Smoke tactics

[seadog]

Hi All,

I just moderated 2 games of Java sea using BR.

The first game went 11 turns with an Allied victory. The players swapped sides for the 2nd battle, this time the Japanese scored a massive victory (allied fleet sunk with only 1 axis DD Sunk). Played over 2 nights

The 2nd battle featured a lot of smoke from both sides. The allied players' smoke masked his own ships quite a bit (more to do with inexperience), which allowed the Japanese to pick off some exposed allied ships in detail.

It left us wondering if smoke was used as an offensive tactic or more to cover withdrawals. In the Java scenario, the allies had to get from one end of the table to the other. What is to stop the allied player lining up his DD's on either side of the cruisers, and smoking with all ships (including the 3 light cruisers) and just sail all the way to the finish line. The Japanese would only be able to target the lead ship in each column each turn.

We had a bit of this situation last night, and the Japanese player started using his DD's as Kamikaze to barge through the smoke and into the hidden allied DD's. This looked and felt a bit cheesy, but I didn't know if this was categorically a-historic or not.

I know Harry has said that he isn't happy with the absolute block that smoke places on LOS, so maybe that would overcome it.

Thoughts anyone?

[TheDreadnought]

Smoke is kinda an issue in naval wargaming for the period in general. It could have been a hell of a lot more effective than it was, but the commanders on the scene just chose not to use it for a variety of reasons (not trusting their radars and so forth). Mostly they just used it for retreating.

Also something that's difficult to replicate is the fog of war. The gamers have perfect knowledge of what their objectives are, what they're facing, and where they opponent is. In real life they didn't have everything laid out for them so nicely. Unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do about that without a lot of double-blind administration and one (or more) people running the game.

For smoke though, I'd suggest changing it to simply be a +1 modifier when firing through it.

[seadog]

So would you add +1 for each smoke screen LOS passesd through. Would you draw distinction between targets in the smoke screen and units on the other side of it? I.e. would some units still be invisible?

How about ramming? Any idea if it was a common tactic (excluding against subs)?

[warchariot]

We have also done a simple roll to see if it stays in place (when deployed) and if it is thick enough to block sight. It became the easy way to save ships or retreat in our games.

[seadog]

Good idea Larry, what type of rolls did you use?

[seadog]

Good idea Larry, what type of rolls did you use?

[warchariot]

It's been awhile, but I think we did a D6 4+ for placement and then a D6 4+ for blocking. We may have made one navy better than another or a +1 if you had a flag for the smoke ships. We just played around until it felt right.

[warchariot]

We also scattered it if it didn't place by moving D10 inches and used a scatter die for direction.

[beau]

This is going to be a long reply.

As I understand the problem, players feel that the smoke rules can unbalance play, as smoke can be too effective.
(Line of sight is blocked by smoke, and gunfire and torpedo attacks can't be made through smoke.)

If you alter the way smoke works (say by making it a straight +1 modifier) you would also have to change how spotting planes work.

Currently, they allow the plane's host ship to have line of sight through smoke and over islands, but give a +1 modifier to fire.
Although they do have some other uses, their main advantage (to my mind) is to counter smoke. Americans have the late war radar
national advantage that allows them to fire through smoke, but for other nations and during the early war the only effective counter
to smoke is to use spotter planes. Some ships even carry aircraft as spotters for their main battery, and I assume the utility
of the aircraft would contribute to the combat value of the ships that carry the aircraft.

If you change the penalty for firing through smoke to a strait +1 modifier that would make spotting planes much less useful.
Also, you would have to drop the +1 modifier for using spotter planes - otherwise they would be making it harder to hit than
just firing blindly (+1 for smoke & +1 for spotter plane). However, just dropping the +1 modifier doesn't give any advantage to
using the spotter plane in the first place.

I don't think the solution is to do away with spotter planes altogether, nor is it to de-value the usefulness of the spotter
planes. Both approaches would mean changing the ship data cards to reduce the combat value of shipe with aircraft.

There should be some way of keeping the spotting planes useful, yet making smoke less effective.

How about: Targets with line of sight blocked by smoke have a +2 penalty. Spotter planes can reduce that to a +1 penalty
(from the existing rules, they give line of sight through smoke, but give a +1 modifier). This makes smoke powerful, but
not insurmountable (especially at close range), keeps Spotter planes relevant, and keeps the American late war radar advantage
useful, all without modifying too many rules or any of the ship data cards!