Scorpion_22

The allies won 5/6 of the in the last tourney? (With the Rambo thing being a bit fuzzy)....interesting. Still, you could provide a slight readiness increase to the U.S. - 10% is about correct imho (to put the entry to Christmas 1941), some more chits for the U.S. to start with, and perhaps some M.P.P.s (say in the region of 1000) while the soviet may have their initial mpps and tech levels looked at (say anti-tank and heavy armour research, for historical and gameplay reasons). Then just distribute this very slightly modified scenario as the official tournament scenario. With it, the U.S. will have an earlier and more meaningful entry, and the U.S.S.R. might hold a bit better.

Fine. Forget about the idea of making air units more expensive and less omnipotent. Hubert says that the Air Fleets include tac bombers, yes, I know that, but I can just as well say that the Strat bomber unit includes ALL bombers, not just strat ones. Anyways, most of you are just happy with the way things are. That´s good. That means you should never experiment, I guess. At least there´s an option to walk away to, now....... (Walks away....) Seriously, I need to test this out. Perhaps I´ll put up some sort of an AAR with this rule (played against myself, of course, since no-one will want to play with this rule besides me) and my soon-to-be-ready historical 1939 OOB scenario.

What rules? Must it be the original scenario?

Great movie, but the battle of the Helm´s Deep was a bit ridiculous because I looked at it with the "strategic eye". Neither side practised any castle attack tactics and only the orcs used (very, very little) equipment (to erect ladders, but forget siege machines). Still, a very enjoyable and enthralling experience. It´s just that the strategist in me was screaming at the onset of the Battle

Eh? What exactly is a "high enough level" bomber or rocket to use? The level 0 ones serve you perfectly well. They are cheaper anyway. I guarantee you that two bombers and rockets (artillery) should cause trouble to any unfortified soft unit.

....Remember that the Luftwaffe, for example, had seven Luftflotten at most (four to start with in 1939). Aircraft are EXPENSIVE. This rule keeps the air fleet counts in check.... So it isn´t as easy to field 18 air fleets unless you skimp out on the bombers.

The gameplay seems very good to me when you rule that ONLY bomber units can attack ground units. Having a huge air force that is all-inclusive and almighty, and can get better in air-to-air operations by performing air-to-ground operations and vice versa, is simly not possible. Essentially it adds another strategic layer into the game. IF you need both bombers and fighters, it is twice as expensive (research included) and you cannot exploit the experience system to rule the skies forevermore (by gaining exp to the fighters by bombing poor defenseless corps). In this case, the fighter unit represents only fighters, and the bomber unit represents both strategic and tactical bombers. Thus one balanced Luftflotte/airfleet consists of one fighter and one bomber unit. Of course, the french, for example, neglected their bombers. This makes sense both gameplay-wise and historically to me. Try it out and see how you like it, perhaps you´ll find that the game play out differently in a positive way?

Get real, folks. He only said that: Note the PAST TENSE. I think all of us HAVE been twelve at one point;) For what it´s worth, I didn´t really take Rambo all that seriously and considered it fun. I guess you could have waited with this revelation until a defeat, would have made a grand prize

So, it WAS a joke, eh? Ha ha, very funny.

Yes, this would fix most of our problems at once. However, a web search yielded no results....nor did any post on this forum have info on it, so is this just some October Fools´ Joke?

No, no and no. The finns were hard pressed to hold on during the end of the winter war, and the armistice was a relief. All in all the Winter War lasted 109 days, and then there was a period of "peace" and building up, until Barbarossa came, and the Finns got bombed. Then, Finland attacked (foolishly, some would say, but you don´t really bomb someone´s capital unless you have hostile intentions and it was pretty clear what Stalin´s intentions for Finland were) and reclaimed the areas lost in the Winter War (in the peace treaty), and pushed into Russian territory. At the end Mannerheim ordered the troops to halt the advance and dig in, rather than join in the siege of Leningrad and cut it off. Similarly, the Murmansk rail was NOT cut off (guess which rail was critical to the transportation of the lend-lease equipment?)

No, no and no. The finns were hard pressed to hold on during the end of the winter war, and the armistice was a relief. All in all the Winter War lasted 109 days, and then there was a period of "peace" and building up, until Barbarossa came, and the Finns got bombed. Then, Finland attacked (foolishly, some would say, but you don´t really bomb someone´s capital unless you have hostile intentions and it was pretty clear what Stalin´s intentions for Finland were) and reclaimed the areas lost in the Winter War (in the peace treaty), and pushed into Russian territory. At the end Mannerheim ordered the troops to halt the advance and dig in, rather than join in the siege of Leningrad and cut it off. Similarly, the Murmansk rail was NOT cut off (guess which rail was critical to the transportation of the lend-lease equipment?)

I would make 1940 the year for level 1. 1939 can hardly be counted as a full year anyway. Otherwise, sounds good.

The massive airfleets start popping up at a rate of 1 unit per turn as soon as the East Front develops into the trench war it usually develops into. You wouldn´t be swamped by other units if there weren´t dozens of airfleets since you cannot stack units. Also, limiting the tech levels of airfleets only makes the problem worse. How so? Well, advances to jets don´t increase the air fleets´ ground attack values, do they not? So, by limiting the tech levels, the air fleets will be even cheaper than before, since their tech level (and cost) isn´t so high. Of course, the industrial tech won´t be as high either, but that´s a different matter.

Brian: Yep, so instead 3-4 of your best units receiving the attention of 4-6 air fleets each turn, you´d receive the attention of 4-6 air fleets in total. That´d be satisfactory. However, we´d still need some kind of a way to advance in AA weapons for units.