Optional Naval Rules

[Mark]

All,

I wanted to post the following three optional naval rules that we have been kicking around.  Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions as to altering them:

Optional Naval Rules:

Zones of Control (ZOCs):  Instead of the current ownership of sea zone rules that are in the standard game, sea zones are controlled utilizing this optional ZOC rule.  Sea zones are temporarily controlled if they are adjacent to an owning player’s cruisers or air unit (fighters or bombers).  Cruisers and air units exert a zone of control into all adjacent sea zones (battleships, destroyers, submarines, transports, and other naval units do not exert a ZOC – only cruisers).  Mark sea zones that are in a country’s zone of control with control markers.  Zones of control prohibit enemy units from moving strategically into, out of or through them as well as block supply.  Overlapping zones of control prohibit strategic movement and supply for both sides.

Strategic movement now takes place through any sea zone not interdicting by enemy zones of control and sea zones are no longer “owned” by one side or the other, instead the are temporarily controlled by zones of control.  Other standard game rules for movement, amphibious invasions, etc. still apply.

Note: This rule is intended to help spread navies out a bit more as well as to prevent “occupy and forget” naval tactics that isolate huge swaths of the map and slow naval advances to an un-historic pace.

Reduced Naval Tactical Movement in Europe:  Naval units have a tactical movement of “3” in the European theater instead of “4”.  All other movement, strategic movement rules remain the same.

Note: I never liked how British units in the North Atlantic could react to a German invasion of Norway or that a fleet in the Mediterranean could react quickly across the entire sea and moves like this.

Minimum air unit deployments in naval battles:  In naval battles, when deploying air units on the air-to-air combat chart, each player must have half of his fighter air units designated as bombers and half designated as air-to-air fighters regardless of enemy disposition.  Fractions may be rounded at the owning player’s discretion.

Note: Often both players assign their fighters exclusively to air-to-air combat in order to get air superiority which plays out to be not very dynamic naval battles.  This is unrealistic as at least half the planes on carriers / on islands were either torpedo or dive-bombers.  Short of developing a new “naval bomber” unit, this rule is intended to portray the dispersal of naval aviation more appropriately.

[John D.]

I always have liked ZOCs.

I am willing to try the 3 Naval tact movement as a playtest before I judge this.

Not crazy about the 3rd idea. More fun to create a new naval bomber unit. (if anything)

Well - my $.02

John

[Darkman]

1) I like the idea and will test it on our next game (yeah it will be soon i hope), since Basiror also gets the game soon.

2) Hm like John already said, it needs testing. I would rather keep an eye on the french naval units.
You can easily use them as a sacrifire against germany in naval battles. (like Norway)
Maybe French Naval units need some penality?.

3) I don't like this rule at all.
Naval Bomber would be a nice idea.

[Basiror]

I think the french fleet should be bound to the mediterranean to keep track of italy as it where historically

[Uncle Joe]

I REALLY likethe ZOC idea instead of sea zone ownership. 

1)  It gets rid of the Japanese mad dash across the Pacific to cut off Australia and then redeploy their fleet elswhere.  In reality, the Japanese would have to stay and fight it out with the Americans.

2) It spreads ships out more to protect "your" sea zones from enemy strategic movement.

3) It makes cruisers and islands (with planes on them) more important.

4) It makes cutting things out of supply more realistic and more resource intensive.

[General Joe]

   Hi, I am one of the core Play Testers of the game!
 
  This Naval ZOC idea was at one time the rules we were using in the game. We also played with Battleships having ZOC's on and off in games.
We ran into 3 problems! 1: Having a hard time in blocking naval strategic movement of enemy fleets moving into what would be historically your sides strategically controlled sea area and getting behined your fleet and trapping it.
2: There are 2 chock points for supply one off of Africa and one in the Pacific east of Austraila that once it is learened with a heavy Africa commitment by the Axis will put most of the Pacific map out of supply for the Allies. This was the straw that broke the camels back that cauesed the ZOC rules to be dropped last time and was replaced  with the control counter (marker) way. 3: With so few ships having ZOC's tracing supply can end up funcky like the Philipines, American units all of a sudden being in supply by tracing a supply path through the Sea of Japan to Alaska. This did happen in our play test games! We also at this time had Japan building 3 Fighters instead of 2. 3: Having 1 enemy Aircraft or Cruiser keeping a Land Area out of supply no matter how powerfull of fleet is next to the ZOC supply blocked sea zone.
Note: When all get used to the current ZOC rules you will all see the above problems.

     In the current game control marker way all combat ships trail control markers behind them when they tactically move! Why should not all combat ships have ZOC's ? Except Carriers without Aircraft - No ZOC !

     There should be 2 types of ZOC's, Strategic Movment Interdiction and Supply Interdiction. All combat ships should have ZOC's ! Any time strategically moveing ships enter a enemy Strategic Interdiction ZOC it ends strategic naval movement. {Hard ZOC !} When checking supply if both side's have Supply Interdiction ZOC's in a empty or with only Transports or Subs in a sea zone then they cancel each others Supply Interdiction and both sides can trace supply through the sea zone. {Soft ZOC !} Also when tracing supply through sea zones the maximum leangth that can be traced through sea zones is half of the strategic movment of the side of the map you are on, to a in supply land area or a convoy sea zone. (Atlantic side 5 sea zones and Pacific 4 sea zones.)
Note: There has been a long debate in are play test group when using ZOC's as how to look at a Sea Zone when tracing supply! 1: When tracing supply through a sea zone to look at it as though you are trying to get supply tactically through the Solomon Slot etc... Thus needing a Hard ZOC! {Not my view!}  2: When tracing supply through sea zones to look at it strategically that the sea zone is a large area of the earth and if you contol only say 20% of it you are shipping supply through a area larger than Britian if not France plus.
When both sides have Supply Interdiction Zone of Control over a empty sea zone the Supply ZOC's are cancelled, it is contested with each side in control of say 20% to 80% of the empty sea zone. {Soft ZOC !} Note: Also you can not Strategically move through a contested sea zone.

    We for over half of the time we have been play testing the game had 3 tactical sea zone moves through the Pacific! I have always believed it to be the best! Remember your screening and blocking squadron tactics! 1 Cruiser or Destroyer equals a squadron! One of the reason we have 4 tactical sea zone move on the Atlantic side was to make sure that a Torch Invasion could be launched from America, but that almost is now irelavent in the game. We were also showing on the tactical side the diffrent sizes of Sea Zone areas of both sides of the map. With so few combat ships in the game you can not realy split your fleets up to cover everything you could in history so being able to move the 4 sea zones lets you to still have the same ability to cover what you could in history.

    * Note: I have designed a D12 version of the game that John and I have been play testing and the above type ZOC rules that I have talked about are being play tested so far working OK, but needs more play testing to be sure.
You will fined that you very much may need a 4 tactical sea zone move for Torch in the D12 version. You also have larger Fleets based on historical fleets using a diffrent conversion!

    Spliting up your Fighters in Naval Combats sounds good to play test. The biggest problem I see is one side has 2 Fighters and the other side has 10 Fighters with both sides always being able to attack ships. This may be ok or not ? Should we allow Aircraft designated to be in Air to Air combat of the side that is larger after matching up 1 for 1 to the smaller side, then to attack the smaller sides ship attacking Fighters with there extra Air to Air Fighters? Would this just always set up the smaller side in fighter strength to always have its Fighter strength to be smashed? Let us see what play testing will show us!

               Per: General Joe

[Yoper]

The problem I see with the "Half and Half" rule is if the attacker sends in air only (i.e.- no attacking naval units) the defender is still forced to allocate air units to the bomber role.

WHY?  There aren't any ships to attack?  And these planes are still subject to interception by the attacker.

While I understand the idea behind the rule- the need to limit damage in air combat- I think that another mechanism should be found.

Craig

[Mark]

During Saturday's game at Origins, James and I played with these rules while we were playing Japan and the US and they seemed to work out very well. 

The problem with the "Half and Half" when the attacker sends in air only (i.e.- no attacking naval units) was essentially ignored - both sides were forced to commit half their planes as bombers - even when there was nothing to bomb - it evened out - becasue it obvously cuts both ways and still worked out - though felt a little "wrong".

One suggestion though was to let planes react to adjacent naval units after the air to air combat round - allowing defending bombers to still bomb attacking ships that were adjacent.  Though we did not play this way - it seemd like a good thing to add on.

The results of the "half / half" rule were excellent - carriers were getting sunk and it had much more the feel of Pacific theater battles.

While Eric's suggestion of changing the values of naval fighters may also work - I am concerned that in actual play, players will just continue to pile all of their naval fighters in "air-to-air" combat roles as they do now - which really defeats the purpose of trying to force the fact that at least half the planes on carriers were bombers (or torpedo planes) and they can't go air to air - they are supposed to bomb ships.

Pehaps the best solution is to have Naval bombers (of which the swordfish would be one instead of a fighter) - but the half & half rule worked pretty well - perhaps better if you allow planes to react to adjacent naval units so that they may bomb enemy ships. 

Would be interested in anyone's feedback that tries this

Mark

[Yoper]

Remember that I did play this for a round or two on Saturday night as the Japanese.

Craig

[Mark]

That was you?   

I think one adjustment or another is key to getting a bit more of the flavor especially out of the Pacific theater.  So the options I believe are:

1) the half and half split for airpower in naval battles.
2) change the combat values of fighters and carrier based fighter aircraft
3) introduce a naval bomber unit and change the ship bombing values of the existing fighter piece.

I think all three have merit - just need to gather opinions, playtesting and feedback as to which way is best.

[John D.]

I may be inclined to go with option 3 even though that may be more work for me 

[Yoper]

I was thinking about the whole air-to-air combat system and this topic.

Maybe another way to handle this is to still allow full participation of fighters in air-to-air, but have any (1) rolled be an abort instead of a kill.

That way any weaker fighters would kill on only a (2) and stronger fighters would kill on a (2) and (3). 

In this system, some of the air is still knocked out of a battle but not outright killed.

Also, any air unit designated as bombers in a battle would be aborted on a (1) instead of killed.  Bombers would still get to fire back even if aborted.  The best a regular bomber could do is abort the attacking fighter, but the heavy bomber could abort on a (1) and kill on a (2).

I do agree that the land based fighters need to have there power reduced when trying to attack naval units in a naval battle.  Down to a (2) or even a (1) if a naval attack unit is introduced.

Think on it.

Craig

[Bobsalt]

I’m not sure how authoritative I can be in this discussion, since in the 5 games we’ve played so far, the game only went on long enough for Japan to get into the war twice, and in those two Italy surrendered on the next turn, petty much ending things, so anything I say will be largely based on theory as opposed to experience. But based on how the system in this game works, and what I’ve seen in other games, I think I like the idea of a separate unit for naval air.

Something I experienced in our last game as Britain was that I had to decide when building fighters whether to build Spitfires or early naval fighters. If I didn’t have an extra or two, my carriers were useless until I could build replacements for combat losses. I kind of liked the realism of this decision process, and I’d like to see every other country faced with this as well.

One idea might be to have naval air units with an attack value of 3 for both air-to-air and bombing. Then, for combats involving aircraft versus ships, the naval air units would function as both a fighter and a bomber. Instead of the normal sequence of play, all planes on each side fire at each other in air-to-air; all surviving planes then move on to attack ships. If this results in too much carnage, make the naval air units have a 2 for air-to-air and a 3 for bombing. There is a justification for this; the naval air unit would represent a group of fighters and bombers together, while other air formations are exclusively fighters or bombers. With this route, you could make the naval air units 2/3 air-to-air/ bombing and regular fighters 3 air-to-air and 2 (or 1 if you prefer) against ships. Personally, I like this because it forces you to take into consideration what the mission will be for a given unit when you’re building units. So, the proposed units would look like this:

Naval Air
Air to Air – 2
Bombing (vs. ships) – 3
Bombing (all other) – 2

Fighters
Air to Air – 3
Bombing – 2
(Or 1 against ships and 2 against other targets)

I don’t like the half-and-half rule, if for no other reason than the problem that was brought up of when you have no ships to attack you’re still required to commit half of your planes as bombers.

[Mark]

I like both Bob's idea and Yoper's idea with resepct to "aborts".
Naval fighters having an air to air value of only 2 may provide more incentive to dedicate naval air to bombing missions vs. ships.

I would like to platest this idea out to see what it does to battles especially in the Pacific.

If it does not have the desired effect, then perhaps the way to go is to have a Naval TAC bomber (similar to a Stuka) and reduce fighters ability to hit ships to a 1 or a 2.  Perhaps let the Naval TAC bomber hit ships on a 4. 

[Bobsalt]

While I think the idea of aborts (ala World in Flames) is a good one, I think Yoper’s idea as written would make these units too hard to kill. If you make all one’s an abort, I think you’re changing the combat results too much, since what would normally be kills will suddenly live to fight another day. A better way to handle aborts might be to say that for each plane that attacks, if it rolls a six, it is aborted. For example, say you have three fighters attacking. You roll a 1, 4, and a 6. The plane that rolls a 1 hits an enemy plane, the plane that rolls a 4 misses, and the plane that rolls a 6 is aborted and cannot fight in subsequent rounds. By taking aborts from misses rather than hits you won’t alter the current system as far as scoring casualties.

As to possible combat values for possible naval air units, I would advise not making them hit ships on anything higher than three. Remember, Japanese planes have a +1 on their first impulse of every combat once they declare war. If naval air hits ships on a 4, they’re going to hit on 5’s their first round. This would make a Pearl Harbor attack too strong in my opinion.