Air interdiction!

[Ricky B]

I personally would agree with Dany that the interdiction impact in the campaign/large and long scenarios can be a bit much. I am not sure that is such an issue with the latest updates in Danube Front, haven't played the WP side but NATO does okay in regards to interdiction, so I thought it had been toned down, or at least felt about right. In an earlier play of NGP, the Soviets suffered very heavily, much more so than I think we are seeing in the current DF game I am playing.

But in Jihad '04, which is not a stock game by the way, the interdiction is just way too high, at least for the game system/setup for that scenario. The Egyptians in particular, but also many Syrians, have a long way to travel to the front, and it really requires travel mode to do, definitely for the infantry forces. I have been in 2 games of it as the Israelis, and in the first one the Arab force suffered such high interediction losses that they really had no chance of winning - the VPs were dropping very fast due to the losses and probably would have made an Arab victory on VPs anyway totally impossible, and would have crippled an attack after the forces moved up. That game ended fairly early.

In the second game, against a different player for the Arabs, I suggested halving the strength of interdiction attacks - I think we left the frequency alone. Hurts the Israelis but makes for a much more balanced situation. That still results in plenty of attacks and losses, my opponent says the attacks are still hurting him a lot, he would hate to have played with the higher losses from the original game, but he has had plenty of strength left after moving up to attack hard and keep the VPs close.

The Israeli air force is well trained and effective, but does not have the ability in a 2 hour time frame to interdict and cause signficant losses to anything like even 10% of the battalions moving at high speed to attack them, across the Sinai, which is what I would say was happening in Jihad before the reduction we are trying. Just look at the numbers involved and try to see if the results seem reasonable, both for airplanes available - and remember there are also user controlled air strikes available - and for the targets scattered across the map.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the results, yes there should be attacks but they shouldn't make a victory for a side that has to move in travel mode impossible, or create unreasonably high levels of losses.

Rick