All fair points. I look forward to your upcoming house rule releases!
Adding value to naval bases
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I will have to look at it when I’m at home around my map, I’m doing everything on my phone today and don’t have access to one.
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Or this…
Cruisers and Battleships may now transport 1 infantry unit each during either their combat or non-combat movement phase. However, these infantry units must be loaded from a territory with an operational naval base, and ships may make shore bombardments or amphibious landings, but not both in the same turn.
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YG. I hosted a G40 game this past weekend and we implemented the 3@1 die-rolls for Naval Bases. (This rule was added into the current version of the 3-Turn Playing System rule set) Rolls where done directly after the Naval Portion and Preemptive to the Land Portion of an amphibious assault. Hits could be applied to any unit participating in any part of the amphibious assault.
We liked it. The people I played with also liked how Naval bases also represented Coastal Defenses in an abstract way. Definitely a value added.
We also implemented the 3-zone radius for Naval Bases. …. To be honest, it didn’t have any impact at all on the Atlantic side … because even the Gibraltar sea zone can be serviced from London if Gibraltar falls to the Axis. (Which it did, and which the Allied posted a large fleet just off shore on the Atlantic side)
On the Pacific side it did make for some added importance to Carlina Islands though. And Japan did end up setting up an additional base in New Guinea. … that base was fought over and more heavily re-enforced by the Japanese. But overall, it didn’t effect game-balance and was quite a fun set of objectives to worry about in the Pacific.
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Thanks for the update Jetset, sounds like a promising addition to naval bases.
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I’ve been also thinking about the original idea of raising ships…
If a cruiser and/or a battleship has been destroyed in a sea zone adjacent to an operational naval base, immediately place a black chip per battleship, and a yellow chip per cruiser under the naval base counter.
During the purchase new units phase, nations may pay to raise ships previously destroyed at half their original cost. Once purchased, move the corresponding chip/s from under the naval base, and into any adjacent sea zone/s. During the place new units phase, mobilize any ships that were raised in the purchase new units phase.
Note: only ships belonging to the controller of the naval base may be raised.
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Raising a sunken battleship, then repairing it and returning it to service, is neither fast nor cheap. Just as one example: USS Nevada, sunk at Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941, was only raised on May 17, 1942, and only returned to service in July 1944. Moreover, this sort of thing is only possible if: a) the damage which cause the ship to sink in the first place wasn’t too severe, and b) if the ship was sunk in shallow water. Arizona was never raised because she was blown apart. Bismarck was never raised because she sank in deep water. And the British firm which famously raised part of the scuttled German fleet at Scapa Flow after WWII ended up, as I recall, barely breaking even (let alone turning a profit) because of the huge costs involved.
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@CWO:
Raising a sunken battleship, then repairing it and returning it to service, is neither fast nor cheap. Just as one example: USS Nevada, sunk at Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941, was only raised on May 17, 1942, and only returned to service in July 1944. Moreover, this sort of thing is only possible if: a) the damage which cause the ship to sink in the first place wasn’t too severe, and b) if the ship was sunk in shallow water. Arizona was never raised because she was blown apart. Bismarck was never raised because she sank in deep water. And the British firm which famously raised part of the scuttled German fleet at Scapa Flow after WWII ended up, as I recall, barely breaking even (let alone turning a profit) because of the huge costs involved.
Thanks Marc, makes sense and now I can stop thinking about this as I realized there were too many variables in wording a rule for raising ships.
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I like your original idea, but what about carriers? They were the most important ships to keep afloat during the war, and a great deal of repair was done for them as well.
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@Tamer:
I like your original idea, but what about carriers? They were the most important ships to keep afloat during the war, and a great deal of repair was done for them as well.
I feel that they are already priced to well, resulting in many players buy a lot of them for what they can do.
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@Tamer:
I like your original idea, but what about carriers? They were the most important ships to keep afloat during the war, and a great deal of repair was done for them as well.
I do not recall any instance off-hand during the war in which a carrier was re-floated after having been sunk and then returned to active service.
The Amagi and Graf Zeppelin were both sunk and re-floated, but neither saw active service during the war and Graf Zeppelin wasn’t even complete.
The re-floating idea is kind of cool, but it may need to be reduced somehow to make it a more rare occurrence. As Marc said, it was a long and expensive process and not every ship that was sunk qualified for such a salvage operation. Unfortunately with A&A, we do not have the granularity in gameplay to determine how badly ships are damaged.
I suppose that you could modify the rule so that after combat you need to roll for each ship lost to determine IF it can be salvaged. Say you need a 2 or less to float a given ship. If you roll that, then you can decide to pay half to re-float.
It complicates things, but definitely makes it so you can’t just regenerate 2 battleships and 3 cruisers if you want.
I will offer another limitation that sounds logical to me, but you can consider:
- Ships may only be raised on the following turn and to do so, there may not be any hostile warships in the sea zone where the ships were sunk. This implies that any ships not raised the following turn will be lost forever, as you said, and that the territory with your naval base cannot be taken by the enemy in that time.
Example: Gibraltar is amphib assaulted by Italy. All UK warships are destroyed. Italy has no warships present in sea zone, only transports. Italy takes Gibraltar. US player lands and liberates Gibraltar on their turn, returning it to UK control. The UK player cannot then re-float ships lost in previous turn combat with Italy because they did not retain full control of Gibraltar.
Somewhat complicated perhaps, but I think some of these limitations need to be placed, otherwise I see this as being a huge advantage for the Axis. Germany and Italy in particular, because they tend to hole up their navies in home water areas and can potentially get double the naval power at half the cost. It will further incentivize them to stock up and stay in port knowing they can effectively respawn capital ships on the cheap. An element of chance and tactical consideration should be added so that it isn’t just automatic.
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