51 Reply by Marauder

(31 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Cool. There were lots of interesting battles without carriers in the Pacific. Some really good cruiser/destroyer battles without battleships thinking all the fun.

I think it would be great to do carriers in a different supplement. I think also to have carrier aircraft involved might require special scenarios. Sure you could just do straight up stats for carriers not including aircraft for those times when a carrier is caught by surprise, but to emulate WW2 carrier ops you really have to do something different than a straight up fight.

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52 Reply by Marauder

(31 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Are we going to see carriers?

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53 Reply by Marauder

(31 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

What time period is Awakened Giant?

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54 Reply by Marauder

(31 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Nice. I'm not sure what I like more. That they match the main rule book or the fact that there is three of them!

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55 Reply by Marauder

(31 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

I don't have a strong preference as to what order they get rolled out - chronologically?

-Tim

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56 Reply by Marauder

(2 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

That's not bad at all.  It does someone mitigate the possibility of rolling really badly (or really well) on the threshold damage checks.

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57 Reply by Marauder

(11 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Nice, what do you think the MSRP will be?

-Tim

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58 Reply by Marauder

(5 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

If you are looking for something in between print and cut out counters and actual minis - check out:

http://topsideminis.com/

These are high quality colour stickers on a wood backing.  Reasonable price and very little work required to commission the fleet!

Looks like they have Jutland on the horizon (hopefully to coincide with a GF3 supplement!).

-Tim

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59 Reply by Marauder

(2 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Carbs,

Just when a damage category is filled.  Note that "damaged" in that sentence refers to the first of the three damage categories.

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60 Reply by Marauder

(11 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Yes, very nice.

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61 Reply by Marauder

(11 replies, posted in News)

We just need some kind soul to do up an excel conversion sheet with all of the weapon stats preloaded in there  wink

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62 Reply by Marauder

(11 replies, posted in News)

Yay!!  big_smile

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63 Reply by Marauder

(5 replies, posted in Starmada)

@Sunwolf

As Cricket pointed out, there are tools (spreadsheets/online builder) already available for you to design ships which don't require you to have any knowledge of the actual design math.  Our group played a fairly large campaign with the previous version of Starmada, using only ships we had designed ourselves.  We just used the spreadsheets and nobody had to worry about what was in the construction rules in terms of calculations/math.  It was great.

-Tim

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64 Reply by Marauder

(6 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Same here. I like cover 2, for the ship image. I could deal with either color.

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65 Reply by Marauder

(19 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

The input is similar to GF2, but the stats and ship sheets are quite different. So new formulas and new design sheets are required.

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66 Reply by Marauder

(22 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

@Arrigo

Thanks for that info on the Deutschland class.  I hadn't read up much on the design of the ships.  I guess my point is that I'm surprised that the German's went that way with the class, given that in WW1 it was shown that the British BC's ended up being not such great ships, where as the German ones were.  I guess the problem wasn't so much with the British BC's, but the fact that they used them in the battleline.  I suspect that the WW2 germans probably did learn from this and made the Deutschland's small enough to never consider trying to go head to head with anything larger than a treaty cruiser.

Still I wonder how Graf Spee would have faired if she had had just 8" guns and a lot more armour?

@Dan

I know of I think 3 Naval games that have separate armour stats for turrets etc.:
-Station's Manned and Ready 2
-General Quarters 3
-Micronauts WW2

That being said, it is a lot of detail and very much linked to more complicated damage models than GF3.  I think this would have been something that you could have implemented into GF2 - but for GF3 it would likely have to be abstracted - say tied to the weapon damage rolls - perhaps something similar to Starmada Nova with the protected/weak systems.  If a ship has much heavier turret armour than its belt that weapon could count as "protected" (i.e. have less chance of losing boxes) etc.

Anyway, great cards.  A ship image would be cool on a larger card, but I understand that is a lot more work than just adding some colour.

-Tim

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67 Reply by Marauder

(22 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Great choice of preview cards!

Again, IMHO, one of the strengths of GF3 is to easily ascertain the strength of a ship by just glancing at its card.  10 dice AP 4 with long range at 26 makes it a very nasty cruiser offensively.. of course 1 armour is pretty miserable. 

On an aside the German Pocket battleships are quite the oddity.  In WWI, and later with the Scharnhorst class, German Battlecruisers were designed with more armour and less weaponry.  The Deutschland class resembles a design philosophy more similar to what the British employed in their WWI and interwar Battlecruisers.

Cricket, are you planning on doing any print runs for GF3 (or print on demand), or is this likely just a soft copy?  Shipping charges to Canada usually kill any notion I have of picking up a printed copy, but still curious. 

-Tim

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68 Reply by Marauder

(22 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

@Arrigo

I have also been very much looking forward to GF3 coming out.  I tried Victory at Sea, but it wasn't for me (not enough granularity overall is my feeling).  I actually liked Naval Thunder better, but there was a lot of little numbers, and didn't really feel satisfied with the way aircraft and subs were treated.

Not so long ago I picked up "Stations Manned and Ready 2".  Its quite good IMHO, but a touch more complicated than I think the rest of my group is interested in trying out.

GF3 really strikes a great balance with everything.  Can't wait to play and also to grind out some more ship stats!

-Tim

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69 Reply by Marauder

(22 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

A shame about the colour, but on the other hand when I do my own conversions, at least my cards won't look so bad compared to the "official" ones now  big_smile

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70 Reply by Marauder

(3 replies, posted in Starmada)

Ah, good point OldnGrey!  I had totally forgotten that damage to shields was not necessarily directly proportional.  For some ships a shield hit may not reduce the shields at all, and for others it may reduce shields by more than one point.

-Tim

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71 Reply by Marauder

(3 replies, posted in Starmada)

You use the faceted numbers (smaller) to determine if you penetrate the shields with the impact roll.  If you get through, you roll damage normally.  If "shields" are hit as part of the damage, you mark off how many were damaged on the large track.  Then roll the dice (one for each shield lost) to determine if this affects the shield you are facing or another of your choice (and quite possibly a mix of the two).

Note that its quite possible for damage to hit your ship but not reduce your current shield rating. These shields are different than in Star Fleet Battles/Federation Commander.  They block shots and only get reduced if the on ship equipment is damaged - as opposed to being big energy sponges in FC that literally soak up the damage until they can't anymore.

I don't think you *have* to use the larger shield track, but it might help to make sure your book-keeping is correct.

-Tim

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72 Reply by Marauder

(22 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

Just looking over some of the data cards that have been previewed, there are a few things I really like compared to other mini games of the same genre:

1) The cards are quite compact yet still clear to read.  It will be no problem to manage several ships without eating up a huge amount of table real estate.
2) If playing a "pickup" game - constructing fleets up to a given point value - its easy to compare ships.  The Speed, armour and relative firepower are all right there to see.  This is especially true for firepower where things like rate of fire/size of shell/number of guns has all been pre-calculated down to one number.  (Of course there is still relative AP of the guns to consider)
3) Little book keeping - other than the odd critical hit (which are tracked by counters on the table), all you have to keep track of his hull damage and degradation of speed/weapon systems.  Because of the way the damage is marked (from the left most box) there really is no thinking required to fire with damaged weapon batteries, as you still just read off the leftmost unmarked box.

Anyway, looking forward to GF3 when it comes out.

-Tim

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73 Topic by Marauder

(0 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

One hundred years ago today:

http://en.mercopress.com/2014/12/08/their-grave-is-the-sea-1914-naval-battles-coronel-and-falklands

I'm thinking about playing this one out using Castles of Steel, or possibly Grand Fleets 3, should it come out sometime soon!

-Tim

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74 Topic by Marauder

(1 replies, posted in Grand Fleets)

We played our first two games of Grand Admiral - Castles of Steel last night.  I decided to take things easy with a relatively small battle and played the "what if" Troubridge's Armoured Cruiser Squadron decided to engage Goeben and Breslau.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Goeben_and_Breslau

The UK force of Warrior, Defense, Black Prince and Duke of Edinburgh came in at 66VPs and the Germans at 40VPs.  Based on the points ratio and the actual situation, we went with the "Patrol" scenario.  UK would get VPs for sinking enemy ships.  Germany would also get VPs for sinking enemy ships, but after sinking one of the AC's, they would be allowed to retreat off their board edge and also receive VPs for getting the ships off the table.

In game one [sorry for no pictures  sad   ] Goeben advanced and managed to keep the AC's outside of range 3 for most of the game.  At this range Goeben could slowly wear down the ACs and take almost no damage herself.  The UK surrendered in the first game after losing 2 AC's and having a third crippled, with Breslau sunk but Goeben down only a point of damage.

Game two the Brits were more aggressive and managed to cross Goeben's T at range 2.  With Breslau at the bottom of the sea (again) and only one AC sunk, Goeben was heavily damaged with only one more point needed to cripple her.  With some luck of the cards Goeben was able to retreat off the table before the AC's could coordinate their fire again (i.e. I had both red face cards in my hand and held onto them for the entire turn). 

So in the end we agreed that Troubridge made the right call not to engage Goeben.  Goeben's guns cut through the AC's belt armour like hot knife through butter.  The AC's guns need to really close quickly onto Goeben to have any reasonable chance to get through her armour.  I think if we play this again we might let the UK at least score a draw if they can manage to cripple Goeben - because she would have had a lot of difficulty completing her journey crippled (to say the least).

First game took about half an hour as it was our first game - second one was only 20 minutes.  We will play something larger (maybe Dogger Bank) next game.

We really like the playing card game mechanic of Grand Admiral for the activation sequence.  Its a great way to reflect the difficulties of communication of the era, and makes for a really fun game too.  It also builds in a segmented movement system without the typical pain.

-Tim

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75 Reply by Marauder

(8 replies, posted in Starmada)

Personally I would make Torpedoes into Guided seeking weapons, and I would come up with a very short range/low damage/high rate of fire 360 weapon system to represent Point Defense.  That way you'd actually have to shoot down torps/fighters.

I'd think I might use ECM for ships that have active stealth type systems in FA.  You could also use the Nova "Stealth", but the only difference between it and ECM is that ECM can be damaged.

Another thing you could do, that could be interesting, is to have some sort of difference between DR and CR be a threshold to decide if the ship has "protected" systems or not.  In FA having a high CR really reduced the criticals, which is basically the same thing that "protected" systems have in Nova.

-Tim

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