Cruisers - Combined Arms

@Young:

Cruisers attack at 4 or less when paired with a battleship.
Thoughts?

I guess what I’m wondering about is the rationale.  In real life, in what way would a cruiser’s firepower be boosted simply because it was operating alongside a battleship?

Historically (i think) cruisers original task was to operate alone far away from their homebase. Therefore i would rather think the opposite of you idea would be right.
Maybe like this:

A Cruiser’s Attack and Defense is increased to 4 if it is the only unit in this specific fight.

@arwaker:

Historically (i think) cruisers original task was to operate alone far away from their homebase. Therefore i would rather think the opposite of you idea would be right.
Maybe like this:

A Cruiser’s Attack and Defense is increased to 4 if it is the only unit in this specific fight.

One of the roles of cruisers was indeed to conduct operations requiring both speed and long range – sometimes alone or in company of other cruisers, sometimes with support from escorting destroyers (or in some cases acting as a “destroyer leader”).  But I’m not sure about a rule that boosts a unit’s combat value when it operates on its own (or, to look at it another way, penalizes it when it’s operating with another unit), since this would in effect be a “negative combined arms adjustment” (a combined-arms penalty rather than a boost).

The way I see it, the combined-arms bonuses (to any kind of units) which make the most sense from a realistic point of view are the ones that arise when two units with fundamentally different types of capabilities are paired.  In other words, there has to be a qualitative advantage to the units working together, not just a quantitative one.  Here are a couple of examples (from A&A and/or from real life) of what I mean by qualitative advantages:

Tac bomber + fighter
Makes sense because the tac bomber is optimized for surface-attack missions rather than for air-to-air combat, while the fighter (faster and more agile) can defend the tac bomber against enemy fighters

Infantry + tanks
Makes sense (especially in cities and other tricky terrains) because the infantry is more nimble than the tank and can better see/hear what’s around them (helpful in avoiding anti-tank ambushes, or dealing with them when they occur), while the tank contributes more firepower than the troops have got and is largely immune to certain threats (small arms fire; artillery shrapnel) that are dangerous to troops

At sea, both in real life and in A&A, subs have very different capabilities from aircraft carriers, and both subs and aircraft carriers have very different capabilities from battleships and cruisers and destroyers, all three of those being essentially surface-combat vessels.  Of those three, destroyers are arguably a bit different because they have an anti-submarine warfare capability that battleships and cruisers lack.  WWII battleships and WWII cruisers, on the other hand, had capabilities that differed in scale rather than type.  Both were basically armoured gun platforms.  Battleships had much bigger guns and much heavier armour, and could carry a lot more firepower (including more AAA) than cruisers, but both they and cruisers were basically ships that were intended to fire explosive shells at surface targets (ships and shore installations) and, to varying degrees, to put up anti-aircraft fire.  Consider the shore-bombardment operations that were conducted off the D-Day invasion beaches as an example.  The battleships stood the farthest out at sea, since their main guns had the most range.  The 8-inch and 6-inch cruisers operated at a middle distance from the shore.  The destroyers, typically with only guns of 5-inch caliber or so, operated very close to shore, since their weapons had the shortest reach.  All of those vessels, however, were doing the same job: pumping explosive shells onto the German shore positions.  The battleships and the cruisers weren’t gaining from each other’s presence any capability which differed type-wise.  Combining them simply increased (quantitatively rather than qualitatively) the amount of firepower being delivered.

If it’s felt that a cruiser should be given an attack value of 4 to make it a more attractive purchase, perhaps the simplest solution would be to give it a house rule boost from 3 to 4 and leave it at that, without making the boost a combined-arms one.

@CWO:

Infantry + tanks
Makes sense (especially in cities and other tricky terrains) because the infantry is more nimble than the tank and can better see/hear what’s around them (helpful in avoiding anti-tank ambushes, or dealing with them when they occur), while the tank contributes more firepower than the troops have got and is largely immune to certain threats (small arms fire; artillery shrapnel) that are dangerous to troops

Interesting idea based on a real tactics.
I wonder what could be this combined arms in game terms.
+1 Defense for Tank when paired 1:1 with an Infantry unit?
+1 Attack to Infantry when paired 1:1 with a Tank (same as an Artillery unit)?

@CWO:

If it’s felt that a cruiser should be given an attack value of 4 to make it a more attractive purchase, perhaps the simplest solution would be to give it a house rule boost from 3 to 4 and leave it at that, without making the boost a combined-arms one.

I agree on this because you made a point about historical cruisers combined arms.
Also, from a game perspective, when you look at the naval roster, fighters and Carriers are much better on defense, so Cruiser could get a fine niche, even at 12 IPCs, if it can be used to boost an offensive to @4 (it will be on par with Strategic bombers for firing power but not range).

As you said elsewhere YG, it will not radically affect the opening moves (and the rest of the game) since it is not a @4 on defense.
Balancing Cruiser (CL) and Battleship (BB) units with other A&A units
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=32165.msg1274409#msg1274409

About an historical combined arms perspectives, I’m more like giving AAA capacity for the duet (Carrier+Cruiser / Carrier+Battleship) or the triplet (Carrier+Battleship+Cruiser), based on this tactical formation developed in the Pacific War, see the Youtube video below around 3 minutes:

@Baron:

@CWO:

It would be an interesting exercise to go through the official OOB rules and check all of the combined-arms bonuses to see how they hold up to the “which is the supporting unit and which is the supported one?” test which I mentioned in my earlier post today.  For example, when I saw the part of your text that I’ve just quoted, it made me think about the two roles which the US Navy’s battleships played in the Pacific in WWII.  One role was to provide shore bombardment to support amphibious landings, but another role (especially for the fast battleships) was to provide anti-aircraft defense for the fleet carriers.  In AA& terms, this would translate into providing carriers with a defense boost against air attack when the carriers are paired with battleships.  Generally this would mean a boost against attacks by tac bombers, but it would also apply to kamikaze attacks (since some of these attacks were carried out by small fighter-type planes).

Wanting to give a boost by adding an AAA capacity to cruiser and based on this documentary, I provided a combined arms for Cruiser with BB and for Cruiser with BB and Carrier.

Around 3min. 25 s.: they explain how a fleet defensive formation was organized.
From outer circles/rings, to the most inner circles/rings: DDs, cruisers, BBs, fleet carriers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxhzWUhBJgE

Between cruiser and battleship is it correct to consider that both provide a kind of anti-air cover for carriers?
Mainly Cruiser (mostly light cruisers with AA batteries)?
Mainly BB?

What is your opinion?

If you don’t want AAA combined arms capacity only because it impacts on opening moves, then just apply the combined arms effect at the beginning of the second round of  play.
You can say that it requires time to create and find a proper and efficient tactical air defense system with naval units at the start of the war.

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.

I like Baron’s idea about AA. As Black Elk points out there is no naval AA unit. Just give the CRZ’s normal AA gun ability and FWIW I would buy some.

Also like what CWO said about tanks and infantry. Maybe make it a reverse bonus where tanks attacking factories against infantry are reduced to two attack? Could be x amount of infantry to tank to activate the “bonus”? Would simulate armor’s reduced effectiveness when in urban areas, stalingrad etc.

We dropped our cruisers’ price to 10 IPCs and gave them AA ability just like a classic land AA gun - roll one die per attacking plane - any ones shoot the plane down. Works OK for us.

So if you have 4 Cruisers being attacked by 6 planes, the Cruisers get 24 AA shots at planes then ?

@Black_Elk:

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?

Hmm…I wonder if speed is necessarily out as an option for cruisers when you take operational range into consideration.  WWII cruisers had much more range than destroyers (those thirsty little ships needed frequent refuelling) and cruisers also tended to have more speed than battleships (although there were exceptions)…so I’m thinking, what if we gave cruisers some sort of naval equivalent of the blitzing ability which tanks have in A&A?  An ability that would not apply to any other type of naval unit?

@Black_Elk:

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?

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?

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.

Cruisers and Battleships carrying 1 Marines Infantry unit are interesting since it can depicts some historical fast deployement of US Marines.
I like it when you show it that way.

Since there is some move @3 via NB, why not input the 1914 Cruiser Move?
A Cruiser basic move is 3 spaces CM and NCM and get no bonus from Naval base.

The high 12 IPCs with the lesser combat value will be explained and balanced by the extended range and Marines deployment capacity.

Battleship heavier firepower can even gives a +1A as Artillery capacity to help Marines assault. (Toblerone77 get this idea first, I think)
Cruiser and BB get their one shot shore bombardment @3 or @4, which is forbid with Naval combat.
But Battleship can still provide a +1A to her Infantry unit on board for every combat round of an amphibious assault.

So Cruiser gets 3 moves, while Battleship gets an Artillery support capacity.

I think this will makes more interesting depiction of Pacific Invasions.

@Baron:

@toblerone77:

Without getting too wild, and fitting within game mechanics, you could simply boost firepower to land units + 1 in uncontested amphibious assaults for all rounds just like artillery does making BBs more valuable. this could be modified to include cruisers too. BBs can support 2 INF and cruisers can support 1. Do this for all rounds of combat and not simply a bombardment.

Interesting idea which I completly forgot could be used as a way to promote BBs and CAs (when we were trying to introduce a more historically accurate shore bombardment for Destroyers and in general).
Destroyers able to get a Shore Bombardment? (1942/1940) http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=30249.msg1260861#msg1260861

1942.2 & G40 Improving historical accuracy of amphibious assault
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=33217.msg1262175#msg1262175

This should be kept within the limits of only paired Infantry units being unloaded from transports in an Amphibious assault get this bonus.
But any INF cannot get both bonus from Art and BBs or Cruiser. It is still a combined arms, right?

Even if it is for all combat rounds, this will be a limited bonus since Infantry units is always the first casualty taken.
It will mostly fade by itself in subsequent rounds, due to attrition.

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As read another time, by " boost firepower to land units + 1" do you really intent to make Armor A4 and Art A3 during a debarkment?

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Probably, it is in this post you got the first development of this idea of BBs and Cruisers providing support to Infantry/Marines:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=22292.msg1101675#msg1101675

@Baron:

Interesting idea based on a real tactics.
I wonder what could be this combined arms in game terms.
+1 Defense for Tank when paired 1:1 with an Infantry unit?
+1 Attack to Infantry when paired 1:1 with a Tank (same as an Artillery unit)?

One or both of those might work.  If I had to choose just one, I’d pick the +1 defense for tanks because I think tanks generally get the better end of the combined arms bargain when they’re paired with infantry (at least in restrictive terrain) because tanks are potentially quite vulnerable to determined and well-trained infantrymen who have the right weapons and who can find adequate cover for an ambush.  (US Marines are apparently fond of saying that “hunting tanks is fun an easy”, which is perhaps a slight overstatement but which definitely shows the right attitude for a foot soldier to take when confronted with armoured forces.)  Soviet soldiers in WWII proved to be quite good at this sort of thing, for instance by lying under cover as a Panzer rolled past, then scrambling to their feet and tossing a satchel charge (or even a Molotov cocktail, when nothing better was at hand) onto the rear engine compartment.

The one qualifier, however, is that this defensive bonus would not apply when tanks are blitzing.  Working closely with infantry does make a tank safer, but it has a downside: it slows the tank to a crawl, and hence negates its ability to operate at high speed in open terrain (like the desert).

Black Elk makes a valid point when he says that there are already lots of OOB combined arms bonuses to keep track of, and that these complicate the resolution of battles.  On the other hand, one way to see house rule additions (like the proposed bonuses being discussed here) is that they’re strictly optional, and that one is under no obligation to use all or most or even any of them.  House rules simply provide players with a range of options to tinker with the OOB rules; selecting and adding a few HRs (out of the many available ones) to a local game provides variety while still keeping things manageable, as long as one doesn’t go overboard and throw in so many HRs that the game collapses under its own weight.

@CWO:

@Baron:

Interesting idea based on a real tactics.
I wonder what could be this combined arms in game terms.
+1 Defense for Tank when paired 1:1 with an Infantry unit?
+1 Attack to Infantry when paired 1:1 with a Tank (same as an Artillery unit)?

One or both of those might work.  If I had to choose just one, I’d pick the +1 defense for tanks because I think tanks generally get the better end of the combined arms bargain when they’re paired with infantry (at least in restrictive terrain) because tanks are potentially quite vulnerable to determined and well-trained infantrymen who have the right weapons and who can find adequate cover for an ambush.  (US Marines are apparently fond of saying that “hunting tanks is fun an easy”, which is perhaps a slight overstatement but which definitely shows the right attitude for a foot soldier to take when confronted with armoured forces.)  Soviet soldiers in WWII proved to be quite good at this sort of thing, for instance by lying under cover as a Panzer rolled past, then scrambling to their feet and tossing a satchel charge (or even a Molotov cocktail, when nothing better was at hand) onto the rear engine compartment.

That will change sometimes the casualty order in defense.
Artillery will be chosen before the Infantry unit paired with Tank to keep the defense @4 bonus.

This will also help better resist counter-strike because there is not very often such a @4 in a just conquered territory. Attacker will need to have enough Infantry to survive the first combat.

Again, in such situation sometimes an attacker will pick Artillery as casualty instead forseeing the next battle in which he will need Inf to protect his Tank and get the +1 defense bonus.

I kinda like the Cruiser costing 10.
Gets 1 shore attack.
Gets 1 AA shot at planes but don’t matter how many planes attack. If 3 planes are attacking, the Cruiser gets 1 shot only ( gets to pick plane ) at any 1 plane. Hits on a 2 or less.

I got a new idea considering the Battleship/Cruiser problem:
I also dont like those complicated unit combination stuff rules. How could one make the Cruiser AND the Battleship worthwhile buys, and giving ANY sea unit it’s specific role, without too much complicated new rules?

Cruisers should outfight destroyers. Without any change of the rules of cruisers and destroyers and keeping destroyer’s price the same (8). How much do cruisers need to cost to outfight a 8 IPC Destroyer? I did some simulations, and 9 IPC for Cruisers is the solution. Then it is a worthy buy as anti air platform AND as anti submarine ship (in combination with at least one Destroyer).

Cruisers are now a rather useful allround warship, being able to rather face any threat.

What are Battleships good in? Killing other surface ships. What are Battleships bad in? Moneuverability. How are Submarines destroyed? Throwing waterbombs on them. What is necessary for that? Moneuverability! => Battleships can’t shoot at submarines. Like Aircraft Carriers should also not be able to (unlike the fighters, they can drop waterbombs).

Therefore, one can make Battleships the strongest over water unit at all, with the disadvantage of not being able to shoot Submarines. At a price of 18 IPC Battleships outfight Cruisers (costing 9 IPC) and any other surface warship, except submarines.

After that, one can go like this:

Submarines : No change
Transports : No change
Destroyers : No change
Cruisers : Price dropped to 9 IPC
Aircraft Carriers : Can’t shoot Submarines
Battleships : Price dropped to 18 IPC; can’t shoot submarines

What are your thpoughts about that? Would it make Battleships too stong vs air?

@arwaker:

9 IPC for Cruisers is the solution. Then it is a worthy buy as anti air platform AND as anti submarine ship (in combination with at least one Destroyer).

WWII cruisers did not have any anti-sub capability; they were to big to maneuver sharply enough to conduct depth-charge runs.  WWII cruisers did have decent anti-aircraft capabilities, and some light cruisers were even optimized for that role.  Destroyers were good ASW platforms.  I’m confused, however, by the idea that pairing a cruiser with a destroyer makes the cruiser an anti-submarine ship because in such a pairing 100% of the ASW capability comes from the destroyer.  Perhaps I’m misunderstanding something.

@SS:

So if you have 4 Cruisers being attacked by 6 planes, the Cruisers get 24 AA shots at planes then ?

No no - it works like a classic land AA gun - no matter how many cruisers you have in the zone, you roll one die per attacking plane.