Critical Hit frequency

[John Roddy]

My group of Naval Campaigns players cannot help but notice how often our battles in most of the games in the series are decided unexpectedly by a critical hit. Please note that we consider any critical hit on a British battlecruiser to be historically accurate and not an issue. Rather, it is the high number of critical hits on capital ships of all types but most especially battleships.

The number of critical hits appears to be determined solely by the mathematical probability of the hit ratios for each scenario which in turn trigger with each hit a possibility of whether that hit is a critical hit which in turn results in a fixed ratio of critical hits for each scenario. And, the probabilities of both hits and critical hits often vary in different scenario so it seems that there must be historical outcomes that form the basis for these variations.

My question is, what exactly is a critical hit simulating? Off the top of my head I can only think of less than a dozen situations when a capital ship was sunk within just a few minutes across the 40 year span of the games. Consider the historical case of the USS Washington and the IJN Kirishima, the Kirishima was certainly rendered a flaming hulk within a couple of minutes, however it remained afloat for roughly three more hours. Is this a critical hit in games terms?

Another example that occurs frequently in game play. In Kriegsmarine in the Battle of the Denmark Strait scenario, it makes perfect sense if the HMS Hood gets a critical hit early but because there are two British battleships present versus one German battlleship, though the Germans still have a statistical higher overall probability of getting a critical hit, it often happens that the KMS Bismarck receives the first critical hit of the scenario. Not to make too fine a point of it but considering the difficulty in sinking a crippled KMS Bismarck a few days later, this sets one to wondering.

So, it seems a critical hit is something far worse and more instantaneous than disabled in the game. Any insight on what is being simulated appreciated.

[GMcClellan]

A Critical Hit is something that causes a Magazine Explosion. There are other types of hits (engine hits, turret hits, flooding) that cause lesser problems. So, something like what the Washington did to the Kirishima, or what Oldendorf did to the Fuso and Yamashiro would not count.

Jutland is the first of the games made, and of course, simulating the failure of the British BC in that battle was high in John's mind. The risk is lower by the time you get to WW2, though not entirely absent (see USS Arizona. See also HMS Barham or HMS Hood).

I will say, we are looking at making some significant changes to the way Critical Hits work, largely in changing the risk of CH from being a global value as it is now to being based on the target ship in some way (such as the known weaknesses of the British BC designs.) That's well down the road though, as the next round of updates for NC games won't be for awhile.

[John Roddy]

Thanks much for that information. So, that confirms that we were already on the same page, that is, we too always assumed that a critical hit represents a magazine explosion. I've looked at possibly modifying some of the scenarios where we seem to get rather frequent gamey critical hits but have always refrained from doing so, not only because of not being certain just what a critical hit really is, but because adjusting the critical hit frequency is a one size fits all type tool that all the adjusting in the world doesn't help get those critical hits applied to the ships that were the most vulnerable to them.

Although I do seem to remember that in at least one of the games, there might be is a mechanism to prevent smaller ships from getting critical hits on larger ships? However, even if that existed, which would be a good thing in my opinion, it would not address the main issue we are noticing.

I too agree that it would seem that there is no good way around this issue without making critical hit vulnerability a ship specific parameter. I hope such a change eventually emerges, until then, in some of the scenarios where this type thing just seems ridiculous, we just save the game frequently and restart just before something like the KMS Bismarck gets taken out with a critical hit by the HMS Hood in the first five minutes of the game!

[GMcClellan]

It's already in the rules for all games that a CL can only get a Critical on a CL, if that's what you are referring to.

[John Roddy]

Ah yes, that's what i was referring to, knew it was about cruisers, just wasn't sure which ones. Thanks!