[House Rules] The Cruiser

[Argothair]

That isn’t quite what i meant by island groups – maybe I should have said “island chains.” The point is that you can drop an infantry off onto the island chain, and then it can keep walking for a while and slowly keep picking up cash, or at least you can sit in the same sea zone and hop from island to island without having to get any closer to enemy planes. The chains are valuable enough to deserve a drop-off in the first place, and maybe valuable enough to have one combat ship around to fight off opponents, but not so valuable that you want to sit there and guard your land units with a whole fleet. The national objectives for BM3 get close to this ideal, but in my opinion they still don’t really get you there, which is why, in my opinion, BM3 still doesn’t really need cruisers. Pics of some World at War island chains are below.

I do encourage everyone’s playtests; by all means, try reducing the price, try the AA ability, try the carry-1-inf ability. You might find something that makes the game more fun for you. I’m not personally that interested in cruiser playtests because I think the whole concept of the cruiser is a mismatch for the 1942.2/Anniversary/Global maps and that the money Avalon Hill spent on the cruiser sculpt (which is kind of hard to distinguish anyway) would have been better spent on a landing craft, or an escort carrier, or a commando, or a transport plane. If we have to play with cruisers, I’d rather see a much sharper divide between DDs, CAs, and BBs that requires a total rework of the naval cost structure…something like this:

Transports __ C5 A0 D1 M2 ___ carries 2 ground units
Subs _________C6 A2 D1 M2 ___ convoy 1 IPC
Destroyers __C7 A2 D3 M2 ___
Cruisers ____ C10 A3 D4 M3 ___ bombards
Carriers _____C14 A1 D2 M2 ___ carries 3 planes, 2-hit
Battleships _ C18 A5 D5 M2 ___ bombards, 2-hit

[General 6 Stars]

@Argothair ya I have the revamped piece costs and such as I stated before. It be nice to see your piece values tested and results showed. But as usual no playtest results.
D12 I have in game
Batt A9 D9 C15 M2 SHS 4. 2 hits
Crus. A5 D5 C9 M3 SHS 3 plane or ship
Carr A2 D4 C14 M2 hit plane only 2 hit
Dest A3 D3 C6 M2 SHS 2 FSBL Depth charge @3
Sub A5 D3 C7 M2 FS can dive with dest present Tacs can hit surfaced subs @3
Tran A0 D1 C7 M2 Esc @3
Can take as casualty but then you lose your D1 plane shot. Transports alone can escape if survive after each round of combat.
Naval ship block. 1 ship blocks 3. 2 ships block 6

Barney I am raising the cruiser to A@5 D@5 against planes AA and ships for every round of combat. Will test it in game in 2 weeks.

5000 planes were shot down to kill only 39 ships so got to boost it for AA

[Mursilis]

@Argothair

My cost restructuring was only going to lower cruisers to 10 and BB’s to 18. Keeping everything else the same. Why do you want to give transports a defense of 1 again? And why reprice everything?

[General 6 Stars]

😩😍😜😄😇😬😜🤐

[Argothair]

If you want to just discount the price of CAs and BBs and leave everything else the same, go ahead! I still won’t buy any CAs, and I’ll still rarely buy BBs, but I don’t think your changes will hurt anything.

The point of giving transports a defense of 1 is to eliminate the concept of the “defenseless” unit, because that adds more rules to the game for insufficient benefit in fun and strategy, and to make it easier for players to build very small navies (potentially just a single transport and nothing more) in minor theaters. I think the cost structure I’m suggesting works without it, though – if you like defenseless units, just drop transports back to D0.

The reason for repricing everything is to try to set up a more interesting thematic difference between SSs, DDs, CAs, and BBs. SSs are small and cheap and good at offense. DDs are small and cheap and good at defense. CAs are medium-sized ships that add good punch to a fleet but are over-priced to use on their own. BBs are big, expensive ships with a much higher offensive value than other ships, but are likewise over-priced unless you can support them with lots of escorts.

As SS Gen so kindly and gently points out, though, we’re all wasting our time – nobody is going to playtest this stuff.

[CaptainNapalm]

@Mursilis

Just read through the thread, and lowering the BB and CA costs to 18 and 10 seems like the best start to me. The other ideas have some fun and interesting elements to them, but they are complicated, while a simple price change is literally the easiest option possible.

[Imperious Leader]

Getting back to topic, what about forget light cruiser. Instead a 3-3 unit that takes 2 hits…the Battlecruiser. And Perhaps each nation can pick one attribute either a shore Bombard at 3, or always move 3 ( 4 with naval base… AKA “Fast Battleship”), or AA gun platform…AKA Alaska Class Battleship… getting any hit goes against planes.

The cost of such a unit would presumably be around 15-17 IPC

Since 6 sided dice only allow a small window of differentiation you need to give these extra units something outside the box, but within the system.

Battlecruisers can model old battleships, Proper Battlecruisers, Pocket Battleships, Heavy Cruisers, etc

The Cruiser can stick with Light and some Heavy Cruisers. I would substitute…or downgrade at least one BB for each: Japan, UK, Italy, USA ( only choosing in pairs- One allied one Axis in order to preserve pay balance

[General 6 Stars]

I know where your coming from IL but I think there looking for the best simplicity option.
No ?

[Argothair]

@Imperious-Leader If a battlecruiser means anything, though, it means a fast, powerful, lightly armored ship. Right, like in the old speed/power/armor trade-off, the battlecruiser was designed to get #1 and #2 by trading off #3.

I always thought the “2-hit” idea was supposed to represent having extremely thick armor and durable hulls. I would think a battlecruiser would be more like C12 / A5 / D4 / M3 / 1-hit / bombard.

[bptastic]

@barnee what you need to do is give cruisers a specific niche in naval combat. Let’s think this through BBs are tough they attack at 4 and can take an extra hit, DDs nullify sub sneak attacks and are generally cheaper to replace. What naval combat has that there is no unit to counter is air. Sure you can bring your own with CVs and that’s good but cruisers, especially in the later war boasted very powerful anti air suites. So give cruisers a niche - anti air abilities. They get a first roll strike at any air units attacking them similar to the AAA ground unit. Then they can participate in regular naval combat as well. Now you have a reason to buy them. They perform a defensive and offensive function, giving a fleet greater flexibility and combat power. I’d buy them if they could counter air power, cause they have a niche, not just a po man’s BB.

[General 6 Stars]

1 Battleship C20 A4 1.26 D 1.26 M2 SHS 4 2 hit
2 Battlecruisers C24 A5 1.66 D 1.34 M3 SHS 3
Not bad. Pay 4 icps for a better A D and M.

[aequitas-et-veritas]

@Imperious-Leader a very good idea.
Next step i was thinking was like linking up CR’s in a tech System.
But your idea is more refined.👍🏽

[General 6 Stars]

@SS-GEN said in [House Rules] The Cruiser:

@Argothair ya I have the revamped piece costs and such as I stated before. It be nice to see your piece values tested and results showed. But as usual no playtest results.
D12 I have in game
Batt A9 D9 C15 M2 SHS 4. 2 hits
Crus. A5 D5 C9 M3 SHS 3 plane or ship
Carr A2 D4 C14 M2 hit plane only 2 hit
Dest A3 D3 C6 M2 SHS 2 FSBL Depth charge @3
Sub A5 D3 C7 M2 FS can dive with dest present Tacs can hit surfaced subs @3
Tran A0 D1 C7 M2 Esc @3
Can take as casualty but then you lose your D1 plane shot. Transports alone can escape if survive after each round of combat.
Naval ship block. 1 ship blocks 3. 2 ships block 6

Barney I am raising the cruiser to A@5 D@5 against planes AA and ships for every round of combat. Will test it in game in 2 weeks.

5000 planes were shot down to kill only 39 ships so got to boost it for AA

[General 6 Stars]

@aequitas-et-veritas I have a tech for Battleships Cruisers and Destroyers +1 on Shore shot only. But my shore shot is lower. D6 shoreshot is to high.

[General 6 Stars]

If Battlecruiser is in game then I would raise battleship AD.
1 Battleship (A5) A10 1.58 (D5) D10 1.58 2 hits 2 A or D rolls
2 Battlecrus (A5) A10 1.66 (D4) D8 1.34

Unless IL the Battlecruiser was a better ship ?

[M36]

Has anyone considered a “Pocket Battleship”? A cruiser that costs 16 IPC, attacks at four and like subs receives two dice for convoy disruption? Tried this in a couple of our Europe games but haven’t seen enough use of it yet to truly determine its worth.

[barnee]

@bptastic said in [House Rules] The Cruiser:

…give cruisers a niche - anti air abilities…

Hi bp

yea I use AA for both the BB and CA. 2 shots that hit at 1 out of 10. Can’t have more shots than planes. I lowered it to 1 shot for the CA after boosting it to A4 when paired with a BB butI’m still on the first test game so we’ll see how that works.

Obviously one would need a 10 sided die for ftf play, but when I tried it at 1 shot hits at 1 out of 6, it seemed too powerful. Lowering it to 1 in 10 seems to work pretty good.

Also, the AA ability doesn’t activate until rd 2, so as not to break rd 1 battles. I think of it as representing early war success of Air vs Naval. : )

[Mursilis]

@Argothair

I’m playtesting it at least. But i can only playtest 1 game at a time. I’m currently doing 11 IPC cruiser and shockingly it’s not being purchased.

[General 6 Stars]

@Mursilis said in [House Rules] The Cruiser:

@Argothair

I’m playtesting it at least. But i can only playtest 1 game at a time. I’m currently doing 11 IPC cruiser and shockingly it’s not being purchased.

Not surprised.

[General 6 Stars]

Barney battleships really didn’t have AA. Small batteries. Take away the battleship aa and give back Cruiser d6 @1 every round ?