Japanese torpedoes stupidly OP? Discussion welcome.

The ship selection in the starter set is abysmally bad.

IJN torpedoes are made to kill big ships – anything from a CA (heavy cruiser) upwards. They are very good at that. They are not as good at killing DDs and CLs. Guess what the starting set gives the USN? That’s right – heavy cruisers, that are made to be murdered by IJN torps.

The USN (and any fleet, really) has very clear answers to IJN torpedoes and those are:

– Dive bombers. The IJN DDs have relatively bad AA and 2-3 DBs will typically cripple or outright kill a DD with Devastating damage on a 3+ to hit.

– Light cruisers. Anything with Fast Tracking, Twin-linked or Light gun turrets will neutralize the DDs’ dodge buff at high speed and murder them at relatively long range.

– Cheap destroyers. Find something that costs around 40 or 50 points and swarm the IJN fleet destroyers with cheap shitty hulls. What are they gonna do? Dump their Long Lances to kill a 40-point hull?

-Smoke. Use smoke to break line of sight (you need it to launch torps).

IJN torpedoes have an insanely low skill floor to use, but even the most basic fleet building and tactical play will neuter them something fierce. It’s just sad that the starting set does not give you the necessary tools.

Well, the long lance torpedo had a crazy long range. More than once allied forces returned to old course, thinking having  succeeded in outrunning them. Then:  Bang.

The rules do just reflect reality.

Playing  pacific I would expect that the USN was inferior in that aspect.   Late war radar and new tactics changed that. 41-43 I would expect a Japanese force winning.

Most Gamers want games with equal chance forces. OK if You are not interested in a historical basing. But  some are like me, being more interested in historical abilities of vessels. So I like these rules.

Dive Bombers kill Destroyers, and especially after 1943, the USA will wallop the Japs in the air.  Ignoring that though, remember, your destroyers should be screening your larger ships.  Against the Japs that means they should be more than 8″ out.  Equal numbers/points, you will probably still take some torpedoes, but you can reduce the hurt through proper positioning.  That same positioning can then bring your advantage to bear, all of those nice guns on cheap hulls.

the missions all have a priority which gives you an extra 10% points, the agreed points or loses you 10% points…. for competative gaminng priority levels are normally ignored.  Some helpful sole (it wasnt me!) sat down and balanced the fleets against each other at the priority levels so they are similar points and game balance.

Erm… points…. yeah…. with the rulebook points I can take 3 different IJN Destroyers (DDs in short) all for the same 60 points and get 3 completely different type of capablities in them…theres an alternative points system (SHIPS) which is far better balanced.  And lets not get into upgrading to type 93s can cost 5 or 10 points depending on which DD its on because they forgot to put wakeless on the rules for all of them :/

Carriers – these come in 2 (community termed off RW terms) types – Escort, that have less than 10 flights on, or Fleet – 11+ flights.  Fleet carriers require scouting points to work effeciantly.  This means you get the scouting points so the flights start in the air.  Escort carriers dont really care about scouting points as you can launch all flights in the game.  (dont forget 2 off every carrier deploy launched, then you can scramble to launch 2 a turn)

Terrain – the ship models are much larger than the table scale (1″ is ~1K nautical yards) so terrain, be it islands or sandbanks etc, is a nice factor – rules for terrain is in the main rulebook.  But short hand is if a vessel of more than 10 hull goes within 1″ is stops moving and cant move again.  No torps can go through nor can line of sight.  So it makes maneovering of ships a factor in games.

Also dont forget that torps apply ALL hit modifiers!  And type 93s have to re-roll hits over a certain distance (18″ IIRC been a while since I used my IJN)

with my standard IJN fleet it has 2 fleet carriers which deploy on the table… everything else is a cruiser or DD and gets me 10+ scouting points so I redeploy my whole fleet and put all my 37 flights on the table BEFORE turn one!

• This reply was modified 4 months, 3 weeks ago by Nat.

It’s part of the long lance national rule…

There’s a house rule that goes if the bases are touching (or a few mm shy) you count as being in short range unless your weapon would be point blank…. So touching doesn’t mean your turret can hit that DD, but does mean your torp stands a chance of working