Applying Naval Tactics to Space Combat
    By Timothy Swenson


INTRODUCTION

At first glance Space and Naval combat may not seem to have much in
common.  Naval combat is based in the past or present.  Space combat
is based in the distant future.  Naval combat is based on real ships
and real situations.  Space combat is based on almost fanciful ideas
and made up situations, but they share two key points in common;
terrain-less battle area, and multi-part units.

Naval and Space combat are fought on battle grounds with no terrain.
Naval combat is fought on the open seas, Space combat is fought out in
the vast expanse of space.  Ground combat is grounded in the type of
terrain it is fought on.

Most space combat games define each ship as having lots of subparts
that are destroyed as the game progresses.  When a number of key
subparts are destroyed, the ship is considered destroyed.  This is
exactly the same way that Naval combat is gamed.

This document is composed of two sections: General Tactics and
Specific Tactics.  General Tactics covers how you want to approach
your battle.  It covers areas to think about before and during your
battle.

Specific Tactics covers how you should move your ships in relation to
each other and the enemy ships.  This section applies more to Naval
than space combat, but is included to show how Naval ships perform
their maneuvers.  These tactics may or may not be directly applied to
space combat, but may prove useful as a starting point.


GENERAL TACTICS

Naval Combat is a War of Attrition

Out on the open seas there is no place to hide and take cover.  Firing
your weapons on the enemy means that you must expose yourself to his
weapons.  You have to take hits to deliver hits.  There is no
defensive position to take.  There is no high-ground to hold.  It's
just pure ship against ship.

There are a few things you can do to give yourself an advantage in
facing your enemy:

   - Greater Range.  If you have a greater weapons range than your
enemy, you can sit outside his range, avoiding his attacks, and
deliver your attacks.  Greater range usually means a less effective
attack, due to a lesser chance of hitting your target and the lesser
force of your weapons.  This is a small price to pay for unreturned
fire.


Historically, in a situation like this, you would have to have a good
system for aiming your shots.  Early Naval combat took place at close
quarters because aim was harder to achieve than range.

   - Bigger/More Weapons.  The bigger or more  weapons you have in
relation to your enemy, the greater your odds at winning.  Having more
weapons means that you can deliver more hits than the enemy.  Having
bigger weapons that each successful hit delivers greater damage.  The
result is your destroying more of the enemy's firepower over time than
he of yours.  This translates into victory for you.

   - Greater Armor.  The greater your armor, the more hits you can
take and not sustain serious damage.  Any enemy shot that does not do
serious damage is a wasted shot.  Do not go overboard in armor.  In
systems in which you are allowed to design ships, having a lot of
armor usually means having fewer weapons.  Historically, lots of armor
meant a heavier ship, which would take more effort to move it, which
meant a less maneuverable ship.


Attack Effectively First

This is the first tenet of naval warfare.  Advantage in battle goes to
he who gets the first shot.  Getting off the first shot means that you
can inflict damage on your enemy before he does so on you.  Destroying
any of your enemies weapons, before they are allowed to fire, equates
to the enemy never having them at all.

Effectively means that you must make your hits count.  If you get off
the first shot, but they are poorly aimed, it is as if you never fired
at all.

There are three means that can assist in attacking effectively first:

   - Mass.  Mass is having more ships and weapons that your enemy.
You want to get all of your forces into battle as soon as possible.
This gives you the mass to make your first blow a serious one.

   - Concentration.  Concentration is focusing  the main efforts of
your forces on a few key enemy ships.  You don't need to attack his
entire fleet at the same time.  If you can mass your forces and attack
a small portion of his fleet, while avoiding as much enemy fire from
the other ships, your attacks will be more effective.

   - Maneuver.  Maneuver is getting your ships where they can be the
most effective exactly when you need them to be.  In firing first
effectively, you must get as many ships as possible into firing
position at the time you want to fire (mass).  Without effective
manuevering you can not achieve the mass you need, which will not
allow you to achieve any effective concentration.

Manuever can easily be applied before the battle begins.  If, through
maneuver, you can manipulate your opponent to manuever where you want
him to be, then you have an advantage over him.

The reason you want to attack effectively first, is to destroy some of
the enemies weapons before they get a change to be used on your
forces. This lessens the number of weapons the enemy has and increases
your odds of destroying the enemy.  Why does it increase your odds?
Because of the nature of attrition warfare and the concentration of
force. Let say we have two sides, A and B, with each side having 100
and 80 ships respectively.  Each of the ships are exactly the same and
have one weapon each.  Each side will destroy 10% of the others ships
in each turn.

In turn one, side A destroyes 10 ships (10% of 100) and side B
destroyes 8 ships (10% of 80).  Now side A has 92 ships and side B has
70 ships.  In the next turn side A now has 85 ships (92 - 10% of 70)
and side B has 61 ships (70 - 10% of 92).  This keeps going on until
one side is totally destroyed.  At the end, side A is victorious over
side B and still has 58 ships.  The ratio of ships between the two
sides was dropping far faster for side B than for side A.

Having the larger force is very important in both Naval and space
combat.  If you are the weaker force, then you may need to think if
this is really the right time to fight.

What should the difference between the two forces be to make an impact
on the battle?  The Naval War College did some gaming prior to World
War II, come up their own evaluations of relative strengths (not just
the number of ships) and applied them to their wargaming.  With odds
of 2:1, the smaller side was removed from the game.  Odds of 3:2 and
the lesser force lost half its strength.  With the odds of 4:3, the
superior force defeated its adversary but took enough damage to limits
ability to fight another battle soon.


Reserves are a Waste of Forces

In ground combat, reserves are used to give that final blow to the
enemy.  It lets you unleash well rested forces against a hopefully
tired and weary enemy, breaking his will to continue fighting.  This
does not work in Naval combat.

Ground combat is based on the man.  The will or morale of men is
critical.  Breaking the will of the enemy starts with breaking the
will of a few of the enemy.  Reserves are used to break the will of
the enemy by hitting him hard when he is tired and weak.  Loss of
morale is contagious on the battle field.  Seeing the man next to you
retreating does not instill confidence.  Once a battle line begins to
break it is very hard to stop and reform it.

In Naval combat, the war is against the machine.  Breaking the will of
a few of the enemy does not usually spread to the whole ship.  If you
are going to try to break someones will, aim for the captain of the
ship or the commander of the fleet.  They are the ones that decide
when to retreat.  If the enemy commander does not decide to retreat,
then you must destroy their ability to fight by destroying the ships
weapons.  Even with the good morale of its sailors, a ship that has no
weapons can not continue the battle.

Because Naval combat is attrition based, you want the greatest number
of forces at the very beginning.  You want to inflict as much damage
to your the enemy as you can, before he has time to return the favor.
Keeping forces in reserve does not allow you to inflict as much damage
as you can.


To Know Tactics, Know Technology

Tactics change with technology.  Tactics is heavily based on using
what weapons you have as effectively as you can.  A ship that has
torpedoes will use different tactics than a ship that has guns.

Here are a few key points about Knowing.  They are discussed in terms
of wargaming and apply both to Naval and Space combat:

   - Know Your Units.  In wargaming terms, your forces are your units.
Know what units you have, what weapons they have, how fast they are,
how strong the are, etc.  Tailor you tactics to the capabilities of
your units.

   - Know the Rules.  Wargaming is based on the rules of the game.
Knowing the rules lets you know exactly what you can and cannot do.
Not knowing the rules means that you may not know all of your
available options.  Sometimes there are rules that you can exploit to
use in your favor.  At the same time you don't want to be unsporting
and abuse the rules.


Defense is Inherently Weaker

Taking a defensive position means waiting for the enemy to come to
you. This breaks the first tenet of naval warfare, Attack Effectivelly
First.  Taking a defensive position does not give you mass,
concentration, or maneuver.  It allows your enemy to attack you on his
terms not yours.

In ground combat the defense is almost always the stronger position.
The defense is based on both terrain (something to hide behind) and
position (the enemy has to move you).  Neither terrain nor position is
available in Naval combat.


Manuever

In ground combat, not only is where you are in relation to the enemy
important, but where you are in relation to terrain is also important.
Holding the high ground is important for defense.  The concept of
maneuver warfare is to out maneuver and to make the enemy position
less useful to him.

In Naval combat position is not as vital.  There is no flanking
manuever, there is no rear to guard.  The only position important is
the relation of the enemy to your weapons.  You must have as many
weapons aimed at the enemy as possible.  Your enemy will try to
manuever so that as few as possible of your weapons are able to fire
on him.  This is the only maneuvering that really counts.


Scouting

The goal of scouting is to get your weapons within range of the enemy
and aim at him.  If you don't know where your enemy is, you obviously
can't attact effectively first, because you have nowhere to direct
your attack.

Scouting applies in wargaming when rule systems have any form of
hidden or partialy hidden movement.  Partially hidden movement is
having many counters on the map, but only a few are real units, the
rest are decoys.  Hidden movement is any movement that is not done on
the map or within view of the other player.  A popular way of
implementing hidden movement in space combat games is cloaking, ships
that are essentially invisible.

Scouting will only work in a wargame that has rules that make
detection of decoy or cloaked ships easier the closer you get to them.
This is the core of scouting, getting your forces close enough to the
enemy to find out where he is.

Naval scouting has been done at two different levels, strategic and
tactical.  Strategic scouting is done to know where the enemy is, but
not to specifically to engage him.  This is usually done by long range
reconnaissance aircraft or eavesdropping on enemy radio conversations.
Tactical scouting is done on a smaller scale with the aim of bringing
an attack to the enemy.

Scouting is based on the range of your weapons, or more importantly,
the range of your enemies weapons.  Scouting has to take place far
enough in front of your main forces for them to have time to react and
prepare for battle.  You don't want to scout at the range limit of
your weapons because this leaves no time to set up a proper attack.
You must scout well ahead of your weapons range.  If your enemy has a
significantly greater range than you, you must scout at a distance
greater than his range.  You don't want your scout ships to discover
the enemy after he has launched an attack on you.

Before the age of the aircraft carrier, scouting was traditionally
done with a scouting line of small but fast ships well ahead of the
main part of your forces.  These ships would be set in an arc pattern
about 45 to 60 degree wide.  They would be spaced at the distance of
their visual range, so that no enemy ships could slip in between them.
Once the enemy is sighted, they would draw back to the protective
cover of the larger ships.


Areas not using in Gaming

Because of the nature of wargaming there are many parts of real combat
the are not simulated.


   - Doctrine.  Doctrine is the teaching of specific strategy and
tactics to all military forces before the battle.  Doctrine guides
these forces in their decision making processes.  Doctrine is
renforced through careful planning and practice.  Doctrine is the glue
of good tactics.

   In wargaming, you make all of the decisions and your units are
nothing more than cardboard. The teaching of doctrine does not apply.
There is one brain controlling your forces not many.


   - Morale.  Unless specifically addresses in the rules, morale of
your troops is not a consideration.  Even when morale is addressed in
the rules, they not simulated close to real life.  Morale is based on
affecting the will of your troops.  Good morale comes from taking care
of your troops and providing them with good leadership.  Gaming can in
no way hope to simulate all that this involves.

   - Command and Control.  Command and control deals with how to get
controling orders out the your forces, so that they do as you wish.  A
significant part of war and war planning is how to keep control of
your forces.  Coordination of your forces is vital in 


SPECIFIC TACTICS


The Fighting Column

The primary purpose of the Fighting Column is a means of control of
the fleet.  It's secondary purpose was the concentration of fire.
Command and Control is critical in getting the fleet to act as one
unit.  The Fighting Column provided control of the fleet by having the
ships follow the flag (lead) ship.  The simple act of "follow the
leader" meant that the commander knew he could get his ships to go
where he wanted them.

Diagram Key

      Ship          -  \  /  |

      Flag Ship     *

      Enemy Ship    =


Divisional Column       Columns of Divisions Forming Battle Line

     |                         |       |        |

     |                         |       |        |

     |                         \       \        \ 
                                 -  *    -  *     -  *
     *

Line Ahead Turn

The Line Ahead Turn is essentially a U-turn of the column.  The flag
ship starts the turn and all ships follow.  Historically this turn was
the easiest to implement (just have all ships follow the lead ship),
but it takes the most amount of time and space to accomplish.

 -  -  -  -  *          -  -  \                   \

                          *   /          *  -  -  /

Front to Flank Turn

The Front to Flank Turn allows the column to turn 90 degrees while
still being in a column formation.  The column can turn from being
in-line to being abreast or from being abreast to being in a column.

In-line to Abreast            Abreast to In-line

1   -   -   -   -   *            |   |   |   |   *

2    \   \   \   \   *            \   \   \   \   *

3     |   |   |   |   *             -   -   -   -   *


Battle Turn Away

The Battle Turn Away is a very fast way of turning the column 180
degrees.  It is faster than the Line Ahead Turn and requires less
space to perform, but it also requires precise timing of execution.

1   -   -   -   -   *

2    \   \   \   \   *

3     |   |   |   |   *

4    /   /   /   /   *

5   -   -   -   -   *  (flag ship now in back of column)

Doubling

The purpose of Doubling is to put your ships on both sides of some of
the enemy ships.  This allows you to double your firepower on the same
ship(s).  It also denies any targets for the unengaged enemy ships,
seriously limiting their effectiveness.

Desired Positions for Doubling

-  -  -  -                                 -  -  -  -
=  =  =  =  =  =  =  =         =  =  =  =  =  =  =  =
-  -  -  -                                 -  -  -  -


    -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
1)                            Out of range of enemy
    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  =


                -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
2)                                        Slow column
    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  =


                -  -  -  -
3)                          /  /  /  /
    =  =  =  =  =  =  =  =



                -  -  -  -
4)  =  =  =  =  =  =  =  =               Now on other side of enemy
                            -  -  -  -


                -  -  -  -
5)  =  =  =  =  =  =  =  =       Speed up doubled ships
                -  -  -  -

Destroyer Screen

Destroyers, being smaller ships, were employed to screen the
battleships from attacks from torpedos and to attack where needed
without breaking up the structure of the battleship formation.


-  -  -  - _                  -  -  -  -  _
-  -  -  -                    -  -  -  -

        --  --  --  --  --  --  **

In out cruising formation the destroyer screen was used to form a
shield around the battleships and was used with scouting ships and
battle cruisers (fast ships).



  |         |         |         |         |    (scouting line)




          |   |   |      |   |   |        (battle cruisers)




      |    |    |    |    |    |
 |                                  |    (destroyer screen)



         |      |    *    |     |


         |      |    |    |     |          (battleships)


         |      |    |    |     |


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