[Mark Robins]

Thanks Laurence,

Sorry if the rules were not as clear as I would have liked.  The term “Spotting Brackets” refers to the fourth column in my first table headed “Roll for Base Visibility” which is applied after the Base Visibility determined by the third column of that table.  I will try to tidy that terminology up when I have some more time..

I have not used Mine Fields in my games so far and have not given the topic huge thought. You do, however, make a very important point.  A major function of the S-Boats was to lay mines, which topic is touched on in Osprey’s “German E-Boats 1939-1945” and much more fully developed in the excellent book “Hitler’s Lost Flotillas” which details the mine laying and sweeping function of the various Kriegsmarine security vessels.

I would be interested in your thoughts or others more expert in this area than me, but it seems to me that contact type mines or floating mines should be reasonably visible to an Average or Veteran Crew up to Combat Speed in decent visibility conditions.

Proximity or magnetic mines would be a much more difficult thing to ‘spot’ however in terms of the scale of our game. My own instinct would be to treat contact mines or floating (as opposed to submerged anchored) proximity mines as a small stationary vessel for detection purposes.

A submerged anchored proximity mine would be much hard to detect by a vessel moving at anything above Slow Speed, but they should pose little threat to a vessel of Medium or smaller size in terms of the scale of our game. I would be inclined to  shift the base visibility level down one  level and impose a -1 modifier to any spotting skill checks for these types of mines.

I can already see some great scenario ideas for a force of S-Boats or MTB’s trying to lead a squadron of larger enemy ships into a mine field!

 

cheers

Mark

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by Mark Robins.

[Mark Robins]

Mike the concept of the variable visibility conditions at the start of each turn, generated by a positive and a minus 1d3 roll with the result multiplied by 10cm to modify the base visibility shift, works this way: if I roll a 2 on the positive 1d3 and a 1 on the negative 1d3, I get a net +1, which improves the base visibility for that turn by +10cm. So if the battle was in Full Moon conditions, base visibility for that turn would be <60cm.

This concept seeks to reflect atmospheric effects such as shifting clouds, thinning/thickening sea mist, changing levels of phosphorescence in the sea etc. In game mechanic terms I also did not want players to be able to try to set up situations for the next turn by relying on fixed predictable visibility distances from turn to turn. As you will have read in “Battle of the Narrow Seas”, night actions at sea were anything but predictable, to the contrary they were wildly chaotic.

[Mark Robins]

Thanks Chris – those rules were fairly skeletal and basic to my mind. Given the frequency and importance of night actions at this scale for these types of vessels, I felt something more substantial was necessary.

cheers
Mark

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