Experiment: Command station cards

Ok, so here’s a new idea I want to launch into the community to see the response:

The command station is currently one page for each fleet; this works quite ok, but I’m not completely satisfied with it.
- There is not much room to elaborate on an order, so this limits the available options.
- There can only be a fixed number of orders on the command station, this already led to the creation of carrier-fleet only command stations because too many specialized orders will not work on a single command station.
- Requests have come in for scenario-specific, era specific and fleet specific command stations. This would cause a wild growth in the number of command stations.

So I have been toying with an alternative idea: Remove the orders from the command stations and replace them with order cards. Each card has enough room for the order rules and specifics and each fleet can build their own deck as they wish (within the constraints of the cards)
The current command stations contain 12 orders, so to keep things interesting, fleets can build a deck of 10 command station cards to suit their needs.

Advantages would be that:
- There is enough room on a card to describe more complex orders.
- Orders can be more specialized (DD only or BB only orders), orders might be limited to an era, scenario, fleet type or OOB.
- Orders become more meaningful as you have picked them to suit your fleet
- Complexity can be increased or reduced by playing with more or less command station cards

It would probably look something like these quick drafts:

I like the idea very much.

As an addition, would it make sense to "buy" cards before the battle? I am not sure, just brainstorming. Might be difficult to balance it.

A few additional thoughts:
- in our experience current command stations are difficult to handle for new players. Players usually look at the QRS and find it difficult to browse the command stations at the same time. The constantly have go through the list looking for an advanced command (AC) that can be played. We solved this by combining the QRS and the command stations into one paper (was not easy ). This meant that in activation boxes we listed playable ACs. This improved the flow of our games a lot. With your cards we could hold in our hands only cards that are valid for that phase - this would make scanning the options faster.
- another issue in 1.4 was that it was not 100% clear when exactly the AC could be played - e.g. before the roll, after, etc. In 1.5 the descriptions are much-much better - thanks for all those clarifications, especially for the "when it can be played". Cards will allow to clarify ACs even more (if needed)..
- I definitely support having smaller papers around the table. A lot of A4 sheets either clutter the game table or its surroundings.

Its really becoming time to start getting the new version to the main section, its starting to look more like version 2.0 than version 1.5 by now...

I like this idea. You can play with as many cards or as few as you want.

They are available in the Onedrive 1.5 beta test files. Give them a whirl and let me know.

I really like this idea. Have you ever played Piquet? Card driven war-game. There each side has a deck which allows them to do things. The decks were based on various factors. So with this new system you are proposing could you not do the same with the build of the command deck? Hate to say it but more options?

As you know I have been doing Tokyo Express battles and have just done a couple of Biak actions and one thing that came up was that the Japanese used their stealthy approach special at night. The target vessel was within 60coms of the firing ship. Normally the rule would hold strong and the ship would not be a valid target, but we questioned the rule because the ship had already been lit up by a searchlight earlier in the turn, by another vessel. We went with the spirit of the rule and said that it could not be targeted. Being the USN player I felt robbed but went with our decision. Your thoughts?

Now moving onto other things I have a couple of thoughts/ideas on the new command station idea. One thing I have found is that with the reduction in order tokens it can be really expensive, if I am reading things right a lot of advance orders state per ship, like Radar fire control. Could it be reworked to read ship/squadron.
How about my Japanese reload torpedo special action? make it real hard 4+, a fals means no more reloads for ship or squadron?
A rapid fire card giving a certain caliber of gun or range of guns the rapid fire ability? Or giving DDs with non rapid fire guns that special skill?
What about a fire and move action like the japanese torpedo run action, with a reduced ROF or half hits?

This new direction also allows for joint nationalities task forces to both command card decks with restrictions. I was thinking something along the lines of that this would be allowed either in the scenario, fleet card or Admiral card. Admiral Crutchley comes to mind. A RAN admiral commanding both USN and RAN forces, one of his special rules could be to use cards from both decks. Another thought on that could be to make any forces employed not of the same navy suffer a penalty on their morale rolls?

Lots to think on, I know you are busy with work. I will await your thoughts.

Great Idea's. I've been adding some of your idea's to command station cards but I haven't come to regenerating the cards yet. I'm still battling with the carrier-related commands.

With the expanded possibilities of the cards we can indeed now consider some more 'niche' cards like the torpedo reloads card etc.

Did a run of Komandoski Island today, running your rules verbatim. Runs good, we liked the rapid fire for less than 8" guns (well I did I was the Japanese!). Though in playing we noticed that there was not a command card for the US for the older Radar fire control action, was that on purpose?

Did you use the 1.5.07 cards? Because I added a 'destroyers only' line to the "Work those guns!" order at the last minute. I ran some quick scans through the database and suddenly imagined the horror of a Cleveland-, Fuji-, Town- or Brooklyn-class cruiser with rapid fire for their 12-15 6"guns.

Good catch on the Radar fire control. It was supposed to be one card for both US and Royal Navy, but I decided that that would become confusing when naming the card files. Afterwards I forgot to add the US card separately. I added it now, together with a Kriegsmarine version. It never made that command station because a lack of space.