New Special Unit Ideas?

Sorry if this has been suggested before!

I think that the game could benefit from a land unit scramble option into adjacent land zones from cities or a FOB.

I noticed a potential need for this when I was playing Germany and I had fighters in Paris so that I could better defend the French region. I was annoyed that I couldn’t have my armoured units (mech, med. tanks, etc) stationed there like IRL to respond to a seaborne invasion.

I think the rule should be either:

Up to three armoured units (or units with a movement of 2) can scramble out of a city to defend an adjacent territory. or; Instead of a city perhaps a FOB can be added into the game to act as a land unit airbase for scrambling purposes, or even movement purposes as well (I think that the game is too short and land units movement needs a buff, perhaps +1 movement from an HQ could help).

I think this would add quite a nice dimension to the game. Making cities more important and making it easier for nations to go on the offensive by not needing to stack as many units on every territory (think Japan on the Chinese coast).

Maybe the incoming scrambling land units can defend at a -2 on the first round of combat (minimum 1 defence) to simulate them coming late to the battle (not as fast as fighters).

Please feel free to critique this or add to it!

@trig said in Special Fortification Zones:

@noneshallpass
@JbuckBuddy
This isn’t exactly made clear, but I would go with the old A&A rule of, “if it has a land border, it isn’t and island.” Otherwise, what is an island. Is the UK? Is Australia? It goes on and on.

Australia is a continent, not an island. The UK and Japan are listed as island nations, and I would play them as exceptions to the special fortification zones, but I don’t see that in the rules. The New Guineas, Borneo, Sarawak, Ireland, etc., would qualify as islands, and special fortification zones, in my opinion.

@theveteran No problem.

Ok, now back to mountainous borders. I’m not saying terrain is magically flat if it is friendly. The way you can be certain that I don’t believe that is to scroll back and read where I said if the armor were in Northern Italy and moving through a friendly Southern France, it would not be allowed to continue on to Aquitaine the same turn.

I’m saying that when a land zone is friendly, then border terrain doesn’t start affecting you until the moment you cross the border. And the river rules give a hint that my perspective may be the correct one.

Sidenote on Game Design: There are two ways game designers can approach movement costs: walls or quicksand. With the walls approach, you are not permitted to move unless you have sufficient movement. If I understand Global War’s system, it is a quicksand one. You are allowed to go in, but then get penalized and stuck. This is the way I conceptualize it. I may be wrong, but I know Morten’s approach in general is to give the player choices with consequences. Other game designers forbid players from doing things.

@trig either way - they have a close relationship. AND i have seen on numerous occasions the FAQ/Errata get updated almost immediately after having a conversation with GHG

@delaja Thanks! Yeah, I thought it had a decent base to it. Just as you said, I was trying to think specifically in terms of an HBG expansion. I wanted it to stay localized to the area at hand.

My thought for requiring the planes on the islands was to force the player to have to do something to get the bonus convoy raid other than just possessing the territory. True, the overall goal is to bring those islands into the conflict in some way, and by eliminating the need to have a fighter present on either Malta or Sicily you’d still want to defend the islands with troops. But I figured this way either side would have to “give” something to “get” something. You want the convoy raid? Place a fighter in these spots, even if not optimal for potential offensive operations!

I’m certainly happy to chat more about it if you’d like as well! Will and Doug both implied they liked it. But like I said, they said it looked great, and asked if I play tested, and I didn’t hear anything after that. Not saying they had to or anything, but I don’t know how much stock they may have really put in it in the end!

@insanehoshi Yea i memorized 85 useless different unit types, but i was talking about new players, and also seeing the values helps calculate combat more quickly. With counters i can easily add in the 15 bonus unit types that are also useless.

You have to remember that the rail capacity in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and South America is only one unit. Linking Egypt and South Africa would only cost 4 IPP so that’s not too bad considering you can only move one unit. Going from India to Egypt though would cost 10 IPP because of the terrain and one more link. That might be too steep a cost to only move 1 unit. It would cost 18 IPP to complete the link from the US to South America. If the rail capacity were unlimited then such links might be ok, but spending that much to move only 1 unit is probably not worth it. Especially a long link that can be damaged or broken by the enemy in an exposed place like the Middle East. I really like the idea of Cape Town to Cairo though.

I’ve found that a couple sheets’ worth of paper “Light” and “Heavy” roundels works to disambiguate which tanks/cruisers/battleships/carriers/bombers are which. Not the prettiest option, but sure is the cheapest.

For instance:

Heavy roundels designate - Heavy Artillery (my homebrew artillery tech “Heavy Artillery Doctrine”, same stats except Costs +1, supports two infantry units), Heavy Tanks, Heavy Strategic Bombers, Heavy Cruisers, Heavy Carriers, Heavy Battleships

Light roundels designate - Light Tanks, Light Cruisers, Light Carriers, and I use “Light” roundels to indicate “Fast Battleships” as well, since they move faster than ‘standard’ battleships