Radar Versus Smoke

[ramiseas]

Dear guys at Mongoose i need help... please! please! please!
I am playing a campaign and we are at logger heads on the new rules for Smoke:

"Ships may fire through Smoke created by friendly vessels with the following restrictions: the ships firing must have the
Radar trait, normal range penalties apply to the friendly fi ring ships, no AD bonus is given to ships within 10”, anti-aircraft fire
from friendly ships is subject to a -1 penalty to AAA Attack Dice, and torpedoes may not be fi red through smoke. The rules
for the automatic Command Check, placing and removing Smoke Counters, and enemy targeting through Smoke as stated in
Victory at Sea remain the same.
"The issue is the friendly smoke, is this rule stating that you can only fire through friendly smoke if you have radar but you cannot fire through enemy smoke if you have radar".

Please clarify this for us as it is a big sticking point ! Thank You!

 

[rcbecker1]

Smoke,

No attacks that draw a line through this counter may be made at all except
for ships equipped with Radar (see Radar in the Advanced Rules Chapter).

Simple.

Smoke: Ships may fire through Smoke created by friendly vessels with the following restrictions: the ships firing must have the Radar trait, normal range penalties apply to the friendly firing ships, no AD bonus is given to ships within 10”, anti-aircraft fire from friendly ships is subject to a -1 penalty to AAA Attack Dice, and torpedoes may not be fi red through smoke. The rules for the automatic Command Check, placing and removing Smoke Counters, and enemy targeting through Smoke as stated in Victory at Sea remain the same.

These rules just explain that you can fire through friendly smoke.

A ship with the Radar trait will detect any enemy ship placed on the table on a roll of three or more. Once detected, an enemy ship will remain so.
If an enemy ship has been detected by radar, the ship that detected it may launch attacks against it at any range up to its normal maximum, regardless of visibility conditions for Smoke, Bad Weather or Night. If an enemy has been detected by radar in Good Weather and during
the day, the penalty for attacking it at long ranges is ignored, while the penalty for attacking it at extreme ranges is reduced to –1.

Also ships using radar in a scenario where it cannot see the target have to lock on and fire at the largest enemy ship in its range.
A good home rule would be radar firing at night, smoke or bad weather would be at -1 to firing since in these situations using radar the target is not seen. instead of normal since radar was nowhere as good as we have now.

 

[Rick]

I'm still of the opinion that radar blind-firing is too easy in the rules. The facility to fire blind by radar lock alone wasn't really available before about late '44-45 afaik, before this ships would have to use visual sighting with radar help to guide the main guns - something that you can do at night with illumination rounds, but not through thick, black smoke. I'm hoping that VAS 2.0 will correct this 'super-radar' somewhat.

Actually - what I would really, really wish for would be for the 'radar' trait to be split into 'hybrid fc' (optical and radar fire control, modifiers to hit in poor visibility/long ranges but can only fire at visible targets) and 'radar fc' (US/RN 44-45 - can be fired 'blind' at up to maximum range through smoke and poor/no visibility). I realise this might add a little bit more complexity, but would be quite useful and historically much more accurate.

 

[MongooseMatt]

RAdar rules are indeed changing in VaS 2.0