Fghtrs vs Cap. Ships

I believe they can attack but their attack values will do little harm.

Audacity is correct.

Usually the gunnery or surface attack of airplanes is way to small to hurt heavily armored ships. They can get to smaller destroyers and the like but usually there are just not enough dice or you need miracle luck to get enough successes to get hits on the Battleships.

BOMBS on the other hand…

If memory serves a Dauntless dive bomber has a 10 or so bomb attack dice. ( Enterprise gives them a couple of bonus dice  8-) )

A Wildcat has like 4 maybe 5  :| gun attack dice.

Most battleships have armor starting at 10 or so.

4,5 and 6 (a six counts as two) gets a success. You need more success than armor rating of target to get a hit.

The Halifax GR Mk. V also gets 10 Bomb attack die.

Don’t forget the Ju-87’s (GE and IT) both have 9 bomb attack die.

But still, you’d need several wings of bombers to get through a Battleship. First you need to get past the Antiair assault phase, and anything that was not aborted gets a shot.

How do you use Aircraft effectively in WAS? Is it with numbers, the more the better? What balance or ratio do you use with aircraft to surface ships?

Well I’m just a casual player of this one. I had to have an Enterprise despite a promise to myself that I wouldn’t take up any more collectible games.

Typically, now this is just with the first set, I have the Big E, A wildcat, 2 Dauntless and a Devastor plus an Atlanta (good AA ship) for every game. That comes in under 100 points I believe. I usually throw in another Atlanta and some Fletchers or other ships with Anti sub weapons. I have limited units and pretty much top out at 200.

I don’t know if that is much help. I like to use as many planes as my Carriers can base (each Carrier has limited capacity) plus one. More is better but you need surface ships to take objectives and usually you don’t want to use your carriers for that and put them in range of the long guns on the big battleships. It is a tricky balancing act.

@timerover51:

I would have to get out my War at Sea set to refresh my memory on how AA fire is done, but for the most part, the Japanese ships are badly overrated and the US ships are badly underrated when it comes to AA.

This is likely true. But it certainly makes the game more fun and even. Reduce the air defense dice for the Japanese ships and the US dive bombers would walk all over the J capital ships.

Truer to history yes, fun to play  probably not.

@timerover51:

After Action analysis by the US Navy and the post-war report done by the US Naval Technical Mission to Japan analyzing the loss of major Japanese warships (I have my own copy and also a complete set of the reports on microfilm)  ( Frimmel’s expression :-o  :-o  :-o ) indicated that one of the reasons for the survival of the ship following so many hits was the relatively even distribution of them on both the port and starboard sides, in effect counterflooding the ship and preventing it from capsizing.

I’ve thought you were a sericously dedicated historian TR but I didn’t realize you were A SERIOUSLY DEDICATED HISTORIAN. Your posts are better than the history channel.

:mrgreen:

Neat stuff.  :-)

Outstanding!

Fighters May straff a ship using it’s gunnery Value. During your Airplacement phase, You must declare if your fighters are straffing or not. Fighters cannot do both, Defend and/or attack other aircraft and straff during their turn. Any Plane that is declared straffing, gets a -2 to it’s armour and Vital Armour

@Deaths:

Fighters May straff a ship using it’s gunnery Value. During your Airplacement phase, You must declare if your fighters are straffing or not. Fighters cannot do both, Defend and/or attack other aircraft and straff during their turn. Any Plane that is declared straffing, gets a -2 to it’s armour and Vital Armour

:-) Whoa Nellie! Slow down.  :lol:

Are these new rules? Have they changed it so that your fighters can fly cover or straffe/attack surface ships but not both? My rulebook, admittedly old, has they can do both.

correct. There has been a rules update that rolled out with set II

Destroyers are nasty little thing now also.
Check it out:

http://www.wizards.com/avalonhill/rules/War_at_Sea_Clarifications.pdf

And the rule book you probably have already.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/aam/WaratSea

Huh. Good to know. Thanks!

@timerover51:

I would have to get out my War at Sea set to refresh my memory on how AA fire is done, but for the most part, the Japanese ships are badly overrated and the US ships are badly underrated when it comes to AA.

If they did that and left the planes the same, The US would win everytime, and that makes for a not fun game if the results are the same.  I play WaS alot and the US AA Def capabilities are Awesome enough without giving them more.

Historically, The US almost always had some sort of Fighter support where as the Japs did not. especially late in the war.

I had to have an Enterprise

Did you chase it around the Antares Maelstorm and Round Perdition’s Flame?- sorry I just had to ask. Kahn is right behind Darth Vader and Grand Admiral Thrawn in my list of favorite villians

I still don’t have an Enterprise or even a first line Allied Carrier. I do have the St. Lo which I might use to bring in a fighter for constant anti-air cover. Seems to work ok. I do have a few Jap. Carriars- the Akagi, Shoho, and the Z(sic).  I have a ton of planes.

It seems a waste to me to have any aircraft strafe when they can be escorting bombers or torpedo planes, or utilized to shoot down attacking fighters.

Well I have 3 Ark Royals if you are interested in trading. I also have a spare Soyru, Fencer.

I have a duplicate of the Hood, Richelue, and the Baltimore.

want a Ark royal for your Baltimore?

Gentlemen as far as AA potential of ships, I don’t think there was a great difference.  Unless you count the fact the late war Japanese had much more limited ammo.  As far as actual weapons and mounts, I think the Type 96 (25mm) was compareble to our 28mm.  And I believe we both had the DP 5" guns, I think the only edge we had going for us was when we started mounting the 40mm, though I’d have to research it a little more to be sure.  Let me also put forth the fact that after the losses at Midway, most Japanese pilots were newbs, and couldn’t really compare to the US pilots in training and flight time.  Aslo take into consideration that US plane types kept getting better and better, as well as maintaining a high degree of ruggedness.

In short, I feel better aircraft, with more highly trained pilots on the US side, would be more effective when compared against post midway ‘newb pilots’ on the Japanese side, in lightly or unarmoured Japanese aircraft.  The American planes and pilots were better, and were ever increasing in number, that is what I think accounts for their better performance historicaly.  As far as I can tell, it seems that the AA potential between US and Japan in WW2 wasn’t all that different for the majority of the war, apart from what’s noted above.  For A&A game purposes I would definently rate them close.  Including CAP and the overwhelming carrier and aircraft forces of the late war US is a different matter all thogether.

Cheers!

Well, I actually got my buddy over and played 5 games yesterday.  He took the Italian carrier with american planes, cruisers and destroyers.  I have to say that in game the Americans have a clear advantage in Anti-Aircraft fire.  Not only do the Ami destroyers have a better AA value than the Kaigun destroyers, a lot of them had the Heavy AA ability, which devastated my torpedo bombers every game.  The american light cruisers also have an AA attack value better than my cruisers, the Soryu or the Haruna, and his 2 cruisers also have heavy anit-air ability, so when he uses his ‘floatila’ strategy as he calls it (putting his carrier with one destroyer then sticking the AA CL and the heavy AA/radar picket DD in the space next to it, as well as on the first turn his other AA CL is also on the other side of the carrier), my planes are cut to ribbons.  In 5 games I was able to attempt an airial torpedo attack about 2 or 3 times max, and one of those was on a lone DD because I was tired of loosing planes and having them aborted.

The Americans AA is actually quite a deal better in game already.  It’s base value is usually better, especailly on DDs and CLs, and they have neat AA abilities like heavy AA and other radar direction stuff.  They diffinently don’t need an AA buff.  While the Japanese AA is worse than the Americans, I still find it playable.  Although it’s quite difficult to chase off 2 squadrons of Hell Divers.  They usually can sink the Soryu by reaching critical armor value by the 2nd turn when they concentrate with land based fighter support.  Still, good times.  I love the game.