Newbie questions

[MektonZero]

Why not reduce the damage available for a liner??

Probably because it would make it overly vulnerable to gunfire.

At the moment, Liberty ships, tramps and Voctory ships are all vapourised by a single torpedo - there are several documented cases of liberty ships surviving a single torpedo hit.

Si

I think you're confusing Crew points with Damage points. A Liberty has 7 damage points and a German torpedo has 3 Damage Dice, even if they all succeed that's only 6 out of 7 (barring a critical hit).

 

[MektonZero]

Looking through the new Civ ships, I think I'll just disregard the Liberty ships (the biggest ever class of ship made) and the tramp freighters and change to three liners....
Three liners give me 171 damage points compared to 36 for 12 Tramp freighters, or 42 points for six Liberties. And speed is a massive seven inches meaning negative modifiers on any attack dice too!

Si

They should probably errata that to no more than 1 Liner per convoy. Or up the value to 25 or so Tramp Freighters.

 

[DM]

The "liner" was there because people asked for statsto represent the big ships like the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. They should be the exception rather than the rule.

 

[gazman]

Why not reduce the damage available for a liner??

Probably because it would make it overly vulnerable to gunfire.

At the moment, Liberty ships, tramps and Voctory ships are all vapourised by a single torpedo - there are several documented cases of liberty ships surviving a single torpedo hit.

Si

I think you're confusing Crew points with Damage points. A Liberty has 7 damage points and a German torpedo has 3 Damage Dice, even if they all succeed that's only 6 out of 7 (barring a critical hit).

Hmm, what use is a ship with one point of damage left?
Tramps are as good as dead with just two points of damage - their speed is 1 inch - you can't round that down, so half speed is stop.
Same with Liberty, get it crippled and again it's dead in the water - effectively useless in terms of VP for the scenario.

Si

 

[gazman]

VAS is completely the wrong set of rules to use for WW2 convoy games. Unsurprising since the "mission statement" was primarily to achieve a fun fast game of surface combat between big ships I've submitted an article to S&P which may make things better.

The Introduction in my copy says - "From skirmishes involving destroyers hunting down merchantmen, to the clashing of allied fleets against implacable enemies."

Doesn't mention convoys exactly, but destroyers, merchantmen and two civilian ship based scenarios in the book....

We're at it again on Wednesday anyhow, I'll be picking faster moving, bigger convoy ships. With Flower and destroyers escorts. See how that plays out.

SI

 

[DM]

It says what it says but I'm going by the discussions we had during development. If thr aim had been a set that covered convoy actions with any real degree of satisfaction it'd have much more fidelity at the lower end of the ship scale.

 

[gazman]

from a destroyer vs sub point of view it's worked reasonably well (from my novice WWII naval perspective).

I think the main problem I'm seeing (in the civ ship games) is the balance between civilian ships and naval. There just aren't enough convoy ships on the table to survive nine subs. Also the deployment rules drop the U-boats right on the middle of the convoy.

I've got this drum to bang now, so I'm going to play a few rounds and tinker with how I run the convoy and some minor stuff like deployment.

Still playing and still enjoying it though.
\
SI

 

[DM]

Out of interest, how many merchies are you using in a game against a wolfpack of 9 u-boats?

 

[MektonZero]

Hmm, what use is a ship with one point of damage left?
Tramps are as good as dead with just two points of damage - their speed is 1 inch - you can't round that down, so half speed is stop.
Same with Liberty, get it crippled and again it's dead in the water - effectively useless in terms of VP for the scenario.

Si

That doesn't leave it dead in the water since unlike Skeleton Crew, nothing about being crippled prevents you from using the Flank Speed special action; giving even a crippled Liberty Ship a speed of 1".

 

[gazman]

Out of interest, how many merchies are you using in a game against a wolfpack of 9 u-boats?

Playing a RAID level - 12 points worth. Last time it was eight Tramps and two Liberties.

I only made four sinking versions - silly me! I soon ran out

Si

 

[DM]

Thats part of the problem of course - any group of ten merchies getting ambushed by 9 u-boats in a situation like that woud be hard-pressed to survive

 

[gazman]

yeah, but reading through some convoy attack accounts, there do seem to be some big numbers of U-boats attacking. Over 40 in one instance I've recently read.

I think this is probably where the imbalance lies in this particular scenario; there's far too many U-boats and escorts to the ammount of civilian shipping. I can actually take 15 escorts for my 'convoy' of ten supply ships....

I think more realistic would be six escorts and three subs... might be the way to play. or triple the civilian ship numbers...

Some experimentation to be done there - I'm also interested in seeing how early war compares to mid and late - see if it mimics the actual swing in power of the U-boats to the escorts.

Si

 

[DM]

In most cases the actual number of u boats in contact was quite limited. Hunting the internet you can find loads of references to convoys attacked by "upwards of 30 u boats", but when you get into the detailed action reports you often find that this was over the space of seveal days, and that at any one time only a handful were in contact (and thats with a convoy of 30-40 ships), or that the number of u boats was the number of boats in the packs that were engaged but that most never got close to the convoy.

 

[gazman]

OK, well that sort of pans out nicely with what I'd like to see on the table then.

I'm playing tonight, so we'll try the fleets at Patrol rather than Raid and the merchants at double Raid!


So we'll get three U-boats and five escorts - probably four flowers and a Loch...

With a convoy of 24 points of civilians...

Si