Wakeless

[Joe Underwood]

The Wakeless rule is written in the Submarine section, but there are also wakeless torpedo listings for some surface ships, particularly in the IJN fleet.  Basically the Evasive rule is negated. However, Evasive is not a reaction to attack, it is preemptive to make the ship harder to target.  Whether the torpedo makes a wake or not, the ship is not holding a steady course and should be harder to hit.  Seems illogical.  Wakeless should negate the +1 to detect submarines when they fire torpedoes, but it does not.  The logic breaks down. Ships likely attempted emergency turns when a torpedo wake was spotted as a reaction. It could be that’s why Torps are -2 to hit.  If so maybe wakeless should add a +.  Negating planned evasion makes no sense.

[Nat]

Wakeless rule is to show that the torpedo makes very little to no visable effect on the surface when traveling through the water…. note even when firing a wakeless torpedo from a submarine you still have the air bubble raising to the surface which in standard weather are visable.

Evade Order means that the ship is braced for sudden violent maneouvers, this is why the ship sufferes a -1 modifier to its own shooting – these are not pre-planned but are in responce to attacks hence forcing attacks to re-roll.  1 AD is not (outside of torpedeos) a single shell or physical attack… for example on light guns 1 AD couple be as much as 4 guns firing.

So there is no wake in the water to warn the lookouts that a torpedo is approaching so the captain cant make avoiding actions.  The minor alterations in a ships course that would throw a torpedo off target is already baked in to the -2 to hit for using a torpedo.

Wakeless negating Evade Order makes sense when you look at the fact that i) there is no time frame per turn / phase & ii) Evade is a rection  (watch the battle of the river plate, where the sheffield (I think) is charging towards the graf spree and the captain says he’ll turn towards the last fall of shot to throw off the germans aim – that is the type of thing the Evade Order represents)

• This reply was modified 8 months ago by Nat.

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