"Battle Stations! Battle Stations! - Review" Topic

I just picked up these rules at Historicon and am quite impressed. They are very much a simplified, fleet level ruleset and if detailed shell by shell resolution is your thing, these won't work. I'm a long time General Quarters 1&2 player and I'd consider these direct competition to GQ. Again, this is not comparable to Seekreig V or Command at Sea but to put lots of ships on the table, they work.

Cool. Play a battle & write her up.

Just curious…what rules go shell by shell? Sounds aweful!

Who publishes these rules?

Decision Games

How does the game handle gunnery and torpedo combat?

I saw that it also has rules for submarines and aircraft. Can you give a quick overview of how the rules handle them?

Thanks
Dave

The gunnery compares a gun rating against an armour factor over one of 3 range bands. Close and standard ranges match up against belt armour and extreme range matches up against deck armour. It is easier to hit at close ans standard but easier to penetrate at extreme. Damage comes in 4 steps, level 1 is hit but no significant effect on combat or manouver, levels 2 and 3 are 33 or 66%reductions and level 4 is dead in the water/wreck. Criticals can occur to add effects. The gunnery uses a D20 and one CRT plus a critical list. No record keeping beyond noting criticals and all combat is essentially conducted using armor,penetration and firepower ratings and factors.

What navies do the rules cover & which wars? Just WW2 for now?

If they are the rules I am thinking about, torpedo fire works quite well.

I managed to sink a number of Italian BB's with a semi-suicidal DD attack, and most of my vessels lived to tell the tale. Escorts for the capitals were poorly positioned, permitting me to close the gap quickly. The game was quite fun, at least for my side – the British.

Torpedo attacks are pretty simple and use the attack factor v defense basic approach with a slighly different damage process. I've been reading these over and they impress me with a clever yet simple approach to naval warfare (including a neat air system at the squadron level)along with subs, mines, damage control et al. The rules are WW2 only but most ships including 'might haves' covered. A designers note refers to addedscenario books and a WW1 set.

I should mention that while I got my set from Last Square, I think On Military Matters was selling them as well. Decision Games is the producer (the Strategy & Tactics folks) are selling them direct as well.

Does anyone have a problem with the damage-control rules? It seems to easy to repair damage. In fact, it's often easier to repair damage than to inflict it.

Yes – I'm a little concered about the ease with which damage can be repaired too. The worst navies have a 1-8 chance on a D20, which is a 40% chance to repair each hit. The best navies have something like a 1-12 chance on a D20, which is 60%!

Yes but you have to remember that the game is so 'quick and dirty' that is presupposes enough damage in a normal turn to sink/cripple every ship and the damage control (saving throw) is a mechanic by which the massive damage in the combat system is moderated down while at the same time, the variable DC roll adjusts for the better navies overall, it just does it on the back end.

Just got the rules, supplied very quickly in the UK by games lore, can recommend. Sadly I am not very impressed at first reading of the rules.

They do seem too simple and too generic, they just don't give the impression you are playing with battleships, it all just looks so abstracted as to be hardly worth the effort of bothering.

I very much like the ACTA rules which Victory at Sea are based on because the mechanisms are very simple, but different enough to feel there is a real difference in ships and fleets, whereas Battle Stations (I think) just roles one D20 for a battle ships main guns, big number do lots of damage, low number do nothing. I think I would be happy with the VAS type approach of throwing more dice.

I haven't played them yet and it is difficult to say, but if you like the bucket of dice approach I don't think you will like these rules.

Closest I can think of is in ACTA lots of people did not like the way Minbari stealth worked because you rolled 1D6 and either saw them or didn't. it was all on the luck of one dice roll. Battle Stations gives that impression to me.

I will try Battle stations, and when I get them, VAS as well, but so far my opinion is not too positive.

Cpt Kremmen

Read them some more now, a little more impressed. They really are aimed at Jutland sized fleet actions, not that many instances of that sized fleet action in WWI or WWII Good for what if's if you want to use your entire fleet in one game.

I have some tricky spots that look like typos, I am going to email the author and see if I can clear them up.

I like the nice simple rules for detecting carriers at long range. Shame they don't mention how many sea planes most carriers actually carried….

Kremmen

I am the author of Battle Stations, so let me clarify the way the damage control system works. First, remember unlike other naval systems it only has four levels of damage not hundreds of points per ship. Therefore to prevent ships being sunk too quickly and unhistorically the damage control rules were put in place.

Historically hits could be scored on ships and they still could recover or fight on. A perfect example is in the battle of Kommondorski islands where the US cruiser Salt Lake City lost power and was dead in the water but through the skill of her crew regained speed and continued the fight. This would be represented in the game with multiple hits perhaps four or more with most of these hits failing to convert into damage due to the damage control rolls. Damage control rolls vary by year starting high for the Japanese and decreasing over time while at the same time the US and the British increase as their crews become more proficient. If you find the values too high then be my guest and reduce them, but I would not advise going below 50%. Believe it or not the system will not fall apart with some personalized tweaking and it is quite user friendly.

Many of you have mentioned that Battle Stations would be great for large battles. Well, it was designed for exactly that, but may I pose a question, what is a large battle, twenty ships, thirty, or forty? Most systems have trouble handling more than four ships without undue slow down. You get bogged down in detail and forget about tactics. I have played small actions like River Plate and large ones like a hypothetical Italian fleet sortie against the Allied invasion force at Sicily which I intend to include in the follow on scenario book. Whether the action was small or large it has been fun to play and has required some tough decisions. Those who like to leave their battleships unprotected by cruisers and destroyers soon find that enemy destroyers can cause considerable damage. My point is if you fail to use sound tactics you will pay dearly. Just as important you will not have to take a week to get a result in your battle or debate over who won. The fleet morale rules easily determine who won or lost.

Anyway if anyone has questions I am here to answer them. All the FAQs are on the Decision Games website. There have been, inspite of my best efforts, some errors but the game system is rock solid and plays very well.

Just ordered my copy. I liked your overview.

I also ordered a copy of VAS (well my wife did for my birthday). I am anxious to tear into both.

Thanks,

John

John,

I have also recently bought VAS and Battle Stations, they are very different rules systems.

First thing to say about Battle stations, there are a few quite important typos, not a problem when you know where they are. There is a FAQ somewhere, make sure you download it, should solve all your problems.

VAS is possibly more fun and certainly more detailed and varied than battle stations. However it is also not as realistic, e.g. it assumes that all carrier V carrier battles will occur at a range of no more than 20 miles. Battle Stations handles this better.

I am going to try and play a few games with both rules sets. I think I will end up using VAS for small "fun" battles, and battle stations for larger and more realistic games.

VAS typos – there are actually very few which is much better than average for Mongoose. British j/k/n type destroyers have a secondary firepower of 1 not 4. Not much else important.

Andy

Some people need to go on BoardGameGeek and add their ratings and reviews.

BoardGameGeek is impractical, in that one can't use it unless one registers, and the "are you human" field parser seems to be broken