[FT] Full Steam was: Re: [GZG] Revised Salvo Missiles Update

I faintly recall you talking about this attempt, but thought you ultimately
gave it up. Which method worked better for your game? Any further thoughts
you'd be willing to share?

The_Beast

Allen wrote on 06/29/2006 09:41:55 AM:

***snippage***
> I first tried to fix this issue in my Full Steam rules (rules for
***snippage*

On 6/29/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:

I actually got quite far with it. There were ultimately two problems with it.

I wanted to differentiate gun sizes. The era had 12", 11", 10", 8" and 6" guns
as standard armament. I basically had the gun size divided by 2 as the number
of dice rolled at close range. I also ran with 6" range bands. This gave 12"
guns 6 dice at close range and 1 die at 36". 6" guns, by contrast, had 3 dice
at close range and 1 die at 18".

This caused the first problem. If you fired a 12" broadside at close range you
roll 24 dice. That's quite a bucket of dice. Add the fact
that a lot of pre-dreadnoughts had 5 or 6 6" guns on the same
broadside, you were usually rolling somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 dice
at close range. Ouchie!

So, to shrink this down I tried putting the two 12" guns in a single salvo of
6". I then gave the ships half the number of 6" guns. This resulted in some
rounding issues, giving less ship differentiation. It was quicker, though,
especially since I cut the number of hull boxes in half.

The second problem was a less than realistic probability curve. Real life guns
don't lose their ability to hit in a linear manner, but on a curve. With the
above problem, I just got tired of going forth with it.

However, I am looking at the rules again. They may not be totally accurate,
but they were fun, at least with smaller ships and not so many dice rolls. I
think I can live with the lack of realism if I can get the first problem
licked. I think I can.

When I first looked at Full Steam, I realized that the d6 mechanics of FT
wouldn't work as is (I wanted to differentiate between 12" guns and 10" for
instance). One thing I thought of using were different dice sizes. I inverted
the rolls (1, 2, 3 hit instead of 4, 5, 6). 12" guns rolled d6 and had 12"
range bands. 10" guns rolled d8s and had 10" range bands, 8" guns rolled d10s
with 8" range bands, and 6" guns rolled d12s with 6" range bands. This keeps
the game down to three range bands per weapon. A 12" broadside would still
only roll 12 dice maximum. A broadside at close range with 12" and 6" guns
would roll a maximum of 30 dice.

The movement system is actually lifted mostly from General Quarters. Movement
rate is tied to hull box rows, not to a single "drive" system. There are five
hull rows per ship. The ship travels at full speed until it loses the first
row, then it drops in speed. Each hull row lost lowers the ship's speed. There
are critical hits, similar to "core systems". One critical hit is the boiler,
which reduces the ship's speed by an additional two hull rows for the first
hit and four for the second. (I might change this to 2 and 3, as you can't
lose it a second time until you've gone through at least two hull rows
anyway).

The movement rules I outlined earlier today worked well enough. For a fun,
pick up game they aren't too bad, especially for big battles. What you lose in
all the moving you gain in not having to write down orders for a bunch of
ships (especially since, in most cases, you just end up moving the lead ship,
with the other ships following behind).

This discussion has been good. I think I'll dust off the rules. They are
actually in a pretty complete format. It wouldn't take a lot of effort to whip
them into shape.