I may be alone in this, but I tend to think the game involves too much unit pairing already. I see the novelty, especially for the two new units introduced in G40, Tac Bs and Mech, still, it complicates the combat phase quite a bit (and makes the combat strip harder to read.) It’s just a lot of unit interactions to keep track of. But I’ll set aside that general feeling and roll with the combined arms idea for a minute.
If we’re willing to see it used with Tanks + Mech, Artillery + Inf, Fighters + Tac Bs, then something on the water wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. To do a combined arms thing with cruisers, then at first I would think “just keep the advantage only on the attack” (for consistency with other units) since a boost to defense would be weird, and break with all the other combined arms unit interactions. But perhaps other boosts could work besides attack? I wish we could figure out a way to make the cruiser a more worthwhile purchase as a stand alone unit.
Everything about the cruiser suggests to me that its advantage should have something to do with speed or maneuverability, but the game has no good way to model this. All naval units move at the same speed in A&A, because here speed just equals distance. They move 2 (or 3 in the case of the naval base) same as any other naval unit.
So speed is out, the game doesn’t do speed well. But how about Maneuverability?
Maneuverability might be something we could try to represent somehow. What if the Cruiser could ignore blockers on non combat? “Race past” Or if you don’t like that, then Cruisers move 3 on non combat?
Or if you are willing to entertain the idea of a defensive maneuverability advantage, maybe the cruiser could perform some kind of scramble-like maneuver into adjacent sea zones? Or perhaps you could attach the ability to the Naval Base, allowing cruisers race into nearby sea zones that come under threat, throwing up advanced screens or the like. Each NB could naval-scramble up to 3 cruisers into adjacent sea zones, or something along those lines.
It would be optimal to capture the speed/maneuverability aspect somehow, but I grant that this is a little tricky. One thing does seem certain, at the current cost and abilities, cruisers are not a particularly great buy. I see people use the ones they already have, but don’t often buy new ones. Kind of unfortunate.
Short of a movement type advantage, the idea to have them attack at 4 is at least something. Attack 4, defend 3? What value would you have it bombard at then though? Still a 3?
Baron’s idea about giving it some sort of Anti-Air capability seems cool. Right now the AAAgun has no naval equivalent. Though I’d think battleships would have a better shot than cruisers, and carriers should properly have some kind of dogfight or intercept rules rather than the way things are now, since they would be the best at anti air actions in reality right? Still I see the why the idea for anti-air is attractive for cruisers, since it would give the unit a special ability, similar to one that already exists (easier to learn.) Though CWO Marc makes a good point about those.
Other concepts that I have tried were Cruisers and Battleships can load a single infantry unit, which I liked, since it basically provides a kind of alternative to defenseless transports (albeit really expensive ones) but definitely makes the unit more attractive as a purchase. In this case, we said that the infantry units loaded onto these Warships represent marines, whereas the units loaded onto transports are more like army soldiers. These dudes are the marines, which was fun with the non com move at 3 idea. For launches, with these units first on the scene in the Pac.
Given that there is no marine unit represented in the game, the idea was that, when loaded onto a Cruiser or Battleship the infantry unit just is a marine or naval- amphibious infantry unit.
I mean, to me if you’re not going to go with the maneuverability type boost, then combined arms with infantry makes a bit more sense to me, than with other ships of different types. The idea of bombardment already has this built in, but there are probably ways you could take it farther. Even if you didn’t want to give the transport ability to the ship directly, perhaps the combined arms thing could be in conjunction with loaded transports?
Cruiser and transport 1:1? where the transport gains some sort of advantage?
Just trying to think about ways to make the cruiser unique so its actually worth purchasing.
I still think battleships need help as well, at the cost. If the idea is to make a bunch of nuanced interactions, and we already have to remember and track all this stuff, I’d like to see both these units (Cruiser/Battleships) get some sort of unique edge. Its hard to teach people how to play all these interactions of various units though. The combat phase is the most entertaining part of Axis and Allies for many people, but it can start to get away from you when you give out too many special abilities for too many unit. All the questions surround subs and hostile sea zones etc. things like that could become problematic with the cruiser too, if granted a unique ability. But still, the unit needs something. You just don’t see enough of them being bought.
