Alpha +.1 new strategic bombing rules questions

@marshmallowofwar @crockett36 et alii

In the Pacific and in general-- BB is the way to go, IMO.

Personally, I prefer CV SUB FIG over either BB or CA/DD in bulk. Having 2-3 BB is intimidating (psychological), has soak (adsorbs hits), has bombardment–and the BBs are the last stuff to survive in a pyrrhic battle where both sides took great losses.

Numbers have an advantage, and so having 2 units might be better than 1 because they are more flexible.

However, the reason the CA (Cruiser) is so weak is that it can’t defend (either itself, or the fleet) against the subshot. Whether this is psychological or odds-driven, all your CA must be given up before your last DD is. Moreover, the DD is required to cover each fleet, and block other squares–so it has a much higher utility value.

I’ve tried to design a “Cruiser Crush” KGF/ATL and it wont work. You need ##s… the small advantage of novelty and bombardments isn’t worth it. With 5-6 CA in SZ 91, you’re going to get creamed, and you’ll have to lose your higher units first!

To broaden the conversation, the cruiser isn’t overpriced…its correctly priced. There are two rules that nerf it out 1) 1 bombard per amphibious unit drop 2) any interference (scramble, killing defenseless unit or sub, prebattle) blocks all shots.

I think all the rules work flavorfully, though imperfectly with one another. So to make the cruiser better, something has to give which is why people try to repurpose or reprice the cruiser.

Summation: Go big, Go BB instead.

Agree with GHG, the limitation there is because you spend so many resources and so much time building up as the USA, it just wouldn’t seem fair that you could just pick off his invasion force, which in some situations, the USA player can not replace for 2 turns or possibly, ever.      Of course, its still pretty much impossible to invade japan proper unless you are demolishing him economically and even then, it takes quite a bit of time to get the forces over there–however, japan is not the only place he can kami --how is it fair to let him kami a transport that’s coming into iwo jima to set up a US strongpoint there?

The true limitation of the kamikaze is that there are really only 4 units that can be hit by it; dd ca cv bb    (no subs, transports, or planes, so its a long list), and 2 of those things aren’t sunk by just 1 hit.

Carriers are the most vulnerable, but they don’t even have to come along, they can wait in the wings and all they bring to the battle is soak hits.

Plenty of times when the allies attack SZ 6 they do it with like 2-3 naval units and 10+ planes, so the kami isn’t effective alone in stopping him.

The reason to keep it around in Japan’s pocket is that it ruins his support shots, iirc

Its a fun flavorful rule but its just piling on because Japan doesn’t really need it in order to survive or thrive, and usually when you try to depend on it it fails miserably in a gigantic blaze of glory.  I say try n dump it (we do in G42 G41 at times)!

@Krieghund:

As I have explained before, the reason Chinese movement is limited is to reflect the historical fact that China was also embroiled in a civil war (Nationalists versus Communists) at the same time that it was fighting the Japanese invaders.  As such, it had little interest in matters outside its own borders (keeping the Burma Road open for Allied aid being an obvious exception).  This restriction keeps China from influencing the game outside of its borders without having complicated rules to represent the impact of this conflict.

Don’t forget about the warlord factions!:)  Sure they were nominally supportive of Chaing but he had to keep a decent force back just to police his ‘allies’.

@elque:

The economic balance favors the allies.

as always…

reverse ur countries. were talking about germ attacking a rus blocker stack.(or italy)

Sorry, my bad.  :-D

Since the U.S. does not start with one of the objectives: (5 of the 7 islands one) They are likely to collect 77….then factor in that when they do take one of the islands to get the 5, they typically have lost the Philippines objective, so they will be at 75-77 (if they have Brazil). I haven’t seen them reach 82 in 4 games of Alpha 2.

fail