Scott Gainer sent in the following question: I had a question the other day regarding weather effects in H 4. Does sea state had any influence on the ability of ships of various sizes to launch weapons? I’m probably being denser than usual but can't find this in the rules or various addenda that I have. I remember this from earlier iterations and was wondering if it was somewhere in H 4. This will have a major effect as the action will take place largely in the GIUK and Barents Sea in the winter. My answer: I'd prohibit missile launches in sea state six or higher from destroyers (Medium-sized). Raise or lower the limit by one sea state if the ship size changes. Guns are good one level higher, but after that everyone’s too busy hanging on. Sorry it wasn’t in the rules. Scott also writes: A group of us were recently running a game of H 4 over the internet involving some Aegis-equipped DDGs. The opposing side had AS-17 ARMs as part of its loadout. With a phased array radar, when an ARM hits one of the arrays, are the others still functional or does this take out so many waveguides or produce enough arcing and sparking in the actual radar transmitter or both that it takes the whole system down? Most of my actual experience is with mechanically-trained radars so I'm not real familiar with the inner workings of large phased arrays. My answer: Scott, I've toured Aegis ships, and it’s possible that only one face of the phased array radar could be disabled, or even just a few elements, which the computer could compensate for. Maybe. Or maybe not. Those waveguides are very sensitive to alignment problems. An ARM warhead generates a lot of fragments, and I’ve always assumed that a “Critical Hit” inflicted by the warhead was more than just a single fragment through the antenna. Essentially, a radar critical (or any Critical Hit) assumes that the break-down is a “severe” hit, something that can’t be bypassed or immediately fixed. Now, is a large, advanced SPY-1 suite harder to kill than an SPS-10? Probably. If you want a house rule, roll a D100 after the ARM hit to see if the radar is really taken out. You have to roll anyway, since the radar has Kevlar armor protection. Just make the roll a little tougher. Mike Dryden in New Zealand writes: You mentioned that a missile fired off an ESM triangulation had a reduced chance of hitting. Where do I find it? The ESM rules refer me to section 6.2.1, but the TMA rules don’t mention ESM at all. My answer: It appears that the modifier I thought was on the TMA solution Quality table is missing. Basically, a passive ESM cross-fix is treated like a Passive Ranging Sonar, so if you have two of them, that’s an 80% modifier, which is good because of course you don't have a passive sonar tracking the target at all. This is a sideways method of using the table. I think we got a little too cute here. An ESM cross-fix should be automatic, and we’ll make the quality of the solution dependent on the angle between the two bearings. That’s easy to figure and accounts for the variable length of the base leg. 0° - 20° : Poor solution 21° - 45°: Fair solution 46° - 90°: Good solution BT Back to The Naval Sitrep #21 Table of Contents Back to Naval Sitrep List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Larry Bond and Clash of Arms. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history and related articles are available at http://www.magweb.com