Newbie questions

[Evil Monkey]

Yes, I know, another ill-informed newcomer asking questions... hopefully not too annoyingly obvious.

Anyway, we've played a couple of games, and having played B5, found it pretty easy to get used to and a lot of fun.
I've got two questions though:

1) The convoy scenario is shown as the convoy setting up 48" from their objective edge. Looking at a reasonable number of transports being 1" move, then even with flank speed that's 24 turns to get them off the board minimum, is that right?

Number 2 comes from picking up OOB at Reading on Saturday. Now this may be down to us having not really used the aircraft trait properly originally but the changes to it have left us rather confused.

2) The aircraft trait now seems to provide no purpose other than to give anti-sub capabilities. My guess (because it's not terribly clear) is that these retain the old observation aircraft stats, however the 'clarification' at the front of the book says observation aircraft are no longer represented on the tabletop, so how do they actually get used? Which stats are correct, and what does the reference to 'short' aircraft on p16 actually mean? No plane has 'short' in its descriptors. Also, does Aircraft: 3 still provide 3 of these revamped planes, whatever they are?
The revamp of planes in general looks good but the aircraft trait issue looks like they missed a clarifying paragraph out somewhere - or else I'm being a bit dumb. :?

Any help appreciated.

 

[gazman]

apparently so - see the thread I started in the rulesmasters section. Apparent explanation is civilian ships were slow.

We play the 1 inch civ ships as 2 inchers - that tallies up with the stats for every other ship in the book when you relate it to knots.

I've been pondering how anyone EVER managed to get ANY ships off the end of the table in this scenario....

You've got nine U boats popping up exactly where they want on turn 1.

I'm determined to rescue at least one civvy ship in this scenario - here's a few things I'm trying next time...

1 - take all destroyers (I've got six Flowers as well) giving 15 sub killer ships.
2 - Line up your civvy ships nose to tail, touching in a line - no way for the sub to get in between and use front and rear torps.
3 - Stay vigilant!

I took some time today to look up losses for convoys and even during the height of the U-Boat menace convoys were only losing 25% of ships.

The new rule that torpedoes do double damage to civilian shipping is way overkill in my opinion - most have only got a couple of damage points anyhow. Double damage vapourises the poor things!!

SI

 

[jfox61]

I agree with gazman here. Overkill is a polite way of saying it. 1 torpedo hit would almost kill a transport anyway so to double the damage is nasty. But bear in mind the new rule for torpedo reloads. Now you don't have unlimited reloads. 2 shots total for Japanese destroyers with reload capability and all other ships and subs 3 shots total. So although torp damage is doubled against civvy ships you have to use your ships a bit more carefully

 

[gazman]

subs 3 shots total

Now I didn't notice that....... :shock:

 

[Evil Monkey]

I'm pretty stunned that no-one else seems to have a proplem with the new aircraft trait. 3 of us at the club have read through it and none of us can work out how it's meant to be implemented. Can someone please explain?! :?

 

[jfox61]

It reads to me as if you now no longer use reccy planes launched from ships, everything else is as the original rules. But although this is the way the rules look to be read then why do these ships still have an aircraft trait. If you don't use spotting rules anymore are they now classed as CAP planes for air defence?

 

[Evil Monkey]

The rules at present to me simply don't make any workable sense. You have a trait that provides an unspecified ASW of which there are no clear details, there has to be some sort of clarification somewhere. I understand the whole observation aspect is removed but what replaces it is clear as mud.

 

[jfox61]

Ok looked again and it looks pretty straightforward and also clear as mud, let me explain. Page 16 at the bottom states that you may use your ship Reccy planes as ASW. At the top of page 17 you have a small table, this gives a ships reccy plane 1AD strength with 3DD. That looks pretty straightforward to me. What does confuse me though is that although it says aircraft equipped ships may use ASW capability it states only ONE of these planes may be so equipped. If that is the case and observation planes are not used anymore for observation purposes then why give a ship up to 4 of these planes. You can only use 1 for ASW so what would the rest be used for? See, straightforward AND clear as mud

 

[Soulmage]

Probably just because they wanted to stick with publishing the historical number of planes carried by the ship.

 

[jfox61]

That makes sense but they should have stated it in the rules if it was the case. I can see where the confusion is coming from because of it. We have had a word at our club and decided that we will carry on using the old rule plus the new rule for ASW. After all whats the point of including a stat for something that isn't going to be used yet was used historically. I would like to know the thinking behind the decision to do away with Recce planes

 

[E Nicely]

I've read the posts you guys have put up about rules issues with OoB. At this exact point in time there isn't much I can say about corrections for the regular print run. There's other material in the book I can't comment on right now. Wish I could but I can't. Here's what I can say:

Torpedoes vs. civilian ships: During playtest ships like the Liner were taking around 20 torpedo hits before they sunk. Doubling torpedo damage was the easist way to bring this closer to reality. The nature of the VaS rules demands simplicity.

Observation Aircraft: Way overpowered in VaS and needed to be changed to have a more strategic role. Check the expanded campaign rules for new uses for them. That and the ASW capabilities.

 

[Evil Monkey]

Ok, so: use Recce plane stats from VaS, and AD/DD per small table on p16 of OOB - completely ignore the aircraft: X number (which seems incredibly odd) is what I gather from the above but according to the 'changes to rules' at the start of OOB, recce planes are no longer represented on the tabletop. Is this a wordy problem where ship aricraft are now classed as ASW (but using the Recce stats from VaS) and so are represented on the table?

 

[E Nicely]

Is this a wordy problem where ship aricraft are now classed as ASW (but using the Recce stats from VaS) and so are represented on the table?

Obs. Aircraft are placed on the table for ASW purposes. Drop the +1 AD to the owning ships main guns and the +1 Init. bonus on p. 15 of VaS, their basic stats remain. The Aircraft trait can be affected by trait loss from crippling damage.

 

[MektonZero]

I wanted to comment in this thread earlier but since I ordered OOB on the 21st of November and just got it today... :x

p3 of OOB states that the Aircraft cannot be lost if a ship is crippled

I suppose that is probably there to avoid a situation where the trait is lost while the plane is still in the air. Still, in the Battle of the Komodorski Islands one of the IJN cruisers took a hit directly to a floatplane. That wasn't an ambush so it isn't a sure thing that the planes would be launched before the shooting starts.

On at least one occasion, long range IJN gunfire directed by observation aircraft was accurate enough that the US commander believed that the Japanese ships were equipped with Radar! :shock:

Still, one of the strengths of this game is that it is simple enough that you can make exactly what you want with house rules. While +1 to hit at short range seems a bit extreme, allowing observation planes to allow the owning ship to fire as if it had radar against 1 target within 6" of the spotting aircraft might not be too excessive. I'd rule it 1 target per turn, not one per plane. Personally, I'd make this ability an Admiral trait as this level of coordination probably wasn't a common thing.

 

[gazman]

Torpedoes vs. civilian ships: During playtest ships like the Liner were taking around 20 torpedo hits before they sunk. Doubling torpedo damage was the easist way to bring this closer to reality. The nature of the VaS rules demands simplicity.

Why not reduce the damage available for a liner??
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.

Playing your scenarios with MS in them, you either need to up the amount of MSs in the scenario or make them harder to hit.

Si

 

[ebar]

Remember RMS Lusitania (a vessel of capital ship dimensions) went down to a single WW1 era torp, while the smaller liner Justicia, had six put into her before she went. (obviously the Germans rolled a lot of ones on the damage)

Torpedoes were effective ship killers because while shells only let the air out of the top, torpedoes let water in bottom.

 

[DM]

Lusitania did of course go down as a result of a rather interesting fuel-based secondary damage mechanism

A definite case of "death by critical hit"

 

[gazman]

no need to test for criticals on Civilian shipping with double damage torpedoes!

For me, the lure of VAS was big convoys with multiple U-boats and some good escort action. I really don't like house rules unless I have to, especialy with scenarios that are in the rule book, but the convoy stuff is starting to look like it may need some.

I sound like an old whinger keeping on about this, but I'd love to get some good results from the convoy games and the book scenarios.


Si

 

[DM]

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. There is a new set of rules on the horizon from veteran Aussie naval wargamer Mal Wright (who some of you may remember has less than joyous views on VAS) which should capture the feel of WW2 convoy actions very nicely. The reports he's been posting on navWarGames are encouraging.

 

[gazman]

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!

Means I'll have to make and paint new models, but I might just make it to the end of the scenario!

I need to contact White Star lines! Well, I'll need to carve some plasticard...

Si