Balancing Cruiser (CL) and Battleship (BB) units with other A&A units

The Fighter Ace & Luftwaffe Ace IPC cost is 11 IPC for each unit.

There was a flaw in the IPC cost in the original text in the rules.

This has now been corrected and updated in the rules attached to the first post in this thread.

Captain

I really like the idea of 1 IPC per valueless allied pacific island. I am going to propose that to the group I play with, because we are always looking for a way to balance the game, but at the same time try to keep it as close to OOB as possible.

What we have been doing for several games, and it is working well, is this:

Play “cry uncle” - so no Victory City win condition for Axis.
Germany not allowed to build factories in original German controlled territories.
USA can do whatever they want in the European theater only, right away in turn one.

@Imperious:

OK.
Cruisers when they shoot and roll a 1 can force the defender to remove a plane
Cruisers move 3 spaces even if they didn’t come out of port.
Now they are worth the extra 2 IPC.

@Young:

@variance:

Another idea has been that each cruiser would only fire an AA shot at 1 attacking plane.

This is better than 3 shots per ship IMO.

So our Cruisers combine those ideas and get:
1-An attack and a defense @3 + 1 bombard @3,
2-A first round AA @1 against 1 attacking aircraft,
3-Cruisers when they shoot, either on attack or defense, and roll a 1 can force the attacker/defender to remove a plane.

In the game I played, the AA has more of a psychological impact than a real effect.
Indeed, it never destroyed any aircraft. And thus, neither by the AA and even by the “1” roll which force the defender to destroy an aircraft.

But UK bought 3 cruisers, instead of any BB, against German Luftwaffe.

Thanks everybody, those suggestions makes cruiser a more interesting unit that worth buying.

However, it can be a real nuisance for Germany but it may also help protect the Baltic fleet against UK aircrafts: at least, it slightly upgrade the Baltic fleet to better defend against attacking UK planes.

Ya I agree. You still need the T-34’s.

I will add these to my official house rules.

@Nukchebi0:

Out of lack of better location, I put this post here. Anyways,I think I have devised a great way to incorporate the cruiser into the game. A cruiser was, in essense, a battleship without armor. It had the same fire power (or nearly), but required less materials and production to build than a battleship. Since it was thinly armored, it was much more susceptible to torpedoes or dive bombers. Taking all these factors into account, a cruiser should be made a 12 IPC, one shot kill unit. It can bombard, attack on four and defends on a three, but is easily taken down.

Obviously, though, no one is going to buy a destroyer with a much better unit at the same price. Thus, the price of destroyers should be reduced to 10 IPC’s (or 8) to encourage more purchases, and reflect on reality more (I believe the Navy had over 900 destroyers by the end of the war.) Perhaps the values could be changed, but at least the price should be altered.

Since it looks like heavy cruisers will be added in the new Axis & Allies Guadalcanal set, I will weigh in here on the subject.

I am not sure where you get the idea that a cruiser is a battleship without armor.  All of the WW2 cruiser designs were effected to a greater or lesser degree by the between war naval disarmament treaties, restricting cruisers to no more than 10,000 tons standard displacement.  The Italians, the Japanese, and the Germans all cheated on this, but even they could not get too carried away, so even their ships went no more that 15,000 tons.  The smallest true battleship built between the wars had a displacement of 35,000 tons.  That is a huge difference.  Armament carried by a heavy cruiser was limited to 8 inch guns, with a typical shell weight of around 250 pounds, with 8 to 10 guns being carried.  That give you a 2,000 to 2,500 pound broadside per cruiser.  The shell weight of the battleship guns used in the new battleships were as follows:  US-16 inch at 2,700 pounds for AP shell; British-14 inch at 1,590 pounds, 15 inch at 1,938 pounds, and 16 inch at 2,048 pounds; German-15 inch at 1,764 pounds; Italian-15 inch at 1,951 pounds; French-15 inch at 1,949 pounds; and the Japanese -18 inch at 3,320 pounds.  The lighest battleship gun projectile was over 6 times heavier than the 8 inch shell, while the heaviest were about 11 and 13 times the weight.  A battleship could very easily wreck a cruiser with one broadside, as the Italians discovered at Cape Matapan in 1941, while a battleship could take quite a pounding from a cruiser with moderate damage, see the South Dakota at Guadalcanal in November, 1942.  When it came to AA fire, the cruiser was closer to the battleship.

As for torpedo damage, a battleship had sufficient beam for a side torpedo protection system, which enabled it to absorb several torpedo hits before being crippled, depending on where the torpedoes hit of course.  A hit near the rudders, as happened to the  Bismarck, may not sink the ship, but still leave it helpless to further attack.  A cruiser lacked sufficient beam for a side protection system, and depended on good compartmentation to survive.  Normally, after one torpedo hit, a cruiser was no longer fighting the enemy, but fighting to stay afloat.  Two hits had a good chance of sinking a cruiser, and three almost certainly would.

Putting all of this together, what should be the characteristics of a heavy cruiser in Axis & Allies?  If you set a battleship at 4 attack on ships and aircraft, 4 defense on ships and aircraft, and two hits to sink, you can work backwards to the cruiser.  A cruiser should get 3 attack and 3 defense with 1 hit to sink, but only 2 attack on a battleship.  The destroyer should drop to 2 attack and defense on ships and aircraft, with a 3 attack and defense on subs.  Battleships and cruisers have an attack and defense of 1 against subs.  The IPC cost could be based on how long it took to build the different types of ships.  Destroyers typically took a year, cruisers and carriers two years, battleships three years, and subs maybe 9 months, but that implies a lot of prefabrication and a sub has much tighter tolerances than the normal ship, so figure the cost the same as the destroyer.  This would give the destroyer and sub each costing 8 IPC, the cruiser and carrier 16 IPC, and the battleship 24 IPC.  The destroyer gets a 2 attack on a battleship from the torpedoes that it carries.

I will be interested to see how this compares to the ships that will be coming out in the Guadalcanal game.

Here is a price list I came up with to use for casual face-to-face A&AR games. Basically it increases the price of land units and reduces the cost of naval units to make the overall purchases throughout each game more varied. It reduces stacking so the game plays quicker which is great if you want to finish a game in one evening.
What’s also great is that it changes the strategic options enough so you can’t really rely on following the standard strategies you find on the internet. There might be better options out there now, especially since it’s so cheap to build a navy.

Infantry: 5 ipc
Artillery: 6 ipc
Tank: 8 ipc
Fighter: 10 ipc
Bomber: 12 ipc

Submarine: 5 ipc
Destroyer: 8 ipc
Transport: 10 ipc
Aircraft Carrier: 14 ipc
Battleship: 16 ipc

AA-Gun      5 ipc
IC            10 ipc

It’s very good, except … I think the US scenarios
are a wee bit OVER THE TOP!