Convoy Disruption: 1941, 1942.2 & G40 Submarine economic warfare

I like those ideas CWOMarc.

It seems fairly straightforward using the Flag Roundel Markers, since these are not usually placed in Sea Zones, they would be fairly easy to distinguish. It might be cool to see them moving, but I would probably avoid that and just fix their locations for simplicity. I’ve tried playing A&A with movable resources before, and while I enjoyed it, my players found it cumbersome in a game that already has so many “moving parts.”

For simplicity I would also suggest having each Roundel represent an equivalent “set” value in IPCs that is consistent across the map, like each roundel = 3 ipcs convoy income.  1 ipc would probably be too low, and require too many roundels to get up off the ground, but if they were all worth 3, I think players would go for it. You could just put a green chip under the roundel, or 3 gray chips.

I’d probably try to keep things confined to one convoy roundel per sz, just to prevent too much confusion.

Again for simplicity, I would include this cash in addition or “on top” of the Nation’s OOB starting income. That way we don’t have to completely redesign the game’s economic system on land.

Lets just say each convoy was worth 3 ipcs. How many should each Nation get? And where should they go?
Some ideas about how that might look in 1942.2

Russia starts with 24 ipcs.
2 convoys, brings their total up to 30 ipcs.
sz 4 and sz 63 might be cool candidates.

Germany starts with 41 ipcs.
3 convoys, brings their total up to 50 ipcs.
sz 5, sz 14, and sz 15? I think G should probably get 3 convoys, since Axis will need more income for game balance, and those zones seem fairly reasonable.

UK starts with 31 IPCs.  
3 convoys brings their total up to 40 ipcs.
Here there is an interesting question of which sea zones to put the convoys in? Gathering them all around UK is one option, since it would be easier for G to disrupt. But if that puts too much local concentration of Convoys in “busy” sea zones (ones that are already likely to be cluttered with units), then another option would be to put them in sea zones that currently receive little action. For example, sz 2, sz 9 and sz 12. This would force the Brits/Allies to put their warships somewhat out of position to keep their convoy lanes defended, and make the job of the raiding U-boats a bit less daunting. Or you could maybe stick one in sz 40 New Zealand to give Japan some raiding options.

Japan starts with 30 ipcs.
3 convoys would bring their starting income to 39 ipcs.
Again there is a question of where they could best be located? Placing them on the “money island” sea zones would make sense, sz 37, sz 47, and sz 48, but that probably just exacerbates the already outsized importance of those islands/sea zones.
Another option would be to push out the zones a bit. Perhaps sz 59, sz 51, and sz 50. This region of the map is still close enough to the money “islands” that one could envision a vague connection here between the imagined source of the resources (Borneo, East Indies, FIC etc) and the destination (Japan itself, and then on to the forward military outposts on the worthless islands.) This would be a conveniant way to use convoys to make the normally worthless territories of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Caroline islands more relevant to the game play, since those sea zones would have convoys.

But now you get to the question of how to approach USA?
I think there is an idea that USA is shipping resources to Allies more than collecting resources.
If you wanted to low-ball it, you could just give them 1 convoy.

That would be 6 convoys for Allies worth 18 ipcs.
And 6 convoys for Axis worth 18 ipcs.

USA starts with 42 ipcs.
1 Convoy would bring their starting income up to 45 ipcs.
You could put it in sz 53 to make Hawaii more relevant?

Or if you wanted to give the Allies more convoys, or the Axis less, that would probably work too. I just thought of the 6/6 idea to preserve a rough balance by sides. You could easily drop the Germans to just 2 convoys, or even 1, if balance by sides is less an issue to you etc. On the other hand, I don’t know that its really necessary to try to distinguish between whether the power is shipping resources or receiving them. If a convoy of USA resources gets sunk by a uboat somewhere in the mid Atlantic, you could just abstract that into USA money that’s “up for grabs.”

In that case you might give USA 3 convoys, and put them in interesting sea zone locations. Up the USA starting cash to 51 ipcs, so they still have the slight production edge on G (the way the OOB parity is.)

That would bring the totals too…
Allies: 8 convoys worth 24 ipcs.
Axis: 6 convoys worth 18 ipcs.

This might solve the balance issue many people complain about, that USA doesn’t have enough starting income relative to the other nations, while still preserving the slight Allied economic edge so familiar in A&A.

If 3 Convoys for USA, then sz 2, 9, and 12 could also be cool, if you didn’t already reserve those for UK. Other options might be sz 57 (Midway), or maybe some of those useless south pacific zones, like sz 43. Another option would be to stick the convoy cash in places like sz 22 (Brazil), sz 18 (Caribbean), sz 55 (Mexico) etc. This would probably make a bit more sense from a trade perspective, since you could say the resources are like cash or raw materials from other Allies in the Western Hemisphere. Those zones would be harder to raid, creating a larger pile of “safe” convoy income for USA, relative to other Nations. Again this would be more of a gameplay/game-balance expedient than anything else.

I think a rule like this for convoys would be a cool way to introduce more money into a game at the scale of 1942.2. Though it doesn’t do as much for the submarine unit specifically. For this system you might have it that ships take the IPCs away (ie. Remove the chips from beneath the roundel) during the conduct combat phase. That way you don’t have to address subs, not being able to create a hostile sz in 1942.2 like they could in the old games. But this gives a definite advantage to the raider over the defender. In other words, to prevent your convoys from being raided, you have to defend them beforehand, not just “clear the zone” of enemy ships before your collect income phase.

The way I was putting it, the system is almost exactly equivalent to the older convoy system, just plugged into 1942.2. Not sure if that’s what people are after, but it does seem workable. At least it would be familiar to anyone who has played using that older system before.

I’ve been trying to think of a way to handle Japan’s convoy spread in 1942.2.

The money islands (Borneo and East Indies) seem problematic to me, for reasons I know we’ve discussed before elsewhere. Basically A&A makes those islands more critical as Allied targets than they really were during the war. By giving them such high IPC values the OOB game encourages the Americans to adopt a fairly ahistorical war plan and amphibiously invade those islands directly, instead of just raiding the shipping around them, which is what actually happened.

The idea proposed by Baron initially might provide a way around that since it gives you a way to disrupt the income from the islands without actually conquering them via amphibious assault.

The alternative, more simplistic method I was trying to suggest based on Marc’s control marker idea (one that looks a bit more like A&A Europe 1999, just adapted to the 1942.2 game board/rules) doesn’t really solve that specific problem. The danger I can see, of including Japanese convoys in sea zones 37 and 47 where they would make the most sense, is that this will just make East Indies and Borneo even more essential American targets. So that got me thinking about where to put the roundels, if you wanted to build up a system like the one Marc suggested.

For convenience and gameplay balance, we could say that a convoy roundel within a SZ represents, not just the convoy traffic of the sea zone itself, but also the convoy traffic of all the zones immediately adjacent to it. A convoy for an entire adjacent region. This is an abstraction of course, but it’s probably necessary, since we can’t have Convoy roundels in every sea zone!

Using this logic, a Convoy in sz 50  could represent not just the convergence points at Truk, Palau, Carolines etc. (contained within sz 50), but also the shipping lanes of all adjacent sea zones as well. So this means sz 48 Philippines, sz 49 New Guinea, sz 51 Okinawa, sz 52 Wake, and sz 44 Solomon Islands, would all be represented by the main Convoy in sz 50.
The idea again, is that all those zones are adjacent to 50. You could do something similar with the two other sea zone convoy locations. So for example, 3 convoys could cover the entire Empire, if you had a Convoy in sz 50, another in sz 36 (FIC) and one more in sz 60 (Japan) since those three Convoy locations are adjacent to all of Japans starting territories/zones.

Would a situation like that make sense?

Using the Roundel system suggested above it might look like this…

Here is another map, this time a real world historical map from the war, that shows some of the major shipping routes for Japan, to give a bit a more flavor to the question…
:-D

@Baron:

With this alternate Convoy Raid, do you have to control somehow the SZ (such as SZ50) to forbid the enemy (Japan) such 3 IPCs income?

It is an interesting question.

One potentially viable approach is to say that a naval unit does not need to occupy the sea zone (on the opponent’s turn, during their collect income phase) but simply to “attack” the convoy on their own turn. What form that attack takes is I suppose a different issue. You could make it a roll, or it could just be automatic.

I know in some of the older convoy systems, it was not necessary to control the sea zone, but simply to pass through it during your conduct combat phase, and this was enough to disrupt the flow of income. So for example, a sub could pass through an enemy Convoy in a sea zone, and be said to have “raided” that zone. This would give ships the ability to behave similar to the way tanks do on land, when they blitz across unoccupied enemy territory. Or…

I imagine it like this, if one of your own convoy zones is undefended, and an enemy naval unit enters it during their combat move (either passing through, or ending their move here) then your IPC chips beneath the Convoy Roundel would be removed. Now, when your turn arrives, on your collect income there will no chips/IPCs to collect for that zone. At the end of a players turn, after collect income, the convoy chips are replaced automatically.This last could be an extension of the “place units” phase, so you place all units and then finally re-place all convoy chips.

For simplicity I had suggested before to use 3 ipcs per Convoy Roundel. It could be 5, just as easily or any number, but I like 3 ipcs for the infantry comparison and because 1942.2 includes Green Chips.
:-D

The easiest approach would be to say that, “raiding” into or across a sea zone removes all 3 ipcs at once automatically = 1 green chip removed from beneath the control marker.

I guess with these chips, you could go on top of the roundel instead of beneath it, since the 1942.2 chips are smaller than the old ones. Either way works. Basically using a chip rather than a transport scultp, since the latter are more limited and often needed by the Allies. This also prevents unit confusion, since chips are always either beneath or on top of the flag roundel.

Another approach would be to say each ship raiding across a Convoy zone disrupts at 1:1 per ship. Here you could use 3 gray chips, and players would have an incentive to “wolf-pack” so they could remove all 3 chips in one pass. This idea gives a bit more variety to the Convoy concept since you could conceivably disrupt 1, 2, or 3 of the ipcs per convoy.

Based on the earlier example with Japan, I have been thinking about how this might look in the Atlantic for 1942.2. One thing I think you need to decide when working up a new HR of this sort, is how much of the game you want to change. I think its good to pick a focus, because if you change too much at once, then the rule can become a bit unmanageable. So for example, if we added an entirely new convoy/income mechanic, then I think it makes a lot of sense to try and leave the rest of the game more or less unchanged, so you can really see whether the rule is fun for gamplay, or balanced in isolation. That means that if I was going to play with a new HR convoy rule in 1942.2 it would be helpful to preserve the OOB unit set up. This creates an interesting challenge for the location of Convoys, because it would be best if the set up didn’t include “contested convoys” e.g. a convoy of one nation, occupied by enemy starting units. This would create more confusion than its worth in my view. So for example, the more I think about it, the more sz 9 seems like a poor location for an Allied Convoy, because German subs start out there! Brings up an immediate dilemma if you put a convoy Roundel there, because the question then arises, “is it already being raided by the starting German u-boats?”

I suppose you could start the game with no convoy IPCs chips loaded under the Flag Roundels
Instead the chips could be loaded during a players first “place units phase.” In that case you could support a British convoy in sz 9, without having to address the question of whether German starting subs there are already raiding it. This would entail no adjustment to starting income, since convoys wouldn’t come into effect until the end of the players first turn, so it doesn’t effect the first round unit set up or battle requirements. That might be ideal.

I think you can avoid the specific question of sz 9 German subs though, while still preserving the essential flavor of the Convoy routes, if you approach the Atlantic a bit like I suggested for Japan. The convoys stand in for all “adjacent sea zones,” which allows you to cover more of the broader convoy region, albeit abstractly. So the convoy activity in sz 9, could be handled via sz 2, or sz 12, which are conveniently NOT occupied by German warships at the outset.
;)

Or if you did want to have Convoy Roundels, loaded with chips from the outset, then this a way to introduce a bonus to starting income, alternative to the bid, while also not busting the first round combats. If done, we could try to balance it against the current need for an Allied bid!
:evil:

Here’s an idea for how they might look in 1942.2…

And here’s another historical map ripped from google. It  shows the broad strokes for the Battle of the Atlantic with major shipping lanes around 1941, so basically the situation as it might be conceived right before the 1942 game kicks off…

Just like with the Japan convoy example on the previous page, I think it would be nice to create a fairly even distribution of convoys for this extra Atlantic income, but one that it is possible for both sides to contest, at least for a time. So just like sz 50 could cover most of the south Pacific convoys, sz 12 could represent the American contributions to Africa, while also encompassing Brazil or the West Indies. Sz 2 could represent Allied convoys bound for England from the Americas, sz 3 would do the same but bound for Russia. Sz 13 could do double duty on both the Med and the South Atlantic/Africa covering most of the British Empire for this side of the globe etc. Germany has 3 convoys here, just like Japan on the Pacific side, but they can be contested after time. What do you guys think?

ps. The sort of convoy system I just outlined for 1942.2 could also be adapted to Global.

It might be helpful to distinguish it from the OOB Convoy system by naming it a “National Convoy” system. National because the money can only go to one nation, rather than being a “local” or “territory controlled” convoy system, where the money up for grabs is constantly changing. Here the money just goes to the National total as suggested by CWOMarc. For simplicity I would do it in some set IPC amount per Convoy, rather than being determined by the IPC values of the territories surrounding the sz or determined by who controls those territories.

Since the scale and economy of Global is larger, you could have more Convoys, or more money per convoy. So if, as suggested, you use 3 ipc convoys (Green chips) in 1942.2, you could use 5 ipcs convoys (Red Chips) in Global. Or you could just keep at 3 ipcs (3 grey chips) if you wanted.

Then you go around the map and place a Flag Roundel over the printed “convoy marker” drawn on the OOB map, and use this new system as an alternative to the OOB one. If you want to add more convoys than these, no problem, all it takes is another Roundel, placed in whatever sea zone makes sense. Some of the OOB convoys might not make sense in the new system, so in that case just ignore all the convoy images on the map that don’t work, and focus on only the new roundels.

This would prevent the situations you currently end up with, where Italy could get raided out of the game, or where a successful Sea Lion complicated the London situation etc. Here it’s simple, you just look at the Roundel markers and the red chips, and rework the convoy balance until you get something that balances the game overall by sides.

You could do this either as an alternative to certain NOs or in conjunction with them, as a way to introduce more money into play. Here’s an example of how you could substitute existing convoys zones for a National Convoy roundel system, and even create new Convoys if desired, like for Germany. The example below shows how this would be fairly simple to do. You could create a new 5 ipcs National convoy in sz 114 or sz 112 or both, in order to balance to total income by sides… If you wanted to give a nod to the Persian corridor into Russia, you could do this via a National Convoy in the adjacent Persian Gulf sz zone.

It would be important to note that this change to the convoy system introduces money on top of the normal land economy, and is capped at the total IPC value of the National Convoy, (not the adjacent land). So you wouldn’t be able to drop a player below their baseline land limit, without actually invading and taking over that land. Here for example, UK could still run Taranto and then “raid” the Italian convoy, but that convoy’s total value would cap out at just the 5 ipcs, instead of raiding Italy out of existence. Italy could still have the land cash to work with. It could be a cash infusion across the board for everyone, but one that you could scale, depending on which zones you want to include or ignore. Using the idea of “loading” National Convoy Roundels with IPC chips during the place units phase, you could include this bonus to starting income, or you could restrict it in the first round and leave all Roundels empty (to be loaded up during the first turn’s placement phase) if you wanted to delay the convoy effect by 1 round.

In the example below I gave the Cypress/Syria convoy to UK. But if there are any questionable Allied convoys it could be entertaining to just give them to France. French ownership would put them effectively out of play for most games, but might create a nice cash infusion to the French during the KGF endgame if Paris is ever liberated. The Free French boost!
:-D

Looking at the National Convoy system on the Pacific side of the map, things would necessarily get a bit trickier, mainly on account of the Dutch, and the money islands. I suppose you would either want to ignore some of the Convoys, or else say that because the Dutch are so weird, that any Nation can take control of these convoys provided they control the island within the sea zone.

Depending on how many Convoys you want to activate/ignore, its possible you might want to set the convoys at separate values by Nation. But if using that approach I would keep the all the National values consistent, this way you always know how many IPC chips to replace

For example,
German convoy 5 ipc red chips
Russian convoy 5 ipcs red chips
Japan 3 ipc gray chips
USA 3 ipc gray chips
UK Europe 3 ipc gray chips
UK Pacific 5 ipc red chips
Italy 5 ipc red chips
French convoys 3 ipc gray chips
Anzac convoy 5 ipc red chips
Dutch convoys 3 ipcs gray chips (can be taken by any Nation at war, but will likely go to Japan).

Or something along those lines. You could do lower IPC values if you wanted, or higher ones, as long as all National values are consistent for all that nations convoy roundels. That way its easy to know how many chips to load under each convoy at a glance.

In the 1940 games National Convoys could also be restricted by the DoW, or only loaded when “at war” if you wanted to limit them by the political situation.

Yup! I like that idea!

The major benefit I can see, if you can get it working as an Economic expansion, is that you could use it as a method to rebalance the game by sides without requiring a bid. Also, it stands to reason that if you could get this model to work with the OOB unit values, then it should also work with HR adjusted ones. If for example, you wanted to play the game with a redesigned unit roster, or with different unit interactions, cooler subs that hit at 3 etc. this would get you extra money to try out.
:-D

I think if it could work with 1942.2 that would be cool, because then you’d have an easy bridge to playing a modified global game with National Convoys. Global would obviously take a bit longer to puzzle out than 1942.2, since its so much larger and more nuanced, but at least the baseline concept is pretty easy. The code for this also already exists in TripleA, from the older A&A games, so it seems like it might be relatively simple to mod in as a replacement to the OOB 1940 convoy system.

@Black_Elk:

It seems fairly straightforward using the Flag Roundel Markers, since these are not usually placed in Sea Zones, they would be fairly easy to distinguish. It might be cool to see them moving, but I would probably avoid that and just fix their locations for simplicity. I’ve tried playing A&A with movable resources before, and while I enjoyed it, my players found it cumbersome in a game that already has so many “moving parts.”

For simplicity I would also suggest having each Roundel represent an equivalent “set” value in IPCs that is consistent across the map, like each roundel = 3 ipcs convoy income.  1 ipc would probably be too low, and require too many roundels to get up off the ground, but if they were all worth 3, I think players would go for it. You could just put a green chip under the roundel, or 3 gray chips.

I’d probably try to keep things confined to one convoy roundel per sz, just to prevent too much confusion.

Again for simplicity, I would include this cash in addition or “on top” of the Nation’s OOB starting income. That way we don’t have to completely redesign the game’s economic system on land.

Yes, this sounds good.  I concur that fixed-location convoys would be simpler to use than moving ones (and would avoid the potential problems with moving ones that I mentioned previously).  AI also concur that each SZ should contain either no convoys at all or just one convoy maximum, not multiple convoys.  I like your suggestion to boost the starting IPC national incomes to represent the addition of the convoy mechanic, rather than reclassifying some of the OOB starting IPCs as being convoy-dependent.

I have no preference on whether each convoy should represent an IPC value of 1 or a higher figure, but from a mechnical point of view here are a couple of thoughts.  If all convoys have a standard value, and if the status of the convoy operates on an all-or-nothing basis (meaning that a convoy is either fully active or totally destroyed), then there’s no need to put chips under the flag roundels.  If on the other hand – and I find the proposed idea about this a very interesting one – convoys start out with a value of 3 but can have that number knocked down to 2 or 1 or 0 to represent attrition as parts of the convoy get sunk, then putting chips under the flag roundel to track these losses is a good idea.  The concept would be compatible either with a system in which all convoys have a standard maximum value, or with a system in which different convoys have different value maximums.  Personally, my preference would be to use standard maximums, and to simply give different countries different numbers of convoys (rather than convoys of different value) to reflect the importance of their respective merchant fleets.

If we go with the model that damaged or destroyed convoys can be reinforced or replaced (back up to their maximum starting values), then I would suggest giving the flag roundel itself no IPC value, and thus having the IPC value of a convoy (0 or 1 or 2 or 3, depending on whether casualties were sustained) expressed exclusively by the chips under the roundel.  The roundel itself would merely be used to denote the fixed position which is assigned by the house rules to such-and-such a convoy.  By the same token (no pun intended), this would help everyone keep track of how many convoys each nation is entitled to and how many supplemental IPCs this represents for income-tracking purposes.

@Black_Elk:

But now you get to the question of how to approach USA?
I think there is an idea that USA is shipping resources to Allies more than collecting resources.
If you wanted to low-ball it, you could just give them 1 convoy.
[…]
USA starts with 42 ipcs.
1 Convoy would bring their starting income up to 45 ipcs.
You could put it in sz 53 to make Hawaii more relevant?

Here are some thoughts on these points.

Regarding the US East Coast: as I recall, during WWII the US convoyed a fair bit of oil to the American eastern seaboard (from which it was eventually fed into the cross-Atlantic convoys) from two locations: the Gulf of Mexico (for oil produced in Texas), and the Caribbean.

Regarding Hawaii: since it isn’t part of the continental U.S., Hawaii presumably needs to import of lot of stuff by ship.

@Black_Elk:

I know in some of the older convoy systems, it was not necessary to control the sea zone, but simply to pass through it during your conduct combat phase, and this was enough to disrupt the flow of income. So for example, a sub could pass through an enemy Convoy in a sea zone, and be said to have “raided” that zone. This would give ships the ability to behave similar to the way tanks do on land, when they blitz across unoccupied enemy territory.

In purely military terms, one helpful concept to keep in mind is the definition of a raid: a limited-objective and temporary strike into enemy-controlled territory.  Raiding forces enter an enemy-controlled territory, attack one or more specific targets, then return home.  Their purpose isn’t to take and hold ground; that’s the job of an army offensive (on land) or of an amphibious landing (on islands and coasts).  WWII strategic bomber attacks (in the real world) were examples of raids, and so were the German U-boat campaign against the Allied convoys in the Atlantic and the American submarine campaigns against Japanese convoys in the western Pacific.  Surface warships, by contrast, are not inherently raiding forces: they sometimes do conduct raider-type operations into enemy-held waters (the Bismark sortie was one such operation), but they sometimes function in other ways too: for example taking and holding territory (example: the Americans at Leyte Gulf) or serving as launching platforms (from areas of the sea  which they do control) for air attacks into areas of the sea which they don’t control.

@Black_Elk:

For convenience and gameplay balance, we could say that a convoy roundel within a SZ represents, not just the convoy traffic of the sea zone itself, but also the convoy traffic of all the zones immediately adjacent to it. A convoy for an entire adjacent region. This is an abstraction of course, but it’s probably necessary, since we can’t have Convoy roundels in every sea zone!

Yes, that would be one of the valid options for handling matters.  To give an example of the concept: The WWII British naval command that was called Western Approaches was so named because it referred to the large sea area in which the various incoming convoy routes converged prior to making port in Britain.  Obviously this made it a prime hunting ground for U-boats, which in turn is why it was so heavily defended by Royal Navy ships and Coastal Command aircraft (a defense which was made easier by the fact that this area, by its vary nature, was close to Britain, and hence was within reasonably short range).  The U-boat response was to move into the “mid-Atlantic air gap” (the so-called “black pit”) because Allied aircraft from both sides of the Atlantic could not provide air cover that far out in the early years of the war.  The target concentration was lower there, but the area was safer for the subs.

A concept related to that of convergence areas (which are dictated by the arrival and departure ports of convoys) is the concept of choke points: places where the presence of coasts and islands squeeze travelling ships into narrow waters, thus concentrating maritime traffic.  The Strait of Malacca between Singapore and Sumatra is a good real-world example: ships traveling between the Pacific and Indian Oceans must either go through it or take a long detour.  Another example is, of course, the Straight of Gibraltar.  These types of choke points have the same advantages and disadvantages (from a sub’s point of view) that convergence areas have: they produce a high concentration of targets, but they also tend to be heavily defended (since, by definition, they involve the presence of land areas where air bases can be built).

Here’s a follow-up point to my earlier post about raiding.  One big difference between bombers as raiders and subs as raiders is the issue of operational endurance.  A WWII bombing raid lasted a few hours (with no possibility of mid-air refuelling, since the technology didn’t exist at that time), whereas submarine raiding operations tended to last from a few weeks to a couple of months.  German subs learned to extended their patrol times by using resupply subs (“milk cows”) to provide them at sea with fuel, food and torpedoes.  American subs in the western Pacific could, as I recall, stay on station for a couple of months if need be: they didn’t (as far as I know) get resupplied, but they tended to be much larger than German U-boats, which allowed more provisions to be carried and a greater degree of crew comfort (the US submariner living conditions were spartan, but nothing as bad as what you can see in Das Boot).  So in this regard, subs on long-range patrol do have some characteristics of both raiding forces and occupation forces, whereas bombers are strictly raiders.

A short idea on its own:

If we treat convoys as quasi-units in the way we’re discussing, they would of course remain open to attack by enemy units (as in the OOB rules, so that part isn’t new), but a new HR element that opens up is the concept of the player who owns a particular convoy might be able to “attach” (with an “h”, not a “k”) some of his naval units to a convoy specifically for purposes of convoy defense.  The player could likewise detach naval units from convoys, if desired, as the reverse operation.  The general idea (I haven’t worked out any specifics) is that such an attachment operation would create a trade-off: a naval unit attached to a convoy for convoy-defense purposes would lose the ability to perform the other (non-convoy) things that a naval unit can normally do in a sea zone, but the convoy would gain some sort of enhanced defensive bonus, over and above the “normal” protection it would gain under the OOB rules from the presence of “normal” (unattached) ships in its sea zone (for instance the normal anti-sub abilities of a normal destroyer).

I’d use these.

@SS:

I’d use these.
Convoy Markers.png (39.71 KB, 150x127 - viewed 4 times.)

Very nice.  I like them.

Also on the subject of tools for this house rule: For each game for which it’s used (Global, 1942, etc.), we’d need to make a reference chart.  I’ve posted below a rough draft of what a couple of lines from such a chart might look like, with purely invented entries on each line.

An additional idea (especially if we have multiple convoys with different and/or changing values): using the income tracking charts to keep track of both types of IPCs, using two types of markers: one type for regular income and one type for convoy bonuses, as shown below (purely as a made-up example).

Great feedback Marc! I’m sensing some pretty broad agreement here in the ways this National Convoy system might work.

I think a 3 ipc convoy (3 gray chips) is best. Since it would work on all A&A gameboards.

Keep the value consistent for all nations. Convoys always = 3, so its easier to understand and easy to track. Tie the raids to the number of warships passing either 1, 2, or up to 3 (cap’ing the max damage at 3).

I favor making the damage automatic 1:1 on IPCs raided. Or ships:chips.
Mainly so we dont have to slow down the conduct combat phase with any more rolls.

Or if you do want to preserve the roll, instead of having a roll for attacker damage, just make the roll for defense. I’m not sure about this idea, but can imagine some ways it might look.

This could be like the older rules for AAGuns, back when AA guns were “always active.” Any flyover had to face a shot, you could do the same here at sea. We might say an “active convoy” (one with defending warships) can fire a shot against any units that are attempting to raid into it.

Or how about this for an idea… A full convoy (3 chips) gets a single shot rolled at 1, against enemy raiding vessels. Just like an AAgun, for the water. This could be a single shot vs all ships, or against only 1 ship, or you could cap it at a Max of 3 shots/3 ships. So the mechanic is familiar.
Or alternatively, you could allow the purchase of “Convoy Defense”, as a new 5 ipcs unit (represented by the AAgun) and placed on top of the Convoy Roundel/Chips. Or you could allow ships in the SZ to move on top of the Roundel, at which point it is considered “Convoy defense”, and the naval unit behaves similar to the way Aircraft do on Intercept. Not entirely sure which system is optimal, but it certainly seems possible to set something up along those lines. I like the idea of “the roll” just being for the “raider’s” defense (whether or not their ship is destroyed during the raid), rather than having the raider make a roll to determine the amount of damage vs the convoy. Though I suppose you could have both if you really wanted.

Probably any of those, or something similar could be made to work, but I’d try to keep everything as simple as we can, just for ease of adoption.

I also like the special convoy markers SS shared, and the idea to create a set up/chart card for the most popular games or rulesets. Such a system could probably work on any Axis and Allies gameboard, and might be a cool way to support the idea of a “Naval expansion” to the game. Because the influx of cash from the Convoys is located “at sea” it really does facilitate an increased likelihood that players use the extra money on ships.

@CWO:

I would suggest giving the flag roundel itself no IPC value, and thus having the IPC value of a convoy (0 or 1 or 2 or 3, depending on whether casualties were sustained) expressed exclusively by the chips under the roundel.

Agreed, I prefer this method. Basically the roundel serves only to indicate the location/existence of a Convoy, not its IPC value. The IPC value is indicated by the number of chips. This way, once the National Convoy Roundel is placed in a SZ during the initial board set up, it never has to be removed.

The only possible exception to this is in Global/Pacific 1940, the convoys around the Dutch islands, since the Dutch are not a player Nation, and thus have no roundels. I could launch into another diatribe about why I find special exclusive one-off rules so annoying in A&A, but I’ll resist the urge. Suffice it to say we have 2 options here with the Dutch in G40.

Option 1. Ignore the OOB “Dutch Island” Convoys markers completely. (i.e we don’t place Convoy Roundels in those sea zones.) This has the advantage of being simpler, and would prevent Japan from collecting too much convoy money outright. The downside is that there is a bit less variety to the overall convoy campaign in the Pacific. If we choose to ignore the Dutch Convoys, I would use the logic that “this particular convoy traffic from the occupied dutch islands” is being represented by other convoys in some Adjacent zone. There are plenty of these to work with already, on both sides. For example, the Japanese convoys in sz 36 (Hainan), and sz 20 (Formosa) could be envisioned as encompassing the shipping lanes for the entire adjacent region, including the Rich Islands, Indo-China etc. If you wanted to create some Convoy near sz 34 (Palau) or sz 34 (Caroline Islands), in order to offset the Dutch convoys we ignore, that is doable as well under the new system, and this avoids the problem of changing dutch ownership as it relates to convoy ownership. Prior to the DoW, or from an Allied perspective, the convoy Dutch convoy traffic can be covered, by other Allied convoys in adjacent zones, such as sz 37 (Malaya/Singapore) , sz 43 (Borneo/Sarawak), or sz (35 Philippines.)

Option 2. Allow any Nation to take control of the Dutch Convoys. This has the advantage of a bit more novelty for the Allies or Japan. Here the logic would be, ‘well, the Dutch rules are unique OOB, and this rule just follows suit.’

There is a definite downside that option 2 violates the new concept we’re trying to introduce that National Convoys are “National,” and don’t change ownership depending on who controls some surrounding territory, except in this one weird instance. There is also the potential the the Dutch convoys become too potent of a target for Japan, distorting their already out-sized importance (as Allied targets.) So I think it might be easier to just ignore all those convoys, remove them from play, and focus on the potential locations immediately adjacent instead. This also contains within it the idea that the Dutch Island Convoy resources are “bound” elsewhere, and so we don’t really need to have a convoy for each Dutch island. The Island itself is enough of a draw already, instead we could put the convoy emphasis one space out just to simplify.