It’s not Axis and Allies but uses similar mechanics.
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/category/53/global-war-1936
Edit
Here’s a list of all triplea maps. Might be something in there. The above Global War isn’t available.
Battlecruisers?
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@Imperious:
BC didn’t have the same firepower as BB. These were stronger than cruisers but still having lower caliber guns. If they carried larger guns they would need more weight and become larger and lose speed.
Their defense was their speed because armor plating was poor due again to the need to keep the ship lighter so it can catch or out run Cruisers or Battleships.
ships should not goto 3 hits and 2 hits. Its not KISS.
If you don’t give the BC a special ability like a speed bonus, the advantage of adding another warship is not adding anything to the game. If anything the only new warship should be escort/jeep/light carriers.
People barely buy cruisers as it is, to have a one hit 4-4- unit or 2 hit 3-3 unit is really like just cutting a pie into more slices. Your not really creating anything new and not adding more to the game
What does a Tank Destroyer or an armored car really add to the game? Nothing except its a new piece that can be used as a tank or have special abilities as a tank destroyer. I think the Navies of the game need a CVL, BC, and Destroyer escorts. These 3 units would really open up the the variant games with new and different rules for naval combat.and tactics.
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What does a Tank Destroyer or an armored car really add to the game? Nothing except its a new piece that can be used as a tank or have special abilities as a tank destroyer. I think the Navies of the game need a CVL, BC, and Destroyer escorts. These 3 units would really open up the the variant games with new and different rules for naval combat.and tactics.
it wont add anything UNLESS LIKE BATTLE-CRUISERS, it has a special ability.
Adding all these pieces and “fitting” in marginal changes in the values and not giving them anything special makes them nothing to the game. If they have a special ability, THEN THEY HAVE A VALUE. BECAUSE RIGHT NOW ALL THE COMBAT VALUES ARE TAKEN.
We got 2-1, 2-2,3-3,4-4 units. adding 4-3 or 3-2 or whatever is not really adding a new idea to the game. Thats why in order to make a new units you MUST ADD SPECIAL ABILITY.
SO the BC should be a 3 space mover or possibly “blitz” sea zones with carriers at 3 spaces like tanks blitz on land with mech.
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@Imperious:
BC didn’t have the same firepower as BB. These were stronger than cruisers but still having lower caliber guns. If they carried larger guns they would need more weight and become larger and lose speed. Their defense was their speed because armor plating was poor due again to the need to keep the ship lighter so it can catch or out run Cruisers or Battleships.
That’s sort of the theory, but the reality wasn’t that simple. If you compare the very first Dreadnought BB (the Dreadnought) and the Invincible, the first CB (or really CC was the proper US abbreviation back then) it had the same main armament, but the BB had more armor and the CC was longer (because length/width ratio was VITAL to speed) and much more powerful machinery. The Germans tended to go 1 step down (like 1", no more) in armament but theirs were better armored. The Renowns and the Hood had 15" guns: hardly lesser firepower, considering that many navies of the time hadn’t yet gotten beyond 13.5" or 14" guns, and no one would go over 16" for another 15 years (and then the Yamato’s with their 18"-ers would be unique.) So they did sacrifice armor, but not much in the way of firepower.
Later CB’s would be a little lighter in armament, like the Alaska’s and the never-built Japanese B65 or Soviet Kronstadt. Even the Gneisenau with its 11" guns was still in the Dreadnought BB range: the original German dreadnoughts carried 11" guns. They were much more heavily armored than the US CB’s, though, and the Germans always referred to them as BB’s. They’d actually planned to rearm them with 6x15", which would have made them an interesting match-up with the Renowns… and the follow-on O-Class, which might have been even lighter armored and WERE seen as “true CC’s,” would have also been 6x15" But anyway, anything that I know of that has ever been called a “battlecruiser” was within the 11"-16" gun range… while everything I know of in the dreadnought battleship range was… 11"-18" range. Hardly a major difference!
A key point here, though, is that the weight of armament was not the main thing that hurt speed, but the weight of armor, especially since the length to weight ratio was so key: putting the same armor over a longer hull would always mean a heavier ship, to the speed/armor trade-off was kind of a catch-22! Sometimes, but not always, designers played around at the margins of extra weight by reducing the # of guns a little bit or reducing their caliber a little bit, but a BC was always much closer to a BB than to a CA in armament. This is why the Washington Treaty grouped BC’s and BB’s together as “capital ships” and then set a strict limit of 8" guns and 10,000 tons for cruisers, to make sure the “cruiser” and “capital ship” categories didn’t merge together and make the treaty irrelevant before it expired.
If you don’t give the BC a special ability like a speed bonus, the advantage of adding another warship is not adding anything to the game. If anything the only new warship should be escort/jeep/light carriers.
People barely buy cruisers as it is, to have a one hit 4-4- unit or 2 hit 3-3 unit is really like just cutting a pie into more slices. Your not really creating anything new and not adding more to the game
Here you have a point, IL, ASSUMING a d6 system, since the d12 system gives more gradiants. But if you give BC’s and CV’s a speed advantage, then that same speed advantage should also go to cruisers and DD destroyers (though maybe not to DE destroyers if they’re added) …and maybe also to fast BB’s. (The Iowa’s were as fast as any BC!) And on a larger map, like the Golbal 1939 one, perhaps such a speed advantage would be a helpful game-pace improvement, though not having played it yet, I can’t say what it would do to the game-balance issue.
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That’s sort of the theory, but the reality wasn’t that simple. If you compare the very first Dreadnought BB (the Dreadnought) and the Invincible, the first CB (or really CC was the proper US abbreviation back then) it had the same main armament, but the BB had more armor and the CC was longer (because length/width ratio was VITAL to speed) and much more powerful machinery. The Germans tended to go 1 step down (like 1", no more) in armament but theirs were better armored. The Renowns and the Hood had 15" guns: hardly lesser firepower, considering that many navies of the time hadn’t yet gotten beyond 13.5" or 14" guns, and no one would go over 16" for another 15 years (and then the Yamato’s with their 18"-ers would be unique.) So they did sacrifice armor, but not much in the way of firepower.
The examples you use are only the cases where the BC had larger guns. The standard BC had smaller guns because larger would cause more weight and the concept was to have something that could run as fast as a cruiser, but outrun and out gun them.
most of these are 11-14 inch range, while battleships 15-16+ size range
Scharnhorst & Gneisenau
Alaska class
Dunkerque class
And it can be argued that some German pocket battleships were really Battlecruisers
Kongo classThe difference is very great in terms of armor piercing ability of having a 15 inch gun vs say a 12 or 14 inch.
I guess a 4-4 unit with one hit capability and moves 3 in NCM is enough distance in this unit to make it viable to include it in the game, but the price would need to be about 14-15 range. not more
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@Imperious:
The examples you use are only the cases where the BC had larger guns. The standard BC had smaller guns because larger would cause more weight and the concept was to have something that could run as fast as a cruiser, but outrun and out gun them.
most of these are 11-14 inch range, while battleships 15-16+ size range
Scharnhorst & Gneisenau
Alaska class
Dunkerque class
And it can be argued that some German pocket battleships were really Battlecruisers
Kongo classThe difference is very great in terms of armor piercing ability of having a 15 inch gun vs say a 12 or 14 inch.
I guess a 4-4 unit with one hit capability and moves 3 in NCM is enough distance in this unit to make it viable to include it in the game, but the price would need to be about 14-15 range. not more
My examples are not un-representative within a given “design generation.” If there’s more than an incremental difference between the average BB and the average BC, it likely has as much to do with the fact that BC’s fell out of favor, and so the newer and larger-gunned BB’s didn’t have BC equivalents most of the time.
-The Kongo’s had 14" guns, as large as they got when she was laid down (The British had only just started thinking about moving to 15" at that point.)
-The Dunkerque’s (13") were only slightly smaller than average and the previous French design had only had 13.4" guns. Even so, the French didn’t actually refer to them as BC’s, but rather as “Fast BB’s.”
-The German pocket BB’s were cruiser-sized because of the Versailles Treaty and only carried 6 11" guns, and so are a special case.-The US Alaska’s are really the only ones built to a noticeably smaller gun type than BB’s of the same generation, and even she has guns that are the same size as the original dreadnought BB and are MUCH bigger than the 8" guns of a heavy cruiser. Even they are a special case, as the USN never called them “battlecruisers” (which they always abbreviated “CC”) but rather “large cruiser” (which they abbreviated CB) partly, I suppose, because the whole “battlecruiser concept” had become rather controversial in the wake of Jutland and the Hood debacle.
Yes, there’s a big range in capital ships guns, but if you really compare BC’s and BB’s of the same design generation, the difference in main armament is always incremental, if there’s a difference at all, and often there wasn’t! Yes, there’s a big difference in power between 12" and 16" guns, but there’s a bigger difference between 12" guns and 8" cruiser guns!
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I’m not arguing about how to use the pieces! I’m arguing the fact that if made available there could be house rules made to fit the units in the game….global or tactical game…any game! IMHO, I think the 3 naval units I mentioned before could add to a game, obviously not as historic as adding the mechs and tacs!! Since we have 2 people willing to make pieces I think it would be good to expand unit catagories as much as possible. Just sayin!
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Fast Battleships really ended the value of the BC. They got the same speed and also had larger guns and better plating.
But the battlecruiser also had a more efficient range that it could operate making them suited for commerce raiding and patrolling. Battleships sucked fuel and needed close bases to operate from.
The Battlecuiser should have the increased range which translates into ‘speed’
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I’m not arguing about how to use the pieces! I’m arguing the fact that if made available there could be house rules made to fit the units in the game….global or tactical game…any game! IMHO, I think the 3 naval units I mentioned before could add to a game, obviously not as historic as adding the mechs and tacs!! Since we have 2 people willing to make pieces I think it would be good to expand unit catagories as much as possible. Just sayin!
Well, I do agree on this much… I think that perhaps that, for example, an Alaska, which really is roughly a half-step between, say, and Iowa and a Baltimore-class cruiser, would be a great 7-7 unit on a d12 system. As to whether it gets 1 hit or 2, I’m thinking that whatever a carrier gets, it would be about the same: not as tough as a battleship, but definitely a step above a cruiser, and probably closer to a BB than to a CA. Probably this means that if you go to a 3-hit BB, or a 1 hit CV, the armor difference between a BB and a BC could be represented, but if both the CV and the BB stay 2-hit units, then a BC would be there too.
Fast Battleships really ended the value of the BC. They got the same speed and also had larger guns and better plating.
Yeah, that’s basically the size of it.
But the battlecruiser also had a more efficient range that it could operate making them suited for commerce raiding and patrolling. Battleships sucked fuel and needed close bases to operate from.
The Battlecuiser should have the increased range which translates into ‘speed’
Well, that’s a point. What we’re really dealing with here is actually “strategic” speed rather than “tactical” speed, given the game’s overall scale, which is why we probably can’t represent the difference between fast tanks and slow ones on this scale. In efficiency, though, I’m not sure that this works so well as a differentiator between BB’s and BC’s. I think it actually probably works better on an “old” vs. “new” basis. For example, I was just reading up on the battle of Guadalcanal the other month (awesome book btw, titled Neptune’s Inferno any of y’all who are really interested in getting into the nuts and bolts of the Pacific War, that guy’s an awesome writer, I couldn’t put it down…) but anyway, the author answered a Q I’d long had: “Why didn’t the US use some of its old BB’s in the Guadalcanal Campaign?” The answer seems to be this very effciency issue you raised: the US didn’t yet have the oiler fleet to keep the old BB’s supplied that far from base.
Interestingly, though, the new BB’s just coming on line were much more efficient, which is why the Washington and SD were on-hand to finally be sent into the fray in the decisive 2nd Naval Battle of Guadalcanal!
Given this, I’d say it makes more sense to give the movement range of 3 to all the new BB’s, BC’s, CV’s/ CVL’s, CA’s/CL’s & DD’s, but not to the old BB’s subs, transports, DE’s, and CVE’s (if we have them).
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Hey guys I’m making a house rule where naval bases and airbases are used for doing things like refueling units. I need to know the cruising speed and distance for all the current naval units and maybe the ones your thinking about making. I might even edit how far a unit can move.
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Ryan,
best way to do that would be to incorporate supply tokens into the game. They cost 2 IPC and they are transported by truck and transport. If your fleet is out to sea it needs a transport carrying supplies sailing with it….like an oiler. Technically ships can stay out to sea indefinetly as long as they have food and fuel and ammo!!!
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Well yeah I’m also making supply rules but I believe someone here mentioned that Battleships needed to stay near a base for fuel. The point is I’m making it so naval bases, and airbases become more valuable. This means that those little islands in the Pacific like the Gillbert Islands and Guam will mean something other than place to take for “fun” when you’ve destroyed your opponents fleet. Also think about this. A destroyer takes lesss fuel and ammunition then a battleship. If we assume that a oiler is always with these ships then that means the battleship’s oiler will need resupplying more often than the destroyer’s. Also these oiler’s wouldn’t go out to sea unescorted so that means no automatic refueling. I don’t want to add another use for transports and I’m assuming these are mainly transports for moving troops not supplies (even though they could be used for both :-) ). In the end I cold just really use some help as I’m not a navy expert, not even roughly learned.
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Ryan,
Lol. I’m a navy man myself, well ex-navy! It was said that the early battleships had to stay close to a base because they drank fuel and the navy didn’t hve the oil:fuel ships at the start of the war. But by 1943 the ships had longer range and they had the logistc ships also. You could make it where they can only load supplies from a base! My rules I have the navy bases use their AA guns if there is a battle in that sea zone. Just an idea
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Gents, In this discussion on Battle Cruisers did anyone figure the fire power of the HMS Hood was 8 x 15 inch guns the same fire power of the DKM Bizmarck? Yes Bizmarck’s guns were a new design but they fired the same broadside of the Hood. I like the idea of Battle Cruisers and I propose these classes below if this develops further into actual playing pieces. For hits make your CCs 2 Hits and all CVs 2 Hits, increase BBs to 3 Hits and you will have a serious game. If you want to penalize UK for armoured deck than limit them to 1 Tac or 1 Fighter no both. I like the idea of CVEs 1 hit to sink and speed of transports. CVEs carry only 1 Fighter zero Tac.
USN Alaska Class 3 ea 2 other scraped before launching
IJN B-64 Class 2 ea IJN PROPOSED BATTLE CRUISER
UK Hood HAD 3 SISTERS NEVER COMPLETED
USSR Borodino ACTUAL LAUNCHED IN 1915 NEVER COMPLETED WITH HER 3 SISTERS
Germany Scharnhorst OR Z-PLAN O, P OR Q
French Dunkerque 1 SISTER STRASBOURG
Italian We would have to create one can’t find a ref were one was even porposed. -
Gents, In this discussion on Battle Cruisers did anyone figure the fire power of the HMS Hood was 8 x 15 inch guns the same fire power of the DKM Bizmarck? Yes Bizmarck’s guns were a new design but they fired the same broadside of the Hood.
Their 15" calibers may have been the same, but their performances were completely different. The Hood’s main guns were 42 calibers in length, and could fire an 871-kg armour-piercing shell at a muzzle velocity of 750 m/sec. Those of the Bismarck were 52 calibers in length, and could fire an 800-kg armour-piercing shell at a muzzle velocity of 820 m/sec.
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@CWO:
Gents, In this discussion on Battle Cruisers did anyone figure the fire power of the HMS Hood was 8 x 15 inch guns the same fire power of the DKM Bizmarck? Yes Bizmarck’s guns were a new design but they fired the same broadside of the Hood.
Their 15" calibers may have been the same, but their performances were completely different. The Hood’s main guns were 42 calibers in length, and could fire an 871-kg armour-piercing shell at a muzzle velocity of 750 m/sec. Those of the Bismarck were 52 calibers in length, and could fire an 800-kg armour-piercing shell at a muzzle velocity of 820 m/sec.
Remember the Hood took a fatal hit to one of her main magazines.
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And thats why the BC is less powerful than a BB. The larger ( even by 1 inch) is a substantial advantage in piercing ability. The Hood could not stand up to Bismarck, The Bismarck could have easily took out both Prince of Whales and Hood.
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The Kirishima just about sank the South Dakota until the USS Washington entered the battle. Kirishima a BC and SouthDakota a Battleship. Yea the BC is outgunned aainst a BB but in this battle a BC did go toe to toe with a BB and for all intents and purposes won!
Really if we are talkin about pieces from a historical standpoint the Battleship was made obsislete by carriers and carrier tactics anyway! There were very few BB vs BB battles anyway! The battleship was limited to landing force protection/shore bombardment. -
Okay I decided that this rule would be bad if you could only refuel at naval bases so yes transports can load resources but only at bases. Still Just for the sake of argument whats the range of those ships. Just label it as shot, medium, or long.
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Okay I decided that this rule would be bad if you could only refuel at naval bases so yes transports can load resources but only at bases. Still Just for the sake of argument whats the range of those ships. Just label it as shot, medium, or long.
Here’s the thing: speed, efficiency and range are 3 different things, but on this game-scale it’s hard to represent all three. Example: DD’s were fast (usually the fastest ships in a given fleet) and used way less fuel, but because they were small, had smaller ranges. Often in the field, DD’s needed to be refueled by BB’s, not because they were inefficient, but because their smaller fuel-carrying capacity limited their range. If it’s an issue of speed by itself, I’d probably make all the ships that were closer to 30 knots have a 3-space “speed” and those closer to 20 knots have a 2-space “speed.” What we then find is that all of the BC’s and new BB’s (i.e., post Washington Treaty, i.e. 1930 on because the treaty imposed a BB-building “holiday”) would be 3-space ships. All old BB’s would be 2-space ships. That makes it pretty simple.
For non-capital ships, it would also be fairly straightforward: CV’s, CVL’s, CA’s, CL’s, and DD’s would be 3-space “fast” ships.
The 2-space “slow” ships would be all subs, transports, CVE’s
If destroyer-escorts are included, they are about halfway in between, and could go either way. I say, make them cheaper but slower and that would give them a reason for existing. (In the real world, DE’s tended to be around 25-knot ships, because they only needed to keep up with slow convoys, so cost-savings were made on their machinery.)
That system, based just on speed alone, would be relatively straightforward and easy to remember on this scale. If we take actual “range” per se into account, however, we open up a whole new world of complexities. I could rattle off the approximate listed speed (give or take a couple of knots) of nearly every class of ship from WW2, but I couldn’t begin to give you range stats off the top of my head.
If you throw efficiency into it, that adds yet another whole new level of complexity. More or less efficient than what? These are the logistic nightmares that kept poor old Admiral Ghormley (and his entire staff, holed up in that dimly lit transport in the harbor of his “home port” in New Caledonia) up at night.
However, since the newer BB’s were apparently much more efficient than the older "“gas guzzlers” of Battleship Row, you could just go with “speed” as your determiner, since the newer, faster BB’s were apparently also the more efficient ones… it’d be much simpler than trying to figure out, say, exactly how much fuel each ship needs for a given amount of time and then figuring how to get it to them… You would also probably find that you’d be building vast fleets of support ships. Take a look at the order of battle of the 3rd or 5th Fleet late in the war, and if its a complete one, including support ships, and you’ll find an enormous pyramidal structure of support ships under-lying the rather limited list of actual combat ships at “the tip of the spear.” I don’t think most A&A players are going to want to have to spend the time, IPC’s, and mental exertion necessary to build and manage this entire support structure. Given the game-scale of A&A, most players want to concentrate on that “spear-tip”, not spend too much time on the whole shaft behind that spear.
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The speed thing would only be for NCM. No warship can travel at full speed unless it wanted to substantially reduce its range.
Only consideration for a 3 move ship is for NCM. Otherwise it changes too much of the game since the distances were configured for 2 space movers. IN combat this is a huge advantage, while in NCM its basically like having a port for NCM only.
The only value for a 4-4 one hit ship might be a 3 space move or an ability to move 2 spaces and 1 more in NCM so warships can perform more like surface raiders by escaping after sinking a helpless ship.
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