Gregor_SSG
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Joined: 3/6/2003
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Just a few points in reply to the posts made here. Firstly, we do try to read every post, though its usually not possible to respond in detail to every single one.
As to the question of what the carriers do when launching a strike, I'd like to make the following points.
Carriers are considered to be 'on station' in a hex steaming at cruising speed while waiting for strike recovery - they are not anchored at zero knots.
Carriers are considered to be manouvering at flank speed whenever under air attack, for the purpose of dodging bombs and torpedoes.
The fact that the formation is in a single hex is no advantage at all for the purpose of launching airstrikes or intercepting with surface groups, since you never deal with the real location of enemy ships, only a sighting report which is inherently variable. You have the same chance of your strike finding a Task Group steaming a set course as one that is 'on station'. So while you know that a TG is in the same hex, the routines that handle sightings and strikes don't.
It is true that if your surface TG is in the same hex as an enemy TG then there a chance for repeated surface contacts. However this is very hard to achieve. You might manage it at night, but sightings decay at night and carriers are unlikely to still be on station recovering strikes at night. You can try during the day, but its hard to get a surface group close to enemy carriers without being sighted and sunk long before you can even think about surface combat. The Japanese did manage this at Leyte Gulf, (by the deliberate sacrifice of their fleet carriers as decoys) but their surface group, despite overwhelming force and being opposed only by a bunch of escort carriers, found the experience so disagreeable that at one stage they retired in confusion and were able to sink exactly one US carrier with gunfire.
In all our years of making games, we have stuck to some basic principles and some of them are very relevant here. In summary, they include:
1. Game first, simulation second. It doesn’t matter how realistic it is, if a game is too hard or not fun to play, people just won’t play it.
2. No game should try to do everything, otherwise it will fall foul of Rule 1 and be too hard to play. This means that we abstract some game elements in order to focus on those that are, (in our judgement) both important and fun.
3. No player wants to do everything but different players will want to do different things. In other words, you can’t please everybody and in trying you’ll probably end up pleasing nobody.
4. You cannot just ask players to ‘do the right thing’ (more on this later).
Carriers at War is not a super tactical game. We don’t want you having to turn your carriers into the wind, micro-manage deck operations or do complex navigation. Your job is at a higher level which involves making tough decisions on incomplete information, not counting deck spots.
On that last point, Carriers at War is already a highly successful game, with its various versions winning multiple awards and selling around 150,000 copies. We’re confident that, even if it doesn’t happen to handle all the details the way you would like, it is such an exciting and fun to play game that you won’t regret its purchase.
Now to the delicate issue of player behaviour. Ian Trout, designer of Carriers at War, has reminded me that the main reason for the ‘on station’ rule is to prevent players from launching a raid and then simply running away from any retribution or mutual strikes. The player would lose their planes, but quite possibly preserve their carriers while sinking the opposition force. With reference to Rule 4 above, we know that it is futile, especially in a multi-player game, to ask players to refrain from exploiting the game system. If an exploit is possible, they will use it while blaming us and simultaneously demanding that we stop it. So we’ve stopped it. Ian reports that the impromptu kamikaze tactic was a favourite in the old board game Flat Top, which had no mechanism to prevent it.
So there you have a full and frank explanation of the mechanism. I’m sure that people will have further ideas and we’ll listen to everything. I would remind people though that we are close to finishing the game, and we are not in a position to make big changes to the current game system.
Gregor
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