"Torpedo Boats in Naval Thunder" Topic

Hey everyone,

I was wondering how everyone uses Torpedo Boats (and other small surface combatants such as various French Aviso's and sloops and the like) in Naval Thunder or other navy games. Do you use them at all, and if so how? I have been running them in place of destroyers in some games, though they seem to just draw fire from one or two cruisers / destroyers guns and never end up doing much, even in small games with smaller ships.

Mostly been using Spica class Torpedo boats for the Italians and Arras class sloop for the French, and they just don't seem to do much to justify even bringing them, as they perish as soon as they get into range.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: The last game I used them in, for example, was a home brewed Scenario in which the Italian Heavy Cruiser Zara was being escorted for engine repairs following a fire (started off with an engine room critical for -2 movement), with her escorts being the light cruisers Alberto da Giussano and Alberico da Barbiano along with four Spica Class Torpedo Boats, the Airone, Cassiopea, Vega and Polluce against the French Light Cruisers Montcalm and Gloire and the Destroyers Le Terrible, L'Indomptable, and Le Triomphant. The idea was the French were sortieing to try and sink the wounded Heavy cruiser.

In the battle the Spica's were an almost non factor as by the time the enemy destroyers closed to the range of their guns, they were just easily shot to pieces by the larger destroyers guns (except the Cassiopea, which had been sunk by lucky fire at a longer range), while their return fire against the french light cruisers and destroyers was to meager to be of much effect.

First off, realize that the Italian torpedo boats were not designed to take a number of hits and survive. (In fact most DD and smaller ships rarely survived 3-5 six inch gun hits unless they were all to superstructure areas).
For example:
link

Note the last paragraphs of this wiki. Even at night, and close range the TB's didn't hit very often for their high rate of fire due to the lack of night fire training and national doctrine.

That being said, I have found that a number of rules overstate the ability of gunfire to hit, especially at their long or extreme range. When you consider that US BB gunfire practices of the 1930's considered 3% hits to be an excellent result at over 25,000 yds (25 Kyds) could you expect light guns on relatively unstable platforms to hit often at their long/extreme ranges?

In my opinion, many rule sets allow for higher to hit percentages in order to keep the game interesting. After all, few players want to roll dice turn after turn with rarely a hit occurring. Rules may do this different ways, the most common I think, is to say each round of gunfire is 5+ minutes worth. So when you get a result of 1-3 hits on that turn, you gotta remind yourself that those guns have fired maybe 100-300 rounds that turn.

Anyways, back to your original question, how to handle light ships. Keep them at longer ranges, if they are tasked to protect ships, use smoke and evasive maneuvering. Their main threat is not their gunfire, but their torpedoes. If you read the wiki link above, you will note that it was a night engagement, when light ships will have the best chance of closing to effective fire and torpedo range. Even so, the light cruiser got 4 hits on the TB effectively sinking it. Note that the CL took only few hits in return.

I'm not sure how NT handles targeting. Many rules will adjust hit possibility by the ship size. For example, gunfire final results at TB's might be adjusted by 1/2. They usually pick a ship size of say 600 x 50 ft and that area size is considered 100% for gunfire.
Evasive maneuvering also is some adjustment to the final to hit number. Type of gunfire control also plays a part in the to hit number: radar enhanced, modern directors and plotting, stereoscopic rangefinders only or just local control play a part in the ability to put the gun on target.

In your last game example, I would've employed a CL with the 4 spicas as a screen between the Zara and its close escort, using smoke, salvo chasing, and staying on the unengaged side of the smoke to keep the french from advancing too quickly. The threat of getting torpedoed upon closing the smoke screen would be enough to keep the French from acting rashly by closing the range. As Italian Cmdr, I would be loathe to send my 4 TB's against any 1 of the French (super)DD's, let alone 3 of them, knowing how few hits they can absorb and still be effective.

TB's as you appear to be learning are a fragile asset. Better than nothing, but not by much.

I irregularily play with German and British S-boats and MTB/MGBs. The difficulty of spotting and hitting these small vessels was their greatest advantage.
My dad's action station was a loader for a 20mm on a minesweeper (HMS Gazelle)- he used to tell me they were trained to shoot slightly short of any E-Boat they saw, as they had a greater chance of hitting by ricochetting rounds off the sea (at a fairly low trajectory) They never saw one!

There are several good books on the subject available.

Using a target number of 10 is a common house rule for destroyers. You might even go to 11 for torpedo boats. Yes… Naval Thunder… The rule set that goes all the way to 11! Lol

Evasive action is key.

Hmmm, when taking evasive action, you cannot fire torpedoes. And since the other ships will fire in an earlier phase than the torpedo boats, they will be toast before doing harm. Unless you bring a score of them to swarm the defence.

What I'm doing instead is a house rule, I simply disregard the Rate of Fire modifiers for ships of CL class and above firing at DDs or smaller. You still have good chance of disabling the DD -especially when you are a Brooklin class with a crapload of 6"- but that is no longer a sure thing.