From: "Sean Barnett" Subject: Clear for Action part 1 Doug Murphy asked me to describe how the Clear for Action (CfA) naval miniatures rules work. I'll describe how I use them and try to remember how I and the others I've gamed with have modified them from their original form (I've been using a modified version so long that I may not remember the original). CfA uses 3-minute turns with a sea scale of 1 in. = 250 yds. (8" = 1 nm). The core of CfA is its range "guesstimation" gunnery combat system. Players plot fire before the ship movement phase, based on their guesses of what the ranges to their targets will be afterwards. Fire is plotted in the form: target, range, number of shots, shot spacing, and shell type. The range is the estimated range to the target ship in inches on the floor (or table). The number of shots is equal to the number of guns of a type firing (ships plot main, secondary, and tertiary batteries separately). The shot spacing governs the area the salvo covers on the floor and is equal to the space in inches between each shot. The shell type is either high explosive (HE) or armor piercing (AP) of a size of the caliber of the firing gun. The referee determines the number of hits scored on a target by measuring a distance equal to the range estimated by the firing player out from the firing ship toward the target (azimuth for all shots is assumed to be correct), marking one shot at that point (mentally or with something like a golf tee), and marking additional shots, at intervals equal to the shot spacing, back toward the firing ship (thus the total area a salvo covers is equal to: (shots -1) x shot spacing). After marking all shots fired the referee consults a "ship shadow" table to see whether any of the shots actually hit the target. A target ship's "shadow" is a function of the size of the ship (over 15,000 tons, 2,500-15,000 tons, under 2,500 tons, PT boats and landing craft), and the distance to the target (in 5,000 yard brackets), and is typically between 1/4 and 4 inches. If any of the marked shots fall into the region between the bridge of the ship model and a point *behind* the ship a distance equal to the size of the "shadow," those shots hit the target (therefore, when players plot their fire, they typically guess a little long). To resolve damage to the target, the player controlling the target first consults a table that tells him how much armor the shells that hit him will penetrate, as a function of range (again by 5,000 yard brackets), and whether the shells are coming in flat or plunging. He then rolls percentile dice and consults the critical hit damage chart for his ship to determine where each of the hits landed. The damage chart lists all of the relevant systems of the ship and the armor thickness protecting them. There are two armor values for each system, representing horizontal (deck) and vertical (belt) armor. If an incoming shell penetrates the armor of a system (or the system is unarmored), it's knocked out (perhaps temporarily; I'll get to damage control). If a shell does not penetrate, the system survives and the hit is ignored. To determine flotation losses, the player takes the number of penetrating hits, rolls a d3 for each one, and consults a table that tells him how many tons of displacement he loses as a function of the shell caliber, type, and number on the dice. Once the target ship loses all of its flotation, it sinks. There are two main attractions of this system, in my eyes. First, it gives a player the flavor of having his ship shot out from under him piece by piece. It reflects the fact that many hits can be inconsequential in terms of systems lost while some can be devastating. Because there are gunnery tables for each gun for each nationality, and damage tables for each ship class, CfA also gives the ships a real feel of individuality. The second main attraction is the manual range guestimation firing process. It's a matter of taste, but it's old-fashioned, maybe even quaint, and it gives the player real control over the effectiveness of his ship (at the expense of realism). I know players who really prefer this system to a probability-based "roll to hit" approach (and, unfortunately, some who find it frustrating). I realize that this is getting long. I'll finish with movement (there's a little more to it than you might suspect), torpedo combat, and peripherals later. Sean Barnett Subject: Time: 9:38 AM OFFICE MEMO Clear for Action pt 2 Date: 2/1/96 This is the second and last part of my description of the Clear for Action naval miniatures rules. The first part covered gunnery combat; this part will cover ship movement, torpedo combat, and peripherals. If I didn't provide it earlier, here's the sequence of play: Plotting phase Movement phase Gunnery Combat phase (including damage resolution) Torpedo Firing phase Ship movement in CfA is particularly interesting because of the clever plastic turn gauges (referred to a couple of weeks ago on consim by Brian McCue) used to control it. Players plot ship movement during the plotting phase in terms of speed, in knots, and course, in degrees turned. The turn gauge consists of a disc marked in degrees (dead ahead is 0) and a flexible arm marked in knots (the distances a ship would move in 3 minutes) attached to the center of the disc. To move a ship, the player puts the disc in front of the model, grasps the arm at a point corresponding to the speed of the ship, and bends the arm around so that the ship's course at the end of the move will be what he has plotted. The end result is a nice curve that increases in radius with the speed of the ship (per the recent discussion of ship turning, the method is technically inaccurate, but it is aesthetically pleasing). Torpedo combat is resolved in CfA during the movement phase following the turn in which the torpedoes were fired. Players plot torpedo fire in the plotting phase in terms of the number of banks to be fired and the side of the ship over which they will be fired. At the end of the turn in which they were plotted to be fire, after the resolution of gunnery combat, torpedoes hit the water. The player then plots the torpedoes' direction in terms of angle off the heading of the firing ship, and speed, for each torpedo fired (spacing between torpedoes in a single bank is limited to 2 degrees, however). In my variant on the rules, the torpedoes move out during the movement phase of the following turn. The referee observes the courses the torpedoes move to see whether any of them intersect the course of one or more ships. If so, the referee pro rates the movement of the ship and the torpedo to see if there was a "collision" and thus a torpedo hit. He does this for each torpedo and each potential target, in each succeeding movement phase until there are obviously no more targets or the torpedoes have stopped running. [note that this can be very time consuming; it can take an hour to run one turn in a Savo Island game. That's why I am now using the torpedo resolution system out of Command at Sea (slightly modified): it's much faster and probably equally or more realistic (torpedoes in CfA act like they're laser beam riders, which they weren't).] As published, CfA does torpedo combat slightly differently. First, in addition to plotting torpedo fire by degrees, a player can decide to fire one torpedo per so many inches of movement on the table, up to the number he could fire off one side of the ship. Second, torpedoes are assumed to have moved one turn of movement in the Torpedo Fire phase in the turn on which the torpedoes were fired. The effect is the "teleporting torpedo," which allows players to move the firing ship within one turn of torpedo movement of the target, estimate the angle to the target (without having to guess its future movement) and, if the estimate is accurate, fire all of the ships torpedoes down a single line to devastate the hapless target. This makes torpedoes *really* deadly. It's also unrealistic, so I don't use it. Torpedo damage is resolved in a manner similar to that used for gunnery. Each ship has a torpedo critical hit chart included with its gunnery critical hit chart. To resolve damage, the player who was hit first rolls percentile dice an consults a chart to determine the amount of flotation damage he will suffer in terms of tons displacement. The flotation result is proportional to the weight of the torpedo warhead. The player then rolls percentile dice and consults the torpedo critical hit chart for his ship to determine where the torpedo hit and what system(s) he will lose. Torpedo protection is listed for each system on the chart in terms of tons displacement saved. If the amount of the protection is greater than the total tonnage to be lost from the torpedo, it is assumed to have no effect. The player does this for each torpedo hit he suffers. CfA doesn't really get into peripherals like aircraft, submarines, amphibious operations, etc . in any detail (it does treat AAA in a simplified manner). I would recommend Command at Sea to anyone interested in gaming anything outside pure surface actions. I've had a lot of fun with CfA. It has great flavor and, with some modifications, is fairly accurate. It can be a little much to digest in a convention game format, but for club games I think it's fine. CfA was out of print for a long time. Last year at Origins the game designer said that he was going to rerelease it, but I haven't seen it yet. Sean Barnett