Campaign Scenario - Feedback wanted

[Skipp]

I really enjoyed Warspite’s suggestions on missions and it got me thinking about things I like in naval wargames. One thing that's improved the naval theme of even very simple games for me has been the inclusion of a mechanism which forces players to split their forces from a fixed pool to achieve a number of different objectives. This has the side effect of making some units useful which might not be very valuable in the standard scenario offered in a game.

I’ve been working therefore on some rules that could be used for a “standard” campaign scenario, that is something that can be played quickly and without preparation. It’s scheduled for it’s first play test by our group this week but given how difficult it is to balance a scenario like this I thought I’d try and summarise the rules here and would be grateful for any feedback that’s on offer.

The basic idea is very simple. Take a an area of operations and split it into three sectors, northern, southern and central. A scenario/mission will be chosen by each player for each sector with units committed from a pool agreed before the game. These missions will be chosen from a small pool and will interact with each other to produce varied engagements. Victory points will be based on an abstract assessment of mission difficulty and the level of risk involved. The central sector always scores an additional victory point acting therefore as a tie break and likely to be the centre of operations. The idea is that players must plan to accumulate more victory points in total than their opponent whilst knowing that to be strong in one area will make them weak in another.

In addition there were four major themes I wanted to work in.

1. Aircraft could be committed to any sector but with penalties on the frequency of activation.

2. An abstraction of detection and fog of war to be driven by the sequence in which the missions are played. (So if you are playing the northern mission first and discover an enemy auxiliary carrier do you launch a strike from your carrier in the central section, or do you play safe in case you are also opposed by a fleet carrier in the central section with your aircraft already committed!)

3. The possibility for players to choose night actions to protect them from aircraft and opposing Capitol ships, forcing balanced fleet builds.

4. Loss or damage to Capitol ships, which are very powerful in the game, to be punished when determining victory.

The hope of all this being to force some interesting and difficult decision making whilst creating some scenarios/missions which have both a historical and naval feel.

I don’t doubt that there are currently major holes in play balance and scenario design so I’d be grateful for any observations.

Axis & Allies War at Sea

Campaign Scenario

(Sector Diagram attached.)

Forces are committed to scenario’s in each of the three sectors from a total pool agreed before the game but usually 200 points.

The scenario fought in the central sector is always worth one more point than face value.

Land based aircraft can operate in any sector but only activate once every four turns. Players need to keep a note of commitments that have already been made and when the aircraft are destroyed.

Carrier based aircraft can operate in their own sector as normal, or in an adjacent sector every other turn. Players need to keep a note of commitments that have already been made, including turns spent in transit, and when the aircraft are destroyed.

Each player commits forces to fight a scenario of their choice at the time of their choice, day or night. The victory points gained from these scenarios are added to determine the overall winner.

In addition to the basic victory points per scenario an additional victory point per scenario goes to whichever side scores the most prestige points.

Per Destroyer sunk 1
Per Submarine Sunk 2
Per hit on a Cruiser 1
Per crippled/sunk Cruiser (Or Aux Carrier) 1/2
Per hit on a Capital Ship 2
Per crippled/sunk Capital Ship 2/4
(Capital ship being a fleet carrier or battleship/battle cruiser)
Before force deployments are revealed campaign initiative needs to be determined. Count all flags as per game initiative but add one per Catalina and other long range land based bomber, (Condor, Betty etc.) and one per carrier. (Remember fleet carriers will also contribute their flag value.) Campaign initiative should be rolled with an upside-down cup being placed on the playing surface. Players should announce the total without showing the dice so that the opponent cannot guess fleet make-up from the initiative bonus. At the end of the game the cup can be lifted to reveal the dice roll. Whoever wins chooses the first sector to be played and the looser chooses the second.

Note that this is intended to mirror the vagaries of detection. You might place a carrier task force in the central section but find that you have to play the northern section first. Do you commit aircraft from your carrier in support of the northern action or wait to find out what faces you in the centre. (It should be noted that the same aircraft can be committed to more than one sector but can’t fly in the period before they have been committed in a previous scenario, in case they get shot down! So if you fly on turn four in support of the northern sector in the example above you will be able to fly surviving aircraft on turn 6 in the central sector. You won’t be able to fly in turn one to three in the central sector because if the aircraft are destroyed they couldn’t fulfil their commitment in the North.)

Missions/Scenarios( Choices to be written down and revealed simultaneously)
Force composition - Generally only one submarine per sector is allowed and no further air attacks are allowed if all naval forces have left the playing area.

1. Naval Superiority

Victory Pts 2 Win -1 Loss
Must maintain superiority day and night in the face of enemy action.

Must drive all enemy ships from the playing area whilst retaining an uncrippled cruiser, auxiliary carrier or Capital Ship.

If the opposition only commit submarines and aircraft the game will be limited to eight turns.

Capital ships can be withdrawn in any night time engagement.

2. Raid

Victory Points 0 Win 0 Lose
Can attack day or night, players choice, but decision must be revealed when announcing mission.

Must include ships and/or submarines. Can break contact and leave by own table edge at any time. Scenario ends when their is not surface element remaining on table.(The idea is to “steal” a victory point by obtaining superior prestige points then breaking contact.)


3. Convoy

Victory points 4 Win -1 Loss
Must defend against attack day or night.

Player gets two free merchant men and must move them from one side of their deployment zone to the other. Safely getting one over is a win. Losing both is a loss. If playing at night convoy player can deploy in their back three hexes. If both players choose convoy it is played during the day.

4. Landing 5 Win 0 Loss
Player may declare night or day.

Place an island two thirds of the way up the playing area. The player gets two merchant men one of which must be successfully moved into the shallows on the island and survive to the end of the turn to succeed. One ship can provide supporting antiaircraft fire from an adjacent square when the merchant man is in the shallows.

(Note you need to agree on a line of site rule for PT boats on islands or it becomes suicidal for merchant men. I’d suggest that they are placed on one side of the island and that units in an adjacent square on the same side of the island have line of sight to them.)

If a daytime landing is opposed by a night time raid the landing is assumed a success and the merchant men removed. The island is then placed in the back third of the landing player’s end of the map. The landing player loses one of the 5 victory points for every two hits inflicted on the island by bombardment to a maximum of three. He loses an additional one if he withdraws any ship from his base edge after the start of play. Prior to play he may remove any capital ships of his choice.

[Skipp]

Apologies for the length of the previous post, definite case of the verbals. The idea’s quite simple, unfortunately describing it isn’t.

One of the plus points is that other than the change to aircraft sequencing required to link the sectors into one theatre, the game is played by the normal rules so the three missions can be played out quickly.

Having had a chance to continue to think things through I’ve identified some issues which are clarified below.

1. I need to get off the fence and make a clear decision on whether aircraft should be able to fly from carriers that have not yet been revealed. The advantage of allowing this is that you can use bait, as the Japanese did, the disadvantage is that it diminishes the abstract searching mechanism in reflected in the sequencing of the missions.

For play testing I’ll allow a strike to be flown from a carrier in an adjacent sector that has not yet been played in either the first or second turn and only once per game for each carrier. They can then fly in their own sector after the return of all aircraft and, if they started in the central sector and it is played second, they can potentially fly in another sector after all their flying commitments in their own sector are complete.

This should still make sure that campaign initiative, the sequance in which the sectors are played, is very important.

Note that land based aircraft should not have the option to return to base and fly again next turn. Once committed it’s a four turn break.

2. If aircraft fly from carriers before their section is played then the carriers are not allowed to leave the playing area until they have retrieved all aircraft they have already committed to fly to another sector in a previous scenario.

3. You should only be able to leave the playing area from your base edge and usually this should cost a victory point unless specifically allowed, such as in the raid scenario. This would be in addition to any prestige point driven victory point loss.

4. Night time landing scenario should be reduced to three victory points.

If anybody's remotely interested I'll put up a battle report after the play test on Tuesday.

[Greyh Seer]

So if you fly on turn four in support of the northern sector in the example above you will be able to fly surviving aircraft on turn 6 in the central sector. You won’t be able to fly in turn one to three in the central sector because if the aircraft are destroyed they couldn’t fulfill their commitment in the North.)

First, I would love to hear the results of this engagement and any rules snaffus you run into. As far as the quote above, the only thing that I would not be comfortable with is that if you commit aircraft in a later turn from another sector you are forcing those aircraft to be non-operational in a different game.

The reason this rule doesn’t work for me is that the entire premise of the rule is based on the fact that these engagements are simultaneous. Since this is the case, any carrier involved in an engagement would divert its planes to attack the greatest threat to it self.

For example: If I found myself facing off against a fleet carrier in my own sector, this ship would be my biggest threat and I would divert all my aircraft to sinking that threat. However, if I had played the northern game first and committed my aircraft in turn 6.... there is no way any commander would commit his aircraft to a long range attack on a battleship or escort carrier when there is a fleet carrier at short range.

The fog of war idea is cool, but if you are going to have units interacting in multiple zones/games simultaneously, we need a better way to do it.

Perhaps play all three games at the same time on three different maps (yes, a lot of table space would be needed). It is the only way I can think of to do it, although that does through the fog of war idea right out the window

[swarbs]

One other thing is warship survivability. WAS tends to be rediculously bloody, especially in terms of capitol ships. I've tried in similar campaigns to have ships that survive the first battle come back for the sencond (usually repairing one pt. of damage in between) and have found that if you actually engage and then are losing and try to get away you probably die. With your rewards for killing big ships you may have even more trouble getting them to retreat from a losing battle.

[Skipp]

Originally Posted by Greyh Seer

The reason this rule doesn’t work for me is that the entire premise of the rule is based on the fact that these engagements are simultaneous. Since this is the case, any carrier involved in an engagement would divert its planes to attack the greatest threat to it self.

Thanks for the response, clearly there's still a lot of work needing done but hopefully you can see where the idea is going.

You only get to redirect your forces when they're in the air if you're lucky enough to get a solid contact with the enemy main body which you manage to communicate effectively to your strike force whilst they still have fuel for the new task, and that's assuming it happens before their aircraft are over your carriers. Given these complications I felt it worked better to put a player who'd lost campaign initiative in the dificult decision of having to choose how to go forward without the knowledge of the enemy disposition. This is a personal preference which feels right to me however others may find it frustrating and I have no problem with that.

I tried to clarify the position on deployment of aircraft in multiple sections in my second post because after further thought it had become clear to me that I was trying to have my cake and eat it!

Hence the

1. I need to get off the fence and make a clear decision on whether aircraft should be able to fly from carriers that have not yet been revealed. The advantage of allowing this is that you can use bait, as the Japanese did, the disadvantage is that it diminishes the abstract searching mechanism in reflected in the sequencing of the missions.

For play testing I’ll allow a strike to be flown from a carrier in an adjacent sector that has not yet been played in either the first or second turn and only once per game for each carrier. They can then fly in their own sector after the return of all aircraft and, if they started in the central sector and it is played second, they can potentially fly in another sector after all their flying commitments in their own sector are complete.

What I'm trying to create here is tension in the order the scenarios are played and a requirement, as part of the building process, for players to consider campaign initiative.

If you've spent a whole lot of points on a big carrier group to operate in the central section then you probably want campaign initiative so that you can choose to play that first. If you're oposed by another major group you can have a big fight. If you're opposed by a night time raid you can remove your carrier and fly in support of other sections. If your faced by medium level daytime oposition you've got a horrible decision because if you use the carrier it's unlikely to have much impact on any other sector.

If you lose campaign initiative and you're faced with the small carrier force in an adjacent sector you've now got the option of one strike but it might mean that your aircraft are in the air when something horrible is coming towards you that you have not yet detected.

By way of clarification I've wrestled for a while with thoughts on how best to do this. In the end it seemed more interesting to use a "gamey" mechanism like sequencing of the scenarios to reflect the real situation where you detect an enemy force but don't know whether it's the main body or whether there is another enemy carrier operating within strike range of your group. This is the reason that the campaign initiative dice rolls have to be kept secret.

Note that whilst the actions are broadly intended to be taking place at the same time, that is on the same day, they're not really intended to be simultaneous. The air actions however have to be put into a strict frame work or it would quickly become unworkable. Hopefully the side effect of this is that the dificulty in using them effectively mirrors the reality.

[Skipp]

Originally Posted by swarbs

One other thing is warship survivability. WAS tends to be rediculously bloody, especially in terms of capitol ships.

I gave serious consideration to having a reserve pool where ships could be withdrawn from one scenario into the reserve and then deployed into another scenario with a delayed arrival. At this stage however it was too dificult to work into the sequencing and mission lengths.

[Greyh Seer]

Originally Posted by Skipp

I gave serious consideration to having a reserve pool where ships could be withdrawn from one scenario into the reserve and then deployed into another scenario with a delayed arrival. At this stage however it was too dificult to work into the sequencing and mission lengths.

I like this idea as well. An interesting way to perhaps pull forces from a sector where you have light resistence to a sector where you suspect heavy.

[Greyh Seer]

Originally Posted by Skipp

Thanks for the response, clearly there's still a lot of work needing done but hopefully you can see where the idea is going.

I do. And I love the idea. I am still very interested to hear how the play testing goes.

Originally Posted by Skipp

You only get to redirect your forces when they're in the air if you're lucky enough to get a solid contact with the enemy main body which you manage to communicate effectively to your strike force whilst they still have fuel for the new task, and that's assuming it happens before their aircraft are over your carriers. Given these complications I felt it worked better to put a player who'd lost campaign initiative in the dificult decision of having to choose how to go forward without the knowledge of the enemy disposition. This is a personal preference which feels right to me however others may find it frustrating and I have no problem with that.

I admit that a re-direction of WWII aircraft was tricky at best. I totally agree with your thoughts on this. I guess the one part that gets me is the idea that because in game one I did not send in my aircraft untill turn six, in game two I cannot use my aircraft at all untill turn 7 or 8.

Again, I don't neccessarily dissagree with the "rule" (in fact it is the only way I can see to make it work at all) but as you said elsewhere, it feels a little gamey.

[Skipp]

Originally Posted by Greyh Seer

I guess the one part that gets me is the idea that because in game one I did not send in my aircraft untill turn six, in game two I cannot use my aircraft at all untill turn 7 or 8.

The way it's working in the play testing so far is that, in any given sector, you either use them early or don't use them at all.

When gauging how to use them for most effect you have to remember that there may only be one, or possibly even no daytime missions where you can use them.

In the varied mission rules Warspite proposed the threat of fighting at night was there to keep both sides honest in force building. Here I've intentionally set it up so that a Japanese player could stand a chance of winning by only engaging in night time punative raids.

One thing that definately needs addressed is the length of time a force must remain on the playing area before it can retreat without giving up a victory point, particularly on a raid mission. Currently you could put a tiny force in, find out your oponent had commited to a major raid and move off board without losing a victory point.

I'm thinking three turns for a day light raid and six turns for a night time raid. (The differential is because of the effect of aircraft.) I need to do more play testing to see how it works but would welcome any thoughts.

[Skipp]

We carried out a play test on Tuesday, which went well, and I'll post a session report later if I get a chance. It became apparent however that there was a fair element of confusion in the way I had laid down the scenario rules. I've noted some of the querys below in case this clarifys things for anyone else who's interested.


I am confused...

Many, many questions...

How many missions are we playing?
How many simultaneously?
How many per sector?
Must I choose a mission in each sector?
Can I attack a sector using aircraft only without assigning any ships.

Three missions in total. One in each sector and at least one surface vessel must be included in each as the scenario effectively ends when there are no surface vessels left to stop aircraft and submarine builds dominating.

All missions are assumed to be happening roughly at the same time. Aircraft missions are in "lock step" other missions are assumed to happen roughlt in the order played with mission initiative reflecting spotting to some degree.


Can I keep carriers in the Force area and fly planes into the north, central or southern sectors, counting as adjacent? Do the carriers count as part of a mission or do I just track plane usage?

The central sector is considered the main area of operations. It allows an additional victory point for succesful missions and is the only area where aircraft can fly from a carrier into both of the other sectors. Carriers are placed in whichever sector they are assigned along with the other ships operating in that sector and are available as targets to other ships and aircraft operating within that sector in the normal way.

The force areas don't exist as playing areas they were only included in the diagram to show that each side theoretically entred from East or West.

If we specify a mission as day or night, where are the ships during the other half of the 24hrs?

All missions other than raid and night landing have a component that occurs both during the night and day. If one of these missions is not chosen the scenario will always take place during the day.Only in the event that one side chose raid during the day and another raid at night would nothing happen in a sector.

If one side chooses one of the two missions that happen at night then the scenario will be played at night, using the nightime component where applicable.

Can planes fly at night?

No

How many turns is a day or night?
According to the game scale it should be 72 turns, this seems rather a lot!

You play until one side withdraws, ceases to have any surface units, or both sides have achieved or can't achieve their victory conditions.

Can we move ships from one sector to another between missions, say overnight?


Not, currently. Campaign initiative is really important as the rules are drawn up. Ships are locked into their existing sector and depending on when that sector is played and whetherthe mission takes place during the day will have a major effect in the usefulness of those ships.

For example if the Northern Sector is played first and you have a carrier up against a night raid then you can withdraw the carrier at night before playing the scenario Importantly however it will be able to use it's aircraft in the central sector, when it's played, every other turn throughout the day. (Thats assuming the central sector scenario takes place during the day.) If the central sector is activated first you will only be able to fly aircraft in support of it from a sector which has not yet been activated once, at the begining of the scenario. When you then come to play the Northern Sector and find that it is at night you're unlikely to feel that you've had much value from your carrier and its aircraft!

This effect is entirely intentional and is intended to make you plan your dispositions taking into account that you might win or lose the initiative. Of course you can always gamble on a plan that will only work if you win initiative and purchase your force accordingly, that is if you're willing to take the risk involved!