COMMAND  AT  SEA

A Review by Jim O'Neil

        Every review begs the question, "should I buy it or not", and at
$50 Command at Sea certainly does. The answer is "If you really like
Naval Action / Naval War games and enjoy knowing how and why things were
done" - buy it. If Naval games are not of much interest to you, neither
is this Simulation., and it is much more a Simulation than a game. The
research and ensuing data on equipment and in the scenarios make the
Boxed set worth the price. You want some idea of when a Radar set began
to be issued?, an aircraft entered service? What units were involved in
a certain battle? Quality of Japanese Armor versus that used by the
British? it's there! The data alone is worth the price, I say that
because I've bought a lot of source material over the years, and it
costs...  lots more than $50.

        Command at Sea (CaS hereafter) supplants Seapower as the
simulation for the folks who want to work with details, and know why
certain things occur. The designers made great efforts to make CaS a
simple playable game with lots of detail - detail won though, and it is
hard to avoid being drawn into an ever more complex simulation. It will
take the average player about four hours to be functional in it, but
30-40 to be conversant with the rules. The Game requires you do a fair
amount of preparation in advance, so quick games will require that you
have the ship forms already made up. Two players will do for many
scenarios, though a few more players lowers the "command load" and
allows some of the bigger scenarios to be played.  The game can be
played in a reasonably small area, as they have an adjustable scale so
you can run the game at 2" = 1 NM  [the smallest recommended scale,
although they have a conversion chart all the way  down to 1"= 5 NM]  or
all the way up to 10"= 1 NM. Larger scales are just a  matter of
interpolation.

         The game  turns come in Intermediate [a Grand Tactical move]
game turns of 30 minutes of action(s); and a 3 minute Tactical turns.
The flow is as follows:

        Intermediate Turn               Tactical Turn
        30 minute                       3 minute
        plotting phase                  Plotting phase
        Movement phase                  Movement phase
        Planned Fires Phase
        Detection Check Phase           Detection Check Phase
        Second Air Move Phase
        Reaction Fire Phase
        Resolution Phase [for torpedoes, bombs, light AA]
        Amphibious Combat
        Resolution Phase [if needed]

Intermediate turns are used to bring units into combat quickly; If
needed, an intermediate turn can be inserted every 10 tactical turns to
bring in additional forces without having to move them in tiny
increments.

        You can play a gunnery game [no aircraft, no submarines] with
say six ships on a side in 3 to 4 hours - less as you become accustomed
to the rules. A spotter aircraft will cause only minor additional time,
but if there are two float planes and one wants to attack the other,
things rapidly get complex. Ships in tactical combat move once in three
minutes, but aircraft can (optionally) move up to six times, in three
impulses during two phases in that same period . AA comes in two types,
Area AA [those guns which fire time fused shells in a barrage to protect
the whole formation] and light AA [ the automatic guns that protect the
owning ship, generally < 75 mm] .

        Aircraft engaging aircraft becomes a game within a game, having
a discrete and accurate system using attack and maneuver values along
with a variety of tactical modifiers, like the Harpoon system. The
result of aircraft is a much more complex turn sequence.

        Submarine / Anti-Submarine is even more of a game unto it self
and more than I can explain  in a few words, with varying depth charge
patterns, sink rates, effectiveness values, AS Detector abilities and
Sub maneuvering. , though it fits right in the normal turn sequence.

        The game covers Amphibious Operations in 30 minute turns that
provide a result based on a much modified die roll. This can be made
into a more complex operation if wished, as they have procedures for
running three minute turns and attacking shore batteries with ships
fire. They also give values for typical ground units, so a ground combat
could be simply resolved in a campaign. There Is No Campaign System
However! That will be a later module according to the rules. There is a
fair amount of data to allow one to run a campaign if they are willing
to do some outside research and make up a few rules.

        The rules seem to cover most anything you could want... unless
it's a rapid quick overview of what the outcome was... you are in the
wrong rules if that's what you want. This is the set for the fellow who
wants to do it all - prove he could fire his torpedoes and extricate his
submarine from the convoy's escorts - have his flight of dive bombers
hit that Carrier... this set makes you the fellow in the hot seat, be he
the admiral or the Lt. Comdr. leading the CAP. It's great if you can
keep up with who you are and what you are doing in each situation.

        I briefly discussed this with Ed Kettler, one of the developers,
and he agreed that in any action using more than one or two flights of
aircraft (two to four planes) per side , an AirBoss was desirable to
manage the action(s). This simulation does allow you to game the Air
Battles of this period with considerable accuracy, so if you enjoyed
games like Dauntless and Air Force, this will have some appeal, although
the simulation is more generalized. Aircraft in a dog fight are fought
by drawing an opponents counters from a cup and making a die roll %
against that type of aircraft. They have also provided a Cumulative
Probability Table to ease and speed up the resolution of very large air
to air battles with out the loss of accuracy.

        Gunnery is simplified to four range bands with varying
penetration and damage, penetration decreases from band 1 [short range]
to band 3 [long range] and then improves in the fourth band [extreme
range] to reflect the increased velocity of the plunging projectile.
Damage [calculated per gun mount] and accuracy  decline as range
increases. Attacks in bands 1 and 2 are against the vertical (or side)
armor while in bands 3 and 4, the attack is against the horizontal
(deck) armor. Is the system accurate? Well it is a simplified system in
order to make the game playable , so it has some faults, but they aren't
going to cause any major discrepancies in the outcome of a battle.
Adding the additional accuracy to the simulation may not be worth all
the trouble. The designers found that 67% of all hits are against the
deck armor at long and extreme ranges (defined as roughly the last 2/3
of the weapons range) , while at short and medium ranges, 2/3s of the
hits would be on the belt armor; this coupled with the angle and
thickness of the armor means that only shells that are striking with
only a small angle from the perpendicular or those much bigger than what
the armor is designed to withstand will penetrate... the damage they do
will tend to even out any discrepancy, while the smaller shells
non-penetrating hits have been factored out, this little convention
greatly simplifies the gunnery computations.

        When we get to Italian ships in the follow on module
"SUPERMARINA" due out this summer (Yes it's one of those unending module
designs) there will need to be some modifications to the system. The
simplest solution may be to just use a slightly higher constant for
computing penetration [this is in Annex J-1 of the Data Annexes Booklet]
and if you are concerned you can make the same adjustment on your own.
This is fine tuning for the enthusiast, and will not affect play much
for those who aren't sticklers for accuracy, so disregard freely if you
wish.

        The components are of very good quality, with dice, some
excellent counters that allow you to play without having to buy
miniatures and the reverse has useful silhouettes that show approximate
ship/aircraft size and shape - useful for the fog of war and in radar
and limited visibility situations. The scenario booklet has lots of nice
Order of Battle information, to include unit designations and
information on ship / aircraft configuration at that point in the war.
Hard to find stuff! If you buy it piecemeal, the parts cost $60; skip
the nice counters and it's still $45. I recommend the boxed set. I have
as much Naval stuff as anyone I've heard off, including the 1:700 scale
plastic airplanes the Japanese model makers put out years ago, and I
still think the set is the way to go.

        The scenario booklet and the Data Annexes are valuable source
material for ANY Naval Game. The scenarios vary from fairly easy and
small [four US 4-pipers shooting up a  Japanese Landing force of
Balikpapan] through larger things like the Japanese Carrier Air Raid on
Trincomalee. Very large battles like  Coral Sea and Midway are broken
into 6-8 separate scenarios.

        The rules booklet also has some very interesting information in
the sidebars along with explanations on how and why certain procedures
were used. Do yourself a favor, do not scrimp, buy the boxed set even if
you plan to play another set of rules.

        Regrettably there are some bad points too, Someone left out
players aids, there are no sheets with all the charts you need to
refresh your memory! Thumbing through the book gets old quick. I am told
this is being corrected, and the sheets will be available soon, these
will cost about $5, since providing them for free would cost the game
producers more than they are making as profit on the set. There are some
typo's, expected in so large a piece of work, and an errata sheet is now
available from Clash of Arms.

        Lastly, there are all the things you are surprised to find
provided (lots of information on the British; eight and a half pages of
Japanese merchant Ship names) the only thing I could find missing were a
few rare Dutch aircraft. The Fokker C-XIW catapult float plane for the
Dutch cruisers and the Fokker T-IVa Float Sea Plane and torpedo bomber
are missing. We are talking about 12 C-XIs and maybe 20  T-IVa s... so
it's hardly critical. The remainder of the aircraft available to the
Dutch were P-36s (provided), Brewster Buffaloes (provided) and Martin
B-10s (missing). Somehow in a simulation that provides so much detail,
this minor oversight seems odd,  but it is very minor.

        I would like to point out that this is a very well supported
simulation, with questions and comments being answered in hours for
those folks with Internet / Compuserve / AOL /GEnie access, a bit longer
if you let the Post Office get involved.

        The overall value is there, understand I was a skeptic; Command
at Sea is a good value, and after you have read through the information
provided, you will be a much more knowledgeable Naval Gamer / Historian.

I would not choose this as my favorite set of rules, but I would feel
deprived without it in my collection. My favorite rules are General
Quarters [non computer] & Shipbase 3 [computer] - I am sort of involved
with Shipbase 3