reachable by relatively weak AA artillery, but that is likely because that was not anticipated (technological gap)). The AA autocannons are much more cost-effective, but only work against aircrafts that are flying relatively low.
This distinction is not as marked anymore, as now they are both auto, though this may be a WW2 technology, and, of course, there are examples in between, like:
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNIT_65mm-64_m1939.phpThis is also important since AA artillery is actually a very good type of artillery, especially for the anti-armour role. So you can see AA artillery as a special kind of anti-tank gun that can also shoot at aircrafts (as it is very easy to adapt an AA artillery to the anti-tank function (you need different ammunition, of course), so I believe it can be approximated as granted, and definitely so if the game is not even representing ammunition consumption). This is something that the boardgames, apparently, never either understood or care to represent, despite the fact that the usage of the German 88 against Allied armours is quite famous. I guess it is an improvement that, starting from v5, AA are also part of land only battles, but they should have more than 0 defence (if not a special attack against armours).
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If I were making a WW2 game in which there is AA artillery and TripleA would support giving more than one AA ability to each unit (or I would be coding it), I would make AA artillery able to AA attack both air units and armours, but as separate attacks (I know this is possible, but currently this would mean either random or giving the opponent the ability to choose if the target is an armour or a plane, that would make little sense). Xeno's World At War has a way of representing this, that it is surely better than Axis & Allies, but I'm not saying that is exactly what I would do.
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I think to get this to work the way I think it should, which would be to require the AA Gun to be present for SBR but to still have individualised fire per facility and also only shoot at bombers, not escorts or interceptors, that would require code changes to the engine. This is not about to happen with the generally available version being stuck at 1.9-13066 for a very long time. I would probably also keep the limits of 3 shots per AA Gun and 1 shot per enemy plane.
Of course, it could work fine in v5 where there is only one possible facility if there was a desire to do so. I guess not many people care that much for that map though.
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@simon33 said in Perfect AA system:
Of course, it could work fine in v5 where there is only one possible facility if there was a desire to do so. I guess not many people care that much for that map though.
I can only speak for the lobby, and I can say I doubt there is more than 1 game of that per month. Does anyone know if the official Axis&Allies Online is doing good? I really wonder about that, because around here seems like nobody likes v5 (I don't either).
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I don't really understand why revised is so much more popular than v5. The former is really just an inferior version of the latter as far as I can see. Directed tech maybe?
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@Cernel said in Perfect AA system:
I can only speak for the lobby, and I can say I doubt there is more than 1 game of that per month. Does anyone know if the official Axis&Allies Online is doing good? I really wonder about that, because around here seems like nobody likes v5 (I don't either).
It looks like it is doing good at a targeted group of A&A players missing GTO and (most of them) not even being aware of the existence of TripleA or related forums. However it is not a 1:1 implementation of the boardgame but has some specific alterations that makes it more a variant of 1942.2 instead of the original.
You wouldn't believe it, but for many players AA1942 Online is the "long awaited solution to finally digitally play Axis&Allies on the PC (online or offline)".
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@Panther Maybe it is a lot self fueling. Maybe most people play Revised (OOB) because that is the only basic simple map that it is played a lot, which means you can join the lobby any time and find someone to play with, wasting very little time searching for. As now, if you would want to play v5, I guess you would most likely fail to find anyone to play with even if waiting for 1 hour.
Could be that if we would remove all basic "WWII" games except only v5, folks would move on playing that, instead, if faced with the choice of either that or nothing "official".
I guess so, if it is true that the ex GTO have moved playing 1942 2nd, not having the Revised option anymore, while here in TripleA they stick to Revised, instead, looks like.
p.s.: I think 1942 2nd Edition should be called 1942.1, rather, since first edition would be 1942.0, then.
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I think it's very daft that it's officially called 2nd Edition. What's the first edition? Classic, which was also second edition (with something slightly different as a first edition). Shouldn't it be called fifth or (preferably) sixth edition?
What is GTO?
And you're probably right.
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@simon33 GTO is the acronym of those that detained the right to the official name before the current Online.
What makes 1942 the "second" is that Spring 1942 was the first edition ever that started in the Spring of 1942, as all the preceding editions used to start in the Summer of 1942 (if @Panther confirms).
The first edition of Spring 1942 is called "v4", here. Practically:
first edition: absent
second edition: Classic
third edition: Classic 3rd Edition
fourth edition: Revised
fifth edition: v4 (Spring 1942 First Edition)
sixth edition: v5 (1942 Second Edition)You can see there is not LHTR, as that never was a new edition (it was considered updating the OOB ruleset to LHTR, but that was never actually done), but always remained a variant of Revised, and also there is not v3, as that is a parallel edition, not something in between of Revised and v4 (as TripleA incorrectly lists it), as well as there is no v6, as that is a parallel edition, not the successor of v5 (as TripleA incorrectly lists it).
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Is there any actual distinction in the start date?
