Aircraft queries – shooting with and at

[Andy Watkins]

Played a couple of games without aircraft, going ok

Decided to try a solo carrier game to see what happened

I ran into a lot of questions I could not find the answer to

1)   Dogfighting – I believe both sides are just rolling 1D6 so a 1944 Japanese Zero with +3 and a Corsair with a +4 dogfight will result in a lot of dead Zeros?

If the Corsairs were able to intercept dive bombers, torpedo bombers of Kamikaze’s before they got into contact with their target ships presumably the +++ is so high you would probably lose 100% of the dive bombers, torpedo bombers etc.

Is tht correct?  Has anyone tried 2D6 or a D10 and the dogfighting ability?

 

2)   LOCAL AA – Rules say you fire during movement against aircraft touching the ship and any that fly over it.  IF 5 aircraft flights end up touching a cruiser do you roll the LOCAL dice once or do you roll it once for each and every flight touching the ship.  e.g. if you were LOCAL 2 with 5 flights touching would you roll 2D6 or 10D6

3)  At the beginning of the gunnery phase you fire all AA batteries, i THINK you only fire the AA batteries that have a number of AD dice listed?  Many AA have no AD dice listed just LOCAL.  Do these fire again at the beginning of the gunnery phase or only those that have AD dice?  I think it is only the ones with AD dice.

If as above you have 5 enemy flights in contact, you fire your LOCAL at the end of movement, and your AA has 2AD as well as LOCAL would you fire the 2AD even though that ship had fired in the LOCAL phase at the end of movement?

 

4)  Torpedo bombers  –  I believe they hit on a 5+ end of story. then 3DD or so per hit, devastating, as they are torpedo’s take into consideration the torpedo belt?

5)  Dive Bombers  –  I think all dive bombers are devastating. I THINK if the target as an armoured deck you reduce your die roll by 1. Would I be correct in assuming that means a roll of 1 to 6 will do 0 to 5 damage? and you would only get a critical on a 6 rather than a 5 or 6?  I don’t think torpedo belts affect the critical number so perhaps armoured decks do not either?

6) Kamikaze – these really confused me, so they hit on a 4+ and reroll if they miss?  If they hit though what damage do they do? Do they have to roll against the armour value of the ship, do they have a + or – AP value or do they do something completely different.  As they are not devastating do they only do 1 point of damage per hit with a 50% chance of a critical if you roll a 6?  That seems pretty feeble so I think I have missed something.

I hd a quicky go with a 2,000 point fleet including 2 fleet carriers per side.  The americans fielded 16 corsair fighters which shot down ALL the zeroes for the loss of 4 flights after 2 rounds of dogfighting.

I also had about 16 helldiver dive bombers and about 14 torpedo bombers.  This resulted in about 6-7 flights placed against each of the cruisers and capital ships in the enemy fleet. Result of this was almost the entire fleet was sunk with just round of combat. Suspect I did something wrong?

Any answers you can give me will be very greatly appreciated as I can’t work out what was intended with aircraft

 

[Enioch]

I am really sorry but, before everything else, you must understand that a lot of my replies are just an interpretation of the rules (my interpretation, and the interpretation of other community members). In general, the rulebook is very vague about some of this stuff, and the recent Warlord FAQ / Errata document did not help with figuring out what the exact rules are. I’ll do my best:

1) Dogfighting – I believe both sides are just rolling 1D6 so a 1944 Japanese Zero with +3 and a Corsair with a +4 dogfight will result in a lot of dead Zeros?

If the Corsairs were able to intercept dive bombers, torpedo bombers of Kamikaze’s before they got into contact with their target ships presumably the +++ is so high you would probably lose 100% of the dive bombers, torpedo bombers etc.

Is tht correct? Has anyone tried 2D6 or a D10 and the dogfighting ability?

Correct. Fighters rip unescorted bombers to pieces. In addition, Dogfighting ‘pins’ both flights at their current location and each player rolls 1d6 for each pair of touching planes. Remember that you can assign planes (not just fighters!) to support a friendly fighter in a dogfight. In your example, you can set a Kate bomber touching the Zero’s base and, as long as no enemy plane touches the Kate, the Zero gets an additional +1 to its dogfight roll.

2) LOCAL AA – Rules say you fire during movement against aircraft touching the ship and any that fly over it. IF 5 aircraft flights end up touching a cruiser do you roll the LOCAL dice once or do you roll it once for each and every flight touching the ship. e.g. if you were LOCAL 2 with 5 flights touching would you roll 2D6 or 10D6

Local AA fires during the movement phase when (and every time) a plane flies over your ship, not when it touches your base. It also fires in the AA phase, against any planes touching your ship.

So, assuming you have a DD with Local AA 1 between a friendly BB and 4 incoming enemy flights: 3 TBs and 1 DB.

The TBs fly over the DD to reach the BB. In this case, the DD fires its Local AA of 1 three times, once against each TB.

The DB instead moves in base contact with the DD. The DD does not fire its Local during the movement phase, because the enemy plane did not overfly it. Instead, it can assign its Local AA dice to the attacking DB during the AA phase.

3) At the beginning of the gunnery phase you fire all AA batteries, i THINK you only fire the AA batteries that have a number of AD dice listed? Many AA have no AD dice listed just LOCAL. Do these fire again at the beginning of the gunnery phase or only those that have AD dice? I think it is only the ones with AD dice.

In the AA phase, the strict reading of Warlord rules + FAQ indicate that AA Batteries roll their Attack Dice AND Local dice.

If as above you have 5 enemy flights in contact, you fire your LOCAL at the end of movement, and your AA has 2AD as well as LOCAL would you fire the 2AD even though that ship had fired in the LOCAL phase at the end of movement?

Yes. Local fires once for every overflying plane during movement (but NOT if the plane just touches your base, ONLY if it overflies) and once as part of your AA dice pool during the AA phase (this time engaging planes that have just come into base contact).

4) Torpedo bombers – I believe they hit on a 5+ end of story. then 3DD or so per hit, devastating, as they are torpedo’s take into consideration the torpedo belt?

Correct. Note that strict reading of warlord rules indicate that TBs dropping torps into the front or aft arc of the ship circumvent the torpedo belt

5) Dive Bombers – I think all dive bombers are devastating. I THINK if the target as an armoured deck you reduce your die roll by 1. Would I be correct in assuming that means a roll of 1 to 6 will do 0 to 5 damage? and you would only get a critical on a 6 rather than a 5 or 6? I don’t think torpedo belts affect the critical number so perhaps armoured decks do not either?

This is one of the most hotly debated issues about DBs and there has been no consensus so far, with Warlord not making a statement yet.

This is what we know:

• DBs are devastating
• The HP damage they do is reduced by 1 if the target has Armored Deck

This is what we do not know:

• Whether the critical score is affected by Armored Deck or not. The strict reading of Warlord Rules indicates that Armored Deck does in fact affect chance of critical (i.e. vs an Armored Deck, DBs only score potential crits on a nat 6), as Devastating Critical chance is explicitly not affected ONLY by torpedo belts (and not AD). Warlord needs to confirm this, one way or another, and they have not.

6) Kamikaze – these really confused me, so they hit on a 4+ and reroll if they miss? If they hit though what damage do they do? Do they have to roll against the armour value of the ship, do they have a + or – AP value or do they do something completely different. As they are not devastating do they only do 1 point of damage per hit with a 50% chance of a critical if you roll a 6? That seems pretty feeble so I think I have missed something.

Essentially yes, this is exactly right. Note, however, that if Kamikazes score a single point of damage, they force an immediate worsening of the ship’s crew critical score by 1. Two successful Kamikaze strikes vs a carrier guarantee an escalating fire in Crew, and thus put the CV out of commission until the fire is extinguished.

In general, please keep in mind that Warlord Points are abhorrently imbalanced, and USN CVs / airstrikes / planes benefit massively compared to other fleets. Take this into account if you’re looking for a balanced fight and either ignore points altogether or use a custom point system (including the most recent SHIPS version for your perusal, as it massively rebalances CV and plane scoring).

Attachments:

1. 

   SHIPS_1.3.0_Notes.pdf
   

2. 

   SHIPS_1.3.0_Tables.pdf
   

[Nat]

@enoich – Only thing I’d say is when talking about dogfight rules use flights not planes so as not to add any confusion about the aircraft X trait supplying observer planes.  Otherwise yeah I agree with it all!

 

[leopard]

Q: local AA fires at aircraft that pass over the ship in question.. does this mean pass over:

1. the bridge, from where all other measurements are made – i.e. the single pin point location the ship is considered to be at
2. the actual model of the ship itself, which isn’t used for any other purpose
3. the base of the model, which also isn’t used for other purposes

asking as by the reading of the rest of the rules it should be “1”, which in effect means local AA only fires when the ship moves under the aircraft as its trivial to go slightly to the sides to avoid this.

the reasonably obvious solution is to give “local” AA an actual range, say 1″ and do away with the issue entirely – so you have a “small” 2 inch bubble in which the ship can fire at passing aircraft.

using the actual model or the base seems to go against the actual principle of measurement in the game that its all to and from the bridge and giving a range allows escorts to screen the thing they are escorting to a level

[Nat]

hi Leopard,

1) local AA is unusual in that it uses the model as range… this is taken to mean the base as well as they are one piece
2)see 1
3) the other use of the base is to tell when flights & MTBS are in range to attack

please note local only works when the flights move NOT the ship… so sailing ‘under’ a flight doesnt trigger local AA

[leopard]

must have been a seriously amazing flak gun design to be able to fire further along the length of the ship than across its width…

thats practically needing a white cat & diamond collar level of ingenuity

using the base for this sort of thing, when literally everything else ignores the base, is somewhat unfortunate.

doesn’t “feel right” that say a small destroyer “Local: 1” alongside, as in right alongside, say a battleship with “Local: 10” is both close enough to block a dive bomber striking the battleship while at the same time too far away for the flak the battleship is presumably putting up to have any effect  – especially when the larger DP flak guns have quite considerable range, just a curious omission, give “local” a range (say 2″?) and then say you can always fire at something attacking you directly – also as a side effect makes it quite easy to then allow the AA battery to also fire at MTB that stray too close

[Nat]

The AD doesn’t equate directly to 1:1 for AA…

Its an approximation of effectiveness

Somethings lean towards gameplay and others to simulation… I like this game as an into level game to the world of ww2 historical naval gaming…if you catch my drift

[leopard]

for sure as an intro, I moved on reasonably quickly to another game I won’t mention here thats closer to a simulation, that said that does bog down quite quickly in larger games.

Almost needs two sets of air rules, the “abstract” set for games with combined ops where airpower is a boost for a fleet but not the focus, and a more detailed version for stuff like Midway carrier strikes

[Bob]

Morning,

two questions,

1) a clarification about shooting at airplan when pass over a ship, during a moving phase the ship route of the other player pass under my plane, he ask me if their AA and DP guns can shoot at the airplan like  the plane pass over the ship.

Two people said no, one yes.

Who is right?

2) we didn’t able to find explanation for traits for Boing B-17D Flying fortress.

Level bomber what means? Has it rule in the play?

Heavy, is it like the heavy weapon or has another meaning?

[Nat]

@bob

1) only local X trait can be used in the movement phase at FLIGHTS crossing a ships model (including the base – as this is the range for local in the gunnery phase). If a ship sails under the flight then it doesn’t meet the rules requirement to fire… basically local works in the flights movement step only not the ships movement step – so the 2 players who said no where correct!

2)the level bomber rule….it allows the flight to ignore defensive measure like barrage balloons (pg- 59) -that’s it!  However a house rule is for level bomber to be immune to local X trait AD but only hit ground targets on a 6

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Nat.

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