Convoy Disruption: 1941, 1942.2 & G40 Submarine economic warfare

…unless HBG made an unique sculpt of a plane with ASW capabilities like the Catalina or Liberator, and the player would need to be successful on the Tech Development first, and then start purchasing this Catalinas for $ 15 each piece. The other planes would of course not get any asw capability

Hi all. Great discussion so far. I have always thought that there should be a sub war built into the game.  Here are a few thoughts.

First. The problem with planes. Historically planes were the nemesis of subs in The Atlantic. Closing the Air gap really was the end of the sub free for all. Asw planes were the liberators welling tons catalina etc not spitfires and hurricanes

Proposal:
1.only bombers can complete asw missions. Fighters do not have range or equipment for asw.
2. When on asw range of planes is reduced by 2.

Is the 1:1 rule to big a drop for the destroyers. A few destroyers would often guard an entire convoy against the wolf packs.
Proposal:
Destroyers remove the surprise strike at 2 subs per destroyer. This would give the destroyer a bit bigger bite.

Submerge.subs should never lose the submerge ability. It is the sub captains choice to attack or withdraw.

Yes I think that does a pretty good job of sumarizing my misgivings, and contrast with the OOB situation. Also important to me is the ability to create one system that could work on all game boards.

The major problem I had with this aspect of convoys in G40, was how ambiguously the rules were worded in the manual. I remember my players were completely unable to parse them, due to confusion about when these raids were supposed to occur, or which player/side was being referenced in the examples as “attacker” or “defender” the “enemy” etc. All very confusing, without any real introduction to the concept that disruption occurs, not on your own turn, but on the opponent player’s turn, during their collect income phase!

Or put another way, my players were confused about why they could be “attacked” on their own turn, during their collect income phase, by the enemy (via disruption). “How can that be?” Or “doesn’t this violate the turn order?” Or “doesn’t that upend the whole purpose of having separate turns in the first place?” hehe. These are the questions I was fielding the first time out. The fact that it was discribed as an “attack” but not a combat. They just assumed they were reading the rule incorrectly. The default response was “these rules are confusing, lets try to play without them” haha.

Disruption in G40 is kind of weird and not introduced very succesfully, given the rather unprecedented character of the attack. It’s like it tries to keep the flavor of the very first A&A convoy mechanic introduced in the old theater games. You know back when “Axis and Allies Europe 1999” and Axis and Allies Pacific 2001" were totally distinct games (red Japan, back in the day) but making it way more complicated than those rules.

In the oldest convoy rules, the convoy income was a feature of the sz itself. The money was attached to the zone, but usually it could only be collected by 1 nation. So for example player A has a convoy zone and gets extra money for it, if player B takes that zone they don’t get the money but rather deny it to the enemy. In G40, the convoy income is a feature of the land surrounding the sea zone (convoy zone), not attached to the zone per se, but to the ipc value of the enemy land adjacent to it.

Frankly I don’t like either system, because I think the economic disruption should be a feature of the submarine unit specifically (not all warships) and that this should be a form of “attack” made during the raiding player’s own “conduct combat phase,” not during the opponent’s collect income phase!

My argument there would be for simplicity and for gameplay i.e. as a way to make the submarine different from other naval attack units, and give it a more independent “hunting role.” I say the argument is “for the gameplay” because I’m aware that historically any warship could probably disrupt convoys. But what we’re looking for in a rule, is a way to separate off the role of subs and make that role unique or advantageous when compared to other naval units at a comparable cost. More advantageous than they are in normal combat, so players actually have an incentive to use them for the economic attacks instead of just normal attacks!

Otherwise the subs just default to the same way other naval combat units work e.g. grouped together with the main fleet, or the main air group. I don’t think the submarine should work like this. (I don’t think StratBs should work like this either, for that matter, even if this conversation is just for subs, I see them as related issues. I mean the way a bomber’s economic attack advantage is subordinated to its normal combat attack advantage vs ships, instead of the other way around.)

The sub unit would be far more interesting, if it’s primary role was for economic attacks, with a secondary role in normal combat. The current situation is basically the reverse. And the sub isn’t really very unique as a convoy disrupting unit. It behaves like all other ships that disrupt convoys, except that its cheaper for the spam and can’t be hit by air without a dd.

The analogy I always return to is SBR or Rocket Attacks, I think subs should work in a similar way. Either you choose to use them as a combat unit, or you forego combat for the chance at an “economic attack.” I think you should be able to run such a “sub attack” in any coastal sea zone bordering enemy territories with an ipc value, otherwise it only works on maps with a special “marker” or map designation drawn on the sz, which means it can’t work on all game boards.

A simple rule, that took into account the max value of adjacent enemy territories, and then allowed subs to “roll” against it, would be ideal. If its overpowered, then you just build in some kind of defensive roll, similar to an AAgun vs a bomber, to destroy the sub. I used to play with similar rules in AA50 (although there it was a special roll against coastal factories for my group.)

The danger of all convoy rules that allow you to “destroy” enemy IPCs directly is how they can affect the first round purchase options. Thinking about SBR as a model, when you “raid” with a bomber in the latest games, money is removed indirectly (via the purchase/repair damage system). In the old SBR rules of Classic/Revised a successful “raid” meant that your opponent had give money to the bank immediately, with no “choice” and no damage/repair. Seems to me that the G40 convoy rules follow the earlier sort of idea of Classic or Revised (where the money is given up to the bank ie. destroyed), even though I much prefer the latter sort of idea from AA50 and later, where the player got to choose how to deal with the consequences of the raid.

In other words, I don’t think players should have to learn two totally separate “economic raiding mechanics” one for bombers and one for subs. Instead the two mechanics should mirror each other and work in similar ways. If not exactly the same, than at least similar enough that I can explain one with reference to the other.

Putting the focus on coastal factories would probably be too overpowered, given how SBR already works against these factories. But if you’re not going to put the focus on coastal factories or give the defender an intermediate “repair” type option, but use the old model (money taken goes straight to the bank) then there should at least be a chance that the “raiding” unit can be destroyed during the economic attack, the same way bombers face AA fire, defender rolls at 1 to destroy the unit attempting to raid. I think that would be way easier than separating this whole “convoy” process out across multiple turns in the game round, which is what the current G40 system does.

I’m wondering if the problems with the OOB convoy rules – which have varied from game to game – arise from the fact that the economic modeling in A&A has traditionally been very simple (which is arguably a valid game design principle), but that as a side-effect of this simplicity the games have traditionally paid little or no attention to logistics and supply (except in A&A Battle of the Bulge, which is an unusual game by A&A standards).

The “convoy zone” concept that was introduced for the first time in the original A&A Europe game was an idea that struck me as being both clever and odd at the same time.  On land, income generation is depicted as an IPC value printed on a territory.  The concept is straightforward to understand: such-and-such a territory is assumed to contain economically useful things like oil and minerals and grain and so forth (all represented abstractly by IPC values), and whoever physically occupies that territory gets to reap the rewards of those resources.  By contrast, the convoy zone system at sea is an odd hybrid.  It recognizes that convoys had a huge economic impact on  WWII, but this recognition isn’t done by depicting actual convoys; it’s done by turning sea zones into the equivalent of land territories, which players have to occupy in order to control them and in order to gain the economic benefits they represent.

This concept has always bothered me because, although the notion of “control of the sea” is certainly valid (as A.T. Mahan pointed out in his classic work on sea power), naval units don’t “occupy” regions of the sea in the same way that land armies occupy ground.  Warships are actually closer to aircraft in this respect: aircraft may control the air, but they don’t occupy it.  In and of themselves, individual sections of the sea (and of the air) have no value; they’re simply the medium on which (or in which) ships (or planes) operate.  So I’m wondering if the OOB approach to handling convoys is perhaps a case of falling between two barstools.

Nailed it! :-D

Damn CWOMarc, on point as always!

Let me know if you ever get a chance to give that 1942.2 strategy guide I was working on the once over. This last point you made totally fits with an idea I was trying to stress in the naval and air sections about A&A unit transits across the map. You always hit it dead on. I’d be very interested in your feedback.

I suppose the suggestion I made, to just have the Sub function as the sole convoy disrupting unit, and to eliminate convoy zones in favor of a system that uses all sea zones that border land with an ipc value (so you could get it working in 1942.2 as well) would still violate the basic idea that the sea zones are just unit transit lanes. But at least this economic value to sz would be somewhat limited in scope. Basically you’d have the sub unit represent more than just “submarines”  but instead embodying the whole convoy conflict, just in the one unit type. It’s not perfect but at least it’s simple. From a gameplay perspective it gives the sub a specialized role to play, very similar to the Strategic bomber.

Just like many types of units represented in A&A could conceivably have damaged an enemy’s infrastructure or production capacity, this role is exclusively given to the bomber unit for simplicity. The game doesnt have to model all the types of “economic raid” that might possibly occur in warfare, just a nod to the idea, and then fold it into part of a single iconic unit. In the air it’s the StratB, on sea it could be the Sub.

As an aside I think the destroyer is still overpowered vs subs OOB. I’d prefer it if subs could always dive, and instead of holding subs from diving that the Destroyer simply had an opening shot against them before they could go under. But even if you wanted to keep the destroyer/sub interaction the same, by giving subs the economic attack role we would at least restore a bit of parity between those two units, Subs vs DD in terms of gameplay entertainment value.

The OOB Convoy situation in G40 can’t be adapted to 1942.2 in my view, without making definite changes to the rules. In G40 all warships can disrupt convoys, but that would be too powerful for a game like 1942.2, with it’s smaller overall economy and lack of distinct Convoy zones with symbols to identify their locations on the map.

On the other hand, if you could get a basic, universal system in 1942.2 for Subs doing economic raids, then you could probably port that over to G40 pretty easily.

In that case you could just say that the “convoy marker symbol” drawn on the G40 map gives a raiding bonus of some sort. Or that it somehow scales better for these sub attacks. Like raid +1 per sub or the like, if the raid occurs in one of those zones. That way you don’t have to redesign the G40 game/map, just come up with a new idea of what the convoy marker symbol represents to subs.

Again not perfect, but I think it would be simpler and make the sub a lot more interesting in the unit roster

@Black_Elk:

Let me know if you ever get a chance to give that 1942.2 strategy guide I was working on the once over. This last point you made totally fits with an idea I was trying to stress in the naval and air sections about A&A unit transits across the map. You always hit it dead on. I’d be very interested in your feedback.

I’ve just had a quick look at that other thread.  It’s very long, so I won’t be able to comment on it in any detail because I’m leaving my computer in a few minutes, but I did glance at the section which describes how, in 1942.2, the sea is basically just a means to get from Point A to Point B, with sea zones having no value in and of themselves.  Yes, I can see the parallel with the point I made previously, so what you describe in the “Ships and Sea Zones” section of that other post does indeed sound right to me.  The difference is that your other post describes an A&A game that has no printed convoy zones, whereas in my post above I was talking about the various A&A games which do have printed convoy zones and therefore which have sea zones which are somewhat analogous to land territories because their possession (or non-possession) has direct economic consequences.

I always enjoy your HR ideas for unit abilities, values and interactions Baron
:-D

The depth and the nuance of the potential unit balances, and the comprehensive analyses provided. I often think that a fully redesigned roster would be fun. The challenge for me, is getting my players to adopt and test out new HRs, when these involve multiple changes to unit abilities. Cost structure seems easier to mess with usually, but when I suggest the possibility of unit ability changes, often the resistance just comes from habit and fact that they have trouble memorizing all the unit interactions. G40 is necessarily more complicated due to the larger roster, but even in 42.2 with a simpler roster I encounter the same challenge, when trying to convince players to try out a different scheme.

Basically I’ve got one other dude in my regular face to face group, that has the enthusiasm and aptitude for this sort of heavily House Ruled game. The sort of player who takes an interest in game design, and so is willing to try new ideas. But even that guy, is sometimes overwhelmed when I try to bring too many things into it at once. In the past, we’ve been open to trying some fairly radical mods. The simplest of those would be new NOs, or modifications to the economy of the gamemap, or using bonuses of VCs and the like, even changing the turn order. In terms of unit costs, the same player has shown a willingness to entertain alterations of these through technology advances, or via autotech schemes. Different production tiers. Different hard set up changes for units, or just a hard tweak to a units cost. But one thing I haven’t been able to sell him on yet is a full redesign of the unit roster.

A single sheet with a full cost/abilities chart for all units, and custom Battle Board would be ideal. Otherwise it becomes hard to track all the interactions. Some kind of visual, that you can flip in combat would be cool.

One thing I like that you mentioned, is using roundel markers to denote the “raided” IPCs, during the raiding player’s conduct combat phase, even if the loss is to future income (again during the opponents turn) and not an immediate loss of cash on-hand. At least this provides a way to visually track the attack on the game map, since your proposal has the consequence of the “raid” delayed until the opponents collect income phase. Only prevents the mechanic from messing up the starting income situation in the first round.

I think G40 is likely to be more accommodating, since the overall economy is larger and convoy raiding is already part of that game. For 1942.2 though, I worry it might be overly rules intensive. The distinction between the Raid proper, and the disruption on station might be tricky. I’m trying to imagine how it would affect the collect income for each nation into the second round, and how much of a bonus you’d need to provide for each nation in order to get the dynamic up and running in a game like 1942.2

I’d think you’d need at least 10 ipcs to each power, to accommodate the change. Just to provide enough cushion in the game’s overall economy, to tease out another form of economic attack beyond the SBR that can already occur.

Again, just trying to think how the rules might affect first round income in an actual game… Right now I’m looking at the OOB sub values. The attack at 3 sub modification, would give even stronger raids than these, but just to start with the admittedly weaker OOB sub that attacks at 2…

During the opener, Russia’s sub, the Red October can reach sz 6, a sea zone with 4 ipcs in territory value adjacent to it. And Germany has no starting DD to destroy it, which means the Russian sub is free to opperate until the 2nd round uncontested. So that Russian sub, if it hits on max economic damage, could raid 2 ipcs from Germany during combat in sz 6 (markers placed=money not collected on the opponents turn during their collect income phase). Then the sub could “disrupt” an additional 2 ipcs, while on station during Germany’s collect income phase = a total of  -4 ipcs, or 4 ipcs Germany will not collect at the end of their first turn. Even if Germany buys a destroyer, Russia could conceivably “raid” an additional 2 ipcs the following turn, before Germany even has a chance to destroy the sub. So its a potential of at least 6 ipcs “raided” for a 6 TUV unit.

This would likely change the current optimal Russian opener for the sub, which has it go to sz 7 to play a purely defensive fodder role (in the hopes of giving the British battleship an extra shot.) That seems to me an improvement already over OOB, at least in terms of the interest for the Sub unit. But the question is whether G can sustain that economic hit, without a bonus?

The German situation would be more dramatic. Here Germany has 4 starting Subs. If 1 u-boat takes out the UK destroyer in sz 10, and the other U-boats all “wolf-pack” together against the British, that is potentially a major hit to UK’s first round income collection.  2 u-boats off the coast of England, could potentially do 4 damage on the Raid, and another 4 disrupted on station, max of 8 ipcs for England. Or you could leave the final u-boat in sz 5, and raid Karelia for 2 ipcs then another 2 ipcs on station. If the German player fires enough 2s while raiding, that’s potentially a dozen ipcs that the Allies might lose from their income due to G’s first round economic attacks. And that’s just subs, to say nothing of the Baltic cruiser getting involved hehe. Whether the German player would ever attempt this, I’m not sure. The value of their subs on G1 combat is hard to ignore, they are needed as fodder primarily and to destroy allied transports.

UK only has the lone Australian sub in sz 39, which could raid East Indies for 2, and then another 2 on station (provided the Japanese destroyer in sz 61 is sunk.) This could be a strong use of the sub, as it has a chance to max damage -4 ipcs from Japan at East Indies. Of course, that is only if you allow subs to conduct raids in a sz occupied by enemy warships, otherwise the UK has no good raid options.

Japan’s sub is out of position to reach any sz with adjacent territories worth more than 1 ipc.

The US sub at pearl is likewise not really a factor in the first round. It might not survive Japan’s first turn, and even if it did, it could only reach New Guinea on station, so USA isn’t raiding or disrupting much of anything in the first round.

Again for 1942.2 I just looked at the subs, because I’m not sure how you could really sustain a convoy raiding system on that board if all warships can disrupt convoys.

Another idea, if you wanted to include a matching bonus, would be to say that each player gets some fixed amount of additional money each round, and this is considered their “Convoy Money.” Say it was 10 ipcs or 15 ipcs or 20 ipcs etc. You could cap the total convoy damage any nation can sustain at that value. This way it is like you are fighting for “extra” money, or a new slice of pie, instead of the same old slice of pie. Each nation would get an increase in total cash, allowing them to buy more subs and sustain the new sub warfare model, and each nation would have an incentive to play out the sub economic warfare to deny the enemy their convoy cash.

The cash itself doesn’t need to be attached to a specific zone, it could represent the entire convoy system for that nation. But when you go to make raids you do it in specific sea zones, vs specific adjacent land territory values, to determine how much you could take in a given round up to that max amount (whatever it is for the Nation.) This gives you bonus money, but also a ceiling to how much money can be taken in total, to prevent the player from getting totally raided/disrupted out of play. The way Italy can be raided out of play in G40.

Any thoughts?

Partly for the fun or it and partly in case it provides any potential ideas for discussion, I decided to have a crack at developing an alternate convoy system.  I’ve deliberately not looked closely (if at all) at the lengthy discussion of the topic that’s already taken place in this thread or in the even longer “Reality wrecking destroyer rules” thread – so if any of what I’ll describe below has already been discussed, please disregard this post.

When I’m describing here isn’t a complete system, and it may turn out to be completely impractical.  It’s a broad concept that includes some possible options, but not a lot of hard-and-fast details.  It leaves a lot of questions to be answered, especially as regards unit strengths and game balance; I have no aptitude for the calculations and assessments that these issues involve, but I know that lots of folks here are very experienced at that sort of thing so I’ll leave those issues to the experts.

The post is kind of long, so if I discover after posting it that part of it has gone over the post-length limit I’ll re-post the missing parts.

In general, I was aiming for something that: a) is very, very simple to understand and use; b) is potentially applicable to any global-scale A&A game, regardless of whether it has an OOB convoy system or not; and c) is more historically realistic that the system described in Global 1940.

On that last point: I raised some realism concerns yesterday, but I thought of an even bigger one this morning.  The OOB G40 rules (basically) state that the IPC value of certain land territories depends on the convoy zones which adjoin them.  For example, the “United Kingdom” territory that contains London (IPC=6) adjoins SZ109 (which contains a convoy).  The rules make it possible, under certain conditions, to neutralize those 6 IPCs by disrupting the SZ109 convoy.  The problem is that this doesn’t make sense regardless of how one interprets the condition which states “2. The sea zone must be adjacent to one or more of your controlled territories”.  Interpretation A would be that the IPC value of the territory depends on the SZ convoy regardless of who controls the territory.  That’s fine (in this particular case, as an example) if the British control that particular territory…but what happens if the Germans take control of it?  The rules imply that, in order to collect the 6 IPC income generated by this territory, the Germans have to keep its economy going by keeping it supplied with German convoys (in the same way that the Brits kept it supplied with British convoys).  This is historically absurd.  Britain’s economy at the time functioned on a model totally dependent on trade with friendly (and in a lot of cases British Empire and Commonwealth) countries.  Britain would import raw materials, transform them into finished products with its industry, export these products to foreign markets, then use the sale profits to buy the consumable (and other) goods that Britain needed for its own use (plus more raw materials, to keep the cycle going).  Germany could not have kept such an economic system going if it had conquered southern England, even if it had had the merchant fleet capacity to do so (which it didn’t).  As for Interpretation B, it makes even less sense: the notion that the condition “one or more of your controlled territories” only applies to the original holder of that territory.  Under such an interpretation, we’d be faced with the absurd notion that southern England’s economy needs convoys to function when the British control it, but doesn’t need convoys to function when the Germans control it.

So – with that little editorial out of the way, what would be a good alternative?  Here are my thoughts on something that might work.

First: we scrap the notion of convoy zones entirely.  Convoys would henceforth be represented by actual convoys, not by convoy zones.  There are different ways this could be done on the game board, in terms of sculpts and/or markers, but for the purposes of discussion let’s represent them by placing a national control marker (to identify the country to which a given convoy belongs) on a sea zone (where a NCM can’t possibly denote anything else) and covering it with a transport ship sculpt (the pairing with the NCM being indicative that this is a convoy, not a naval transport).  Strictly speaking, the ship sculpt might not be necessary…but that will depend on an issue that will be discussed at the end of this post.

Second: we scrap the notion that convoys affect the IPC value of specific territories.  Instead, convoys will affect the total IPC income of each power.  When working out the details of how this system would work, we’d have to decide what percentage of each power’s staring IPC income depends on that power’s use of convoys.  For some powers (like China), the concept would obviously not apply.  For others (like the USSR), the concept might apply.  For still others (like Britain and Japan), the concept would certainly apply, since both nations very much depended on maritime trade.  So as an example, just to pick a number out of thin air, let’s assume that out of Italy’s 10 starting IPCs, 3 of them are convoy-dependent.  And let’s assume that this translates into 3 separate convoys, each supporting 1 IPC.  (This is for the sake of simplicity, but it might be possible to use a system in which convoys have variable value, just as land territories have variable value.)  If Italy loses one of its 3 convoys, with nothing else about Italy’s situation changing, then Italy’s overall IPC income would drop from 10 to 9.

That’s the basic concept – but there are a lot of questions that would need to be decided to fill in the details:

1. As just mentioned: which countries have convoy-dependent IPCs?  How many of their initial-income IPCs depend on convoys?  Are all convoys of equal value…and if not, how do you keep track of which convoy is worth how much?

2. Where do convoys get placed initially during set-up?  In certain defined SZs?  If so, which ones?  Or could they go wherever each player wishes?  That last option could get very messy.  If I were Britain, for example, and I wanted to put my convoys in the safest place possible, I’d put them all (if the rules allowed it) in the most out-of-the-way location possible, like SZ52 south of Samoa.  This would not only be unfair (since it would give the Axis almost zero chance of sinking them), it would also be completely unrealistic (since a convoy south of Samoa can’t possibly be supporting industrial production in, say, London).

3. Can convoys move? That’s an interesting notion on which I have no definite opinion one way or another.  It would be a lot of fun if they could move, and in some sense it would reflect historical reality if that were the case (particularly if the rules were to state that they must move at each turn), but against that is the consideration that players might be tempted to keep moving their convoys away from danger rather than towards their economic centres.

4. Can more than one convoy occupy the same SZ?  Does the answer change depending on whether we’re talking about convoys just from one side, as opposed to enemy convoys?

5. Which naval and air units can attack convoys, and under what combat rules can they do so?  Obviously that’s a huge and complex question, which I’ll leave for others to debate.

6. Can a destroyed convoy be replaced?  If so, when and at what cost?  That’s another complex question that I’ll leave for others, since it involves game economics.  I imagine the answer would depend on the cost-benefit ratio: how much will it cost to buy a unit which (in our example) generates 1 IPC per round, and is it worth that cost?  One idea that might be interesting to explore is the concept of treating convoys as units somewhat similar to Industrial Complexes, which offer a mixture of costs and benefits.

7. Do destroyed convoys remain marked on the board?  This is what I was referring to above when I was talking about how to depict convoys.  If convoys have fixed SZ positions, and if destroyed convoys can be replaced, one option would be to use a NCM + sculpt combination to show an active convoy, and to use a NCM by itself to show that such-and-such a country is allowed to have a convoy in such-and-such a SZ, but that at the moment the convoy in that SZ has been destroyed and has not yet been replaced.  This could help in keeping track of IPC adjustments for each power.

So those are some ideas on an alternate way to handle convoys.  If they’re of any potential use, feel free to discuss and develop them because, as I said, there are many gaps to be filled.

Why not try having convoy routes. Like CWO said. You could use a country’s token and place in each sea zone for route and put a HBG convoy marker in the middle sea zone to show route.

You could also use HBG convoy nation markers that come in each country’s color token. Then lay them out to show the convoy routes. I’m sure somebody will also design routes on there maps if they want.

If you don’t or can’t get ship sculpts, use HBG convoy marker that has the ship on it and says convoy on marker only.

Then when any enemy ship stops in any sea zone in route, the defending country pays the bank a certain amount of icp’s according to there total income. If you have like 5 enemy ships in sea zones in route, their is only a 1 time penalty and once every turn. Some countrys are going to also have more routes than others.

OR have it where each country starts with a ship sculpt for each convoy route they have and have ship move so many sea zones per turn where enemy has to attack ship to destroy. If the convoy ship sculpt makes it to the end of route, then they get some icp or icp’s from bank towards there country. Your going to have to decide if when your countries convoy ship is destroyed you either get a free one or have to buy one and the ship has to start all over. If ship makes it to the end of route, it can return to starting point. This might be better for 1942 game.

So now if enemy doesn’t kill convoy ship on return to starting point would be better due to it will take longer for ship to get back instead of killing ship and country gets to start with new ship unless of course they have to buy convoy ship. Just some thoughts.

Hi all,

Great ideas,

1. As just mentioned: which countries have convoy-dependent IPCs?  How many of their initial-income IPCs depend on convoys?  Are all convoys of equal value…and if not, how do you keep track of which convoy is worth how much?

I think a workable and simple solution would be that all IPCs must be transportable to a factory. If a land route exists the IPCs are safe. If they cannot trace a land route then they must be shipped.

I think that the easiest way to represent this is that the submarines would be able to launch an attack against the IPC value of a territory. The submarines would be essentially blockading the port or patrolling offshore waiting for the merchantman to leave harbour.

The mechanic would be as suggested before. If a sub is in a sea zone next to an eligible territory then it can fire a single shot. If it is a hit the territory loses that amount of IPCs. (this could be shown by placing markers in the sea zone which the convoying power must remove by paying the damage bill)

If a sub is submerged or takes part in a sea battle on its turn it cannot attack.

Another suggestion would be to increase the subs movement to 3 to allow them to slip past blockades and escape into the ocean and force opposing powers to patrol and escort effectively.

I like those ideas CWOMarc.

It seems fairly straightforward using the Flag Roundel Markers, since these are not usually placed in Sea Zones, they would be fairly easy to distinguish. It might be cool to see them moving, but I would probably avoid that and just fix their locations for simplicity. I’ve tried playing A&A with movable resources before, and while I enjoyed it, my players found it cumbersome in a game that already has so many “moving parts.”

For simplicity I would also suggest having each Roundel represent an equivalent “set” value in IPCs that is consistent across the map, like each roundel = 3 ipcs convoy income.  1 ipc would probably be too low, and require too many roundels to get up off the ground, but if they were all worth 3, I think players would go for it. You could just put a green chip under the roundel, or 3 gray chips.

I’d probably try to keep things confined to one convoy roundel per sz, just to prevent too much confusion.

Again for simplicity, I would include this cash in addition or “on top” of the Nation’s OOB starting income. That way we don’t have to completely redesign the game’s economic system on land.

Lets just say each convoy was worth 3 ipcs. How many should each Nation get? And where should they go?
Some ideas about how that might look in 1942.2

Russia starts with 24 ipcs.
2 convoys, brings their total up to 30 ipcs.
sz 4 and sz 63 might be cool candidates.

Germany starts with 41 ipcs.
3 convoys, brings their total up to 50 ipcs.
sz 5, sz 14, and sz 15? I think G should probably get 3 convoys, since Axis will need more income for game balance, and those zones seem fairly reasonable.

UK starts with 31 IPCs.  
3 convoys brings their total up to 40 ipcs.
Here there is an interesting question of which sea zones to put the convoys in? Gathering them all around UK is one option, since it would be easier for G to disrupt. But if that puts too much local concentration of Convoys in “busy” sea zones (ones that are already likely to be cluttered with units), then another option would be to put them in sea zones that currently receive little action. For example, sz 2, sz 9 and sz 12. This would force the Brits/Allies to put their warships somewhat out of position to keep their convoy lanes defended, and make the job of the raiding U-boats a bit less daunting. Or you could maybe stick one in sz 40 New Zealand to give Japan some raiding options.

Japan starts with 30 ipcs.
3 convoys would bring their starting income to 39 ipcs.
Again there is a question of where they could best be located? Placing them on the “money island” sea zones would make sense, sz 37, sz 47, and sz 48, but that probably just exacerbates the already outsized importance of those islands/sea zones.
Another option would be to push out the zones a bit. Perhaps sz 59, sz 51, and sz 50. This region of the map is still close enough to the money “islands” that one could envision a vague connection here between the imagined source of the resources (Borneo, East Indies, FIC etc) and the destination (Japan itself, and then on to the forward military outposts on the worthless islands.) This would be a conveniant way to use convoys to make the normally worthless territories of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Caroline islands more relevant to the game play, since those sea zones would have convoys.

But now you get to the question of how to approach USA?
I think there is an idea that USA is shipping resources to Allies more than collecting resources.
If you wanted to low-ball it, you could just give them 1 convoy.

That would be 6 convoys for Allies worth 18 ipcs.
And 6 convoys for Axis worth 18 ipcs.

USA starts with 42 ipcs.
1 Convoy would bring their starting income up to 45 ipcs.
You could put it in sz 53 to make Hawaii more relevant?

Or if you wanted to give the Allies more convoys, or the Axis less, that would probably work too. I just thought of the 6/6 idea to preserve a rough balance by sides. You could easily drop the Germans to just 2 convoys, or even 1, if balance by sides is less an issue to you etc. On the other hand, I don’t know that its really necessary to try to distinguish between whether the power is shipping resources or receiving them. If a convoy of USA resources gets sunk by a uboat somewhere in the mid Atlantic, you could just abstract that into USA money that’s “up for grabs.”

In that case you might give USA 3 convoys, and put them in interesting sea zone locations. Up the USA starting cash to 51 ipcs, so they still have the slight production edge on G (the way the OOB parity is.)

That would bring the totals too…
Allies: 8 convoys worth 24 ipcs.
Axis: 6 convoys worth 18 ipcs.

This might solve the balance issue many people complain about, that USA doesn’t have enough starting income relative to the other nations, while still preserving the slight Allied economic edge so familiar in A&A.

If 3 Convoys for USA, then sz 2, 9, and 12 could also be cool, if you didn’t already reserve those for UK. Other options might be sz 57 (Midway), or maybe some of those useless south pacific zones, like sz 43. Another option would be to stick the convoy cash in places like sz 22 (Brazil), sz 18 (Caribbean), sz 55 (Mexico) etc. This would probably make a bit more sense from a trade perspective, since you could say the resources are like cash or raw materials from other Allies in the Western Hemisphere. Those zones would be harder to raid, creating a larger pile of “safe” convoy income for USA, relative to other Nations. Again this would be more of a gameplay/game-balance expedient than anything else.

I think a rule like this for convoys would be a cool way to introduce more money into a game at the scale of 1942.2. Though it doesn’t do as much for the submarine unit specifically. For this system you might have it that ships take the IPCs away (ie. Remove the chips from beneath the roundel) during the conduct combat phase. That way you don’t have to address subs, not being able to create a hostile sz in 1942.2 like they could in the old games. But this gives a definite advantage to the raider over the defender. In other words, to prevent your convoys from being raided, you have to defend them beforehand, not just “clear the zone” of enemy ships before your collect income phase.

The way I was putting it, the system is almost exactly equivalent to the older convoy system, just plugged into 1942.2. Not sure if that’s what people are after, but it does seem workable. At least it would be familiar to anyone who has played using that older system before.