Advanced Deployment (Aircraft): Issues / fixes?

By phocion, in Dust Tactics Rules Discussion

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phocion said:

I think Rasputindarkscythe is correct in that deploying choppers before anything else would seriously hobble them, they just wouldnt survive the deluge of fire that would result.

I thought the problem was that it was impossible to shoot down the choppers in one turn without insane luck? If you are only bringing one chopper and have to deploy it first to use AD, and it gets shot down, guess what? Welcome to Dust: TACTICS. Have one unit assault the enemy's defenses is a suicide run regardless of the unit's movement type. It's a bad TACTIC . A lone chopper, attack or transport, flying too far ahead of it ground support should get shot down. That's why modern forces will send them in groups. The enemy is forced to either split their fire and hope, or concentrate on one at a time and hope too many don't get through.

Even one chopper is still tough to take down in one turn unless you are loaded up with AA. Which means your force is lacking in anti-tank ability. It would take an average of 18 attack dice to take down one chopper. Thats roughly 60pts of your force, if you use the A3 machinegun infantry, which means being within range 4. A smart TACTICIAN will use that to his advantage and try to force those machinegunners to deploy into LOS for one of his range U weapons. If you try to use the longer range AA walker your spending even more. It would take 3 Heinrichs (78pts), and some luck, to take down one chopper and you still have to be within 6. You can't even try with the heavy walkers because all they can do on turn one is move/move.

Just say it's a 300pts game and you want to AD your one 60pt attack chopper. In a balanced force is the enemy really going to be able to muster 18dice of AA fire. If you keep playing against someone who overloads on AA, take a walker heavy army once or twice and mop the floor with him. He'll change his build, or he'll get used to losing.

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BTW, I know "AA" stands for Anti-Aircraft. What does "AAA" stand for? Other than American Automobile Association.

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AAA = Anti-Aircraft Artillery

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fhaugh said:

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but the issue on the table is the abuse of the advanced deployment rules, yes? If I understand the flow of things, the SSU player will bulk out his activations with a bunch of cheap units. During the first turn he will deploy all of these cheap units first, and once the enemy has deployed all of his important/AA units, the SSU player will advance deploy all of his choppers adjacent to these priority targets. Because of Yakov, the SSU will most likely win initiative on turn two and going first will begin attacking, and probably destroying the unit most dangerous to them. The enemy will be unable to counter this move because of the difficultly in bringing down a chopper in one turn. Am I right so far?

Advance deployment simulates the mobility provided by air units, thus allowing them to detect and engage the enemy ahead of the rest of the force. With that in mind, shouldn't the units using advance deployment be the first units you deploy? In game rule terms, "Any unit(s) in the players force using advance deployment must be deployed before any units in their force not using advance deployment. Once a player has deployed a unit without using advance deployment, no further units in the force may use advance deployment."

If you want to get your attack choppers in their face, your going to have to face the initial barrage of AA fire. (Sound rather realistic, doesn't it?) If it is as hard as people claim to take a chopper down in a single turn, then they will still be there on turn two for you to start bombing the AA units.

The point of making something deploy first in games, is usually to simulate it being slow, so it lacks the capability to react and therefore more agile opponents can move advantageously in relation to a slow unit. Which is entirely the opposite of what the agility of helicopters is meant to allow - a chopper that is agile wouldnt get caught in a bad position, or so the train of thought goes - they would be the one taking advantage of slower enemies. Helicopters are dangerous precisely because of their ability to move unhindered and arrive where the enemy least expects. They arent tanks, they dont slug it out in combat where there is stuff that can hurt them - even modern attack choppers. They should be glass hammers to a degree (I know SSU choppers have more health than a armor 4 walker at the moment)… Therefore forcing a chopper to deploy first will rob it of that agility and the survivability that their speed gives them, they dont have armor worth a ****. If you deploy your chopper first you are asking for me to then deploy every one of my units that comes on after your chopper to try and destroy it, because there is nothing it can do. Its almost the inverse of the issue with AD that I raised. Putting yourself in a situation where you are unable to react to the enemy and then you wait there while he comes and stomps all over you is a tactic generally known as committing suicide and isnt likely to see much use - hence why I said I thought it would hobble choppers. Just as exploiting the current AD rules can hobble your opponents force at the moment. You may as well not use AD at all, any rule that forces me to deploy a unit before any others is in no way a benefit in a game where my opponent can then make every effort to kill that unit for no loss of their own. You may as well take AD out of the game at that rate (which is one possible solution).Forcing choppers to deploy first with AD defeats the point of having the better than normal movement ability in the first place.

I have said before that I like the current concept of AD in that it allows choppers to drop anywhere on the board, to that extent I think it is a reasonably good way of simulating the mobility of a chopper. However the rest of it is pretty broken if abused under the reaction rules as described.

I agree that a chopper dropping right in on your units would face some form of anti-aircraft fire - that is realistic. However the current reactive fire system doesnt allow this if your chopper comes in after all my units have moved. This doesnt reflect what would happen if someone parked a chopper next to a unit of men with machine guns - they WOULD shoot at it. Ideally we need something that balances having the mobility of choppers whilst not allowing choppers to be that sword of damocles that can wipe out three units at once with no counter.

Hope that all made sense, its been a long day and I'm tired…. :)