Smoke did come up in playtesting, and was dropped as not being worth the time and complexity in the otherwise straightforward disengagement process. I'd also note that, aside from a couple of engagements in the Med, it did not impact surface engagements in WW2 (which as you will know were most often fought at night). And after a lifetime at sea, I can understand why, compared to squalls, fog, haze and dust storms!
This is what Sam Mustafa posted on his fB site.
There are more designer's notes in NIMITZ than in any previous game I've published, but there are still a lot of questions about why things *aren't* in the rulebook, that people have become accustomed to seeing in naval games of the past. I thought I'd address the three most common:
Coastal Bombardment
Relatively few naval games include this, mainly because it opens a huge box of land-warfare rules. Bombardment of what? There would need to be a system of "garrison points" or something like that, otherwise, what is the result of the bombardment?
How effective is the bombardment by different ships? Does a 15" gun bombard better than an 8" gun? How many guns? What if some of the bombarding ships are damaged? That would require more rules, and another step in the sequence.
Are all bombardments equal, or does the defender's positions and terrain matter? More rules.
What is the goal? Are we softening up the base for an invasion? If so, then we'll need more rules for the combat between the invaders and the garrison.
This is a naval game; I want to keep the action at sea. But if you want to include coastal bombardment in a specific scenario, then it's relatively easy to write as a scenario rule: for example, if a TF with at least X-number of large guns anchors off the enemy base for two full periods, that base is assumed destroyed, or whatever criterion you care to write.
Smokescreens
This is the question I get most often. Why is there no smoke in NIMITZ? Many (most) of the playtest versions included smokescreens until we gave up on them for being a lot of fiddly rules for not much benefit. (The reason there's a "Marker Step" in the sequence of play is because that was once the stage during which you lifted the smoke markers.)
Smoke is one of those things that people are accustomed to playing literally, i.e. having game mechanics for putting it down and picking it back up again. It requires a fair amount of rules: How big are the markers? How many can you put down as the ship moves? Does it require some special phase or order to do so? What other actions can you do while making smoke? How does your ship's speed affect the number of smoke markers it can place? Then there's the issue of effect: How does it affect fire? The launching of torpedoes? Does the smoke marker affect the ship making it, or only those behind the markers? Is the smoke opaque, or is it a modifier to fire? Does smoke happen at night? What if a ship has fire control radar?
One of the conceptual problems here is that ships normally made smoke when they were breaking off the action, or when they were trying to put some distance between themselves and the enemy, i.e. a pause in the action. But in a wargame, where everything is compressed onto a small table, smoke appears in the midst of shooting, torpedoes, and close maneuvering, in ways that aren't historical but are expected because gamers are used to games that have these mechanics. We already have a "disengage" rule. What would smoke add to that?
I don't recall when in the playtest process we got rid of smoke, but I do recall that not one playtester asked to have it back. My advice to you is: play the game. If you really miss placing smoke markers, then ask yourself why: what function, specifically, are you missing? Just the ritual of putting it down and picking it back up again? Or is there a real tactical advantage that can accrue to one side, that you feel is lost? (Because if it applies equally to both sides, then there's really no need to play it out.) You can easily assume it's there, just like radar, spotter planes, and any number of other things that games abstract.
Mines
This is something that is so easily scenario house-ruled that I decided it didn't need to be in the book. For one thing, nobody needs it unless they're doing a very specific sort of scenario. For another, it's also a Pandora Box: do we include minelayers and minesweepers now? If mines are in the game, players will naturally want to know next: can we lay mines during the game? Or have a scenario involving minelayers?
The randomness of mines makes for an easy house rule: if you move through the minefield, roll a die. If you roll an "X" resolve a torpedo hit with Strength Y.
As a General Rule:
During playtesting, or especially after a game comes out, I have never seen players ask to remove things from a game. I have only ever seen them wanting to add things. Giving in to every such temptation results in an Advanced Squad Leader or Star Fleet Battles: a game that becomes slow, compendious, and hard to learn.
If that's your thing, then you're in luck, because there are a LOT of naval games like that. My M.O., however, has always been to streamline, to simplify, and to get at the essence of what players need to do: the fighting that matters. In the most direct and expedient way.
It's your game now, and you're free to do whatever you like with it, but if you wanted to know my rationale, that's why NIMITZ doesn't have many of the rituals that you're accustomed to seeing in naval games, and why I don't want it to.
experiments to find a better way to mount aircraft for wargaming.
