About screenshots

[vveedd]

A few questions and suggestions:
Q: Can't see any tactical or strategic bombers. Only fighter. Any special reason?
S: Maybe you should reconsider to put more minor cities on the map - just for supply purposes.
Q&S: Air unit will be enable to land on any terrain? If yes, maybe you should reconsider this rule. It is unrealistic that it can land on mountains or forest.

[firepowerjohan]

A few questions and suggestions:
Q: Can't see any tactical or strategic bombers. Only fighter. Any special reason?
S: Maybe you should reconsider to put more minor cities on the map - just for supply purposes.
Q&S: Air unit will be enable to land on any terrain? If yes, maybe you should reconsider this rule. It is unrealistic that it can land on mountains or forest.

1) In the screenshot http://www.slitherine.com/commander/ima ... 9_06_3.jpg there is a Axis Tactical Bomber, but don't you worry, they will all be there. We have not finished all the arts for units just yet.

2) Yes, the map is currenly restrictive as to not having too many cities. You are correct, it affect the balance because with more cities there can be more pockets of units that are in some supply. We have not made the final map data yet so this will also change somewhat.

3) It wont matter because in CEAW we define 4 types of battles.
- Unit vs Resource
- Air Duel
- Naval Battle
- Other

So, even if an air unit (in mountain) is being directly attacked by another air unit it will fight in the air (which is realistic) and not gain any bonus from mountain or other terrain.

[andyfromva]

How about some more screenshots? What I've seen so far looks great.

[vveedd]

3) It wont matter because in CEAW we define 4 types of battles.
- Unit vs Resource
- Air Duel
- Naval Battle
- Other

So, even if an air unit (in mountain) is being directly attacked by another air unit it will fight in the air (which is realistic) and not gain any bonus from mountain or other terrain.

I disagree here. It is not about air fight, it is about range and air fields from which these air units are going to air fight. It is not realistic that you can have air fields in forest or mountain hexes. I have seen the best example in SC2 game when Axis has attacked Greece from Yugoslavia and Bulgaria (North Africa was under British control). Athens city suffered heavy damage from air because air units could land on massive and large mountains between these countries. In same case, if you apply no landing on mountain and forest rule, Athens city will be out of range of these Axis air units.
To my opinion this rule will give more realistic management of air units and will request much more strategy thinking from players which will be good thing for game.

[SMK-at-work]

I disagree with most of your disagreement!

Airfields for most air units need be nothing more than large paddocks, of which there is plenty of room for many in a "hex" even of nominally mountain ot forrest terrain. I'm not sure what the ground scale is for this game, but I suspect it is many 10's of kilometers per hex - many thousands of sq km.

Until the advent of large 4-engines bombers at least, paddocks are adequate - although it does help if they are levelled and packed. So it is only facitiltes for large a/c that should be prohibited from difficult terrain - and that only mountains - if necessary forrests can be levelled, but not usually mountains! Construction of major airfields in forrests shoudl be a bit mor expensive in time tho.

So IMO there shold be a few fixed airfields representing major pre-war faciltiies. Smaller airfields should be able to be established anywhere (erxcept on water!!), and nations with significant airfield construction units should be able to build major ones in a suitable time frame.

[vveedd]

I disagree with most of your disagreement!

Airfields for most air units need be nothing more than large paddocks, of which there is plenty of room for many in a "hex" even of nominally mountain ot forrest terrain. I'm not sure what the ground scale is for this game, but I suspect it is many 10's of kilometers per hex - many thousands of sq km.

Until the advent of large 4-engines bombers at least, paddocks are adequate - although it does help if they are levelled and packed. So it is only facitiltes for large a/c that should be prohibited from difficult terrain - and that only mountains - if necessary forrests can be levelled, but not usually mountains! Construction of major airfields in forrests shoudl be a bit mor expensive in time tho.

So IMO there shold be a few fixed airfields representing major pre-war faciltiies. Smaller airfields should be able to be established anywhere (erxcept on water!!), and nations with significant airfield construction units should be able to build major ones in a suitable time frame.

Ok, this is your right and I again disagree with your disagreements. You forget one thing - as one hex represents xy square miles one unit represents xy units. So one padlock should be VERY LARGE and this is impossible to create on mountain (in WWII time especially) and it will take a long time to create it in forest.
ALSO, map graphic in not interactive and you can??™t change terrain on map so if you assume that one forest hex is cleared for air unit after you move it and put land unit in it this hex, land unit shouldn??™t get forest defense bonus which will not be the case.
ALSO, forest and mountain hexes on the map represent only very large and massive mountains and forests in Europe.
ALSO, we are talking about forest and mountain hexes; we forgot swamp hexes in Russia?

I agree with you that should be airfields in game. Airfields were very important in WWII so this will add more tactical and strategic options to game.

[IainMcNeil]

Currently there are no airfields so you can land anywhere (assuming you control the ground). I'm not sure how we would do them either - suggestions?

How would you build them, what should they cost etc.

[vveedd]

Currently there are no airfields so you can land anywhere (assuming you control the ground). I'm not sure how we would do them either - suggestions?

How would you build them, what should they cost etc.

I have had one idea when I suggested more minor cities on map - Air units can land only in hexes where city is (actually, this is rule from Third Reich game) but then you should have stacking...
Haven't smarter idea but landing air units everywhere is too gamey for my opinion and that's why I suggested this above. You should have, at least, some landing restrictions.

[SMK-at-work]

vvedd - most air units are probably "only" a few hundred aircraft - the LW on whole of the Eastern Front never amounted ot much more than 2000 a/c, usually much smaller, split between 3-4 Luftflottes, and those sometimes operating in a couple of different areas.

Have a look at video of a WW2 airfield some time - it's easy to get 100+ a/c on something that these days is just big strip for agricultural aircraft doing crop dusting...although you do need more parking area!

So 3 or 4 "paddocks" could accomodate a number of aircraft that could conceivably be an air unit IMO. Now this is at the lower end of the scale of course, but IMO it shows what can be done.

As for building airfields - I am comfortable with small/tactical air units being able to operate from anywhere, just not large strategic bombers and their escorts. These need decently large facilities - if only to handle the amount of fuel they use!!

I'd limit them to cities, and perhaps clear hexes adjacent to cities. Substantial airfields in other places maybe could be treated as a terrain type? Building them should just be a mater of resources and time - I imagine there's info out there about how long it took to build the B29 bases on various Pacific Islands.

If this is too complicated to code then I'd start with just allowing them to be based in cities (or adjacent to major cities), and perhaps adjust the number of cities on the map as suggested above.

[IainMcNeil]

No idea if its possible but would this be the ideal situation.

* Fighters & Tac air support can fly from any non mountainous terrain
* Bombers can only fly from key locations (cities etc).

[vveedd]

No idea if its possible but would this be the ideal situation.

* Fighters & Tac air support can fly from any non mountainous terrain
* Bombers can only fly from key locations (cities etc).

Yes, this will be acceptable to my opinion.

[joe98]

* Fighters & Tac air support can fly from any non mountainous terrain
* Bombers can only fly from key locations (cities etc).

The hex would need to have been friendly for "x" turns before aircraft can base there.

Given that an air unit flys a mission, it should return to the same base at the end of the mission.

To change from one base to another ought to take a full turn (no missions allowed)

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[SMK-at-work]

Works for me.

I dont' see any great reason for a hex to be friendly for any period of time - a week would be more than enough to clean up any damage IMO. Airfields ahve always been very difficult to put out of action, even deliberately by the owners!

[joe98]

The hex would certainly need to begin the turn as a friendly hex.


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[uxbridge]

No idea if its possible but would this be the ideal situation.

* Fighters & Tac air support can fly from any non mountainous terrain
* Bombers can only fly from key locations (cities etc).

This seems much better than not having restrictions at all, but limiting to certain, as you call them, "key locations", could sometimes create strange situations. Wouldn't it be possible to allow strategic air units to operate from any non mountain/forest/marsh-hex, but that the unit had to construct the airfield (establish it's base structure) before operations begin? This could be done, as an example, by the air unit first transfering on game turn 1. Then on game turn 2 it has to create a base. This could be done using the before mentioned "upgrade interphase", where the player simply clicks the unit the same way he would when upgrading. On the third game turn the unit - if all other criteria (such as supply, etcetera) is fullfilled - is considered operational and can begin bombing missions. If it again moves, it must start the entire process anew.

I think that the most beneficial effect of such a system would be that the player is forced to pre-plan some of his strategies, preventing him from flying around the map whenever the thought of bombing something chances into his head. It would also lead to a prohibition of operating heavy air units from locations where it would not be practical to do so (again, maybe as an effect of supply difficulties) without having to create complicated sub-systems.

[joe98]

The answer:

How long does it take to make a paddock into a fighter base together with it's logistics? One week?

And how long is a turn? 3 months??


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[firepowerjohan]

The answer:

How long does it take to make a paddock into a fighter base together with it's logistics? One week?

And how long is a turn? 3 months??


=

That is a good point. Axis and Allies have 18 moves each per year, meaning every full turn is 20 days. Creating air bases will then be abstracted and air units moving should be considered to be "ready for mission" the turn after.

Some ppl are concerned about air being too fleixble and powerful and I think you are prejudging the game based from other games you played.

Air is not so flexible as some might think. There are some heavy restrictions to that in CEAW.

1) Air units (like ground units) need to be loaded on transports (which take a long long time) when travelling between far away continents (for instance Italy->Africa)
2) air can like other ground units use railroads but still there is limit to how long you can move by rail in one turn (so u cannot move from Moscow to Paris in one turn!) and also railroad movement largely reduces efficiency so you cannot call air in like one minute men across the grand map and win instantly.
3) Air units being attack by air capable units (air or carrier) will fight in AIR without terrain bonuses meaning you cannot protect your air from enemy air by plaving them in mountain for instance.



Attacking Greece with 4-5 air in CEAW means you will be short of air in Egypt or Across English channel and that is in itself penalty enough. CEAW will not allow Axis to sweep across and dominate the whole map in 1940-1941. If Axis focus everything on Greece then yes they will get Greece but will suffer elsewhere and frankly Greece is worth alot less than Scandinavia, Spain or the indirect value by taking Egypt and grabbing some Iraq Oil would mean.

[SMK-at-work]

I'd disagree with the felxibility of air units at this stage of history.

you can pre-position the ground components, and literally "fly in" the air components at a moment's notice. You do not need heavy maintenance at a base to operate from - you just need fuel (for planes and people) and ammunition. Unserviceable a/c can be pushed to one side - and often were.

In the BoB RAF squadrons only had to fly their aircraft around British bases to relocate - ground units were seperate units and did not have to shift. After D-Day the same happened - the allies had ground units in France preparing the strips and the sqyuadrons literally just flew their aircraft in and started operating.

the only limit to this is how far the aircraft & pilots can fly with the fuel & refueling available. There's no reason at all why a unit shouldnt' be able to rebase from Moscow to Nth Africa and start ops immediately IMO. From Italy to Nth Africa is trivial.........as long as you have put your ground units there first. But even if you havent' a few Ju-52's full of technicians and spares will enable ops in very short order - certainly they won't be able to keep full serviceability going, but that's somethgni else again.

The main problem is the runway surfaces - they have to be solid enough to take the weight of the a/c concerned - hence US CB battalians with their pierced-steel-planking in the Pacific for bomber bases. Consider Henderson Field - the US captured it in August, before it started ops, but the Japs only started building it in mid-July, with about 2500 men and it was very nearly ready - so a month for a major airfield built from nothing. And it was a big airfield - intended to operate patrol bombers over long ranges.

[uxbridge]

Johan, can you just give us some more hints about air unit transfer. You said "rail", as meaning general transport capacity, not actual trains I hope . But the unit must have a way of re-basing by itself, hasn't it? Can it fly it's operational range, or, preferable, double that, and has to go on "rail" only when the distance traversed exceed the units range? Or is it impossible to re-base without using up rail capacity?

Anyway, as your answer suggests that moving air units is limited by a number of prohibitive factors already, maybe no additional sub-system is necessary.

I think that it would be enough, then, to limit strategic air assets to clear hexes. Tying them to cities isn't necessary. The latter can also be very dangerous, considering the inability to stack and the fact that rail transport was also linked to cities. If such a sceme should be considered, be very mindful about where those cities and other key features are located. Otherwise we might have situations where air units can't operate from places it would be perfectly possible to fly from, or from where they flew historically, or there might be problem tranfering land units to places occupied by a strategic air unit.

[firepowerjohan]

Johan, can you just give us some more hints about air unit transfer. You said "rail", as meaning general transport capacity, not actual trains I hope . But the unit must have a way of re-basing by itself, hasn't it? Can it fly it's operational range, or, preferable, double that, and has to go on "rail" only when the distance traversed exceed the units range? Or is it impossible to re-base without using up rail capacity?

Anyway, as your answer suggests that moving air units is limited by a number of prohibitive factors already, maybe no additional sub-system is necessary.

I think that it would be enough, then, to limit strategic air assets to clear hexes. Tying them to cities isn't necessary. The latter can also be very dangerous, considering the inability to stack and the fact that rail transport was also linked to cities. If such a sceme should be considered, be very mindful about where those cities and other key features are located. Otherwise we might have situations where air units can't operate from places it would be perfectly possible to fly from, or from where they flew historically, or there might be problem tranfering land units to places occupied by a strategic air unit.

Using the railroad system is done with a special railroad button pushed so when moving normally you do not use rail movement.