Enioch

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…[Read more]

Yubari is amazing and probably the best of the IJN’s ultralight cruisers (although the others are also very good and frequently underestimated).

7″ Agile move with 2+ armor and light guns makes her an utter terror as a DD leader / killer. Also, she can be followed by 2-3 Long Lance destroyers for a torpedo run on enemy capitals and suffer the…[Read more]

1) If I’m trying to hit a Ship e.g. with the Prinz Eugen with Torpedos at extreme Range (10″ only) I have to roll a impossible 8+ (4 + ‘2’ (extreme Range) + ‘2’ (Torpedo Attack))

So I only get a slight chance to hit if I fire at short Range (5″) by rolling a 6+ (4 + ‘2’ (Torpedo Attack))

Correct?

Yes.

2) In the FAQ is stated that Torpedos can…

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As this reads it is independent of the enemy’s scouting effort – although both sides might claim the same benefit?

Correct

So if I have 3 destroyers off scouting, that’s 3x d6, say I roll a 3, 5, 6 – so I have two scouting points.

Correct

It makes no difference if the enemy has 0 scouts or 10 to my efforts.

Correct

How can scouts mask your own fle…

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If your DP operates as a normal AA gun, most of the AA problems disappear.

You’ve just sprinted your airplanes into the enemy formation to snipe the BB? Say hello to its 5 DD escorts within 9 inches that contribute with an extra 10 DP dice before you can activate your plane attack (and its own Local / dedicated AA).

But now, DP is essentially…[Read more]

that still leaves the question of can you shoot between the smoke template and the bridge of the ship laying it?

Rules as written say “Yes”. Only the smoke token blocks vision, not the ship model.

Not seen the changes to DP guns

Back in the day, most people assumed that DP guns fired with the rest of the AA, after movement and before gunnery.

This is not the case, as the FAQ specified.

DP guns can only engage air targets in the gunnery phase. This means that an incoming airstrike can activate before you get the chance to fire your DP guns…[Read more]

Assuming you have a Fubuki with Long Lances, and that you would normally launch torpedoes at a 6-to-hit range (which you shouldn’t, you should be getting closer for a 5+ or a 4+), with a fan salvo you’re rolling 1 x 6-to-hit for a random target instead of 9 x 6-to-hit against a target of your choice.

Fan salvoes can hurt if you build your fleet…[Read more]

Given that the Warlord FAQ eviscerated DP guns, body-blocking is currently the only way escorts can effectively defend larger ships. Yes, it’s gamey, but unless you’re willing to homerule more effective long-range AA, there’s gotta be some way for escorts to…well, escort.

Which without body blocking, they would currently be 100% unable to do.

@Nat he means fan salvo, not normal over the horizon shot.

And yes, it’s bullshit on the receiving end; but it is also a significant risk on the IJN’s end as well, as it removes a significant part of their torpedo armament for relatively limited success chances, especially if your ships don’t have reloads (e.g. Fubukis)

@leopard

There has been no official response from Warlord on this question, but Matt has answered it unofficially:

https://www.dakkadakka. com/dakkaforum/posts/list/120/786189.page#11002068 (remove the blank space)

Aft of the base. Just pop it behind the ship, nothing complicated should be considered here or, indeed, in any part of the rules -…

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Based on rules as written, carrier flights cannot be used for scouting.

*If* you are using homerules that allow for carrier-based scouting, you typically “burn” any flights used for scouting and use the remaining flights for the game. In this instance, if you had a carrier with a total of 10 flights and sent out 3 to scout, but only got 7 points,…[Read more]

And yes, it would not surprise me if USN players would prefer Warlord points. Like I said, they’re hilariously (or tragically, depending on your point of view, I suppose) broken.

Taking your questions in ascending order of the “patch” versions. Note that these are CHANGELOG notes (i.e. they document how the SHIPS mod has changed through different versions). Most of them only make sense if you’ve followed development from the beginning and wonder about things like “Why has thing X changed when we went from version 0.8.5 …[Read more]

@Eric Kingsley
You will find that SHIPS provides essentially exactly that: a system to pay for your CV flights with a discount compared to Land-based air. And fixes surface ship point imbalances as well.
Docs are posted above.

My KGV’s have gone up as well 🙁

It’s just a little 10% bump in price to justify their excellent armor, torpedo defense and AA. If you want to see massive hikes in prices (that are absolutely justified), look at USN ships, and especially their slow BBs.

Before I opened that PDF I was half expecting a shed load of stat changes in which case I p…

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Here is SHIPS (Statistically Harmonized Indexed Points System) developed by myself with the help of other members of the VaS community Discord.

I’m attaching version 1.3.0 – I have version 1.4.0 in the works but on hiatus because I was waiting for Warlord to do something before I wasted any more of my time. After the second FAQ / errata doc was…[Read more]

@Mick

Let me be as clear as possible: the Warlord-published points lists are garbage.

Going by Warlord points, the supremacy of USN carriers is crushing during any and all time periods, especially if you use a dive-bomber heavy loadout. It’s so imbalanced it’s not even funny. From 1944 onwards there is nothing any of the other nations can bring…[Read more]

If you are playing a pickup game taking place in year X (you have to agree on what date that is with your opponent, to determine availability of national rules such as VT fuzes and functioning USN torpedoes), you can deploy any ship that was commissioned before or during year X – and you see that in the commissioning date field in the data…[Read more]

You never go by the model. The model is a placeholder. The reason it has a date on it is because ships get refits and their appearance changes – the model is accurate to how that ship would look at the date mentioned on the model.

In a battle, models can be used to depict the ship at any point during its lifetime. If you have a battle taking…[Read more]