AARHE: proposed naval combat rules change

Here is an interesting bit of historical trivia. The US 8th Air Force actually had bases in the Ukraine for a short time. From June to September 1944, the 8th Air Force started a shuttle run of bombers that would take off from England and Italy, bomb targets in Germany then fly on to 3 bases in the Ukraine, Piryatin, Mirgorod and Poltava. The reasoning was mainly to show solidarity with the Russians and to hit Germany from an unexpected quarter.
The mission was called “Operation Frantic”. I don’t think it was much of a success. One reason is that the Luftwaffe bomber arm was still fairly strong in the East. Some Luftwaffe planes saw the American bombers heading into Russia. Then when a shot up P-51 crashed in Poland, it had documents on the Russian bases. Luftwaffe command was notified and they send Fliegerkorps IV, nearly 350 He 111s, to pound those bases while the B-17s were lined up in neat rows due to lack of space. It was the 8th Air Force’s costliest single operation of the war.
I didn’t even know about this until I read it in World War II magazine.

I agree with King of Aces on the Heavy Tank stats: 4-4-1-8. Not sure about the 2-hit idea, but it sounds interesting. I suppose you could simply put a damage marker under it like you do with Capital ships that take the first damage hit but survive the battle.
Also interested in IL’s idea that Heavy Tanks can move 2 in NCM only.
Light tanks should be 2-2-2-5. Giving them 3 on defense is too much.

you have to build bombers to carry paratroopers and you only carry one of them and that can only be dropped 2 spaces away from friendly forces. The bomber commitment alone precludes the issue of “flying shock armies from buck rogers”.  Unfortunately some feel that you should be able to build and use them w/o bombers and i know 100% that this is a broken game, however, the OOB is somewhat balanced.

but if you feel its not balanced you can impose a “training cost” of 1 or more IPC every time you drop airborne, paid to model training of these elite specialists. Also, limit the build of one airborne per turn ( example: if you build 3 bombers in a turn you only can use 1 additional airborne drop the turn following placement and 1 each following turn for the next 3 turns)

This would preclude the really stupid and impossible idea of Germany building lots of bombers and thinking they will have an immediate Sealion because they didn’t buy anything for 5 turns and all of a sudden spurged on bombers as some kind of trick.

Aircraft Carriers can be outfitted with technology to have AA Guns that fire just like ground based AA Guns.  Only one per sea zone may fire, but it may fire at each attacking enemy aircraft.

CV was a poor defender for anti-aircraft. They relied on CAP to intercept incoming planes at lower altitude to intercept these and drive them away from the fleet. The Carrier created an umbrella of air cover to protect in this manner. It could not stand up to much of a fight and was the weakest in terms of AA capabilities in WW2.

IN modern times this changed but not in ww2. At midway 3 Japanese carriers were sitting ducks because the air cover was lost fighting off waves of incoming torpedo-bombers, and the carriers had the best Japanese equipment money could buy and it didn’t mean a thing because they were unescorted by cruisers and enough supporting ships.

A BB was a slower moving ship and was meant not to engage fighters but to engage surface ships and having the slower speed could only hope to surprise the enemy from nowhere or fight on equal terms against other battleships. Cruisers were some of the fastest ships and much better suited to fight airplanes by escorting fast carriers that were vulnerable.

The only thing the BB should have is a first strike attack against other surface warships.

Cruisers should move 3 with carriers and have a AA gun at planes hitting at 1 on the first round.

I agree that the current method of defender choosing casualties is simple, so perhaps it should stay, but in war, the casualties were much more random, so here is my suggestion.

Custom create a Battle Board sheet. (A Microsoft Word table will do just fine.) Here is an example.

Battle Board
          Attacker’s Units
1   2   3   4
5   6   7   8
9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20

Defender’s Units
1 2 3   4
5 6 7   8
9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20

Now, when a battle is declared, place the units on the board on a number in any order begining from the number 1 position.

Roll the Attacker’s dice as normal, for example there are 6 units defending, 4 Infantry on #'s 1-4, a Tank on #5, and a Fighter on #6.  You get 3 hits, so now you roll 3 6-sided dice to see which units were hit. For example, you roll a 2, a 2, and a 6.  Now you re-roll the second 2 and it is a 4, so the defender lost 2 Infantry and 1 Fighter.

You, the attacker, attacked with 4 Infantry, 3 Tanks, a Fighter, and a Bomber, so you place your units on the Attacker’s side #1-4=Infantry, 5-7=Tanks, 8=Fighter, 9=Bomber.  The defender only hit twice, so he rolls 2 10-sided dice. (If he rolls a 10 or the same number, then he just re-rolls until he hits a valid target)  He rolls a 5 and a 9, so he hits a Tank and a Bomber.

After casualties have been removed, then move the survivors down to the lowest numbers and use smaller-sided dice as needed.

Continue the battle until someone wins, or the attacker retreats.

Of course, you would need to have multi-sided dice such as, 4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, 10-sided, 12-sided, and 20-sided, but you can find these relatively easy at a hobby or gaming shop.

This system would seem to be fair, easy to use, and a bit more historical than the current system.

Of course there could be an occasion where you attack a fleet and happen to hit his 2 fully loaded carriers on the first turn, so you decide to retreat, which results in the 4 Fighters being lost at sea, but as we say, “Them’s the breaks!”

Using this system to assign Sub hits (to make sure that it’s not on Air units) would actually not be that difficult.  You would just have to roll them separately, and if the Sub hits an Air unit, then just reroll the die until it hits a valid target.

What do y’all think?

@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 in his defense i actually have 2 games (using d12 system) that have both a primary and secondary attack ( the primary is pre-emtive)

but the economy of scale is quite different from regular AA

right.