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Flankerk -> RE: Navy Books? (1/16/2007 11:49:28 PM)
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Going to stick my neck out somewhat, and be controversial. ( Like thats something new [:)] ).
Essentially naval combat tends to be more technical than land combat. By that I mean those with the highest tech weapons tend to have a significant edge. The same doesn't always hold true for land combat. If you have superior tanks, but the attack is wholly behind your flank and by surprise, you are likely in trouble. I'd argue that the same doesn't necessarily follow for naval combat in the same way. A naval group that is "outflanked", might manouevre to unmask batteries, but it isn't in the same amount of trouble as a land force in the same situation.
As an introduction to naval tactics etc, the manual stands out as pretty good to me. I agree both the above books are good. However they tend to be most useful for doctrine and so forth. They are great for scenario design and for trying to reproduce known tactics. They are less good as an introduction in my honest opinion. I found at times that Janes or Combat Fleets made easier reading too!
Harpoon as a wargame is pretty good at introducing players to increasingly complex scenarios. The training missions work decently enough, while even complex scenarios are a good introduction, you just tend to play them in lower speed settings/compression. Would particularly recommend the FOST series on HHQ plus the RED Flag set up for testing there also. Even if you dive in and get hammered, its a good introduction and I seem to recall I just kept replaying scenarios until I finally won them.
Overall, there is a dearth of books that actually cover Naval Tactics as such. Those that do tend to be fairly heavyweight.
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