Air Unit Range

[Panama]

I understand the theater air superiority is only informational and not used for game purposes. It more or less inflates your ego cuz yours is bigger than the other guys.

What I want to know is how range fits into air superiority and interdiction.

Is the range of an air unit the limit to which it can apply it's strength for air superiority or interdiction? From what I understand, air strengths are local. Interdiction is only used universally for supply determination. Am I totally off base, right on or someplace in between?

And how is the interdiction strength of an air unit determined? How is it applied? Like a combat with air units taking casualties and the bombardment strength of the air unit applied to the unit being interdicted?

The rules are not clear about any of this for some reason. Seems to be the standard for most games. [8|]

Thanks in advance.

[Panama]

Another question comes to mind. When my air units fly a mission are enemy air units scrambled within range of my air unit's target or are any scrambled within range of the route my air unit is flying or all of the above?

[Veers]

target.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: Veers

target.

Thanks Veers.

So I take it the rest TOAW community is as much in the dark as I am concerning my first post?

Salute

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Panama
Is the range of an air unit the limit to which it can apply it's strength for air superiority or interdiction?

Yes.

And how is the interdiction strength of an air unit determined? How is it applied? Like a combat with air units taking casualties and the bombardment strength of the air unit applied to the unit being interdicted?

It's not clear what you mean. Do you mean the % interdiction figure in the Air Report? Or the strength of the interdicting unit when it is triggered to execute an interdiction attack?

In the latter case, it functions just like a bomber mission against the ground unit that triggered the interdiction. It's subject to enemy AS interception and target AAA. It's AP is then applied to the target's soft equipment and it's AT to its armored equipment.

In the former, I don't know the exact formula, but the value seems to be directly proportional to the quantity of aircraft assigned to interdiction, and inversely proportional to the enemy-owned area over which interdiction is being applied. The value is the chance of triggering an interdiction attack any moving unit incurs for each hex it enters. So, as you add air units to interdiction, the number goes up. As you gain enemy territory, the value goes up, as well.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: Panama
Is the range of an air unit the limit to which it can apply it's strength for air superiority or interdiction?

Yes.

And how is the interdiction strength of an air unit determined? How is it applied? Like a combat with air units taking casualties and the bombardment strength of the air unit applied to the unit being interdicted?

It's not clear what you mean. Do you mean the % interdiction figure in the Air Report? Or the strength of the interdicting unit when it is triggered to execute an interdiction attack?

In the latter case, it functions just like a bomber mission against the ground unit that triggered the interdiction. It's subject to enemy AS interception and target AAA. It's AP is then applied to the target's soft equipment and it's AT to its armored equipment.

In the former, I don't know the exact formula, but the value seems to be directly proportional to the quantity of aircraft assigned to interdiction, and inversely proportional to the enemy-owned area over which interdiction is being applied. The value is the chance of triggering an interdiction attack any moving unit incurs for each hex it enters. So, as you add air units to interdiction, the number goes up. As you gain enemy territory, the value goes up, as well.

Thanks for the reply. In the manual there is no clear explanation of interdiction ranges, how combat values are applied and what may cause casualties and at what point. With some games only half of an air units bombardment value is used so I needed to know how it was used in TOAW.

As for air superiority I know some games use only half an air superiority unit's range for interception but the TOAW manual doesn't address this.

Thanks again. Very much appreciated.

[ColinWright]

The likelihood that a given fighter unit will participate in a given combat seems to be proportional to how much of its range is required to reach the combat. The same seems to be true for interdiction strikes, and I would assume that it's true for units assigned to general combat support.

So an Me-109 unit with a range of 55 is very likely to participate in a fight 20 hexes away -- might or might not show up for one 50 hexes away.

The range itself -- at least for fighters -- seems to be a rather generously figured combat radius. In Seelowe, the Germans are able to exert air superiority considerably farther north than they were able to historically. Of course, part of the problem is that it's one thing to show up at a given point at a given time, drop your bomb or whatever, and then head for home -- another thing entirely to be able to show up and hang around for a useful length of time.