A good question, Mark. Cruisers would be okay. They had a larger fuel capacity. Not so, destroyers. The reason not is that they did not have great fuel "bunker" capacity. Yes, they were fast, and smaller than capital ships, but they didn't hold a lot of fuel by comparison. And because of their speed, they burned what fuel they had faster than the others. They had to refuel off from tankers or other capital ships often.
Hence, no destroyers accompanied Bismark and Prince Eugen in their run through the North Atlantic, even though some had a range of 11K miles.
That was part of the problem for the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and off Midway, too, because if they wanted to continue the fight, it would put their smaller ships in a difficult spot.
Running up and down the Slot in the Solomons wasn't a big problem as they usually were back in port the next day or two.
That's my 2cents.
Paul,
Something to keep in mind is that there are other factors to consider other than just how far a ship could travel before having to fill up when you’re trying to determine the range of a ship in a wargame. Having to zig-zag to avoid submarines takes quite a bit off of a ship’s range – as much as 20%. Weather is also a factor; ships burn more fuel in rough weather than on clear days with low seas. Also, ship captains aren’t going to want to get too low on fuel. A ship’s fuel consumption goes up considerably at flank speed; a destroyer that can cruise for 15 days burns through that same fuel supply in about 30 hours at flank speed. Ship captains will want to keep a fighting reserve in the event they suddenly find themselves in combat, which means they probably wouldn’t want to get too much below half full before refueling.
In a game, there are other factors to consider than just how far a ship can go in a straight line. Mark has said that in The Struggle one of the reasons they have reduced range in the Pacific is to try to force players to have to fight a historical campaign rather than just build up a bunch of transports and make one assault on the enemy shores. Keep in mind also that the Pacific is larger in real life than it on the map; having reduced range helps take this into account.
A lot of games give ships shorter operational ranges than they had historically for game playability purposes. I can’t remember if you said you ever played World in Flames or not, but that game is a great example of what I’m talking about. Each sea zone had a 0,1,2, and 3 box in it. Most ships had a range of 4. Moving from port into the 0 box of the adjacent sea zone cost one movement point. You could then spend another point to move into the 1 box or into the 0 box of an adjacent sea zone (and so on until the movement points were expended). The higher the box you occupied in a sea zone, the less chance you had of being surprised in combat; I think it also gave you better chances to spot the enemy. I can’t really say that there was anything all that realistic historically about this mechanic, but what it did was force players to utilize their navies in a historical manner. You tended not to want to operate more than a couple of sea zones away from a port so that you could occupy at least the 2 box and not have too great a risk of being ambushed. This meant that players in the Pacific would want to move out slowly and take islands where they would establish a port so that they could then base from there and allow them to penetrate deeper into an enemy perimeter. As I said, I can’t really see anything about this mechanic that is all that historical (why would your chances of being taken by surprise increase just because of how far you travel?), but the potential consequences in the game gave players a strong incentive to operate their fleets historically (I.E. not too far from a friendly base). The end result is that you use a rule that’s not all that historical to produce an historical result.
The same principle applies in The Struggle. Yes, a fleet could steam from Honolulu to Tokyo in much less than one game turn, but if you allow ships to do that you wouldn’t have much of a game; at least, not an historical one. Hence, you use a rule limiting the tactical range of ships to produce an historical result – forcing players to slowly fight their way across the Pacific and capturing islands that can then be used as staging areas.
To use your example of letting a sub move 8-10 zones, and then later saying that cruisers probably could do the same, you’re pretty much opening the door for just about all ships. Many battleships had comparable ranges to cruisers because even though they weren’t as efficient as cruisers, they had correspondingly larger fuel bunkers. So, using your justification for CA’s, we’d have to include BB’s. Ditto for fleet carriers, which fall between the two, and also have large fuel bunkers. Light carriers would also have to be included, since they were comparable to cruisers in bunker capacity and engine efficiency. And if we include these, we’d also have to include transports, since even though they were slower they were all more efficient than combat ships; indeed, transport ships are designed specifically to move people and goods long distances without having to stop for fuel. So – once you go down the road to increase the range for one – you’d pretty much be increasing the range for them all.
Yes, I agree that it’s cumbersome to have to take two turns to get a sub into position to be able to raid Japan’s convoy zones – 1 turn to strategically redeploy and then 1 turn to move tactically into the zone. But keep in mind – unlike real life, there isn’t any need for your subs to return to base to refuel/reload. In the game, once you’re where you want to be, you can stay on station literally for years of game time, hitting the enemy until/unless you’re sunk. All-in-all, I’d say that’s an acceptable trade-off.
If it really bugs you though you could use the optional rule I suggested and which apparently was already in place for the new game where all sea zones are neutral. With that, you can get there in one turn and begin attacking on the next.
I think there’s quite a bit that needs to be adjusted in the Pacific, and we’ll probably have to wait for the next game to see those changes. But take my word for it – I really don’t think you want to start increasing the ranges of ships; I think you’d find that would really produce some whacky results.
BTW – I never thanked you for the prayers for my mother-in-law. She went to be with the Lord in May. Though we mourn her, we will “not mourn like the pagans, who have no hope beyond this life.”
Bob
