Order of Battle. . .

[Soulmage]

Spotted this tidbit in the Mongoose blog -

. . . and prelimary work on the much anticipated Victory at Sea supplement Order of Battle - tracking down usable old pics of the various ships and aircraft the new supplement has been a pretty long task (thank you Wikipaedia and the US Government). Pity that there are not many pics of ships of the Z-plan that were never made...

Sounds like we're going to get some hypotheticals in the supplement! Yay!!

It would be nice if I finally had some stats to go along with my Montana!

 

[Wishbone]

I think the H class ships are already statted in S and P. can't remember which issue though.

I'm looking forward to some of them being available... Aquila for one. giving the Royal Navy the Audacious and Malta class carriers would be fun too, if the aircraft rules have been revised!

 

[DSV1]

not to sound a killjoy but it would be nice to have the current issues resolved first before people start playing with hyperthetical ships :?

 

[TheMackster]

not to sound a killjoy but it would be nice to have the current issues resolved first before people start playing with hyperthetical ships :?

What current issues? I mean I'm new to VaS but other than a couple of typos I haven't found any problems except Yamato and possibly Iowa might need a War+ rating or something as they clearly outclass every other BB in the list.

 

[steveburt]

not to sound a killjoy but it would be nice to have the current issues resolved first before people start playing with hyperthetical ships :?

What current issues? I mean I'm new to VaS but other than a couple of typos I haven't found any problems except Yamato and possibly Iowa might need a War+ rating or something as they clearly outclass every other BB in the list.

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There are a *lot* of ships missing - those need to be added before we start doing hypotheticals.

Lets' see - off the top of my head.

German 'T' class destroyers
British Dido class cruisers
British Corvettes and Sloops
British H and V class destroyers
Italian Garibaldi class cruisers
Italian Soldati class destroyers

There's doubtless a bunch of US/IJN stuff missing too, but I'm not so familiar with those fleets.

 

[TheMackster]

Ah, I see now. Different perspective.

From my viewpoint "issues" are problems with a game system and I just don't see any here except a minor one or two regarding ship ratings (like Yamato) or possible beefing up air power a bit, although aircraft are lethal against cruisers already.

The "missing" ships are really just a want list, not really a game issue in my opinion. I play British and Kriegsmarine and I'm quite happy with my ship selection.

 

[steveburt]

Ah, I see now. Different perspective.

From my viewpoint "issues" are problems with a game system and I just don't see any here except a minor one or two regarding ship ratings (like Yamato) or possible beefing up air power a bit, although aircraft are lethal against cruisers already.

The "missing" ships are really just a want list, not really a game issue in my opinion. I play British and Kriegsmarine and I'm quite happy with my ship selection.

----------------
Oh, there are a bunch of game system issues, too (IMO of course):

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.

 

[Burger]

8. Ships never, ever seem to run out of crew, so either hits should cause more crew damage, or crew ratings should be reduced.

Several of your points state that things are broken because they are historically inaccurate. Can you name one historical occurance where a ship was disabled because it ran out of crew?
Apart from the Marie Celeste, that is

 

[steveburt]

8. Ships never, ever seem to run out of crew, so either hits should cause more crew damage, or crew ratings should be reduced.

Several of your points state that things are broken because they are historically inaccurate. Can you name one historical occurance where a ship was disabled because it ran out of crew?

No - which means that crew are irrelevant and should be removed from the game system; if something never actually affects the game, why bother having it in the game system at all?

Either crew losses should have an effect, or they are a waste of space.

 

[Burger]

Waste of space IMO.

 

[Swan]

----------------
Oh, there are a bunch of game system issues, too (IMO of course):

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.

While I can agree with most of these from our games torpedos are hugely affective. They hit well and when they do they cripple or destroy what they hit (with the exception of the battleships with torpedo belts). As for critical hits, we may be an exception, but we see a lot of critical hits in our games, to the point that the criticals are what determines the games half the time, and not good strategy. Smoke is definitely broken, as well as flank speed. Some of these things are being addressed, but even with them VaS is a fun game to play.

 

[steveburt]

----------------
Oh, there are a bunch of game system issues, too (IMO of course):

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.

While I can agree with most of these from our games torpedos are hugely affective. They hit well and when they do they cripple or destroy what they hit (with the exception of the battleships with torpedo belts). As for critical hits, we may be an exception, but we see a lot of critical hits in our games, to the point that the criticals are what determines the games half the time, and not good strategy. Smoke is definitely broken, as well as flank speed. Some of these things are being addressed, but even with them VaS is a fun game to play.

Oh, I agree torpedoes are effective - it's just that they are effective for the wrong reasons.
They should be quite hard to hit with, but devastating when they do hit.
Instead they are quite easy to hit with, and because they score many hits, are very effective.

Torpedo belts are also far more effective than they were historically, - again David Manley's suggested mod works well (ships without a belt count as armour 2 against torps. Ships with a belt get to count their armour)

 

[Soulmage]

I don't agree with all your points. . .

But Order of Battle has already promised some rules adjustments.

That has nothing to do with what ships are included in the supplement. Personally, I'm glad to see some hypotheticals included to balance out the fleet lists somewhat. You cannot create balanced fleet lists for navies that were historically unbalanced against each other.

For the folks who only want to use actual ship classes that we laid down. . . nothing forces you to use the hypotheticals, but it opens up options for those of us willing to use them.

I'm a wierd mix of the historical vs. a-historical. I would never use more of a single ship than there were made. . . except for ships that were never built.

 

[juggler69uk]

Crew shortages will come into play in the campaign game if you cannot or choose not to reinforce them (rulebook p 44/45)

Another thing that needs a fix is needing more than a 6 to hit parts esp on fast moving destroyers, for one thing IMHO secondary weapons should not suffer the -1 pealty to hit fast moving targets

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Maybe I'm being thick, but why should a ship's secondary guns be any better at hitting fast-moving targets? Did they have superior fire control, gunners or faster-moving turrets? I know the secondaries were intended to fend off small ships like destroyers, but where they actually that useful?

 

[TheMackster]

Maybe I'm being thick, but why should a ship's secondary guns be any better at hitting fast-moving targets? Did they have superior fire control, gunners or faster-moving turrets? I know the secondaries were intended to fend off small ships like destroyers, but where they actually that useful?

The secondaries typically had a much higher rate of fire. Think of trying to hit a moving target with a single rifle shot or with a machinegun, which is easier? We ignore the -1 for fast moving targets using secondaries.

BTW- we also ignore the only 3 flights of planes can attack a target too. Who thought of that anyways? We hit cruisers with full carrier launches and need 2 carriers to hit a BB or rival CV due to their high AA dice, not even counting escorts.

 

[juggler69uk]

Plus If im correct in my thinking, they were easier and quicker to move aim than the ships main guns.

As to aircraft, the ruling was you could place as many aircraft as you can in the attack position but after AA fire only 3 can make the attack

 

[TheMackster]

As to aircraft, the ruling was you could place as many aircraft as you can in the attack position but after AA fire only 3 can make the attack

Yeah, we finally noticed that rule last night but we're ignoring it. Aircraft are already pathetically weak and we found out pretty quick you need full flights of 6 to handle even cruisers.

A full carrier launch should be a threat to a Battleship, not a joke, and right now I don't think a 2 fleet carrier launch could really hurt a BB with much chance of success considering their high armour and AA ratings, let alone their escort's AA fire.

 

[juggler69uk]

Im not sure the aircraft were as effective as you feel until late in the war, And I think I recall seeing that VaS is set around '42 (but I may be wrong) hence some ships are not credited with radar etc when they were fitted later.

However the strong rumour is that aircraft will be upgraded in the supplement, so I will wait and see.

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

 

[TheMackster]

However the strong rumour is that aircraft will be upgraded in the supplement, so I will wait and see.
THe other point is that if they are too powerful then we could be in danger of seeing an All Aircraft Fleet :lol:

Right now we are already joking about taking an almost all DD and subs fleet and burying our opponent with torpedoes. The DD's launch at large enemy ships and then attack their DD's so our subs can finish off the enemy capitol ships with impunity. Sounds boring and probably loop holes there somewhere but a BC or better without escorts is just a free kill for subs unless it leaves the map and gives you free VPs.