A&A Pacific

Indeed!
The “Empire Highway to India” must be controlled by the Allies.

And maybe the risk of loosing 4 of 5 transferred IPCs is compensation enough for the option to support the defence of India or gain assistance in the Battle of Britain.

From my previosu thread:

Start date May 1917

The first Russian Revolution has occurred, but really makes little difference to the military situation. So continue using RR rules as normal.

America is at war, so we’ll assume that Germany has already declared USW.

Territorial changes are surprisingly few; I’d say they were:

Assume all aligned neutrals have been activated.

The only non-aligned neutrals violated are:

Persia: contested Turkey & Russia/Britain

Greece: contested Britain/France & Germany(Greeks)

Other tts not under original control:

Picardy & Lorraine: contested France & Germany (BEF in Picardy)

Belgium: German occupied

Poland: German occupied

Livonia & Belarus: contested Russia & Germany

Romania: contested Russia & Austria

Serbia: Austrian occupied

Albania: contested Italy & Austria

Togoland & Kamerun: French occupied

SW Africa: British occupied

Galicia: contested Austria & Russia

Mesopotamia & Trans-Jordan: contested Turkey & Britain (poss Russians in Armenia?)

America gets its draft of X infantry, but only the regular 20 IPCs to spend.

Tanks are available, probably only B & F have any just yet.

Fighters should be up to 3-3 by this stage.

Bombers should just be coming on line for both sides.

Edit: Or possibly consider July 1st 1917 as the start date: in something of an A&A tradition the game begins with a Russian great summer offensive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerensky_Offensive

@barney:

yea I’m a little concerned this would boost the defensive values of fleets even more. I also added DK’s cruiser gets one AA shot which is another defensive bonus.
I wonder how much super subs would counter that? I’m trying not to tweak things price wise at the moment but I may eventually incorporate your entire cost structure.

Good explanation on the destroyers vs EC’s. Having a fighter that hits at 4 could be appealing though.

Good stuff Baron

If I introduced AAA Naval capacity at such low cost (Advanced Shipyard) it would be in a combined arms bonus and not for a single unit.
Maybe just up to 2 AAA preemptive shots against 2 planes when 1 Battleship and 1 Cruiser are protecting a Fleet Carrier, and only this kind of unit, not any Escort Carrier.
Each have their specific mission, Fleet Carrier have a more consistent AA batteries and CAP (Carrier Air Patrol) while Escort Carrier groups were assign Anti-Sub Mission.
So, to get Naval AAA buy all the three warships: Battleship, Cruiser, Aircraft (Fleet) Carrier.
In counterpart, these costlier warships units would still be vulnerable against Subs while Escort Carriers and Destroyers will be vulnerable against planes but much able to defend against Submarines.

@Black_Elk:

@Baron:

I’m more inclined to treat it exactly as an AAA unit: @1 against up to three planes.
After all, it is a known concept in ground combat adapted to Naval Battle and it requires 3 warships type, the number 3 is obviously on the board.
IC’s AAA seems too powerful and unrealistic: a defense @1 against infinite number of planes.
Defending Carriers are already much better than offensive ones. Anti-Air is providing an additional defense.

@Black_Elk:

Well the anti air for battlegroup concept seems cool. I think the hope was that we could find a combined arms that just had units pairing 1:1. That one requires a pairing of 3 different units 1:1:1, but seems like it could encourage Cruiser purchases.

Not only Cruiser but also Battleship buying incentive.
Another reason to not give IC’s AAA capacity: you want to defend against more than 3 planes, buy another Cruiser and BB to join another Carrier.
I’m pretty sure it can change some buying from Destroyers and Subs to Cruiser and Battleship.

It still cost 12+16+20= at least 48 IPCs (68 with 2 Fgs) to get this additional defensive abilities.

Maybe this concept can be simply extended to each combo of BB+Cruiser gives 1 AAA capacity as long as there is a Carrier to protect.

So 2 BBs + 2 Cruisers + 1 Carrrier will provides an AAA against up to 6 planes.

All this!  :-D

I think something along these lines could potentially bring both Cruisers and Battleships back into the mix as a purchasing consideration, and is relatively simple.

Of the combined arms proposed thus far, this one doesn’t bust the opening round combats. It would increase the swing on fleet defense making all out air assaults against a stacked battle group more risky. Right now the all air option is pretty powerful vs navies, this would give at least some way to counter that, but only at the cost of more expensive warship units, and somewhat diminished flexibility in other ways, since you have to keep the ships together to get the boost.
I still think a different bombardment bonus or marine concept could work for cruisers and battleships, or a maneuverability bonus for cruisers specifically, but both of those would surely have an influence on the opening balance.

I found a post which say that SBR AAA kill ratio was 10% max:

What Larry says have flaws, and contradict to to base mechanic.

It should be like this:

1. Attacking fighter escorts roll dice, each 1 is hit, and defender move casualties to casualty zone.

2. Defending AA-gun roll dice, each 1 is hit, and then defending fighters roll dice, 2 or less is hit. Attacker choose his casualties.

3. Surviving bombers roll SBR dice against factories.

In real world, the attacking airfleet would first face the intercepting fighters, and then the escort fighters would do dog-fight. Later, the bombers would face AA-fire at the target. This AA-fire killed historically less than 10 % of the aircrafts. Using Larrys rule where AA-guns target bombers, you could be lucky and roll two 1’s and kill both attacking bombers, and get an unhistoric result of thousands bombers killed and no harm to the factories. Since its an abstract game, let the attacker pick a fighter as casualty to represent a % loss, and still have bombers survive to SBR.

http://harrisgamedesign.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1706&start=8
He is talking about an older version of SBR (AA50 Anniversary).

These are just proposed for now, the goal is to reduce the incentive of a J1 DOW and to reduce incentive of an India crush, promoting a more global game.

Placement changes:

Removal of UK BB and 2 transports in SZ 37, replaced with a cruiser. Addition of a UK BB and 1 transport in SZ 39
Reason: Slow down UK DEI expansion and decrease J1 DOW incentive. Replacement of US bomber at Philippines with tac fighter.
Reason: increase SZ defense, also makes it harder to retreat the plane. Replacement of US transport with a destroyer in SZ 26
Reason: reduce dicey J1 pearl grab and sneaky sub J1 attack Addition of Minor IC to Manchuria
Reason: allow japan more build slots

NO changes
Removal of UK Kwangtung & Malaya NO, want to replace it with something but unsure of what.

ANZAC occupation of original jap territory to be for every round.

Replacement of US NO of Phi, to 3 of the following: Phi, Wake, Midway, Pearl.

Replacement of US NO of Iwo and Oki to 2 of the following: Iwo, Oki, Carolinas.

Replacement of Japan Haw NO to any 1 of the following: Haw, Mid, Wake.

Any thoughts.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks for your imput.

I included the critical strike on grounded aircraft to give the attacker reason to get involved in a dogfight seeing how deffending aircraft hit @4. The critical strike is @1 and for the first round only, I believe attackers shouldn’t get a disadvantage for being agressive. Without the critical strike, players ask themselves why should I attack with my valuable aircraft and get all the odds against me.

I don’t enjoy changing the attack and defend capabilities of any units, I believe the game is difficult enough without trying to calculate all the different changes for any given senerio. for example: Fighters attack @3 except when escorting and except in dogfights and except on carriers and except….ect.ect.ect. (you get my point).

I am still tweeking the merchant convoy rules when transporting supply chips however, this is a major aspect of my rules and it must be handled with care to balance the game. On one hand, the allies have enough to do, what with keeping up with with the axis agression during the first 4 rounds and on the other hand it is too much of a factor to just ignore the importance of the merchant shipping lanes. For example: if I were the supreame commander for Germany during the war, I would never have shiffted towards bombing London or even think about opperation Sea Lion when they were so close to starving the little Island. Non the less the rule is still a work in progress… any Ideas?

I might think about a rule for the Gibralter however, I don’t want to limit the Italian fleet entering the Black Sea. That would only limit them to Africa and I want the Italian player to have options.

As for my Tech charts, I believe that if your going to have the kind of game ender like a nuke just for historic reasons, I would prefer to limit it to one Nation (U.S) and still leave it to chance of getting that advantage. As for Nations limited to thier own charts, I have found in my games that players really think hard about what Nation they wish to play at the begining of the game because they want to play with some charts but don’t want to be up against others. One aspect that I have found very important is giving each nation one free chance per turn to get a tech, this way techs are always a factor in the game while still rewarding others for buying extra chances.

I have a book where I have cut and pasted the Axis and Allies rules into a word document and have added my own rules to make everything more compleate to the newbies I play with. It took alot of work and I think it looks nice, I could e-mail you a copy if you like and that way you can edit it to your own house rules, the good thing is that most of the work is done for you. Just send me a personal message with your email address… I think you would like it.

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.