Air Combat

aircraft counters

Air units are another way of exhibiting the power projection capabilities of your Nation.

Air power considerably lengthens your military reach allowing you to attack targets that are often a long way from your own shores. In particular, heavy bombers , have a range that makes them a strategic asset rather than a tactical one. A bombing campaign can be seen as a campaign-within-a-campaign.

Other air units are primarily for tactical use; limited bombing, interdiction, ground and shipping attack etc.

In Imperialism, air combat forms a central feature of the game turn and is conducted in several phases;

Airstrike Declarations
Airstrike Sequence
Airstrike Resolution

Airstrike Declarations

In this phase you determine what your targets are for air attack and move your aircraft to their lauch airfields and from there to their assigned targets. Remember to assign fighter escorts if the target is in range! For more on this see Deploying Air Assets

Players should alternate between declaring airstrikes. First, Player A announces a target and places his air units on the target hex. Player B now does the same. Players continue alternating the placement of their attacks until both players have no more attacks to declare.

Once all attack declarations have been made and air units are on the target hexes, both players can now place their Combat Air Patrols (CAP).

Combat Air Patrol

If you have uncommitted fighter aircraft that are in range of targets that are under attack by the enemy you may now assign these to a CAP role over the target in order to engage attacking enemy aircraft.

Airstrike Sequence

Depending on the composition of the air and ground units in the target hex, the following sequence is followed;

Defending CAP Fighters and attacking escort fighters engage each other using the Fighter vs Fighter combat chart.
Surviving CAP fighters now engage the attacking bombers
Defending anti-aircraft engages the surviving attacking Bombers;
1. Shipping Targets engage attacking bombers with their anti-aircraft fire
2. Anti-Aircraft units that are either the target, in the same hex as the target, or are adjacent to the target, engage the attacking bombers.
3. Army Groups that are the target engage attacking bombers with their inherent anti-aircraft fire
Surviving Bombers attack the target using the appropriate combat chart;
1. Target is an Army Group: use Aircraft vs Army Group and Army Group vs Aircraft chart.
2. Target is a Facility: use the Bombing Facilities Chart.
3. Target is a ship: use the Aircraft vs Shipping Chart
4. Target is an Artillery or Anti-Aircraft unit ship: use Aircraft vs Army Group chart.

Airstrike Resolution

Results of the airstrike are applied to the targets;

Facilities lose 'Points' - adjust the points value of the facility on the Facilities Damage Track of the Data-sheet
If an Airfield is destroyed then any aircraft squadrons stationed at that airfield may may land at an alternative airfield that is in range (this is an exception to the normal rule regarding land-based aircraft transfers). Aircraft that cannot find an alternative airfield to land at will be destroyed along with any squadrons caught on the ground at the moment of attack.
Army Groups, Artillery and Anti-Aircraft units lose points. If they are reduced to zero points they are considered destroyed and removed from play (remove them from your Order of Battle on the Data-Sheet)
Ships that are hit lose points. Deduct the points from the ship.

Air Combat Example

In this example, Red Air Units are attacking a Blue Facility;

In the Airstrike Declaration Phase, Red has moved his aircraft to attack a Blue Aircraft Factory facility
Red's attacking airgroup consists of 30 Heavy-Bombers (3-Squadrons of 10-aircraft) escorted by 1-squadron of 30-Fighters
Blue has held back sufficient Fighters to use as a Combat Air Patrol and assigns two squadrons of 25-aircraft each (50 Fighters total) to the CAP.

You can only see the top counter of the stack and the stack of aircraft counters obscures the target. However, if you hover your mouse pointer on the stack, the stack will expand to show you all counters in the stack including the Airfield facility counter.

The CAP fighters engage the escort fighters:
1. Combat losses are calculated using the Fighter vs Fighter chart.
2. Blue draws one-card and gets a four of Spades. Blue compares it against the 'Per 50-aircraft' column (double kills shown on card) so shoots down 8 escorting fighters
3. Red draws three-cards, one per 10-aircraft, and draws Ace of Hearts, nine of Spades and the King of Hearts. Red compares these against the 'Per 10-aircraft' column. Red cards result in 'No Kills', so the ACE and King are discarded. Black cards kill as on card so the nine of Spades results in 9 blue fighters being shot down.
4. The Red players Escort mission is now over and the Red Fighter squadrons are returned to Red's Air Assets window. Red player then adjusts the counters according to their losses (see 'Recording Aircraft Losses').

Red escort fighters have been removed and now Blue CAP attacks the bomber force.

The surviving Blue CAP fighters (now reduced to 41-fighters) now engage the Red bombers:
1. Combat losses are calculated using the Fighter vs Heavy-Bombers chart.
2. Blue draws one-card for each 10-fighters (4-cards) and one-card for the remaining fighter. Blue draws 5-Hearts, 3-Hearts, 9-Spades, 5-Spades and Q-Hearts respectively. The first four cards are compared against the 'Per 10-aircraft' column. The 9-Spades and 5-Spades result in 1-kill each. The 5-Hearts and 3-Hearts result in two-kills each. For the remaining fighter only the Ace or King of Clubs score kills so the Q-Hearts is discarded. The total number of bombers shot down is 6.
3. Red has 30-bombers and so draws three cards, 1-card for each group of ten, and draws 2-Hearts, 5-Hearts and J-Hearts. On the Bombers vs Fighters section of the chart, only cards that are Spades result in a kill. Red does not kill any of Blue's fighters.
4. The Blue players CAP mission is now over and the Blue Fighter squadrons are returned to Blue's Air Assets window. Blue player then adjusts the counters according to their losses against both the escorting fighters and the bombers. (see 'Recording Aircraft Losses').
There is no anti-aircraft defence protecting the target so Red player goes straight to the Bombing Facilities chart.
1. Red draws a single card for his bomber force and draws a 7-Spades. Comparing this to the Bombing Facilities chart results in 1-hit for every two bombers. There are now 24-bombers remaining and of these only 12 score hits (24 divided by 2) on the target for a total of 12-hits.
2. Each bomb from a heavy-bomber causes 1,000-points of damage so Red bombers inflict 12,000-points of damage to the aircraft factory.
3. Red's bombing mission is now over and the Red Bomber squadrons are returned to Red's Air Assets window. Red player then adjusts the counters according to their losses (see 'Recording Aircraft Losses').
Blue player now adjusts the points value of the Aircraft factory on the Facilities Damage Track of the Data-sheet.
This Airstrike is now over and players should now move on to the next one...

Although it appears to be a convoluted process here on the page where it is described, in practice this process will only take a couple of minutes as you become increasingly familiar with it.