Katyusha Rocket Values

@Ichabod:

@Argothair:

Ichabod, your idea of boosting capital territories’ income is interesting and worth considering as an alternate way to balance the game, although if we only boost capital territory income, then the Axis will have no incentive to fight over peripheral territories, which will become even more irrelevant to the war. As I’ve mentioned on other threads, it bothers me that Australia, South Africa, the Urals, and Archangel wind up being so irrelevant to the game, even though in reality they were a major component of the Allies’ industrial and logistical capacity.

I agree with you that we should not be boosting any territories that would wind up just being a gift to the Axis, because the Axis have plenty of advantages already, but I think it is actually very hard for the Axis to stack Archangel in the early game – it’s three territories away from Berlin and its adjacent to Moscow, so if the Russians can’t at least trade Archangel (to share the extra income), then you’ve probably reached the endgame.

I assure you, that as the Axis I will be trying to take as many territories as possible to boost my income even if the value is still the original 1 or 2 IPCs. I’ve played 42.2 only a few times. I grew up on Classic/Revised and it’s basically just an updated version. The 2x I played 42.2 however were enough to demonstrate to me how ridiculously unbalanced it is, way worse than G40 (which is my go to game).

Start small, make the capital territories an increased value of 5 IPCs and see if it doesn’t unbalance the game.

I’m telling you if you make irrelevant territories like Archangel or South Africa, or Australia worth more, the Axis will just capture those places, and poof, there goes your game balance and it’s even more lopsided. Archangel was captured on round 2 or 3 of the 2 games I played. It’s easy for Germany to push Russia back in 42.2; heck a caveman could do it.

Axis can grab lands such as South Africa or Australia but I don’t think it might be optimal for Axis.
Such are out of position and, if Germany waste money in Africa, this is less units against Russia.
Same for Japan wasting resources against US instead of crushing India, then going Caucasus or Moscow.

I do agree about Archangel and Karelia, it is on the north way toward Moscow.

@Tamer:

I like your original idea, but what about carriers?  They were the most important ships to keep afloat during the war, and a great deal of repair was done for them as well.

I do not recall any instance off-hand during the war in which a carrier was re-floated after having been sunk and then returned to active service.

The Amagi and Graf Zeppelin were both sunk and re-floated, but neither saw active service during the war and Graf Zeppelin wasn’t even complete.

The re-floating idea is kind of cool, but it may need to be reduced somehow to make it a more rare occurrence. As Marc said, it was a long and expensive process and not every ship that was sunk qualified for such a salvage operation. Unfortunately with A&A, we do not have the granularity in gameplay to determine how badly ships are damaged.

I suppose that you could modify the rule so that after combat you need to roll for each ship lost to determine IF it can be salvaged. Say you need a 2 or less to float a given ship. If you roll that, then you can decide to pay half to re-float.

It complicates things, but definitely makes it so you can’t just regenerate 2 battleships and 3 cruisers if you want.

I will offer another limitation that sounds logical to me, but you can consider:

Ships may only be raised on the following turn and to do so, there may not be any hostile warships in the sea zone where the ships were sunk. This implies that any ships not raised the following turn will be lost forever, as you said, and that the territory with your naval base cannot be taken by the enemy in that time.

Example:    Gibraltar is amphib assaulted by Italy. All UK warships are destroyed. Italy has no warships present in sea zone, only transports. Italy takes Gibraltar. US player lands and liberates Gibraltar on their turn, returning it to UK control. The UK player cannot then re-float ships lost in previous turn combat with Italy because they did not retain full control of Gibraltar.

Somewhat complicated perhaps, but I think some of these limitations need to be placed, otherwise I see this as being a huge advantage for the Axis. Germany and Italy in particular, because they tend to hole up their navies in home water areas and can potentially get double the naval power at half the cost. It will further incentivize them to stock up and stay in port knowing they can effectively respawn capital ships on the cheap. An element of chance and tactical consideration should be added so that it isn’t just automatic.

I was actually thinking about this at work tonight. It could be a really cool concept.

Give credit where due. Good luck

Perhaps, to make trucks a bit more vulnerable, is make trucks susceptible to raids from enemy fighters and tac bombers. That way, there would be a way to counter the use of trucks, and force players to use them more sparingly. This would make sure that tanks are still being purchased. It might even be enough to eliminate mechanized all together as well.

Maybe they could get a single premtive attack in land combat like a sub (AA gun preventable of course). This simulates bombing before an operation. However I think that adding completely new rules for air units would be interesting.

@Imperious:

The OOB rules for AAE describe fighter escorts and defense.

Jet fighters is another matter altogether, not in AAE

I was talking ONLY about how it was done in that game, while ADDING the part of jet fighters so they have an advantage by a factor of 1 in both cases.

uh yeah but your post actually referenced rocket attacks which do not appear in AAE, verbatim or otherwise, hence my confusion

@Imperious:

But fighters defending in the target of a rocket attack, could be given a roll of 2 or less for each plane. That could make sence.

One of those ideas that will keep you up at night, wishing it could smoothly be implemented without making your own map!