A thought on Battleships and Battlecruisers

[Joe_Dracos]

There seems to be a massive difference between BB's and CA (cruisers). This difference is to the point that BB's simply turn and then open fire from across the length of the table (Yamato, Iowa, Sharnhorst). Granted that this is based on Historical facts, but there are plenty of other games out there that are full of history-esk ships. Cruisers and destroyers in every case made up the meat and potatoes of every fleet in the second world war. The Capital ships represented Power Projection against land targets (though do bring a massive amount of Fire power to the battle) were as Cruiser battles were the most common battle fought at sea.

There should be another priority level added and all the battleships bumped up one and the Heavy cruisers spread out between Battle and Raid, with Light cruisers being spread out between Skirmish and Raid and destoryers between Patrol and Skirmish. This would make cruisers the predominant force that you could pick for your navy and making BB's quite rare.

Perhaps making a special Priority level for those Overly large German BB's too.

 

[captainsmirk]

Shouldn't the thread title then be "Thoughts on Battleships and Cruiser Battles"...

As for the idea, it really depends on what Mongoose were trying to represent, they seem to have been working on an ahistorical gunnery duel premise.

More WW1 than WW2 really, but your suggestion would make more sense in the reality of the conflict, but I think VaS is two large scale for this to be a good idea. All the basic ships in the game would suffer from a non-standard method of in-game operation (i.e. weak trait). The way the characteristics are worked out places the battleship as the basic ship. Destroyers and cruisers are under detailed in comparison.


Nick

 

[Joe_Dracos]

Actually, this would provide for more tactics to get to better possitioning (out manouver) and to utilize your one volly of torpedoes (don't get me started on the Japanesse slow-loading traits). Battleships just line up across the table and start volly firing with out any manouvering. If something with torps gets unreasonably close they turn it into a smoking cinder (usually... I have rolled bad).

 

[Makoto]

This is where terrain starts to matter. Drop some islands, add some fog patches (impenetrable to radar, mayhaps?)... Who said the table absolutely must be an open field where both fleets just line up for a gunnery practice?

 

[Keith]

Its true that the force selection process is unrealistic. This is bound to be true for any Historical game, particularly if the points system is a coarse as that provided by priority level system.

However, IMO its not a valid argument for introducing different priority levels or even a finer grained points sytem. Placing limits on available selections in scenarios provides a far more elegant solution. Last week we played a 5 point skirmish and specified that the only valid choice be criusers.

A set of house rules limiting the numbers of ships at different priority levels could easily be established. This allows you to stage unrealistic battleship clashed or more historically accurate battles as fite the mood.