Cruisers - Combined Arms

@CWO:

@Baron:

How Cruiser such Baltimore Class can be a match against Battleship?
Do you think a bunch of Heavy cruisers can outmatched a lesser number of Battleships?

As is true with a lot of things, the answer is “it depends”, so generalizations have to be treated with caution.  One-on-one, a (let’s say 16-inch) battleship would in principle be able to outfight a (let’s say) 8-inch cruiser, if the cruiser didn’t use its (often but not always superior) speed to simply run away.  16-inch guns have longer range than 8-inch guns, so if a battleship’s speed was equal or superior to that of a cruiser (which generally wasn’t the case), the battleship in principle would simply stay outside 8-in shellfire range but inside 16-inch shellfiure range and keep firing until the cruiser is sunk, while sustaining no damage to itself.  A cruiser, however, would usually have the speed advantage, so it would be up to the cruiser captain to decide whether he’d run or whether he’d fight.  If he chose to fight, he’d have to quickly close the distance to 8-inch shellfire range, but not get so close that he’d be within range of the battleship’s 5-inch dual-purpose guns, which would only make his situation worse.  His situation would already be bad enough: the cruiser’s 8-inch guns would heavily damage but would not sink a battleship armoured to resist 16-inch shellfire, but the battleship’s 16-inch guns would (in principle) make short work of a cruiser armoured to resist 8-inch shellfire.  Short of ramming the battleship outright (and I can actually picture some British captains being Nelsonian enough to do that if the mission was important enough), a single cruiser fighting a single battleship wouln’t have much chance of sending the battleship to the bottom.

The catch, of course, is that a one-on-one duel between a battleship and a cruiser is almost unimaginable.  Battleships usually don’t travel unescorted, for various reasons, not least of which is the fact that admirals don’t like the idea of a flotilla of enemy destroyers getting within torpedo range of a battleship.  One way to keep those fast and dangerous destroyers well away from your dreadnoughts is to intercept them with your own destroyers.  Destroyers started life precisely in that role, as “torpedo boat destroyers” (hence their name) because when the Whitehead torpedo was introduced in the late 19th century, surface-ship officers were horrified at the idea that a little torpedo boat could punch a hole – from a distance! – in the waterline of a cruiser or battleship.  (One Royal Navy officer of the time called these newfangled infernal machines “damned un-English” as an expression of his contempt.)  Also, as WWII progressed, battleships operated more and more as part of task groups or task forces, with ships of many types, so the prospect of a one-on-one duel with a cruiser was pretty close to zero.

Thanks for this detailed answer.

Since the Battleship have the bigger guns with the greater range and a consequent armour, this would satisfy a first-shot plunging fire extra-attack to help counter-weight the  Battlecalc real advantage of the 2-hits Cruiser.
So, all Battleship can make a First Shot Att/Def @4, immediately after Subs Surprise Strike phase, and before regular combat.
Any single hit unit casualty is immediately removed.

Just to tie up a loose end from earlier today before I go home, I did some checking and I don’t think the “destroyer leader” idea is really applicable to the concept of cruisers and destroyers working together as a combined-arms team.  Destroyer leaders (aka flotilla leaders) were simply large destroyers or small cruisers with some facilities aboard to house the officer who commanded a flotilla of destroyers – in other words, basically a ship with some extra office space.  This didn’t confer any combined arms advantage, any more than the presence of similar flagship facilities aboard larger ships conferred any combined arms advantages to admirals commanding task forces; what these offices really represent is the command-and-control system that exists in any naval formation consisting of more than one ship, so it’s nothing that would apply specifically (and only) to a cruiser+destroyer pairing.

simply no….

@Young:

Going back to the drawing board, if we reset attack and defense values back to oob rules… would increased shore bombardment capabilities alone be enough to boost Cruisers and Battleships as favorable purchases?

Shore Bombardments

Cruisers @3
Battleships @4

• Sea combat no longer negates bombardments during amphibious assaults
• All sea units that can bombard may do so regardless of how many units are landing
• Bombardments repeat every combat round during an amphibious assault

This one has some loopholes:
All sea units that can bombard may do so regardless of how many units are landing.

You cannot get rid of pairing with ground unit, otherwise their will be some Europe Dieppe straffing assault in which:
1 or 2 Infantries are scrapped while allowing many cruisers to drop the German’s stacks without any big retaliation.
German’s rolls can do overkill but there is only 1-2 Infantry lost.

Maximum, 1 Shore bombardment / unit making the debarkment.
This one must stay in your OOB rule, for sure.

I agree about returning on the drawing board.
Unfortunately 2-hits Cruiser A2 D2 C12, is still too much OP against costlier units such as Fg, TcB, StB, Carrier and Battleship.
Even a 10 IPCs 1-hit Cruiser A3 D3 M2, is much weaker.

About infinite Shore bombardment, I have no idea.
A 12 IPCs Cruiser will get the attack factor of a Fg at 10 IPCs.

In itself, not a problem.
It is more an issue from an historical depiction POV.

I think we have just demonstrated in the last few pages, how its basically impossible to fix the naval roster with just one unit in isolation, or by just using the combined arms or “special boost” type model.
:-D

@Young:

Based on everything I have read, I would take away the 2 hit advantage on Aircraft Carriers, but allow them to carry 3 air units to justify their 16 IPC cost, or if that’s to strong… give them a defense @1.

I see these as a workable solution, not least because of how frequently people in my playgroup gripe about the way damaged carriers are handled OOB. With fighters either getting trapped on deck, or unable to land on a stranded/damaged carrier. In a lot of cases the carriers end up being sunk or sacrificed anyway, and usually this just gets pushed out 1 round. I know we’ve discussed the 3 aircraft carrier in the past, and Baron offered a lot of ideas on why it might be preferable.

In general I adopt the view that YG had, looking more at how these units function as abstract game pieces, rather than historical analogs, but I still would like to strike a balance that serves the game from both perspectives.

On this last point, I think the attitude comes from a sense the the names of these pieces are sometimes arbitrary.

For example in the older games like Classic, destroyers and cruisers did not exist as a game piece. Though of course they existed in WW2! So if you’re a player like me, what you do is just imagine that the abilities of ships encompass the existence of other invisible units, representing them in the abstract. I think thats why I dont have an issue with things like warships transporting infantry, because I just imagine that the warship is escorting some invisible transport vessel not physically represented itself, but embodied by the warship that you can buy.

I could also imagine that say, we need yet another intermediate ship in A&A. And then people just adding in a new unit like “frigate”, or “light” or “heavy” or “battle” cruiser some random name,  just because it’s needed to fit the desired unit abilities. Some intermediate unit at the Attack/Def values, with a reasonable name to fit, since that’s basically what happened when cruisers and destroyers were introduced.

@Young:

Going back to the drawing board, if we reset attack and defense values back to oob rules… would increased shore bombardment capabilities alone be enough to boost Cruisers and Battleships as favorable purchases?

Shore Bombardments

Cruisers @3
Battleships @4

• Sea combat no longer negates bombardments during amphibious assaults
• All sea units that can bombard may do so regardless of how many units are landing
• Bombardments repeat every combat round during an amphibious assault

Bombardments repeat every round makes a lot of sense to me. Sea combat not negating bombardment is also interesting. But I know from previous experience designing tripleA games, that bombardment can be heavily abused if there is no restriction based on how many units offload. The prime example of this, was a common tactic where players purchased a big stack of bombardment capable warships and then used a single infantry unit on amphibious to bombard the hell out of coastal capitals at a relatively cheap cost. In a very extreme example, say you had a dozen cruisers that could all be activated by a lone amphibious inf unit, destroying on average 6 enemy infantry for a cost of just 1 attacking infantry lost. In Classic and Revised it wasn’t as bad, because only Battleships could bombard, they were very expensive, and the overall money in play wasn’t very high. But in a game like G40, where you can afford a lot more ships, the bombardment restriction based on how many ground are unloading is important. If going this route, I would keep the first line, and the last, but ditch the one in the middle.

As I was typing this out, I see Baron beat me to the punch on that last point.

Also, given what CWO has said about possible historical unit pairings, it doesn’t seem like there are many great options for a combined arms enhancement with cruisers. Just focusing on bombardment alone might be easier.

Many players in my group have also expressed a certain distaste for the the whole idea that units which are destroyed on bombardment get to return fire. I have to agree that this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If the desire is to just find a way to kill off attacking ground during an amphibious assault, perhaps this should be handled via a special roll? Based not on the defending units normal defense value, but rather just make it a simple roll, similar to aa guns, which determine how many attacking dudes get killed before they ever get off the beach?

Another idea I once had back in AA50 was to just detach bombardment from the amphibious assault. But in that case only allowing these ships to bombard at a reduced value. Hits at 1 for cruisers, 2 for battleships.  This was done because it seemed kind of silly how players would just throw away infantry on doomed amphibious invasions purely to do bombardments with their battleships or cruisers.

The idea here was that ships could bombard the coast at all times at the reduced values, but if bombarding in coordination an amphibious assault they hit at the OOB values.

This was open to abuse and exploitation, and that was the main problem, since you didn’t have to risk ground to make a hit. Even still, it felt somehow more fitting with the character of bombardment. Maybe if they had to roll 2d6 or 3d6 and added up the dice to meet some higher value to score a successful hit?Say cruisers bombard at 9 2d6 cumulative , battleships bombard at 12 3d6 cumulative. Something along those lines? Just typing it out it already sounds too onerous. How about instead of firing back against amphibious ground, the defender gets to fire back against the ship itself? Sort of like anti-air fire but with ships. Though bombardment capable ships are expensive so this roll would have to be restricted somehow, harder than aa gun fire to hit for the defender. But maybe, if the risk was to the ship rather than the ground, this would provide the requisite element of risk to the bombarding attacker, to prevent it being just a freebie, which is the only way I can see to make it work if you don’t pair the ship with a ground unit for bombardment, but instead want to separate the bombardment off into its own separate action.

I agree enhanced bombardment, whatever form it takes, is better than an Anti Air role for Cruisers and BB, since, if those ships got to make anti air shots in the opening round, it would totally screw the key battles in sz110 and sz 111 etc.

@Black_Elk:

I agree enhanced bombardment, whatever form it takes, is better than an Anti Air role for Cruisers and BB, since, if those ships got to make anti air shots in the opening round, it would totally screw the key battles in sz110 and sz 111 etc.

Not if it is only considered as a Combined Arms bonus abilities, as I introduced earlier, when all 3 units are together: Cruiser+Battleship+Carrier.
I insist on this to underlined that is the most historically accurate defensive formation.
SZ6 and SZ10 are out of reach in any initial assault.
And you get the same result if you prefer to give a pairing 1:1 Cruiser+Carrier or Battleship+Carrier.

So it is not for this reason that you can reject this idea, as such.

You can give more individual abilities to Cruiser and Battleship.
But I keep thinking that, from an historical perspective, AA Flak should be a Combined Arms, not a specific ability given to a single type unit.

@Baron:

As for the many special attributes that can be given to Cruisers that will enviably result in players purchasing more… there are a lot of variables that could automatically push them into the realm of overpowering. The largest variable to consider is the problem of giving Cruisers something that will completely alter how players view opening strategies. Although we all want Cruisers to be purchased more often, and have them be a vital part of our ultimate war effort, the truth is that there are many already on the board. Therefore, all idea’s of giving Cruisers AA capabilities will never fly with purists because their entire G1 strategy will be forever altered. The question is… how do we give newly purchased Cruisers a special attribute while neutralizing the ones in the setup?
**Cruisers attack @4 when paired with a Battleship.  **

The idea of not altering the opening strategies is a sound principles and should be taken into account for balance purpose.
I have this question, are you sure your combined arms bonus for Cruiser doesn’t fall into this trap?
Because, at first glance, there is much more opportunities than with AA flak combined with carriers:

Italy:
SZ 97: 1 transport, 1 cruiser, 1 battleship

Germany:
SZ 113: 1 battleship
SZ 114: 1 transport, 1 cruiser

UK:
SZ 98: 1 transport, 1 destroyer, 1 cruiser, 1 aircraft carrier (carrying 1 tactical bomber)
SZ 110: 1 cruiser, 1 battleship
SZ 111: 1 destroyer, 1 cruiser, 1 battleship

SZ 37: 1 Battleship
SZ 39: 1 transport, 1 destroyer, 1 cruiser

USA:
SZ 10: 1 transport, 1 destroyer, 1 cruiser, 1 aircraft carrier (carrying 1 fighter and 1 tactical bomber), 1 battleship
SZ 26: 1 transport, 1 submarine, 1 destroyer, 1 cruiser

JAPAN:
SZ 6: 1 transport, 1 submarine, 2 destroyers, 1 cruiser, 2 aircraft carriers (each carrying 1 fighter and 1 tactical bomber), 1 battleship
SZ 19: 1 transport, 1 submarine, 1 destroyer, 1 battleship
SZ 20: 1 transport, 1 cruiser
SZ 33: 1 destroyer, 1 aircraft carrier (carrying 1 fighter and 1 tactical bomber)

Another question, besides the game incentive toward cruiser unit, do you see some kind of historical rationalization behind this combined arms bonus?

Ok that would work, if you want anti air, then you could do the cruiser, carrier, battleship combo.

It wouldn’t make cruisers better alone, just necessary for the core defense of the battle group against all out air attacks. Might make them worth buying at 12.

For Japan and USA certainly a clean incentive.
For UK, it will be probably difficult to resist not getting at least one AAA umbrella against Luftwaffe.

But, on the other way, you don’t get the independant operation you can get with Marines-Unit with BB or Cruiser.
Which can increase action faster.

@Black_Elk:

How about instead of firing back against amphibious ground, the defender gets to fire back against the ship itself? Sort of like anti-air fire but with ships. Though bombardment capable ships are expensive so this roll would have to be restricted somehow, harder than aa gun fire to hit for the defender. But maybe, if the risk was to the ship rather than the ground, this would provide the requisite element of risk to the bombarding attacker, to prevent it being just a freebie, which is the only way I can see to make it work if you don’t pair the ship with a ground unit for bombardment, but instead want to separate the bombardment off into its own separate action.

Not exactly against warships, but should be said.
It was discuss elsewhere, here is a slightly different HR:
All Shore Bombardment are fired but allows
All defending INF+ART combo, able to make a preemptive strike 2@2 against incoming invaders. And single Artillery unit also, as in 1914.
Then casualties are removed.
Proceed to regular combat with additional ShoreBombardment treated as a regular roll.
Never more Shore bombardment than the number of ground units unload from Transport.

Well the anti air for battlegroup concept seems cool. I think the hope was that we could find a combined arms that just had units pairing 1:1. That one requires a pairing of 3 different units 1:1:1, but seems like it could encourage Cruiser purchases. I think in that case, people would be much less inclined to ever separate their cruisers, BB and CV once purchased or consolidated together.

Not sure if that’s everything we’re after, but at least its workable. Doesn’t bust the opening round, and gives a reason to buy the cruiser unit.

In this case, what would be the optimal way to handle the anti air fire? Hits at a 1 against all attacking air? Or restricted to some set number, like up to 3 fighters (similar to regular aaaguns) or 3 fighters per set of cruiser/bb/cv? That might be too under powered to make a difference. Probably easier to just make it like factory anti air fire, against all air that come at you.

@Black_Elk:

In this case, what would be the optimal way to handle the anti air fire? Hits at a 1 against all attacking air? Or restricted to some set number, like up to 3 fighters (similar to regular aaaguns) or 3 fighters per set of cruiser/bb/cv? That might be too under powered to make a difference. Probably easier to just make it like factory anti air fire, against all air that come at you.

I’m inclined to treat it exactly as an AAA unit: up to three planes.
After all, it is a known concept in ground combat adapted to Naval Battle and it requires 3 warships type, the number 3 is obviously on the board.

IC’s AAA seems too powerful and unrealistic: a defense @1 against infinite number of planes.
Defending Carriers are already much better than offensive ones.
Anti-Air is providing an additional defense.

@Black_Elk:

Well the anti air for battlegroup concept seems cool. I think the hope was that we could find a combined arms that just had units pairing 1:1. That one requires a pairing of 3 different units 1:1:1, but seems like it could encourage Cruiser purchases.

Not only Cruiser but also Battleship buying incentive.
Another reason to not give IC’s AAA capacity: you want to defend against more than 3 planes, buy another Cruiser and BB to join another Carrier.
I’m pretty sure it can change some buying from Destroyers and Subs to Cruiser and Battleship.

It still cost 12+16+20= at least 48 IPCs (68 with 2 Fgs) to get this additional defensive abilities.

Maybe this concept can be simply extended to each combo of BB+Cruiser gives 1 AAA capacity as long as there is a Carrier to protect.

So 2 BBs + 2 Cruisers + 1 Carrrier will provides an AAA against up to 6 planes.

@Young:

Thanks for the great ideas, this is what I will present to my group for our Jan 10th game…

Modified shore bombardment…

• Sea combat no longer cancels bombardment capabilities during an amphibious assault.
• Bombardment rolls repeat every combat round during an amphibious assault

Modified combined arms…

• Battleship + Aircraft Carrier + Cruiser = 3@1 against air units (in addition to regular attack and/or defense capabilities).

I like it.
If there is some resistance about blockers tactics and Naval Combat:
- Sea combat no longer cancels bombardment capabilities during an amphibious assault.
Maybe you can have a in-between:
- Bombardment rolls repeat every combat round during an amphibious assault unless there is a Naval Combat in the SZ.
If the case, then BBs and Cruisers get only 1 Coastal Bombardment (as was originally OOB Shore Bombardment)

That way, blocker tactic is not totally obsolete.

@Young:

Thanks for the great ideas, this is what I will present to my group for our Jan 10th game…

Modified shore bombardment…

• Sea combat no longer cancels bombardment capabilities during an amphibious assault.

This messes with the timeline of the game. How would battleships have time to both fight a sea battle AND bombard the shore?

@Young:

• Bombardment rolls repeat every combat round during an amphibious assault

Way overpowered, and unrealistic. Historically, bombardment did not kill that many men, due to their entrenchment. (Think about how many Japanese were still alive on Iwo Jima after the huge bombardment, the largest in history at that time.) Also, how can the BBs possibly keep bombarding every round, after friendly soldiers have landed and are engaging the enemy at close quarters? Â

@Young:

Modified combined arms…

• Battleship + Aircraft Carrier + Cruiser = 3@1 against air units (in addition to regular attack and/or defense capabilities).

If you give a cruiser AA ability, ANY ship it pairs with will then get AA protection. Roll 1 die for each attacking plane, just like a classic land AA gun. That makes a cruiser worth having along with any sized navy. Â

I’m more inclined to treat it exactly as an AAA unit: @1 against up to three planes.
After all, it is a known concept in ground combat adapted to Naval Battle and it requires 3 warships type, the number 3 is obviously on the board.
IC’s AAA seems too powerful and unrealistic: a defense @1 against infinite number of planes.
Defending Carriers are already much better than offensive ones. Anti-Air is providing an additional defense.

@Black_Elk:

Well the anti air for battlegroup concept seems cool. I think the hope was that we could find a combined arms that just had units pairing 1:1. That one requires a pairing of 3 different units 1:1:1, but seems like it could encourage Cruiser purchases.

Not only Cruiser but also Battleship buying incentive.
Another reason to not give IC’s AAA capacity: you want to defend against more than 3 planes, buy another Cruiser and BB to join another Carrier.
I’m pretty sure it can change some buying from Destroyers and Subs to Cruiser and Battleship.

It still cost 12+16+20= at least 48 IPCs (68 with 2 Fgs) to get this additional defensive abilities.

Maybe this concept can be simply extended to each combo of BB+Cruiser gives 1 AAA capacity as long as there is a Carrier to protect.

So 2 BBs + 2 Cruisers + 1 Carrrier will provides an AAA against up to 6 planes.

@Der:

This messes with the timeline of the game. How would battleships have time to both fight a sea battle AND bombard the shore?

It is always mandatory to win the SZ battle before landing troops.
The timeline is stretched within a few months period.
The transports unload under somekind of cover by the big guns sisters.
They are never left alone.
1 or 2 months to clear the SZ.
1 or 2 months to make debarkment and the bombardment.
1 or 2 months to positioned the winners troops and occupied the land.

Big guns can acts as Artillery coming from the sea. On islands this was possible.
In a certain kind of view, each unloaded unit can be linked to a given BB or CA : they can shot into land as long as their corresponding land unit is alive.
The limiting rule on the number of ShBmb still applied: never more than the number of unload units.

@Black_Elk:

On this last point, I think the attitude comes from a sense the the names of these pieces are sometimes arbitrary.

In a sense, yes, though my guess is that Larry’s unit development process works in the opposite direction.  I imagine that his starting point is the observation (for example) that in WWII battleships were an important type of military unit, and that his next step is to figure out how the real-world abilities of battleships can be translated into unit values that fit his game system.  With later games, in which new unit types are being fitted amongst pieces that are already establised, Larry also needs to consider where the new unit’s abilities ought to fit relative to the existing units.  He needs to ask himself, for example, whether a cruiser is intermediate in combat values between a battleship and a destroyer, and whether it should have special abilities that distinguish it from one or both existing types.  Ditto for tac bombers relative to strategic bombers and fighters.  Ditto for mech infantry relative to regular infantry and tanks.  As part of this process, he may realize that he needs to tweak existing units; I suspect that’s why the carrier was given a 2-hit capacity in Global, for example.  So in this sense, it’s not a case of Larry coming up with a unit having certain combat values and then giving it an arbitrary name, it’s a case of him picking an existing unit type first and then giving it (arguably arbitrary) combat values, in view of he fact that any particular WWII unit type (like “battleship”) actually represented in the real world a broad range of models and classes with sometimes drastically different capabilities.

@Black_Elk:

I could also imagine that say, we need yet another intermediate ship in A&A. And then people just adding in a new unit like “frigate”, or “light” or “heavy” or “battle” cruiser some random name,  just because it’s needed to fit the desired unit abilities. Some intermediate unit at the Attack/Def values, with a reasonable name to fit, since that’s basically what happened when cruisers and destroyers were introduced.

As a piece junkie, I love new unit types. The above comment is interesting in the context of the present cruiser discussion, however, because in one sense it runs counter to the basic premise of this thread: that the cruiser is an intermediate unit category which doesn’t have much going for it under the OOB rules and which needs some kind of boost to make it worthwhile as a purchase.  I recall that some other units have sometimes been called “niche purchases”, which I guess has two possible meanings: a) the unit is highly suited to specialized purposes, but not useful in other cases; or b) the unit is an unhappy compromise between established types that doesn’t have any particular distinguishing features that make it worth buying.  So it’s possible that even finer gradations of units, as fun as they might be, would run into the same criticism.

Another question this raises (and I don’t have an answer to it) is the following one: do all units necessarily have to be equally attractive as purchases?  The fact is that some WWII military unit types genuinely were less useful than others (depending on the context, of course, and varying from nation to nation).  To some extent the OOB rules reflect this fact because not all game units are equally useful, or at least not equally useful to all players.  The reaction to this state of affairs tends to be: “This unit isn’t getting purchased enough, so let’s change x or y or z to make it more attractive to buy.”  This motivation is understandable in one sense, because it seems a shame to let some of these cool sculpts remain unused in their boxes, but isn’t there a danger that unit values will get distorted simply for the purpose of getting them on the board and making sure that each unit type is roughly as attractive as every other unit type?  It’s just something I’m wondering about.