a question of etiquette

[loki100]

(and similar refined things)

I'm interested in how people avoid mistakes when playing with the (all but universal) no bombing of unstacked HQs house rule?

With the Soviets, even with a lot of air recon, its often hard to push up detection rates behind the lines beyond knowing that 'something' is in the hex. Now, in the hope that it disrupts their response (and keeping a very close eye on Hitman202's research), so far I have often done a bombing raid on something that might be a Pzr/Mot division in reserve.

A couple of times in my current game with SigUp what I've bombed then turned out to be a HQ all on its own. So I've tried to remember and apologise in the emails to notify end of turn, gloat, and/or spread misinformation [8D], but clearly I've done something I shouldn't have.

Does this happen to others? If so how do you handle (I think if I killed someone really important I'd offer to redo the turn) this?

Now there is a serious question lurking in here. Any tricks for pushing up the efficacy of Soviet air recon - as anybody who has glanced at the AAR of our game will have picked up - I'm very keen to spot (& keep spotted) his Pzrs.

[M60A3TTS]

If the unit you bomb isn't showing as a HQ, but one gets caught because it was hidden, I don't know that you did anything wrong. It isn't that hard to do, you bomb a panzer unit of undetermined size and the hidden panzer corps HQ is sitting beneath it. There isn't much to be done about it.

[GreenGoblin1898]

What's so bad about bombing HQs anyway?

[jwolf]

ORIGINAL: GreenGoblin1898

What's so bad about bombing HQs anyway?

If overdone, it's a good way to kill enemy leaders in far greater numbers than actually occurred.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

If the unit you bomb isn't showing as a HQ, but one gets caught because it was hidden, I don't know that you did anything wrong. It isn't that hard to do, you bomb a panzer unit of undetermined size and the hidden panzer corps HQ is sitting beneath it. There isn't much to be done about it.

Should have been clear ... if the HQ is stacked, it takes its chances. With the Soviets in the period of the 1941/2 mobile warfare, I'd rather have them stacked with something so as to avoid being bounced by a German move next to them.

So in this case, the HQs I hit were in a hex all on their own, but somewhere that I suspected was a mobile unit with the potential for a reserve activation. So it breached the letter of the house rule, but not by intent.

With Hitman's work on pre-combat bombing, I'm starting to wonder if bombing potential reserves is of any use in any case? I guess it produces cohesion loss, but not got a clue how that translates into the reserve activation mechanic, even so, I quite liking bombing tanks [8D], so thats a good reason in itself.

I was just wondering how others handle this situation. Its a common, pretty much standard, house rule, so I doubt I'm the first person to have done this. It also, more importantly in a way, links to the relatively low effectiveness of Soviet air recon to uncover just what a hex contains.

ORIGINAL: jwolf

ORIGINAL: GreenGoblin1898

What's so bad about bombing HQs anyway?

If overdone, it's a good way to kill enemy leaders in far greater numbers than actually occurred.

aye done to excess by 1943 you can have killed most of the leaders for both sides ... it eliminates a very gamey quirk in the rules

[swkuh]

@Loki... and what happens when "all" leaders are eliminated (hard to imagine?)

Believe right solution is to maintain credible CAP and beat the bad boys up when they attack. Too bad that WitE, still at this late date, allows "exploits" like this.

[Killzone]

Very simple fix would be:- bombing a HQ has no effect on leader, just take it out altogether. If you want to incorporate some killing of leaders by bombing do it in some form of random roll like executions, completely separate from opponent actions