Christopher Taylor
United States
Lake Forest
California
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Here are some additional notes about the design:
Okinawa
Kadena Air Base in Okinawa is, currently, a large US military presence in the area. In Fleets, Okinawa was not selected as an allied airbase since it is scheduled to be closed or reduced in size by around 2015. The local government and population are against the presence of US military bases. Some units and personnel are being moved to Guam.
UCAV
UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle) are robotic planes, equipped with weapons, that are capable of flying and fighting without human intervention. They can be be pre-programmed to fly a particular route and will automatically attack any hostile forces that it finds. They are also useful as scouts, being able to send real time video back to area commanders. UCAVs are operational today. The UCAV unit in Fleets represents the next generation of aircraft.
The PLAN player does not receive UCAV units. The PLAN will operate UCAVs by this time, but it was a design choice to limit the UCAV unit to the USN player as the effectiveness of PLAN UCAVs is unknown. The UCAV Replacement card represents the ability to quickly prepare backup UCAVs for operations.
Search
The Search mechanic was added after the first public display of Fleets. It was based on some excellent player feedback.
Searching now represents the "cat & mouse" of stealth unit operations versus detection. Even surface ships will be operating under restrictions to reduce their detectability at distance. Subs and B-2B stealth bombers have the ability to return to stealth, due to their increased stealth characteristics. F-35Cs have increased stealth properties as well, but their being able to return to stealth would have played havoc with game balance. (They are already an extremely strong unit.)
F-35C
The F-35C was a problematic unit to balance. It originally had a 2 strength with 1 air combat bonus symbol. It tore through PLAN ships like a bull in a china shop. After extensive playtesting, we tweaked it to be a 1 strength unit with 2 air combat bonus symbols. This made it a strong air combat unit but balanced it better against ships.
Here are the original counters if you'd like to try them out:
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Steve Carey
United States
West Coast
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Thanks Chris!
Do you think this system is adaptable to WWII?
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Christopher Taylor
United States
Lake Forest
California
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Steve Carey wrote: Thanks Chris!
Do you think this system is adaptable to WWII?
I sure do!
We've been playing a lot of Pacific theatre games in the last few months and discussing what the scope of a WWII version would be.
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Steve Carey
United States
West Coast
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Solomon's Campaign.
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Rob Bottos
Canada
Coquitlam
British Columbia
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Chris, just curious as to what other potential flashpoints you're looking at for games in this series? What about a conflict in the Arctic between the Rusians and the Canadians over Arctic sovereignty. How about a return to the Falklands with a clash between Argentina and Great Britain? Or a clash between Argentina and Chile over control of fishing grounds? Or a clash between Canada and France over control of the fishing grounds off St.Pierre/miquelon.
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Jim Adlard
United States
Petaluma
California
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Invulnerable US stacks-
Keep one SSN with two DDG or CGX and 3 F35 together at all times. It gets ten defensive dice against surface and Subs and 16 dice against planes. Everything not in these stacks are placed behind in stacks where possible. These stacks go anyplace they want and do anything they can, and the best the Chinese can do is make a 4 die attack with being vulnerable to counter attack or they can make 3 die SSN strikes and be invulnerable to counter attack.
Ok, so they are not invulnerable, but they are near to it. Is there a game mechanic to deal with this?
On another note, the subs do not feel lke Subs. The subs should have better survivablity when alone.
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Christopher Taylor
United States
Lake Forest
California
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That sounds like a perfect hex to drop a nuke onto. Or use Land-based Cruise Missiles. Or a regular attack backed by Command and Control Confusion.
Yeah, that's a nasty stack, but there are cards that can ruin the USN's whole day. And the USN doesn't have a lot of spare units, so any loss is deeply felt.
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Jim Adlard
United States
Petaluma
California
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Thanks for the reply so quickly.
We've played a couple of more times, just the Training Exercise scenario though, but the Chinese have their own strong stack of a SSN, 2 x DDG, and 3 x the 2-4 aircraft for 13 defensive dice and 15 verses aircraft.
The usual turn involes the Americans moving their stack to 4 hexes from the Chinese stack and on their operation doing a 4 die attack with their DDG. They usually add in 2 dice with a card against 13 defensive dice. The Chinese don't even have to pplay a card.
For the Chinese, they move the SSN to within two hexes and attack with 3 dice. They play a card to get to 5 or 6 dice against 10 dice for the defense. THe Americans usually play a card to get to 12 dice if they can.
Then the events happen...
We lowered the American start moral to 7 which gave the Chinese a 2 out of 6 win ratio.
My opinion is that it's too hard to restealth the subs. They shaoild be able to restealth anywhere as long as it's deep water for SSN and shallow water for the SS. This would help the Chinese cause because they operate last.
Lastly, it is a good little game and has a lot of potential for expansion.
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Brian Berg Asklev Hansen
Denmark
Vejle
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any firm plans for an expansion or another game using the same system?
Brian
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Christopher Taylor
United States
Lake Forest
California
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brian asklev aursen wrote: any firm plans for an expansion or another game using the same system?
Brian
Nothing firm at the moment, but there is something squishy in the works. Maybe.
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