"...And All the Ships at Sea."

[Charlie3]

" Hello Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea."
"...And All the Ships at Sea." Is a set of rules designed to include warships in the DoW version of Wings of War. I based the rules on some ideas that were being bounced around here on the aerodrome. I posted a couple of ideas I had and was asked to publish a set of rules and game parts. That simple request snowballed into the set of rules I added to the WWII House Rules file area of the site. I want to thank everyone for their support and patients because as I was typing up the simple rules that I had, other game issues popped up that needed to be addressed and it took longer than I thought it would.

I was also working under the handicap that I do not yet play DoW...I am still stuck in 1917...so I had to ask some questions, and do some research into the DoW system.

And then there was the graphics for the ships, counters, and such. Like most model builders I am picky. I wanted the game parts to have a common maritime feel. So I spent quite a bit of time on them. Except for the lettering, the graphics were gathered from multiple sources and recombined to create new items. I have very limited abilities when it comes to this and am grateful there are programs out there that will do things for you.

If you find a problem, typo, or have a question please post them here. I feel that these rules are still a work in progress, and I am not adverse to changing something that the majority of us think is necessary for playability. If you have additional house rules, you want to use instead of or along with these rules by all means post them here also. If they never make it into a revision of the original rules, they will at least be here for people to review and try themselves.
Most of all have fun!

[Stormkahn]

These are going to come through as I think/find them otherwise I'll forget.

1st up, Thank you. I can't think of any better way of putting it, awesome.

Page 1, penultimate para "The first are changes to the strafing rules to reflect the difficulty of firing weapons small enough to mount to an aircraft at an armored object 10 times it’s size expecting to do much damage to it," should be "enough to mount on an aircraft at an armored"

Strafing Rule 1, not sure what this is saying, if another ship is blocking LOS then you'll hit that? What's your thinking?

Torpedo Moving Rule 3, Genius, very elegent.

brb

[Stormkahn]

There's nothing here that couldn't be used for WW1 I don't think?

Could/Should defensive AA be spread out amongst targets rather than all get the same amount, then attacking in numbers has some advantage, looks nasty as is but it needs playing.

Flak Guns, Load/Fire, not sure I quite follow you, it implies that they get fired every turn?

Recovering Aircraft 4, there's no option to abort and come round again?

There's nothing about bombing the ships and surpession of fire?

I'll give them a go tomorrow night with a little solo Ju87 vs a Destroyer I think.

cheers,

Dave.

[wargamer]

The techniques used in ww2 were developed between the wars. improved torpedoes, longer range torpedoes, shallow harbor effect torpedoes. Then compare the ships, warships prior to 1922 were pretty slick decked, no forest of aa guns like in world war 2. Not counting just number of guns, what guns were available were not set up to fire up at aircraft. Visualize small arms as a dreadnoughts antiaircraft battery.



There's nothing here that couldn't be used for WW1 I don't think?

Could/Should defensive AA be spread out amongst targets rather than all get the same amount, then attacking in numbers has some advantage, looks nasty as is but it needs playing.

Flak Guns, Load/Fire, not sure I quite follow you, it implies that they get fired every turn?

Recovering Aircraft 4, there's no option to abort and come round again?

There's nothing about bombing the ships and surpession of fire?

I'll give them a go tomorrow night with a little solo Ju87 vs a Destroyer I think.

cheers,

Dave.

[Stormkahn]

Mechanically it's comparable though, the AA values will be different, torpedoes will have more duds ETC but as a core set of rules they look applicable to both?

[Charlie3]

...1st up, Thank you. I can't think of any better way of putting it, awesome.You're welcome



...Page 1,...Should be on an aircraft... That's what I get for typing like I speak and not using the language skills I have. If that is the worst you find I am happy!;)


...Strafing Rule 1, not sure what this is saying, if another ship is blocking LOS then you'll hit that? :confused: I think you got the Strafing rules and the Torpedo targeting rules mixed. The only way a ship can block LOS for strafing is if you are at zero altitude (assuming you are using the altitude rules)and really close!
As far as the torpedo launching, you can't launch a torpedo UNDER one ship to get to another. So ships block LOS for selecting the target for a torpedo. Rule 4 under Torpedo Moving states "If a torpedo card touches any target in the water it must stop." This would constitute a hit. Take note that you could fire a torpedo at a ship and MISS because the ship turns to, and hit another ship that may be in range of the torpedoe's movement.


... Torpedo Moving Rule 3, Genius, very elegent. A simple system I have used many times.

[Charlie3]

There's nothing here that couldn't be used for WW1 I don't think? I have already been thinking of this and have come to the conclusion that simply swapping the "A" and "B" damage amounts for AA fire between the ship classes, adjusting the ship movement to only allow 1 course change per game turn (not every maneuver card) and removing the carriers should do it.


Could/Should defensive AA be spread out amongst targets rather than all get the same amount, then attacking in numbers has some advantage, looks nasty as is but it needs playing. The AA Fire Umbrella effect is based on a simple game mechanic that does not require you to know how many weapons are available to fire. These ships were difficult to get close to, and I wanted them more dangerous than getting into range of another aircraft. I felt that 2 tokens for long range and 4 for short range were reasonable. There are still all those zeros in the mix. In game terms you are not likely to get too many aircraft in range at one time because of the size limits of the table, ship cards and aircraft cards/stands. It will just get too crowded. So I felt every plane in range drawing damage was ok.


Flak Guns, Load/Fire, not sure I quite follow you, it implies that they get fired every turn? Nope, the sequence requires you to LOAD on one turn and FIRE on the next or a following turn. The shell will go off on the third turn. Effectively you could fire every other turn to create a wall of flak. For those of you using altitude, you will have to spread the shells out over heights as well.


Recovering Aircraft 4, there's no option to abort and come round again? I was assuming that once you announced you were landing you were "committed" meaning you were past the point of no return. I left out damage to the carrier if you crash, and lightened up on the issue of "covering the center dot" to make a successful landing. just trying to keep it simple.


There's nothing about bombing the ships and surpession of fire? Bombing is covered by a blanket statement on page 1. "Although "...And All the Ships at Sea." uses all of the aircraft combat, bombing and dive bombing rules of the Dawn of War game system, there are a few changes." Didn't want to reinvent the wheel.

For AA fire surpression see rules 3 and 4 under Strafing Ships.


I'll give them a go tomorrow night with a little solo Ju87 vs a Destroyer I think.

cheers,

Dave.Good hunting!

[Charlie3]

I did make a fun discovery today, I accidently printed the ship card sheet in grey scale. It gives the cards a newsreel feel like looking at old photographs.

[Stormkahn]

All jolly good answers Charlie and as the rules stand they're a damn fine set to start some testing from.

I'll do the Ju87s to start off with just to see how the AA/flak goes, get a feel for how tough it is. Not sure what I'm going to do about the bombing damage, I'm thinking some standard conversions x Kg of bombs = y damage and just fiddle it a bit so Z direct stuka hits will sink a destroyer.

Not sure it'll be tomorow night either, may be taking the good lady out for the evening.

Watch this space.

Cheers,

Dave.

[Charlie3]

The techniques used in ww2 were developed between the wars. improved torpedoes, longer range torpedoes, shallow harbor effect torpedoes. Then compare the ships, warships prior to 1922 were pretty slick decked, no forest of aa guns like in world war 2. Not counting just number of guns, what guns were available were not set up to fire up at aircraft. Visualize small arms as a dreadnoughts antiaircraft battery.Do you feel the umbrella effect would not work for a WWI version? or would we be able to just downgrade a bit?

[Charlie3]

All jolly good answers Charlie and as the rules stand they're a damn fine set to start some testing from.

I'll do the Ju87s to start off with just to see how the AA/flak goes, get a feel for how tough it is. Not sure what I'm going to do about the bombing damage, I'm thinking some standard conversions x Kg of bombs = y damage and just fiddle it a bit so Z direct stuka hits will sink a destroyer.

Not sure it'll be tomorow night either, may be taking the good lady out for the evening.

Watch this space.

Cheers,

Dave.Sorry I goofed...I didn't realize that the bombs did not draw damage tokens, and I missed that while reading how bombing works in DoW. My WWI game group draw damage cards for bombs.

Can we safely assign a draw of 1 "D" token per bomb for 500lbs or less, and 2 "D" tokens for 1000lbs and larger for game purposes? Half damage if the bomb card does not cover the targeting dot on the center of the ship card, and the explosion dealing a direct hit down the funnel or smokestack for a kill? Fire would still work as written in my rules, and all other special damage would cause an AA fire surpression.

[Stormkahn]

OK, Charlie, 1st up sorry for the late response, it's been half term here with the outlaws up to stay as well so time has been, well, non-existent!

Just ran through a stuka attack on a lone destroyer with no altitude rules. Based on that I have the following observations;

1) Personal I know but if felt like I was attacking a tug rather than a destroyer so I'd certainly go for a double length card for these and single for the smaller ones.
2) The use of the ships turn had little effect on the profile of the target for a single sized card, it wasn't harder to hit by any significant amount. It therefore follows that it's much more useful for the larger vessels which seems counter to what I'd expect. (limit the number of steps you can turn the vessel by size?)
3) Lack of forward movement by the ship didn't seem a problem.
4) The supersized flak AoE marker meant I always got a hit, especially against the slower Ju87. (Recommend just using them as per the rules.)
5) The 180 deg radius for the flak needs marking on the ship. Aircraft dive bombing can get hit by both ends!
6) The umbrella of flak at AAAA/AA was fatal, just doing a straight approach flight to cover the target allowed me to draw 10 chits + 4 more for the actual bombing if I'd not already been shot to shreds by that point. This isn't being spread out amongst multiple targets so if I'd flown 10 in it wouldn't have helped. Nothing will get near a battleship.

This wouldn't have been as bad if I'd been using altitude rules because I would have stayed out of range until the vertical dive bombing, I'd still have to soak up 6-8 chits I think before getting out of range. Still not nice. Take into account the flak and it feels suicidal.

My recommendation at this point is to have AA firing in fixed arcs at designated targets as we do for everything else thus far. Add Arcs for flak too. It means moving the ship could be helpful in bringing some guns to target, attacking in numbers adds some safety and it allows for some flavour between different classes/nations.

If the bomb covers multiple flak/AA points and a special damage chit is pulled how many are suppressed?

That’s all for now, will try some torpedo runs next time I think :)

Cheers,

Dave.

[MayorJim]

This sounds great...but for some reason, I can't seem to download pdfs fromthe file section?

[Charlie3]

This sounds great...but for some reason, I can't seem to download pdfs fromthe file section?Try again Jim... I just tried it and it loaded ok...If you are still having trouble I can try to email it to you.

[Charlie3]

OK, Charlie...Just ran through a stuka attack on a lone destroyer with no altitude rules. Based on that I have the following observations; Glad to hear someone gave them a go so soon! Thank you for the input, and sorry for the length of time it took me to respond, I've had the same trouble you have with non existant fun time. Your post just proves new rules never survive first contact with players.;)


1) Personal I know but if felt like I was attacking a tug rather than a destroyer so I'd certainly go for a double length card for these and single for the smaller ones.I made the 2x long cards because I liked the feel of having a bigger card for the bigger ships...I left the smaller ships the same size as all the other cards to try to keep things in line with the original game parts...I can see what you mean though, it seems like we should have some middle size cards for the destroyers to make them bigger than the "boats" for the feel of things. I will make some optional 1.5 length destroyer cards to put in the file section for anyone that wants them.

2) The use of the ships turn had little effect on the profile of the target for a single sized card, it wasn't harder to hit by any significant amount. It therefore follows that it's much more useful for the larger vessels which seems counter to what I'd expect. (limit the number of steps you can turn the vessel by size?)The ship turning system was designed to defend against the torpedoes not bombing runs...since we are using the Dawn of War bombing rules I wouldn't expect the ship turning rules to make much difference in the game since you have a bomb card that is the same size as the current destroyer cards and the bomb card only has to overlap the target to do damage. I have read several opinions on ship turning abilities on other sites and magazine articles over the years and the general consensus is that they turn the same speed just not with the same turning radius. I would like to wait until more people try things out and check in before we change this.

4) The supersized flak AoE marker meant I always got a hit, especially against the slower Ju87. (Recommend just using them as per the rules.)You didn't mention how you decided where to locate the markers, I wonder if your "opponent" just knew what your next move was going to be.:rolleyes: I played out 3 solo Bismark missions with six of MaxHeadroom's Swordfish cards in each game. In the first game I used a randomized shot drift system, with the other two I used innocent bystanders to place the shots. (wife and #2 son) The random drift system made the shots about 50% effective, the Wife was the most deadly at about 75% effective, and my son was about 60% or so. The flak templates are the same ones we use in the Traverse City League Wings of War WWI games. We find them not to be too deadly so I thought they would work here.

I will make some optional half size replacements for people who feel they need to be smaller or players always have the option of using the Dawn of War rules for flak.:D

5) The 180 deg radius for the flak needs marking on the ship. Aircraft dive bombing can get hit by both ends!I originally had the arcs printed on the ship cards, but thought they looked too busy. I can make up a visual aid to put on the rules page to show how it works. As far as getting hit coming and going or by both guns if you are on the line...I intended for pilots to try to avoid straddling the line or flying through two fire arcs.(Lost two planes to that myself in play testing:rolleyes:)

6) The umbrella of flak at AAAA/AA was fatal, just doing a straight approach flight to cover the target allowed me to draw 10 chits + 4 more for the actual bombing if I'd not already been shot to shreds by that point. This isn't being spread out amongst multiple targets so if I'd flown 10 in it wouldn't have helped. Nothing will get near a battleship.The intent was to make the ships dangerous to attack. In my play testing I did not use bombs. Since I used torpedoes, I was able to get within what I thought was long range for the torpedoes and peel off before I got close enough to get hit by more than the long range for the AA guns. There is a sweet spot where you are just inside flak range and just outside AA range but you may miss the target. No matter what you do however you are going to be in danger of getting hit multiple times. All you can do is pray for zero’s.

In my 3 Bismark play test games, I lost 13 planes out of 18 planes (6 per mission). One of the planes gets the "Lucky Git" award because it drew a total of 8 points of damage from 2 flak hits and 8 AA "B" damage tokens!! The other 4 survivors were barely flyable with only 1 or 2 points left. I only lost 2 planes to flak alone, and 2 were lost to explosions from AA shots outright. (The Bismark was destroyed once, and rudder crippled with lots of damage the other two times)

That said, I think I may have leaned too far towards simulation than game here and I agree that the 4 and 2 token draws for short and long range are too high for the umbrella system being used. Therefore I will change it to the standard 2 and 1 for short and long range, but I would like to keep the umbrella effect because I don’t want to figure out how many guns to include, where they are located and what arcs they need. If someone wants to produce ship cards with this information on them and use them by all means go ahead!! I would just ask that copies of them are provided to the files area as optional cards for everyone to try out.



This wouldn't have been as bad if I'd been using altitude rules because I would have stayed out of range until the vertical dive bombing, I'd still have to soak up 6-8 chits I think before getting out of range. Still not nice. Take into account the flak and it feels suicidal.In reality height is the advantage in bombing and dive bombing ships since you can stay out of range and still hit the target. Getting in close to drop a bomb is always going to be a brush with death. :eek:

Since you were flying a single aircraft I am sure your flight DID feel suicidal.:eek: The problem with the game is that a single aircraft has no chance of surprising the target. For game purposes both sides of the game table know the attack is coming and can react. In real life a single plane had a chance to go unnoticed and get in a hit before the target opened up and may have only taken a few hits on the way out. In the game however, you are going to take hits on the way in and the way out. I think the zero’s in the damage system soak up some of the unreality but can’t compensate for all of it. The change in the damage draws should help. Player’s always have the option of including their own rules for surprise, but in play I have never found these ideas satisfying for both players.


My recommendation at this point is to have AA firing in fixed arcs at designated targets as we do for everything else thus far. Add Arcs for flak too. It means moving the ship could be helpful in bringing some guns to target, attacking in numbers adds some safety and it allows for some flavour between different classes/nations.If someone wants to produce ship cards with this information on them and use them by all means go ahead!! Including information about gun locations and quantities on different classes of ships or from different nations is beyond my ability at this time. I would just ask that copies of them are provided in the files area as optional cards for everyone to try out.

If the bomb covers multiple flak/AA points and a special damage chit is pulled how many are suppressed?OOPS...I missed including that in the final version of the rules. I intended to include the fact that a flak gun covered by a bomb card that causes Fire, disables the gun for the game, and AA fire of BOTH port and starboard are suppressed by a bomb attack that causes a special damage to the ship if the bomb card covers the center dot on the ship card. Otherwise there is no suppression. I will add these rules to the file soon.

Good luck on your torpedo runs!

[Stormkahn]

Flak marker placement;

I placed it in the place the a/c would most likely pass through. Stuka's are slow and over the 2 cards plays before the flak goes off their route is fairly predicable, worse when they're trying to stay level and line up over the target. I think actually this is a feature, it's tough enough lining up for the attack run without having to jink about to avoid the flak which sounds about right to me.

With the blast area being so much bigger there didn't seem much chance of jinking round it.

I'll just go with the standard counter myself because it's there. I don't otherwise think it's more deadly when you include altitude, after all you can fly in at height and the drop vertically with a stuka. You can't place flak markers over the target :) Little more tricky with a Dauntless though I guess :)

sterling work Charlie,

cheers,

Dave.

[Charlie3]

Flak marker placement;

I placed it in the place the a/c would most likely pass through. Stuka's are slow and over the 2 cards plays before the flak goes off their route is fairly predicable, worse when they're trying to stay level and line up over the target. I think actually this is a feature, it's tough enough lining up for the attack run without having to jink about to avoid the flak which sounds about right to me.

With the blast area being so much bigger there didn't seem much chance of jinking round it.

I'll just go with the standard counter myself because it's there. I don't otherwise think it's more deadly when you include altitude, after all you can fly in at height and the drop vertically with a stuka. You can't place flak markers over the target :) Little more tricky with a Dauntless though I guess :)

sterling work Charlie,

cheers,

Dave.Your Flak crews are just better than mine;) I should have the new ships and flak markers ready by the end of this week. I will post them as soon as I finish them. I played a quick couple of rounds of the Bismarck game again today to try out the change in the AA damage draws...Still nasty but much more survivable so it should translate to a less frustrating game. Beware though... with multipul ships on the table the firing zones are going to be really nasty!! If you are going to attack a fleet of more than 2 ships I suggest you bring a lot of aircraft. You really have to plan your attack and find those fire free zones.

I also gave a carrier launch under fire a go...the first fighter group was all away but there was lots of damage to the carrier since it could not fire during launching. The fighters drove off the attacking aircraft quite handlely but could not land until the fires went out on the carrier, so they had to fly station around the ship. The Strafing attacks didn't really do that much damage, but the crew had a bad time putting out the fires. The fire was finely extinguished with 9 damage points left, and no planes below decks survived.

Again these games are of questionable use since I am the designer and we always think our stuff works great!:rolleyes: I am hoping to hear about some other games soon:)

[MayorJim]

Try again Jim... I just tried it and it loaded ok...If you are still having trouble I can try to email it to you.

I tried again and finally got it...thanks!

[Charlie3]

I just posted a new version of the rules to the file area.

Version 2 includes the damage downgrade to the AA fire, Flak Gun suppression from bombing, and some other omissions that I discovered along with some minor wording changes.

For those of you that don’t want to download it again the corrections are as follows;

1. AA fire for large ships is now 2 “B” for short range and 1 “B” for long range.
2. AA fire for small ships is now 2 “A” for short range and 1 “A” for long range.
3. Flak Guns that are covered by a bomb card that draws fire damage are removed for the game.
4. Kamikaze aircraft are reduced to half their original damage points to represent that they are packed full of explosives and explode easier.
5. Bombs do 1 "D" if they are 500lbs or less and 2 "D" if they are over 500lbs. Half damage drawn if the bomb card does not cover the center dot. Explosions are a kill if the bomb card covers the cernter dot of the ship, or are a 10 point Fire card if they simply overlap the ship card.
6. I also added a pair of arc of fire examples for the Flak guns to help avoid confusion.

10699
Don’t forget to look for the optional game parts that I also added to the files section for those of you that want larger Destroyer cards and smaller Flak explosion templates. If there is anyone out there that wants to make their own ship or boat cards I have posted the card backgrounds in my photo album area. The cards already include the water, target zones and game information area. I am looking for someone to do a freighter on both the regulation size card and the new 1.5 size card as I have not had time to find a good graphic to paste onto one of my cards. I am guessing maybe a 20 point target??

If you haven’t already found them, Max Headroom now has a Torpedo plane file on his personal page that includes the most common torpedo planes from the war for each of the major combatants. These cards may be used as is without the restrictions listed in the rules for making existing DoW planes into torpedo planes. However they still may not perform an Immelmann turn until after they launch their torpedoes. Stormkahn has also added his awsome crew control sheets to the file area for the Beaufort and the SM-82 which you should be able to use for the SM-79 torpedo plane.

[Charlie3]

While at a party last night I was explaining the "...All the Ships at Sea." idea to a friend who is intrested in history but does not game. (I know...really!)
He asked me about the common use of air dropped depth charges on both ships and subs, and how we handled that. I didn't add it for two reasons;

1. I didn't think of it when I started.
2. When I did think of it I decided that the bombing rules would cover it well enough without having to add any special damage rules for the depth charges.

Now that I am thinking about it again, I guess I would simply use the bombing rules and allow the depth charges to do full damage as long as the bomb card overlaps the target instead of partal damage if the bomb card does not overlap the center dot of the ship card.

I'm not sure that in our game depth charges are that important since our use of the planes for submarine hunting/killing is going to be minimal and I just don't remember reading about any ships sunk by depth charging. If anyone has more information or ideas about this chime in!

[David Manley]

Depth charges were often used against surface ships, but generally in attacks made by torpedo boats and other coastal forces craft. I'm not aware of any DC attacks on surface ships made by aircraft, but I'd be surprised if there weren't any.

DCs were of course used against subs, but usually in the process of diving since the charges were usually fused before takeoff to detonate at a depth of around 100' or so (I think depth settings could be changed on some types of charges carried internally in aircraft where the crew could reach the weapons). If used against a surfaced submarine they could still cause significant damage if they were dropped close enough. You could make some interesting scenarios with an LRMP or aircraft from a "jeep" carrier attacking a surfaced group of U boats. At one time the German strategy was for all but one boat to dive whilst the last one stayed on the surface and slugged it out with the aircraft. Not an entirely wonderful plan, although less one-sided when the Germans increased the AA armament of some of their Type VII and Type IX boats.

[Charlie3]

I remember reading that depth charges were used against some surface ships because the concussion could be crippling vs smaller ships and boats but I have never read or heard of them sinking anything. I think they should just cause damage points no special damages. I had read of the wolf pack misdirection plan. You're right not exactly a great plan but sometimes you gotta do something. Thanks for the information!

[Charlie3]

As of this posting there are 39 of you out there that have downloaded these rules...Any battle reports yet? Just curious.

[Puklat]

I am sorry, but I haven't tried it yet. I will try to give you some feedback as soon as I possible.

[Charlie3]

I hope you enjoy them. I have used them quite a few times for solo missions. I do not actually play the WWII version of the game but I found the idea intresting and could not resist trying to create some rules. Good luck!

[radzak]

Did u put these temPlates into "files" or are they somewhere else?