World in Flames - Naval Combat

Naval Combat

To initiate combat, two fleets in the same sea area perform die rolls to determine whether the units (which can also include land and carrier-based aircraft) spot each other and which side has the element of surprise. If at least one stack of units is deemed to spot the enemy fleet, combat is initiated. There are two types of naval combat: naval air combat and surface combat. The former represents one or both sides attacking the other side's ships using fighters and naval bombers; the latter represents ships attacking each other directly with their own guns. Naval air combat requires that an air-to-air battle is fought if either player has fighters allocated to defending their ships. Any bombers cleared through are then subject to anti-aircraft fire from the defending ships. Surviving naval bombardment factors are then used to determine what damage is inflicted on the enemy fleet. Surface combat is determined by adding the surface combat factors of all involved ships on each side. Surface and naval bombardment factors are cross referenced with the number of ships in the opposing fleet to determine results. Surprise can at this point be used to boost the table entry, increasing the amount of damage inflicted. Inflicted damage takes the form of one or more instances of "ship abortion", "ship damage" and "ship destroyed". Each result must be assigned to a ship, which then makes a roll to determine if it can reduce the damage to a less serious level. A ship can be chosen to suffer damage more than once. As can be expected, battleships are more likely to absorb damage successfully than smaller ships. Surprise can be used to force a result on a particular ship, carriers being a popular choice. After all results are assigned, each side has the option of aborting all remaining ships in the combat, returning them to an eligible port and flipping them. If neither of the sides abort, the sides again roll to spot each other and combat can occur again.