Naval battles question

[david12345]

Wondering what you guys think. Just had a naval battle that makes no sense.

Japanese cruiser, (Furutaka) level 2 naval just whooped 2 USA Battleships (Washington and North Carolina by herself. None had enough experience to make the difference. All the ships had 10 strength and the USA ships had 10 supply, not sure about the Jap. cruiser. I hit the cruiser with both battleships and each battleship lost 4 strength. The cruiser lost a total of 4 from the two battleships. The cruiser ran, but I'm willing to bet it could have won the battle, or at least bagged a battleship. Give the cruiser level 3 naval and some experience, and she would have really killed them. The Furutaka had six 7.9 inch guns, the battleships each nine 16 inch guns. The armor, of course, favors the battleships by a great margin.

Ok, it's just a game, not perfect, but really? I think that in the real world, the Japanese cruiser probably could empty her magazines into one of these ships and not sink it, and that is assuming it was not firing back. Yes, the cruiser has torpedoes, but the only time I can think of one capital ship torpedoing another in WWII was the dead in the water Bismarck getting hit by the Dorsetshire.

Don't you think this should be tweaked?

[SeaMonkey]

Did you remember that IJN cruisers were fitted with tubes to fire long lance torpedoes and were quite adept at night surface engagements?

[david12345]

The only time I can think of a cruiser hitting a battleship with a torpedo was the already dead in the water Bismark..

[SeaMonkey]

Does that mean that a cruiser never fired a torpedo at a BB in WW2 or was incapable of?

[Nupremal]

That part is less concerning than the overall way naval battles work. They did not act very much like the way land units move and attack. It is also hard to duplicate how hard it is to spot naval formations in wide open seas. However, in this type of game, it would not be too easy to change the system. Perhaps some sort of system where you have regions and need to control ports or go on missions, that sort of thing, with damage occuring if there is a battle between fleets, may make more sense. I am not sure how that works with this type of system. The best I have seen, though not played, so I can't be sure, has been what they do for World in Flames.

[Big Al]

Deep sea zones and coastal zones tiles would be the way it could work. Seamonkey came out with an interesting idea that would work well with it. See the SC3 discussion.

Naval battles are very unpredictable due to the nature of naval battles. Look at when the Japs surprised the USA invasion force on the beaches of the Philippine islands. They should have killed them with the Yamato out there.

Can a cruiser kill a BB? Doubtful but possible. In the above mentioned battle a destroyer run got a real ugly torpedo hit on a Jap cruiser that sank it in one shot if I remember. DD vs CA and the DD won.

[david12345]

I'm not suggesting sea zones and all that, although they are one way of handling the problem (I remember them from Avalon Hill games). All I'm saying is that the strength of Battleships vs Cruisers should be tweaked to avoid battles like the one I had.

@ Seamonkey. Not saying it could never happen, just that it never did, and hence should not happen, except perhaps very rarely, in the game.

[Big Al]

Well Im not sure how the base scenario was designed but from playing it a single counter is not exactly 1 unit of cruisers or 10 cruisers. Its a mixed unit of 2 capital ships of the class + several CLs and DDs in the mix.

There was another situation during the battle in the solomons where a group of DDs wiped out a group of CAs in a night action.

[Big Al]

I came up with another thought when taking my son to trick or treat tonight. I wasnt even thinking of SC2 and the idea popped in my head.

Instead of making deep/coastal zones you could make ships in a move mode and a combat mode. Move mode is full movement and no interception of units along the way is possible. In other words you dont want to be found. Combat move is 1/2 or 2/3 move points and the idea is you are looking and searching for enemy ships. So perhaps the search radius is 2 tiles to run into someone.

Would work well with seamonkeys idea too.