Should Aircraft Carriers have more flights

[Soulmage]

Then you are all creating an unbalance, a Battleships alone game is going to be dominated by the IJN.

:roll: Oh no, an imbalance!!!!

We played an IJN vs. Kriegsmarine 2 on 2 game the other night. The two of us playing the IJN just chose not to take a Yamato! Crisis averted!!!

Basically, if you try to match up any other way that IJN vs USN and RN vs KM, you will have an imbalance with or without aircraft carriers. That's just the way it goes in a game based on historical ships/fleets instead of creating everything from scratch in a sci-fi game.

 

[Reaverman]

Then you are all creating an unbalance, a Battleships alone game is going to be dominated by the IJN.

:roll: Oh no, an imbalance!!!!

We played an IJN vs. Kriegsmarine 2 on 2 game the other night. The two of us playing the IJN just chose not to take a Yamato! Crisis averted!!!

Basically, if you try to match up any other way that IJN vs USN and RN vs KM, you will have an imbalance with or without aircraft carriers. That's just the way it goes in a game based on historical ships/fleets instead of creating everything from scratch in a sci-fi game.

So you are saying you are quite happy to play a game (friendly or tourney), where you are never going to win?

I'm happy playing Historical games, but some of the people I play with are not into historical battles, they prefer to play a balanced battle. As for not using the ships, for the sake of good sport. Fine, thats ok. But after a while, people are going to ask "Whats the point of printing it, nobody ever uses it".

The system can be balanced, and it would still meet the requirements of the general gamer and the historian. Its called binning the PL system, and using points. This would mean that the likes of the Yamato would be say 3000 points, where the likes of the Nelson would be at 1500 points. Meaning that an even battle could be fought, since the the RN player could field ships and planes to match the Yamato.

Argue as much as you want, the PL system in a historical system is flawed. If you want historical battles, you will not use it. And, if you want a balanced game you cant use it.

 

[Burger]

As for not using the ships, for the sake of good sport. Fine, thats ok. But after a while, people are going to ask "Whats the point of printing it, nobody ever uses it".

Also, if I win because my opponent deliberately chose lower-powered ships, it would feel like he is letting me win. I don't want to play like that. Both players should be able to choose the best ships available to them, and the game should be balanced.

The system can be balanced, and it would still meet the requirements of the general gamer and the historian. Its called binning the PL system, and using points. This would mean that the likes of the Yamato would be say 3000 points, where the likes of the Nelson would be at 1500 points. Meaning that an even battle could be fought, since the the RN player could field ships and planes to match the Yamato.

YES, exactly. My ship comparator shows relative values of ships compared to each other Since VAS has very few rules and special traits compared to ACTA, it is relatively simple to calculate points cost for ships. There are no awkward questions like there would be for an ACTA conversion, such as "how many points is AJP worth?" or "how many points is 2/90 turns worth compared to 1/45?"

 

[Oly]

Then you are all creating an unbalance, a Battleships alone game is going to be dominated by the IJN. The Yamato is going to mince most ships, and only lucky shots are going to do anything (thats if you get into range of it before being mauled). The only way the Yamato was sunk, was through Airpower. You cant have one, without the other. Remember, WWII was the twilight of the BB ship fleets, it was the advent of Carrier operations.

If you want a BB dominated game, I suggest you look towards WWI

OK that's heading off on a PL tangent which I'm not sure I know enough to comment on.

I think the basic idea of nerfing aircraft somewhat so as to allow ships to play a bigger role on the stage than they did in reality is fine, as long as such an intent is clear and I think that it is.

Personally if I did meet up with people for a tournament I'd be tempted to just request at least one "no aircraft" and "no submarine game".

I also suspect that I'm going to be happy sticking primarily to historical scenarios. They may not be balanced forces wise but they are, hopefully, balanced victory conditions wise thus making for an interesting game. That said even if they're unbalanced, e.g. Death of Bismarck, they can still be a lot of fun.

 

[Reaverman]

I also suspect that I'm going to be happy sticking primarily to historical scenarios. They may not be balanced forces wise but they are, hopefully, balanced victory conditions wise thus making for an interesting game. That said even if they're unbalanced, e.g. Death of Bismarck, they can still be a lot of fun.

Like I said, you dont use the PL system in those sort of scenarios.

 

[Chernobyl]

The local opinion of japanese torps is that they have too many on ships that re-load...an all destroyer fleet would be wickedly difficult to take out given the occurance of targeting modifiers (night, bad weather)

If a ship can have a torpedo launcher that lanuched a spread of 4-5 torpedoes, and has 4-5 AD, then there's no reason whatsoever that a flight of torpedo bombers (or dive bombers) to have only 1AD. after all, they've got 1 bomb or torpedo each, and should have an equal, or at least more AD. They're pretty much igonred as being irrelevant now.
We played a carrier clash Sunday night, and two carrier's worth of attack planes did a grand total of squat to a british fleet. Ship board torpedoes on the other hand, were marvelous. Rolling 20-25 DD against a ship, even with a torpedo belt, will produce quick results...!

The number of flights is fine in my opinion, but the AD is nowhere near proper.

Chern

 

[Poi]

Personally if I did meet up with people for a tournament I'd be tempted to just request at least one "no aircraft" and "no submarine game".

I don't think you'll need to request it too often. The chances of players turning up with bombers or subs are remote, they're that poor.

 

[Reaverman]

Personally if I did meet up with people for a tournament I'd be tempted to just request at least one "no aircraft" and "no submarine game".

I don't think you'll need to request it too often. The chances of players turning up with bombers or subs are remote, they're that poor.

Actually having a sub fleet, is darn cheap

 

[Poi]

Subs may be cheap, but are they effective? Speed is so low for most, that I'll just stay well away from you.

 

[BuShips]

The local opinion of japanese torps is that they have too many on ships that re-load...an all destroyer fleet would be wickedly difficult to take out given the occurance of targeting modifiers (night, bad weather)

If a ship can have a torpedo launcher that lanuched a spread of 4-5 torpedoes, and has 4-5 AD, then there's no reason whatsoever that a flight of torpedo bombers (or dive bombers) to have only 1AD. after all, they've got 1 bomb or torpedo each, and should have an equal, or at least more AD. They're pretty much igonred as being irrelevant now.
We played a carrier clash Sunday night, and two carrier's worth of attack planes did a grand total of squat to a british fleet. Ship board torpedoes on the other hand, were marvelous. Rolling 20-25 DD against a ship, even with a torpedo belt, will produce quick results...!

The number of flights is fine in my opinion, but the AD is nowhere near proper.

Chern

That's pretty much my argument, and don't forget Fitzwalrus said much the same thing (where he was doubling I was at least tripling the AD). Where you were looking at comparing the airborn torpedoes against the surface ones, I was comparing the bombers against the ship's individual primary weapon barrels. It's almost as if the flight combat stats are for 1-2 aircraft and not the six that they are theoretically containing. As to comparing airborn versus surface torpedoes, remember that aerial torpedoes were smaller than ship mounted ones and thank the gods that the 24" type 93 was never carried aloft! :shock:. As far as the ships with torpedo reloads (slow-loading), for a game with the "easy play" design intent that VaS is I would drop this and make all surface torpedoes a one-shot type. In reality, it took some time to reload torpedo launchers and if a ship was under attack and undertaking combat maneuvers I don't think it needs to be a factor. Now if you were considering sequential scenarios however :idea: , this could be taken into consideration by allowing these ships to have reloaded between games without the assistance of a supply ship or destroyer tender, such as in a short campaign.

 

[Fitzwalrus]

I'm not really sure what factor ( x2? x3? x4?) aircraft AD should be increased by: I just mentioned "twice" above as an alternative to doubling the number of aircraft Flights on a carrier, as increasing the AD by two would have the same effect on combat. I just know they're too low now, and need to be increased.

If folks are really concerned with aircraft "taking over", then do what WWII naval gamers have been doing for the last 30+ years to avoid the historical dominance of aircraft over ships in the period: play night actions, play without carriers, or simply specify "no aircraft" scenarios and go from there. Run campaigns that limit the number of aircaft that are available to the players. Don't nerf the rules just because you want to play surface actions.

As to torpedo reloads, this came up in discussion during our first Guadalcanal game. According to our resident IJN player/authority, VaS has at least that aspect of things pretty well covered in the ships they have statted out so far. (He's also our Seekrieg fan, so getting him to say something nice about VaS is a bit of an accomplishment. :wink: )
As VaS says, the Fubukis were the first IJN DD's to carry torpedo reloads, but used a cumbersome system to get them on deck that effectively made it impossible to reload during a battle. "One Shot" reflects this nicely for them.
The Kageros and later designs used a much-improved system that allowed torps to be reloaded much more quickly, and "Slow-Loading" reflects that nicely in game terms.
I would suggest some limit on the number of times torps can be reloaded, however.
Back at the Dawn of Time when we had to chip ship miniatures out of flint, our old Seapower rules allowed reloading torpedos but each ship's stats also included the total number of torps onboard: once you'd fired them all away, you were done.

 

[BuShips]

I'm not really sure what factor ( x2? x3? x4?) aircraft AD should be increased by: I just mentioned "twice" above as an alternative to doubling the number of aircraft Flights on a carrier, as increasing the AD by two would have the same effect on combat. I just know they're too low now, and need to be increased.

If folks are really concerned with aircraft "taking over", then do what WWII naval gamers have been doing for the last 30+ years to avoid the historical dominance of aircraft over ships in the period: play night actions, play without carriers, or simply specify "no aircraft" scenarios and go from there. Run campaigns that limit the number of aircaft that are available to the players. Don't nerf the rules just because you want to play surface actions.

As to torpedo reloads, this came up in discussion during our first Guadalcanal game. According to our resident IJN player/authority, VaS has at least that aspect of things pretty well covered in the ships they have statted out so far. (He's also our Seekrieg fan, so getting him to say something nice about VaS is a bit of an accomplishment. :wink: )
As VaS says, the Fubukis were the first IJN DD's to carry torpedo reloads, but used a cumbersome system to get them on deck that effectively made it impossible to reload during a battle. "One Shot" reflects this nicely for them.
The Kageros and later designs used a much-improved system that allowed torps to be reloaded much more quickly, and "Slow-Loading" reflects that nicely in game terms.
I would suggest some limit on the number of times torps can be reloaded, however.
Back at the Dawn of Time when we had to chip ship miniatures out of flint, our old Seapower rules allowed reloading torpedos but each ship's stats also included the total number of torps onboard: once you'd fired them all away, you were done.

Fair enough, Fitz. As far as torp reloads, I'd certainly limit the reloads to firing one time only after the initial usage. I don't remember the torps being meant for more than one reload.

 

[Fitzwalrus]

It has been literally years since I've even looked at the Seapower ship stats, but IIRC their IJN DD's had one full reload available. The larger CA's with torpedoes had more torps onboard, which gave them two reloads (or perhaps one reload and a partial.) Those are much bigger hulls, though, so they'd have room for the additional storage.

Shall we bring up the Kitikami torpedo cruiser conversions? :twisted:

 

[Soulmage]

If folks are really concerned with aircraft "taking over", then do what WWII naval gamers have been doing for the last 30+ years to avoid the historical dominance of aircraft over ships in the period: play night actions, play without carriers, or simply specify "no aircraft" scenarios and go from there.

If folks are really concerned with THE YAMATO "taking over", then . . . play night actions, play without THE YAMATO, or simply specify "no YAMATO" scenarios and go from there.

 

[BuShips]

It has been literally years since I've even looked at the Seapower ship stats, but IIRC their IJN DD's had one full reload available. The larger CA's with torpedoes had more torps onboard, which gave them two reloads (or perhaps one reload and a partial.) Those are much bigger hulls, though, so they'd have room for the additional storage.

Shall we bring up the Kitikami torpedo cruiser conversions? :twisted:

It would seem logical that IJN DDs only had 1 reload as they were simply too small to carry more. That was the frame of reference that I was coming from and only when you mentioned cruisers did it seem plausible to me that they would possibly have more reloads. On the flip side of ships having this powerful weapon, there should be consideration given to the catastrophic events of having a torpedo mount hit that has not fired its torpedoes (as in the DD suffering a catastrophic disassembly!) :shock: . Yes, let's not mention the Oi and Kitakami... :wink: .

 

[Jammybee]

I agree, put their AD up and their PL (Which would be a bigger asset, a leander or an Illustrious?)

 

[Oly]

I agree, put their AD up and their PL (Which would be a bigger asset, a leander or an Illustrious?)

Definitely. If aircraft start becoming as powerful as they were then they will need to become far more expensive.

I'm sure that it was less than 100 aircraft that won a relatively easy victory over Prince of Wales and Repulse, a "War" and a "Battle" level ship.

You'll also have the effect, has happened in history, that no one will want to field battleships. Sure there's an interesting long range carrier game in there but it's not what I want to play.

So you're stuck in an awkward place between wanting to have some degree of accuracy and not wanting to end up making the game you want to play pointless....

 

[Chernobyl]

Hmmm...I've read up on the long lance a bit and it appears that most ships that could reload them could only do it once. Which, makes me question "is this enough to qualify them as slow loading?"

I'm thinking no...

Chern

 

[BuShips]

Hmmm...I've read up on the long lance a bit and it appears that most ships that could reload them could only do it once. Which, makes me question "is this enough to qualify them as slow loading?"

I'm thinking no...

Chern

I'm thinking I'm agreeing, lol. I wouldn't place the slow-loading rule to them at all. Maybe just a special trait that allows for one reload after a longer delay of maybe two turns (hmm). :idea: :?: