Naval Warfare HO! (V@S and other Naval Games)

is fairly close.

The Japanese ships started with British-style tripod masts (being basically copies of British vessels). As technology progressed and the need for more spotting stations, lighting platforms, and other sundries increased, instead of taking down the masts and instituting a major refit, the Japanese more or less just tacked on more and more platforms (they also strengthened the original tripod legs).

The Japanese solution *was* faster and less expensive than the full-on refits undertaken by other navies. Now, every other nation also added things to their bridges and foremasts, but not to the extent the Japanese did, and when brought in for modernization everyone else showed a preference for replacing the foremast and bridge structures entirely. The US replaced its cage masts with sturdier tripods, and then post-Pearl with tower structures similar to the new fast battleships. The Italians put in entire new tower structures. And the British went for those massive block towers.

Also, "pagoda"-style upgrades were certainly not unique to the Japanese. The Colorados during the late war era, for example, show a breadth of additions which come very close to looking like a pagoda mast. And the Soviets outright created pagodas when they modernized the Gangut-class. Pic related.

It's VaS. Par for the course. Plus, what game would let 20-year obsolete biplanes immobilize a modern German battleship? Game must be broken.

>lucky hits happen

VaS is a decent entry-level game. I'd recommend heading over to the Historicals General thread, OP. There's regular navals discussion there. I personally prefer General Quarters as a game, and there's a new ruleset called Naval War that's just a touch more involved than VaS and avoids a lot of that systems issues. Good to see more naval enthusiasts.

>I had the Littorio
Based.

>Victory at Sea

Wasn't there supposed to be a new edition of this released like 3 years ago? I know Mongoose makes Valve look like hardworking prompt people, but still.

Wonderful to hear, I prefer the Richelieu class myself but I wish european ships didn't have the portholes.

...

Are there no good WW2 Naval Tabletop Games around?

Even if it's a bit arcadey like SW Armada I wouldn't mind.

>a modern German battleship?

Bismarck's design was basically prehistoric (hardly surprising considering how Germany lost its institutional shipbuilding knowledge after the first great kraut chimpout) so calling her modern is kinda stretching it.

There are about a dozen or so, if go back far enough
Hex and chit wise there are literally hundreds

...

I love how most nations had plans to break the treaty, wonder how things would have gone had they broke it sooner.

I mean it's a warship and Mars was the god of war, so naturally we calculate displacement based on Martian gravity. Doesn't everyone?

If you're going with that route you probably should had posted one of the Jap battlecruisers that are so popular among weaboos in these days.

ship bump

ded thread ded genre

You can occasionally see people that are into naval stuff in /awg/ or /hwg/ so it isn't completely dead, just in critical condition and currently on life support at intensive care unit.

Does anyone even actively produce games for the genre any more? The only game that's even close to navals is Star Wars Armada, and that's only sucessful because of the Star Wars license. Are games about ships just a genre inherently doomed to fail?

Doesn't help that Kids aren't interested in it either. All want some fast action BS like Ass Creed Black Flag.

Victory at Sea. Like OP said, it is generally easy to pick up and understand, and it feels right.

Or are you looking for something with model support?

And the autists that could be interested in this shit are too busy fapping to their kawaii waifus to care about boats that aren't 20lbs of pussy&ass.

Have you seen the UK pre-treaty fleet?

18 Inch Gunned N3
16 Inch Gun G3
Super Cruisers weighing in at 'only' 25,000 tons

The UK pre-washington fleet was going to be hilariously OP. The best the US had on the drawing board was the South Dakota (1920) which was an upgunned Colorado.

>brits and yanks figured out triple turrets
>french were messing around with quad turrets
>japs still were going for mashing in as many double turrets they could and hope for the best

Wonder why nips never really adopted triple turrets for their boats.

Rule Britannia!
And yet by 1940 they were the only ones without treaty breaking battleship plans.

By 1940s UK was very much a has-been empire on life support.

Probably because they already had a ton of good ships (QE and Revenge + Nelsols) and the KGV was armoured to the teeth, with a better throwweight then the Bismarck series.

Well fighting a world war single handedly will drain resources. People forget that Britain fought the start of WW2 while still trying to recover from the Great War. It's nothing short of a miracle they survived.

The Japanese were not very good engineers. They copied the British turret design over and over, including the loading. The first innovation they had was in the Yamato turret, where they managed to get a fast firing cycle, but at a huge weight penalty (which is another reason the Yamato is so massively overweight.) For her tonnage, the Yamato wastes a lot of it. Consider the KGV, or the Nelson, very heavily armoured and armed ships, fast, and both under the treaty limits for weight.

tl;dr: Japanese had bad engineers.

Here is the Victory At Sea rules since we are talking about it:

dropfile.to/SAVjjCw

True.
Also very true.

Yeah, whenever people debate Battleships, they always forget that the British actually built treaty battleships. The Italians, Germans, And Japanese just lied about their displacements. The Americans tried, but then abandoned it because it wasn't going to work, plus the war had already started.

In terms of ship building efficiency, the British were always at the top of their game. By the 1940s, no other nation could pack as much onto a weight limited ship as they could. Without the restrictions of the treaty, the Brits had the Lion, which was 3 knots slower then an Iowa, with identical armament and superior armor. The British wisely cancelled it, because they saw the CV was the way of the future, and the drain on resources of the Lion would have cut into the carrier budget. The US didn't have those budget problems, which is why we got the Iowa class.

But yeah, British Naval engineering was damn impressive throughout the 20s-40s. Talk about doing more with less.

Too bad their fire control was competing strongly for dead-last place dohoho

>Claims British Gunnery was bad
>Forgets who invented Radar Fire Con
>Forgets who invented the Admiralty Fire Control Table

British gunnery was damn good. Fire Rate, Dispersion, and Accuracy was amazing, thanks to the Mighty BL 15 Mk1 which had truly admirable gunnery characteristics.

German Firecon never worked properly, usually failed on the first salvo when the Kraut electronics died under blast pressure.

Meanwhile the Brits happily shelled stuff in bad weather (Reknown and Duke of York for example)

>dryer tables instead of proper synthetic fire control
>main rangefinders in the turret bases instead of up on the mast
>late implementation of RPC
>never implemented a full-feedback RPC loop like the Americans did

here be the deets my good man

dropfile.to/B8A8CAw

your weekend just vanished, but I am not sorry

Is that the big book of naval gunnery by friedman? I've read it. British gunnery bad in WW1, good interwar, great WW2 on ships that had the refits.

Let them be, WW2 was pretty much the last time that Brits could pretend that their navy had any relevance and that they still ruled the waves.

Fair enough, I don't think the UK still claims to rule the waves anyway.

Nice, reading it now!

This is not nautical.

They fly around in a ship.

A space ship, and I'm still disappointed there weren't more space battles.

Nice OP, how many people in your campaign? And I am assuming you are using the campaign rules from the book?

If you go full grognard and such, Admiralty Trilogy has the WW2 Component Command at Sea.

Harpoon's rules adapted to the environs of WW2.

I'm waiting for the WW1 set's (Fear God and Dread Nought) update and release on PDF.

>Is that the big book of naval gunnery by friedman? I've read it.

Oh, so you know the story then. Carry on~

But for everyone else, snag that. Best book on fire control I've ever seen.

Loving the V@S rules so far, but the errata in the second book is ridiculous, may as well just go back and cross out passages in the orginial stats.

...

She looks better on the bottom of the Ocean.

A boat is a boat even if it goes around in space.

Beautiful ship.

Ok, reading it now, how do the points work for balancing forces?

Ah, the magic of 'priority levels'.

Ok, so every battle has a Priority Level, there are five levels. Lowest to highest is Patrol, Skirmish, Raid, Battle, War

Each battle has a number of points, rated to the battle level. Let's say we have Raid 3, so you have 3 pts in a raid level battle. You can buy 1 raid ship with each point. Or you could buy two Skirmish ships for one point. You could also buy three patrol ships for one point. You can combine points, to bring in a higher class vessel, so 2 points of Raid and you can have a Battle class vessel. Points can be split, a bit as well, 1 Raid point can get you 1 skirmish vessel and two patrol vessels. (You can't split a point more then that though.)

It seems confusing, but it is actually really easy to add up once you get the hang of it.

Most players run Raid 5 or Battle 4 as standard.

It's not perfect for balancing, but it is quick and easy to 'mostly' end up with fair fights.

Also, people who try to game the system (like maxing out lower tier ships) tend to lose games. Your average patrol level destroyer can get wiped the fuck out by the secondary armament on a Battle level Battlecruiser in one turn, the primary armament will finish off a Skirmish level light cruiser with 1 or 2 hits. And they outrange you. So trying to zerg to win just results in miserable failure.

The best strategy is to try and have 50% of your force or more at the priority level of the battle, and then give yourself some tactical flexibility with one tier step downs.

I was going to say, it seemed open to abuse, but that makes sense that each tier is pretty significant in difference.

...

>Yeah, whenever people debate Battleships, they always forget that the British actually built treaty battleships. The Italians, Germans, And Japanese just lied about their displacements. The Americans tried, but then abandoned it because it wasn't going to work, plus the war had already started.
Y-you're forgetting someone.

>15 inch guns in muh glorious 14-inch max treaty
>quad turrets that didn't randomly jam

I would disqualify the KGV as best "all-around." No one had perfect quad turrets, and the damn things are complex as fuck. KGV's also had an abysmal cruising range compared to their contemporaries.

I really hate to go all 'Murrica, but the North Carolinas were probably the best all-around, (especially since the South Dakotas were designed better, and probably would rule most 1v1 engagements, but were absolute shite in other areas that made them a poor all-around BB).

Richeliu would probably be just behind the NorCars. If the French would have stopped experimenting all the damn time...

That would be nice, unless there just happens to be a suitable range of 3pp stuff that fits the bill.

Your best bet is likely to be to get models and then look for a system, since pretty much every naval wargame is flexible when it comes to scale.

If you're in the UK, 1/3000 and 1/6000 scale are the common ones. 1/3000 are best serviced by NavWar and Skytrex. 1/6000 is best serviced by Magister Militum.

If you're in the US, the primary scales are 1/2400 and 1/6000. The big dog in 1/2400 is GHQ, but their ships are *expensive* (gorgeous, tho). A lot of people buy their capital ships from GHQ and then go to Panzerschiffe for lighter ships in 1/2400. Pic related illustrates the difference: Straslund is from GHQ, the others are Panzerschiffe. 1/6000 is best serviced by Scale Creep Miniatures.

Note that attempting to order across the Atlantic is problematic in many cases. The Ur-example is NavWar: they have a web catalog with no order system. You have to download their catalog, draw a check from a British bank in pounds sterling (and only that - have fun with that), and send the check across the pond to them, and they'll get your order to you in 1-3 months. Their store is open 4 hours/week on Saturday afternoons only, so good luck calling them to clarify things. And if you mess up your order at any point you'll have to start the entire process over again.

The other common scale for WW1/WW2 stuff is Axis&Allies: War at Sea miniatures (prepainted minis at 1/1800), and the Victory at Sea stuff (which is also 1/1800). These don't see much service outside that arena - 1/1800 gets a little big for the tabletop once you use pretty much any other rules sets aside for the games they're designed for. Note that 1/2400 can play VaS just fine; you even get some more maneuvering room and it looks OK on the table.

Magister Militum's range looks pretty nice. No 1/6000 Taihou though, wtf.

North Carolina was not a treaty battleship.

1/6000 in North America is actually done by "Last Square Miniatures" who own the license to produce the 1/6000 hallmark ships.

lastsquare.com/zen-cart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=103_109&zenid=fldfhdqpr9a2audap8p3m05lr2

1/6000 is my preferred scale for big fleet engagements, ranges feel right, and it is generally cheap to field a big force.

And 1/2400 isn't that expensive either, well, relatively.
Battle 4 Force (Tournament Level)
GHQ HMS Hood 16.95
GHQ HMS Vanguard 16.95
GHQ HMS Ark Royal 19.95
GHQ HMS Yorkshire 11.95
GHQ HMS Belfast x2 23.90

>Total: ~90$

>had been designed to follow same standard displacement limitations as KGVs
>upgunned thanks to the escalator clause that had been baked into the treaty
>not a treaty battleship

Really the only reason why KGVs didn't carry 3 x 3 in either 15 or 16-inchers was out of sheer British stubbornness.

The reason the KGV had 14 inch guns was because the British hoped everyone would go to 14 inch clause in the treaty. They didn't.

9x15 put the ship overweight
9x16 was not possible
12x14 required a stretched hull (not possible)
10x14 was the best throw weight they could mount.

KGV also had tons more armour then a North Carolina, almost 15 inches to the NoCals 12.

North Carolina was not really a treaty BB, given her displacements. She may have started out as one, but by the end she was way out of the weight requirement.

From a protection standpoint, the KGV had a chance of shrugging off a hit from the NoCal, the NoCal didn't have that chance when taking fire from the KGV.

Holy shit, I thought you were lying about the armour.

They put 15 inches of battle steel and still managed to stay under treaty weight? Not compromised to hell (American) or lying through their teeth (Japan/Germany/Italy)

>Holy shit, I thought you were lying about the armour.
>tfw you're so perfidious that you loop right back round to being legit

>They put 15 inches of battle steel and still managed to stay under treaty weight?

To achieve that KGVs' were lacking in endurance (thanks 3.7k tons of oil stored aboard, for comparison North Carolinas' had 6.2k tons) and had extremely lightly armored conning tower.

>To achieve that KGVs' were lacking in endurance (thanks 3.7k tons of oil stored aboard, for comparison North Carolinas' had 6.2k tons) and had extremely lightly armored conning tower.

Wrong again on the fuel. Fuel was not part of treaty calculations, only full armament stores. So you had Max Zero Fuel weight limit of 35K tons, if you decided to load up with more fuel, that was fine by the treaty. The reason that the Brits had low fuel numbers is they designed their ships to operate in the Atlantic, and they had support bases everywhere in the world. The US did not have that luxury, so devoted more space to oil tanks. But Fuel is not part of the treaty considerations.

As to the Conning Tower, the british studied the weight with it, and did away with it since they found no captain actually used the damn thing in battle, and that protecting the bridge from shrapnel with lighter 3 in armor was a more effective use of weight.

It's funny, because in every operation I've read about, the US never used those armoured conning towers in their ships, preferring to stay on the bridge during battle. So more wasted space.

>And 1/2400 isn't that expensive either, well, relatively.

In my defense, I'm collecting the entire British Grand Fleet and the entire German High Seas Fleet (1914-1918). That somewhat colors my collecting perspective of 1/2400 stuff.

Oh for sure.

You can get the entire fleets in 1/6000 for about 400 bucks together, 200 each. In 1/2400 you are crossing into the 1000s easily.

Under the revisions of 1936 which allowed all nations to increase the ratios and increased the gun size to 16". This was specifically because the Japanese and Italians were getting all "fuck dat treaty shit."

1938 saw an addendum that increased displacement to 45,000t.

North Carolinas were designed and laid down prior to the escalator clause and the only change done afterwards was in armament. Hence, why they have 16" and only 14" gun protection.

12 inch armor is not 14 inch gun protection.

Sorry displacement wasn't a change, guns were.

I agree the NorCar's were obviously overweight by the end of it, but within the escalation clause.

KGV is best original treaty BB
NorCar is best expanded treaty BB
SoDak's would probably displace the NorCar if they weren't so crap.

Lion is the best Expanded Treaty Battleship.

Identical armament to an Iowa
Massively superior Armor
Similar Speed.

>never built

I would call that a pretty major flaw when it comes to the Lions-class.

It was layed down, which is better then most paper ships can claim. I don't think the Montana (which was way outside of treaty) even got to that stage.

Admiral Hipper in yo threads!

>yfw the USN fucked over Japanese shipping with torpedo that couldn't kill anything for half the war

Torpedo was fine, detonator was crap. Most American Captains figured this out, replaced mag caps with impact caps the moment they left port.

It hurts.
At least we still have a lot of our old ships turned into museums.

File expired, can you repost?

Here you go:

dropfile.to/eu61wMa

>At least we still have a lot of our old ships turned into museums.

Yeah, we should have kept Warspite at least, bloody good ship she was.

And a bute.

...

That quad+double turret combo will never stop looking ugly to me.

I like it myself.

Do you also hate the Nevada class, and Doria Class?

With 3 + 2 it works (unless it is something utterly retarded looking like Pensacola-class), but with 4 + 2 the difference between turret width is just too large.

The only ship that has turrets that look like the wrong size is Vanguard in my opinion.

The KGV Quads look like a goddamn bunker, and the elevated one fits in. The Vanguard just looks underarmed, even though it could smash a Bismark or Tirpitz so hard the Krauts would still have Tinnitis by the time they surrendered the war.

Different user, but Quad Turrets are the literal devil.

PITA to design, make work, armor, build, and work-in. And the Brits wanted to have a KGV with 3 quad turrets.

>my sides

> KGV with 3 quad turrets

Stop. I can only get so erect.

The casemates are rather small.

Personally I would had gone with KGVs armed with 3 x 3 14-inch guns. Sacrificing 1 gun for more reliable turrets and less eye cancer inducing looks sounds pretty decent trade off to me.