From: ROWLETB Subject: Long: Game report: Jutland, 1st phase, with SHIPBASE III On Saturday evening, 13 July 96, the Kampfgruppe Indianapolis war game club carried out a replay of the first phase "The Run to the South" of the Battle of Jutland, May 31 1916. This game was meant to commemorate the 80th anniversary, but unfortunately had been postponed from May due to a family illness. BACKGROUND: The game was the club's first use of the Shipbase III naval rules in formal play. Shipbase III is a game support program for naval miniatures gaming, keeping track of scales, weather, torpedoes and most importantly doing all the gunfire and damage calculations. GAME SET-UP My previous experimentation with Shipbase III gave me the opinion that small ships are too easily destroyed. In an attempt to rememdy this and also to improve playability, I employed a technique from the WWI version of our club's preferred ruleset for WWI and WWII, the GENERAL QUARTERS system. Light cruisers were represented with a two-ship section of a four-ship CL squadron represented by one model; and one miniature represented a four-ship destroyer division. (Half-Flotilla, for the Germans). The SBIII database was used to build these units, selecting the appropriate class and then doubling or quadrupling all appropriate data. I adopted in the game the convention from GQ that capital ships could not employ main guns against such composite units, as this would probably distort the hit and damage models too much. Some of the capital ships from the SBIII database also had small corrections to armor and speed, based on CONWAY's ALL THE WORLD'S FIGHTING SHIPS 1906-1921. The miniatures were Davco 1:3000. Floor scale selected was 1:9600 (not a default in Shipbase III but a very useful scale; in the SBIII game turn scale one inch represented 4 knots and a nautical mile was one foot). Since I was prepared to run the game in GENERAL QUARTERS if the gamers were not receptive to trying SBIII, or if we had crash problems, we used the maneuvering and broadside indicators from GQ. As we only had five players, the forces were allocated as follows: Germans: -Battlecruisers -Light forces British: -Lion, 1st BCS (2 LION's, TIGER), one CL section (one model representing two ships), one DDFlot (two models representing 8 ships) -2nd BCS (2 INDEFATIGABLE's), one DDFlot -5thBS (QUEEN ELIZABETH class) & one DDFlot (started game out of visibility from Germans), two and a half CL sqdns. The start position chose was that of 1515 hours. Both sides had sighted the other and outlying light cruisers had closed in - historically 1515 was the first fire, when German a CL hit, without damaging, a British CL. COURSE OF GAME: The Germans BC's did a battle turn away "gefechtskertwendung"), and sped south, putting VON DER TANN in the lead; and consistently tried to open the range, although the ref. (me) prohibited them from opening too much, as being (1) ahistorical and (2) dangerously close to the Jutland bank, if not the Danish coast! The German light forces, all of which had been in the lead, turned toward the British advance CL's, then commenced their own run south. The British CL's closed somewhat as well - in essence, the two sets of light forces were for a while heading down the arms of a "v". The LION and First BCS spent most of the game alternating between closing and holding the range to the German BC's. The 2nd BCS (flag NEW ZEALAND) seemed to sometimes close and sometimes circle about, not closely following the lead of "Beatty" in the LION. The German BC player, as "Hipper", role-played nicely, sending a stream of contact and status reports to the not-actually played "Scheer". The "Beatty" player, took an "it's only a game" attitude, and had to be prodded somewhat into historical messages - the Admiralty sent him a "where is the enemy? The world wonders" message"....:) A key early event was that LUTZOW, the German BC flagship, and tail end in the formation after the battle turn, was hit and somewhat slowed early on. This slowed the whole German force. The Battlecruiser action was essentially separate from the action of all the light forces. Both sides had a long chase, with a gradual build-up of damage on each side. About half-way through the game however, LION was sufficiently hit and slowed, and with serious fires aboard, that she dropped from the formation, leaving PRINCESS ROYAL to lead the pursuit. "Beatty" remarked "at least no British battlecruisers have blown up yet". Ironically, two turns later SEYDLITZ scored a belt penetration that blew up QUEEN MARY. Also, the British, having slowed LUTZOW, also slowed DERFFLINGER; the INDEFATIGABLES, the TIGER, and, when they came into range, the QUEEN ELIZABETH's, all concetrated on LUTZOW. In the final turns played some ten - 15 inch projectiles hit and finished off LUTZOW. They BARHAM et al were preparing to switch to DERFFLINGER when the PRINCESS ROYAL sighted the first division of the German Third Battle Squadron - the four KONIG's, the lead element of the High Seas Fleet. Since the Germans had turned south considerably sooner than historically (historically both sides had actually closed for several minutes before opening fire, and then did not open fire at the fairly long ranges our players began with), This reulted in the"run to the South" being shorter than historically, and the German High Seas Fleet appear at the South End of the playing area rather sooner, in terms of game turns, than they had in real life. PRINCESS ROYAL was the first British ship to sight the High Seas Fleet because the light forces were essentially fighting their own battle, all but removed from the big ship action. All the British light forces directly operating with the capital ships (each line of capitals had a destroyer flotilla as escort), at first moved to intercept the German light forces during their move south, but some withdrew back after witnessing the horrendous action described below. One of the German scouting squadrons consisted of the older slower ships HAMBURG MUNCHEN, STUTTGART, and STETTIN. These were somewhat isolated from the rest of the German CL's and DD's. Thus the British had a five-to- two advantage in CL's in the light forces battle area. The British used, firstly, the extra CL's, and then the secondaries on their capital ships, to deadly effect against the German destroyers and later light cruisers. The end result was the loss of >all< the German light forces. Conversely, the German Battlecruisers never had a target come within range of their secondary batteries. However, because the British commited most of their light forces to this separate battle, there were >no< British forces scouting ahead of the 1st BCS, Thus, as mentioned above, PRINCESS ROYAL was the first British ship to realize they were 'sailing into a trap'. As the player agreed that PRINCESS ROYAL would have turned away and begun the historical second phase of the Battle of Jutland, "The Run to the North", and it was 0030 hours of the real-time day, we ceased the game at that point (one I had picked as a good stopping place anyway). The players intentions at that point would have been: The German light forces commander would have taken over the High Seas Fleet, becoming "Scheer" :), and begun pursuing the British bakc North. The German BCS commander ("Hipper") would await orders from "Scheer" and attempt to save DERFFLINGER if possible. "Beatty"/"de Robeck" would have run north, toward "Jellico" (I had the lead elements of the British Grand Fleet available also, ahd the game gone that long). "Evan-Thomas" commanding the QUEEN ELIZABETH's would have tried to finish off DERFFLINGER and inflict damage on the leading High Seas Fleet elements, before turning north. "Pakenham" (2nd BCS) would have eventually followed "Beatty". Losses in the game (listed as individual ships, not divisions) British: German QUEEN MARY LUTZOW 5 light cruisers 10 light cruisers 13 destroyers 28 destroyers DEFFLINGER and LION were comparably (45%) damaged, The INDEFATIGABLES were at about 20% damaged each, PRINCESS ROYAL about 35%. TIGER, SEYDLITZ and MOLTKE were undamaged and VON DER TANN only about 10% however. The QUEEN ELIZABETH class (BARHAM et al) were all undamaged, but that condition was unlikely to continue given the aggressive employment the player had in mind if we had carried on.... HOT WASHUP: (1) The British won on the basis of the light ship action; honors on the capital ship side are fairly even. (2) the composite ship concept (one unit representing a division) worked as a labor-saving device, and let us run what historically was about 85 ships with only 5 players (although the German light forces commander was indeed somewhat overworked!) (3) both sides had a much more furious engagement of light forces in the game than in this action historically. (4) even this, however, did not explain the excess vulnerability of light forces that all players perceived. The comment was made that "there is no point in using light forces to scout with this game system, because the scouts die too fast." (5) all the LIONs shot very poorly. It is unclear if SBIII has an effect for continuing fire on the same target for several game turns. Since the system does 'remember' the last main battery target, it is possible, and the LION's did switch targets a lot. (6) The British light forces would often concentrate fire on one or two German light force units at a time. Similarly LUTZOW was often under concentrated fire from as many as 6 different British capitals. There is no penalty for over-concentration on the same target in SBIII, and the British (and to a lesser extent the Germans) did much ahistorical concentration of fire when they learned this. This also was of particularly notable effect in the demise of the German light forces. (7) Nonetheless, SHIPBASE III was well received, and I will continue to experiment. I think the problem with damage is that SBIII models linearly the comparison of shell size to ship size, which is not really the case in terms of physics. Such a formula can be accurate in the middle and one end of ship sizes, but not both ends. One approach is to modify the tonnage value entered for small ships. The only problem with this is that the hit probability also rises with ship size. Conversely, on the shell size end, big shells are big primarily to increase the probability of penetration >to< causing damage - it is not the case that a shell of twice the weight causes twice the damage. Indeed, damage-causing effect of explosive is often best modelled as increasing with the cube root of the weight. (8) Additional comments on possible additions to SBIII: (a) have dud rate be variable between nations, and be user-modifiable, to better reflect, for example, the problems many British shells had at this period. (b) provide a clearer indication on the gunfire screen of penetration. (c) I tend to prefer ship capability degradation by accumulated system damge, rather than decreasing linearly with percent damage (as in SBIII, SEAPOWER, and FLETCHER PRATT';s NAVAL WAR GAME). However, both approaches are valid. Comments welcome. -Brooks A. Rowlet