Victory at Sea 'modern' supplement?

[Nerroth]

Hi!


I was wondering if there are any plans to create modern supplement for the Victory at Sea engine - including US, French, Russian and other carriers, aircraft, aegis units etc?

(Perhaps the system could be set up as a tie-in to Battlefield Evolution - the French and British carriers would be aligned to the European Federation, and so forth.)

I'd love to see models of carriers like the Charles de Gaulle and the Admiral Kuznetsov - as well as an excuse to see Rafales, Su-33s and so forth in action! (Plus the likes of GHQ already make plenty of Modern ships, if Mongoose couldn't do their own.)

Also, the system could cover the late Cold War era, too - so one could play out the scenarios presented in the likes of Red Storm Rising, too.

Anyone else find this idea of interest?


Gary

 

[Wulf Corbett]

I voted No, BUT I'd actualy be very happy to see one that worked. Trouble is, I can see almost as many problems as I met trying to get an ancients version working. While the system doesn't really work with ramming and quite slow triremes, it also doesn't work too well with over-the-horizon ranges and multi-mach movement. You would have to radically change the time and 'ground' scales, and all sorts of other tweaks.

I'm much more looking forward to the WW1 version...

Wulf

 

[Poi]

Rather than a modern version, which would be dominated by aircraft and beyond the horizon weapons, I'd like to see older versions. WW1, ACW, Age of Sail before anything modern.

 

[Nerroth]

You know, mentioning an ancient/Age of Sail edition made me think of how great it would be to see models and rules for the Baochuan, Admiral Zheng He's enormous flagship, and for the other ships in the great Treasure Fleets of the early fifteenth century!


Gary

 

[Poi]

Ancients, focusing on ramming and boarding actions would get very messy. Ships bashing against each other all over the place would negate movement, and could end up in a mass of ships in the centre of the table, all locked.

Could get very dull very quickly.

The first cannon armed ships up until WW2 is probably the most a ruleset based on ACTA can handle.

Ancient and modern would require radically different rules.

 

[E Nicely]

I had to say no. I don't want to play games where I'm firning from over the horizon. It would be hitting eggshells with sledgehammers.

But I'm pretty sure some intrepid gamer some where will at some time in the future do his own modern naval conversions to VaS.

WWI on the other hand sounds hella cool.

 

[Reaverman]

Yes, why not. As long as they do a WWI edition as well though

 

[Soulmage]

No, the rules don't really support modern combat. I'm not sure any set of rules could and actually make it an interesting game.

WWI should definitely be next on the "to do" list though!!

 

[DM]

I thought yes until I tried developing a VAS-based modern set, but it doesn't really work. For a decent alternative you could try my Modern GQ set (which I really must get around to finishing one day, since it was developed for a Falklands campaign and needs updating for contemporary actions) or "Shipwreck" from Vandering Publications. The latter is an escellent set, pitched at a VAs level of complexity.

As mentioned here before, WW1 is easy to do, RJW and pre-dread equally so, but the system creaks the further back in time you go.

 

[chaos0xomega]

"Modern" Naval Combat

Each side has 2-3 aircraft carriers with accompanying aircraft compliments, an ICBM armed nuclear submarine or two, and a bunch of destroyers and cruisers. Play on a 20ft table. Ships sit in same positions, launch aircraft and dogfight, and hope you roll better and your aircraft make it to enemy fleet, manage to dodge AA fire and then launch as weaponry. Submarines torpedo from long range and/or get in position to fire a ballistic missile(short range) or two. Rest of the ships launch as missile at range. Opposing fleets never come within 15 feet of eachother....

No thanks.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Damn it, I want the Battle of Salamis and the Punic Wars... :x

 

[DM]

Opposing fleets never come within 15 feet of eachother....

Thats why I play fleet actions as mini campaigns on maps (with tabletop actions for air and missile strikes and occasional close quarter gun engagements), but prefer to run FAC / FIAC games which are fought over much shorter distances.

 

[chaos0xomega]

FAC/FIAC?

Is that english!? :?:

 

[Nerroth]

Well, after my copy of Aeronautica Imperialis arrived today (hooray!) I'm thinking that perhaps a modern sea combat game will need to be integrated with a decent air combat engine to really work.

Since the numbers of fighters in the air in modern engagements would not necessarily be all that high, an A.I.-style system (which is pretty interesting, as it happens) would be used for figuring out whether an incoming force gets past the fighter screen and makes it into missile range of the carrier. Then, the aegis boats and point-defence systems on the target ships would try to cut down as many incoming missiles as they can.

Indeed, one could flesh out the operations of submarine (and anti-submarine) warfare - covering the clashes between submarines themselves, and between them and surface ships (plus antisub helicopters etc).

Now, the game would need to leave nukes out completely (say that the political climate is against such deplyments).


And one thing to remember is that the ship models (or counters) do not have to be in scale - and does not have to keep the same scales seen in the WW2 edition. So you may not need that 20' table after all...


Gary

 

[DM]

FAC = Fast Attack Craft
FIAC = Fast Inshore Attack Craft

 

[DM]

Now, the game would need to leave nukes out completely (say that the political climate is against such deplyments).

Depends what era you are gaming. I've played a few 1960s naval campaigns that involved the use of tactical nuclear weapons and they weren't the nightmares that you may expect. For one thing they were pretty much essential against some types of Soviet submarines! Their use also illustrated why 1960s Task Force tactical deployment was significantly different to post Cold War deployments where the threat from nukes was lessened.

Most, if not all modern naval rules in my experiece handle the air battle quite well. There are quite a few models out there to choose from.

 

[Itkovian]

Ancients, focusing on ramming and boarding actions would get very messy. Ships bashing against each other all over the place would negate movement, and could end up in a mass of ships in the centre of the table, all locked.

Could get very dull very quickly.

The first cannon armed ships up until WW2 is probably the most a ruleset based on ACTA can handle.

Ancient and modern would require radically different rules.

Actually ancient naval battles were surprisngly mobile affairs in the early years, as both sides tried to disable or sink their enemies rather than board.
It was the Romans, who were as indifferent sailors as they were cavalrymen who turned naval battles into land battles with the development of the Corvus (Crow) and boarding tactics.
(Which oddly enough the French - seeing themselves as the new virtuous Roman republic fighting the perfidious mercantile neo-Carthaginian British - tried to copy in the Napoleonic wars. Though of course this was partly to compensate for having destroyed their own navy through political meddling!)
Then by the times they became Byzantines they had moved on to seagoing flamethrowers!
I tend to agree though I'm not sure the ACTA system would work for Trireme combat, the Age of Sail though I think it can, in fact I'm working on a set of rules for that now...
Biggest problem is criticals and damage given that different fleets target different parts of a ship!

 

[Lord David the Denied]

You'd have to have Attack Dice numbers drop as ships take broadside hits, representing guns being dismounted and crew crushed underneath them. Criticals would be things like damage to the rudder and steering gear and masts being knocked down. Plus hits to the quarter-deck killing the officers.

You'd need rules for raking ships, as well, and variable ammunition. Could get complicated.

 

[Wulf Corbett]

I tend to agree though I'm not sure the ACTA system would work for Trireme combat, the Age of Sail though I think it can, in fact I'm working on a set of rules for that now...
Biggest problem is criticals and damage given that different fleets target different parts of a ship!

Declare a firing strategy and roll on one of a selection of tables, with a single list of all the results?

Wulf

 

[Itkovian]

You'd have to have Attack Dice numbers drop as ships take broadside hits, representing guns being dismounted and crew crushed underneath them. Criticals would be things like damage to the rudder and steering gear and masts being knocked down. Plus hits to the quarter-deck killing the officers.

You'd need rules for raking ships, as well, and variable ammunition. Could get complicated.

The decreasing dice is relatively easy, raking ships would simply be a matter of adding a bonus to hit, I wouldn't bother with different ammunition, as the assumption would be the ships captain or the gun division commander would be bright enough to pick the right shot.
Unless he's Spanish or Revolutionary French of course! :wink: