Naval Units

[Jennifer]

Well, destroyer escorts, as best I could tell, were just gimped destroyers.

Escort carreirs, however, found much more use in our games then full carriers.  By being much cheaper (and bear in mind this was classic, not revised, so they were almost half the cost) you could more of them in the water, doubling your effective hellcat carrying capacity for almost the same cost. (Also meant the enemy needed more hits to sink your fleet!)

[Imperious Leader]

Of the units you mention escort carriers seem to be the only viable ship.

DDE are infact low grade “gimp” destroyers but still are destroyers

Escort carriers were built in great quantity… id use Milton bradley carrier for it

attack 0
defend 1
carry one plane

cost 8-10

[tekkyy]

@losttribe04:

The reason we never added it to the game was b/c of the size of the unit it couldn’t pass an ocean, so we wanted to make a way where it couldn’t end its turn in the sea.

Yeah its stupid for certain units to end turn in the middle of the sea.
Like a fleet of transport full of land units.
Should penalise land units ending their turn in the sea.
Pay upkeep or something.

[losttribe04]

I think its bad business to leave land troops at sea at the end of NCM anyway. If I’m going to Japan they make a pit stop in Alaska. Other than that you shouldn’t have to leave them at sea. The reason I do that it b/c should an attack come if I had to I could use transports as fodder w/o losing land troops.  8-)

[Jennifer]

An idea that was raised once, to me, was why have the transport at all?  Make Carrier Groups and Battleship groups include them.  BB’s can carry 2 ground units (1 must be infantry) just like transports in AAR, carrier groups can carry 1 ground unit of any type.  You then have a whole fleet of transport units to use as cruisers/destroyers/whatever.

[losttribe04]

That would be a good idea; however, I have been on ship I wouldn’t like the idea of being a land combatant on a Naval war ship. Its to crowded already. I always figured 1 INF to represent 1 division now days thats about 16,000 people, and 1 ARM to represent 1 tank or CAV division 495 tanks unsupported. Transports are needed I think to keep the ratio somewhat in balance.

[Jennifer]

The thought was that a battleship doesn’t represent just one battleship in this game.  It represents a battleship fleet including oil tankers, escort warships, medical ships, troop transports, landing craft, etc.

[Imperious Leader]

The thought was that a battleship doesn’t represent just one battleship in this game.  It represents a battleship fleet including oil tankers, escort warships, medical ships, troop transports, landing craft, etc.

you left out cruisers, subs,destroyers, and carriers and the kitchen sink…

I really dont understand why so many people look at the pieces this way…  The only thing that can realy be extrapolated is that a battleship represents a group of these ships

an infantry unit = a corps of infantry ( 3-5 infantry divisions)… it does not include tanks, planes etc…

[tekkyy]

although one argument is that with the introduction of destroyer piece in revised, and cruiser piece in house rules…

a battleship piece or a carrier piece don’t have to implicitly include escort ships, maybe just auxiliary ships

of course that means all naval units should be a bit cheaper

so with your proposal in the first post, what costs do you use for standard units like battleship and carrier, Jennifer?

[Ddraiglais]

I have no problem having one (or a very small group of) CV or BB being represented as one piece and costing as much as they do. Do you have any idea how much capital ships cost? Why do you think that so few countries even try to build them? Then there is the cost of operating them. That isn’t even considered in the game. In modern times it cost a million dollars a day to keep a CVN at sea. I doubt WW II CVs were that much, but I guarantee it wasn’t cheap.

[losttribe04]

Well I agree CV didn’t cost that much in WWII but two things to consider would be how much inflation has gone up and two modern US CV’s all have reactors to make them more efficient. Sure you need to replace nuclear fuel rods but not like you would in WWII with fossil fuels.

Not only that I think how much units cost is trivial b/c they cost other countries the same amount. Also no matter what you do a Navy’s return will never equal it’s investment b/c you don’t gain anything capturing international waters your Navy will abandon the next turn any way.

In short you never win with a Navy at best you only have minimal losses.

-LT04

[crusaderiv]

In my WAW games i added.

heavy & light cruiser,escort carrier,destroyer and escort (escort may be use as a mine layer)
But there’s also, Oil tanjker Att= 0, Def =1, move = Increasing warship movement to 3 sea zone.

As a UK special unit= Liner ship. Att: 0, Def=2, move= 3.
Liner ship may transport 4 infantry but cannot be use for amphibious assault.

AL.

[Jennifer]

The significant difference between the Cruisers and Destroyers is that the Destroyers can find submarines, but the cruisers can conduct shore bombardment.

I’ve toyed with allowing Cruisers to carry 1 infantry unit as well.  We had to prevent it for England, Russia and Germany since it really skewed things to the British favor. (for slightly more money you can buy transports that shoot really well….kinda deters a German air assault, eh?)

Also, the escort carrier, which may seem useless, actually is nice.  A)  It carries hellcats.  B)  It makes good fodder.  C)  It is a good breaker against naval assaults.  D)  2 Hellcats protecting a transport is a viable defense.

[crusaderiv]

Cruiser to transport infantry.
Hum……I’m not a fan of that.

I know japanese used destroyer to transport troops.
Tokyo express it’s a good national advantage for japenese but give the same opportunity
to the allies. Not realistic.
That’s a reason why a introduce liner ship in my game.

AL.

[Guest]

I hope that no one flames me for resurrecting a thread like this, but I was thinking along the same lines as introducing some form of smaller ASW escort, and the escort carrier to use in the A&A Pacific and A&A Europe game.  The British had a range of ASW ships, from the small Flower-class corvette to the much larger escort sloops and Lend-Lease destroyer escorts.  The destroyer escort was intended specifically as an ASW ship, and was actually more capable at ASW than the normal destroyer, having as good a sonar suite, and the ability to deliver a much larger depth charge pattern, along with Hedgehog attacks from 1943 on.  It was generally viewed as being about 1/2 the cost of a destroyer, which would give it a cost of 6 IPC, an attack of 2 against surface ships, defends at 2 verses ships and planes, and attacks and defends against submarines at 3.  You could drop the attack and defense rating against planes and surface ships if you really wanted a bigger difference than the destroyer.

The escort carriers were pretty much either converted merchant ships or built according to merchant ship standards to modified merchant ship designs.  That would give them an IPC cost of 8, not counting planes.  The British used some escort carriers as fighter carriers for amphibious landing coverage, and those could be viewed as carrying two fighters.  You could restrict those to defending against air attack and maybe having a 1 for ship attack.  Otherwise, the normal air group was 12 to 19 Wildcat fighters, and 9 to 12 Avenger torpedo planes if American, or Swordfish if British.  This would carry only one fighter, but it would have the regular aircraft stats for attack and defense as representing a mixed air group.  If you wanted to, you could use some of the 1/700 scale Avengers or Swordfish and give it a special ASW capability with limited air combat ability.  If you did that, you might want to boost the cost of the aircraft up two IPC over a straight fighter.

For units to represent these two types, I was thinking about using the destroyers  and carriers from my Attack Expansion game, and designating which color went with each country.  Then I do not have to keep track of cardboard counters.

[Guest]

A couple of notes…
A Destroyer Escort as you describe it would need to be $10 in order to balance in game terms against other naval vessels.  If I could buy a 2/2 unit for $6 instead of $8 for a SUB, AND it could fire on enemy aircraft…  I’d probably almost never buy SUBs again, or regular destroyers.

Escort Carriers would need to be $14… cheaper than regular carriers, more expensive than a DST.

[Imperious Leader]

Preliminary: To introduce those items as you see it to the game you must consider that the game foremost needs cruisers. Using a D6 system will require that the OOB battleship moves to 20 IPC, the Destroyer moves to 2/2 costing 10 ( from 3/3) so that the new Cruiser ( takes two hits and representing both Heavy and Light types) is now at 3/3 and costing 16). Having said that you now have these to consider:

Destroyer Escort (DE) attack 1 defend 2 cost 8

Escort Carrier (CVE) or Light Carrier (CVL) attack 0 defend 2 carry’s one plane costs 12

[Flashman]

In my version the oil tanker is the only new unit added.  Well, apart from Radar installations and Rocket pieces.

But then one key rule I introduce is that all ships must refuel every turn, tying them to friendly land areas.  With tankers it becomes possible to carry out long range naval operations, but the pieces themselves are expensive and have no combat value.

I’m not convinced that cruisers are anything more than a piece for the sake of having a 3-3 ship, with destroyers becoming 2-2, but we’ll see what LH has come up with in Guadalcanal.  Eventually.

The problem with cost reduction is that you might create naval cannon fodder units bought in vast quantaties just to soak up hits.  A ship costing 4 IPCs and having no combat value would probably be a good buy.