Heavy Tanks - a new technology

Heavy Tanks (replace Coastal Bombardment)
Why Heavy Tanks are so powerful - A single heavy tank could halt the advance of a complete armoured division. These tanks were massively protected and had an extremely powerful anti-tank gun, which were more than adequate to deal with any armoured fighting vehicle of that time. When on offence a heavy tank relied entirely on its thickness of armour, which made them impervious to any standard anti-tank weapons in a respectable range. Frontal attack of this tank, by any weapon available of that time, was out of the question.

Any design of a tank has to balance the three aspects of mobility, firepower, and armor. No doubt the Tigers (Germanys most well known heavy tanks) had great firepower and armor, their tank killing record speaks for itself (12:1)! However, mobility was sacrificed to achieve that. It was precisely that lack of mobility, mechanical reliability, and high fuel consumption that severely hampered their effectiveness. The statistic that 41% of Tiger tanks were destroyed by their own crew, verses 45% destroyed by enemy action, is telling enough. It makes you think how much more effective they would have been if the mechanical reliability was higher!

However Germany began the war with LIGHT TO MEDIUM OFFENSIVE TANKS to perform the battlefield function of offensive breakthrough and were highly successful from 1939-1942 against WWI style opposition. The design of the offensive tank was driven by physical reality to have the maximum cross-country mobility to infiltrate through enemy lines to collapse them from the inside out . The thing that won the “lightning war” (blitzkrieg) battle according to German Panzer General Hans Guderians was TRACKS not tank dueling. The goal was to defeat Army units to win battles and wars not destroy other tanks to chalk up “kill marks” on your gun tubes. The heavy tanks like Tigers were made for tank dueling and hence of a defensive value, to make newly captured areas less susceptible for counter-attacks!

Variant No1 Heavy Tanks
Your tanks are now heavy tanks. They attack and defend on a 4. Each tank now costs 6 IPC’s and you must pay one additional IPC for each tank you have before the development come in to play.

Variant No2 Heavy Tanks
You do now have heavy tanks. Every second tank you have in a combat attack and defend on a 4. A heavy tank stays a heavy tank for the rest of the combat, no matter of any tank casualties.

Variant No3 Heavy Tanks
Your tanks are now heavy tanks. They attack and defend at the opening fire step of combat.

Variant No4 Heavy Tanks
Your tanks are now heavy tanks. They defend on a 4.

Variant No5 Royal Tigers (National Advanatge for Germany)
The massively powerful Royal Tiger was virtually impervious to Allied tank guns and capable of dominating the battlefield. A single Royal Tiger tank could halt the advance of a complete armored division.
Every third tank you have in each combat cycle, attack or defend on a 4.

Maby Assault Guns would be a better technology than any of the above technologies??? :o

Assault Guns
Each of your attacking tanks has a decreased attack roll of 2 or less, but increases one matching infantry to an attack roll of 2 or less. Your Tanks now cost 4 IPC’s.

@Kaladesh:

personally i do not like any of those since all of them are quiet strong … in my view even to strong. i admire your ideas b.andersson, but a tank figthing with a 4 or a tank using opening fire is just to strong.

i could agree on the second but however this does favor the germans in the first who off course would be the most obvious to use a lot of tanks.
opening fire just in the first round might as well be better than opening fire the whole combat but again for a german player who is relying on its tanks this would be to strong anyways. i do not feel very comfortable about this, remember a development should regard more than one nation (which is the case with coastal bombardement which would be of use for japan us, uk and even germany when having seafights) but this heavy tank stuff would be most interesting for germany only (maybe us) so it would be more a national advantage rather than a development for all.

Well, Combined Bombardment (CB) will only be useful for US and maybe UK and Japan to small extent. Germany with an assault on UK will cost too much to have any IPC’s left to spend on development!!! So, the question is will Japan develop CB? It is not as likely as Germany will develop Heavy Tanks (HT), since Germany is likely to be economically stronger than Japan. No matter of how good HT is for Germany the CB won’t be better for US than HT, since they with HT stands a good chance to fend off any Japanese assaults in Asia with an IC and the Chinese Divisions advantage! So honestly I my opinion HT is as good as CB for US. HT is much likely better for Axis (mostly Germany) to hunt down any Allies (mostly Russian) in the continent and Africa than CB is for the Axis to launch an amphibious assault on UK or US, but cost a lot more to. CB is really crappy for the Axis and quite crappy for the Allies to, since there are much better technologies for both the Axis and the Allies. It can of cause come in handy some time, but not likely! That is the reason why I think and suggest replacing the crappy CB, since it is really not as much a strong technology than the other technologies. CB is more like a national advantage!

If one thinks that HT is too much in favor for the Axis one can replace the Rockets Tech to V2 Rockets advantage to Germany (use the old A&A Classic rule for Rocket Technology), since it is almost only Germany who will develop this technology. And replace it with HT and at the same time replace the CB with Super Destroyers!

Super Destroyers
Your destroyers are now super destroyers. Like battleships, your destroyers now can conduct bombardment during an amphibious assault at an attack roll of 3 or less. In addition your destroyers now have a movement of 3.

This one would counter the Super Submarine Technology. It would also be a strong incentive for Japan to develop, if the Japanese player has the Tokyo Express advantage!!!

One might also consider to let the Heavy Tanks to be an advantage for Germany, like this one:

Tiger Tanks
A single Tiger tank could halt the advance of a complete armoured division. These tanks were massively protected and had an extremely powerful anti-tank gun, which were more than adequate to deal with any allied armoured fighting vehicle of that time.
Every third tank you have in each combat cycle, attack or defend on a 4.

@marine36:

three sounds pretty good. one would be complicated, how would you know what tanks are heavy and which tanks arnt?

By using the battleboard and counting every second tank that you still have in the combat as a 4 (heavy tank), put on the 4 hit area on the battle board! Do this procedure for every cycle of combat! :wink:

@Kaladesh:

not ;-)

first combatcycle:
put 2 tanks on 3 and 1 tank on 4 … repeat this until all tanks are on your battleboard. at the end of the combat remove casualties.
second combatcycle:
remove all remaining tanks from battleboard and redeploy them by putting 2 on 3 and 1 on 4 … repeat that until all your remaining tanks are on the battelboard…
and so on

Thank you Kaladesh, for clarifying how Tiger Tanks works! :)

@Kaladesh:

it was a pleasure :D

Do tou play A&A Europe, if you do I sugget you to take a look at the A&A Europe forum for NAs! :D

@Guerrilla:

The 3 option is awesome… but make it only for the first round, because of the obvious Russian Repercussion(recieved not given :wink: )

GG

How about giving it as an advantage and let German tanks attack and defend in the openingfire step during the first cycle of combat? This one would make it more simple, than every theird tank at 4/4!

I have tested both in a few games and my game friends land I like both variants!