Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

I'd add that the writeups miss the range, in nautical miles (with speed). It's an interesting figure.

quote:

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

I do agree that USS Enterprise does need a much more detailed write-up.

If the original authors are not offended, I could offer to rewrite any (or all) carriers of all nations, as that is a speciality area of mine.  The sort of areas that need to be stressed, for example, are speed, the US Navy's decision to sacrifice protection for aircraft capacity, the aircraft types carried at different stages of the war, and notable doctrines (e.g. damage control - the finest carrier the Japanese ever produced, Taiho, was destroyed when some moron thought it would be a good idea to clear the avgas fumes out of the hangar by switching on the electric fans).

I have sent Steve a write-up for Béarn, and you can decide if my style is acceptable.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Plain Ian

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

I'd add that the writeups miss the range, in nautical miles (with speed). It's an interesting figure.

I'd also add that seing the main armament quoted as "mm" at the top of each 'biog' for British naval units, then described below in terms of inches was a bit disconcerting. But then this has already been discussed.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Norman42

I look at it this way:

First, this isnt an encyclopedia of all things WW2, its a game, and the write-ups while nice 'chrome' are 100% un-needed for the game to function. 

[Warspite1][100% agree with that]

Second, they are being done by volunteers, each with thier own style and knowledge base and bias as to what facts are important.  Expecting a uniformity in this situation is fairly difficult.  To get that you would need a far more comprehensive organization and template then is currently in place. I think the present format listing primary armament, speed, armor, and size is enough in the way of standard 'hard data'.

[Warspite1][Broadly agree although a couple more additions would not be too onerous if enough people thought it would help]

Third, there are what...6500 counters/write-ups to be done? That is a large undertaking, and to expect a Wikipedia-like entry for all that is beyond what I think the scope of the "write-up operation" is intended to be.  Besides, some units/ships have very little to distinguish them.  Yes, a ship like the Enterprise, Bismarck, or Ark Royal are going to have large detailed writeups, but an obscure Yugoslavian destroyer flotilla or a cruiser sunk by a mine in its first week at sea will not. 

[Warspite1][Agreed as per my original post the length of any write up will necessarily be governed to an extent by the unit history - but my wider point was without some kind of framework agreement on what is required we may get (and have currently got) just a few lines on the Enterprise while a second person may choose to write a small book on a minor vessel. As a presentation this in my mind would look odd]

We *could* fill up the write-up with minutia about the slope of the armor belt, or the benefits of different calibres of each anti-aircraft gun, and the differing horsepower of the engineering plants, but that isn't what these write-ups are about.  They are to add a little bit of colour to the square little piece of cardboard(pixels).

[Warspite1][Hence my comment on broad agreement for what needs to be included]

Personally, I think less is more.  Aiming for 3-5 short paragraphs (depending on the history of the unit) as a summary of their creation, actions, and fate is plenty. We aren't Jane's Book of Ships 1936-1946.  These write-ups should whet someones appetite to go read further books on the histories of WW2.

[Warspite1][I think the problem is that less can be well...... less. Lets use Creation, Actions (WWII history only) and Fate for example as the 3 key headings and within that a guideline that:
Creation - is about when? - and if interesting why - for what purpose?
Actions - very brief service history which should be briefly expanded only where particularly interesting e.g. Midway, North Cape
Fate will either be a scrapping or sold date or a brief expansion on the engagement that sunk her.

Then, provided all those core bases are covered, if someone wants to spend time writing more on a unit then fine - but at least every unit will have a basic treatment]

My 2 cents.

(in reply to Norman42)

quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

Okay - here is the note I sent to Steve previously

Firstly - let me say that I think the write ups are secondary to the main issue - i.e. getting a working game on the market.
However, I think that if write ups are going to be included - and personally I believe that they are a superb addition to the game - then they need to be done "properly". 
Let me be clear, I am not saying that I believe my write ups are necessarily the way to go and am happy to listen to any criticism but I am generally happy with the approach I have sought to take i.e. a structure for the write ups so that for each ship I will get:

- Key Facts and Figures
- Brief background as to the reason the ships were required in the first place, class, no of ships etc
- WWII service history only - encompassing brief details of theatres operated in and only expanded slightly in the interests of brevity where there is a more famous or interesting episode e.g. River Plate, Hunt the Bismarck etc
- Fate

Reading the existing write ups of the three Australian County class sisters, I think they are simply too brief to give the reader any real insight.

.P  A County Class Cruiser, the HMAS Shropshire was commissioned by the Royal Navy in September 1929, but
was transferred to the Australian Navy after the HMAS Canberra was sunk in 1942. In the Royal Navy she
served in the South Atlantic as a merchant escort. In the Australian Navy she saw action in the battles of
Surigao Strait and Linyagen Gulf.
.P She was decommissioned in 1949. She was supposed to be renamed
Canberra after the HMAS Canberra was lost, but due to the fact that the US Navy had a ship with that name,
she kept her old name. This was the only ship ever to be named after Shropshire, England.

If the author would be agreeable, I would like to see these expanded in the way that her 10 sisters have been written up.
(I have added my Dorsetshire write up at the bottom of this post). 

Another example.

For the write up of HMNZS Gambia:
- Armour detail is missing
- There are references to Royal British Navy? and British Navy?
- The second paragraph simply repeats the facts section in more words - no value added.

HMNZS Gambia was originally commissioned into the Royal British Navy as a Fiji Class Cruiser, but
  was decommissioned into the New Zealand Navy in September 1943. Her battle honours include
  Sabang, Okinawa, and Japan. She was handed back to the British Navy in February 1946. Her first
  mission after rejoining the British Navy was to transport large quantities of gold bullion from Australia to
  England.
  .P She was finally decommissioned in December 1968. Her engines gave her a total of
  80,000 hp, and a top speed of 32 knots. Her main armament was a total of 12 152mm guns. At full load she
  had a displacement of 9,000 tons.

Last example - USS Enterprise

Commissioned in May 1938, the USS Enterprise was the sixth aircraft carrier to enter the lists of the US Navy.
   She would serve throughout the entire war, participating in almost every big battle in the Pacific. Although not
   in port during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, bombers of the Enterprise did participate in aerial
   battles over the port, and 6 of them were lost. The USS Enterprise was the flagship of Admiral Spruance’s
   fleet during the battle of Midway.
   .P She would go on to earn a total of 20 battle stars during her operations in
   WWII, the most of any ship in the US Navy. The Enterprise was finally decommissioned in February 1947.
   .P She was the only ship outside the Royal British Navy to earn the highest decoration of the British Admiralty,
   the British Admiralty Pennant.

You posted Norman42 write ups of three French ships on Saturday.  Personally I would have added a section on why they were built, class etc but in my view these were absolutely fine. They were brief - but only because the ships did not particularly warrant more and moreover they each had the same structure - which I think is very important.

I`m afraid what I know about computers is not worth knowing so I cannot help on the technical side but am keen to see the historical aspects done in a way that really give the reader - regardless of prior WWII knowledge, a real taster for what the unit he is commanding is all about, what she did and what happened to her.   

Dorsetshire write up

.P HMS Dorsetshire and her sisters were the first heavy cruisers built right
up to the 1922 Washington Treaty Naval limits (standard displacement 10,000
tons and 8-inch main armament). These limits had been set as the Royal Navy
already had cruisers this large (Hawkins Class).
.P Athough Britain needed more numerous smaller vessels, the building of large
cruisers between the wars by Japan had to be countered by the Royal Navy - the
County class were the result. There were 13 ships built including two for the
Royal Australian Navy. After the sinking of one of these - HMAS Canberra - the
British government agreed to the transfer of HMS Shropshire to the Royal
Australian Navy.
.P World War II gave the County class the opportunity to prove themselves as
excellent all-round vessels, noted for their combination of range, strength,
sea-worthiness and weight of fire.
.P HMS Dorsetshire was completed in 1930. In December 1939, a couple months
after war was declared, Dorsetshire was transferred from the China station to
Ceylon to link up with her sister ship Cornwall and the carrier Hermes - Force
I. Force I took part in the search for the pocket-battleship Graf Spee.
.P She operated in the South Atlantic for a short while before returning to
the UK in May. She quickly departed for West Africa and in June, set out to
follow the French battleship Richelieu which had left Dakar for Casablanca.
The Richelieu was eventually ordered to return to Dakar and Dorsetshire
continued to monitor French Naval Forces off Dakar throughout July.
.P In September 4 she had minor repairs in South Africa before returning to
Freetown. By November she was operating in the Indian Ocean and bombarding
Italian Somaliland. Thereafter a further spell in dock in South Africa was
followed by a patrol in the South Atlantic looking for the Admiral Scheer.
.P Dorsetshire`s most high profile engagement of WWII was the hunt for the
battleship Bismarck that had escaped into the North Atlantic in May 1941.
It was Dorsetshire that on 27 May was ordered to torpedo the crippled Bismarck
at the end of the battle. Dorsetshire recovered 110 of Bismarck's crew from
the sea, before being forced break off the rescue because of the presence of
a U-boat.
.P After this Dorsetshire undertook a further period of convoy escort and in
1942 she was assigned to the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean. The Japanese
1st Air Fleet, fresh from 5 months of uninterrupted victory since Pearl Harbor
entered the Indian Ocean for what was known as the Indian Ocean raid.  During
this raid, Dorsetshire and her sister ship Cornwall were caught in the open
and without air cover. They were attacked by carrier based aircraft south-west
of Ceylon on 5 April 1942. Dorsetshire was hit by ten bombs and sank quickly.
234 crewmen died. Cornwall was hit eight times and sank about ten minutes
later.

quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

I think the problem is that less can be well...... less. Lets use Creation, Actions (WWII history only) and Fate for example as the 3 key headings and within that a guideline that:
Creation - is about when? - and if interesting why - for what purpose?
Actions - very brief service history which should be briefly expanded only where particularly interesting e.g. Midway, North Cape
Fate will either be a scrapping or sold date or a brief expansion on the engagement that sunk her.

Then, provided all those core bases are covered, if someone wants to spend time writing more on a unit then fine - but at least every unit will have a basic treatment]

My 2 cents.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Norman42

I look at it this way:

First, this isnt an encyclopedia of all things WW2, its a game, and the write-ups while nice 'chrome' are 100% un-needed for the game to function. 

Second, they are being done by volunteers, each with thier own style and knowledge base and bias as to what facts are important.  Expecting a uniformity in this situation is fairly difficult.  To get that you would need a far more comprehensive organization and template then is currently in place. I think the present format listing primary armament, speed, armor, and size is enough in the way of standard 'hard data'.

Third, there are what...6500 counters/write-ups to be done? That is a large undertaking, and to expect a Wikipedia-like entry for all that is beyond what I think the scope of the "write-up operation" is intended to be.  Besides, some units/ships have very little to distinguish them.  Yes, a ship like the Enterprise, Bismarck, or Ark Royal are going to have large detailed writeups, but an obscure Yugoslavian destroyer flotilla or a cruiser sunk by a mine in its first week at sea will not. 

We *could* fill up the write-up with minutia about the slope of the armor belt, or the benefits of different calibres of each anti-aircraft gun, and the differing horsepower of the engineering plants, but that isn't what these write-ups are about.  They are to add a little bit of colour to the square little piece of cardboard(pixels).

Personally, I think less is more.  Aiming for 3-5 short paragraphs (depending on the history of the unit) as a summary of their creation, actions, and fate is plenty. We aren't Jane's Book of Ships 1936-1946.  These write-ups should whet someones appetite to go read further books on the histories of WW2.

My 2 cents.

quote:

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

Steve, in the Béarn write-up you've added a spurious reference to the ship being sunk on 27 Nov 1942 (the date the Vichy French fleet in Toulon was scuttled).  But Béarn, being in Martinique at the time, survived to the end of the war.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

During the design of CoiF, I asked about what the counters represented, and I was answered that by the designer :

1 ASW = around 5 to 20 DD/DE/corvette type units, depending on which class & the unit's factors, etc., etc.
1 ASW-CV units = around 6 CVEs.

quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

During the design of CoiF, I asked about what the counters represented, and I was answered that by the designer :

1 ASW = around 5 to 20 DD/DE/corvette type units, depending on which class & the unit's factors, etc., etc.
1 ASW-CV units = around 6 CVEs.

Patrice - just to be clear was your comment for info or are you suggesting that this be incorporated into the ASW write ups?

quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

Patrice - do you know where all this unit/counter info can be found? Are you able to post these? I don`t recall it being in the literature that comes with the board game but if there is a definitive list then this may be useful in assisting the write ups. 

quote:

ORIGINAL: Taxman66

Mr. O'Keets!

I got a question:

Looking over the v7 rules from ADG... shouldn't those ASW units have attack values of 0 and ASW values of 8 & 4 (4 & 2 doubled for being red boxed) respectively (4 & 2 being used for the pre-fire/combat or whatever it's called ASW attack)?

Is there room for comments in the technical box to explain/remind players about doubled values (red circles/boxes), halved values (extended range), subtracted values (Subs in surface combat, twin engine fighters, etc...), etc... 

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

During the design of CoiF, I asked about what the counters represented, and I was answered that by the designer :

1 ASW = around 5 to 20 DD/DE/corvette type units, depending on which class & the unit's factors, etc., etc.
1 ASW-CV units = around 6 CVEs.

Patrice - just to be clear was your comment for info or are you suggesting that this be incorporated into the ASW write ups?

Well, I don't know. This is an info, that's for sure. I believe somewhere in the game, this should be written what the scales are, you know those "1 SUB is 30 first line submarines (plus many more obsolete)", "1 CVP is 21 planes per Class", "1 TRS, 1 AMPH or 6 CP = 1 million tons of merchant shipping" etc...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Taxman66

Another possibility would be to throw that info in at the top of the unit description and then use some kind of seperater "------" line before the color commentary begins.

I think that would be less coding, and given that I can't think of many units off the top of my head that would be subject to more than one special effect (I guess there might be some extended range tank busters?) that directly modified the factors.

----
Oh, and thanks for the explanation. I just saw the counters' values in the unit data panel and it didn't jive with what I recently read in the 'new' rules.

----
I haven't played with these units and I got mixed feelings... on the one hand the CW & US now get the option to concentrate the (formerly) intrinsic ASW. On the other they were free (as intrinsic ASW) and now cost build points, a lot when you figure in the CVPs. Meanwhile the Axis just get new toys without giving anything up.