Gruppe Nord: The German Kriegsmarine in World War II (2012 Standard)

Command at Sea is a very nice game system and Gruppe Nord has some well researched scenarios and plenty of data on the ships of the Kriegsmarine. Unfortunately, I have discovered some significant anomalies associated with the data on the ships and their weapons when setting up to play scenarios involving Scharnhorst class ships against Renown, Ramillies, Malaya or Duke of York (historical scenarios or near encounters). I even suspect these scenarios were never play-tested. The problems come down to two main issues. The most serious seems to be a fundamental flaw in the method for determining range bands for the naval guns in the annexes. It appears the designers have specified the Short/Medium/Long ranges according to a published formula from the 1940s which estimated accuracies based on percentage of ‘maximum range’ of the guns. This makes sense to account for differences in calibre and muzzle velocities. However, the formula assumed ‘maximum’ range was determined at a common maximum elevation (e.g. 30 degrees) and DOES NOT account for additional range achieved by guns with higher elevations. Put simply, modifying a turret design to allow 45 degree elevations in lieu of traditional 30 degree maximum does not in any way make the gun more accurate at closer ranges. However, the misuse of this formula to suggest medium range band (where gun accuracy is approx. 30%) could be extended from 15 to 25,000 yards has a MASSIVE impact on the game balance. Essentially, the ships armed with high elevation 28cm SK/C 45 guns are now 6-7 times more accurate than their opponents at ranges around 20,000 yards which was very typical for engagements in this era. I cannot overstate just how significant this is in the game – it makes the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau more powerful than any other ship in the German or British navies. And I suspect the Graf Spee could well be a match for most of the British battle fleet if anyone was to play that hypothetical. Looking at some of the data for smaller calibre guns it seems this issue may just be tip of the iceberg and calls into question the credibility of the data presented. The second issue comes from the exaggerated armour ratings of the German ships with turtle-back armour schemes, suggesting that they cannot be penetrated by munitions at ranges when in fact they were penetrated. I understand the benefit of the turtleback scheme in minimising damage to ships deep interior and making them very difficult to sink but this would be far better represented with increases to the ships flotation ratings rather than boosting their armour ratings. The effect of this is to exaggerate the protection for not just the ship interior but also prevent critical hits that historically did occur to topside systems such as bridge and turrets to Bismarck and Scharnhorst early in their final engagements. Even for deep hull hits, the turtleback was not infallible. The Duke of York 14” shells were able to penetrate the Scharnhorst’s belt and turtleback to destroy boiler 1 at very long range, which was the hit that doomed the ship. Unfortunately, this cannot happen in this game. On a lesser note, is the damage values for these same 28cm gun shells, which are rated at 80% of the damage of the larger 38cm shells despite having less than 40% of the weight and bursting charge. I suspect the designers are factoring in their higher rate of fire but personally think this is not supported by the actual historical engagements as the rate of fire benefits (which were real) seem to have been offset by a high proportion of shells that did not explode. Germany was suffering from significant production material quality issues.

Command at Sea

Very detailed and accurate scenarios and info on German ships. On there nations are in other publications.