Flak

[ev]

In SC1 all cities had antiair batteries, and, all antiair batteries in all citites were improved when higher tech levels were reached.

I suggest SC2 deals with flak as some sort of upgrade that the player has to buy for a city or port. If the player does not invest on flak upgrade for a city, then the city or port would not be protected by flak.

Cities would have a default flak value of 0. But a player could buy up to ten flak points for a city. Advances in Flak tech would allow a player to buy additional flak points - say up to 15 at tech level 5.

Flak points would not add to the air defense of a city, but would attack air units bombing the city. Flak units attack the air unit before the bombardment, hence reducing the strength of the air attack. A city with no flak unit will be hammered by the full strength of the air attack. But a well defended unit will fair much better.

Flak points are not units, hence they have no counters and no action points. However, I would allow a player to "operate" flak points from one city to another - at a cost.

According to this scheme, a player would only buy flak for those cities that are within range of enemy bombers. As the enemy develops longer range tech, then you have to buy flak for cities further away from the enemy. Increases in bomber range would have the added advantage of forcing the opponent to buy more flak for more cities.

Flak points could also attack air units attacking a land or air unit based on the city hex. Note that flak points are not units, but upgrades to the city hex. They have no counters on the board and do not affect stacking limits.

An argument could also be made that flak unit could contribute the anti tank strength of a land unit defending a city.

[Edwin P.]

I think that a player should be able to purchase an extra AD point (limit of 1 per city) for an individual city for say 200MPPs. This would stack with the existing AD rating for a city.

Then players would have a choice do I research increased Anti Air which benefits all cities and/or do I purchase increased air defense for individual cities.

With this the Brits could immediately purchase an extra AD point for London and not risk having to wait several turns for tech advancement in Anti-Air. It would also allow the Russians to increase the AD of key cities to a limited degree.

[fischkopf]

That would be fun.

[ev]

Originally posted by Edwin P.:

I think that a player should be able to purchase an extra AD point (limit of 1 per city) for an individual city for say 200MPPs.

This sounds fair, and not that far off from my idea.

Say we make each Flak point to cost around 20 MPPs. And say we make each Flak point roughly equal to 1/10th of an AD. Then, Edwin's idea is much like mine...

Edwin's proposal has a the advantage of simplicity. ...and simplicity is important, for the AI, and, for ease of playing.

My proposal has the advantage of being able to buy incrementally in the event you do not have 200 MPPs available. Keep in mind you may have 200 MPPs available, but you may need to defend several cities. And remember the enemy will attack the undefended cities that are within range first.

[Edwin P.]

I don't think that the difference between Flak and the Air Defense rating is large enough to warrant creating another combat rating similar to AD (especially if each Flak point = 1/10 of an AD point). Perhaps someone could explain the difference to me as I do not understand it.

I suggested a high cost of AD, about 200MPP, to force players to make a choice. You can't protect every city and resource hex equally. You have to make choices.

The ability to purchase an extra point of AD also allows players to increase the air defense of important cities using their current technology, if they are will to invest the resources.

[ May 06, 2004, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]