Order of Battle. . .

[juggler69uk]

I did consider an all subs fleet using jap ones that can flank speed on the surface at over 7" to get the -1 to hit and are agile, basically use them to all out attack anything opponent has that can hit subs, then mop up at leisure

 

[Tankdriver]

I guess I am missing the Flank Speed stuff, where is that?

 

[juggler69uk]

I guess I am missing the Flank Speed stuff, where is that?

Flank speed is on Page 11 in the rulebook Special Actions.

But the -1 to hit when you are shot at is for fast moving targets (on page 7) which means most ships need to be moving at flank speed to attain that, however this also means you suffer a -1 to your shooting (page 11)

 

[duskdealer]

Been attacked by an all sub fleet was painful, but don't underestimate MTBs. Vosper 72' had depth charges. two points of damage and your on the surface and facing 15" guns.

there are some 'iffy' things in the rules, but mongoose will iron them out. if they dont, we just make house rules.

Simple.

 

[steveburt]

Been attacked by an all sub fleet was painful, but don't underestimate MTBs. Vosper 72' had depth charges. two points of damage and your on the surface and facing 15" guns.

there are some 'iffy' things in the rules, but mongoose will iron them out. if they dont, we just make house rules.

Simple.

Quite.
It's a good game, even with the various glitches.
Some of those will doubtless be fixed in the new supplement.
Any that are not can easily be fixed with house rules.

 

[Tankdriver]

Well, my brothers-in-law took to Babylon 5: A Call to Arms faster than they did to Battletech, and given the choice this week, they chose Victory at Sea over ACtA. I call that the sign of a good game.

 

[E Nicely]

1. Aircraft are underpowered
2. Spotter planes have an importance they never had historically
3. Torpedoes are too easy to hit with, but not lethal enough when they hit
4. The critical hit system is broken - weak guns should be able to score critical hits against small ships.
5. The flank speed rules is broken - should be a chance of engine damage.
6. Smoke seems too effective; maybe it should just cause -1 to hit.
7. Critical hits in general happen so infrequently they are hardly worth bothering with
8. Ships never, ever seem to run out of crew, so either hits should cause more crew damage, or crew ratings should be reduced.


I don't know how many of these have been addressed, but I understand 1 & 5 have. Not sure about the others.

David Manley's house rules fix most of these issues, and improve the game.

I can say that after many games of VaS crits do happen often enough and ships have been driven past the crew threshold due to fires. All of your other points have been dealt with in Order of Battle.

 

[DSV1]

Getting the current problems solved will be great. However I do not understand people wanting to play a historical naval wargame and then want to use "IF" and "MAYBE" ships.

The Naval fleets of the time were just that so wishing for 4 Yamatos instead of 2 or a fleet of Montana's seems silly.

The PL should work in regard to tournaments, if not IT needs altering NOT adding hyperthetical SUPER ships to balance it. I accept there will always be a difference between the European war and the Pacific but that would be a tournament issue - ie Only certain RN ships can partake in a pacific tournament etc.

Sorry for sounding negative, I am not about the rules themselves, they are an excellent way for a part-time gamer like myself to enjoy ww2 naval games.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

There's historical games and there's hypothetical games, aren't there? Obviously, VaS comes with a set of historical scenarios, but even playing these is playing the "what if?" game, simply because, we weren't in command of those encounters and the commanders who were didn't know what we know now. So where's the harm in more hypothetical scenarios? What if the Kriegsmarine had had more Bismarck-class battleships? What if the UK had built the G3-class battlecruisers? I don't see a problem with this.

 

[Swan]

Getting the current problems solved will be great. However I do not understand people wanting to play a historical naval wargame and then want to use "IF" and "MAYBE" ships.

The Naval fleets of the time were just that so wishing for 4 Yamatos instead of 2 or a fleet of Montana's seems silly.

The PL should work in regard to tournaments, if not IT needs altering NOT adding hyperthetical SUPER ships to balance it. I accept there will always be a difference between the European war and the Pacific but that would be a tournament issue - ie Only certain RN ships can partake in a pacific tournament etc.

Sorry for sounding negative, I am not about the rules themselves, they are an excellent way for a part-time gamer like myself to enjoy ww2 naval games.

Guess that I should ask, do you feel that only actual battles should be fought? No one should try to re-fight any of the "historical" battles using ships that were not present just to see what might have been? Should we also play "historically" making sure that the loses that occured in the actual battles occur in the re-creations we play?

VaS has a campaign system attached to it, at currently we have a 9 player campaign running and everyone is having a lot of fun. The campaign is set in the South Pacific. So, by the theory that we should only run the game "historically" I should boot out 6 of the players, since Italy, France and Germany had no forces in the area, The UK had limited forces and we should not have more then 1 US or Japanese player (currently there are 2 Japanese, and 3 players using the US Fleet lists). At the moment the Italian player is winning by holding 5 ports, but I should stop him from building more then 9 Navigatori Destroyers, because 9 were ever built, and prevent him from building more then any other type of ship beyond what was historically produced, though by campaign rules he has the resources, and by campaign time period his navy is still viable and one of the largest in the game. Basically, I should hamstring him just because Italy did not do well in WWII? Had Italy and France lasted longer in the war, isn't it possible that they would have produced more ships? Perhaps its the way that we are running the campaign, maybe we should have set it up that by this time France's forces are "automatically wiped out" and Italy has chosen to dry dock all of her ships, but then it would not make for a very fun game for those players.

 

[Court Jester]

THe other point is that if they are too powerful then we could be in danger of seeing an All Aircraft Fleet :lol:

Hey... I pretty much did that with the current rules... And I did pretty well for myself (considering)...

 

[E Nicely]

Getting the current problems solved will be great. However I do not understand people wanting to play a historical naval wargame and then want to use "IF" and "MAYBE" ships.

The Naval fleets of the time were just that so wishing for 4 Yamatos instead of 2 or a fleet of Montana's seems silly.

The PL should work in regard to tournaments, if not IT needs altering NOT adding hyperthetical SUPER ships to balance it. I accept there will always be a difference between the European war and the Pacific but that would be a tournament issue - ie Only certain RN ships can partake in a pacific tournament etc.

Sorry for sounding negative, I am not about the rules themselves, they are an excellent way for a part-time gamer like myself to enjoy ww2 naval games.

Just because you don't want to play hypothetical designs doesn't mean others share the same POV. It's not silly to some. I won't, I don't play 4 Shimikazes at a time since there was only one built, there's nothing to stop anyone from playing as many of them as they want. The tournament I ran had a "number constructed" rule, that was as far as I took fleet restrictions. The potential for "what if" games is already strong with Agis' Z Plan ships (the full list, a fraction of them made it to OoB) that were in S&P.

As far as restrictions for tournaments thats up to the person running it and the group participating. I will say that you you call it an Atlantic-only tournament you'd better have all the models that will be used for all of the players since half of them might only own Japanese and American ships. Like I said up to the tournament organiser.

As far as PLs go, they work. The changes to the core book ships have been made and making sure that the new ships balanced was my #1 concern with Order of Battle. You're left with a broad war level. Some War ships are better armed but since VaS has never been a game of single ships, it evens out over a fleet. This leaves some ships that will only be used in historical scenarios, but that's the way the fleet lists work in VaS, especially with the huge amount of new ships in OoB.

 

[juggler69uk]

As far as PLs go, they work. The changes to the core book ships have been made and making sure that the new ships balanced was my #1 concern with Order of Battle. You're left with a broad war level. Some War ships are better armed but since VaS has never been a game of single ships, it evens out over a fleet. This leaves some ships that will only be used in historical scenarios, but that's the way the fleet lists work in VaS, especially with the huge amount of new ships in OoB.

Leaving aside the What if's (you may as well just forget the rulebook and make up your own ships here, such as make the Hood an armoured deck and give it 18" guns etc etc ), If you dont limit the fleets to "quantities historically built" then as you say some (A LOT IMHO) ships will permanently be "left on the shelf".

The fleet lists could eaasily be amended to say "Limit to number built in class, Unless agreed on by both parties ...." etc etc. That way the "Standard" would be Historical with the option to play Ahistorical, rather than have it the other way round

 

[E Nicely]

Leaving aside the What if's (you may as well just forget the rulebook and make up your own ships here, such as make the Hood an armoured deck and give it 18" guns etc etc ), If you dont limit the fleets to "quantities historically built" then as you say some (A LOT IMHO) ships will permanently be "left on the shelf".

The fleet lists could eaasily be amended to say "Limit to number built in class, Unless agreed on by both parties ...." etc etc. That way the "Standard" would be Historical with the option to play Ahistorical, rather than have it the other way round

If you don't like the inclusion of hypothetical designs that's your perogative. Like I said earlier in the thread there's players that like the "what if" aspects and that option will stay open to any gaming group that wants it.

Further defining the numbers in service isn't really necessary since there's nothing in the rules that requires players to stick to historical numbers in service. It's fine for your gaming group or my gaming group but doesn't require a set in stone rule. In Service dates do take on a little more weight in OoB however, and a new rule suggests defining a specific year for each battle. This keeps kamikaze attacks from happening in 1941, allows for carriers to have different compliments of aircraft appropriate to which stage of the war the battle is in, and limits the use of some of the hypotheticals. I'd forgotten about that in my earlier posts, the year of the battle does officially impose some restrictions on the hypotheticals.

 

[juggler69uk]

If you don't like the inclusion of hypothetical designs that's your perogative. Like I said earlier in the thread there's players that like the "what if" aspects and that option will stay open to any gaming group that wants it.

Im not looking to prolong this and dont expect you to reply (In fact i'd rather the thread reverted to the original topic) but to clarify, You will Note I did not say whether I preferred the inclusion of hypotheticals or not, I merely intended to indicate that, for a ruleset where the cover states it is a WWII naval combat game, then Historical lists should be the "Standard" with an "OPTION" to play non-historically if all parties are in agreement (I fully agree there is a place for them in the rules, just not the base level).

Also I'm fully aware that any group of people can agree to only use Historical lists if thats what they want (You really should not have to "House Rule" something so basic though), the "Problem" arises where people turn up to play social games from different areas with different fleets and the "UBER" non-historical fleet is all poweful just because the "Rules allow it" as the basic standard.

 

[Tankdriver]

So yeah, Order of Battle is coming and bringing with it new things and such. We have an idea of whyt will be in it but until there is an actual copy in our hands, than it is all so much wishing and speculation. And back to the 1920s analogies, speculation can be a very dangerous thing. Almost as bad as appeasement.

Think about it.

 

[Soulmage]

Spoke to the guys at GenCon. BB Montana is included in the supplement! Hooray!!!!

Also, they are debating whether to include the WWI ships in Order of Battle as well or not. If not, it will be released as a separate supplement a few months later. (That is MUCH sooner than I hoped. . . I was expecting to see WWI about a year from now!)

Also I'm fully aware that any group of people can agree to only use Historical lists if thats what they want (You really should not have to "House Rule" something so basic though), the "Problem" arises where people turn up to play social games from different areas with different fleets and the "UBER" non-historical fleet is all poweful just because the "Rules allow it" as the basic standard.

** Warning - Rant Ahead **


This is a specious argument.

- In a friendly game, both players will reach mutual agreement on what ships are to be used before the game commences. Nobody forces you to play somebody who wants to use non-historicals. So the issue of somebody showing up with a "uber fleet" is moot.

- In a tournament, rules for fleet composition will be posted well ahead of time. Everybody will know exactly what is legal and what is not and can choose to attend that tournament or not, or choose what to include in their fleet based on those rules.

Saying "only historical ships should be in the supplement" as some have said smacks of the same elitisim that has kept naval wargaming to an extremely small slice of the already small wargaming community. If you want more players in the hobby, you must be a little more open minded and accepting of diversity in the player base.

If you don't want/don't care about more players in the hobby. . . nothing is forcing you to play with anybody new. You can play with the same small group you've always played with using the same approaches you've always had. . . . but wanting to put up barriers to other's enjoyment of the game is. . . . let's call it 'not reasonable.'

Unfortunately. . . that sort of in-bred elitisim is common to a great many gamers from a wide variety of genre's. Its not something naval wargaming corners the market on at all. . .

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Agreed with Soulmage 100%. Well said, sir.

 

[DM]

WW1 is a completely separate system that (at present) uses the broad VAS system but with soem detailed changes (the management of torpedoes for example will be far more historical - unlikely to hit but they'll really ruin your day when they arrive!). The campaign system is similar but better reflects (IMHO) the style of naval warfare in the early 20th century. The system for ship stats is again similar but the scales have obviously changed to reflect the spread of capabilities in ships of the era (so you can't use WW1 stats in WW2 games). The current intention is to cover the period from the RJW to the end of WW1, possibly (probably?) back to Span-Am as well.

Of course all this may change once the draft is handed to MGP

 

[juggler69uk]

..............
** Warning - Rant Ahead **
. . .

In order to end this now I will not reply in detail and live with being misquoted and falsely accused as most of that rant did not apply to my "quote" or the meaning of the full message. If your going to quote someone dont flame them in the rant for things they have not said or views they dont hold