PLAYER'S MANUAL

Each side starts with 5 players: 4 captains in the operational zone and one Intelligence officer, safe in the fleet headquarters.
At the beginning of the game, each side is assigned a mission, the nature of this mission will be kept secret for the USSR side to keep things interesting and NATO's mission will be to intercept and neutralize USSR task force before it is able to perform it's mission .
Each side will have 1 primary and 1 or more secondary objectives which will be stated in the mission orders.
At the beginning of the game, each team must choose it's intelligence officer which will then be granted a total of 100 intel points he or she must use to buy various upgrades for the team or forfeit them in order to add them to the grand total of the team in order to boost chances of winning the game.
Upgrades are unique to each side and reflect each side's doctrine of war and technological capabilities. The upgrade list will also be kept secret from the general forum to keep things interesting.
Intel officer must order the team to move to a certain spot, attack a certain enemy/group/base and use special upgrades/abilities obtained for the team to help other team members. Also, only intel officer receives intel data which they might or might not share with the rest of the team. Intel officers cannot be killed unless the C&C HQ they are in is destroyed by a direct nuclear attack. But who would use such a thing to win a war, eh?
Captains on the other hand are in charge of surface ships and must perform orders they receive, attack enemy groups/bases/planes and use their brains to solve various problems they will be tasked with. For the realism sake, we will have 1 hour delay in communication (1 turn) with the intel officer so they need to rely on their wit and help of other captains in the field to solve some problems that may arise.

Each player will receive a "character sheet" with the stats of his vessel(s) which will include a cute picture of the ship, data about how big they are, maximum speed, maximum range and type of sensors and what weapons they have in stores, how many missiles/shells/torpedoes and at what range they can use them.

At the beginning of each turn all player declare their intent during two phases of the turn:
- during the attack phase, they tell me what are their actions if some enemy unexpectedly appears and how many missiles/shells they intend to use in battle. Also, this is the phase they may use their active sensors to scan for enemies.
- during the defensive phase, they declare their intent on how many missiles/shells they intend to use to destroy any incoming missiles if somebody unexpectedly attacks them.

Player intentions are declared to the team's intel officer and he transmits them to me and turn play out.

Turns are done simultaneously, time required for a turn will decrease if two sides start getting closer to each other to reflect the speed of modern combat.

After all this snks in, I will continue with player's manual

Any comments/questions so far?

I realise this has probably already been stated, but I can't for the life of me find it, so how long do we have to decide our actions for each turn?

At the beginning of each turn, intelligence officer receives sitrep about the war in europe and situation in the north/norwegian sea and all of the captains receive sensor reports and weather station report.
Sensor reports may look like this:

16/06/85
21:35
EM POST REPORT
-nothing new to report, Sir
ACTIVE SONAR REPORT
-We are running silent and not scanning Sir
ACTIVE RADAR REPORT
-We are running silent and not scanning Sir
PASSIVE SONAR/TOWED ARRAY REPORT
-Weak contact detected!
Type: Unknown
Solution 12%
Above water
Bearing 189, Heading unknown, Range 30+ nm

As you can see, the player is running silent, not using any active sensors so he can't be detected. His passive sonar operator has however detected something. Data provided can give clues about what it is:
- It's an unknown type since player is too far away for visual or sound detection,
- If a player decides to fire a weapon that has range to target, base chance to hit that target would be 12% since we really don't have enough info to triangulate his real position
- The contact is above water so it must be a ship or a submarine that has surfaced
- Last info given is about data such as the couse player must take to point his ship towards target (bearing), targets's heading (where it is headed) and range to target (in nautical miles).

Weather report will include visibility, weather forecast, current weather and the state of THERMAL LAYER. This last thing is bold becaue it's very important but we'll get t o this.
every team will have 24 hours to post their turn so everybody has enough time to reviev the situation and tell what they think. Also, I will organize mailing lists for each tam where members can discuss things.

I'm now reviewing the guide. It might take me all night to understand since I'm unfamiliar with naval combat stuff, so bear with me. :)

like I said, no rush, I want all people to have fun, not lose themselves in things they won't understand. I will do all the math, they just need to tell me what they want to kill :D

this is a good reference thing: a manual for Red Storm Rising, another GoG i'd like to see here ;) You will find many interesting things there

example of one turn, no enemy detected

Dr.Zli is a captain of russian FFG Krivak class ship "Verniy"
- During his turn he orders that the active radar is turned on 6 times for 5 minutes with 5 minute pause intervals in order to hunt for ships in range
- If a ship appears unexpectedly he orders that if firing solution is bigger than 85% no more than 5 missiles are fired at target, if a sub appears unexpectedly in range he orders that no more than 10 depth charges are used to battle it and a heli should be asked from other players to battle and find the sub
- If missiles are detected on a course towards the ship he orders that no more than 2 missiles and no more than 5 grenades are used per missile detected to combat them.

During the attack phase nothing happens and during the defense phase 4 missiles appear in range homing in on his active radar , he uses 8 missiles for defense and they manage to shoot down 3 of the attacking missiles, only one remains and his automated defense systems manage to shoot down the 1 remaining missile with 4 grenades. Number of spent missiles/grenades is deducted from his total

example of one turn, enemy group detected in previous turn
Dr. Zli iz joined by his 3 friends in destroyers and they coordinate an attack on an enemy group. They agree that since it's the main enemy battle group they will concentrate their attack on the main ship of enemy task force and use 80% of their missiles and try to kill it overwhelming their defences. They decide to use active sensors so their resolution is better.
He again chooses that If missiles are detected on a course towards the ship he orders that no more than 2 missiles and no more than 5 grenades are used per missile detected to combat them.

- During attack phase they fire 50 missiles at an enemy ship, 44 are shot down with missiles, 5 are shot down with automated defenses and 1 hits enemy ships blowing it up.
- Unfortunately during defence phase 80 missiles appear heading towards them, 30 of which are meant for his ship. HIs stores are depleted when he fires all of his missiles at incoming death barrage shooting down 15 of them, 10 more are shot down with the automated defense systems and his ship is hit with 5 missiles which make a nice fireball out of it. Dr.Zli is killed and out of the game.

Keep up with questions, we can start after your curiosity is sated :D

Example of INTEL officer's orders:

Task force 1, join with task force 2 and proceed towards coordinates CENSORED.
Weapons free, EMCON suggested is passive, no active emissions
When you reach coordinates deploy Spteznaz divers who will disable mines so you can move to contest the harbor. Fire shells at all military installations.

Sensors indicate 2 enemy task forces in vicinity at coordinates CENSORED, recon planes identify them as warships, 6 total, 1 confirmed Iowa class battleship

Weather expected: calm with light showers, satelite imaging reveals storm fron moving to your location in 6 hours

Expect recon planes to be in position in 3 hours (special ability used)

Apart from the abundance of info found in that red storm rising manual, here's a nice article about sub combat, it discusses many aspects of maritime combat

http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_491.shtml

I'm beginning to get the hang of it.... well I wouldn't say that, but I at least have some basic understanding of some of the terminology.

The one I can't figure out right now is firing solution. I looked it up, it seems to be related to attacking accuracy somehow? Can you explain?

sure, in this game like in the reality it will be a number that shows you a chance to hit your opponent with a weapon that has the range to reach it. It means that with all your sensor reading you have established correct location for the contact and you know where to fire your weapon so that it can home on that target with reasonable chance of success.

Agressive captains fire at 50%, NATO trains it's crews to wait until 85% and more.

Excellent, thanks for filling me in.

I didn't receive an E-Mail yet and I just double checked, the supplied address in the PM is correct.
Are we going to receive information on how likely certain actions are to succeed (e.g. what's the chance to deflect a missile with 1, 2, 3, 4 ... of your own)?

that's because I didn't send any yet, I want people to read this and information to sink in. Mails will be sent today when I get back from work, which is in 7-8 hours

Yes,such information will be provided, every weapon has a base chance of success which will be modified with firing solution, weather conditions (if applicable) and crew experience. You will receive weapon data which will be complex enough so you know all these parameters before firing, but also simplified a little so that you don't have to be a real captain to know what to use for what. Also, I will advise you on any problematic decisions you might have. I will post a example of a ship character sheet soon for all to see.

Who is AI1... is that a player or "Artificial intelligence 1"?

A player ;)

Here's a link to ship sheet pdf I made