Convoy Disruption: 1941, 1942.2 & G40 Submarine economic warfare

I always enjoy your HR ideas for unit abilities, values and interactions Baron
:-D

The depth and the nuance of the potential unit balances, and the comprehensive analyses provided. I often think that a fully redesigned roster would be fun. The challenge for me, is getting my players to adopt and test out new HRs, when these involve multiple changes to unit abilities. Cost structure seems easier to mess with usually, but when I suggest the possibility of unit ability changes, often the resistance just comes from habit and fact that they have trouble memorizing all the unit interactions. G40 is necessarily more complicated due to the larger roster, but even in 42.2 with a simpler roster I encounter the same challenge, when trying to convince players to try out a different scheme.

Basically I’ve got one other dude in my regular face to face group, that has the enthusiasm and aptitude for this sort of heavily House Ruled game. The sort of player who takes an interest in game design, and so is willing to try new ideas. But even that guy, is sometimes overwhelmed when I try to bring too many things into it at once. In the past, we’ve been open to trying some fairly radical mods. The simplest of those would be new NOs, or modifications to the economy of the gamemap, or using bonuses of VCs and the like, even changing the turn order. In terms of unit costs, the same player has shown a willingness to entertain alterations of these through technology advances, or via autotech schemes. Different production tiers. Different hard set up changes for units, or just a hard tweak to a units cost. But one thing I haven’t been able to sell him on yet is a full redesign of the unit roster.

A single sheet with a full cost/abilities chart for all units, and custom Battle Board would be ideal. Otherwise it becomes hard to track all the interactions. Some kind of visual, that you can flip in combat would be cool.

One thing I like that you mentioned, is using roundel markers to denote the “raided” IPCs, during the raiding player’s conduct combat phase, even if the loss is to future income (again during the opponents turn) and not an immediate loss of cash on-hand. At least this provides a way to visually track the attack on the game map, since your proposal has the consequence of the “raid” delayed until the opponents collect income phase. Only prevents the mechanic from messing up the starting income situation in the first round.

I think G40 is likely to be more accommodating, since the overall economy is larger and convoy raiding is already part of that game. For 1942.2 though, I worry it might be overly rules intensive. The distinction between the Raid proper, and the disruption on station might be tricky. I’m trying to imagine how it would affect the collect income for each nation into the second round, and how much of a bonus you’d need to provide for each nation in order to get the dynamic up and running in a game like 1942.2

I’d think you’d need at least 10 ipcs to each power, to accommodate the change. Just to provide enough cushion in the game’s overall economy, to tease out another form of economic attack beyond the SBR that can already occur.

Again, just trying to think how the rules might affect first round income in an actual game… Right now I’m looking at the OOB sub values. The attack at 3 sub modification, would give even stronger raids than these, but just to start with the admittedly weaker OOB sub that attacks at 2…

During the opener, Russia’s sub, the Red October can reach sz 6, a sea zone with 4 ipcs in territory value adjacent to it. And Germany has no starting DD to destroy it, which means the Russian sub is free to opperate until the 2nd round uncontested. So that Russian sub, if it hits on max economic damage, could raid 2 ipcs from Germany during combat in sz 6 (markers placed=money not collected on the opponents turn during their collect income phase). Then the sub could “disrupt” an additional 2 ipcs, while on station during Germany’s collect income phase = a total of  -4 ipcs, or 4 ipcs Germany will not collect at the end of their first turn. Even if Germany buys a destroyer, Russia could conceivably “raid” an additional 2 ipcs the following turn, before Germany even has a chance to destroy the sub. So its a potential of at least 6 ipcs “raided” for a 6 TUV unit.

This would likely change the current optimal Russian opener for the sub, which has it go to sz 7 to play a purely defensive fodder role (in the hopes of giving the British battleship an extra shot.) That seems to me an improvement already over OOB, at least in terms of the interest for the Sub unit. But the question is whether G can sustain that economic hit, without a bonus?

The German situation would be more dramatic. Here Germany has 4 starting Subs. If 1 u-boat takes out the UK destroyer in sz 10, and the other U-boats all “wolf-pack” together against the British, that is potentially a major hit to UK’s first round income collection.  2 u-boats off the coast of England, could potentially do 4 damage on the Raid, and another 4 disrupted on station, max of 8 ipcs for England. Or you could leave the final u-boat in sz 5, and raid Karelia for 2 ipcs then another 2 ipcs on station. If the German player fires enough 2s while raiding, that’s potentially a dozen ipcs that the Allies might lose from their income due to G’s first round economic attacks. And that’s just subs, to say nothing of the Baltic cruiser getting involved hehe. Whether the German player would ever attempt this, I’m not sure. The value of their subs on G1 combat is hard to ignore, they are needed as fodder primarily and to destroy allied transports.

UK only has the lone Australian sub in sz 39, which could raid East Indies for 2, and then another 2 on station (provided the Japanese destroyer in sz 61 is sunk.) This could be a strong use of the sub, as it has a chance to max damage -4 ipcs from Japan at East Indies. Of course, that is only if you allow subs to conduct raids in a sz occupied by enemy warships, otherwise the UK has no good raid options.

Japan’s sub is out of position to reach any sz with adjacent territories worth more than 1 ipc.

The US sub at pearl is likewise not really a factor in the first round. It might not survive Japan’s first turn, and even if it did, it could only reach New Guinea on station, so USA isn’t raiding or disrupting much of anything in the first round.

Again for 1942.2 I just looked at the subs, because I’m not sure how you could really sustain a convoy raiding system on that board if all warships can disrupt convoys.

Another idea, if you wanted to include a matching bonus, would be to say that each player gets some fixed amount of additional money each round, and this is considered their “Convoy Money.” Say it was 10 ipcs or 15 ipcs or 20 ipcs etc. You could cap the total convoy damage any nation can sustain at that value. This way it is like you are fighting for “extra” money, or a new slice of pie, instead of the same old slice of pie. Each nation would get an increase in total cash, allowing them to buy more subs and sustain the new sub warfare model, and each nation would have an incentive to play out the sub economic warfare to deny the enemy their convoy cash.

The cash itself doesn’t need to be attached to a specific zone, it could represent the entire convoy system for that nation. But when you go to make raids you do it in specific sea zones, vs specific adjacent land territory values, to determine how much you could take in a given round up to that max amount (whatever it is for the Nation.) This gives you bonus money, but also a ceiling to how much money can be taken in total, to prevent the player from getting totally raided/disrupted out of play. The way Italy can be raided out of play in G40.

Any thoughts?

Partly for the fun or it and partly in case it provides any potential ideas for discussion, I decided to have a crack at developing an alternate convoy system.  I’ve deliberately not looked closely (if at all) at the lengthy discussion of the topic that’s already taken place in this thread or in the even longer “Reality wrecking destroyer rules” thread – so if any of what I’ll describe below has already been discussed, please disregard this post.

When I’m describing here isn’t a complete system, and it may turn out to be completely impractical.  It’s a broad concept that includes some possible options, but not a lot of hard-and-fast details.  It leaves a lot of questions to be answered, especially as regards unit strengths and game balance; I have no aptitude for the calculations and assessments that these issues involve, but I know that lots of folks here are very experienced at that sort of thing so I’ll leave those issues to the experts.

The post is kind of long, so if I discover after posting it that part of it has gone over the post-length limit I’ll re-post the missing parts.

In general, I was aiming for something that: a) is very, very simple to understand and use; b) is potentially applicable to any global-scale A&A game, regardless of whether it has an OOB convoy system or not; and c) is more historically realistic that the system described in Global 1940.

On that last point: I raised some realism concerns yesterday, but I thought of an even bigger one this morning.  The OOB G40 rules (basically) state that the IPC value of certain land territories depends on the convoy zones which adjoin them.  For example, the “United Kingdom” territory that contains London (IPC=6) adjoins SZ109 (which contains a convoy).  The rules make it possible, under certain conditions, to neutralize those 6 IPCs by disrupting the SZ109 convoy.  The problem is that this doesn’t make sense regardless of how one interprets the condition which states “2. The sea zone must be adjacent to one or more of your controlled territories”.  Interpretation A would be that the IPC value of the territory depends on the SZ convoy regardless of who controls the territory.  That’s fine (in this particular case, as an example) if the British control that particular territory…but what happens if the Germans take control of it?  The rules imply that, in order to collect the 6 IPC income generated by this territory, the Germans have to keep its economy going by keeping it supplied with German convoys (in the same way that the Brits kept it supplied with British convoys).  This is historically absurd.  Britain’s economy at the time functioned on a model totally dependent on trade with friendly (and in a lot of cases British Empire and Commonwealth) countries.  Britain would import raw materials, transform them into finished products with its industry, export these products to foreign markets, then use the sale profits to buy the consumable (and other) goods that Britain needed for its own use (plus more raw materials, to keep the cycle going).  Germany could not have kept such an economic system going if it had conquered southern England, even if it had had the merchant fleet capacity to do so (which it didn’t).  As for Interpretation B, it makes even less sense: the notion that the condition “one or more of your controlled territories” only applies to the original holder of that territory.  Under such an interpretation, we’d be faced with the absurd notion that southern England’s economy needs convoys to function when the British control it, but doesn’t need convoys to function when the Germans control it.

So – with that little editorial out of the way, what would be a good alternative?  Here are my thoughts on something that might work.

First: we scrap the notion of convoy zones entirely.  Convoys would henceforth be represented by actual convoys, not by convoy zones.  There are different ways this could be done on the game board, in terms of sculpts and/or markers, but for the purposes of discussion let’s represent them by placing a national control marker (to identify the country to which a given convoy belongs) on a sea zone (where a NCM can’t possibly denote anything else) and covering it with a transport ship sculpt (the pairing with the NCM being indicative that this is a convoy, not a naval transport).  Strictly speaking, the ship sculpt might not be necessary…but that will depend on an issue that will be discussed at the end of this post.

Second: we scrap the notion that convoys affect the IPC value of specific territories.  Instead, convoys will affect the total IPC income of each power.  When working out the details of how this system would work, we’d have to decide what percentage of each power’s staring IPC income depends on that power’s use of convoys.  For some powers (like China), the concept would obviously not apply.  For others (like the USSR), the concept might apply.  For still others (like Britain and Japan), the concept would certainly apply, since both nations very much depended on maritime trade.  So as an example, just to pick a number out of thin air, let’s assume that out of Italy’s 10 starting IPCs, 3 of them are convoy-dependent.  And let’s assume that this translates into 3 separate convoys, each supporting 1 IPC.  (This is for the sake of simplicity, but it might be possible to use a system in which convoys have variable value, just as land territories have variable value.)  If Italy loses one of its 3 convoys, with nothing else about Italy’s situation changing, then Italy’s overall IPC income would drop from 10 to 9.

That’s the basic concept – but there are a lot of questions that would need to be decided to fill in the details:

1. As just mentioned: which countries have convoy-dependent IPCs?  How many of their initial-income IPCs depend on convoys?  Are all convoys of equal value…and if not, how do you keep track of which convoy is worth how much?

2. Where do convoys get placed initially during set-up?  In certain defined SZs?  If so, which ones?  Or could they go wherever each player wishes?  That last option could get very messy.  If I were Britain, for example, and I wanted to put my convoys in the safest place possible, I’d put them all (if the rules allowed it) in the most out-of-the-way location possible, like SZ52 south of Samoa.  This would not only be unfair (since it would give the Axis almost zero chance of sinking them), it would also be completely unrealistic (since a convoy south of Samoa can’t possibly be supporting industrial production in, say, London).

3. Can convoys move? That’s an interesting notion on which I have no definite opinion one way or another.  It would be a lot of fun if they could move, and in some sense it would reflect historical reality if that were the case (particularly if the rules were to state that they must move at each turn), but against that is the consideration that players might be tempted to keep moving their convoys away from danger rather than towards their economic centres.

4. Can more than one convoy occupy the same SZ?  Does the answer change depending on whether we’re talking about convoys just from one side, as opposed to enemy convoys?

5. Which naval and air units can attack convoys, and under what combat rules can they do so?  Obviously that’s a huge and complex question, which I’ll leave for others to debate.

6. Can a destroyed convoy be replaced?  If so, when and at what cost?  That’s another complex question that I’ll leave for others, since it involves game economics.  I imagine the answer would depend on the cost-benefit ratio: how much will it cost to buy a unit which (in our example) generates 1 IPC per round, and is it worth that cost?  One idea that might be interesting to explore is the concept of treating convoys as units somewhat similar to Industrial Complexes, which offer a mixture of costs and benefits.

7. Do destroyed convoys remain marked on the board?  This is what I was referring to above when I was talking about how to depict convoys.  If convoys have fixed SZ positions, and if destroyed convoys can be replaced, one option would be to use a NCM + sculpt combination to show an active convoy, and to use a NCM by itself to show that such-and-such a country is allowed to have a convoy in such-and-such a SZ, but that at the moment the convoy in that SZ has been destroyed and has not yet been replaced.  This could help in keeping track of IPC adjustments for each power.

So those are some ideas on an alternate way to handle convoys.  If they’re of any potential use, feel free to discuss and develop them because, as I said, there are many gaps to be filled.

Why not try having convoy routes. Like CWO said. You could use a country’s token and place in each sea zone for route and put a HBG convoy marker in the middle sea zone to show route.

You could also use HBG convoy nation markers that come in each country’s color token. Then lay them out to show the convoy routes. I’m sure somebody will also design routes on there maps if they want.

If you don’t or can’t get ship sculpts, use HBG convoy marker that has the ship on it and says convoy on marker only.

Then when any enemy ship stops in any sea zone in route, the defending country pays the bank a certain amount of icp’s according to there total income. If you have like 5 enemy ships in sea zones in route, their is only a 1 time penalty and once every turn. Some countrys are going to also have more routes than others.

OR have it where each country starts with a ship sculpt for each convoy route they have and have ship move so many sea zones per turn where enemy has to attack ship to destroy. If the convoy ship sculpt makes it to the end of route, then they get some icp or icp’s from bank towards there country. Your going to have to decide if when your countries convoy ship is destroyed you either get a free one or have to buy one and the ship has to start all over. If ship makes it to the end of route, it can return to starting point. This might be better for 1942 game.

So now if enemy doesn’t kill convoy ship on return to starting point would be better due to it will take longer for ship to get back instead of killing ship and country gets to start with new ship unless of course they have to buy convoy ship. Just some thoughts.

Hi all,

Great ideas,

1. As just mentioned: which countries have convoy-dependent IPCs?  How many of their initial-income IPCs depend on convoys?  Are all convoys of equal value…and if not, how do you keep track of which convoy is worth how much?

I think a workable and simple solution would be that all IPCs must be transportable to a factory. If a land route exists the IPCs are safe. If they cannot trace a land route then they must be shipped.

I think that the easiest way to represent this is that the submarines would be able to launch an attack against the IPC value of a territory. The submarines would be essentially blockading the port or patrolling offshore waiting for the merchantman to leave harbour.

The mechanic would be as suggested before. If a sub is in a sea zone next to an eligible territory then it can fire a single shot. If it is a hit the territory loses that amount of IPCs. (this could be shown by placing markers in the sea zone which the convoying power must remove by paying the damage bill)

If a sub is submerged or takes part in a sea battle on its turn it cannot attack.

Another suggestion would be to increase the subs movement to 3 to allow them to slip past blockades and escape into the ocean and force opposing powers to patrol and escort effectively.

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.