Cruiser add on

[baron Münchhausen]

@General:

I like the towing idea, and it makes sense to limit it to destroyers. It would make sub hunting easier or they could be paired with air for more muscle.

I can live with both world Cruiser kind of:

CRUISER
Attack 3
Defense 3
Move 3 (no NB boost)
Cost 12
Shore bombardment @3
Gives +1 Move to smaller surface vessel (Transport and Destroyer only) paired 1:1 with
Gets 1 preemptive Anti-Aircraft defense @1 against up to 1 plane, whichever the lesser.

And Battleship can also use such 1 preemptive AA shot @1.

[Young Grasshopper]

If Cruisers are so great at movement, why don’t we just give them the same stealth movement ability subs have only they can’t be blocked by other vessels the way subs can?

[aequitas-et-veritas]

@Baron:

@aequitas:

Playing W@W world at war on triple and having the ability to carry one Inf on a CR is much of a help.
Any planes can also hit a sub, but it will submerge after one Round of combat.

I’m saying that a minor add on onto CR will def. spice up and upgrade a global 40 game.
Thank you for your input so far.

I find that 1 regular Infantry at 3 IPCs put on Cruiser is a bit unbalanced compared to TP needing escorting warships.

I play Subs as in G40 but planes can hit unsubmerged Submarines anytime, with/wo DD.
DD is still required to block submerging Sub before, so attacking plane can hit them.

The ipc value of an Inf makes it indeed a little bit unbalanced.
(W@W inf cost is 2ipc)
But it is not like we would build up CR’s like crazy because of that, right?
I get your point  :-D

[baron Münchhausen]

@Young:

If Cruisers are so great at movement, why don’t we just give them the same stealth movement ability subs have only they can’t be blocked by other vessels the way subs can?

I wonder why such Cruiser cannot be blocked by another Cruiser.
It is still a surface warship.

[CWO Marc]

@Baron:

I just made a fast overview of cruisers range compared to liberty ship.
Funny,  I found that Liberty have a range of 20 000 nautic miles.
But Cruiser, at 15 knots have still smaller range than Liberty ships running at 11 knots.

Maybe there is a different way to rationalize a +1 bonus move when paired with cruiser.
Not just refueling the thirsty little ones around.
IDK.
Game movement is not only pure speed, because at this, Destroyer seems the fastest warship.

When ship performances are compared, one has to take all the relevant factors into account.  There are lots of WWII ship types that had long ranges; little dinky corvettes, for example, could cross the entire Atlantic without refueling.  That doesn’t mean that you can put every long-ranged ship into the same basket and consider them equivalent.  Cruisers had long ranges, and so did transport ships and so did corvettes…but they were vastly different in their capabilities.  Cruisers had powerful turbine engines and could reach high speeds when they needed it.  Transport ships and corvettes didn’t: they had low-powered engines and they were slow.  The reason they had such long ranges was because they were slow: low-powered, slow vessels are much more fuel-economical than high-powered fast vessels, for the same reason that a little commuter car gets better gas mileage than an Indy 500 race car.  Plus the fact that transport ships and corvettes don’t have any heavy armour to lug around.  If you pair a cruiser with a transport ship, it’s logically not the transport ship that would get a +1 movement boost, it would logically be the cruiser that gets a -1 movement penalty because groups of ships have to travel at the speed of their slowest unit.

[General 6 Stars]

@Baron:

@General:

I like the towing idea, and it makes sense to limit it to destroyers. It would make sub hunting easier or they could be paired with air for more muscle.

I can live with both world Cruiser kind of:

CRUISER
Attack 3
Defense 3
Move 3 (no NB boost)
Cost 12
Shore bombardment @3
Gives +1 Move to smaller surface vessel (Transport and Destroyer only) paired 1:1 with
Gets 1 preemptive Anti-Aircraft defense @1 against up to 1 plane, whichever the lesser.

And Battleship can also use such 1 preemptive AA shot @1.

Agree but no Transport if its to over powering.

@Baron:

@Young:

If Cruisers are so great at movement, why don’t we just give them the same stealth movement ability subs have only they can’t be blocked by other vessels the way subs can?

I wonder why such Cruiser cannot be blocked by another Cruiser.
It is still a surface warship.

Agree with Baron.

[baron Münchhausen]

@CWO:

@Baron:

I just made a fast overview of cruisers range compared to liberty ship.
Funny, � I found that Liberty have a range of 20 000 nautic miles.
But Cruiser, at 15 knots have still smaller range than Liberty ships running at 11 knots.

Maybe there is a different way to rationalize a +1 bonus move when paired with cruiser.
Not just refueling the thirsty little ones around.
IDK.
Game movement is not only pure speed, because at this, Destroyer seems the fastest warship.

When ship performances are compared, one has to take all the relevant factors into account.  There are lots of WWII ship types that had long ranges; little dinky corvettes, for example, could cross the entire Atlantic without refueling.  That doesn’t mean that you can put every long-ranged ship into the same basket and consider them equivalent.  Cruisers had long ranges, and so did transport ships and so did corvettes…but they were vastly different in their capabilities.  Cruisers had powerful turbine engines and could reach high speeds when they needed it.  Transport ships and corvettes didn’t: they had low-powered engines and they were slow.  The reason they had such long ranges was because they were slow: low-powered, slow vessels are much more fuel-economical than high-powered fast vessels, for the same reason that a little commuter car gets better gas mileage than an Indy 500 race car.  Plus the fact that transport ships and corvettes don’t have any heavy armour to lug around.  If you pair a cruiser with a transport ship, it’s logically not the transport ship that would get a +1 movement boost, it would logically be the cruiser that gets a -1 movement penalty because groups of ships have to travel at the speed of their slowest unit.

I understand Marc.
What I’m looking for is different ways to explain this +1M boost coming first from Naval Base.
All ships received the bonus OOB.
Refueling facilities on NB can hardly explained it from a realistic POV. Neither NB can increase speed of TPs.

So, is there other kind of explanation about why Cruiser paired to another ship gain the +1M boost?
Here is an alternate explanation, by far incomplete:

From what I understand, Destroyers (and Subs to some extent) were the main warships with lesser range which need to be refueled at sea. The other ships have better autonomy.
So, can it be the opposite, for instance, Cruiser have no need to slowdown to refuel and share fuel between Carriers, Battleships and Transports?
That way, Cruiser can travel M3 with others BB, CV and TPs?

[CWO Marc]

@Baron:

So, is there other kind of explanation about why Cruiser paired to another ship gain the +1M boost?

No.  At least not if you want to be realistic.  A cruiser boosting a destroyer makes realistic sense (for reasons that I’ve already explained).  A cruiser boosting a carrier, a battleship or a transport ship is unrealistic (for reasons that I’ve already explained).  A cruiser boosting a cruiser is unnecessary.  A cruiser boosting a submarine would arguably be possible, but in practice I don’t think it was done, and the concept is problematic because it would imply a sub operating in tandem with a cruiser.

The fact that the A&A rules provide a naval base movement boost to various ship typess isn’t (in my opinion) a valid reason for arguing that cruisers should be able to boost anything except a destroyer because (in my opinion) the whole concept of movement boosts from naval bases (and air bases) is one of those A&A rules that I find unrealistic and baffling.  I have trouble visualizing what this “base boost” is supposed to represent in real life.  It can’t be a speed increase, because the speed of a ship or a plane is a function of its design, not a function of the facility from which it operates.  And it can’t be a range increase because, regardless of whether a unit travels to Point B from a Point A that contains a base or from a Point A that contains no base, the distance from A to B is still the same.  Bases aren’t hyperspace tunnels that shrink the physical distance between a point of departure and a point of arrival.

[General 6 Stars]

@CWO:

@Baron:

So, is there other kind of explanation about why Cruiser paired to another ship gain the +1M boost?

No.  At least not if you want to be realistic.  A cruiser boosting a destroyer makes realistic sense (for reasons that I’ve already explained).  A cruiser boosting a carrier, a battleship or a transport ship is unrealistic (for reasons that I’ve already explained).  A cruiser boosting a cruiser is unnecessary.  A cruiser boosting a submarine would arguably be possible, but in practice I don’t think it was done, and the concept is problematic because it would imply a sub operating in tandem with a cruiser.

The fact that the A&A rules provide a naval base movement boost to various ship typess isn’t (in my opinion) a valid reason for arguing that cruisers should be able to boost anything except a destroyer because (in my opinion) the whole concept of movement boosts from naval bases (and air bases) is one of those A&A rules that I find unrealistic and baffling.  I have trouble visualizing what this “base boost” is supposed to represent in real life.  It can’t be a speed increase, because the speed of a ship or a plane is a function of its design, not a function of the facility from which it operates.  And it can’t be a range increase because, regardless of whether a unit travels to Point B from a Point A that contains a base or from a Point A that contains no base, the distance from A to B is still the same.  Bases aren’t hyperspace tunnels that shrink the physical distance between a point of departure and a point of arrival.

Agree with ya CWO. I don’t understand the base increase too unless you get to strap on an extra fuel tank.
Airbases should just be used for planes landing and taking off,  2 AA shots at attacking planes and 3 figs scramble.
Naval Bases you can only Build, Fix, get 2 AA shots at attacking ships or planes next to that sea zone.

Thats where you could add a tanker ship that can move a certain amount of ships 3 sea zones without naval bases, but still give the Cruiser its 3M even with tanker only.

[CWO Marc]

@SS:

I don’t understand the base increase too unless you get to strap on an extra fuel tank.

Yes, exactly.  The difference between a base and a tanker is that a base stays on the ground, whereas a naval tanker (an “oiler” in proper naval parlance) can accompany ships at sea and a tanker aircraft (which didn’t exist in WWII) can accompany planes in the air.  Without an accompanying tanker (or other accompanying unit from which they can mooch), ships and planes are limited to the fuel they can carry in their own tanks, and that amount of tank capacity doesn’t change regardless of what type of ground facility they’re operating from.

[baron Münchhausen]

@CWO:

@Baron:

So, is there other kind of explanation about why Cruiser paired to another ship gain the +1M boost?

No.  At least not if you want to be realistic.  A cruiser boosting a destroyer makes realistic sense (for reasons that I’ve already explained).  A cruiser boosting a carrier, a battleship or a transport ship is unrealistic (for reasons that I’ve already explained).  A cruiser boosting a cruiser is unnecessary.   A cruiser boosting a submarine would arguably be possible, but in practice I don’t think it was done, and the concept is problematic because it would imply a sub operating in tandem with a cruiser.

**The fact that the A&A rules provide a naval base movement boost to various ship typess isn’t (in my opinion) a valid reason for arguing that cruisers should be able to boost anything except a destroyer because (in my opinion) the whole concept of movement boosts from naval bases (and air bases) is one of those A&A rules that I find unrealistic and baffling.  I have trouble visualizing what this “base boost” is supposed to represent in real life.  It can’t be a speed increase, because the speed of a ship or a plane is a function of its design, not a function of the facility from which it operates.  And it can’t be a range increase because, regardless of whether a unit travels to Point B from a Point A that contains a base or from a Point A that contains no base, the distance from A to B is still the same.  **Bases aren’t hyperspace tunnels that shrink the physical distance between a point of departure and a point of arrival.

The only aspect which is not part of the argument is that a game turn is about 3 to 6 months of time lapse. And 3 months travel at sea on free water, is enough to cross Pacific Ocean or Atlantic from east to west or north to south. So realistically, all ships can travel more than 3 SZs in 3 months period.

Adding this element in the issue can maybe help find an acceptable rationalization for Naval Base movement boost.
For instance, maybe it is a matter of packing a lot of ressources in a short notice which allows extended range from Bases.
Probably, units have to go back and forth from the starting point to destination more than once.
The board shows a single movement but it summarize many ones, so having less time to spend on a more organized area (base) to refuel and pack things up allows more time to travel between the two areas, so it can provide an extended operational range.

IDK.  I don’t have any ready-made explanation.

[CWO Marc]

@Baron:

Adding this element in the issue can maybe help find an acceptable rationalization for Naval Base movement boost.

If I’m not mistaken, the original purpose of this thread was to suggest one or two simple fixes to make the cruiser a more attactive purchase option.  The thread has now veered into the subject of trying to rationalize the movement boost provided to ships by naval bases (which is an entirely different topic) in order to provide a basis for arguing that cruisers should be able to boost naval transports and other ships rather than just boosting destroyers, even though that concept – in my opinion – is completely unrealistic.  Since by now I’ve made pretty much every argument I can think of to explain why that’s my opinion, I’m not going to argue the point any further.  My opinion is only that, an opinion, and you certainly don’t have to take it into consideration if you disagree with it.

[baron Münchhausen]

You are right it can be seen as a derailing.
But, I rather see it as questioning the assumptions and exploring the idea it reveals.

When I bring the move boost to Cruiser, I saw it as a simple borrowing of one game feature of the naval base with some limitations (1:1 and surface vessels only).

It was an accepted feature of the OOB.

But, your always interesting line of thinking  bring the historical or realistic POV glasses over House rules. I realized that it can provides some basis to question this OOB features of NB and AB.
I was looking for an acceptable narrative to explain move boost by bases on the board.
I have none of your compendium memory and erudition on WWII. It was an open question.
Maybe, in another thread we will find some narrative for bases movement boost.

The impact on HR with Cruiser was a secondary objective.

[regularkid]

@CWO:

@Baron:

So, is there other kind of explanation about why Cruiser paired to another ship gain the +1M boost?

No.  At least not if you want to be realistic.  A cruiser boosting a destroyer makes realistic sense (for reasons that I’ve already explained).  A cruiser boosting a carrier, a battleship or a transport ship is unrealistic (for reasons that I’ve already explained).  A cruiser boosting a cruiser is unnecessary.   A cruiser boosting a submarine would arguably be possible, but in practice I don’t think it was done, and the concept is problematic because it would imply a sub operating in tandem with a cruiser.

The fact that the A&A rules provide a naval base movement boost to various ship typess isn’t (in my opinion) a valid reason for arguing that cruisers should be able to boost anything except a destroyer because (in my opinion) the whole concept of movement boosts from naval bases (and air bases) is one of those A&A rules that I find unrealistic and baffling.  I have trouble visualizing what this “base boost” is supposed to represent in real life.  It can’t be a speed increase, because the speed of a ship or a plane is a function of its design, not a function of the facility from which it operates.  And it can’t be a range increase because, regardless of whether a unit travels to Point B from a Point A that contains a base or from a Point A that contains no base, the distance from A to B is still the same.  Bases aren’t hyperspace tunnels that shrink the physical distance between a point of departure and a point of arrival.

CWO, while I have little interest in a cruiser-boosting-movement concept, I’d like to say a word in defense of naval bases. The movement bonus from a naval base is only ‘baffling’ if one conceptualizes fleet movement on the board literally. It can’t possibly be that a fleet’s range represents literal ship speeds. Assuming a single turn constitutes six months, or even four months, none of the ship ranges would make sense, since ships could travel much further in that mount time. Rather, the movement of any unit on the board represents, in my view, something more abstract–a “projection of power.”  A naval base allows its owner to project naval power more effectively/efficiently than without it, and this advantage is represented on the board by giving ships a movement bonus. Make sense?

[baron Münchhausen]

What can be describe as a projection of power in WWII events?
If you can give us an example, it will help understand this abstract concept.
I thought it was more a game concept than anything else.
It was used to describe the benefits of multiple zones within range (7 move points) which can be attacked by a single stack of Strategic bombers put on Air Base in Darken skies strategy.

[Young Grasshopper]

I’m leaning toward this…

Cruiser

Cost- 12
Move- 2 (3 from NB)
Att- @3 or less plus @1 against enemy air units (per round if present)
Def- @3 or less plus @1 against enemy air units (per round if present)
Special: May conduct 1st round shore bombardment @3 or less

Battleship

Cost- 20
Move- 2 (3 from NB)
Att- @4 or less plus @2 or less against enemy air units (per round if present)
Def- @4 less plus @2 or less against enemy air units (per round if present)
Special: May conduct 1st round shore bombardment @4 or less

[baron Münchhausen]

@Young:

I’m leaning toward this…

Cruiser

Cost- 12
Move- 2 (3 from NB)
Att- @3 or less plus @1 against enemy air units (per round if present)
Def- @3 or less plus @1 against enemy air units (per round if present)
Special: May conduct 1st round shore bombardment @3 or less

Battleship

Cost- 20
Move- 2 (3 from NB)
Att- @4 or less plus @2 or less against enemy air units (per round if present)
Def- @4 less plus @2 or less against enemy air units (per round if present)
Special: May conduct 1st round shore bombardment @4 or less

What is a real paradox is that Cruiser and Battleship are better at killing planes than aircraft units.
:-D

[barney]

Per round AA fire can be pretty devastating. Let us know how it goes YG.

[Faramir]

I would just make the simple change of giving Cruisers a base movement of 3 (Naval Bases do not increase movement for Cruisers). Just enough of a boost to make them worth considering, like the Battleship’s 2 hit ability.

[Young Grasshopper]

@Faramir:

I would just make the simple change of giving Cruisers a base movement of 3 (Naval Bases do not increase movement for Cruisers). Just enough of a boost to make them worth considering, like the Battleship’s 2 hit ability.

I’m not sure the extended movement would be enough for me to buy them unless some crazy good strategy developed from it.