Combined arms suggestion

[Young Grasshopper]

In this case… the combined arms works for the defender as well as the attacker, essentially you are combining all the fire power that your vessel has to offer.

[Young Grasshopper]

@Ichabod:

YG,

I’m confused to. Is your suggestion to say that cruisers/battleships, whether or attacking or defending, if fighting both warships and air, would get to roll 2 AAA die @1 for 1 possible hit per ship applied to air units? Is this it?

It would work like the Heavy Bomber breakthrough… 2 dice each vessel, than pick the best result to hit once. Your opponent would still choose their own casualty to be removed.

[Jennifer]

That makes more sense.  Though I’d just pair a fighter or submarine with a battleship (attack) or battleship/carrier (defense) for that ruling.  (Assuming the submarine or fighter is being a spotter unit).  Just off the cuff response, I didn’t put 4 hours of thought and research into it…

[baron Münchhausen]

Interesting new path for Cruiser and BB.

And with CWO ways of seeing naval combat, you can see air-naval combined arms bonus like preventing Cruiser and BB to roll 2 dices and keep the best (like heavy bomber).
So, if only air or only surface vessels are attacking Cruiser and BB get two dice for defense.
If only surface vessels or aircrafts remains on defense, then attacking Cruiser and BB can roll 2 dice.
YG (all warship guns open fire) and CWO (single enemy-type more efficient warship tactic), you bring 2 opposite rationalizations and each can work with similar principles. It only depends on which is more appealing for a given group of players.

In both cases, it adds a layer of tactical warfare at sea. Nice and original, good works guys.

[Narvik]

Infantry backed by artillery, and Tanks backed by Tactical Bombers, now that are true combined arms. Battleships and aircrafts are not. Ships and planes really should roll dice in different phases. Aircrafts can spot and reach ships at a far distance, long before ships can reach other ships. A&A miss a dedicated air to air and air to ground phase before the general combat. In this initial combat phase with dogfights between planes, and the surviving planes attacking ships, I figure the surface warships could roll Anti Air fire with a roll of 1 as hit. Much like the SBR thing, dogfights, AA fire from facility, or in this case a ship, then bombers target the ships. Only in one case during WWII did a battleship sink a carrier, when Scharnhorst sank the carrier Glorius in a blizzard off the Norwegian coast during winter. The planes could not take off because of the blizzard. But this was a one time case, to confirm the rule that carriers are superior to gunships

[Tamer of Beasts]

What if the three previously mentioned ships were to preemptively fire AAA at a 1@1 (up to one per participating ship of those three kinds)? That would make it less altering while still using the AAA capabilities.

[Narvik]

@Tamer:

What if the three previously mentioned ships were to preemptively fire AAA at a 1@1 (up to one per participating ship of those three kinds)? That would make it less altering while still using the AAA capabilities.

The problem with that is that an A&A Fighter unit represent 1000 real life aircrafts, while an A&A Battleship unit represent one or two real life Battleships. That would be like the Battleship Bismarck shot down 1000 aircrafts before any of them could drop a bomb on her. That would be insane nonsense and derogatory bedlam flat out crazy in the real war. As we know, one single Swordfish WWI plane crippled Bismarck with one obsolete torpedo in the real war. A rule like the suggested one will only make sense if an A&A unit represented 100 ships or 100 aircrafts, and the aircraft unit had a range limit, like it could only combat move 1 or 2 sea spaces. With the current rules, an unlimited number of plane units can cover all the oceans of the world, and if the real world planes could do that too there would be no surviving ships after 1939. It would be like millions of single engine fighters would circle the globe and sink everything, except when one ship got lucky and downed thousands of planes with one lucky AA shot. It would not be the war we know from the history books.

[Tamer of Beasts]

While I do agree that ships represent just a few, I have to disagree on the planes.  Large carriers can only carry two plane units in the game, and most of them in real life had a compliment of about 72 planes, thus each plane can only represent approximately 32 planes, a decent sized squadron.  Perhaps this ability can only be available for battleships for a balanced compromise?

[taamvan]

How do you know that a carrier piece doesn’t represent an entire carrier group of fleet carriers, escort carriers, seaplane tenders, tankers and destroyer escorts, and that then, the fighter is more like dozens and dozens of operational aircraft of various types?

Step 7, deploy imagination :D

[Gargantua]

Ultimately we are all playing a game.

And as a game mechanic - combined arms should only reward the side that has combined arms. (So as to encourage its use).

Implementing rules to discourage fundamental activities is generally a poor practice.

Whilst I don’t support this concept as written, I am a strong supporter of cruisers and possibly battleships getting typical AAA capability.

Cruisers and battleships aren’t purchased often enough if ever, and giving them AAA capability, would ENCOURAGE thier purchase.

Aircraft carriers don’t need this ability, as they are already a standard purchas3 with powerful capabilities.

[Narvik]

@Tamer:

thus each plane can only represent approximately 32 planes, a decent sized squadron.Â

Now that is some expensive planes, 10 IPC for 32 planes, while you get a Panzer Corps with 500 Tanks and 50 000 men for 6 IPC. And if you are correct, I think the game start set up is short of some hundred aircraft units, since a power like Germany had more than 10 000 planes when the game start in 1940. I figure a fighter unit represent something between like 250 or 500 planes, and a Bomber unit maybe 50 units, or I could be wrong of course

[Caesar-Seriona]

@taamvan:

How do you know that a carrier piece doesn’t represent an entire carrier group of fleet carriers, escort carriers, seaplane tenders, tankers and destroyer escorts, and that then, the fighter is more like dozens and dozens of operational aircraft of various types?

Step 7, deploy imagination :D

I always pictured ships being 1 for 1 with the exception of transports. An aircraft piece to me is a wing.

[knp7765]

@Gargantua:

Whilst I don’t support this concept as written, I am a strong supporter of cruisers and possibly battleships getting typical AAA capability.

Cruisers and battleships aren’t purchased often enough if ever, and giving them AAA capability, would ENCOURAGE thier purchase.

Aircraft carriers don’t need this ability, as they are already a standard purchas3 with powerful capabilities.

I lobbied for an AA ability for cruisers when people were discussing the worth of cruisers vs. their cost. This would give each ship class a certain ability and maybe make cruisers more worth the 12 IPC cost.
Submarines = surprise strike and convoy raiding
Destroyers = ability to cancel submarine abilities
Cruisers = anti-aircraft ability and shore bombardment
Battleships = 2 hits to sink and shore bombardment
Carriers = 2 hits to sink and carry planes

Any time a naval force that includes aircraft attacks an enemy naval force that includes cruiser(s), the cruiser(s) act like anti-aircraft guns and roll 1 die per attacking aircraft and hit @ 1 before regular combat round. Any hits are immediately destroyed.
Also, you could limit each cruiser like the AA guns on land to only 3 shots per cruiser.

[Ichabod]

@knp7765:

@Gargantua:

Whilst I don’t support this concept as written, I am a strong supporter of cruisers and possibly battleships getting typical AAA capability.

Cruisers and battleships aren’t purchased often enough if ever, and giving them AAA capability, would ENCOURAGE thier purchase.

Aircraft carriers don’t need this ability, as they are already a standard purchas3 with powerful capabilities.  Â

I lobbied for an AA ability for cruisers when people were discussing the worth of cruisers vs. their cost. This would give each ship class a certain ability and maybe make cruisers more worth the 12 IPC cost.
Submarines = surprise strike and convoy raiding
Destroyers = ability to cancel submarine abilities
Cruisers = anti-aircraft ability and shore bombardment
Battleships = 2 hits to sink and shore bombardment
Carriers = 2 hits to sink and carry planes

Any time a naval force that includes aircraft attacks an enemy naval force that includes cruiser(s), the cruiser(s) act like anti-aircraft guns and roll 1 die per attacking aircraft and hit @ 1 before regular combat round. Any hits are immediately destroyed.
Also, you could limit each cruiser like the AA guns on land to only 3 shots per cruiser.

This is off topic of YG’s post. But I see the cruiser AAA idea as always coming back.

It’s really hard to overcome Naval superiority and achieve a good outcome as an attacker. In order to win naval battles, you have to tip/take carriers as casualties to preserve the dice throwing units for the 2nd/3rd battle round. It’s hard to determine the amount of lost planes (carrier casualties) is the right amount or not. If play aggressive on your attack to ensure you win the battle, you could lose a ton of planes (pyrrhic). If you attack conservatively, you could maybe lose the battle because you were taking dice throwing units as casualties rather than 2 hit points per carrier.

Therefore, if I were playing that house rule idea of the cruisers getting up to 3 @1 dice AAA shots, I’d want it as a defender AND attacker.

PS:  Ironically, destroyers, carriers, battleships, and cruisers are the ships with the most/best effective AAA in real life in that order (cruisers lest effective AAA).

[CWO Marc]

@Ichabod:

PS:  Ironically, destroyers, carriers, battleships, and cruisers are the ships with the most/best effective AAA in real life in that order (cruisers lest effective AAA).

I’m having trouble grasping the rationale for that description.  On an individual-ship basis, and talking about the real WWII rather than the A&A rules, battleships would arguably be the best (because carried the greatest number of AAA guns), destroyers would arguably be the worst (because carried the smallest number), and cruisers would be somewhere in the middle.  On a collective basis, and still talking about the real world, destroyers would arguably be the best and battleships would arguably be the worst (and cruisers would be somewhere in the middle) because destroyers were cheaper to build (and thus could be built in larger numbers, and deployed in a fleet in larger numbers) than cruisers, with the same relationship applying between cruisers and battleships.  So from both perspectives, cruisers are in the middle of the AAA effectiveness scale rather than at one end of it.

Actually, that could perhaps be an angle to use to solve the A&A cruiser problem: create for destroyers, cruisers and battleships some kind of two-factor relationship (how much each unit costs and how much AAA firepower each unit has) which, when the two factors are put together, results in cruisers having an AAA cost-benefit ratio which is superior to the destroyer AAA cost-benefit ratio and the battleship AAA cost-benefit ratio.

[GeneralHandGrenade]

When developing Radar in my R&D rules, Cruisers also get the ability to use radar. I don’t give them AA shots though because that’s not how radar worked backed in the 1940’s. The technology didn’t help you target the enemy it just showed you where they were. So the way it works in my game is if you have developed the tech then the presence of your cruiser (either offence or defence) in a sz means that all enemy aircraft are -1 in the first round of combat. This is to simulate the loss of effectiveness in that they don’t have the element of surprise on their side. It is assumed that they would communicate the location of the planes with the other ships in their group just just a Destroyer would with the presence of a Submarine. All Cruisers have the ability to transport my Special Forces Units as well so the cost at 12 IPC’s is worth it.

[CWO Marc]

@GeneralHandGrenade:

When developing Radar in my R&D rules, Cruisers also get the ability to use radar. I don’t give them AA shots though because that’s not how radar worked backed in the 1940’s. The technology didn’t help you target the enemy it just showed you where they were.

Actually, radar was used for targeting purposes in some WWII-era gun-fire control systems.  An example would be the Iowa class battleships, whose 16-inch guns were controlled by three MK 38 Gun Fire Control Systems, and whose 5-inch dual-purpose (anti-air and anti-surface) batteries were controlled by four MK 37 Gun Fire Control Systems (whose radar technology was upgraded a couple of times during WWII).  The radars of these GFCS didn’t just show where the enemy was; they provided some of the data from which fire-control solutions were computed, solutions which in turn were used to target the guns accurately.

[Ichabod]

@CWO:

@Ichabod:

PS:�  Ironically, destroyers, carriers, battleships, and cruisers are the ships with the most/best effective AAA in real life in that order (cruisers lest effective AAA).

I’m having trouble grasping the rationale for that description.�

I don’t know exactly myself; but I’m regurgitating information from a retired Navy Sailors I trust who served on the same kind of destroyers from that era. Destroyers, were the main ships for the defense of carriers; hence more AAA guns per the size of the ship. Cruisers were shore bombardment mainly, battleships were designed to slug it against other surface warships and withstand returning punishment. Sorry if you can’t grasp that. All ships have AAA guns.

[CWO Marc]

Focussing mainly on the US Navy for the sake of brevity: battleships, cruisers and destroyers all had multiple functions, and within each of these three types of ships there existed a variety of designs optimized for different functions.  To start with the most relevant example: the USN (as did the Royal Navy) had a number of specialized anti-aircraft cruisers (CLAA) such as the Atlanta class, which carried no 6-inch guns (as did light cruisers) and no 8-inch guns (as did heavy cruisers); instead, the Atlantas carried 16 x 5-inch guns, 16 x 27mm guns and 6 x 20mm guns, which is more AAA firepower than a conventional US light cruiser of the time carried.  So it has to be kept in mind that the word “cruiser” covers at least three different types of ships (light, heavy, and anti-aircraft), and arguably five or more types of ships if you add ultra-light Italian-type “destroyer leader” cruisers at the low end and the various types of battlecruisers and super-heavy cruisers at the high end.

The roles you describe for the three ship types were indeed one part of their respective function, but not their only (or even their defining) function.  Destroyers were “maids of all work”: they were used for anti-aircraft defense, but they were also used for ASW (anti-submarine warfare), as shore-bombardment vessels (example: the USS Corry, DD-463, was sunk on D-Day in a duel with a German shore battery), as convoy escorts and so forth.  At the opposite end: battleships were originally designed and intended for surface slugging matches against other battleships, but by WWII that role was being overtaken by events; in WWII, they spent more time fulfiling other jobs.  Fast battleships, for example, got used a lot in the USN as escort vessels for fast carrier task forces, while slower battleships were used as shore-bombardment vessels to support amphibious landings.

[Loose Moose]

While I do not play any of the global games, and do play a lot of Pacific 2001 version, I do have a comment.  We have added a “cruiser unit” to the game…cost is 14…attacks and defends at 3…the cruiser and the battleship have anti-air capabilities.  We allow them to roll 1 die that hits at 1 for each attacking aircraft ( max 3 die per ship).  This roll occurs first, and any aircraft losses are removed from play immediately with no chance to return fire.  This AA roll occurs in the first round only.  Everyone seems to like it.
Adding the cruiser to the lineup did require us to lower the cost and capabilities of the destroyers however.