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Sinker of Battleships
AHF Bronze-Rated Trader
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I have an Idea- here it is people, the single unbeatable way to not lose any convoy ships. Watch your enemy stutter with rage as they are unable to take any major shots at your ships-
RUN AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
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WAS 64/64
39-45 36/60 |
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 Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:29 pm |
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Admiral Lady Dame Honor S. Harrington steadholder and duchess Harrington
Posts: 262
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How about in a 100 point game letting the escourt player stack his surface ships three deep?
And in a 200 point game making the attacker stack his only two deep? 
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"I will not let my ship be shot from under my own ass"
Captain Ernst Lindemann of KMS Bismarck
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| Mon Jan 28, 2008 11:56 pm |
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| I'll give that a shot and see how it works out. Thanks for the suggestion. |
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| Mon Jan 28, 2008 11:57 pm |
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| Allowing the defender to have three ships in a space made the game a lot closer, though the convoy side still lost. I think instead of being impossible for the convoy side to win, that rule gives the convoy side something like a 15% chance. A lot better than impossible, though still not quite there. Other ideas are still welcome. |
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| Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:10 am |
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Admiral Lady Dame Honor S. Harrington steadholder and duchess Harrington
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I've played it three times and the escorting player won two times.
maybe you could give the escorting player 10/15 extra points or have one or two of the convoy ships be Nordmarks with there real stats? 
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"I will not let my ship be shot from under my own ass"
Captain Ernst Lindemann of KMS Bismarck
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| Fri Feb 01, 2008 8:45 pm |
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Right now, I am giving the escorting player second set-up and three ships in a square. Next time I am going to try Nordmark stats and see if that gets it up to about 50%.
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| Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:08 pm |
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It's a lot closer, but I still haven't managed to pull out an escorting player win. Perhaps I am just designing too efficient attacking fleets. Right now I am running an attacking fleet with two U-boats, three Kondors, two Stukas, a Scharnhorst, and a Karl Galster.
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| Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:57 pm |
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Pushing Plastic Ships in the Dakotas
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Ok.
I finally got a chance to try this this weekend, using the rule suggestions for the convoy ships themselves I mentioned earlier in this thread, and my convoy protection group for the germans.
And what happened? Well for the first time in history (besides the one time my group substituted nordmarks for convoy ships) the escorting player won.
So - while its not guarenteed (you want a sure thing, you're playing the wrong game  ) I believe by simply increasing the vital armour of the Convoy rules version of the convoy ship, and increasing the AA to 5 - the convoy mission has gone from questionable to difficult but doable.
We played this twice. The first time, the German player brought a mix of subs (U510s) Two or three Kondors, and some Kolns. (I'm sorry I don't remeber the exact fleet, but it was three days ago, and I'm kinda tired right now)
I brought the build I'd discribed earlier in this thread:
1 Princeton
2 Boise's
2 Devistators
1 Dauntless
1 Wildcat
2 Catalinas
1 Sammy B
(100 points on the nose)
The Devistators, Sammy B and the Catalina's all performed well above the call of duty and sunk every Sub sent after me. The Wildcats harrassed and eventually blew up the Kondors. And the Boises with the support of the Dauntlesses blew the Kolns out of the water. Win for the Allies!
Deciding it do it again, the German player requested I bring the same fleet (so I oblidged - we sometimes like to see just how long a single fleet can survive multiple attempts to blow it up) and this time brought a Sharnhorst, a Bismarck, and a Karl Galster. He may have also afforded a Kondor or a sub, but I don't quite recall.
This time, it was a completely different matchup. While I stated earlier when I created the idea for this build that I felt it could stand up to a battleship, with some luck - I had ment a SINGLE battleship. Certainly not two.
The results were predictable if painful to view. Still, I believe the biggest increase in covoy survivability was the AA bump to 5. Sure - 5 ain't great, and against Japanese attackers is down right horrible - but when fighting of Stukas, Kondors and Swordfish, it gives them at least a fighting chance.
The 7 Vital Armour means that cruisers aren't guarenteed a vital armour shot, especially at longer ranges, which improves convoy survivability quite a bit as well.
This will take a few more plays to find out how much better this works - but I think the convoy scenario is doable now - and no longer dread it 
What do you folks think?
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| Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:46 am |
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Post subject: Re: The Convoy Scenario Altered & Improved
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I think that a good way to play the Convoy scenario would to make several changes. 
First, change the stats for the liberty ships: armor=2, vital armor=7, hull=3. This comes fromthe Escort Carrier St Lo. Also change the gunfire ability to what the St Lo has. The USA Escort carriers are build on cargoship type hulls, and have a similiar gun armament. I like to think of the freighters as being those type of ships that the CVEs were made from.
(Also, the Liberty ships don't carry lotsa aviation fuel.)
Second, give the attacker double points for destroying each ship, and give the defender double points for each that succeeds (or even triple points!) Thus, if the attacker sinks the entire convoy, but loses most of his fleet, he has possibly won a tactical victory, but a Pyrric one at that. The loss of bulk of the attacking squadron could actually be a strategic defeat... 
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Darn the Torpedoes; full speed ahead!
Victory is blasting hostile ships out of the water before they blast you out of the water... |
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| Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:27 am |
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Nothing but Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash.
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Post subject: Re: The Convoy Scenario Altered & Improved
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| SJG Gamer wrote: | | The loss of bulk of the attacking squadron could actually be a strategic defeat... |
Here, I think is the most valid point about these scenarios. There are no strategic repurcussions. If the attacker is willing to sacrifice his battleship to sink the last merchant vessel, then that is encouraged by the rules. Perhaps there should just be a rule requiring the attackers to retreat after 50% losses or something.
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| Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:31 am |
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Post subject: Re: The Convoy Scenario Altered & Improved
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| swarbs wrote: |
Here, I think is the most valid point about these scenarios. There are no strategic repurcussions. If the attacker is willing to sacrifice his battleship to sink the last merchant vessel, then that is encouraged by the rules. Perhaps there should just be a rule requiring the attackers to retreat after 50% losses or something. |
This is an excellent point and one that has some historical data to back it up. There are many accounts of German raiders withdrawing from an attack on a convoy at the sight of British patrolling vessels. The goal of the German raiders was not to engage to British capital ships but to sink convoy ships. So the best response when a patrolling ship was sighted was to run away so that you could engage another convoy another day. |
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| Mon Apr 14, 2008 7:07 pm |
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It seems the convoy scenario needs a completely different approach to make it work. In general, any interaction between a raider squadron and a convoy is going to result in the convoy 'losing', it's just a question of losing by how much.
Most transport convoys were not escorted by capital ships but usually by destroyers. This was typical in trans Atlantic and North Atlantic convoys. This was also typical in the Pacific since both the US and Japan deployed primarily subs to raid convoys thereby freeing up their capital ships to engage each other. From what I have read there are three situations where the typical WaS 100 pt per side convoy scenario becomes relevant.
The first is when the raider force encounters a patrolling force and can't get away. But in this situation it seems the goal of the raider is just to escape, not to sink more convoy ships so you might as well just fight a standard 100pt per side engagement and leave out the merchant ships. This is typical of Atlantic region convoy actions. One thing I've noticed when reading accounts of these actions is that aircraft were rarely involved since the raiders purposely avoided areas where land based aircraft could reach.
The second situation, and probably the most fitting, is when the convoy is composed of troops and supplies for an amphibious assault (Guadalcanal is a good example). In this case each and every cargo ship that is sunk matters a great deal and there were generally significant escort and screening forces in place to make sure the valuable cargo made it to it's destination.
The third is the sub vs convoy situations common in the Pacific and the Atlantic with wolfpacks.
The 2nd situation seems the most interesting to model within the workings of the WaS rules. It might also be the easiest to alter to create a working scenario. I'm certainly no expert but it seems that one thing that these situations often had were the presence of screening forces. In these cases the convoy raiders would have to fight through the screening force to reach the convoy which would probably be accompanied by a light escort (minesweepers, destroyers etc.). You could make the escort free (maybe two or three destroyers) and then make the rest a standard 100 pt per side encounter. The real difference would be in how each side is deployed. Positioning the screening force between the attacker and the convoy and requiring the attacker to close with the screening force before it came in range of the convoy ships might provide enough of an edge to the convoy force to even out these scenarios. The initial distance of the attacker might be about 8-9 hexes away from the cargo ships and the screening force sets up between the two. Then make the scenarios last as long as it takes the convoy ships to cover somewhere around 4-6 hexes (representing the convoy ships covering the distance between detection and actually landing. This might not require altering any of the cards to make the scenario work and hopefully would simply require adjustments to the starting distance of the attacker away from the convoy and the distance the convoy would have to travel to win. I haven't play tested the idea yet but at least it seems to work better in my head than the original convoy scenario does.
Any other historical convoy situations anyone can think of that would make modeling a workable convoy scenario a little easier? |
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| Mon Apr 14, 2008 8:15 pm |
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