Japanese torpedoes stupidly OP? Discussion welcome.

[Aidan]

Hello fellow gamers,

This year I bought the Victory at Sea:Pacific starter set, and at first I thought the Americans had the advantage with 9 ships versus 6. However, after a few games I realized that despite their numerical advantage, it was really, really, hard to win against the IJN. They could just spam their torps from their cruisers and destroyers at unbelievable distances, while the U.S. player frantically played keep away trying to shoot at the IJN ships without getting close. Am I doing something wrong, or missing a good U.S. playstyle?

Also one thought is that, is it meant to reflect how most American ships lost in the Guadalcanal campaign were from torpedoes? now I know the Type 93 was a good torpedo, but you would thing it would not be represented in game as being a newb spam weapon with more range than most destroyer guns.

Opinions/comments anyone?

[Aidan]

Or maybe I am just really bad at playing the USN, does anyone have any tips?

[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 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.

[Aidan]

Ah ok, glad that it’s not just me then. When it reached the point where a 10-year old spammed my fleet with torps and I lost in 3 turns, I started to have doubts about my abilities.

Thank you, it looks like I’ll be 3d printing some aircraft carriers and Atlanta class cruisers, and using more Fletchers.

I wish that the starter set maybe included at least one CL per side, to give the fleets more variety and protection against DDs.

Yeah I agree, there’s got to be other people like me who are getting destroyed by Type 93s because they don’t have any way to counter them.

Thanks Enioch!

[invisible officer]

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.

[Aidan]

Oh ok, that’s an interesting perspective that I never considered, thanks.

Yeah that makes more sense, although my “USS Indianapolis 1944” is still getting it’s stern handed to it by a 50 point “Fubuki”.

So I guess my best bet to still play historical, because I do like naval history, but balance it out a bit, because I play games to have fun, is to bring a ton of planes as Enioch said.

[Thomas Solway]

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.

[Nat]

side note … do look in the ‘news from the wardroom’ as it was worked out that the starter set is NOT designed to have all the ships on the table at the same time.  But rather give you the ships to do the 3 levels of priority as fleet can have (pg 21 in the starter booklet)

[Aidan]

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.

Thank you very much, I didn’t even think of that. Yeah I’m thinking maybe I should work on positioning first then move on to aircraft. Because bringing me a carrier won’t do any good if I get it sunk in 2 turns. Maybe I was having trouble before because of the playing area size? Due to space limitations, I would just usually set up one mat, basically a torpedo heaven playing field.

[Aidan]

side note … do look in the ‘news from the wardroom’ as it was worked out that the starter set is NOT designed to have all the ships on the table at the same time.  But rather give you the ships to do the 3 levels of priority as fleet can have (pg 21 in the starter booklet)

Thanks Nat, your a lifesaver. I figured out that I am not good at navigating the forum, so I think I’ll just hunker down in the ‘news from the wardroom’ for a while lol. It’s a treasure trove of information.

That’s awesome, usually I just built fleets using points values alone. I copied and pasted the 3 levels of priority list. But what is it based off of? What do the ‘priorities’ mean? I read the starter booklet cover-to-cover a few months ago, but I don’t have it with me right now. And now that I look at the priorities list, I realize that I didn’t bring enough destroyers before.

[Nat]

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 5 months, 3 weeks ago by Nat.

[Aidan]

Ohhhhh I see, that makes sense thanks.

Yeah I noticed that the points were all over the place.

That’s good to know, because I eventually want to get some carriers 3d printed.

Yeah terrain sounds fun, it would be more of a “world of warships” arcade vibe, but being able to limp your damaged destroyer behind cover to save it would be handy. And there were a few battles like Guadalcanal where there were reefs and islands, so it would be historical.

Yeah noticed the whole ship scale thing. I was trying to maneuver my DD within torpedo range of my friend’s Japanese cruiser and with America’s cr*p  torpedoes, for short range I needed to be within 3″ (bridge to bridge). Well with the large bases that the ships are on and their size itself, I had to position my DD ON TOP of his cruiser to get within range.

Huh I never heard about the re-rolling torps thing, I’ll have to look it up.

37 flights?!?!?!? My word. That would be when I invest in AA upgrades as your opponent.

 

[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

[Aidan]

Oh ok, thanks.

Nice I’ll have to play with that from now on. Because trying to maneuver to get a close to the bridge as possible, even though you are a half inch from the base kind of breaks the immersion.

[Author]

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