Cruisers and tac bombers new abilities


  • I am


  • Am I the only one that does CA/DD combos? The perks of ASW and Bombardment, for the bargin of a two for one basis of a BB. That said, I am fond of an CA anti-air ability. No doubt a further incentive for me, or others, to purchase them.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @calvinhobbesliker:

    @LHoffman:

    My motto is why buy a cruiser when you can have a fighter? Fighters attack the same, defend better, move farther, cost less and can attack the whole round of an amphib assault, unlike the 1 bombard then out for a Cruiser. With airbases, having a fighter is like having another battleship to defend with… I say go for carrier and fighters, much better than 3 cruisers.

    Yes, but Cruisers can’t be killed in a strafe. You’d rather invade with 2 inf and 2 cruiser bombards against 3 tanks and a fighter than 2 inf and 2 fighters

    Yes fighters can be killed, but that is the risk you have to take for their multiple attacks in a combat. I would rather not even do that attack you mentioned above, the odds are totally against you. You would almost certainly kill more enemy units with 2 inf and 2 fighters than 2 inf and 2 cruiser bombards.

    Unless you were saying that I would rather lose 2 inf, but take out 2 tanks with the cruiser shots… basically doing a suicide attack to thin the enemy… right? In that case, yes, I’d rather have the Cruisers. But that situation appears far less in practice than being common enough to outweigh the use of another fighter instead. Obviously what you’d want to buy depends on your application and situation. But for the most part, I’d rather have a fighter. After that one attack, the cruiser is basically 12 IPCs sitting in the ocean with no great benefit to the rest of your forces. Whereas a fighter can still be very useful.


  • @LHoffman:

    Is there any particular reason or recurring circumstance where extra movement is worthwhile?

    How about with the US or Japan in the Pacific where you might need to move new naval units up to join the main fleet faster?

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @SAS:

    @LHoffman:

    Is there any particular reason or recurring circumstance where extra movement is worthwhile?

    How about with the US or Japan in the Pacific where you might need to move new naval units up to join the main fleet faster?

    Yes that is an obvious application, and no doubt useful at times, but for me it is not enough incentive to BUY a cruiser over a fighter or something else even. For Japan/US it is better to have carriers most of the time anyway, so I’d prefer to buy planes instead. They can join up just as quickly with a far away force. … Now, I realize that you need some ships to absorb hits in a fleet. But for that purpose it is better to use subs or destroyers, since they are less expensive. I used to be really into Cruisers… and I still think they are cool. But I don’t see them as being as useful as I once did. I am not saying I never buy a cruiser, but I rarely do it now.


  • That’s true, a fighter for 10 with 4 movement in most cases would be better for reinforcement than a cruiser for 12 even if it has 3 movement, assuming you have undamaged carriers to land them on…

    Tactical bombers though I actually really like.  I think they’re going to see a lot of action on the Eastern Front with Germany as part of a mech+tank+tac combo.  For 1 extra IPC than a fighter and 1 less than a strategic bomber you get the attack power of a strategic bomber with the almost the same defensive boost as a fighter.  Yeah, it has 2 less movement than the strat and 1 less defense than the fighter, but I think it’s the perfect balance between offense and defense that Germany needs for the Eastern Front.  It might just work great for Russia too in combination with a few tanks in order to make an offensive strike force to support all the defensive infantry and artillery.


  • I have an idea. Allow bombarding units to attack every round of combat as long as each bombarding unit is paired with an amphibious ground unit. This would make Cruisers one heck of a deal especially against AA gun territories. They would be like fighters that don’t have to worry about being shot down if the opponent gets unlucky.


  • Speaking of AA Gun territories, I’ve always wondered why AA guns don’t fire every round. What about having them do that, but only having them shoot once (instead of at every plane) but also allowing lots of AA Guns. So you could have like an AA gun with two chips under it, which would fire three times a round (even if there were like 10 planes) and then maybe you could choose aa guns as casualties or something? Thoughts?


  • @The:

    Speaking of AA Gun territories, I’ve always wondered why AA guns don’t fire every round. What about having them do that, but only having them shoot once (instead of at every plane) but also allowing lots of AA Guns. So you could have like an AA gun with two chips under it, which would fire three times a round (even if there were like 10 planes) and then maybe you could choose aa guns as casualties or something? Thoughts?

    That would probably throw off the balance of the game quite a bit, seeing as attacks can include around 30 planes. I imagine a lot of battles in the Pacific would change if AA guns fired like this.


  • @McMan:

    @The:

    Speaking of AA Gun territories, I’ve always wondered why AA guns don’t fire every round. What about having them do that, but only having them shoot once (instead of at every plane) but also allowing lots of AA Guns. So you could have like an AA gun with two chips under it, which would fire three times a round (even if there were like 10 planes) and then maybe you could choose aa guns as casualties or something? Thoughts?

    That would probably throw off the balance of the game quite a bit, seeing as attacks can include around 30 planes. I imagine a lot of battles in the Pacific would change if AA guns fired like this.

    Well, I’m not suggesting a house rule. I don’t like those. Just a thought for future games. And, hopefully, future games won’t “balance” the game in the bs way they did it this time with a Japanese air-force that has more planes than practically every other power combined.


  • @The:

    @McMan:

    @The:

    Speaking of AA Gun territories, I’ve always wondered why AA guns don’t fire every round. What about having them do that, but only having them shoot once (instead of at every plane) but also allowing lots of AA Guns. So you could have like an AA gun with two chips under it, which would fire three times a round (even if there were like 10 planes) and then maybe you could choose aa guns as casualties or something? Thoughts?

    That would probably throw off the balance of the game quite a bit, seeing as attacks can include around 30 planes. I imagine a lot of battles in the Pacific would change if AA guns fired like this.

    Well, I’m not suggesting a house rule. I don’t like those. Just a thought for future games. And, hopefully, future games won’t “balance” the game in the bs way they did it this time with a Japanese air-force that has more planes than practically every other power combined.

    They have 28 planes. The US has 12. The UK has 10. Germany has 8. They don’t even beat 3 of the other powers. Adding Russia’s 3, France’s 1, China’s 1, ANZAC’s 4, and Italy’s 2, its 41 vs 28


  • personally i like the idea that games wont end within 2 turns of someone getting super bombers, cause that is all that happens. turn they get it they buy bombers and thats all they buy from then on, just becomes innevitable at that point unless they were close to collapsing. This is much better.


  • oops, had multiple windows open and replied to the wrong one. sorry.


  • @calvinhobbesliker:

    @The:

    @McMan:

    @The:

    Speaking of AA Gun territories, I’ve always wondered why AA guns don’t fire every round. What about having them do that, but only having them shoot once (instead of at every plane) but also allowing lots of AA Guns. So you could have like an AA gun with two chips under it, which would fire three times a round (even if there were like 10 planes) and then maybe you could choose aa guns as casualties or something? Thoughts?

    That would probably throw off the balance of the game quite a bit, seeing as attacks can include around 30 planes. I imagine a lot of battles in the Pacific would change if AA guns fired like this.

    Well, I’m not suggesting a house rule. I don’t like those. Just a thought for future games. And, hopefully, future games won’t “balance” the game in the bs way they did it this time with a Japanese air-force that has more planes than practically every other power combined.

    They have 28 planes. The US has 12. The UK has 10. Germany has 8. They don’t even beat 3 of the other powers. Adding Russia’s 3, France’s 1, China’s 1, ANZAC’s 4, and Italy’s 2, its 41 vs 28

    Really man? you call them having almost as much as the three largest world powers acceptable when they should barely have more than germany? What is this?


  • @The:

    Really man? you call them having almost as much as the three largest world powers acceptable when they should barely have more than germany? What is this?

    Keep in mind that it’s Japan vs. the US, India, ANZAC, China, and 18 Russian infantry. Together, they outearn Japan by nearly 100 IPC’s in Global. Whereas Germany can easily increase its income by steamrolling France and then turning on an unprepared Russia, Japan has no easy means of getting more money other than going for China, unless it does J1, and it has no allies in range to help out in the Pacific. It needs all the planes it can get! Although Pac isn’t balanced, I imagine Global will be, even with all those planes. Why is a ratio of units such a big deal if the game is balanced and fun (which I’m assuming it will be)? There are so many nitpicky details that aren’t exactly like the war was, but that’s why it’s a GAME. If it was exaclty like the war, the Allies would win every time  :-)


  • The problem is not cruisers are too weak; it’s rather destroyers are too strong. Aircrafts should always have some edge against navy for the same investment so 12 IPC for a 3/3 naval unit is just fine. To balance things, I will try a very simple rule. Just give cruisers (and also battleships) the ability to drop the combat value of a single enemy destroyer (this can also be applied to enemy carriers) to 1 on a one-on-one basis, in the exact opposite way as artillery does when supporting infantries. I did the maths using the “no luck” method and it completely balances cruisers vs destroyers IPC-wise, giving a slight edge to mixed groups, while keeping the battleship as the “king of all ships”. It gives an interesting role to cruisers when its time to deal with single destroyers which is, I beleive, rather realistic and, more importantly, it doesn’t break the air vs naval balance.


  • Cruisers don’t do this in the real world.

    Its not realistic. They don’t do anything to enemy destroyers in that regard. The solution must be somewhat realistic.

    However a cruiser did have the fastest speeds and longest cruising range and were designed as a AA gun platform to help protect larger ships.

    AA gun roll at 1 either each round or every round for each CA could balance it out, or just reduce them to 10 and drop the SB capability and add in ASW.

    or drop to 11 and add in ASW and one round AA fire


  • @Imperious:

    Cruisers don’t do this in the real world.

    Its not realistic. They don’t do anything to enemy destroyers in that regard. The solution must be somewhat realistic.

    or drop to 11 and add in ASW and one round AA fire

    Yeah, I see your point. But I see the problem on the opposite angle. The purpose of my rule is not to increase the strength of cruisers but rather to decrease that of destroyers against larger and better armed vessels. As far as I know, large ships have been removed from fleets after WW2 because they were getting too vulnerable to aircrafts. I don’t think that strengtening cruisers would be a very good idea because of balance vs aircrafts that is already fine.

    There are other options for destroyers though. Maybe preventing a hit from a roll of 2 to be allocated to a cruiser, a battleship or an aircraft (or something like this)…

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    In my opinion, destroyers are already crap units and are only good as shield ships… absorbing hits. But for the fact that they are not at all useful offensively, I never buy them.


  • @LHoffman:

    In my opinion, destroyers are already crap units and are only good as shield ships… absorbing hits. But for the fact that they are not at all useful offensively, I never buy them.

    Except for subs, they are the most cost effective offensive naval unit. They are also the most cost effective naval unit on defense except a loaded carrier.

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