dont, know weather this has been thought of before, but here goes my idea for a combat scenarios/gameplay is to have transport ships attually transport something for the battleships and have an impact on the overall battle. the game would need two teams, lets say red and blue or autobots and decepicons, whatever you like. it also needs a home port for each side were it's a no fire zone for safety and be big enough for several people/captains to be taking their ships in and out without falling over each other. the game would start with the transports of each side on opposite sides of the pond/battlefield or umm.. battlelake and then a wisle blows or someone shouts 'game start', then the transports must get to their home port as fast as posible were on arrival the battleship captians would take out the transports load of ballbearings and load there guns and then try to sink the all the enemy's ships. now i can tell what your thinking, the extra BB's will upset the waterline markings/measurement, so perhaps instead of a load of BB's just have the transports 'worth' a certain amount of BB's but still have the feel that they are carring something, then when they reach homeport they just have to do a normal convoy run around an island that is near enemy teritory and return back to port without sinking and each succesful run would score ammo pionts. i dont know if this is a good idea or not but, if one side has had all their transports sunk, they could de-arm one battleship to take the spot of a convoy, now these would be worth alot more BBs pionts then the convoy ships, sort of a last horah, where its all or nothing as one side try to protect their last hope of getting back in the game and if succsesful they may be able to turn the tide of battle as they could arm all or almost all of their battleships. i think this type of game would add more of team work aspect to the game, say if you are an armed ship you would have to decide to protect your convoys because they supply you with ammo or go after the battleships,furthermore it would add some tactics aswell for example do we attack the enemies transports and cut off their supply of ammo, or do we go after the battleships that may have run out of ammo but leave the transports. another tactic would be the decision as a group of which ship to load up first with BB's or wich ship to arm to full capacity with BB's and act as a disration wile the covoys work to arm the rest of their fleet to capacity. lastly the game would end when either one side has run out of ammo and no way to score more BBs through convoy runs, or if all the battle ships on one side have been sunk. again, if this sort of game has already been thought of or tried and proven not to work in practice please disregard the above the reason why i posted this game idea is to suggest a way of giving the transports a more important role in combat and if they have a more important role, it may seem more attractive to newcomers to the hobby to get involved for a realitivly low cost but have the all the fun of an intense combat game where they have and effect on the overall battle, like i said before.
Early Campaign rules in the IRC allowed for this and even more! Transports carried supplys: supply dumps, guards, patches, ammo and batteries. The supplies on the ship were a piece of paper in a photo case. The forward base had 10 supply dumps and 10 guard forces. For the supplys to be delievered there had to be a supply dump standing. The dumps and guards were styraform cups on a platform at lake side and could be shot from the lake. A ship could resupply as long as supplies were available at the forward base OR one ship could supply at a time at home base. It was supposed to represent the war in the Pacific. if all of the guards were taken out the opponent could invade the forward base (this once happened at a Nats in TX!) The combatants got tired of the paperwork, and campaign got cut back more and more 'til it is but a shadow of what it once was. The word from some of the combatants was "We just want to shoot!"
The WWCC tried this in 2004. Rather than counting separate ammo, batteries, etc. we measured bench visits. 1 transport completing 1 run would allow 1 ship on your side to head to the bench for repairs, reload, re-gas, whatever else it needed. Battle began, and the Axis immediately suffered a number of minor breakdowns. Someone forgot to turn on their gas, another got mossed, and a few others had wires pop loose. Easy things to fix, but each of them required a bench visit, and without support from the disabled warships, the Axis couldn't score a single transport run. It turned into an hour-long turkey shoot, with the surviving Axis ships blockaded deep inside their bay and unable to defend themselves once they ran out of ammo and gas. At the half-time break, everyone said it was no fun, the Axis surrendered, and we played regular sorties the rest of the day. The problem with tying convoy runs to physical things like ammunition, batteries, or port visits is that it severely punishes the loser. If one team falls behind on cargo runs even slightly, they lose the ability to recover, and eventually cannot even fight back. While this is historically accurate for warfare, remember that we are playing a game for fun. The WWCC had to make extensive changes to our campaign game rules before anyone would even consider having a second one, because of how un-fun the first one was.
indeed, kotori i see your piont of playing the game for fun and that is the main thing here, however, perhaps a simplified version, where at the start of the game all the battleships are on the bench and are all gased up, charged up all they need is ammo, now the captians would have all their ammo inhand ready to load their ships as soon as their teams transports make it into home port, then they load, lanuch and the shooting begins, then they would be allowd to rearm, regas ect as long as their side still have transports, i.e. get rid of the BBs value system and the confusion of counting BBs in the middle of a battle but still retain the importance of the transoprts in the game. anyway, by the looks of whats happend before it seems to prove infeasble from your experances with this type of game.
i should mention that my idea for this transport vocused game is for big gun, not fast gun, as the game would be over pretty quick using fast gun ships. at least with big gun the battle may last a bit longer and if patching is alowed, even longer
You'll probably be interested to hear that the AusBG places a very high emphasis on convoy ships. So much so, in fact, that convoy runs are the sole determining factor in victory! Apparently they tried this several years ago, and the sinking and fun increased so much that they decided to make the change permanent. Because a battleship's survival was no longer relevant to victory, only the survival of the convoy vessels, the battleship skippers could push their vessels to the limit and beyond without fear of singlehandedly dooming their team if they got sunk. Thus they would often have one or more battleships fighting to the death to protect a convoy, and another few battleships fighting to the death to sink that convoy. Lots of teamwork happens when victory depends entirely on the convoy getting through.
i am interested, this is good news for me being in australia and all, and makes me want to get building my first ship sooner, still waiting on a reply from Michael at drednaught hulls though... any details on that type of game play? it sounds exatly what i was hoping for i just want to add that i would be asking this question to my local BG club, but here in adelaide i cant seem to find what would be concidered a 'local' club, i think these just one club in the whole of south australia and its a quite a way away. cheers for the info Kotori
We still use that idea for game play. Only merchant ships have a value, sort of makes it pointless to sink a warship apart from denying the enemy its use in the battle so we're considering wether to reintroduce warship points at a level where the sinking of a warship cannot tip the balance too far against you but it makes people be a little cautious. Our battles have been made into1 hour battles with a 30 min break between to repair, so they are short sharp and sweet, no patching for warships with armour over 2.4mm thick but you can re gas and rearm as needed. Warships sunk in combat or pulled from the pond in a sinking state because of damage do not return till the next battle but freighters can be patched, recovered and returned to combat as required. All the emphasis is on the merchants getting through. People as a result tend to seek the merchants out in an effort to deny the enemy points and for those of us with a merchant and a warship we often launch the merchant a little late to miss the feeding frenzy at the start then wait till the enemy are rearming and hit the pond, if it gets sunk we put our warship out. The Sydney group has a fleet of merchants that they loan out to visitors to drive for them and then they run protection round them to get them back. As you say though we've had a Bismarck from Brisbane and the Washington from Newcastle immolate themselves in order to get the freighters through. A very staisfying experience. Still working on scenario's and the latest suggestion was that instead of calling a battle over at the exact time, and cancelling all uncompleted runs we may try, any freighters who have already started on final laps may complete them in combat conditions and if so will get their score counted. If your're not on the final lap your score wont count but your presence on the pond may dilute the enemy's effectiveness therebye allowing your other scoring merchants time to get in. Cheers
ha, so the transports can patch holes in battle... does that include batteries replacing if they go flat? i also didnt know that you can launch the transports later in the battle, so you let the warships sink each other then score pionts ok, so the only pionts that can be scored are transport runs, not transport sinks correct? like the pionts for the runs isnt taken off the score if the tranport sinks, if you get what i mean...
