Let's try using tags in house rules and customizations

Mr. Piscolar;

the fortress idea is OK, but it seems OP when you can build them to defend key VC strongholds like Moscow.  Your point about inactivating them is interesting, but that’s not how the rules for Airbases work, you can’t disable them right before the scramble.  It is sort of interesting to imagine a fighter intercept/bomber part of that transaction, but at some point you simply need all your planes in order to overwhelm, you can’t split them off to wrack the forts first, or the defense becomes too favorable (because you have increased defensive power by +1 or reserved the planes for this task, either outcome increases the defense vs offense pretty dramatically).  When you are talking about potentially adding +1 defense to 40+ units, it becomes OP.

Actual fortresses are not realistic in WW2, as they were captured by paratroops, reduced by bombing, surrounded and besieged, or simply bypassed and ignored.

Your ANZAC idea is fun and interesting, but unless ANZAC takes the risk of moving its assets to Brazil, there wont be much coordination there.  Not sure why you would cleave off a second grey team.  Why not just clarify your original idea by making the ANZAC team better (by giving them Canada and 1-2 ships 1-2 units) at the expense of UK Atl.?  UK isn’t really a viable team at that point but neither is a 7 income independent team with split forces…

I like the special NOs from Balanced mod, but I’m not sure why you’ve added NOs that are active based on what teams already pretty much have or go for from the get-go.  NOs should draw the players into an unexpected alignment to incentivize new play, not reward them for doing what they were already going to do.

Adding German Units seems very odd since they are usually getting a bid of 20+ against them, now the required bid would be even higher.  You have offset some of the Axis advantage with other NOs, but I wouldn’t make the Germany start position even more advantageous its extremely powerful as is.

You also added several Axis NOs for just being Axis, these aren’t necessary to bolster their already dominating economic position and they aren’t dependent on what the Axis choose to do.  Giving Japan an NO for attacking allied zero $ islands or for Germany to attack Iceland are some examples of encouraging the player to do something that otherwise he would rarely or never choose to do.

the VC condition is messed up OOB, good effort on trying to change it

Tech/Cruisers/Bombers; these are similar to other suggestions, I think the tech doesn’t need new incentives to go after it, several of them are awesome and the rest are junk.  Unless you nerf the good ones and improve (all) the bad ones, making them easier to get doesn’t really balance anything.  Smart to reshuffle the Charts, but the “Land” one is packed with junk.

Crusiers are OP if they are 10 AND AAA.

Bombers are OP at 12, but if they cost 14, SB isn’t viable and buying them in bulk isn’t either.

These are just a ton of interesting extra rules, which are all fun and creative but they don’t seem to balance Axis vs Allies any better than standard rules.

Good point in the last paragraph, a turn does encompass multiple months and you would expect some sort of naval engagement if both forces were conducting active operations and not sitting in home port. Adding a dice roll to determine if a naval battle occurs adds too many variables for the moment. But I’d certainly like to add a retreating rule in my next home game. I think this would create a much more aggressive game if the risk of losing your entire fleet on one bad round of dice was limited.

Does anyone have any experience with this? How did you do it? What did you do with transports? etc.

@Black_Elk:

That’s a clean map Ryuzaki_Lawlie!

The color selection is ideal. Though the black impassibles still jump out at me

From a design standpoint the only things that catch my eye are the two round sea zones surrounding Japan and Hawaii.

It feel like you need one in the Atlantic to balance things out aesthetically. Have you considered the possibility of one surrounding the British Isles?

Or maybe Iceland? Or maybe both?

I still think Mercator is a bit tight in Europe, a little stretching there might be ideal, even if it was just along the vertical axis. I think the map would still read fine, but you’d get a few more pixel for units into those key European spots. Also if you were willing to shrink South America slightly you could almost curve off a 10th of the map height at the bottom of the screen (which is notorious for players forgetting units in the south sea hehe) without really needing to change Africa/Australia of the pacific. Basically a slight bend would go a long way, even if using Mercator for the baseline.

Oh and I think the possession colors for Dutch Borneo and British Sarawak and North Borneo should be reversed.

My only suggestions :)

Nice work man. That would be a fun map to form the basis of a 1939 game, or any year from 39 on.

I like that you have not yet imposed on the map any extraneous information such as IPC values or VC. This means the map is adaptive for many purposes. I like the general division of territories. Only that the projection is a bit large at the poles for my tastes. If we could shrink them up slightly I think the map would be ideal. Its really more about screen dimension for me when it comes to the Big World Map that Wandering Head made. These days most screens are very long relative to their height, so standard Mercator always seems blown out a bit in tripleA to me, especially at the south end, and of course Europe is always tight. I wish the center picker for tripleA was better at housing units to smaller scales. Its a little better than it used to be, especially with the guiding lines, but still Europe loves to clutter up haha.
:-D

Again though, great design direction!

I’ll probably shift the continents (turning their general direction), and stretch out northern Africa and Europe, will probably require North America to get a bit skinny, but I think the big benefit from this, is that potentially more European spaces can be added. This will allow me to add more to the Mediterranean however (and it really needs the space), perhaps round out where Rome is. Africa, I think needs a bit more work. South America possibly as well, but I sort of need an idea of which cities can be considered major not only there, but elsewhere. Vladivostok will defiantly get added in with it’s own space.

I picked black for impassables, since it tells me that there is nothing there, no play space, it’s simply temporary, and they are there for the designer’s benefit.

I’m not sure where else to put a rounded Sea Zone, I’m considering more though.

Incorperating some of my additions to A&A 50th, as well as insperation from the community; this is my list of prototype house rules. Ive yet to play a full game of pacific, yet these ideas continue to rattle around in my head.

My objective is a “one page” historical house rule suplement to the Pacific Theatre

Changes to The Game Board
None at this time (might add Russia as a power here, but im not sure if its a waste of time)

Changes to Production
Victory City Infrastructure Victory Cities contain enough commerce, industry and manpower to allow you to mobilize one infantry unit there during the place units phase. You must have controled this Victory City at the begining of this turn. Likewise, the convoy zones adjacent to that Victory City as well as the closest controled Industrial complex must be free of enemy units or else mobilzation there is forbidden.

Changes to Units
Artillery During the first round of an amphibious invasion only, defending artillery fire before all other combat units as if they had submarine “suprise strike”. For purposes of bombardment, ships may fire for units taken as casualties. Additonaly, hits from naval bombardment must be assigned to defending artilery first if any are present.

Special Rules
The Atomic Bomb After the 10th game turn, American strategic bombers may use atomic weapons during stratigic bombing. This is done as follows. Roll 4 dice and have the American Player assign them as follows.

Highest Value - Stategic Bombing damage done to Industrial Complex
Higher Intermidate Value - Number of Japanese land units destroyed (chosen by the American player)
Lower Intermidate Value - Permanent damage done to the IPC value of the territory
Lowest Value - Permanent Damage to the Industrial Complex

@Krieghund:

@Gallo:

@Romulus:

I would say use the LHTR rules for Heavy Bomber…  :-D

which are?

Whether attacking or defending, roll two dice for each bomber and pick the best result.  In an SBR, add one to the resulting number.

thanks  :-)

I got to say that the introduction of the National Objectives concept, was a stroke of genius imho.
Now, the game, through the NO Bonus Incentives, push the players towards their historical aims.

Anyhow, as with any setup, I think that even with the NO setup, AA50 might go stale over time.
Also, not ALL historical strategies are being encouraged by the OOB NOs. What about the German Sub strat, for example? It is not shown in any NOs at least.

Therefore, I thought of the Variable NO concept. It runs like this :

We create a list of, say, 5-10 NO’s per Nation (not possible to create even THAT many for a nation like China, for example). Before the game starts, every nation rolls randomly to see what NO’s they get.

1 NO: China
2 NO’s each: Italy and Soviet Union
3 NO’s each: Germany, Japan, UK and US

I like the thought of China having their own NO/NOs, but of course, they could be incorporated into the US one.

What’s your thought? Or maybe you got some NO’s of your own?

@Cmdr:

@Raeder:

@Cmdr:

Ever consider Super Carriers that could hold 3 fighters?  (3 is good because you can physically put three fighters on the carrier model!)

For crying out loud… I posted exactly this idea in the New units thread like months ago… no answers, and now you post the exact same thing here. I’d like to be credited.  :wink:

I was doing that in 1993 though. :P

But yea, figuring out 3 fighters fit on a carrier doesn’t exactly take brain surgery. hehe

Using it without my permission… hmm, you owe me royalty then.  :-D

Well that explains that.  I wish there was some really easy way to create a good hex map.  Have not found out how to do that yet.