Rules 1.5 beta: overpowered defenders in air battles

The biggest challenge with Naval War is that you are never working in a vacuum. Every balance change needs to work in all game modes. So if we change CAP rules, they not only need to work in carrier vs carrier battles, but also in other modes like surface fleet vs surface fleet battles with limited carrier or land-based support. Or in carrier vs surface fleet battles.

Most surface fleets only have limited options for air cover. If your air cover is land-based, and you have only 1-3 flights to keep up CAP over your fleet, it’s a bit sour that there is a 17% chance that even your one CAP flight will not be able to engage the enemy. So we need to keep an eye on the bigger picture. Still, not being able to find the opponent was a very likely occurrence in a lot of engagements so it is historical to have an off-chance to evade a small CAP.

1. There actually never was a CAP designation in the last version. All flights that did not yet activate (or launch) this turn were considered to be patrolling, we could easily reinstate that. I like the Scramble! command station order because it adds interaction and flavor to carrier battles. (In 1.4, carrier battles were the least exiting because everything was pretty predictable. I think we came a long way now in fixing that)
2. I think that sending them home is a bit too harsh, they will eat at your launch/land CAP and you have very little to see for it. Another point is important here, and that is if there are repeated air strikes within the same turn. Before, you would probably exhaust the CAP at the first attack unless a player intentionally held some flights back. Now, there might be unengaged CAP flights left after the first attack that might be able to assist in defending against a second or third strike. I really like this side-effect.
Then remains how to keep flights from joining a counterstrike? Well, I see some options here:
- Your suggestion to consider the flights to have moved, so they cannot make another air move this turn. Clean and simple
- We could make them equal to scouting aircraft, i.e. that they cannot join an air attack in the turn after they have been assigned to patrolling duty. This will still allow them to move though, so you can send them off towards the enemy.
- We could have any flights that have failed to intercept spend one extra fuel. Those that did intercept must head home anyway, and it is no stretch to have spent extra fuel to find the enemy. This will reduce their fuel levels so it will be more difficult for them to be of any value to an air strike. This might prove problematic for flights that have been launched with 1 fuel with the Scramble! order or flights that are at the end of their fuel when they (fail to) intercept. Hmmm, scratch that idea…
3. Small groups were more often intercepted, with the exception of loners who sometimes evaded detection. I do want to point out that you are reasoning from a max-cap perspective. If there are only 2 flights patrolling, even a small group may come through with these changes. Before all the changes to patrolling aircraft, the intercept chance was 100% up until now.

4. The 8-flight limit has several reasons:
- History; The Japanese had a preference for gathering up their airgroups before setting out in very large attack waves, sometimes containing planes of up to 6 carriers (at pearl harbor). So it is desirable to have the option of combining flights of multiple carriers, or a big and a small carrier for instance.
- Options; Having a small carrier launch 3 flights of its own to attack is pretty pointless, where joining the bigger group has loads of advantages. You might want to have a scouting plane join the group or some flights from off-table air support. There are many reasons to want to combine multiple small groups into a larger group.
- Balance; Allowing for unlimited size groups stretches the capabilities of the game. AA is not suited to take on very large groups, neither is a CAP capable of taking on an airgroup of 15+ flights. If groups are capped too small, AA will become overly effective; with even an average carrier group with 2 escorts will already yield you 16+ AA dice.
- History again; Although it was ideal to combine all your aircraft in one attack wave, most of the time smaller waves were formed because in a carrier-battle (opposed to a land-attack) you want the element of speed. Waiting till all planes were formed up was just not an option, so carriers could launch up to 3 smaller waves, combining them with the waves of other carriers if possible.

All the above led me to cap air groups at 8 flights. This was calculated based on 2 CAP 6 carriers each launching 4 flights and keeping some room for CAP operations. This is just arbitrary, so a cap of 9 could even be considered. Anything above that would jeopardize the balance of the game, lower than that would severely hamper your available options.

I've uploaded a 1.5.05 version of the rulebook with the above changes (using your rule at point 2) to try out.

Ow, and for now, use the First Strike order with a changed Critical failure effect. On critical failure, just fail the order, nothing else happens.

I have not regenerated the cards yet, I will as soon as I have some spare time. I'm also considering adding 'Press the attack' to both the Royal Navy and the IJN or even make it an 'any navy' order. It is not a very unique order in that bombers from all navies would sometimes weather severe AA fire up to the point of destruction to finish their attack. It was a matter of no room on the other command stations.

We played a few 2 vs 2 carrier mini-battles with version 1.5.05. The mechanics under average rolls worked more-or-less okay, but there were too many cases where non-average rolls caused very distorted results, such as 6 CAP flights or none. This was a bit annoying. Also, with the average 3-flight CAP even 8-flight group attacks were not very dangerous. 3-4 flights remained to attack after interception which after AA+Evasion translated into very-very few hits. Plus the attackers normally lost around 1/3 of their flights. Maybe it's just us, but it also felt a bit sluggish to play, somehow the game flow did not feel natural (remembering/noting which flight can do CAP, different fuels when Scrambling, too many dice rolls when intercepting, etc). Just felt overly complicated.

So, we tried to simplify it without compromising the main principles (weaker CAP, moving dynamics, etc). Here is how it turned out.

The basic idea is that all flights in the air who have not moved or attacked this turn are eligible for interception (they must be in range, of course). So even if they were launched this turn, they are already eligible for interception. The trick is that actual interception is limited to max 2 flights (I know, hard cap again . But couldn't think of a better, simple soft cap). As I read your historical data about CAPs again, max 2 flights seem realistic. This way of intercepting eliminates the need for CAP activation in the preparation phase. Also it does not allow defenders to become too strong in the following the turns.

Order changes:
"Scramble the CAP" and "First Strike" as defined in version 1.5.05 were removed. Two activations/orders were used instead:
"Air Strike Run" or something like that: played instead of an attack activation. Air group moves AND attacks. Equivalent to "Torpedo Run", so easy to remember. For us it is more natural then moving (and scrambling) in the prep phase. Main reason for this is that we do not want defenders to intercept twice (after having moved once and during attack for the second time). Also allows the attacker to chose his timing when he wants to attack, so defender has to be ready each turn.
"Intercept" or something like that: reaction order to enemy attack or move. Critical fail: no interception. Basic failure: 1 eligible flight is allowed intercept. Success: 2 eligible flights are allowed intercept. (numbers can be tweaked for balance, of course). Of course, it is not necessary for this to be an order. Alternatively, just say d3 (or more precisely d3-1) flights can intercept.

Additional smaller rules we used (optional, needs of further testing):
When a carrier is revealed it can have 1 or 2 flights in the air (player's choice). Those flights MUST land in the coming preparations phase. We introduced this to make it worth trying to shoot down the scout and also to reduce the land/launch capacity in the turn the defender was revealed. I really hate when the revealed side does not try to shoot down the scout(s)
Carriers cannot launch/land if they did an evasive maneuver last turn. I think this is how it actually worked in real life. Sounds like too harsh at first, but seemed to work as this prevents the defender to build up his counter attacking force while being under serious attack. The reason it did not turn out to be harsh is that the defender has enough capacity to launch enough interceptors in the prep phase when he was revealed. There is no special fuel for CAP mission, so all flights can spend a few turns in the air to defend. With the cap of max 2 interceptions per attack/move he can use his 4-5 flights launched in the turn it was revealed for interception in consequent attacks and turns.

I have to admit, I do not know how this affects other scenarios than carrier clash. But for carrier clash felt more natural and simple.

Did you also run tests 1.5.05? What did those show?
What do you think about the suggestions above?

Yesterday night we played a Coral Sea Carrier Clash with rules I described in #969 .

It was a fun game. The first few turns were spent hunting submarines and scouting. The Lexington was revealed in turn 3 and IJN started launching attacks. Kido Buutai failed, the IJN attacked in 2 consecutive turns using 8-flight groups (from 2 carriers). None of the carriers had supporting ships are they were still busy with subs. Lex was evading like crazy, still suffered notable damage to the hull (+fires). This prevented them to launch for 3 turns. The IJN carriers were revealed in turn 4, the Yorktown in turn 5. IJN aircrafts arrived home, when the Yorktown launched his 6-flight group against the Shokaku (Lexington was still unable to lanuch any flights). The Shokaku suffered 4 hulls of damage. By turn 6 the Lexington was crippled and still had 1 fire, Shokaku had 4 damage to its hull. Rest of carriers were 100%. 2 US and 1 IJN subs were sunk, 4 US and 5 IJN flights were killed.

Remarks about the battle:
- Air Strike Runs all succeeded due to lucky rolls - that felt kind of correct. Somehow, we did not want Air Strikes Runs to fail. I think odds should be very low for failure.
- Interception was an automatism, not a reaction order. Flights could intercept by rolling D3-1. Roll gave the number of intercepting flights. We felt that interception needing a token is too harsh, starved the defender unnecessarily.
- In contrast to games with previous rules, there were relatively low fighter casualties (as intercepting is not so powerful any more). We felt we had "too many" fighters. I think this is great, as this allows a more balanced (realistic) carrier setup, no need to max out fighters in all carrier configurations.
- Strangely not noticed it before, but the extra token for 5+ groups felt weird. Flights are launched after getting the tokens, so cannot be used in the launching turn when it is needed the most. So, for attack there were too few tokens. On the other hand when the groups were returning home, the player received extra tokens - that were not really needed. So, I think getting tokens based on 5+ groups should be reconsidered.
- We used the original evading rule: ships could launch/land half capacity. Denying them completely to launch/land felt too harsh.

We will play with the above rules again today and make a detailed battle report about it. I will post it in the report section as soon as I am done with it, so you can review it when you have the time.

This rule was introduced when air strikes could not be made in the turn that a group was launched, so you only needed the extra tokens in the following turn. As it is, with an advanced activation that starts the action early, the tokens indeed come late. So this system has to be reworked. I have no solid idea's yet on how to do it though, I kind of want to have one fixed moment in the game to check for order tokens. Maybe move the moment that order tokens are generated to the end of the preparations phase? But that would conflict with a lot of orders. Maybe just move the launch/land part to the front of the preparations phase turn order. Generate tokens after that but before anything else.

I'll probably got time for a few test games tomorrow, I'll take into account your suggestions and see how it goes.

Added battle report to the Battle Report in the forum. The link for the pdf is this one:
PDF Download

Putting my four penneth onto the ring! Again!

I am onboard with the the fuel token idea. One thought would be to add the number of fuel tokens to the stats of each aircraft? Then if an aircraft is designated as scout, gaining the loiter bonus, gets an extra token or two.

Regarding CAP, what about limiting the number of aircraft avaiable as a CAP to the size of ship, small carriers can only designate/assign 1 flight of fighters/aircraft as CAP, medium and large 2 flights? Then maybe allow an increase depending on the year? Or adding a new command card alowing extra CAP flights?

Making the cap dependent on carrier size is a nice touch, we have to keep our eye on balance though. After we get the normal carrier battles on the road there is a balancing job to do for the other fleets that sometimes only have an escort carrier for air cover. I'll keep this one in mind for the next round of changes.

I've been away from the forums a bit and I will be occupied with other stuff the coming month. I've got some exams to take for a new job. I'll be back though