ANZAC planes on US carriers

[nikola1975]

@taamvan

Well, usually it will happen that you will have those fighters on US carriers, even without wanting to use it in this way. If Australia can earn around 15 - and usually that is what they can get until Japan is taking care of islands, India, China, Russia - they will buy a fighter every round or two. In order to be able to invest both in Europe and Asia, US can save some money by buying a fighter less. Effectively, if they buy a carrier and wait for two rounds, they are getting excellent defending power for 16 IPC.

With those ANZAC fighters sitting on the US carriers, it is then opportunism - let them sit back near Australia coast and if an opportunity arises, go kill those transports.

[taamvan]

@nikola1975 word

[nishav]

@andrewaagamer yes, but, Axis & Allies is a strategy World War 2 board game. Any nuance and complexity should exist within the framework of historical reality.

The fact of the matter is that most of the game’s design decisions represent a trade-off between two mutually exclusive extremes. On the one hand, we have absolute historical fidelity (guess who wins) and on the other we have pure game design in which any change to improve play can be made.

While I agree with you that there is nothing game breaking about other nation’s fighters taking up carrier spaces, it is still a jarring disconnect from an historical fidelity standpoint. If the ANZAC fighters have been assigned to a US carrier why aren’t they taking orders from the US Admiralty and participating in US maneuvers? Why is Soviet Russia’s penalty for having 8 British fighters sitting on Moscow from turn 4 onward only the loss of a $5 bonus?

Certainly this is not the place for specific House Rules discussions, but it is important we remain conscious of the reality that thousands of people play this game, and that many of them disagree with us on everything, other than how awesome this game is.

[taamvan]

@nishav

Carrier Fighter Groups are elite units with specialist aircraft trained specifically for operations from aircraft carriers. Those aircraft have structural improvements but also weaknesses of range and load based on the short runway and tolerances of operations at sea.

Therefore, its quite unrealistic to treat land-based fighter groups as even capable of operating from carriers, and sea based fighters should be a separate, more expensive, range-limited unit that is allowed to operate from carriers. Some famous units like black sheep and marines did operate from land bases, but having the cross-capability of doing so is a luxury and requires extensive training and support and extra well-prepared bases.

Besides the US and UK and the IJN, no nation had any practical idea how to actually operate an integrated, fully supported and non-seaplane aircraft unit from a ship and any attempt to do so without decades of preparation and planning would be a disaster.

To follow your logic,

carrier planes should be a separate unit
normal fighters cannot land on carriers
germany and italy can buy carriers but it costs them 15+ for sea stukas and they fight at -1/-1/-1
The usa and uk go on to win the technology and operational war as they did in real life after they didn’t sink the nonexistent western axis CVs

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@taamvan

Which ruins my hopes for an Axis victory, making the entire game useless.

The Captain has half of what you’re looking for.

His carrier based fighters are cheaper, but fly less range, cannot use land bases, and have the same attack value.

Normal fighters (with a reduced cost) still can use carriers and land bases.

No rules regarding German and Italian carriers, which is good since Germany and Italy could have built carriers anyway.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@taamvan

And I believe Japan took aircraft and pilots off carriers and sent them to land bases in the South Pacific (destroyed by US overwhelming numbers).

[nishav]

@taamvan you didn’t follow my logic at all, as your proposal completely ignores the game design tradeoffs that have continued to emphasize generally generic units to keep the game at very much an entry level, and simultaneously ignores my statements regarding units on carriers still being completely independent, in favor of a point I never raised regarding the specialization of CAGs.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@nishav

Perhpas we have it that foreign units are placed under the command of a bigger power, with a limit on the amount put under control (so some British units can be under US command in Europe, like happened historically).

[taamvan]

@nishav

You’re arguing for a commander in chief rule

The rest of what i said was a response to your point about historicity.

as the others point out GW and the Captain’s Mod have many different treatments for planes, sea planes, torpedo bombers, air transports etc etc

My point was their treatment in AxA oob is a good tradeoff of all these ideas

You rock

Taamvan

[Martin]

I didn’t expect this thread to take such a direction, LOL :-)

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@taamvan

True.