The aberration of the defenseless transport

If we really wanted realism there would only be three units. An army, navy, and air force unit if we’re talking about the game on a strategic level.

Having more units is fun. One thing about house rules is the fact that they are just that, house rules. What works for one group may not work for others. I think sharing ideas is a great thing. I like DK’s ideas. I don’t think however that we always need to assume that HRs are going to be adopted by Larry Harris, tripleA, or tourney organizers.

I disagree with realism means whittling down everything to only 3 units, the army, navy and air force. It was an almost irrelevant comment.

The point of axis and allies was and has always been about starting off at a point in world war 2 that was accurate to the time and conditions that existed at that point in time. You then had the chance to refight the war without making the same mistakes and trying different strategies in an attempt to win the war. A what might have happened scenario. The game is largely marketed to history enthusiasts who don’t want to be forced to fight the war and merely repeat history, but want some level of accuracy in terms of what was at the time.

The game can only be so accurate without a level of complexity that would hurt the game, making it to tedious and long to play. But when changes that are simple can be made that bring an awesome level of realism, then to not make those changes seems a change to me.

Many of those changes have been made, but it has taken 30 years to do it. From the very first edition of axis and allies, (which I never played) to the second (which I play for over a decade) to todays versions, it was obvious each new edition was more realistic then the previous. Why it has taken this long and not yet completely fixed is a shame to me.

I think the last problem and one of the biggest was the Naval problem. Unfortunately the fix was to create NO’s instead of fixing the cost.

@eddiem4145:

I disagree with realism means whittling down everything to only 3 units, the army, navy and air force. It was an almost irrelevant comment.

The point of axis and allies was and has always been about starting off at a point in world war 2 that was accurate to the time and conditions that existed at that point in time. You then had the chance to refight the war without making the same mistakes and trying different strategies in an attempt to win the war. A what might have happened scenario. The game is largely marketed to history enthusiasts who don’t want to be forced to fight the war and merely repeat history, but want some level of accuracy in terms of what was at the time.

The game can only be so accurate without a level of complexity that would hurt the game, making it to tedious and long to play. But when changes that are simple can be made that bring an awesome level of realism, then to not make those changes seems a change to me.

Many of those changes have been made, but it has taken 30 years to do it. From the very first edition of axis and allies, (which I never played) to the second (which I play for over a decade) to todays versions, it was obvious each new edition was more realistic then the previous. Why it has taken this long and not yet completely fixed is a shame to me.

I think the last problem and one of the biggest was the Naval problem. Unfortunately the fix was to create NO’s instead of fixing the cost.

First of all, that was not an irrelevant comment. toblerone77 makes a valid point. Axis & Allies, particularly Global, Spring 1942 and any others that use the world map, is a grand strategic game. You are taking the entire resources of a nation state and waging war. At this scale, it really would make more sense to say you are using your army, navy or air force as opposed to just infantry, or just bombers or just destroyers.
However, that would really not be so fun for us A&A fans. It would oversimplify the game and we would end up with another version of RISK. We don’t want some simple piece representing all of our infantry, artillery, mechs and tanks in one fell swoop.
So, they gave units to split our armies, navies and air forces up. I have always liked to imagine, in the case of land forces, that each unit represents a whole division although at this scale it’s probably more like Army or Army Corp strength. Whatever the case, it is really cool to be able to diversify your army so that you can exploit the different strengths of each type of unit. Where do you want better defense? Where do you want stronger offensive punch? Where is movement more of a factor? And so on…
Unfortunately, all of this leads to the problems of “realism” in the game and “why it isn’t fixed yet”. In Classic, we simply had infantry, tanks, fighters, bombers, subs, transports, battleships and carriers. Fun game yes, but not very realistic.
So Revised gave us Artillery and Destroyers. Better! Now both the army and navy has an “in-between” unit. That’s two more pieces to make rules for. More realistic = more complex.
Well, that wasn’t good enough for us. So Anniversary came along and gave us Cruisers. Great! Now destroyers can assume their traditional role of somewhat lower powered warships that beat up on subs instead of some sort of little brother to the battleship. That’s what Cruisers were meant for anyway. One more piece, a few more rules.
Still not quite good enough. So along comes the 1940 games and give us Tactical Bombers and Mechanized Infantry. FABULOUS!! Now we have fodder for tanks when they blitz and a new plane that can give us the strength of bombers under certain conditions. Of course, two new pieces require still more rules for them. Somewhat more complex rules as both of these pieces require being paired with other pieces to utilize their main strengths. Also, since this game takes place in 1940, two major Allied nations aren’t even at war yet and only enter war after certain circumstances occur. One Axis power is only partly at war. There are MORE neutral countries now, some are pro one side or the other and all of the now have their own standing armies. This means a LOT more rules, some of which seem to be very complex as witnessed by the FAQ.
Even this is not “realistic” enough for some people. They keep wanting more and Larry Harris is bombarded with questions and comments like “Why doesn’t this unit do such and such?” or “Why can’t this country do so and so?”
On top of this, we have HBG coming out with even more different units. Some are simply different versions of the current units, some are units to represent tech units we don’t have (heavy bombers, jet fighters, etc.) and some are even more “in between” units that would add more to our current forces (light cruisers, escort carriers, etc.).
Now I do NOT begrudge HBG for this. I absolutely LOVE the idea of more pieces and different units. The point I’m getting at is if we want to use them, they will require still MORE rules to incorporate them into our game. Add to this HBG also makes a 1939 map, which I am sure a game starting in 1939 would have even more complex rules than a game starting in 1940 just for the political rules alone. And what about adding early-war, mid-war and late-war versions of all the units?
Do you realize if we had an Axis & Allies style game that started in 1939 and incorporated all of the current units available plus the versions that HBG is putting out that we would end up getting a phone book for the rules.
What’s more, all of this realism and complexity to unit strengths and weaknesses is going to make this game end up like Tide of Iron or A&A Miniatures. The very reason I don’t play those games is they are too complicated. There are just too many things to keep track of and it takes the fun out for me. I prefer the level of simplicity to A&A.
If A&A in it’s current form isn’t enough for you and you want to keep adding different nuances to make it more realistic, then of course that is your prerogative. I just wish you wouldn’t come down on Larry Harris or WOTC for making a “broken” or “incomplete” game. They have put out an excellent product.

So my point of relevancy was this. You kept using language in terms of using more and different types of pieces for more realism. You are pointing out that the more realistic and diverse units that are introduced makes the game more complex.

What I said was irrelevant was the idea that a more realistic game would be to have only 3 units, and army, navy and airforce.

What would anyone do with that comment. Is it more realistic to have more diverse units and fight more realistic wars, or just 3 units, one representing a navy, and army, and airforce. How that is more realistic and would give more realism is beyond me. Could it be? I guess that depends on your argument. So that leaves me with what??? Or anyone reading this post. A point that gave no value to the discussion. That is why I called it irrelevant.

The challenge of course has always been realism versus complexity. It is a challenge that of course is a difficult one and you can’t make everyone happy. But guess what, they dealt with those problems. 1942 is suppose to be the begginers basic less complex game. Global is suppose to be the more intricate game.

All the biggest problems that people have been the most vocal about since the 1980’s have been fixed. Very slowly, one by one. My point is that there fix for a lack of action in the Pacific missed an obvious opportunity. The biggest problem in the Pacific was that the amount of resources necessary to build a Navy by the Japanese and US compared to what could be gained failed in comparison to what could be gained by spending those resources in Asia by Japan and Europe by the US. They attempted to fix that problem. In case you haven’t noticed, the cost of Navy’s have continued to come down, oh so slightly with each version since the 1980’s. They just didn’t go obviously far enough. That is my point. Along with the 6 VC for Japan. It is a horrible rule and completely foolish based on no historical or realistic reason. Only  for the purpose of forcing the US to spend significantly in the Pacific to a point that is inefficient.

And I am not advocating the US can ignore Japan.

That is my point. And in keeping true to this post, if you are going to have defenseless transports, how in the heck, are you going to make them cost $7. Nuts!!!

@eddiem4145:

That is my point. And in keeping true to this post, if you are going to have defenseless transports, how in the heck, are you going to make them cost $7. Nuts!!!

You kind of answered your own question: for realism.
It cost a lot of money to get the ships together to move all the troops and material over to Europe or out to the Pacific. It was expensive but was all necessary. The reason the US did it so well was because they were a big industrial powerhouse, which is represented in the game by their much larger income when compared to the other countries. If you lower the price of transports too much, you will have nations transporting vast armies at little expense outside of the men and material. That is not very realistic.
As for transports being defenseless, they WERE defenseless. Without warships and aircraft to protect them, transport ships were sitting ducks for U-boats, warships and aircraft. While transports may have had some AA defenses (which is why I suggested in an earlier post giving them a limited defense against air-only attacks), do you really think a transport could damage a battleship or sink a cruiser? Of course not. That is why the defense @ 1 from Classic was removed. That’s also why transports are chosen last for casualties. You have to get through the warships protecting them first.
Bottom line is you can’t have cheap transports or give them a defense where they can damage warships and still keep any sort of realism in the game. I think the ideas you are proposing go toward making the game LESS real.

Just to let you know that a bunch of transports were not as defenseless that I also think at the beginning of this thread:

@Der:

Wow - just got back from vacation to see this.

I’ve been reading Richard Frank’s historic account called Guadalcanal. On pp 79-80 he describes a Japanese air raid on US transports:

“Twenty-three Bettys …burst out of the East in several groups to charge the fat transports just before noon…the Japanese suffered grievously at the hands of the ship’s gunners. The Bettys rippled the sea surface from an altitude of only 20 to 40 feet in accordance with tactics that brought success early in the war against weak AA defenses. But now the Japanese faced more heavy guns guided by sophisticated fire control systems and, more important a proliferation of the deadly 20 mm antiaircraft machineguns…12 or so adorned each of the sluggish transports, and from some vessels came a further barrage of automatic rifle and submachinegun fire…only five of the attacking Bettys fluttered back to Rabaul…”

That is history. Under global transport rules, it would have read something like this: "then a single Japanese Betty flew over and all the transports were auto-sunk without firing a shot."Â

To answer some of the requests for more details of our game, what happened was people would decide that they would invade somewhere, then buy ENOUGH TRANSPORTS TO DO THE JOB, and quit. That makes sense - at $10 a pop you are not going to keep spamming transports to use in battles when you can be twice as effective using DDs which cost $8 and attack and defend @2.

In the new naval setting, BBs need not fear transports - remember they can take the first hit free, and in some versions they are auto-repaired at the end of the battle. If you’ve bought five 10 IPC transports that is $50 worth of shipping there - do you think sane people will run them into battle situations as a regular strategy? We didn’t - it might have happened in dire situations but spamming transports was never strategy used in our group, with DDs available.

Remember, we’re not talking about going back to the old classic game world with 1 hit BBs and no DDs. We are advocating bringing the classic-type transport into the new global world which is a whole different story.Â

For the record eddiem, I’m not a proponent of having only a land, sea, and air unit. Matter of factly I have at least one set of every custom battle piece HBG sells and have eight sets of Japanese units on pre-order.

@Baron:

Just to let you know that a bunch of transports were not as defenseless that I also think at the beginning of this thread:

I agree with that. That’s why I proposed an AA defense for transports and suggested limiting the amount of transports any attacking unit could sink to 3 per attacking unit, be it aircraft or warship.
Transports were not really designed to take on submarines or surface warships but even so, having 1 sub or 1 destroyer move in and sink a stack of 10 or more transports just seems ridiculous to me, or at the very least simply unfair for game play. Too easy for the attacker. So limit the number to 3 per attacking unit so if the attacker wants to sink that stack of 20 transports, they have to commit resources to do so. Now, this might lead to a problem of some players leaving huge stacks of transports unguarded by warships or planes if they see that their opponent has limited attacking ships in the area, but I can’t fix everything.
As for aircraft, I do believe that transports had some AA capabilities. So I suggest each transport gets to roll 1 die @ 1 for AA defense. This would work along with the limits on attacking the transports. So if a single plane attacks, up to 3 transports can roll for AA since any further transports will not be involved.
Also, if the defending transports get a hit on the aircraft, the attacking aircraft can no longer destroy all 3 transports but has to roll 1 die at it’s normal attack value. Tactical Bombers do NOT get the attack bonus for being paired with a fighter when attacking only transports, so both fighters and tacs would roll @ 3. Strategic Bombers still roll @ 4 and if you have Heavy Bombers, they can roll 2 dice.
If the attacking plane gets a hit, then just 1 transport is destroyed with the plane and the other two survive.
Of course, if none of the transports score an AA hit, then the attacking plane doesn’t have to roll but automatically destroys the 3 transports.
This would make any “air heavy” players think twice and perhaps commit more IPCs to warship purchases and not only air. On large transport stacks, it can get pretty dangerous for your planes. Say you sent out 3 planes to sink 9 transports. That’s nine dice to roll for AA guns. You could lose all 3 fighters and take a chance of sinking 0 transports if your dice roll bad. Even if you roll good and get hits with all 3 fighters, your opponent still has 6 transports left. However, if you would have sent 3 subs, all 9 transports would go down with no danger to the subs.

Transports are better they way they are modeled in Global and other games.

In naval actions, the speed of ships is much greater than the AP and they would never be caught in combat because they would not be in the area. The Historical cases where they were attacked are very few. Each transport is really a collection of vessels amounting to about 1,000,000 tons of shipping. Where is there any prescient where even a remotely comparable case exists?

Their is none. Perhaps a few AP’s got sunk in the medd or Pacific. Most of these units were sunk on the high seas as per convoy raid by submarines, and not fleet combat.

Now comes sarcasm:

Captain: we are getting ready to attack the Japanese fleet… Let’s have the entire fleet halt for a dead stop and wait a week for the 12 knot transport ships to get in front of the fleet so any hits can go against them.

1st mate: Yes that makes perfect sense! That way our battleships can’t be hit right away, even though the enemy will be shooting at a target that has 16 inch guns, the trick is to park these 12 knot ships in front and convince the enemy projectiles to miss and hit only the defenseless transports. An excellent suggestion Captain!

Captain: In the mean time, keep the fleet dead in the water even though we move at 30 knots, we can’t go faster than 12 knots because we will leave these buggers behind and that’s not fair to their crews who will die without honor.

@Der:

It’s interesting to see this debate still going on.

As players we want to see this game become the most fun possible. The game makers, however, have a different goal. That is to sell the most units possible. This can only be done by adding new units, rules, etc. as no one would buy a new game unless there was something new in it. Axis and Allies has been out around 30 years now and I believe the game has become overlegislated. Even the creators have seen this and have introduced simplified versions like AA 1941.

One example is the transport. It did not work well for realism purposes in the early games. People were using them for battle fodder. I get that. But the rule changes have not fixed this - they have only added a new version of unrealism. Now a single fighter or DD can take out an unlimited amount of unescorted transports with no risk at all. No dice are rolled. They are just lost. This is not consistent with any other AA combat in the history of the game. Dice have ALWAYS been rolled for combat. If you don’t roll dice, you don’t have pure AA, IMO.

With the addition of new units and new unit abilities (like 2 hit BBs, 8 IPC DDs, ETC) the Classic transport fits in acceptably well. In fact, in our next game we are going to drop our classic TPs back to 8 IPCs instead of ten, and see what happens. I suspect people will still buy ENOUGH TRANSPORTS TO DO THE JOB, and then by the more powerful DDs when they need cannon fodder.

There will still be occasional unrealism in sea battles, but the simplicity and consistency with the rest of the game’s combat system is worth it.

Remember, we are playing a GAME first of all with a WWII flavor. AA will never be an accurate WWII sim. There is no FOW and there is no supply system, for a couple of examples. If the supposedly “improved” rules are encumbering, inconsistent, and reducing the fun of your experience then I say out with them.

“I should point out that I encourage the creation and implementation of house rules” - Larry Harris

DK I couldn’t agree more. What fascinates me is how this subject of transports being able to defend creates so much ire. I love house rules and use them frequently. What I don’t understand is why many feel the need to to tell other players how to run thier house games. Discussion and exchange of ideas is a great exercise and I’m all for it. I think however that sometimes the internet community feels that they must be Larry Harris’s rules police. Just because someone creates something outside of the established authority of LH or tripleA does not make it wrong. Conversely the net community doesn’t have Larry’s exclusive ear quite as exclusively as some may think.

As much as I like your idea DK and use direct or modified versions of it , I think quite a few really don’t like it. I find though your idea seems to create an unwarranted fear that somehow Larry Harris or tripleA is reading this thread and is just itching to change it back as if he bases major design descisions upon posts on this site.

Again DK good post friend!

I must admit that I’m starting to be annoyed by the defenseless transport and the alertness on wandering units (fg, bomber, and sea units waiting to fall on them) it requires every time you left any transport alone without defensive units.

I hate to watch powerlessly at 4 or 5 transports (35 IPCs worth !) being wipe out by a single fighter or even a sub! :x

It is funny the first few times, but after it appears to be a glitch in the system rules when a lot of japanese Transports are wipe out because 1 single damaged US battleship survived against IJN fleet.

I will probably try the Transport A0 D1 M2 C9-10, my next game or a totally different HR naval warfare based on separated groups of subs, transports, escorts and warships.

I’m more the kind of guy who likes to see where lead a certain strategy instead of winning because of some kind of attention disorder in a more than 6 hours game.

The defenseless Transport creates much of this kind of game situation.

Ok this is house rules soo…

In the example of 5 AP’s getting sacked by one destroyer, perhaps allow one dead transport per round. The balance roll to escape at 1-2.

Each round they all roll and the remaining group that fails loses one ship per round. You keep rolling for each remaining transport until nothing remains.

Another idea is to make a technology to replace the stupid war bonds ( pieces of paper that are surety bonds for latter payment were invented in the Civil War and are not TECHNOLOGY…GEEZ.

Tech would be Q-ships which allow AP to defend at 1.

Third idea is to allow only one AP to be sunk, the others are displaced ( moved to adjacent SZ or remain in the current zone and must retreat next turn)

Forth idea is for each ship attacking one AP lost, so ONE SHIP DOES NOT KILL 10, FOR EACH HIT YOU WANT ON A DEFENSELESS AP, YOU MUST BRING IN ONE UNIT.

This last idea seems the best and simplest and fair. Think about it

@Imperious:

Ok this is house rules soo…

In the example of 5 AP’s getting sacked by one destroyer, perhaps allow one dead transport per round. The balance roll to escape at 1-2.

Each round they all roll and the remaining group that fails loses one ship per round. You keep rolling for each remaining transport until nothing remains.

Another idea is to make a technology to replace the stupid war bonds ( pieces of paper that are surety bonds for latter payment were invented in the Civil War and are not TECHNOLOGY…GEEZ.

Tech would be Q-ships which allow AP to defend at 1.

Third idea is to allow only one AP to be sunk, the others are displaced ( moved to adjacent SZ or remain in the current zone and must retreat next turn)

Forth idea is for each ship attacking one AP lost, so ONE SHIP DOES NOT KILL 10, FOR EACH HIT YOU WANT ON A DEFENSELESS AP, YOU MUST BRING IN ONE UNIT.

This last idea seems the best and simplest and fair. Think about it

Your last idea is good but I think too restrictive. We limit the sinking of transports to 3 per attacking unit. So each submarine, surface warship or plane can only sink up to 3 unescorted transports. We also put in an additional rule for transports having limited AA capabilities against attacking aircraft, but that’s another thing.
So if a defender has a stack of 10 transports, the attacker has to commit 4 units to kill them all.
This also works for escorted transports. Once the naval battle is over, there is still the 3 transport per attacking unit limit. If during the last round of battle the attacker gets more hits than needed to destroy the defending warships and/or planes, any excess hits are applied to transports. Any remaining transports are then subject to the 3 per attacking unit rule.

By the way, I like your tech idea of Q-ships, or defendable transports. I also agree that War Bonds is a stupid tech. I also think Paratroopers is stupid AS A TECH. Paratroopers should be an elite infantry units that costs 4 IPCs and must follow the rules for the Paratrooper tech.
I have been trying to come up with some sort of new tech to replace both of those but is still in keeping with what could have been available in the 1940s. I think I am going to implement your Q-ship idea as one of them.
Thanks IL.

As a New Tech, you should introduce the AKA instead:

AKA A1 D1 M2 C7-10

@KimRYoung:

And while you’re thinking of ideas, consider the following about American amphibious cargo ships (originally called Attack Cargo Ships, or AKA):

"Attack cargo ships played a vital role in the Pacific War, where many were attacked by kamikazes and other aircraft, and several were torpedoed, but none were sunk or otherwise destroyed. "

So why are so many sunk so mercilessly in A&A??

Kim

@Imperious:

Ok this is house rules soo…

In the example of 5 AP’s getting sacked by one destroyer, perhaps allow one dead transport per round. The balance roll to escape at 1-2.

Each round they all roll and the remaining group that fails loses one ship per round. You keep rolling for each remaining transport until nothing remains.

Another idea is to make a technology to replace the stupid war bonds ( pieces of paper that are surety bonds for latter payment were invented in the Civil War and are not TECHNOLOGY…GEEZ.

Tech would be Q-ships which allow AP to defend at 1.

Third idea is to allow only one AP to be sunk, the others are displaced ( moved to adjacent SZ or remain in the current zone and must retreat next turn)

Forth idea is for each ship attacking one AP lost, so ONE SHIP DOES NOT KILL 10, FOR EACH HIT YOU WANT ON A DEFENSELESS AP, YOU MUST BRING IN ONE UNIT.
This last idea seems the best and simplest and fair. Think about it

Instead of only one round, give warships and aircrafts a second round of firing before letting Transports flee in the same sea-zone.

Let BB destroy 2 TPs/round (she has speed, more guns and with longer range).

Why would the magic number be two rounds rather than one?

@Imperious:

Why would the magic number be two rounds rather than one?

The basic OOB system rules gives to the attacker, in fact, an unlimited number to destroy as many transports as there is in a sea zone.

There is some cases, when transports are on an amphibious assault and the defender choose to scramble up to 3 fighters, which give 1 round of defending fire before allowing retreat and, in this case, specify that 1 transport is sunk for each fighter scrambled.

In the previous case, the basic principle that 1 combat unit destroys 1 unit/ round is granted.
Only exception: AAA.

So we got 2 extremes situations: one based on the OOB rule about defenseless transport and, on this last case, 1 round of attack on defenceless transport on offence.

Giving one additional round of attack, make this escape effect on transport (which cannot usually escape), less effective than a sub submerge ability (once the destroyer blocker is gone).

Keeping the principle: 1 combat unit destroys 1 unit/round, allowing a second round, makes  the attack, at the end, a 1 combat unit destroys 2 defenceless transports.

It is a middle term between (1 kill/unit and 3kill/units).
Only one additional round is easier to remember and keeps track (than 3, 4 or more).

And it gives each battleship (the best gunships of all) a real advantage over other units.
Each BB can sink 4 transports before they escape.

Allowing more rounds of destruction, will mean, on average, the same thing as the OOB rules: no transport will survive.

EDIT: A single round of fire before escape is almost giving transports a better escaping capacity than the subs “submerge capacity” which needs to kill all enemy’s DDs before withdrawing of battle. Hence, giving 2 rounds of enemy’s fire is a clear difference between submerging after first round and escaping on the ocean surface.

And it gives each battleship (the best gunships of all) a real advantage over other units.
Each BB can sink 4 transports before they escape.

This does not solve the main complaint, that groups of AP’s can get wiped out by one unit. I consider 4 AP’s a group.

Scrambling is for defense.

Just all naval and air to attack AP, but you need one unit to kill one AP, the excess are displaced in the same SZ and must move out on their turn or face another attack.