Naval combat rule question.

[Ur_Vile_WEdge]

I really ought to know the answer to this one, but it came up last night and nobody seemed to know what to do.


Naval combat in the South China sea. Both the CW and Japan have convoys in the area, the CW has a cruiser in the 4 box, and 4 in the 3 box. The Japanese have a big task force in the 4 box, nothing in the zero. Search time.

Now, if only one side finds the other, we get

Only one side succeeds
If only your side gets to include units, then you must pick at least one (or more if you prefer) section containing committed enemy units. Only those enemy units are included in the combat.
Just because you choose to include the enemy units in a particular section in the combat doesn’t mean that your own units there are also included. They must have been included by your own search roll.

But in our case, it was raining. The CW rolled a 4, which only lets the cruiser in the 4 box find, and the Japanese roll a 2, which lets the I will kill you fleet in on things. The question is, can the Japanese force the inclusion of the ships in the three box, beating them all up at once.


I could have sworn the answer is yes, but I can't seem to find anything in the rules that justifies it.

[Jimm]

If both sides succeed, only those units which find are included.
From 11.5.5:

If a combat occurs, each of your committed units is included if
your modified search die roll was less than or equal to the modified
search number of the section it is in.

If only one side succeeds, then it gets to pick which enemy seaboxes are included.

In your case the CW cruiser is toast, but the rest escape to fight another round.


WIF does this to your brain sometimes!

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: Jimm

If both sides succeed, only those units which find are included.
From 11.5.5:

If a combat occurs, each of your committed units is included if
your modified search die roll was less than or equal to the modified
search number of the section it is in.

If only one side succeeds, then it gets to pick which enemy seaboxes are included.

In your case the CW cruiser is toast, but the rest escape to fight another round.


WIF does this to your brain sometimes!

Or the rest of the CW units are wise to abort.

[Ur_Vile_WEdge]

Thanks for the replies, looks like I was wrong.


Also, while it's not related to the original question, something else came up in our game:

We're playing with option 53, twin engined fighters.

Option 53: (Twin-engined fighters) In air-to-air combat during the day, all front fighters with an orange air-to-air rating achieve one result less than normal when the front enemy fighter in the combat does not have an orange air-to-air rating. In these cases an AX result becomes a DX, a DX becomes an AA, an AA becomes a DA and so on. A DC result is unaffected.

It actually didn't happen because there was enough surprise to abort combat, but we had a near run in between a twin engined fighter and a carrier. If the carrier uses its plane to fight air to air, does it count as a "fighter" for purposes of option 53?

[michaelbaldur]

yes.