Flames and Steel (official thread)

malmessi

@KurtGodel7
Ok, I need to know more about rules to avoid silly questions but...
Bombers of each type... they can only bombard or can also partecipate to battles involving land(naval units ?
Because when you say about your scenario, Russia is forced to purchase fighter thet will be used just to defend against Sbr, while (maybe, I am asking) german bombers can play battles.

Also, if Ger has a lot of bmb, then Russia purchase fighter, and then Hitler move his bompers to Uk leaving Stalin with a lot of useless and expansive fighter (Russia will never be so rich to buy bombers so fighter will be useless)
germany can force 2 different powers to spend on fighters investing less money (I dunno teh costs but 6 bombers will cost less that 6+6 fighters I suppose)

malmessi

@KurtGodel7 said:

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.

Still, sorry if I say something wrong, need more infos but...
If I know that Us fighters can dogfight VS my japanese attacking planes so... I will try to attack Us fleet with naval units only, probably a lot of subs.
I do not think india and Chine will purchase a lot of bombers so fighter won't be a valid purchase until usa has a strong fleet and move it across the pacific ocean so not before round ? 6/7 maybe ? Ite depends on map and other factors that I still ignore

KurtGodel7

@malmessi said:

@KurtGodel7
Ok, I need to know more about rules to avoid silly questions but...
Bombers of each type... they can only bombard or can also partecipate to battles involving land(naval units ?
Because when you say about your scenario, Russia is forced to purchase fighter thet will be used just to defend against Sbr, while (maybe, I am asking) german bombers can play battles.

Also, if Ger has a lot of bmb, then Russia purchase fighter, and then Hitler move his bompers to Uk leaving Stalin with a lot of useless and expansive fighter (Russia will never be so rich to buy bombers so fighter will be useless)
germany can force 2 different powers to spend on fighters investing less money (I dunno teh costs but 6 bombers will cost less that 6+6 fighters I suppose)

Bomber attacks fall into one of three categories:

Attacks against armies
Attacks against ships
Strategic bombing raids

There are different types of bombers depending on the job you need done. Dive bombers are your best bet for attacking armies, and can also be used to attack surface ships. Torpedo bombers are great at attacking surface ships, and can also be used to attack land units or subs. Strategic bombers are at their best when strategically bombing, but can also be used to attack land armies. Medium bombers can be used against armies, surface ships, subs, or for relatively weak strategic bombing raids.

Consider the air war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Neither nation is attempting to strategically bomb the other. Instead, each one wants to use dive bombers to strafe the other's armies. Unlike traditional Axis and Allies maps, armies don't get to fire back when being strafed. To the extent one side is able to assert control over the sky, it can use that control to strafe the armies of the other.

To take the example you gave, suppose the Soviet Union builds a bunch of fighters to prevent Germany from having control over the eastern front. The Luftwaffe then exits the eastern front and goes elsewhere. This makes the Soviet Union happy for two reasons. 1) His armies are no longer being strafed by German dive bombers. 2) Now the Soviet Union can build dive bombers of its own to strafe German armies. For each dive bomber the Soviet Union builds, Germany will lose 1 infantry per turn on its eastern front. In my example game the U.S.S.R. had an income of 171 PUs and 22 MPs at the end of round 3. There's plenty of money in that for the Soviets to build some dive bombers.

Think of the air war as being fought separately from everything else. Building air superiority aircraft is a big part of winning the air war. To the extent you're able to gain air superiority, you can use it to either a) inflict punishment, or b) defend yourself from the punishment someone else would inflict. The punishment being inflicted includes strafing armies, strafing surface ships or subs, as well as strategic bombing raids. Your bomber aircraft will always be able to inflict punishment of some sort, as long as they're in range.

Vendetta

That was helpful to see. Your new rules on air combat systems are particularly interesting.

The conscript spam problem is one you might have several ways to address. Fundamentally, you have two routes to look into: making it easier to kill them, or throttling the production pipeline.

The way to make them more killable would be giving some of the higher value units multiple attack rolls so they can potentially kill two or three of them at a time. However, that’s going to have severe ripple effects on the balance of the entire combat system, so it’s probably the least attractive option.

You could raise the MP price by 1, or lower the MP budget for the presently overpowered nations. Raising the MP cost may of course make the unit no longer economical to produce, and nerfing Soviet and Chinese MP too much may handicap them from building enough of their normal units if those are also using MP.

Putting a flat population cap on them is the simplest band-aid fix that won’t fundamentally alter the balance of the game. I included a Militia unit based on the House Rules one in my draft of a total overhaul of the A&A research and tech system, which I’ll be posting a thread about sooner or later. It has more or less the same combat profile as your Conscript (A0/D1/M1) but can’t get artillery support, and a 2 PU cost. I decided to impose a flat production cap of 12 on the map at a time per nation to control spammage. The use case for them in my meta is emergency defense - the enemy is sitting one territory away from your major factory and you want to put the maximum amount of cannon fodder there at the lowest possible price - that and I tied them in to the mechanics for Chinese and Soviet partisan spawns. The difference here is that I explicitly wanted to make sure my Militia would never became a mainstay unit that would displace Infantry from its role as the backbone of your army - but you actually want your Conscripts to do that for your select group of countries. The main downside of flat population caps is that they feel very artificial and arbitrary for the players, like running into an invisible wall.

One more solution that might work for you is separating conscripts from standard Factory production infrastructure to keep a tighter control on the number players can place per turn. Consider this: Conscripts are built out of a separate building altogether (call it a Recruiting Center, Training Ground, Army Base, or whatever else suits your fancy).

Recruiting Centers are cheap (maybe 4-6 PUs) and each one allows 3-5 Conscript placements. The Soviets, Chinese, and Italians would start with a few on the map, allowing some immediate Conscript placements, but not enough to just dump their entire surplus MP budget into Conscript buys every turn. They can do that, but they’ll have a bunch stuck in the queue because they don’t have enough spawn points to place them all. They can solve that problem, however, once they buy some additional Recruiting Centers - but that requires a PU investment, so they need to divert some of their budget from normal units in order to achieve their maximum potential on conscript spawns.

It also gives enemy players some options for counterplay against Conscript spamming - they can try to bomb or overrun your Recruiting Centers to limit the spawns.

That option seems like the most promising one to me, but you’ll have to do some experimenting with how much the Recruiting Centers should cost / how many conscripts can spawn at each to figure out what would play best.

RogerCooper

@Vendetta If you want to prevent unit spamming, TripleA has a number of straightforward solutions.

You can set a maximum number of units built
You can set a stacking limit
You can have units that launch AA-style attacks against every unit

KurtGodel7

@Vendetta said:

That was helpful to see. Your new rules on air combat systems are particularly interesting.

The conscript spam problem is one you might have several ways to address. Fundamentally, you have two routes to look into: making it easier to kill them, or throttling the production pipeline.

The way to make them more killable would be giving some of the higher value units multiple attack rolls so they can potentially kill two or three of them at a time. However, that’s going to have severe ripple effects on the balance of the entire combat system, so it’s probably the least attractive option.

You could raise the MP price by 1, or lower the MP budget for the presently overpowered nations. Raising the MP cost may of course make the unit no longer economical to produce, and nerfing Soviet and Chinese MP too much may handicap them from building enough of their normal units if those are also using MP.

Putting a flat population cap on them is the simplest band-aid fix that won’t fundamentally alter the balance of the game. I included a Militia unit based on the House Rules one in my draft of a total overhaul of the A&A research and tech system, which I’ll be posting a thread about sooner or later. It has more or less the same combat profile as your Conscript (A0/D1/M1) but can’t get artillery support, and a 2 PU cost. I decided to impose a flat production cap of 12 on the map at a time per nation to control spammage. The use case for them in my meta is emergency defense - the enemy is sitting one territory away from your major factory and you want to put the maximum amount of cannon fodder there at the lowest possible price - that and I tied them in to the mechanics for Chinese and Soviet partisan spawns. The difference here is that I explicitly wanted to make sure my Militia would never became a mainstay unit that would displace Infantry from its role as the backbone of your army - but you actually want your Conscripts to do that for your select group of countries. The main downside of flat population caps is that they feel very artificial and arbitrary for the players, like running into an invisible wall.

One more solution that might work for you is separating conscripts from standard Factory production infrastructure to keep a tighter control on the number players can place per turn. Consider this: Conscripts are built out of a separate building altogether (call it a Recruiting Center, Training Ground, Army Base, or whatever else suits your fancy).

Recruiting Centers are cheap (maybe 4-6 PUs) and each one allows 3-5 Conscript placements. The Soviets, Chinese, and Italians would start with a few on the map, allowing some immediate Conscript placements, but not enough to just dump their entire surplus MP budget into Conscript buys every turn. They can do that, but they’ll have a bunch stuck in the queue because they don’t have enough spawn points to place them all. They can solve that problem, however, once they buy some additional Recruiting Centers - but that requires a PU investment, so they need to divert some of their budget from normal units in order to achieve their maximum potential on conscript spawns.

It also gives enemy players some options for counterplay against Conscript spamming - they can try to bomb or overrun your Recruiting Centers to limit the spawns.

That option seems like the most promising one to me, but you’ll have to do some experimenting with how much the Recruiting Centers should cost / how many conscripts can spawn at each to figure out what would play best.

An important facet of this game is its tech system. There are 55 techs the Soviet Union can research, 52 for Japan, 65 for Germany. A number of those techs require multiple stars to research. I will grant that not every nation needs every tech. The Soviets, for example, do not need fleet carrier tech.

Even so, my goal is for the outcome of the game to be undecided on round 20. This will give the tech system time to unfold. If someone concedes on round 7, that means I have failed. The effect of tech is small for the early game and grows over time.

In my test game, Japan was slowly conquering China. That was exactly what I'd wanted. The Axis needs to expand to counteract the Allies' advantage in early game income. But I didn't want the expansion to be too rapid.

The way I've conceived things, some territories produce manpower points--but only for their original owners. As Japan took Chinese territory, China's MP income was slowly reduced. This meant Japan's invasion was starting to gain momentum. I want the Axis to conquer enough to keep it in the game economically, but not so much that it delivers a quick knockout punch.

The European theater of my test game was a different story. Despite the Soviet Union's ability to spam massive amounts of conscripts, Germany was able to stack Smolensk on G4. Smolensk is two spaces away from Moscow. Barbarossa was a little too strong. What was required there was a little bit of a nerf of Germany's starting units. As the Soviets lost territory to the Germans, their manpower points declined. By round 3 their MP income had been reduced to 22, or 22 conscripts per turn.

I'm perfectly happy with the Soviet Union or China spamming large armies of conscripts. There is nothing at all wrong with that. They had large armies in the real war, they may as well have large armies in this game. The tricky part is balancing the game, such that the game lasts a long time before the outcome is decided.

Infantry-type units
Conscript. Cost: 0 PUs, 1 MP. Move 1, attack 0, defend 1.
Infantry. Cost: 1 PU, 1 MP. Move 1, attack 1, defend 2.
Sturmtruppen. Cost: 3 PUs, 1 MP. Move 1, attack 2, defend 3.
Mobile infantry. Cost: 3 PUs, 1 MP. Move 2, attack 1, defend 2.
Mechanized infantry. Cost: 5 PUs, 1 MP. Move 3, attack 2, defend 2.

Conscripts can only be built by the Soviet Union, China, and Italy. All nations except China can build infantry. Sturmtruppen are Germany only. Mechanized infantry can be built only after researching the appropriate tech. Tech can also be used to upgrade your mobile infantry to movement 3 and defense 3. The "assault rifle" tech for Germany adds +1 to the attack and defense of its Sturmtruppen. All infantry-type units can receive support on both offense and defense.

The nation with the most MPs is the Soviet Union. But even the USSR, with its massive MP income, ran out of MPs before it ran out of a need for cannon fodder. That's why there's the anti-tank gun, available for all nations to purchase. Cost: 3 PUs. Movement 1, attack 1, defense 1, receives support on defense only. Anti-tank guns can receive support on attack also, if you research "unrelenting attack" tech.

Let's say the Soviet Union is on defense. It has lots of conscripts as cannon fodder. It has some anti-tank guns to provide additional cannon fodder. But then it needs something to "crown the stack" as it were. Something with really good defensive firepower. That's why there's the heavy gun. Cost: 7 PUs. Attack 2, defend 4. Provides support on defense only. Its defense value can be upgraded to 5 with rail guns tech. Its cost can be reduced by 1 with working women tech.

Another good defensive unit is the trench. Cost: 3 PUs, movement 0, defends on a 0, takes 2 hits to kill. Trenches can be placed on any territory you owned at the start of your turn. They do not count against factory placement limits. A maximum of two trenches per territory per turn can be placed. Their defense value can be upgraded to 1 with bunkers tech.

Let's say I'm the Soviet player and I'm defending Moscow. I'd want lots of trenches. Lots of conscripts and anti-tank guns to soak up hits. Heavy guns, both for the defensive firepower they offer in and of themselves, and also because they provide support on defense. If I have 20 heavy guns, that means 20 of my conscripts or anti-tank guns are getting +1 to their combat rolls on defense. If I need to bring in units from a distant factory, and if I need to get them to Moscow quickly, I'm bringing tanks. A tank costs 8 PUs, attacks and defends on a 3, has two hitpoints, and a movement of 2. If that movement of 2 is a must-have, tanks give you good hitpoints for the money, and give you good firepower on both offense and defense. Soviet tanks can experience a 1 PU cost decrease with the "simplify the T-34" tech. British tanks can gain +1 to offense and defense by researching the "Comet" tank tech.

Vendetta

@KurtGodel7 Fascinating. My own tech system overhaul plays closer to vanilla but has 45 universal techs and 48 national exclusives (4 each for ANZAC/China/France and 6 each for Germany/Italy/Japan/UK/US/USSR). It would be interesting to compare notes on that once I've finished getting it all written up.

malmessi

@KurtGodel7 said:

To take the example you gave, suppose the Soviet Union builds a bunch of fighters to prevent Germany from having control over the eastern front. The Luftwaffe then exits the eastern front and goes elsewhere. This makes the Soviet Union happy for two reasons. 1) His armies are no longer being strafed by German dive bombers. 2) Now the Soviet Union can build dive bombers of its own to strafe German armies

Ok it is as I said, Russia need to pay a lot for fighters just to get point 1) but this was the same in normal A&A games with one difference, russian fig can be also used to attack and take back precious territories
About point 2) it was predicted by me but I have never seen Rus purchasing bombers or battleships or other expansive units in any game over teh last 10 years playing TripleA. It all depends on the cost for those dive bombers; if a bomber costs like 4 inf it will allow to kill 4 german inf in the incoming 4 turns but on the otjher side it will be a -4 inf for Stalin too...
I am sure you balanced your game very well, my posts are just opinions of a player who did not crrated the game, did not even read complete rules, just trying to help in a construcitve way

KurtGodel7

@Vendetta said:

@KurtGodel7 Fascinating. My own tech system overhaul plays closer to vanilla but has 45 universal techs and 48 national exclusives (4 each for ANZAC/China/France and 6 each for Germany/Italy/Japan/UK/US/USSR). It would be interesting to compare notes on that once I've finished getting it all written up.

Yeah that sounds good. I'm curious to see the tech system you've come up with.

Speaking of tech systems, I just played a few rounds of another example game. I'm kind of learning good openings as I go along. I now believe that a good German opening involves taking Leningrad on G2. I think that Japan should start neutral farming on round 1, with the intention of building factories in southeast Asia. Japan does not go to war against the UK, USA, or USSR until round 3. But in rounds 1 and 2 it can still invade China and can still neutral farm. It was sometimes necessary for Japan to ship units out of China to achieve its neutral farming goals for southeast Asia.

While things for Japan went as they should, the situation with Germany was more discouraging. On round 2, Britain built land units and a transport for its factories in India and Africa. A couple trenches for Singapore. Other than that, it put almost all its money into strategic bombers.

The Soviet Union starts the game with nerfed fighters. Soviet fighters have a dogfight value of 2, as opposed to 3 for everyone else. To get rid of the nerf the Soviets need to research radios tech. That's a 2 star research requirement. The Soviet Union got a little lucky with its tech rolls, getting the radios tech in its round 2 research phase. This meant that Soviet fighters would no longer be nerfed in dogfights, starting in round 3. The USSR then used the majority of its round 2 cash to buy fighters. It also built max defense for Leningrad, with 7 heavy guns and 2 trenches. (The Leningrad part could have been avoided with a better German opening.)

On round 3 the air battles were devastating for Germany. Its fighter defense over the "bomb Germany" theater was largely wiped out by British strategic bombers. It only took out one British bomber in exchange. In the air battle over the Eastern Front, the Germans lost considerably more air than the Soviets. The remaining German dive bombers did some damage to Soviet targets, but not quite enough for Germany to take Leningrad. British strategic bombers did 40 PUs of damage to Germany.

My planned solution to this (once my weekly usage limit resets).

Nerf the strategic bomber. This means reducing its dogfight value to 1 and its strategic bombing value to 3. I might also reduce its hitpoints to 2. I also plan to nerf the strategic bombing value of the medium bomber to 1. Someone wants an un-nerfed version of these units? Great. The un-nerfed version will be made available through research in the "strategic bombers" tech category. This means that the Allied strategic bombing campaign will be stronger late game than early game. Which is historically accurate.
Give Germany a few more fighters. This should make it a little tougher for the Soviets to take control over that air front.
Require one additional star of research for the radios tech for the Soviets. Granted, they did unusually well on their tech rolls, if their goal was to get that particular tech. Even so, I think they should need 3 stars to be rid of the Soviet fighter nerf instead of 2.
Maybe give Germany a few extra infantry for Barbarossa.

The Soviets appear to be economically strongest for their round 2 purchase phase. Three reasons for that. 1) I didn't give them full starting cash for round 1. 2) The Germans push east for the first few rounds, reducing Soviet income. 3) The Soviets start off with an insane number of MPs. This means they don't have to buy anti-tank guns for the first two rounds, because the conscripts they buy instead give them plenty of cannon fodder. The Soviets do not need to purchase anti-tank guns as cannon fodder until round 3. If the Soviets are able to use their round 2 economic strength to take control of the sky on round 3, that would blunt Barbarossa too early.

But, I don't want the initial German push to result in a quick collapse of Moscow, because that would be too unbalanced in the other direction. The fall of Moscow causes all Soviet cash to be handed over to the Axis nation which conquered it. But that is a one-time deal only. After that, the Soviet player is able to collect income without regard for whether he does or does not own Moscow. Also, cash is handed over for the first Moscow conquest only. If the Axis takes Moscow additional times, it is treated as a normal territory. On turns when the Soviet Union doesn't own Moscow, it receives the benefit of only one research center instead of its usual two.

Non-Soviet Allied units are not allowed onto Soviet soil. Non-Chinese Allied units are not allowed onto Chinese-owned soil. In my example games, China has been able to put up a good fight on its own, without the help of other Allies.

KurtGodel7

@malmessi said:

Ok it is as I said, Russia need to pay a lot for fighters just to get point 1) but this was the same in normal A&A games with one difference, russian fig can be also used to attack and take back precious territories
About point 2) it was predicted by me but I have never seen Rus purchasing bombers or battleships or other expansive units in any game over teh last 10 years playing TripleA. It all depends on the cost for those dive bombers; if a bomber costs like 4 inf it will allow to kill 4 german inf in the incoming 4 turns but on the otjher side it will be a -4 inf for Stalin too...
I am sure you balanced your game very well, my posts are just opinions of a player who did not crrated the game, did not even read complete rules, just trying to help in a construcitve way

Normal Soviet behavior varies depending on the map. If you're playing Revised, the Soviets would maybe buy fighters for back-and-forth battles. But probably no bombers, and definitely no navy of any kind! If you're playing New World Order (a player-created map of the European theater), it would be somewhat normal for the Soviets to buy bombers for back-and-forth battles, or to help threaten the German Baltic fleet.

But the rules set I've created for this map is completely different than what anyone is used to. Different logic is going to apply. Fighters for my map serve a role which does not exist for Larry Harris maps. The one task of fighters is to shoot down enemy air. This, they do well. If you're building air units for a Larry Harris map, you're probably building them either to take out land targets (back and forth battles) or for naval battles. Or maybe strategic bombing raids.

For my map, if you're looking for a plane that's good at taking out land units, you want a dive bomber. For naval battles, a torpedo bomber. For strategic bombing raids, a strategic bomber. Fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers each cost 10 PUs. Strategic bombers cost 18 PUs. If you're building a fighter, dive bomber, or torpedo bomber, that's essentially costing you 3.3 anti-tank guns (cost of 3, attack and defend on a 1).

In a Larry Harris map, air units cannot strafe land units. Instead, the air units fire, then the land units fire. This is not strafing. It is normal combat. In my rules set, air units are able to strafe. The dive bombers fire at the land units, the land units do not fire back at the dive bombers. The way to prevent your units from being strafed is to build fighters and assert control over the skies.

"I am sure you balanced your game very well." I like your optimism on this subject! I wish I shared it.

In my first test game things were unbalanced in favor of the Allies. I made balance corrections. Those corrections were apparently too heavy-handed, as things became unbalanced in favor of the Axis. In particular, Barbarossa was too strong. I then made pro-Allied balance corrections, and in my most recent test game things were unbalanced in favor of the Allies. I'm sure I'll get this right eventually.

Vendetta

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 guns 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. 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.