Re: [FT] Fleet Battles

On Wed, 19 Jan 2000, Alan E and Carmel J Brain wrote:

> Denny Graver wrote:
>
> > Do people use the fleet combat rules from MT (page 8: Squadron
> > Operations)when fighting fleet battles ?  i.e.. organise ships into
> > squadrons and issue group movement orders and fire all ships in the
group
> > simultaneously.

personally, i always use squadrons for movement - i write orders for a
squadron leader, and then draw a little flag in the orders box of the
other ships in the squadron to denote that they're following the same
orders (the flag is a vertical line with a triangle off the right, like
an
angular P; it's quick to draw). if i want one ship to break formation, i
write orders for it separately.

> I nearly always use identical orders for groups of ships. Something
> like:
> Turn
> 1.	 All Spd 6+2=8 R1
> 2.	 All Spd 8-1=7 L2
> 3.	 1 Spd 7-4=3
>	 2 Spd 7-3=4
>	 3 Spd 7-2=5
>	 4 Spd 7-1=6
> 4.	 1 Spd 3+4=7
>	 2 Spd 4+3=7
>	 3 Spd 5+2=7
>	 4 Spd 6+1=7
> 5	 All Spd 7-3=4 
> which would turn a line-abreast formation heading straight up the
table
> into a line-abreast formation going left-ish.

i don't usually bother with this, so i would go from line-abreast
heading
north to line-astern heading west. my squadrons are generally 3 or 4
ships
in a triangle or diamond respectively, so it makes relatively little
difference. i always use ships of the same class in a squadron (ie a DD
sqn, a CL sqn, even a BB sqn).

> However, I always fire ships separately.

same here; firing as squadrons would change the game: i could lump all
my
big ships in one squdron and fire them all at once on my first action.
to
prevent this, we'd need rules about valid squadrons, which would be a
pain.

tom