Oil Costs and Air Interception

ncali · Post by **ncali** » Mon Jul 25, 2011 5:07 pm

I'm sure this has been the same since the game was released, but I just now noticed it. If you send an air unit to attack and the air unit is intercepted, it will pay double oil costs! Once for the air interception and once for the attack mission. This may be working as designed, but it does not make sense to me. Even if there is some justification (which I don't really see) for a slightly increased oil consumption if air is intercepted, it should not have to pay its oil cost twice. This also places the relative oil costs of air versus ground units somewhat out of whack, I think.

Peter Stauffenberg · Post by **Peter Stauffenberg** » Mon Jul 25, 2011 5:26 pm

Land units pay oil both for moving and additional oil for attacking so they also pay twice sometimes. Maybe the oil consumption for attacking should be slightly less (like halved, but rounded up). This means naval attack, air interception (but not bombing because this simulates the cost for moving to the target area) and land attack. This will affect the total oil consumption quite a bit, though.

The most accurate would be to let the units pay oil dependent upon the number of hexes they unit moves, but that would make it harder for the players to calculate. So the oil consumption shown for a unit is about the average movement distance per turn.

The problem is that the oil consumption and oil income per turn is tuned to the current rules. If we change anything we might have to re-tweak the oil balance. A minor change here can make a big long term difference.

ncali · Post by **ncali** » Mon Jul 25, 2011 6:18 pm

Yes, I guess your right. If starting from scratch, I tend to agree with you that the cost for a land unit attacking should be half, rounded up, total distance moved would affect oil cost, and air units would pay no or only a slightly increased cost if intercepted.

That being said, now is probably not the time for this type of change. Although I don't mind a bit of uncertainty for the player in the precise oil costs, your right that it would require a lot of effort to retune oil supply/demand to be in any type of balance if these changes were implemented.