At the Friday night meeting in August, Brian Dewitt set up his World War II "ship game" (described in an article in this issue). In full accordance with the great-minds-think-alike school of philosophy, without any prior knowledge of Brian's preparations, I had pre-planned my own "ship game" for the next day, Saturday.
The Simon Ship Game (SSG) is also a WW II vintage game, employing all sorts of ships plus an assortment of aircraft. Unlike the Dewitt ships, which are referenced to their particular WW II Naval counterparts in terms of tonnage and armament and armor, SSG ships are all generic in nature.
We have a "carrier", representative of all carriers in the known universe, in that the ship has some anti-aircraft capability, and some secondary batteries and some aircraft. And we have a battleship, again representative of all battleships, in that she's kinda big, has primary batteries, and secondary batteries, and so on and so forth.
Each ship has a data sheet, two types of which of which are shown below:
The main battleship batteries of the Dewitt game range out to over 160 inches, some 13 feet. SSG main batteries range out to 60 inches, i.e., 5 feet... I wanted SSG procedures to be confined to a single ping-pong table.
When SSG guns fire, the two parameters of interest are:
- (a) The Battery Factor (BF), found on the ship data sheet. For the battleship listed above, this is 6 for the main guns, and 4 for the secondaries. For the cruiser, it's 4 for the main guns, 2 for the secondaries.
(b) The Range Factor, RF, obtained from the ten's digit of the range measurement. Thus if the range is measured and found to be 36 inches, RF equals 3. Similarly, if the measured range is 43 inches, RF equals 4.
The effect of the Battery Factor, BF, is attenuated by the Range Factor, RF, simply by subtracting RF from BF: (BF - RF). For example, at 45 inches, when RF equals 4, the battleship's BF of 6 gets reduced to 6-4, or 2. I must note that the staff at the Centre For Provocative Wargaming Analysis realizes that the effect of a naval shell exploding right on target should be the same, whether the target is next door, or 15,000 yards away. But the attenuation factor is tossed in to account for loss of accuracy at the farther ranges. The effect in the game, whether the total resultant impact is reduced because of fewer hits due to lessened accuracy, or reduced by some range attenuation figure, is essentially a wash. Putting together the above parameters, the Impact Factor (IF) on an enemy flotilla is defined as:
- IF = 10 x (BF - RF) x (Number of Targets)
Here, the firing commander selects his targets; all targets within an 8-inch diameter area are fair game. If, for example, the battleship fires its main guns at 3 targets situated an average distance of 47 inches away, the Impact Factor becomes:
- IF = 10 x (BF of 6 - RF of 4) x 3 Targets
IF = 60
Given this value of the IF, SSG now references a universal Hit Chart, used throughout the galaxy for torpedo hits, gunnery hits, aircraft firing, anti-aircraft firing, bomb droppings, rodent droppings, you-name-it.
The Hit Chart looks like:
- -------------------------------------------
- No Hits
- 1 Hit
- 3 Hits
Which means that, far an IF of 60, a percentage dice toss of 30 or less translates into 3 hits on the target, a toss of 31 to 60 results in a single hit, and above 60 results in no hits. The firing player always places the first hit, selecting the first target in the target zone to receive an impact, while subsequent targets are alternately chosen by both players.
A hit on a ship results in an entire column being crossed out on the target vessel. Note on the data sheets given on the preceding page, that, after 5 hits, the capabilities, i.e., the Battery Factors, of a ship are reduced. The battleship's BF decreases from 6 to 4, and its secondaries decrease from 4 to 2.
A brief digression.
What the firing procedures essentially do is to blast all targets within an 8-inch zone, in effect, inundating the area with the combined impact of all firing weapons. In the example given above, a single battleship's Impact Factor, for the target area concerned., came out to 60; if another battleship had joined in, the total would have gone up to 120, and if the ships' secondary guns had fired, the total would have gone even higher.
For each 100 points, the Hit Chart is referenced, and hits accordingly placed on all eligible targets within the target zone. Purists will immediately object to this... they will say that in naval battles, ships' batteries didn't merely fire into "target zones", hoping to hit something, but each ship selected a specific target, and proceeded to blast away at this particular target and only at this particular target.
I note that the staff at the Centre For Provocative Wargaming Analysis recognizes the truth of this position. But the gaming procedures here, in looking at the results of an exchange of fire at sea, rely on the following logic:
- a. First, rather than have every single ship that fires designate a specific target, and go through the timeconsuming procedure of calculating individual hits, we. can coalesce the entire firing process.
b. With many ships firing, the effect - and, after all, what we are truly interested in is the effect - is to scatter a number of shots within a targeted zone as each ship selects its own target, and
c. The time span of the game turn is such that the results of the firing procedure effectively sum up the total number of hits from a lot of firing weapons at a lot of targets over the period of time encompassed by the game turn.
End of digression.
When a number of hits are scored against ships in the 8-inch diameter target area, the players have one of two choices, since the hits are placed alternately by the sides. With 5 hits, for example, the firer will place 3 of them, and the owning player will place 2.
The first option is to concentrate all the hits on one target, and second is to spread them out, distributing them amongst all potential targets.
In one of our first games, Admiral Cliff Sayre was seen to be accumulating hits on his battleship, the Easter Island, rather than spreading them out amongst the Easter Island's escorting vessels.
His opponent, Commodore Jim Butters, was also trying to accumulate hits on the Easter Island, and it looked like Cliff was accomodatinq him.
Each time a ship is hit, she tests to see if the shell went down the stack, to see if the ship blows up. Note on the data sheet that the top row is annotated TOTAL HITS, a record o€ how many times the ship took damage. The percentage chance, C, of blowing up is:
- C = 3 x (Total hits)
If the battleship doesn't blow up by itself (note that it has a potential of 15 tests, since it has 15 columns), then it slowly sinks beneath the waves when the 15th hit is received... in effect, all its hull boxes have been crossed out. Evidently, by placing all his hits on his battleship, Admiral Sayre was, in effect, attempting to limit the scope of the damage done to his fleet. If he distributed the hits, there was the chance that all affected ships might blow up, whereas by constricting the hits to the Easter Island, only that ship was in mortal danger. Tell that to the crew of the Easter Island.
Second Game
In our second game, Air Squadron Commander Jeff Wiltrout was taken to task when, in a fit of overzealousness, he took all of his airey-planes, launched them from his carrier, and flew them off to attack the enemy fleet. He left no covering aircraft for protection of his own carrier. "Not the way to go! " said Flotilla Commander Tony Figlia.
This comment was made after the fact... and the fact was that enemy aircraft flew in over the Figlia/Wiltrout fleet and sank the carrier.
The game sequence works in an aircraft phase now and then. The exact sequence for the half-bound is:
- 1. Side A moves all ships, launches torpedos
2. Simultaneous fire phase
3. Aircraft phase
4. All torpedos move
When it's time for Phase 3, dice are tossed: on each half-bound, there's a 20 percent chance that an Aircraft Phase actually occurs. If not, then on the next half-bound, the percentage increases to 40 percent. Each time the phase down not occur, the percentage increases by 20 perecent. Once it occurs, the sequence starts anew at 20%.
If the aircraft phase occurs, all ships are stationary, and only planes move. Dice are tossed to determine the extent of the aircraft phase: either 6, 7, or 8 cycles of Side A moves planes, Side B moves planes, etc.
Planes can move 12 inches per cycle, with a couple of 45 degree wiggles thrown in to make them maneuverable. During the aircraft cycles, the following can occur;
- a. A plane can overfly a ship, dropping up to 2 bombs. Target damage is determined using the universal Hit Chart.
b. Ships can fire at aircraft, again using the Hit Chart. c. Opposing planes flying within 6 inches of one another can engage in a "dogfight" to see which side gets the upper hand, and gets to fire (the Hit Chart again).
Our set-up used a configuration in which the defending side's ships were berthed on the eastern side of the bay. The attacking side's fleet appeared on the western edge of the table, and the game was afoot.
The defending fleet sails out to do battle, each side launches aircraft (when the dice indicate that an aircraft phase occurs), the ships launch torpedos, etc.
Each plane model represents a flight of aircraft (don't ask how many), and each plane has a data sheet:
- AIRCRAFT:
TOTAL HITS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
NO OF BOMBS: 0 0 0 0 0
At first, the chance of knocking a plane down was defined to be the same as that of blowing up a ship, i.e., 3 x Total Hits. Those present tableside indicated, however, that this gave the aircraft too much "longevity", it was too difficult to knock off a plane, and that the planes should be easier to shoot down.
The issue was referred to the Fixed-Wing Aircraft Research Department of the Centre For Provocative Wargaming Analysis, and certain mutterings were soon heard behind closed doors: "Zeta squared minus the integral of pi times the cube root of Avagodro's Number divided by the LaGrange Constant plus 42..." The sounds were remarkably similar to those of a group of WRG gamers calculating their casualties in combat.
What finally emerged was the following:
- Chance to destroy an aircraft = 20 + (3 x Total Hits)
In all, with the help of the Centre, SSG seems to proceed rather smoothly. In its symbolic procedures, it admittedly lacks much of the naval-nitty-gritty which befouls the usual run of naval gamery... but it sails that much more smoothly as a result.
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© Copyright 1994 Wally Simon
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