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My map isn’t heavily distorted to fit too many kind of units. I am favour to add new units if only absolutely needed. But Italy and China have units with similar Mech stats to diversify their options.
Need some input on new unit att/def values
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Thanks for all the input so far guys, it is very much appreciated.
One thing for sure is Mot. Infantry will NOT be getting the BLITZ ability, no way. So yes, they are a slightly more expensive Infantry unit for getting reinforcements to the front lines quickly. And myabe that’s enough? But should they get an ability of any kind? Perhaps something like:
Tows Artillery: During your Noncombat Move phase, your Artillery and Motorised Infantry units that begin in the same territory and did not take part in Combat this turn, may be moved together up to two spaces, through friendly terrtories. Each Mot. Infantry unit must be matched one-for-one with an Artillery unit. Both units must arrive together in either the first or the second territory.
How about that? If this is too powerful, we will have to think of some other way to reduce them somehow. Perhaps Att 1, Def 1, Move 2, Cost 3, as suggested by Vance?
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I am assuming for the Motorized Infantry you would be using the new Truck unit being put out by FMG, right? I had a different idea for that unit:
No attack or defense value, move 2 in Non-Combat move only and would be fairly cheap, perhaps 3 IPCs. Ability would be to carry 2 infantry OR 1 infantry & 1 Artillery 2 spaces in Non-Combat move. This way you could get infantry and artillery up to support your tanks and mechanized forces. They would move back next turn and could bring more reinforcements the turn after that. So to keep a continuous stream of inf/art reinforcements, you would have to have plenty of trucks going back and forth, thus the cheap price.
If a truck(s) are in a territory which is attacked and all your other combat units are killed and there are still enemy forces left, the trucks are destroyed (like transport ships in naval battles). -
I really like knp7765’s idea about the truck being like a transport on land. You would place trucks at the IC and at the front and shuck inf/inf or inf/art (a good german setup might be to have 5 trucks at Germany, 10 at E Poland and 5 at Bryansk). So, the Germany player could spend money on logistics by buying trucks, or choose not to buy the trucks but ultimately lose expensive tanks because of poor logistics. Also, even if the trucks attack and defend at 0, they could be used as cheap hit soakers. I bet those would be a very popular unit to buy.
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We used to used the old transports from Classic as TRAINS.
Like AA, you could capture them.
They worked exactly like a transport, except on land, you could move in non combat, 3 inf, or 1 inf 1 art/arm/mec.
These were alot of fun, especially, when you conquered your opponents! And made them your own.
Cost was $6.
There was an “optional” rule, that allowed them to attack a territory with all infantry loaded, it didn’t seem unbalanced, but seemed unrealistic.
Places where these can be abused, are particularily the eastern front… and China Russia suffers, if the axis get wise with their logistics!
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i think trains would be OP unless russia was made even larger, or else germany will buy a couple of these and just ferie infantry and arty forward 3 times faster defeating russias logisitical advantage.
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Okay, the Mot. Infantry unit is starting to take shape! Specifics: Att (0), Def (0), Move (2), Cost (?)
To knp7765: Yes, I am thinking about making house rules for the Mot. Infantry unit because of the soon-to-be-arriving FMG pieces. I like the idea that it has no combat values of its own and is essentially treated as a ‘transport on land’. It does not make a territory ‘hostile’. In combat, all remaining defending Mot.Inf units would be destroyed when the last defending land or air units are destroyed; exactly like an actual Transport.
Likewise, a lone Mot.Inf unit(s) may be attacked and destroyed by enemy air units without firing. They would still be treated as a valid target for air attack; if your Bomber attacks a territory with both a Mot.Inf and an Industrial Complex, you would have to choose between eliminating the truck or bombing the factory (you couldn’t do both).
I think they should be destroyed instead of captured (as you could assume that they were in the process of retreating from the embattled territory when the combat broke out, and therefore overrun by enemy forces). However, you could make an exception to this: if any of your land units move into an enemy controlled but not occupied territory (during the Combat Move phase), and there is an enemy Mot.Inf unit(s) present, you should be able to capture it at the same time as you capture the territory (as you could assume that the Mot.Inf was not alerted to your armies’ advances). Remove the Mot.Inf unit from the territory and replace with one of your own Mot.Inf units. This will teach players NOT to leave their trucks un-defended!
And how about this for the special ability:
Carry Land Units: During your Noncombat Move phase, your Motorised Infantry units may carry your land units, provided that none of those units moved in your Combat Move phase (either the Mot.Inf OR its cargo). The cargo capacity may be either:
Two Infantry or
One Infantry & One Artillery or
One Infantry & One AA GunYour Mot.Inf units must begin their Noncombat Move in the same territory as their cargo and must not have taken part in Combat this turn. Both the Mot.Inf and their cargo must be moved together up to two spaces through friendly terrtories, and must arrive together in either the first or the second territory.
How does that all sound? Thank you again for all your input. If we’re all good for the above then I guess we need to fix a price tag to ‘em. I think the minimum should be 4 IPCs. Okay, it’s cheap but these are very useful if incredibly weak units. Transports do pretty much the same thing (albeit they can carry your allies’ units) and they currently cost 7. So I’m thinking possibly 5 IPCs for this unit…
Over to you!
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Yeah 5 sounds like a good price. These would be extremely useful so if the price were too low people would just buy all trucks, artillery and infantry and never bother with tanks and mechs. Its also nice if you can keep the truck rules as close as possible to the rules for sea transports because the game really doesn’t need to be any more complicated than it already is.
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So would the Trucks be a different unit from Motorized Infantry? There is an armoured car in the axis minor set that might be good for Motorized Infantry and there’s a truck in the new German units set.
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Vance, I am trying to come up with some house rules for the new Motorised Infantry unit being supplied by FMG (it is just a truck). The FMG Armoured Car unit will, I guess, represent the Mechanised Infantry.
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I am assuming for the Motorized Infantry you would be using the new Truck unit being put out by FMG, right? I had a different idea for that unit:
No attack or defense value, move 2 in Non-Combat move only and would be fairly cheap, perhaps 3 IPCs. Ability would be to carry 2 infantry OR 1 infantry & 1 Artillery 2 spaces in Non-Combat move. This way you could get infantry and artillery up to support your tanks and mechanized forces. They would move back next turn and could bring more reinforcements the turn after that. So to keep a continuous stream of inf/art reinforcements, you would have to have plenty of trucks going back and forth, thus the cheap price.
If a truck(s) are in a territory which is attacked and all your other combat units are killed and there are still enemy forces left, the trucks are destroyed (like transport ships in naval battles).Ohhh hey. I like this, nice one KNP.
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ATTACK, DEFEND, MOVE, COST, ABILITIES.
Infantry 1, 2, 1, 3, -
Mot. Infantry 1, 2, 2, 4, -
Mech. Infantry 1, 2, 2, 4, BLITZ with Tank
Artillery 2, 2, 1, 4, BOOST Inf ATT
Mech. Artillery 2, 2, 2, 5, BOOST Mech. Inf ATT?
Tank 3, 3, 2, 6, BLITZ
H. Tank 3, 4, 2, 7, BLITZ
As a standard rule all types of artillery should boost all types of infantry. If a turn was one day, then maybe selfpropelled artillery could only support mech infantry, but since a turn is 3 months, I think you have time to combine leg moved units with motorized units in joint operations. Also I think KISS rules is better for playability.
I think Self propelled artillery should be an offensive weapon, and since motorized artillery usually was 150 mm + versus towed usually between 70 mm to 100 mm, they should get higher attack value.
Self propelled artillery 3, 2, 2, 6 and boost matching inf to a 3.I dont think heavy tanks did any blitzing, and they should not move 2 spaces, since they had poor mobility.
Heavy tank 4, 4, 1, 8 and no blitzingIf we have both motorized and mech inf, they should be
Motorized inf 1, 2, 2, 4
Mechanized inf 2, 2, 2, 5 and blitz together with tanksIf the combat rules should be close to reality, then infantry should boost artillery, or artillery should have low value when fighting solo. Artillery barrage and suppressive indirect fire was easy to protect against for dug-in infantry, and was only lethal when followed up by charging infantry or tanks.
Artillery 1, 2, 1, 4 and boost to attack at 2 whit a matching infantry
Infantry 1, 2, 1, 3 and boost to attack at 2 with a matching artillery
Maybe not good playability ? -
Hey Lozmoid, thanks for the comments. It sounds like we have the same ideas on how to use the new trucks. Personally, I would keep the price at 4 IPCs, not 5. I just don’t think they should cost more than mechs or artillery. Although, I do understand your thinking on how incredibly useful these units will be in getting infantry and/or artillery to the front (and AA guns, I forgot about them).
One thing that I am wondering about: Might we need a new or altered setup to include trucks in the starting setup? I would think that each nation, or at least the larger ones, would start with some trucks. Or do you think this should be a unit that gets purchased after the game starts?
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Razor, thanks very much for your input on this. Those stats you provided are well worth taking a closer look at. I will give some proper thought to Mech.Art at some point, and I agree that H.Tanks should be Att(4), Def(4), Move(1), Cost(8?) and no BLITZ. Not sure about the cost; would have to test this.
knp7765, yes I was thinking the same thing. But I guess it all depends on what game we’re talking about here. Personally, I hadn’t envisioned adding Mot.Inf to the set up of any official A&A games due to obvious balancing issues, so I guess I was just looking for input on how these units should be designed with regard to future use in people’s own in-house game concepts.
I gotta be honest, I think 4IPC is too cheap. I think 5IPC would be better; a Transport costs 7IPC as it is and the Mot.Inf could be thought of as basically a land-based Transport. You will get your money’s worth out of them, believe me, as long as you don’t leave them undefended. I reckon Mot.Inf will soon become an essential target for bombers. Getting Inf and Art two spaces to the front lines in one turn is very powerful.
Oh, and another rule - Motorised Infantry can be loaded onto Transports (along with one Infantry) in the normal fashion! Forgot to add that.
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Razor, thanks very much for your input on this.
Getting Inf and Art two spaces to the front lines in one turn is very powerful.
Your welcome, Loz, happy to share :-)
In the real war all units used railroads to get to the front, and a infantry division would get to the front faster than a panzer division, because it took some time to load the tanks on the train. Just look at the German reinforcements after D-day, the men of the Panzer divisions arrived in Normandy several weeks before their tanks arrived. If the only advantage of tanks and mechs is they arrive faster to the front, then that is too bad and historically uncorrect. This game could use a Railroad rule.
Now, the real advantage of motorized units like tanks, mechs and selfpropelled artillery, was speed, range and mobility. They would punch a hole in the frontline and still have mobility to exploit that breakthrough.
To put that fact into an A&A rule, would be to let all motorized units, like tanks, mechs and selfpropelled artillery, move one extra space after the battle in the first territory is resolved. The rule could state that all motorized units always can move one extra space to a friendly territory, but if they want to keep moving into an enemy territory for another battle, then they need to be acompanied by a Leader unit.Now with this kind of rules, the heavy units like tanks, mechs and selfpropelled artillery will get its right combat value in battle too, and not just be some fast travelling units. Tanks had more fighting power than men with rifles.
Another way of doing it, could be to let all support units boost a matching infantry to its own combat value. Like an artillery boost a matching inf to attack at 2, a selfpropelled artillery can boost a matching mech to attack at 3, etc
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I also agree with razor.
But you forget one things.
Self propelled gun…(tank killer) if you want. -
I gotta be honest, I think 4IPC is too cheap. I think 5IPC would be better; a Transport costs 7IPC as it is and the Mot.Inf could be thought of as basically a land-based Transport. You will get your money’s worth out of them, believe me, as long as you don’t leave them undefended. I reckon Mot.Inf will soon become an essential target for bombers. Getting Inf and Art two spaces to the front lines in one turn is very powerful.
You know what? The more I think about it, the more I agree with you on trucks costing 5 IPCs. Even with no combat ability of their own, getting infantry and artillery up to the front faster would make them VERY versatile and surely be worth more than the attack values of artillery or mechs. Plus, I got to keep reminding myself of the grand strategic nature of this game. I keep thinking of these as a single unit when really one truck piece would represent a whole fleet of trucks plus support personnel and equipment.
Man, I am really looking forward to implementing these new rules and pieces. Only problem now is that even when we get the Italian set in a few weeks, none of the other countries will have trucks yet. We COULD use the trucks from Battle of the Bulge, but that’s only USA and Germany. We would still have Japan, UK, ANZAC, USSR and France without trucks. -
Regarding cost of Trucks (Road Transport):
With Artillery costing 4 and Infantry costing 3….
the combined cost of an SPG/Artillery-Tank (presumably a cost near 6, which is similar to the tank whose chassis it often shared) and a Mechanized Infantry (cost 4) should exceed the cost of the Artillery + Infantry + Truck.
If not, and all other things are equal (hitting power of SPG at or near towed Artillery), the incentive to purchase Mech and SPG is diminished.In fact, wouldn’t it be another advantage of using Trucks that if you suffer Infantry casualties while winning the battle, you could still slide new, cheap Infantry into the group by transporting them in via Trucks?
So, to make the SPG and Mech combo viable, the Truck should cost at least 3. However, reasoning that Trucks cost more than (or even as much as) Mech Infantry seems a hard sell to me.
Therefore, I may keep the costs of the two combinations equal, and go with this:
Artillery Tank (SPG) cost 6 / att 2 / def 3 / move 2
Truck cost 3 / att 0 / def 0 / move 2 / can transport one Infantry and/or one Artillery / may NOT move into any territory more than 2 spaces beyond an IC owned by any player (limiting their range). -
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.
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