What makes colour striking unlikely nowadays? 1) combat damage rendering
communications impossible with other ships 2) weapons which do so much damage
that you never get a chance to think about striking your colours before you
pretty much die 3) chaos and damage rendering situational control aboard the
vessel which might strike its colours impossible 4) damage to internal ships
communications
Modern ships tend not to surrender. But how many times will modern commanders
avoid a fight? How often will they withdraw at the first sign of a threat to
the prized battlewagons? How often will they either just abandon ship or
scuttle and abandon when confronted with combat versus a nasty foe?
Morale in a modern naval sense boils down to a few factors:
Do you have a motivation to fight? If it is a "battle of the line", then yes
you do. If it is a recce patrol and you are suddenly surrounded and can't FTL,
you probably don't. It might also depend on how your enemy treats prisoners.
As much as a Captain has a duty to his Admiralty to sell his vessel for a high
cost, he also has an obligation to his crew to protect their wellbeing. This
might, under some circumstances, mean surrendering without taking much damage
(for fear of taking a lot of damage if the vessel persisted in combat). And
most Captains aren't suicidal.
Is it strategically sensible to fight? If you are on a recce mission, you
might want to break contact and escape. If you are damaged in an engagement,
it might be more important to save your crew, escape for repair, and come back
to fight later than to go down shooting.
You really have several levels of morale questions: 1) When do your ships
attempt to withdraw from a conflict? 2) When do your ships consider surrender?
3) When do your ships consider scuttling or self-destruction?
It is far more likely that strategic or crew-safety concerns will
provoke an early withdrawal than it is that anyone will surrender a ship. If
the ship cannot withdraw, then surrender would probably be an option IF there
was enough command and control left on that ship to consider it and IF the
enemy was likely to treat surrendering forces well. Either battle damage or a
ruthless enemy might make a ship that wanted to withdraw keep fighting.
Similarly, scuttling might happen to prevent a battle from occuring (scuttle
in port), to prevent the capture of a ship (that can't get away), etc. But
scuttling shouldn't be automatic either because battle damage may render it
infeasible (similar to rendering surrendering infeasible due to loss of
systems or command and control).
So you really have two levels of morale to consider....
fight/withdraw and surrender/scuttle/fight
If your vessel decides it is no longer in shape to fight (by some criteria
such as thresholds perhaps? Or by being so outgunned it would just die if it
fired?), then it should attempt to withdraw. If this is infeasible, a wholly
new secondary consideration must be made - given one can't withdraw, do
you fight and hope to win anyway, do you attempt to scuttle, or do you just
surrender?
Scenario rules that take into account the context are probably the only way to
do this justice, though some rough guidelines ought to be possible to draft.
> "Barclay, Tom" wrote:
Racial characteristics can also come into play - Kra'Vak would never
surrender, especially to the Hu'Mans, and human forces may prefer to
fight to the last man rather than risk torture / genetic experimentation
/ forced breeding programs (although thinking about, the breeding
program option might be fun...).
Would the IF ever surrender to the NI ? Or vice-versa ?
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Tony Francis wrote:
> > <snippage>
I dunno. I kinda liked Los' take on the Kra'Vak, that the 'losing' side
stopped fighting and basically surrendered (IIRC) when their flagship was
taken out. While that would make for a quick game (esp if you concentrated on
the enemy flag and removed it), it is a different way to handle surrendering.
IIRC (and it's been a while since I've read the Rot Hafen saga in detail) the
Kra'Vak didn't understand why the humans wouldn't surrender when the Hoo'Man
flagship was extinguished, and eventually just decided Hoo'Mans were nuts and
were to be given no quarter.
I think, though, in the other cases you make above, that yeah, in those events
it may be preferable to fight to the last man. Thus I think either the
scenario or the universe in which you are playing should really be fleshed out
better in order to
implement morale rules or 'no surrender/fight to last' rules
if there is a conflict of perception over it (the rules of
disengagement/surrender, that is).
Tony asked:
> Would the IF ever surrender to the NI ? Or vice-versa ?
The IF is in a slightly different situation from most because many
ships--most under CH size--have no FTL and doctrine is to avoid risking
tugs. If the IF ship can use its thrust-6 to break contact, it will;
otherwise it will *probably* surrender if it's in a hopeless situation.
However, some commanders would prefer to self-destruct, and quite a few
would be willing to try ramming if they have a chance--perhaps without
regard to whether they'd surrendered first. As I understand it, Muslims
believe that dying in battle against unbelievers guarantees you immediate
access to heaven, so they're not operating on the same principals as everyone
else.
I doubt this will arise often, though, as most of my smaller (non-FTL)
IF
> On Thu, 04 January 2001, "Barclay, Tom" wrote:
> What makes colour striking unlikely nowadays?
The whole point of striking colours was to allow the crew to get off a
crippled vessel and away safely. It was all part of the international rules of
naval warfare. Note that there wasn't a whole lot of "striking of colours"
done at Lepanto! *smile*
One of the more common occurances of striking colours was with merchant
vessels. You weren't supposed to sink a civilian merchant vessel until you
were sure that all the crew got away safely. This ended in World War II for a
number of reasons, the main ones being that ships were sunk without checking
first by both sides, and a lot of ships were protected by armed convoys.
Today, the hellishness of weapons and their range makes colour striking
unlikely. A ship is likely to be sunk or rendered pretty useless from a very
long distance away.
I disagree with the internal communications breakdown, though. I think most
ships today have a method of getting people off the ship even if the
electrical system is down. It may be as simple as whistles and bells.
Whether or not a ship in FT would strike colours would depend on the rules of
engagement under which the war was fought. If prisoners are routinely
abandoned to their fate if a ship is scuttled, you may see ships on both sides
either: 1) striking their colours, or 2) fighting to the death.
I think, though, that scuttling is more likely. It might be an idea, though,
to create little escape pods. That would make an interesting
scenario/morale rule. Create an escape pod per ship's crew star. Treat
them as fighters with no combat capability. Let other ships pick them up
without having a shuttle bay? I think that could work.
If you made, therefore, the loss of CREW the determining factor in a game (and
not the loss points of ships, or hull boxes, you could see situations where
hurt ships escaped a battle area, and lifepods are picked up. Just a thought,
anyway.
G'day guys,
> Thus I think either the scenario or the universe in which you
I think that's an important point. In the general GZGverse most fighting
vessels have FTL capability and so many of us seem to fall into the habits of
modern naval warfare morale in a game where the ships tend to fight a
lot more like vessels from earlier naval periods. In contrast in a GZGverse
offshot I'm mucking around with there's an alien race who (a bit like the IF)
don't have FTL capability, even on their largest SDNs. Instead whole
fleets travel around attached to an FTL spine, they unlock from it before a
battle, leave it somewhere safe and limp back afterwards. In the history of
this species their own internal conflicts saw fierce fighting amongst the
non-FTL vessels but the spines were so precious that they struck their
colours very quickly if threatened and were considered so prized by both
sides you didn't damage one, it just wasn't done. Mind you they got a mighty
surprise when they ran into other species that had FTL on all ships who
weren't so reverential of the mammoth spine ships. So I'd agree that
under the strict name of "strike the colours" then it will depend on the
universe and circumstances you're playing.
Having said that I still enjoy using the strike the colours (treated like a
critical) as a fast, easy to remember proxy for morale.... you get the odd
nervous or inexperienced lot who high tails it rather quick, but you can
also get the ship that dies before it bows. In the campaign we played there
was also "a memory" built into the process. If you fired on a ship that had
struck then that race got a +2 to any future "strike the colours" rolls
against you in the future (and it was incremental, so if you did it a few
times then they were going to get an automatic pass and fight to the last hull
box in every case).
Cheers
Beth
> -----Original Message-----
[snip]
... who... don't have FTL capability, even on their largest SDNs. Instead
whole
> fleets travel around attached to an FTL spine, they unlock from it
> colours very quickly if threatened and were considered so prized by
Shades of BattleTech!
G'day Brian,
> Shades of BattleTech!
Guess it must be subliminal.... Derek's an Anime nut, but I haven't actually
sat down with any of his stuff and seen what it ahd to offer;)
Cheers
Beth