#19 HMAS Melbourne - Ready For Card (Again)

Australian Carrier - Treat this unit as a British carrier for basing Aircraft.

The RAN did work much more closely with the Royal Navy than the French and American Navies, or the German and Italian Navies.

This would let American aircraft base on this unit
At that point we may as well just make this a British unit.

Well considering our head of state is the Queen of England this not that much of an issue. Why do you think our navy is called the Royal Australian Navy when there is no Australian King or Queen?
Also this would allow it to operate with a British or US fleet a lot more efficiently which is historically how the Royal Australian Navy operated did in WW2.


2. Assuming it were to be treated as a RN carrier.
Why does it get treated differently to its German, Italian and French equivalents?

I'll rephrase my answer.
It's not being treated differently. A new Forum German carrier is treated like an existing German carrier. A new Forum Italian carrier is treated like an existing Italian carrier. A new Forum French carrier is treated like an existing French carrier.
The problem with an Australian carrier is that there is no existing Australian carrier to teat it like so we have to treat it as an existing carrier already in the game. Australia is still comes under the rule by the Queen of England so it is the most logical choice.

We need to keep this KISS. Your over thinking it and making it way more difficult than what it really is.

But I do agree with you that this is a British unit. I thought the time period of W@S covered 1939 - 1945. I didn't know the time period included the mid '50's when this unit became Australian.

Actually, I believe the history is that the UK first offered one carrier and Oz turned it down, and then later in WW2 they offered a second named ship and Oz turned it down also. Maybe someone on here can help me recall the names of the two ships that were offered to the RAN in WW2. If my memory is correct on this, then the class limits is definitely T-W-O for this ship.

Also consider that this is only an issue when taking an Australian Force in the game. There is already a lack of points for any such pure Ozzie force, so having the second ship (which Oz would essentially have after WW2 as well) would help bulk up the points so as to entice people to play an Ozzie force in games. So this could also be looked at is a play balance issue.

Looking at the list of combat aircraft the RAAF actually used in numbers, the spitfire is the next most common in line.
Wirraway/Boomerang arent really naval. Liberator, Lancaster are heavies and the Vengance was never considered for naval use. Mustangs were built locally but werent navalised.

So theoretically. We could give Spitfire Operations, for the Mk1. Which would give 2 extra slots for beaforts/beaus/kittyhawks on the landbase. It'd also be possible to include melbourne in a uk fleet with the Mk1 standing in for for seafire i's or what ever.

This still seems over complicated. There are too many compatible aircraft to possibly list in the space on the card. I think we need to go with something like I proposed which at bare minimum would boil down to this:


I added the following line to the above to make it clear that just having the carrier did not give unlimited UK compatible aircraft:


In a rule book historical limit, etc., agreed upon game, these two statements would seem to automatically allow in US aircraft for basing on a UK type carrier as well, which is something you also wanted, but limited to two per each for the two Ozzie carriers of this class to prevent abuse.