Not long after I proposed this project, I received suggestions on how to handle torpedoes. The thrust of these suggestions was that the fashion in which DW handles torpedoes is somewhat unsatisfactory, due to them being “direct fire” weapons, and not giving a good feel for seeing the deadly “fish” streak across the table to hit your opponent’s ships. In principle, I agree with this sentiment, so it’s worth examining in some detail.
Historical Performance
In WWI, torpedoes greatly grew in power and range, at the same time that their employment from Destroyers and submarines became a lot more effective. Combine that with the fact that underwater protection was poor on capital ships of the era, and you had a weapon that was truly fearsome. By the time of WWII, underwater protection on newer ships was much better, and older ships were usually retrofitted to improve their performance in this area. However, torpedoes continued to improve as well, and it also proved to be impossible to provide adequate protection to smaller ships such as cruisers and destroyers.
Across the major belligerent powers, torpedoes varied considerably in performance. The Japanese “Long Lance” oxygen torpedoes reigned supreme as the deadliest weapons of their type during the war. The following table summarizes the characteristics of the primary surface-launched torps of the primary naval powers of the war. Keep these numbers in mind as we turn to discussing gameplay implementation:
Note: These weapons all had multiple speed settings. Shown here are what I was able to determine were the most commonly used settings.
DWH Gameplay: Torpedo Options
The first and most obvious thing to do would be to carry over the torpedo mechanics straight from DW; that is, they act as “direct fire” weapons with a given range, roll against a target’s DR/CR, and do not degrade with damage. This approach has the advantage of minimizing the learning curve for players of DW, which was one of my major goals for this project. However, the downside is that, as discussed, there is no feel for laying a spread of torpedoes and having them travel across the table. The mechanics in BFG, which I discussed here previously, offers an alternative. The challenge here would be that I would have to insert a new phase into the game turn. Additionally, putting a marker of some kind down on the table would require some way to mark the strength of that marker, if the standard exploding Attack Dice mechanic is to be used.
There is another wrinkle to consider when discussing the idea of putting a marker down on the table; the time and distance scales I’ve chosen. As you may recall, these are 6″ and 600 yds/inch. Given that, it makes sense to use markers on the table if those markers are actually going to be there more than one turn. Given the table above, we can see that doesn’t always bear true; The US Mark 15, for example has a torpedo run of only about 4 minutes at it’s highest speed. The Long Lance is a good candidate, though; it would run for a full 12 minutes.
Lethality
I think we also have to consider the lethality of the torpedo, and whether or not the standard attack dice mechanic represents it well. In order to give a fair representation, we would need to give torpedo mountings on say, a destroyer, enough AD to have a good chance of damaging a battleship; perhaps about 10. That’s quite a few for a small ship to throw, but it would be necessary to do if we are to keep torpedoes deadly. Another option would be to change the torpedo damage mechanic more radically. I could do something similar to War at Sea; small numbers of dice are rolled, but only “6’s” count as hits. Those hits do 2 or 3 points of hull damage, however. For DWH, we could say that a torpedo hit causes a Critical Hit. Or, we might have a special Torpedo Damage chart for players to roll on following a torpedo hit. Again, though, this may make for too many differences in DWH from regular DW.
Concussion Charges
One aspect of the DW engine that I know I am going to have to do away with is the CC defending against torpedoes. Simply stated, navies simply did not use depth charges as countermeasures against enemy torpedoes during WWII. Even if such a thing was physically possible (ie, a depth charge detonating near a torpedo would destroy or divert it), which is a dubious premise, the tactic simply wasn’t employed. Thus, it will have to be removed wholesale from DWH. That being said, clearly some kind of Anti-Submarine Warfare ability is needed, but that will have to be a topic for another post.
Conclusion
At the moment, I think I am leaning towards a construct that has torpedoes being launched by ships during their activation, which will result in a marker on the table. That marker will then move in a separate phase after all activations but before the End Phase. My concerns right now is that this will result in extraneous book keeping and depart too much from the basic rules, but that is something I am going to explore with play testing. As for the damage mechanic, I think going with a variant of the War At Sea system might be the way to go. Until next time!
Sources:
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WTJAP_WWII.php
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WTGER_WWII.php