Sixth Fleet is a simulation game of near-future combat for control of the Mediterranean Basin. As commander of the U.S. or Soviet fleet and respective allies, you must form your ships into Task Forces and attempt to cripple the enemy’s capital ships and submarines. Your limited air assets must be carefully assigned to defensive and offensive missions. Commando, parachute and amphibious assault units stand at the ready to capture vital objectives. Most important, you must protect your supply and replenishment ships, or your fleet will be unable to maintain combat momentum. Sixth Fleet is a comprehensive simulation of the myriad elements involved in future naval confrontation.
Each 8 hour game turn is broken into 3 distinct phases (sub, surface, and air) and each player takes turns choosing which phase they wish to conduct. Ex. if the US player chooses "Air", they conduct all bombing, shipping strikes, anti-sub, and interception actions for all their aircraft.
Players also use their units to attempt to "detect" enemy forces so that an attack can be made. Ships and aircraft are always detected once a unit moves close enough to them, but players have to roll to try to detect subs.
The entire "Fleet" series of games shares one thread at ConSimWorld.
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Master links/images from Boardgamegeek.com; message boards linked to Consimworld. Other links to the actual game pages...
By: Brant
Always liked the situations in the Med using Sixth Fleet.
ReplyDeleteDuring the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the USN deployed three carrier battle groups south and southwest of Crete.
We didn't actually know what would happen to get us into a hot war, but knew that six years previously, the Israelis had attacked the Liberty.
We tried to be prepared for anything.
Mostly we expected any kind of attack would come from Egypt and the Soviet Med squadron.
Their surface forces weren't much, but they had a couple of Charlie/Victor SSNs and they scared us a lot.
At one point on my destroyer, we counted eight sonar contacts an hour for most of a day.
Us Junior Officers were putting on a brave face, but inside the wardroom admitted we were pretty scared.
The more experienced guys just grinned and carried on.
After the war was settled, one day the Destroyer Squadron Ops Officer came into the wardroom with a big grin.
"You know all those sonar contacts?" And he opened the message board.
There must have been twenty OutChops from USS Hammerhead, USS Shark, etc.
Most of the sonar was our own subs.
For some reason the OutChops were sent unclassified. The orignal InChops were so far above us poor enzymes that we couldn't even be given a warning.
Oh, Ssorry meant to include this tidbit in the first post.
ReplyDeleteKeeping three battlegroups at sea for about ninety days didn't come cheap or easy.
A lot of fuel oil was used up.
We asked the staff where all the oil came from, and how could the country afford it?
We were told that it came from Libya and was sold to us dirt cheap.
All we could figure was that Moammar Gaddhafi preferred an existing Israel to a victorious Egypt on his border and maybe thinking of old scores to settle.
Holy cow does that ever take me back! It's almost worth taking a sick day tomorrow just to set that up again.
ReplyDeleteYOu could do an interesting compare-and-contrast between the VG 6th fleet and the somewhat-less-demanding SPI 6th Fleet!
ReplyDeleteor, you could do it for us and submit it as an article...
ReplyDelete