The Commander Series Forum

During an oppositon command phase he successfully calls in in 2 simulataneous air missions against the same target point. After deviation etc I have an Air Defence (AD) total of 12 attacks in sight of the impact point do I:
Use all 12 against each air mission i.e 12 + 12 AD attacks?
Have to split my AD fire evenly between each target i.e. 6 + 6 attacks?
Or can I split my AD fires as I want i.e. 4 AD attacks v 1 mission + 8 AD v the other?

Chhers - Jools

You have to split them - he's trying to swamp your AD assets. Same target point or not they are all arriving simultaneously. Only with separate air support requests can you fire all at both aircraft.

You say you have 12 attacks "in sight of the impact point", los isn't a factor, but you do need to be in range!

You split the attacks according to the available AD attacks. i.e if you have 3 AD assets with 4 attacks each (so 12 total) then you either have 4 and 8; or 8 and 4. Does that make sense?

Dave - Thanks

In our view the wording of the 1st para of the AA Fire section:

AA fire is calculated against each aircraft unit, with the following units being eligible to fire:
- any unssuppressed comd unit within range and LOS of hit point.
- any unsuppressed and deployed AA/SAMunit within range and LOS of the hit point.

means that the rules might be open to a bit of interpretation particualrly "AA fire is calculated against each aircraft unit" - is this 'all' each or 'singular' each? We had a debate amongst oursleves as to exactly what this means and were seeking others views and our views sort of accord with ours. We also agree with your breakdown of splitting attacks against targets based on groups of attack stats.

However I am not sure about your point of LOS as the rules state quite clearly that your Comd/AA/SAM units have to be in Range and LOS. I am not sure whether there is an intent to write into future rules a differenatiation between Optical and Radar Acquistion and Tracking systems but assume the current rules refer to visual as they are LOS.

Cheers - Jools

Jools,

You might be right on LOS - though we've not played it right then! That said, might the aircraft not be at some height relative to the target point and intervening terrain??? (hastily clutching for a straw )

Oooooh - missile guidance / tracking techniques eh? IR / radar etc... might be a complication too far for CWCII. The tail might end up wagging the dog. Radar guided SAMs are really off board I tend to think. My own area is Golan '73 so it tends to be guns (optical / radar) and Syrian ManPADs (IR).

I'm certain that I'm right on dividing the attacks though. Otherwise there's no way to overwhelm AD. Fly over in dribs and drabs and get picked off. All turn up together and give him too much to shoot at!

Re LOS on page 6 it states " aircraft and helicopters are assumed to be low flying during the game, so LOS will be blocked by interviening high area terrain and smokescreens. LOS is not affected linier terrain or low area terrain".so LOS is a facter as is range.Dr Dave is right when he says you can split the attacks, but you could also fire everything at one aircraft if you wanted to and ignore the other one.(not that you would want to).

Yep - we've been playing it wrong. Not sure how often it would have made a difference though - our AA tends to be guns - so short range so not much scope for intervening terrain.

Or put 2 divisons worth of Flak on one table -

Sorry Steve.

ianS

Was there only two, I thought we'ed squeezed on more than that!

I'm sure there were four plus attachments

I still got in though......

IanS

one sa9 for a harrier, not a bad exchange.

I think that this raises an interesting point.

How did the a/c get to release it's payload - where was it beforehand on the way in?

I'm NOT suggesting that we plot flight paths
But there must surely be oppotunities when the plane is in view to most of the board? Thus obviating the LOS to the point of impact rule?

It seems to me that the a/c appears near the attack point and then disappears again? Are we assuming that the plane was v.high and came down for it's attack and then sped away to v.high afterwards? Hence, out of range except at the attack point?

All that said - the system works!

I'll go lie down now.

Like you said dave the system works.Sometimes things are best left alone or simple can become very complicated, very fast and suddenly your not playing CWC any more. Had a similar experiance playing Blackpowder ACW. Someone at our club brought in a download of a another clubs ACW ammendments, a weighty but well thought out and presented document.problem was we found our games slowed to a crawl, some units became impossible to brake and for us at least it no longer felt like ACW.
now i'am not saying blackpowder feels like ACW but we can get in a good few turns in in an evening, using 10+ brigades a side and still get a result.
I think the same can be said for CWC.for me there's enough detail to give a good feel for the periods it covers at the levels we play at whilst not getting bogged down in the micro management some other systems use or becoming fixated on the diferences between tank a or tank b.
sorry if this turned into a rant, i'll shut up now!

Well said sir

Remember you need line of sight and range to the hit point, not the actual aircraft, which neatly removes the need to plot flight paths and heights etc

Oh yeah - granted. I'd never touch a set of rules where you needed to plot the flight path.

It just struck me as a bit odd that you needed LOS to the hit point. If there's a house in the way then there's no LOS. I'm just trying to rationalise how a house blocks LOS to an A/C, and how did the aircraft get there without being shot at on the way in (or way out)?

Come to that, don't friendly units block LOS?

Yup, Happy with all of the above very useful to sound out others on rules queries - Long Live the Forum.

In our case we had an incident where the 'Air' player tried to swamp AA/AD by using multiple missions 'on call'. It worked so the defender had to figure the best way of allocating his AA/AD attacks. In the first instance it worked for the defender as the 1st pair of F4s were waxed but the 2nd pair got through and took out some MBTs. However the next turn the Air player learn't the lesson and put down smoke as part of his Suppression package, it worked by way of mostly blocking LOS for Comd's, SP AA guns and some Radar guided AD SAMS. In future versions of CWC we might need to make a 'Note' in respective Army Lists for AA/AD systems that differentiates between Radar Guided and Optical AD systems. A simple note that says "LOS to Hit Point is not blocked by smoke or battlefield obscuration - only by terrain features".

Should I put that on the 'Proposed Changes Page' - what do you think?

Regards Jools

Yep - very good point. It could just be an "R" or "EO" in the notes column with just a line in the AD section.