Philippine Sea Campaign Ideas - Comments?

[Alexb83]

Due to TGT's desire to start playing VaS, but his and my desire to steer clear of the PL system, we're attempting to put together a short, concise campaign covering the battle of the Philippine sea. We'll be using the full OOB, with the ships broken down into their historical task forces (though we haven't quite decided how they will be disposed to start, or what victory conditions will be).

A hex map will form the foundation of the movement system, with 50 nautical miles per hex base scale. Surface groups are allowed 15 hexes per day (which roughly equates to maximum range for a 33kt ship) - I didn't want to overcomplicate this too much - though this is rounding down rather than up and may introduce problems with half-hexes.
Similarly, aircraft have a maximum endurance of 15 hexes (going by the range of the Dauntless).

I invite comments on the system; basically each day in the battle will be broken down into 3 'turns' - the Morning, Day and Evening.
Surface ships can move 5 hexes per turn. Planes can move up to their 15 in one turn, but must return to a carrier within 15 hexes of launch, or 3 turns (whichever is sooner) or splashdown.
Returning in the evening will incur a roll-off to see if the planes land safely.

 

[Alexb83]

Broken message due to crappy firewall :S

Battles occur under the following conditions: surface vessels meet on the same hex during a turn.

Aircraft and/or surface vessels meet on the same hex.

Where ships/planes meet in the morning, the first half of the turn will be played in night-time conditions, and the latter half where battles occur in the eveining turn.

Battles last 10 turns; in the event that at the end of a battle, forces remain on both sides, there may be a pursuit, allowing the battle to continue immediately in the next campaign turn (i.e. in the day following a morning battle).

Quite how we're going to resolve spotting over the extreme ranges remains unclear atm - ideas would be welcome.

 

[Alexb83]

Aircraft attacking surface vessels:

Surface vessels move first on the map in each turn. Following movement, aircraft on the map can be moved up to their maximum movement, but will stop 3 hexes short of any surface vessels (c. 150 miles). At this point they are considered to have been spotted by some means (such as radar). Surface vessels can react immediately in a couple of ways:

Scrambling fighters (if they have them). These fighters are scrambled, and will be available in the ensuing attack as pre-launched fighters on the tabletop. Following the attack they will be automatically reduced to 7 hexes of movement or 2 more turns on the map to represent fuel/ammo lost in the defensive action and quick scramble.

Any friendly aircraft groups already launched (on the map) may be vectored out towards the incoming enemy. Movement is resolved at 1 hex each simultaneously following detection. A pitched battle is fought over the sea if they meet - any enemy planes which manage to cross the table proceed to attack the ships.

 

[vitalis6969]

Is each player going to know where all the enemy squadrons and such are? Im assuming yes because you didn't mention the use of the neutral GM.

One thing I would think about including is some type of historical "missions" table for the various task forces and ship squadrons. That way you don't just wind up with a giant "pile on" of ships all converging on the same hex.

Another way to do it would be to have all the markers as "blank" markers unless confirmed, i.e. your opponent doesn't know what each of your markers represent unless they are scouted out. Kind of like the old game Stratego.

These popped into my head because of the Guadal Canal campaign and all of the ship mismanagement that went on, especially with the American carrier force being sent north at a very bad time after a bunch of empty decoy carriers.

Also, to keep it simple without having to worry about where all these scouting planes are every turn, assign a scouting value to each player and roll every turn on your opponents tokens, if you make it, he has to flip it over and reveal what it is. Heck, let each side have decoy tokens as well that are nothing. Of course, even if scouting reveals nothing when two squadron tokens get within three hexes or whatever, they have to be flipped over anyway.

I don't know, just some thoughts and nothing concrete at all.

-V

 

[Alexb83]

An independant umpire has been considered - but as I mentioned we haven't come up with a good system for remote detection yet.

The game should start with the Americans knowing the general position of the Japanese (from information relayed by subs - which we aren't using in the battles).

Halsey's mistake in sending the ships after the decoy was well... a mistake. Some argue that the inverse mistake was made in the Philippine sea by Spruance.

I was tempted to say that you can assign a number of scouts each turn (maybe 3 each) which can see a certain number of hexes all around, to represent patrol flights. Each turn you nominate an area for each patrol, and each will show the hex it's in and the 6 surrounding hexes. Plus your surface ships (with radar) will be able to see up to 5 hexes (250nm).

I dont know what range is a good representation of visibility for any planes you put up from your carriers?

 

[vitalis6969]

For planes you could take a look at the search ranges that were assigned to the "strawberry" flights of PBYs in the battle of Midway.

Unfortunately whatever way you pick is going to be pretty arbitrary especially if you want to keep it simple.

-V

 

[Alexb83]

Yeah, we want to keep it as simple as possible - you will just get a look in at a certain number of areas each turn to see if you can spot a surface group or aircraft.

Once you get them it should be easy to keep eyes on them because you can blanket the area with your spotters the next turn, or direct your ships towards it.

The other big issue is going to be micromanaging your planes (more importantly your carriers movement) so that they dont splash down after attacking their targets.

 

[DM]

I've posted some campaign packs for Midway and other actions on my GQ website. Although written for another set of rules many of the ideas thereinare easily portable to any WW2 set of rules. There may be some useful ideas for your campaign in them.

 

[Alexb83]

Thanks DM, I'll have a look at those, and I've got a copy of S&P 43 now too - definately may be a good application for the weather rules and formations.

In order to keep the campaign short and sweet rather than letting it drag on for all eternity (and encourage decisive action on the part of both fleets) I think we're going to set an upper turn limit of 3-5 days (so 9 to 15 turns).

Being as it's an historical battle, obviously there is a significant skew in the balance of the forces - the Americans have a far larger force, and any significant reduction in the Japanese forces' aircraft or carrier force will be a decisive win for them, they can also afford more losses in attrition.

On the other hand, the Japs need to go all out to either get to Saipan and interrupt the invasion, or sink whatever gets in the way - which is going to be far tougher for them to do without suffering crippling losses.

I dont think we're going to include submarines (although 2 of the carrier kills from the US forces were from Submarines) because they dont seem well represented in the rules atm.

Map wise it's a bit more bland than the S&P sink the Tirpitz scenario - we've got Saipan and Guam (with the Japanese land based fighters) and the rest is empty sea.
In a sense the Japanese are going to have the benefit of better spotting, thanks to their forces on Guam.

 

[Alexb83]

Taking to heart some suggested amendments from DM's website, the following changes to core rules are made for the campaign:

Flank Speed cannot be performed... 33kts is already flank speed, thankyou very much.
Premeasuring for gunnery is allowed, but not otherwise.
All aircraft AD are tripled.
Fighters have a dogfight endurance of 2 turns, afterwhich they have no ammo and must land to re-arm.
Torpedo launchers can be destroyed in the same way as turrets.

Having just finished slapping a map together using a HEX pdf generator, and sneakily using some GIS software, the bounds of the campaign are: 24 hexes by 19 hexes. The Northern Marianas are in the top-right, with Yap towards the centre bottom and Palau towards the bottom left.

 

[DM]

Sounds like its all coming together very nicely. Keep us posted!!