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

Cruisers or Destroyers for my new surface warship?

Subject of a new post: www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=41552.0

For those following along at home…

-Midnight_Reaper

Addressing the issue of unit size, individual pieces in Axis & Allies typically depict the Corps or Army level, as I understand it. However, there are a few deviations to depict smaller, independent commands, such as the two British infantry in Hong Kong and the French and British infantry scattered in West Africa south of the Sahara.

I understand the desire to be able to build every type of unit, but I think that scarcity places correct emphasis on those troops’ elite status. The mobilization rule would be a quirk: the Legion has periodically fought on the mainland (as during WWI, for example). Its frequent foreign deployments are rather a reflection of the fact that the Legion’s peculiar non-national composition gives French politicians greater latitude to pursue foreign policy that has some blood cost.

I think that Frogmen should get to roll a d6 against every capital ship, hitting on a 2 or less. They should have no independent combat value because they operated as small units, not at the division level.

When it comes to Marine infantry, the question is whether you view naval units of any type as indicative of fleets (e.g., a Destroyer could stand in for a single capital ship), or whether you want them to represent actual unit types, in which case I don’t think a Cruiser or Battleship should be allowed to carry Marines. Historically speaking, Cruiser divisions sometimes fielded Marine and naval landing parties, but these comprised perhaps slightly over 100 men when multiple ships combined their detachments.

Think about whether you want to confer advantage to certain units only for certain rounds of combat. The difficulty of remembering when and how to roll for them can be partially mitigated by player aids.

One additional unit type for which HBG makes a piece is the Armored Car. This is especially good if you want to game out the inter-war period. I have developed rules allowing attackers to re-roll a die when an Armored Car is present in the attacking force. This is a play on their role as reconnaissance elements. Think about Cavalry, also. Perhaps Cavalry strike harder versus infantry when they outnumber defenders.

I’ve used cards to trigger the appearance of special units denoted by markers. They can also be used to grant nation-specific bonuses for a single round of play, etc. This works better on much larger maps with a game that is expected to go on a while, especially because the cards can be used as interrupts, which prevents players getting bored between turns.

If you are interested in exploring some new ways to play the game, please check this thread for more information:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=32937.0

Cheers, M_I_R

@Trisdin:

@Imperious:

A factory is france is worse for Germany, while the others listed are clearly in favor to benefit those players.

Perhaps Romania is best actually. Then Germany can build ships for Medd. Yes i like this better

Romania is a good idea, it gives Germany a second sea zone to build ships in and it allows germany to build land units closer to Russia, but is it historicaly accurate or viable.

yeah, it’s viable: didn’t antonescu aide the germans allot?

yeah its the intentional
the strategic situation is different between 39 and 42
China was isolated from help due to losing coastal areas

goto thrashers site ill bet you find it there.

@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.

@Trusty-Sapper
Wow, you’ve responded to my reply from a year ago, on a very old thread. I checked my PM’s and I was able to send Bass my most recent version of AARe.

I do agree with you Trusty, that “National Advantages plus bid makes every game a strategic puzzle”
Don’t forget the targeted tech rolls too. No chance to develop super subs when my scientist were working on long range!

I was a bit upset when it was only a short 5 years after Revised was released (and we fine-tuned Enhanced) that AA50 (Anniversary came out). Everyone ran for the new release and Revised was left to rot.