"Action Stations 4.X" Topic

In recent playtesting of a scenario using Action Stations 4, we noticed that it's pretty easy to spot everything at night (once inside spotting range):

• There are no modifiers for going slow (to hide the wake). Didn't there used to be?
  
• There are no modifiers to make small ships harder to spot than big ships.
  
• There are modifiers which make it easier to spot from larger craft – the bigger the spotter, the better the modifier.

Taken altogether, large ships like DDs and transports will tend to spot MTBs before the MTBs can spot them, which seems backward. Am I missing something?

- Ix

You are correct that there was a big change in spotting (and movement) rules. There are a few things to remember with the new spotting rules:

- Each ship can only make one spotting attempt during the spotting phase.
- A ship can only check for spotting if it is deployed on the board.

The new rules make spotting easier, but also penalize the player that wants to spot by making them deploy their ship. This makes them give away their position, so the other ships know exactly where they are. If a DD/transport player reveals the ship, the MTB players need to move around at the edges of visual range and then when they are ready to attack reveal themselves at the start of the movement phase when they want to attack. The tough part is that the hidden ships are limited to 10cm movement.

If you are finding it a little too easy to spot smaller ships, I would suggest reducing the visibility range. That way there is a little more maneuver room for the MTBs.

The new rules take a little getting used to and a change in how you think about approaching the battle.

I hope that helps out.

Thanks! That does help. And it all makes a lot more sense.

I totally didn't get the part about revealing oneself to even start spotting – that isn't really clear from the wording of the rules. An overtly stated rule like "blips can't spot" would clarify that. It would also help to consistently use the word "vessels" instead of "ships"; it's confusing to refer to all floating objects as "ships" in some places and distinguish between ships, boats, subs, landing craft, barges, etc. in others.

I also missed the 10 kn speed limit for blips (contact markers), but that rule even has its own section under Movement, so I should have noticed. I think I was thrown off by the haphazard swapping of the terms "blip" and "contact marker" to refer to the same thing.

- Ix

My published does love changing things:)