scenario battle idea

Discussion in 'Scenarios / Gameplay' started by Ebaneser, May 8, 2014.

  1. Ebaneser

    Ebaneser New Member

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    Sometimes thing can go very wrong for battleships and their captains. Take the HMS Hood as an example, If it wasn't for one of the bismarck's shells that hit the ammo magazine, the british ship could have fought another day. My idea is that almost anything can happen at almost anytime.
    A captain is picked at random to be "God" and gets to pick out ballots from a box. these ballots will have a certain scenario on them that must be obeyed by the captains ie: One of the Axis battlecruisers is sunk by aircraft. The allied team gets to then pick an enemy battlescruiser to remove from the game. Its simple but would add realism to the game.
     
  2. Tugboat

    Tugboat Facilitator RCWC Staff Admiral (Supporter)

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    My idea is that I'm lucky to get 10 captains together fora battle, some of whom drive 10 hours plus to get to the pond, with ships that cost a good bit of money/blood/sweat/tears. There are already enough reliability issues and problems that creep up without adding false ones.
     
  3. KeriMorgret

    KeriMorgret Facilitator RCWC Staff Vendor

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    Have you been to any battles yet? We generally don't need to add in this type of randomness, as it already happens. There will be a loose connection, dying battery, pump that doesn't get switched on, or any other number of technical issues that can happen at almost any time.

    You may have a tough time getting other people to agree to this type of scenario, as people want to come out and play, not to have their ship be disabled by the roll of a die.
     
  4. jstod

    jstod Well-Known Member

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    The only issue is getting the captains on board of either pulling their ship or letting it be sunk. It would effectively mean they don't get to play for the sortie which wouldn't be all that fun.

    I like the concept of picking scenarios out of a box. that way it's random and you could have everything from convoy is king to FastGun circle of death (forgive me if the name is incorrect). You could also have the teams pick out of the box which ship is their opponent in single combat or their goal to sink in a sortie
     
  5. SnipeHunter

    SnipeHunter Well-Known Member

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    The real and often unpredictable stuff that happens is one of the awesome parts about this hobby. Things happens all the time that change the course of a battle and creates a storyline for the battle without the need for a scripted scenario. Boats lose propellers, Pump hoses come off, guns get jammed, rudders get stuck hard over, motors die, CO2 lines burst, fuses blow, gears get stripped, servos fail. All those things happen with some frequency and provide realism and unpredictability to battles without being scripted. There are also some really weird things that happen like having the main power switch get shot and turned off during battle, picking up a rock between your prop and your hull, a BB wedges itself in your pump outlet blocking it, your boat gets wedged under a dock or other structure, your late prey's float gets wrapped around your prop and you pull yourself under. All of these things play into the flow of a battle and create the story as the battle happens, this also gives us stuff to talk about at dinner or in the evening when you get to hear what was happening on the other side of the lake or so and so's gun that you had been trying to avoid was really jammed the whole time. It all contributes to the fun and excitement of battling and the hobby.

    I really don't think we need to inject fake realism...plus what happens to the guy who just drove 4-16 hours and is now told by "god" that he doesn't get to play? That doesn't sound fun at all.
     
  6. Anachronus

    Anachronus Well-Known Member

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    "The golden BB" is just as common in our scale as in 1:1. i.e. Snipehunter is right.
     
  7. Tugboat

    Tugboat Facilitator RCWC Staff Admiral (Supporter)

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    I typed 4 responses to this, deleted all 4. Do not like.
     
  8. Hovey

    Hovey Admiral (Supporter)

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    Murphy doesn't need any help. Random missions however could be fun.
     
  9. jstod

    jstod Well-Known Member

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    Random missions or game types or even teams could get interesting.
     
  10. Gascan

    Gascan Active Member

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    I saw a boat recovered from the deep with a ball bearing down each pump outlet. Someone got double lucky on that one. I've also seen pump outlets get dented, or outlet hoses get disconnected from the pump.

    Warspite came back from battle with six barrels clogged out of eight. At first I thought someone shot straight down the barrels, then I realized that his tight tolerance barrels just got dented and prevented his own shots from passing.

    Spahkreuzer's first battle was marked by blowing the barrels for the torpedo cannons overboard with the first shot. He still had some deck guns to operate for the rest of the day, but this incident caused him to begin the refit that turned Spahkreuzer into a real killer, earning my brother the Most Feared award two years running.

    I saw submarine captain make a perfect attack on HMS Hood, which was stuck on a bush. He came in about 12" deep, then pulled full up on the dive planes just before impact. His two torpedoes struck right on the waterline, but Hood didn't go down. Inspection after the battle revealed that the torpedoes struck on the torpedo bulge, and were deflected up, leaving two furrows in the wood that failed to penetrate.

    Another submarine captain misidentified a cargo ship in distress. Instead of firing on the swarm of Allied attackers, the Axis submariner made a textbook attack on his own cargo boat, sinking it with a single volley.

    A common occurrence at any battle is the *hisssss* of a leaky connection. As soon as the victim can be determined, the sharks come to feed. I know of a few people lucky enough to hide their weakness and bluff their way through the rest of the battle.

    One guy launched a monitor HMS Roberts. 15 seconds after the call to Commence Fire, while still leaving port, a large air line burst. It blew open a 2" by 1" panel on the side, spun his boat around a couple times until his air bottle was empty, and sank right at his feet before a shot had even been fired.

    An American Gearing destroyer sank about 15ft off shore in about 5-6 ft of water at a gunnery and maneuvering event. When I got my swimsuit and goggles ready, a string of bubbles marked the location of the wreck. As I neared the location, I noticed thin smoke rising from where the bubbles broke the surface. While diving down, the bubbles looked hazy, rather than clear like they normally do. When I pulled the wreck up, I kept it under water until I got it closer to shore and was told the location of the power switch. Apparently the ESC didn't like sinking and had been spewing flame and smoke under water.

    I've seen a few other ships suffer fires, mostly on shore. One guy's ESC fried when he plugged in his battery, and it spewed a six-inch green flame until he could disconnect the battery. Smoke poured out of another guy's boat, and when he tried to disconnect the battery, the solder joints had melted and fell off the battery.

    My light cruiser had one shaft become tangled in mines (before we outlawed them). Stephen's Mogador came to attack, and got one shaft tangled as well. During the tug-of-war that ensued, my shaft came disconnected and fell out of my boat, anchoring Mogador in place a couple feet off shore. While I ran home with a 1/8" hole a couple inches deep, my brother took his time as he lined up a torpedo volley and blew the French destroyer to kingdom come.

    I've seen plenty of ships suffer propulsion failures in battle. After the battle, their allies will try to push them back home, or at least to shore, to avoid a Did Not Return penalty. During the campaign game or other longer battles,it becomes much more important to recover the ships so they can be repaired and returned the battle. This results in battles circling the disabled ships while their friends try to perform tugboat operations. I was awarded an Iron Cross for my rescue efforts during one campaign game. It really changes the dynamics of the battle, and we later tried a steal-the-bacon scenario. Although the bacon (a lifeguard rescue tube) ran aground after five minutes, it resulted in some of the bloodiest, all out, damn-the-torpedoes fighting I've ever seen.

    My brother's cruiser got a leaf sucked into his props, stopping him dead at the peninsula that divides the Axis and Allied sides of the pond. An allied battleship started bombarding him from 6ft out, and a British destroyer came to blast him with a volley of torpedoes. The destroyer captain asked if he had fired his torpedoes yet. Kotori kept his silence. He had been heading back to the Axis side when he got stuck, so the Allied captain assumed he had been going to reload. He moved in for the kill, carefully moving forward and back as he worked for the perfect shot. BLAM! Kotori took full advantage of the Allied captain lining up his torpedoes and opened up a 1/2" by 2" hole just below the waterline. The Brit fired in panic, missed, then ran for home. He made it just five feet before sinking.

    My Scharnhorst had a poor design rudder linkage, and would occasionally overextend. This would cause one of the rudders to flip, jamming in an odd position that eliminated all ability to control the ship. I had to get a friendly to point me in the direction of home so I could make it back safely.

    When Scharnhorst was first launched, I had an air compressor instead of CO2. I didn't realize at the time that the compressor put out a metric ton of electrical noise. During my first campaign game, the instant I turned on the compressor, the Lutzow next to me immediately lost all control, as did my own boat. While I slowly drifted to the far side of the pond, the Allies pounded the battlecruiser under. A Derfflinger got tangled up in the float line, and the Allies made short work of that one as well. The captain of the Lutzow launched his new Baden. While leaving the Axis port, he sailed over the wrecks of the first two ships, and got stuck in the float from the second battlecruiser. For a third time, the Allies circled like vultures and easily sank the unfortunate Axis battleship. Only half an hour into the two-hour event, and the Axis had suffered three sinks and one disabled ship, all due to the radio noise from my air compressor.

    Something similar happened at a Last Man Standing event. A cruiser's float was knocked off by enemy fire, and it got wrapped up in it's own float line. An aggressive Deutchland came to attack, but also got caught in the float line. A second torpedo boat approached the Deutchland on the side away from the float and planted a few torpedoes on target. When the pocket battleship sank, it dragged the first cruiser down with it, accompanied by much cheering from the captains on shore.

    I heard about a cruiser that suffered an accumulator explosion. It ripped off all the balsa on the forward third of the ship, leaving the ribs and deck. Witnesses said it was like HMS Hood going up: a loud bang, a huge splash, and bits of boat sailing through the sky. Apparently he had used a secondary regulator to save weight, which is not meant to handle CO2 without a primary regulator.

    I saw an accumulator explosion on a 1/72 boat at a maneuvering event. It was an old cannon that had not aged well, and was just being returned to service from the mothball fleet. The damage was less than I expected: the accumulator merely fractured, and the air cracked open a panel of balsa. I suspect the larger hull and bigger deck opening for the rotating cannon helped vent the pressure better. It also was a twin cannon instead of a quad, so it had a smaller accumulator.

    These are just a fraction of the incidents and occurrences I have seen at battles and events. Some of these are funny and make great stories, a few are not and should serve as cautionary tales. The whole point is that there is plenty of randomness in battles already. There is no need to add the chaos of war, it already exists thanks to Murphy's Law. Instead, think about scenarios that get more ships involved in the fighting. Wrapping ships in fishing line or pulling one from action with a roll of a die are bad ideas because they prevent people from battling. A beach landing scenario that requires an LST to land and unload a tank sounds like fun until you realize it all depends on a single ship operating as designed, while the rest of the battle has no impact on the outcome. The real fun is in getting more boats on the water for a standard battle. Standard battles are the most common format because they are simple and put the maximum carnage into the minimum time. You can mix things up a bit by having an extra long campaign battle, or run a Cargo Is King or Steal the Bacon scenario. These scenarios are fun because they keep battles interesting while still encouraging fighting.