Torpedo Boats

Night rules saying nothing about sighting at long ranges...

Or have the firing ship make a roll to acquire just like a A/c makes a roll to find a ship at night. Same principle except the small fast boat is harder to see at night much less acquire.

Ship makes an acquire roll like A/C searching at night and if detected and if the fast boat is hit, it makes its high speed evasion roll... A simple thing and it makes fast boats (torpedo boats) much more of a viable option for night operations.

OR

My proposal is that each surface unit shooting at Torpedo Boat day or night needs to make a spotting roll. At Range 3 (20,000 yards or 10 miles) you need a 6, at Range 2 (15,000 yards or 7+ miles) you need a 5+, at Range 1 (10,000 yards or 5 miles) you need a 4+, and at Range 0 you need a 3+.

Also since each Range sector is 5,000 yards, primary guns on CL, CA, BC, BB should not be able to shoot at Torpedo Boats in the same sector as the shooter is having a problem of deflecting their main guns low enough to hit a small fast evading target that is at point blank range. OR THEY NEED A 6 TO HIT. That is what secondary and tertiary guns are for or their AA...

At range 3 (20,000 yards or ten miles) no lookout will see a torpedo boats wake... In our games as soon as a torpedo boat gets at range 3 they are sunk by gunfire before they even get into torpedo range. At night they make hardly any noise since their exhaust pipes are below the waterline on the stern.

In the dark making a torpedo attack against a capital ship the small guns on a motor torpedo boat will not hurt capital ship must less a CA or CL... That is what their torpedo's are for... Just a matter of tactics... Personally I think torpedo boats are pretty useless and rarely sink their point worth in enemy ships and need the above modification to the rules to make them worth taking.

What say you???

Like a lot of small craft, when you have too many to destroy then it makes them terribly good. If you can reliably win initiative and put them where you want, so much the better!

Islands and smoke help.

There is a trick to making the light brigade of torpedo boats charge at the same time a glass cannon battlecruiser closes with the enemy.

Its a lot of planning for a couple torp rolls but if you do have them, may as well use them.

I'd be tempted to revise the cost of torp boats downward instead of tevising their rules.

Night games on maps with a healthy number of islands are about the only situation I've been able to get mileage out of them, mainly because night rules tend to make life a lot harder on aircraft (particularly most fighters, which can strafe the crap out of PT boats). I agree with several of the other posts - its unfortunate that the High Speed Evasion rule doesn't work against aircraft.

The Team's Italian MAS Torpedo Boat's Torpedo Boat Flotilla SA is somewhat helpful: "The sector this unit is in can contain one friendly Ship above the stacking limit if all of the friendly Ships in this sector are Torpedo Boats". Kind of a shame the other Torpedo Boats don't have this. It doesn't help their survivability much, but it does let you pack more of them in to a Range 0 attack.

I have had some limited success using the from the Team's Advance Naval Base. This at least lets you get them out into the middle of map at the beginning of the game. This usually means they can get to attack range sooner, minimizing their exposure to enemy air attacks and long range gunnery. This can get pretty expensive though. A pair of PTs + the base costs 20 points (and a single pair is probably not enough). All that said, you still need a favorable map with islands in good positions.

If that air is in the 14 point neighborhood it’s a more reasonable investment.