Archive for Axis & Allies ForuMINI Specialised in the World War II Axis & Allies Miniatures and War At Sea Games
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Blackeagle
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Blackeagle's Modified Torpedo RulesI run a lot of US vs IJN games, so I deal with a lot of torpedo attacks. The usual way to do this is to make the torpedo rolls and wait decide what to attack with gunfire until after I know which ships got hit with torpedoes (no sense shelling a ship that's going down to a long lance). This is effective, but not very realistic. Torpedoes take a while to reach their targets, so forces usually fired guns while their torpedoes were in the water. I've been playing around with some rules to simulate this.
Modified Torepdo Rules
The Torpedo Launch phase occurs after the Air Attack phase and before the Surface Attack phase. It is composed of the first player's Torpedo Launch step, and the second player's Torpedo Launch step. In the appropriate Torpedo Launch step, each player decides which ships they will target with their torpedoes. Place one torpedo marker next to the targeted ship for each die of the torpedo attack (I use dice for markers, so I can just pick them up and roll them later, but you need a lot of them if you're playing an IJN fleet). If a force has both ships with long lance torpedoes and ships with ordinary torpedoes, use different markers for each so you can know how many points of damage a hit will do.
Torpedoes are no longer fired in the Surface Attack phase.
The Torpedo Impact phase occurs after the Surface Attack phase. Roll one die for each torpedo marker next to a ship. As usual, a six is a hit and hits do two points of damage (three for a long lance).
I've tested these rules a bit. They slow things down a bit and tend to make torpedo attacks less powerful, but they're still fairly simple and they add an interesting tactical dimension to torpedo firing decisions. Allocating a lot of torpedoes makes a target more likely to be destroyed, but you may get a bunch of hits that are wasted. On the other hand spreading torpedo attacks around makes overkill less likely, but you may sink a bunch of low value targets and miss the high value ones.
There's one additional bit which I haven't playtested yet. It could be a SA or it could just be an option for all ships.
Comb the Wakes: Before this unit makes any gunnery attacks during the Surface Attack phase you can choose to evade torpedoes. Remove one torpedo marker from this ship. All gunnery attacks made by this unit suffer a -1 penalty to each die.
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LordYmer
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Re: Blackeagle's Modified Torpedo Rules | Blackeagle wrote: | I run a lot of US vs IJN games, so I deal with a lot of torpedo attacks. The usual way to do this is to make the torpedo rolls and wait decide what to attack with gunfire until after I know which ships got hit with torpedoes (no sense shelling a ship that's going down to a long lance). This is effective, but not very realistic. Torpedoes take a while to reach their targets, so forces usually fired guns while their torpedoes were in the water. I've been playing around with some rules to simulate this.
Comb the Wakes: Before this unit makes any gunnery attacks during the Surface Attack phase you can choose to evade torpedoes. Remove one torpedo marker from this ship. All gunnery attacks made by this unit suffer a -1 penalty to each die. |
You said it yourself. Why should the Torpedo face come before the surface fase? Why not then put it in the torpedoface with the Subs? then ther would be a target selection of what I fear the most (torpedo or gunnery), in the surface attack face.
On the other hand I love your idea Comb the Wakes, but I se it as a ability manovably all small ships should have (destroyers and light crusers), and a SA for some capital ships. Again this rule alone speaks for the toredo face, even the subs fase would come before the surface attack fase. I think that option is quit unrealistic caus the time of fligt for a round ws the time of "swim" for at torpedo.
LordYmer
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Blackeagle
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Re: Blackeagle's Modified Torpedo Rules | LordYmer wrote: | | You said it yourself. Why should the Torpedo face come before the surface fase? Why not then put it in the torpedoface with the Subs? then ther would be a target selection of what I fear the most (torpedo or gunnery), in the surface attack face. |
Shifting torpedoes back to the submarine attack phase just ends up with the opposite problem. The player gets to decide which ships to torpedo after seeing the results of his gunfire. I'm trying to model South Pacific naval battles where torpedoes were generally fired before gunfire commenced, but didn't hit until after the gunfire was well underway. I want to model that uncertainty of not knowing the results of torpedoes when allocating your gunfire and vice versa. I think the best way to do this is to split the torpedo phase into two parts before and after the torpedo phase.
| LordYmer wrote: | | On the other hand I love your idea Comb the Wakes, but I se it as a ability manovably all small ships should have (destroyers and light crusers), and a SA for some capital ships. |
You'd think so, but some destroyers actually had fairly lousy maneuverability. The Fletcher class, for instance, had a bigger turning circle than some cruisers and battleships because they were fairly long ships with a single rudder (the Gearings and Sumners were built with twin rudders to correct this).
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'Warspite'
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Certainly surface torpedoes should be kept out of the submarine phase, they were moved from there in the first official revision of the rules because no destroyers were surviving long enough to launch them.
What about going ship by ship? As you get to each ship's shooting specify where its guns are firing and where its torpedoes are going BEFORE you roll any dice. You complete one vessel and then move to the next.
Tough if you double kill a ship (it happens) but just as tough if you split fire on two targets and score insufficient to sink either/both. Certainly torpedoes would be on their way before the results of surface gunnery could be assessed so I see this as a 'quick and dirty' rule and it would ease play.
Comments?
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EvilKobra
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I'm curious - are there sound historical reasons that justify treating shipborne torpedoes any different from submarine torpedoes?
If not, it would make sense to unify ships and subs: torpedoes from either would be declared before, but resolved after, the gunnery phase.
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'Warspite'
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| EvilKobra wrote: | I'm curious - are there sound historical reasons that justify treating shipborne torpedoes any different from submarine torpedoes?
If not, it would make sense to unify ships and subs: torpedoes from either would be declared before, but resolved after, the gunnery phase. |
As I understand it they were moved from the 'torpedo' phase into surface gunnery because very few destroyers were surviving to make attacks. The few I tried went the same way.
It was purely a change to game mechanism to make the game more playable and the destroyers more effective. Prior to that they had virtually a walk-on role. Walk-on, get sunk. It was a limited role! smile
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EvilKobra
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Yes, I'm aware of that part. I meant, if we adapt the rules so that ship's torpedoes they get fired during one phase but resolved in another, shouldn't we also apply this to subs? Meaning the phases would now be as follows:
1) Torpedo declaration phase
2) Gunnery attack phase
3) Torpedo resolution phase
As opposed to:
1) Surface attack phase
2) Submarine attack phase
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Blackeagle
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| EvilKobra wrote: | | Yes, I'm aware of that part. I meant, if we adapt the rules so that ship's torpedoes they get fired during one phase but resolved in another, shouldn't we also apply this to subs? |
Well as far as game balance goes I think they left the sub torpedoes in a separate phase because subs were already powerful enough (and needed to be toned down) while surface torps got moved to the gunnery phase because destroyers and the IJN needed a boost.
As far as a house rule, I haven't played enough games with subs to say.
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'Warspite'
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| EvilKobra wrote: | Yes, I'm aware of that part. I meant, if we adapt the rules so that ship's torpedoes they get fired during one phase but resolved in another, shouldn't we also apply this to subs? Meaning the phases would now be as follows:
1) Torpedo declaration phase
2) Gunnery attack phase
3) Torpedo resolution phase
As opposed to:
1) Surface attack phase
2) Submarine attack phase |
Why make it so complicated? There were few actions where submarines got involved in surface battles and - when they did - they tended to strike later, such as the Japanese destroyer which finished off the USS Yorktown.
The thing which struck me about War At Sea was the simplicity and the elegance of the game play. I'd like to keep as much of that as possible.
I'd favour doing each ship one-at-a-time, allocate all weapons to targets, roll the results and then move on to the next one, surface ships in one phase, submarines in another (later) phase after the ASW attacks have been resolved.
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Blackeagle
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| 'Warspite' wrote: | | Why make it so complicated? There were few actions where submarines got involved in surface battles and - when they did - they tended to strike later, such as the Japanese destroyer which finished off the USS Yorktown. |
I think you mean submarine, not destroyer. 
| 'Warspite' wrote: | The thing which struck me about War At Sea was the simplicity and the elegance of the game play. I'd like to keep as much of that as possible.
I'd favour doing each ship one-at-a-time, allocate all weapons to targets, roll the results and then move on to the next one, surface ships in one phase, submarines in another (later) phase after the ASW attacks have been resolved. |
I do love the simplicity of WaS. When I'm thinking about house rules I try to balance the added realism and decision making against maintaining simplicity. I've played the "all attacks from one ship at a time" way, and I think it's better than mixing and matching attacks, but it doesn't quite have the feel I'm looking for.
Of course, you have to keep the context in mind. I play mostly Pacific theater, including a lot of night battles, so torpedoes are a really important part of the game (long lances are pretty much the raison d'ętre of Japanese surface forces, after all). To me, that makes the extra complexity of these torpedo rules well spent. If you're playing an Atlantic theater game, where torpedoes are more of a "well, I'm within two sectors, I might as well fire torps too" type of thing, then the added complexity of these rules might not be worth it.
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rutilius
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well for me i try for making it real but i want playable. i have done some games that one didn't know if a hit occured till the computer said so. it was fun to have small ships in a 40ft sq playing field where you couldn't tell what you were firing at, but not much fun if you wanted to try out some tatics that happend in history. so..
1) ships firing up a class get -1 to dice but 6's still dbl. it keeps the golden BB but distroyer guns don't go through cruiser armour and 8" cruiser guns draw the attention of the battleships secondary guns because the clang of the bounced shot is anoying.
2) each ship picks targets for all fire before we roll dice. each gun may pick a seperate target.
3) we say we launched torps when we picked targets and they hit in the gunnery phase. no change in the rules just the way we say it.
4) all dd get smoke and follow the salvos. both were common in all navies.
5) smoke takes effect at the end of surface gunnery.
i welcome any comments. take care
mike
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