[Walter Hard]

Pretty much agree with everything above. Invisible Officer, i would fine all the fluff less bothersome if it didn’t seem like the rules writers devoted as much or more attention to it than to the rules themselves (their main effort seems to have gone into the models, which are quite impressive). The spelling and grammar issues don’t help. But so many hair-pullers, like their ignorance of what “semi-automatic” means, and s description of Crew Hits that begins “No shooting this activation” (the damaged vessel has just been fired on, so it’s obviously not currently active — yup, no shooting!). Argh.

[Walter Hard]

Ah . . . I see where our rules interpretation differ. You’re interpreting the rules to say you can turn after every one-third of your movement for the activation. In the example I gave, you’d turn after every 3 1/3 cm, if moving slow.

I think the rules mean to say that you essentially move in legs or segments; this is why the max speed is always exactly triple the slow speed. You get one turn at the end of each segment. Following my example, I think at slow speed the boat moves one 10-cm leg and then turns. At fast speed, it moves 1 10-cm leg and turns, then a second 10-cm leg and turn, then a third 10-cm leg and turn.

Maybe the designer could pop in and clear this up. The question is, how many turns does a boat moving slow get during one activation, one or three?

[Walter Hard]

I don’t think that’s the case, Big Al. A boat moving at faster speed will end up turning more degrees in one turn than a boat moving slowly, but the radius (in the game) is identical.

Take a small boat whose max speed is 30 cm. Regardless of its speed, it’s going to move 10 cm, then turn 45°, then move another 10 cm and turn 45°, then move a third leg of 10 cm and turn another 45°.

It’s just that the boat at fast speed will do it in one activation, the boat an slow speed will spread it out over three. The radius of the turn is identical. Can make a big difference if you’re trying to avoid running off the board or into an obstacle.

[Walter Hard]

Fair points on the difficulty of hitting naval targets with a tank turret gun. But the T-34 turrets still retain their armor, so perhaps ignore gun hits against them from MGs and small cannon?

Edit: My bad. I see that the rules already exempt the turrets from small caliber hits (in the narrative history about Soviet boats)

[Walter Hard]

I note that the ship rosters list the bronekaters with “6-pdr” main armament. Not sure if the designers are saying they only had the effect of 6-pdr guns, but of course all bronekaters had tank turrets as main armament, as shown on the models, with 76.2mm guns.

One more minor item: The ship rosters show 1124 bronekaters with one turret and the 1125 with two turrets. It’s actually the other way around. I can understand the confusion here, since some otherwise solid sources, like Harald Fock’s Fast fighting Boats, make the same mistake.

[Walter Hard]

To my mind, the real question is why so many guns are wrongly listed as “semi-autoamtic” in the ship rosters. The 40mm Bofors, the 37mm German Flak 36, and the U.S. 37mm M4 are all given as “semi-automatic”. None of them actually are — they are all fully automatic, and never had a semi-automatic version. The terminology wouldn’t matter much, except that the “semi-automatic” tag gives a (small) advantage. Is this intended? Incidentally, the 40mm Bofors and 37mm Flak36, when placed in multiple mounts on larger warships are not listed as semi-automatic.

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