Naval Wargames General

What game are those from?

Steel Ocean.

Free on Steam.

It's as drydock, meaning it can be pumped dry.

Did the anons get a fleet together?

1/1200? Those are some enormous bites user.

Somebody posted something about user Fleet in the other thread.

I have more reasonably sized boats.

Those the old Revell kits?

Yeah, I found them for 10 CDN in my local hobby store.

Another Naval Model I built.

Best ship of WW1 reporting in.

Don't take offense user, I like unreasonably sized botes, I had just never seen any 1/1200 stuff with anything that puts their size in context.

My stuff is all 1/1800, and all my spess stuff is decidedly not fleet scale.

Doesn't post a Revenge class. SAD!

Only good things that ever came out of Revenge-class were Repair&Refit.

Are there any larger scale naval wargames that have models depicting crews and the like?

Hey, I see you ordered a test piece from CzarChino!

Like rule models for crews?

There are some coastal navy (patrol boats) that model crews. Some solitary sub games model crewmembers.

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Ah the Scharnhorst, could have been better then Repulse/Reknown, ended up being worse.

What are you basing on and what's that rectangle block ship thing?

What is wrong with the Revenge? Better armoured and massively cheaper QE. Probably the best BB at the time they were built. Were capable all the way into early WW2. That's 20 years of excellent service.

The only reason they were never refitted like the QE is that the frame they were built on couldn't easily accept upgrades.

hunghh i love that slav bote aesthetic

The rectangle block is a vinyl sticker on a piece of wood. Basically a dirt cheap way to get a lot of ship models really fast.

Where'd you get em?

Over Christmas I bought the Coronel and Falklands set too. Pretty nice, cheap way to branch out some.

So if I'm not mistaken y'all here are a bunch of naval nerds, right? Can someone explain to me what the fuck Japan was thinking during WW2? I get that the Imperial Court was wrapped around the navy's finger and the navy wanted to do navy stuff while the army wanted to do army stuff (in Russia) but even then from an outside perspective the Japanese navy appeared downright suicidal. Yamamoto himself predicted that even if Pearl Harbor was succesful, he'd have supremacy over the Pacific for 6 months, 12 months max before the Americans would've rebuilt their fleet to old capacity. Did the Nips honestly believe they could win the war in six months? Against the number one industrial power? Without landing on the American continent?

Hindsight is 20/20 but joining Germany for a two pronged attack against the Soviet Union seems like the much more logical option, maybe later joining Germany to attack America from two sides or something. Why did the Nips go full retard?

Desperation. They're oil was cut off, meaning their war machine in China would grind to a halt. They'd have to invade Southeast Asia to get more oil, but that'd piss off the Allies and bring the US into the war, which would launch attacks from the Philippines. Originally, the IJN wanted to have their DECISIVE BATTLE near the Philippines, after harassing the overextended US supply lines across the Pacific. The overall goal would've been to (hopefully) wear down the US's taste for war and settle for a negotiated peace. Yamamoto wanted to launch a first strike against the American battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor, timed to be done just after their embassy handed in their declaration of war. Yamamoto outright threatened to quit if he didn't get his way, so the Navy had to do his plan.

Then Pearl Harbor happened, the declaration of war was accidentally handed in AFTER the attack, and shit went sideways. Add in the sheer amount of YAMATO PEOPLE SUPERIOR FILTHY GAIJIN GO HOME indoctrination the Japanese military had institutionalized and you get a majority that flipped between seriously believing they could win and plain refusing to give up unless everything was ashes.

>They'd have to invade Southeast Asia to get more oil
But didn't they already have French Indochina, Singapore, Malaysia (Rubber in all three) and the Dutch East Indies (oil) in about 1940 due to their alliance with Germany, and no real threat of American intervention at the time? They already had what they wanted, were already at war with the Western Allies and if they really wanted to expand for resources India was the logical target, right? Maybe aid the Germans in trying to stir up a rebellion there and invade once shit hits the fan?

>Singapore, Malaysia, Dutch East Indies
Offensives there began timed alongside Pearl Harbor. True occupation began in 1942. Oil exports to Japan were also embargoed by the US at that point. Hence the "halted war machine".

>India
Heavy British presence, would take years to fight through, busy occupying China and Southeast Asia, and didn't fit into their ideological plans for the Greater East-Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.

I bought everything from WW2. It's the simplest way to have every ship in the war, and they are durable so I don't have a problem bringing them out to game nights. Great way to get new players interested. I bought a big pack of BBs so I can had one out to every participant. I write the website name on the back of them so the newbies know where to get more boats.

History and rules of Jane's wargame 1906 edition.

books.google.com.au/books?id=JF9PAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=Fred T. Jane wargame&source=bl&ots=PkYpQs-Jkv&sig=tkPXQjctipcxZXg02GdHLOaq7Lk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv5orYwvvSAhUJ1mMKHUCKBc84ChDoAQgeMAE#v=onepage&q=Fred T. Jane wargame&f=false

Ignore the fuck out of for one thing. So much wrong and lack of historical context.

Japan had imperialistic aspirations since the Americans forced their government to open up to trade. That caused a crisis where the shogun and forces that wanted to restore the Emperor to direct power fought a little war, modernizing piecemeal all the while: the only viewpoint they shared was literally FUCK THE FOREIGNERS. In fact the pro-Emperor faction that won literally had "Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians" as its official slogan. Afterwards the nation rapidly modernized way beyond its means, with the spread of mass culture and sweeping changes to the military class occurring at the same time. Militant nationalism was common in the transitional period, and at one point the government was referred to as "governance by assassination" because of the number of PMs Japan went through in a short time.

Back then Russia was the main enemy de jour, since they had a presence in the region most notably in Sakhalin/Karafuto, but after the war with Russia focus shifted to America as the primary competing Imperial power in the region. So the Japanese pinned their fleet developments to the US Navy in terms of individual ship designs and total numbers. Their plan was to form a coherent battle line that could take on an American battle line consisting of half her battleships and armored cruisers after suffering attrition to submarines while crossing the Pacific... and THEN face the remaining Atlantic fleet afterwards. That focus also determined her international agreements during the runup to the war, as well as her refusal to abide by treaties which would have limited the size of her navy to the point where they couldn't handle half the US navy at a time.

Meanwhile the battle of Taranto happened, proving the concept of an overwhelming air attack on a fleet in port.
>1/2

The IJN even sent an emissary to study the aftermath, though none of the records of it were written down for secrecy. So you have a faction that supports the use of air power in a preemptive strike, which made sense particularly given the size of the Pacific ocean compared to the Med. So this ultimately led to Pearl Harbor, but the focus was still on seizing territory then holding it against an American attack in a defensive action. The IJN's biggest and most powerful battleships remained primarily in Japanese waters for exactly that reason: they were waiting for the kind of strike Pearl Harbor made all but impossible. So they lost a lot of their carriers due to poor damage control, lack of decent defensive fire, and several high-profile miscalculations on the part of the commanders involved.

They couldn't replace all their ships and equal American output. They hadn't planned on being the ones suffering attrition. And so with their battle fleet in reserve and their carriers and destroyers sinking about as fast as they could float new ones, it was basically just a matter of waiting for them to run out of something.

As it turns out what they ran out of first was planes and pilots, followed shortly thereafter by avgas and fuel oil. Their territory contracted, they concentrated their forces in southern Japan in anticipation of a ground invasion despite the fact that most of their fleet was sunk at Kure, and finally the bombs became more than they could handle. A definite *invasion* that they could respond to was suddenly in doubt.

And so they finally gave up. True story, most of the people who heard the Emperor's voice for the first time that day had no idea what he was even saying, because he spoke such an outdated dialect, but it became obvious pretty quickly what had happened.

Maybe in one final FUCK YOU Nagato steamed out and was in position to cross the T on the force that was sent to officially capture her.

Slav boat, so she'd look best sitting in port all war being bombed.

Anyone?

Yeah. Currently waiting on the GM for our first mission, I think.

topsideminis.com/

Topside Minis is the company's name.

topsideminis.com

I use matboard cut to shape. I have a bunch leftover from framing pictures and the like, and it's easyish to work with.

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This tessellates with my knowledge.
Add to that that while Japan had a liberal/democratic movement within it, it had no tradition of civilian control of the military, and american (and european) treatment of them undercut the liberal, xenophile line- IE, why should we be more like these gaijin when no matter what they're going to give us a shit deal.

I also believe the army was the one with the Emperor wrapped around their fingers right up until Kahlkin Gol, or whatever it was called. In Khalkin Gol, the Kwangtung army, which had been roflstomping chinese peasants since the mid thirties, ran into Georgy Zhukov and a much more modernized Red Army. They got their shit kicked in pretty ridiculously hard (down to their last division being ordered to charge across two and a half miles of open ground and assault enemy defensive lines after the battle was already foregone).

The results of Khalkin Gol meant that the Army/Northward expansion political faction got humiliated (based on the Kwangtung army getting humiliated) and war with Russia was decided to be a bad idea.

KD?

>Hindsight is 20/20 but joining Germany for a two pronged attack against the Soviet Union seems like the much more logical option, maybe later joining Germany to attack America from two sides or something. Why did the Nips go full retard?

It's impossible to seriously answer your questions on an image board with a 2000 character limit. Attacking the USSR was the retarded option, especially after Nomohan showed even the fire eaters in the IJA how far they'd fallen behind. The IJA gave Tokyo a list of prerequisites for another attack on the USSR which included a Soviet civil war, the Germans in Moscow, and material advantages Japan could never achieve.

Grabbing the Soviet Far East would solve none of Japan's resource issues while also pissing the USSR off.

And, before some moron brings it up, the Soviets NEVER moved troops from the Far East to the front in European Russia to fight the Germans. The "Siberian" troops idiots like to talk about were from military districts in Central Asia. During the war, the USSR actually managed to reinforce the Far East.

I don't what is talking about but I do know they're a fucking idiot. Japan occupied French Indochina in Sept of '40, but didn't step foot in Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, or the Dutch East Indies until AFTER they declared war on the UK, US, and Holland on 7/8 December '41. For various reasons, most of which were related to inadequate shipping, the resources in those regions didn't help Japan as much as they believed they would.

There are answers to your questions, but you're going to have to do some reading instead of "learning" them 2000 characters at a time on an image board.

>Back then Russia was the main enemy de jour, since they had a presence in the region most notably in Sakhalin/Karafuto, but after the war with Russia focus shifted to America as the primary competing Imperial power in the region.

Not exactly. After 1905, Japan had settled most of her security concerns in northeast Asia by occupying Korea & Manchuria and gaining Russian acquiescence of the same. Japan's ARMY still regarded China & Russia as likely opponents while the NAVY looked at the US and UK. That schizoid outlook fucked up Japan's strategic planning for decades.

I've recommended Evan's "Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy; 1887-1941" in several of these threads now and I'll do so again for anons who actually want to learn about the issues involved instead of repeating the usual load of lie, partial lies, and misconceptions.

Pearl Harbor was a very LATE addition to the "Lunge to the South" war plans Japan had been working on since at least the 1910s. European & US possessions in Asia & the Pacific had been Japan's cross-hairs for decades. The main argument against Pearl Harbor wasn't that the US would be attacked as invading the Philippines & Guam were already part of the plan. The real arguments against the Peal operation had to do with whether or not the CVs, BBs, and other assets used would still be available for previously planned operations elsewhere in the Pacific. The IJN eventually decided the risk to the Kido Butai would be worth the reward of damaging the US Pacific Fleet.

>Meanwhile the battle of Taranto happened, proving the concept of an overwhelming air attack on a fleet in port.

No. Taranto proved you could successfully drop torpedoes in the shallow waters of a harbor.

The US' own fleet problems in the 30s had already shown a fleet in port could be attacked.

Khalkin Gol was more "USSR uses doctrinal and armored superiority to concentrate their armored forces at one point, execute a textbook double envelopment on a Japanese infantry division, and wipe it out", and not without Soviet failures in the early stages. The Japanese getting their shit kicked in was basically a series of failed break-outs/break-ins by their forces after the envelopment.

Jesus. I can just imagine the fucking monotony already.

>You are BMSN Timmy.
>You're brand new to DDG70 and you have 72 hours to compete your check-in-sheet
>sweepers is from 0700 to 0800
>quarters is at 0805
>fresh water washdown is from 0815 to 0915
>zone inspection of boatswain 1 at 1300, so you'll spend all morning correcting deficiencies. No fuck your check in sheet... what do you mean you can't get hazmat yet? Extended hours until you get qualified
72 hours later...
>you got qualified, but where's your check-in sheet? That's your 3rd counseling chit, so it's DRB for you.

God damn. Fuck this shit.

>>You are BMSN Timmy.

If you go to boot without a guaranteed A school, you deserve everything that happens to you.

We're roleplaying. Why would I roleplay a rate I chose?

>We're roleplaying.

Who is "we"?

?

The royal "we" then. I'm any case, it was to illustrate a point, not to say that I'm a BM, or anything. Romanticism of Navy life is just silliness to a Sailor.

The only "point' here is the one of the top of your head.

No one here is romanticizing navy life. We're discussing naval wargames and the history those wargames attempt to model.

Maybe he mixed this board with /lgbt/ and thought that this was a naval sodomy threat?

Most likely. Didn't Jap Moot and His Merry Crew mix together boards for April Fools or something?

...

So, I've never been involved in wargaming really, but after going to a local military museum and seeing their model ships, I started thinking that a naval war game would be cool.

What should I be looking into?

That sorta depends on stuff like what time period you're interested in, how large you want your games to be, how complex rules you're ready to tolerate, how large/small you want your minis to be, etc.

I think was actually asking about those same kind of basics as you just mentioned ...

look better in port rusting away dont you mean?

I'm seeing a lot of historical masterbation, and not a lot about actual wargaming. So yeah, maybe it's over my head. You guys wanna play trains with me?

Several of us post batreps from time to time, but that's all dependent on getting to actually play.

I'm sitting down with Heart of Oak currently trying to learn that system. Later on in my slate are Frigate and Fire as She Bears. Anybody have any experiences to share with these systems?

Why does that ship fly one Nazi Empire Marine flag and one Republican flag?
Also, what are botes?

Finding other people to play with.

youtube.com/watch?v=T7Vadzjac6g

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It is a game, and people can put whatever flags they want on the ships. Case in point attached.

>I'm seeing a lot of historical masterbation

The word is "masturbation" so, yeah, it is over your head.

They play with trains in /n/. Have fun.

Five anons found each other here, and are now playing in a game.

What are some pre-dreadnought to WW1 era systems with reasonably detailed damage models?

I'd like to wargame some stuff out for a story

Fear God and Dread Nought.

The feeling when you get your favourite ship ever in a game...

>they don't do trawlers
aww

The OG treaty cripple.

Nelson wasn't a treaty battleship...

Well she was, but she certainly wasn't crippled because of it. Nelson>Nagato>Colorado

>its nickname is literally the "cherry tree class" because it was "cut down by Washington"

>4 kt slower than Nagato as-designed
>only two screws
>one more barrel of main battery than either of her contemporaries, but the 16" guns she mounted were so disappointing the RN went back to 14"
>her rounds were lighter than her contemporary 16" cousins and had a theoretical maximum penetration nearly two inches less than Nagato
The only real advantage she had was that as-built her secondary batteries were turreted and she was built with the right amount of decent AA. Nagato and Colorado were relatively deficient in that regard due to having been laid down along more traditional lines prior to the Washington Naval Treaty which forced many of the more modern touches on the Nelsons to be incorporated.

>Cherry Tree Class

You mean the original South Dakota (WW1) class?

Nelson's poor performing 16 inch battery was due to an original loading of a light shell. When the RN went back to a heavy shell (mid 30s) the 16 inch regained her power. Of the three guns, the Colorado had the worst, the Nips were second, and the Brits had the hardest hitting. The British were also the only ones to adopt a 6crh shell, although the americans did put heavier shells on the Colorado eventually, but the loading mech could not support longer shells. Any supposed deficiency in Nelson or Rodney's battery was proven false when Rodnol put rounds straight through the Bismark's armor, knocking out first her turrets, then her engineering spaces.

Nelson also had heavier armor then any of her contemporaries. The Colorado was second, and the Nagato had a crap armouring scheme that reduced her effective protection by almost 15%. Nagato had speed but never made turns for those knots, so it is just a paper figure.

Add to that Radar, Secondary and DP AA, and the Nelson really only loses in speed, and then only to the Jap with bad protection.

>Nagato had a crap armouring scheme that reduced her effective protection by almost 15%.
How, exactly? Failed to armor parts of the citadel properly?

You forgot to mention dispersion.

The Colorado could fire effectively out to 25,000, and a max of about 32~34. But the dispersion was so bad beyond 27,000 it wasn't worth doing. The Nelson's guns, despite being wire wound, were unerringly accurate, only encountering dispersion at 34~35, with a max range of 39.

That is a not insignificant advantage, of being in effective firing range 10K yards before your opponent is.

Much like the Bismark, the Nagato was armored to fight at close range, and had none of the Jutland lessons implemented into her (sloping, decking, etc) so although she had 12~13 inches, against modern armaments at combat ranges in the interwar and WW2 eras, she only really had 10~11 inches of protection.

Decking? Sorry, new to "how BBs work" stuff.

Armored decks to protect against plunging (high angle) fire that occurs at longer ranges.

Armor was not just put on the outside. In addition to the belt (side) they generally had additional layers of armor inside the ship. The outermost armor was supposed to take the brunt of the blow, and either decap the projectile, or deflect it. If it made it into the ship, the shell exploded after x amount of milliseconds according to the fuzing. Now, with additional layers of armor inside the ship (decking) the shell will either be slowed enough to explode in a place that isn't vital, or will be bounced/redirected. The Nelson had a very advanced armor scheme for her time, and the Colorado was similar. Multiple layers in addition to the outer belt, with oil tanks and angled layers of armor designed to increase the relative protection of the armor. The Nagato did not have nearly as many of these advances, in addition to less armor overall. This made her a lot more vulnerable then the other two bbs.

Yep, Nagato only had 305mm armor at the thickest point, and had no angling at all. Nelson was inclined 10~15 degrees if i remember right. I think Nelson and Colorado both armored all or nothing as well, another weight saving trick that made them more effective.

Nagato's armor was strengthened and modernized before the outbreak of the war, with similar strategies aside from angling the main belt which was kind of a non-starter.

Nagato was all-or-nothing as well. People like to shit on Japanese boats, especially on Veeky Forums where shitting on anything Japanese is a pastime, but some of them were every bit as effective in most regards.

>Decking? Sorry, new to "how BBs work" stuff.

Answering that in 2000 characters will be hard. "Armor" in a BB depends on the type of armor used, how thick the armor is, and how the armor is arranged within the ship's structure. The last very important.

Decking refers to the horizontal armored deck AND it's position in the ship. That armored deck was not the deck you saw sailors walking around on. It's actually within the hull. After WW1, Jutland, and various testing, the UK & US determined that an armored deck should be higher in the hull to increase the volume of the armored "citadel" protecting various critical bits. The Germans & Japs didn't make the same change. They kept their armored low in the hull, nearly at the waterline, and that meant portions of the ship were hideously vulnerable.

Bismarck, for example, used an armor layout dating from the 1914 Bayern class. While plenty of equipment and materials were new, the arrangement of the armor was old. When Bismarck faced KGV and Rodney she was mission killed (meaning she couldn't fight back) in 20 minutes. As Preston explains, all her internal comms, electrical power, telemotor leads, boiler uptakes, etc. located above her low armored deck were quickly shredded because they were unprotected. Bismarck's main machinery spaces were relatively untouched because the RN was firing at such a close range none of their fire was "plunging", but that didn't matter because all the "connecting" systems above the deck were destroyed.

Imagine an armored knight wearing a gauntlet on his hand, a breastplate on his torso, and NO ARMOR on the arm connecting the two. That's the problem with Bismarck's and Nagato's "decking". Their armored deck aren't in the proper location to protect vital areas of each ship.

Nagato modernization slapped more armor on the turret barbettes, Nagato had a tapered belt, not all or nothing.

>Bismarck's main machinery spaces were relatively untouched

That isn't correct. She had flames pouring from her engineering spaces, and reports from people who were on her said that the boilers were knocked off line. Flooding was reduced by the compartmentalization, but the British shells, especially the 16 inch shells, were going through the main protective systems. The knock outs on the turrets, going through the barbettes and gunhouses is proof of that.

All or nothing refers to distribution over vital areas while minimizing coverage over nonvital areas, not angling or whether the belt is tapered or not.

Don't conflate terms.