Hey Lozmoid, thanks for the comments. It sounds like we have the same ideas on how to use the new trucks. Personally, I would keep the price at 4 IPCs, not 5. I just don’t think they should cost more than mechs or artillery. Although, I do understand your thinking on how incredibly useful these units will be in getting infantry and/or artillery to the front (and AA guns, I forgot about them).
One thing that I am wondering about: Might we need a new or altered setup to include trucks in the starting setup? I would think that each nation, or at least the larger ones, would start with some trucks. Or do you think this should be a unit that gets purchased after the game starts?
Razor, thanks very much for your input on this. Those stats you provided are well worth taking a closer look at. I will give some proper thought to Mech.Art at some point, and I agree that H.Tanks should be Att(4), Def(4), Move(1), Cost(8?) and no BLITZ. Not sure about the cost; would have to test this.
knp7765, yes I was thinking the same thing. But I guess it all depends on what game we’re talking about here. Personally, I hadn’t envisioned adding Mot.Inf to the set up of any official A&A games due to obvious balancing issues, so I guess I was just looking for input on how these units should be designed with regard to future use in people’s own in-house game concepts.
I gotta be honest, I think 4IPC is too cheap. I think 5IPC would be better; a Transport costs 7IPC as it is and the Mot.Inf could be thought of as basically a land-based Transport. You will get your money’s worth out of them, believe me, as long as you don’t leave them undefended. I reckon Mot.Inf will soon become an essential target for bombers. Getting Inf and Art two spaces to the front lines in one turn is very powerful.
Oh, and another rule - Motorised Infantry can be loaded onto Transports (along with one Infantry) in the normal fashion! Forgot to add that.
Razor, thanks very much for your input on this.
Getting Inf and Art two spaces to the front lines in one turn is very powerful.
Your welcome, Loz, happy to share :-)
In the real war all units used railroads to get to the front, and a infantry division would get to the front faster than a panzer division, because it took some time to load the tanks on the train. Just look at the German reinforcements after D-day, the men of the Panzer divisions arrived in Normandy several weeks before their tanks arrived. If the only advantage of tanks and mechs is they arrive faster to the front, then that is too bad and historically uncorrect. This game could use a Railroad rule.
Now, the real advantage of motorized units like tanks, mechs and selfpropelled artillery, was speed, range and mobility. They would punch a hole in the frontline and still have mobility to exploit that breakthrough.
To put that fact into an A&A rule, would be to let all motorized units, like tanks, mechs and selfpropelled artillery, move one extra space after the battle in the first territory is resolved. The rule could state that all motorized units always can move one extra space to a friendly territory, but if they want to keep moving into an enemy territory for another battle, then they need to be acompanied by a Leader unit.
Now with this kind of rules, the heavy units like tanks, mechs and selfpropelled artillery will get its right combat value in battle too, and not just be some fast travelling units. Tanks had more fighting power than men with rifles.
Another way of doing it, could be to let all support units boost a matching infantry to its own combat value. Like an artillery boost a matching inf to attack at 2, a selfpropelled artillery can boost a matching mech to attack at 3, etc
I also agree with razor.
But you forget one things.
Self propelled gun…(tank killer) if you want.
I gotta be honest, I think 4IPC is too cheap. I think 5IPC would be better; a Transport costs 7IPC as it is and the Mot.Inf could be thought of as basically a land-based Transport. You will get your money’s worth out of them, believe me, as long as you don’t leave them undefended. I reckon Mot.Inf will soon become an essential target for bombers. Getting Inf and Art two spaces to the front lines in one turn is very powerful.
You know what? The more I think about it, the more I agree with you on trucks costing 5 IPCs. Even with no combat ability of their own, getting infantry and artillery up to the front faster would make them VERY versatile and surely be worth more than the attack values of artillery or mechs. Plus, I got to keep reminding myself of the grand strategic nature of this game. I keep thinking of these as a single unit when really one truck piece would represent a whole fleet of trucks plus support personnel and equipment.
Man, I am really looking forward to implementing these new rules and pieces. Only problem now is that even when we get the Italian set in a few weeks, none of the other countries will have trucks yet. We COULD use the trucks from Battle of the Bulge, but that’s only USA and Germany. We would still have Japan, UK, ANZAC, USSR and France without trucks.
Regarding cost of Trucks (Road Transport):
With Artillery costing 4 and Infantry costing 3….
the combined cost of an SPG/Artillery-Tank (presumably a cost near 6, which is similar to the tank whose chassis it often shared) and a Mechanized Infantry (cost 4) should exceed the cost of the Artillery + Infantry + Truck.
If not, and all other things are equal (hitting power of SPG at or near towed Artillery), the incentive to purchase Mech and SPG is diminished.
In fact, wouldn’t it be another advantage of using Trucks that if you suffer Infantry casualties while winning the battle, you could still slide new, cheap Infantry into the group by transporting them in via Trucks?
So, to make the SPG and Mech combo viable, the Truck should cost at least 3. However, reasoning that Trucks cost more than (or even as much as) Mech Infantry seems a hard sell to me.
Therefore, I may keep the costs of the two combinations equal, and go with this:
Artillery Tank (SPG) cost 6 / att 2 / def 3 / move 2
Truck cost 3 / att 0 / def 0 / move 2 / can transport one Infantry and/or one Artillery / may NOT move into any territory more than 2 spaces beyond an IC owned by any player (limiting their range).
Perhaps, to make trucks a bit more vulnerable, is make trucks susceptible to raids from enemy fighters and tac bombers. That way, there would be a way to counter the use of trucks, and force players to use them more sparingly. This would make sure that tanks are still being purchased. It might even be enough to eliminate mechanized all together as well.
