Worklist for update 1.5

Scouting is now a remaining action.You get the cap of 2 flights no matter how the token is revealed. And you are correct, I should add some text allowing for you to reveal your own contact token in the scouting phase.
Good idea, I’ll check if this is possible
Kido Butai has been unchanged for a while now. It has always affected only one carrier.
Please give me more, the game would be improving so much faster if more people like you took the time to go through the rulebook to find stuff that is worded badly or missing. Many thanks!

Worklist:
- Correct small mistakes (done)
- Add carrier flight damage to damage effects table
- Reevaluate the accurate special rule
- Change Tone, Chikuma and Oyodo to hybrid carrier rules.
- Address TP boat issues
- Add to the scouting rules that a player can reveal his own group if he wishes. (done)

Regarding fleet flagship and orders, I feel either add an order for that or increase the officer. Flagship loss results in the same order loss.
Regarding additional dice for fires and flooding. In the past carrier battles there have been times where the target received 7 fires/floods. Being able to remove 2 or 3 might have saved the ship. But on the reverse you could still roll three 1s…
Regarding Crippled. Did I read it wrong in v1.4? To me once you have lost all your regular hull boxes you are by definition crippled?
Damage boxes. Makes sense now. For engines 3 hits equal disabled for everything else, except TT, requires 2. I must have missed the bit about which systems receive a hit.
Regarding the Dive bomber armour reduction. In my last game I dispatched the Japanese carriers and decided to pick on the Nagato. The issue was that the any dive bomber hits were saved on anything but a 1. Surely it should have a greater chance of a damaging hit? Hence the reduction, similar to plunging fire. I don’t feel this would hurt carriers as non armoured carriers only save on a 6 anyway?
Regarding group formation. I see now that being able to do both in one turn will work and makes sense.
Aircraft fuel. I get you rationale now. I have been playing on a 8ftx5ft surface so the limitations didn’t make sense. I think that stating Distant cover is a one shot deal. My feeling here is that some land based planes could reach a battle zone but at their maximum range. Close cover would be in range to perform multiple attacks in the same engagement. Maybe allow distant cover only 1 turn to initiate an attack, so 3 turns on table and close cover 4 turns?
Regarding Insignificant/torpedo boats. I agree that a similar format as aircraft would work, maybe reducing the number to 2 or 3? Regarding hits, what about restricting fire to calibers over x? 6 inch? And halving hits?
Regarding the loiter rule. I meant you don’t clarify loiter in the special rule section.
Regarding scouting. I think a little more clarification on the initial scouting phase vs. the scouting bonus for turns taking into account the new aircraft rules?
Kido Butai. In the 1.4 it says select a carrier, but you selected a carrier by activation So each activation you could try for a carrier

Hold on there...page 11 reads: A damage control roll is made for each fire or flooding marker. Alternatively you may try to repair one damaged system on your ship per turn.

You can only repair one damaged system, but you can try to negate all fire and flooding effects during the damage control action.

I agree that the wording was off, you didn't read it wrong. As written, the ship would only be crippled as soon as a red hullpoint is crossed off, which would result in some ships not having much of a crippled status. Just to be sure: you need to cross off the last solid hullpoint to sink a ship.

True, and I've incorporated the change. However, do not underestimate the resilience of battleships to bombs, most BB's could weather bombs pretty well, examples being Yamato, Hiei, Tirpitz, PoW and Repulse etc. They took quite some bomb hits, but usually torpedoes were needed to actually sink them. That's why the accurate trait allows for two hit location dice, it increases the chance for the bomber to hit the superstructure (where they cán do damage). A pwr 9 bomb cannot damage a armor 8 ship, because even a roll of 1 will be enough, so the change will increase the damage chances of bomber vs BB's a bit.

I've incorporated most of your idea's and suggestions and a new Rulebook file has been uploaded to the onedrive for you to check.

I'm going to opt for KISS in this instance. Differentiating the different kinds of cover would require bookkeeping on the table, and would needlessly complicate matters I think.
Again, KISS, I did up the lucky save of small craft to 4+, so you may want to give that one a try. Remember that also TP-boats can make evasive action reaction which would halve the hits.

I've added to the insignificant special rule that in some instances they can generate their own order tokens.
The loiter comment was a joke because I had uploaded a new rulebook version where I readded the rule just before you made your post
I'll look into this, the scouting bonus potentially comes into play in every scenario, whereas the scouting phase is an extra phase only in scenario's with hidden deployment.
Kido Butai now is a timed order, played in the preparations phase. So you could potentially play it multiple times targeting different carriers during the same phase, before aircraft are launched.

Again, thanks for all the feedback, I think the 1.5 version has improved a lot because of it.

I will defer to your judgment on the first two points. As I have mentioned I am going to run through the Tokyo Express battles next, see if my luck changes when there are no damn planes. There are 3 or 4 engagements that happened or could have that involved PTs alone facing Japanese forces and I will let you know how they play out.
I like your interp on the Kido rule allowing for each carrier to potentially use that order.
With the adjustment to give "accurate" the penetration bonus means that armour 8 ships will still save on 3+ for most sections 66% chance of saving, pretty decent chance. Wasn't a lot of the damage to the US fleet in Pearl caused by modified bombs?
Fires and Floods! Wow, I can't believe I missed that...… That makes a difference.
Got it on the crippled. Would it be worth considering switching some damage boxes for smaller ships so there is a chance that they would cripple before sinking? I know it may not be worth it as they would most likely get shot up enough to sink any way.

Thanks for letting me be a part of revising the rules and hearing out my thoughts and suggestions.

I read through the updated rule book after my last post...

I think my misunderstanding regarding the fire/flood rolls was the wording. "A damage control roll is made for each fire or flooding marker. In addition you may try to repair one damaged system on your ship per turn." This implied to me that you can only roll for a fire or a flood and I just thought that if you can only repair one system it followed that you could only do one fire or flood. Something like "roll for all fire and all floods"?

I just saw capsizing, I like it.

From the way it reads regarding when a ship is crippled it still implies that once the last black box is crossed the ship is crippled. I think that maybe this is the right way to go, taking into consideration the ships with only one red hull point.

Thank you for including my idea regarding reducing the armour. Might I suggest limiting it to aircraft with accurate rather than all bombers? Also the accurate special rules does not mention this and the armored flight deck does.

Thanks again for letting be part of this process.

I've updated the armored flight deck rule. I've purposely broadened the scope of the bomb rule to all bombers because the level bombers could do comparable damage 'if' they could manage to hit their targets. This is due to the altitude which gives the bomb a lot of momentum. The examples are plenty:

- Arizona was hit by a level bomber carrying a converted 16" shell
- Scharnhorst was severly damaged at la pallice, france:
"The 15 Halifaxes attacked Scharnhorst at her moorings. They scored five hits in an almost straight line on the starboard side, parallel to the centerline. Three of the bombs were 454 kg (1,001 lb) armor-piercing bombs, and the other two were 227 kg (500 lb) high-explosive bombs.[32] One of the 227 kg bombs hit the deck just forward of the starboard 15 cm twin turret next to the conning tower. It passed through the upper and middle decks before exploding on the main armored deck, which contained the blast. The joints with the torpedo bulkhead were weakened enough to cause leaking. The second 227 kg bomb fell forward of the rear main battery turret and penetrated the first two decks. It also exploded on the armored deck and tore a small hole in it. The explosion caused splinter damage and disabled the ammunition hoists for the 37 mm anti-aircraft guns.

Two of the 454 kg bombs hit amidships between the 15 cm and 10.5 cm gun turrets; both failed to explode and penetrated the ship completely. The first went through each deck and exited the ship through the double bottom, while the other was deflected by the torpedo bulkhead and penetrated the hull beneath the side belt armor. The third 454 kg bomb hit aft of the rear 28 cm turret, about 3 m (9.8 ft) from the side of the ship. It too failed to detonate, and passed through the side of the hull, which was not protected by the main armor belt. These three hits caused significant flooding and caused an 8 degree list to starboard. The forward and rear gun turrets were temporarily disabled, along with half of her anti-aircraft battery." Source: Wiki
- Tirpitz was sunk by level bombers.
- Prince of Wales and Repulse took damage from level bombers:
"Prince of Wales was now under power by only one propeller shaft but was still able to fire at a high-level bombing attack which developed at 1241 hours, although only with S1 and S2 5.25 inch turrets. Although most of the bombs straddled her, one bomb penetrated her deck amidships. This bomb penetrated the upper deck and exploded amongst the wounded gathered in the Cinema Flat beneath, causing extensive casualties."

More sources indicate that level bombing could be very damaging if they would hit, which they ofcourse, very rarely did.

Seeing as I am running Guadalcanal/Tokyo Express games, which are night games, I came up with one idea about adding searchlights disabled to the first box of hit location 5. This would mean adding a searchlight hit location to the data cards in order to keep track. Thoughts?
Regarding starshells. Is the 10cm a radius or diameter from the target point?
I noticed you also added the aircraft flights destroyed description to the magazine hit location. I feel this is not necessary as a magazine is a magazine whether it is for guns or aircraft munitions. What about randomizing the possibility of taking out either a weapon system or the air group weapons so the carrier cannot reload/refuel any further aircraft?
One thing that I feel would be really useful would be adding page number references on to the QRS.
When rolling for close/distant cover are individual squadrons/aircraft/aircraft groups rolled for or is it one roll for all? Need to clarify under that section.
I have asked this before, but is it possible to have more squadrons in your force than the rating of your officer. I feel this should be yes, but you can only generate tokens for squadrons to the max of the officer.
In the new QRS under generate tokens there is a typo in the first section and it should read “Each squadron lead by a flagship, with one ‘large’ or”
The bottom of the US Navy standard com station, adapted tactics, the description is not complete and is cut off.
Have you thought about adding an index?
Getting rid of scouting means you need to redo the aircraft data card on page 5.
What is the shadowing range for ships at night?
Add into the preparation phase that even if the officer/fleet flagship is not on the table that you still get all his abilities and tokens.
Add to page 6 & 10 that if fleet flagship is lost then all officer bonuses are lost.
In games with hidden deployment a clarification on when and how you can voluntarily reveal your squadrons should be made.

Great feedback! I'm currently on holiday but I will deal with these issues once I get back.