Air Support! Is it worth it?

[Jarmo]

I'd guess the jabos have been deliberately overpriced. They have their place in some scenarios, but it'd suck to have them around in every other quick battle.

In one single player campaign I got a jabo first, it proceeded to kill my Panzer IV with a cleverly placed bomb, then flied away.

Then the AI got her plane, dropped the bombs in the middle of her massed infantry attack. Guess that was about a company out of action.

So in the end the planes kind of cancelled each others out by delivering roughly the same amount of friendly fire.

I'd never buy them and am very frightened if I get one in a scenario..

[MikeyD]

My thoughts on the airpower or no airpower question:

It all depends on if winning is your main goal, and not simply having fun. I still get a great kick out of the surprise of a passing plane shadow. I invariably halt my viewing and rewatch from other angles, chuckling as I do. I don't care if it has zero utility. it's still fun.

Along that line, here's a suggestion for CMBO. Imagine if at ramdom (every 6 or 7 games) a civilian sedan filled with drunken cossaks careens onto the board, drives about wildly then -- if they aren't all killed -- blasts off the map again.

No point, no points. Just a few moments of absurd fun. The purist grogs would have a coronary!

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by ArmchairKIA:

For reinforcement interdiction - delay # of turns and/or cause casualties (would probably have to be just random units)

I thought of casualties, but decided that this close to the front it would either be infantry already dispersed on foot or armored vehicles which would not be too vulnerable. Therefore, casualties would be too light and improbable to bother factoring in. Besides, just delaying reinforcements would tend to swing play balance so much already that anything additional would be overkill IMO. YMMV.

Michael

[John Kettler]

Depends. I've had everything from fighter bombers

finding hidden enemy armor over the next ridge and blasting it (love those smoke pillars!) to not showing up or, worse, blasting my own troops, happily not as severely as some here have related.

Air power can work great and when it does, exerts vast leverage, but it's uncertainty in both arrival and effectiveness makes it a real wild card. My limited reading on its battlefield effectiveness

tends to confirm this. I just finished reading an account of a battle in Italy in which an American infantry unit was hit both by the 3 x FW-190s and a bunch of Mustangs, fortunately without much damage. I tend to prefer artillery, for reliability, overall usefulness, and sustained combat power. That said, I have been brutalized by hostile aircraft in both QBs and tournament play.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

John Kettler

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by redwolf:

I did some tests to get an idea how BTS came up with the price for the Allied fighter-bomber.

I found, that for a "typical" combined arms mix, that means infantry, support, vehicles and tanks, in percentatges as proposed in the Quickbattle setting, the fighter-bomber will kill enemy units about the value value as its price.

Redwolf, I am wondering if you factored friendly fire into these calcs? Do you happen to remember?

[melb_will]

Not Cossacks, drunken generals, who would burst out of the cars, shout orders then disapere off the map as crew. Brilliant,

In regard to the air power question, I find that sometime it is worth buying just to keep your opponent off balance. If their is a possbility of air power your opponent will be forced to buy anti aircraft assets to counter you. These points will take away from the ones which could be spent on afv's or other. To me this is a good representation of history where a choice would have to be made between using road space for anti air defence or other.

Will

[Crank_GS]

I'm with MikeyD - I do the same thing when I see that ol' shadow racing across the map. As I almost always play US, it is usually my planes I see. I have had a few friendly fire incidents, but not nearly as many as seem to the norm based on this thread...

Also, I agree with Michael Emrys: there is really little room for FBs in the CM battlefield. They were far more likely to be found starting just beyond the FEBA, and extending far into the enemy's rear areas (that sounds bad, doesn't it?). Interdicting supplies, reinforcements and C&C elements as well as dropping leaflets insulting the recipients' mothers.

Modeling that "behind the enemy lines" type of effect would do a lot to swing play balance...

[Code13]

I love CAS, its just in most occaisions it is used in the wrong place, QB's, mostly smallish maps.

Having used CAS on very large maps they are supremely useful because they never get near my own troops, instead ranging about at the far end shooting up the enemy as they move forward to reineforce the front.

Sure sometimes there is a bit of "Blue on Blue" as they say but thats what happened.

If your troops are less than a kilometre away from the enemy dont blame the FB if he drops a stick of bombs too close to you, he is moving at 200+ miles an hour, less than 200' up and can only see little dudes shooting at each other, you are the ones that blurred the front line, not him.

For evidence at how useful CAS is play a battle on a big map, from the on disk missions Approach to Sevastapol is spot on.