[GZG] John's Shipbuilding

John, kudos for the nice exposition of historical shipbuilding trends. Let me
add a few twists to your discussion, however:

Once destroyers became capable of taking out line-of-battle ships, why
did the LoB ships still exists? Two answers. One is that ships don't just
vanish, and thus you've invested a lot in building and crewing them, so you
don't just chuck them away when a new system comes out that really threatens
them. Second is mission suitability. They may in fact be threatened by
destroyers, but they are also still very capable at certain types of missions
that destroyers really don't do a good job at (shore bombardment, for
instance).

But both of these aspects (and the bonus third reason of institutional
aversion to change)
aren't represented in one-off games where anyone can build anything and
bring it to the board. If small ships have easy shipkillers, then not just one
fleet shows up with them, but both. If BB's had a high point cost, and losing
one cost you all of that, wouldn't you build a swarm of smaller ships instead,
both to mitigate losses and to give yourself the
same gnats-with-sledgehammers armament? It also allows tactics that you
can't do with a single ship. So our battles would devolve into small fleets
with big guns fighting. That
might, as you say, be a bit on the un-fun side.

At the same time, the points imbalance in larger ships is being addressed
because there are benefits that don't acrue in the manner the *current* point
system suggests, as an artifact of game rules such as threshold checks. System
degradation is very much dependent on hull points total and configuration.
Thus, large ships actually have a farely sizable advantage which the points
system does not capture.

Now, what is the point system meant to do? The discussion above shows that at
the moment, there are some loopholes in the system for a 'tactical game' (one
off balance on the game board sans outside consideration) points system, and
the system is also similarly broken for the 'smaller part of a bigger game'
points system that my comments on ship's being around, having crew already
trained, and being mission suitable for things that might not be present on
the current tactical map represent. So we have two types of point systems the
game point system could be, and right now it does a so so job of the tactical
game points system (with a few crashing holes, like big ships, unbalanced
sideslips and fighters for example) and it does almost no job of encompassing
any sort of 'campaign universe flavour' (small game inside big game) rules.

This probably explains why most games that mean to support both a tactical
game and a campaign flavour have two point systems (effectively, if not
literally). SFB had that concept. So do most other games. It may well be that,
tactically speaking, the small ship
swarm has some advantages in a particular version of the game univrse -
big weapons and high mobility. It may be they have strategic advantages like
smaller crew requirements, require smaller shipyard slips to produce. But it
may also be they have campaign type disadvantages such as not being good for
some types of missions, lower hyperdrive
efficiency/speed, smaller computers (that might matter for navigation or
something), etc. The point being, you have two point systems with different
considerations.

My view for FT is that the FT point system should be *strictly tactical*. This
is so that the game does an *excellent* job of describing ship to ship in
whatever combinations on a table. I realize it'll never be perfect, but with a
patch for fighters and a patch for a few of the other things, maybe a point
modifier for vector rules narrow arc ships, for instance, it will do a pretty
good job of being a tactical system. This will allow all sorts of one off
games and even in larger terms, it will give you a better idea than the
current point system of relative combat power of two forces, which is still
useful even in the larger idea of multiple interrelated games.

But what about the strategic considerations? Manufacturing? Other missions?
etc.

I'm a simulationist almost as much as John A. and Magic are. So I believe in
campaign based point systems (victory points and other restrictions that
encourage people to play beyond just the straight tactical considerations in
the rules because of larger issues the captains must consider). But these
should be a separate point system. This serves two functions: First, it works
(unlike trying to do both strategic and tactical with one point system) and
second, it maintains the generic nature of the game, because different people
who want to flavour their campaign universes differently will bolt-in
different campaign point systems to enforce different considerations on their
captains and admirals. (There might also be some campaign rules, such as
morale, etc, and there may be minor tweaks to the tactical point system if
those rules affect combat power). Certainly, a fairly generic
tactical point system allows you to setup various one-offs, and a
bolt-on set of campaign
points (which encompasses economy, political realities, manufacturing, or
whatever constraints people wish to consider) then adds that external
dimension, but does so in such a way as to allow them to be replaced
differently by other players who want a different sort of universe. One set of
campaign points (with a few rules to boot) could encourage more of a First
World War line of battle sort of approach and one sort might encourage a more
World War Two carrier war sort of approach. Yet a third campaign system
(campaign points plus a few rules tweaks) might try harder to map to
subs-in-space or hide
and seek. But in general, they can use the tactical point system with very few
tweaks, even though the campaign point systems may be very different.

So, I submit, the one problem in these discussions is treating a single point
system is as if it can handle both of the tasks the game as a whole (as a
generic
sci-fi ship combat
game trying to cover most metaphors and handle one off as well as campaign
play) tries to accomplish. The problem is no system can be all things to all
people in this regard. Two points systems are required.

Thanks for listening. I've quite enjoyed everyone's posts on these topics.

On 1/14/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Once destroyers became capable of taking out line-of-battle ships, why

And a third: while a single shot could take out a line-of-battle ship
once they hit, they had a hard time attaining that single shot.

In the late 1890s there were naval theorists that believed the battleship
would soon be dead. Small torpedo boats could destroy the largest battleship
at a fraction of the cost, etc., etc. The truth of the situation was brought
home in 1904. At the outbreak of the
Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese slipped a division of torpedo boats
into Port Arthur just after or just before the declaration of war. (Note:
though this was the same "infamous" tactic the Japanese used in World War II,
they were praised by the Americans and British in 1904, as Japan was seen as
the David to Russia's goliath.) The boats attacked at three ranges, roughly
500, 1000 and 1500 yards. The conditions were about as perfect as they could
get: a still, clear night and an unprepared enemy. If I remember correctly,
the only negative was that there was a fairly full moon out.

The boats that fired at 500 yards did a lot of damage. At 1000 yards there
were far fewer hits, and virtually none of the torpedos launched at 1500 yards
hit anything.

In an attack with almost perfect conditions, the torpedo boat was
discovered to _not_ be the line-of-ship killer that it appeared on
paper. Anti-torpedo defences were already being incorporated, like
torpedo bulges and greater compartmentalization.

So that's another reason the line-of-battle ships were still used:
their day was not yet over. They were not quite as easy to kill as theorists
thought. To be sure, their days were numbered, but that wasn't until the
advent of torpedos and bombs carried by aircraft.

> Tom Barclay wrote:

...an excellent post to which I agree 100%. The main purpose with this
reply is to emphasise that the FT points system - at least in its later
iterations - is intended precisely as a *tactical* points system, with
no attempts to "campaignize" it.

***
Scattered comments to John's post:

Yes, for the cost of one SDN you can buy oodles of tiny missile boats. In
such a match-up, the purpose of the points system is to reasonably
accurately predict how many such missile boats you need to get a 50% chance of
them defeating the SDN.

***
The SDN-vs-missile boat example is off by a factor three:

> That would cut 12 points off the cost of that ship, and for the cost

No, you couldn't: the missile boat in question originally cost 48 pts, so if
you reduce that cost by 12 pts it still costs 36 pts. That gives you a
mere 33 missile boats against the 1204-pt SDN, not the 100 John expected
-
and 33 missile boats are by no means impossible odds for a well-handled
SDN.

***
As Allan noted, the wet-navy torpedoes turned out to be somewhat less of
a
one-shot killer than expected due to rapid implementation of
anti-torpedo
measures.. just like Full Thrust's Salvo Missiles, really: when FB1 was
published there was a wave of panic over the fact that an SM salvo can inflict
up to 36 pts if it rolls really well, but players very quickly figured out
effective defences against it.

***
Finally, I'm not sure about Norway, but Sweden certainly uses
truck-mounted
RBS15 SSMs for coastal defence.

Regards,

Which is all the more reason why you need to fire torpedos against trucks, ala
"Operation: Petticoat".:)

--Greg

> On Jan 15, 2006, at 2:22 AM, Oerjan Ariander wrote:

<snip>
> Finally, I'm not sure about Norway, but Sweden certainly uses

> On 1/15/06, Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@telia.com> wrote:

Yup--and a campaign "points cost" system needs to take into account a
wide variety of factors. The ones I can come up with off the top of my head:

Construction time Availability of construction facilities for larger ships.
Crew manning requirements (the campaign balancing factor for fighters)
logistical/resupply issues (which is a whole tree of issues to itself)
Maintinence Actual cost of ship
Production bottlenecks--I'm thinking of the production of the large
main guns for capital ships early 20th/late 19th century.  Highly
specialized production requirements which cost bundles of money, went slow,
and was a cap on how fast your ship construction program could be.

I'm sure there are a lot more--and for second tier powers the
situation is worse if they are not capable of producing indigenous electronics
suites or other high tech components.

> >That would cut 12 points off the cost of that ship, and for the cost

A slip of the fingers--typing faster than I was thinking.

A mere 33. . .given that it takes 10 on-target salvos doing average
damage to completely destroy the dreadnought in question, I would
suggest that the odds are well more than 50/50 in favor of the missle
boats. At 17 to 1, the odds are much closer to even.

> On 1/16/06, John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com> wrote:

Yupo, I'm in agreement with John, Magic, Tom, and Oerjan on this one.

I would, however, add one caveat:

A good tactical point system can be generic because it is designed to
reflect the comparative merits of any vehicle/ship/weapons system in a
one-off battle.  But a strategic/campaign system is going to be less
generic and far more colsely tied to a specific background or historical
period, because many of the factors it must take into account are going to be
background specific.

John said:
> A mere 33. . .given that it takes 10 on-target salvos

I suspect I have more experience with strikeboats than most
folks, and I don't know that I'd put money on this  bet--at
least until I find out what the SDN's starting speed and MD ratings are.

> On 1/16/06, laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

> > A mere 33. . .given that it takes 10 on-target salvos

MD4, starting speeds in scenarios I usually play are no more than 2xMD rating.
But YMMV.

Of course, what throws the math off is that you'd never find an SDN
running around by itself.  These things are (doctrinally--at least my
doctrine) grouped into squadrons of 3-4 capital ships, 1-3 heavy
cruiser consorts, and 2xEscort Cruisers with 10xPDS each.  2700-2900
points, which translates into ~60 strikeboats (as the NPV values currently
stand in print). That strikes me as far more likely to go in favor of the
heavies.

Which reinforces my original point---that there are no small boats
armed with heavy ship-killers in the Full Thrust rules as written.
The closest equivalent is SMRs and most people seem to be skeptical of their
effectiveness. Hence serious fights will be primarily focused on capitals
rather than on small ships. Small ships exist for
anti-piracy.  Historically, most pirate vessels were relatively small
vessels incapable of standing up to a real warship and hence a 14 gun brig
with a trained and disciplined crew was perfectly capable of taking them. The
idea of pirate "cruisers" or "dreadnoughts" is grossly ahistorical. Perhaps
the economics of piracy will be different in the future. I can't honestly say.
It is worth noting that most modern piracy is done with speedboats and assault
rifles. Pirates do best by making sure their predations are rare enough that
they do not attract the attention of real navies or by taking
advantage of warfare or areas/periods of lawlessness.  Not by standing
and fighting naval patrols, which is profitless and dangerous. Not what
pirates are after.

They also scout and patrol (assiduously avoiding contact with serious
warships), do 'show the flag' missions, and man stations too unimportant to be
worth large, expensive warships. They do not generally zip around while
dreadnoughts are exchanging deathblows. That is an artifact of bad space opera
movies.

If you alter the rules heavily in favor of the smaller ship by making steep
discounts in their points cost and jacking up the price of heavy ships (by 375
points in the case of a 250 mass SDN) you'll get swarms of small ships and
people will come back complaining that it's not "balanced" for them that want
larger ships.

What I'm driving at is this: For any given points cost system, there is one
most efficient use of the points. Either it will favor small ships, or large
ships, or there will be an artificial 'break point'
(like the old FT points just below the divides between escort/cruiser
and cruiser/capital) where the most effective point cost is.

What I seem to see in the discussion of point balance is that people are
complaining that their particular style of fleet (whatever that may be) is not
as effective as something purpose built for max effectiveness. They complain
that is not "realistic". The question is "realistic compared to what"? If you
assume a universe where
sensor pickets and layered anti-missle defense is effective, then you
would "realistically" see the escorts in a ring around the capitals and in
great numbers compared to the other ships[1] But it isn't terribly effective
as the Full Thrust rules are currently written. It is actually far more
effective to put an ADFC on each of your capitals and thus interlink their
point defenses.

Now, I can understand putting in an upper limit on mass personally, for the FT
universe as written. Perhaps mass 300? But that's a
"universe" rule, not applicable to (for instance) a Star Wars-based
universe, or one based on certain types of anime (SDF-1 anyone?).  I
could see a "proton torpedo in the exhaust tube" rule for anything
over a certain size, or other universe-specific rules.  Perhaps
fighter damage is multiplied by a certain number against supership, or Ace
groups who roll 2 or more sixes causes an automatic system check done the same
way a threshold check is done, based on how many 6s they
roll.  2 6s means a 6+, 3 6s means a 5+, etc, etc.

For that matter, you can put a limit on fighters by limiting the total number
of pilots you have for your entire fleet. I'd suggest 3 per 100 points?. This
means that in a 3000 point game, you could field 90 pilots which is 14 fighter
groups and 6 ships to carry them. If you want more ships, then you are
fielding fewer fighters. That's a lot of fighters, but shouldn't be enough to
overwhelm the entire game. To make this even more fun, for ever 20% under the
limit you are, you can designate 1 fighter group you do take as being Ace. Or
you can exceed it by a given percentage (perhaps 20%), but for six pilots you
go over the limit, two of your fighter squadrons are Turkeys. YMMV.

If your heart is just set on escorts and cruisers, then announce the scenario
as being in a backwater frontier sector. The players get 1
ship of 90-110 mass as the squadron flagship, and no more than half
their hulls can exceed 50 tons. Oh, and if the squadron flagship is destroyed,
they die and automatically loose. Better withdraw it before it goes boom.

These are just suggestions, but they seem to be in keeping with the design
philosophy of FB1. Feel free to tweak as you like.

Whether you like it or not, no matter how 'generic' you make your rules, you
have some assumptions. And if I were running games on a regular basis, I would
have these be part of the scenario design assumptions. It's ridiculous to say
two mutually contradictory things:

1)I have a style of ship/fleet design I like and the rules should
support it. In many cases this seems to be the WWII battle group with a mix of
capitals, carriers, cruisers, and escorts, with fighters but not an
overwhelming number of them.

AND

2)The rules should be totally generic, with no limits at all on ship
construction or fleet compositions.

It ain't likely to happen.

John
[1]Although, in complete honesty, the United States Navy has given up
on escort ships. Almost all of the classes of warship in service (other than
carriers) are, based on hull size, cruisers. Ticonderoga class "cruisers" and
Spruance class "destroyers" are identical hulls with different weapons and
sensor fits. Arleigh Burke is about the same size. All of them are roughly the
size of a WWII Heavy Cruiser. It's interesting the things you learn in a naval
museum with lots and lots of ship models, including every class of destroyer
in USN service since WWI.

JohnA:
> MD4, starting speeds in scenarios I usually play are no

If the strikeboats start close enough, I'd probably take
their side.  If the SDN starts at, say, 20+ speed, I'd back
the SDN.

> Of course, what throws the math off is that you'd never

Bismarck? I concur, more or less, with the rest of John's post.

> On 1/16/06, laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

> > Of course, what throws the math off is that you'd never

She left port and linked up with the Prinz Eugene (a heavy cruiser) and 3
destroyers, but the destroyers were detached after the stop in Norway and were
sent to Trondheim. I cannot locate a reason why this happened. After the first
fight with the Hood and Prince of Wales, the undamaged Prinz Eugene was
ordered to detach himself from the Bismarck and conduct independant cruiser
operations (merchant raiding). The Bismarck was attempting to run for a port
to conduct repairs when he was located by carrier aircraft and torpedoed,
causing him to slow down further and eventually ending in his destruction at
the hands of a squadron of 2 Brit battleships and 2 heavy cruisers.

I submit that this was a freak event, caused by a number factors. First, the
German Navy had a minimal surface combatant force and as a result focused on
fast ships intended for independant commerce raiding rather than decisive
engagements with the RN's battleline. Second, the decision to ditch the
escorts early on, which baffles me. Third, the decision that getting the Prinz
Eugene into action against convoys was more important than nursemaiding the
Bismarck back into port.

> John Atkinson wrote:

> >>That would cut 12 points off the cost of that ship, and for the cost

That's why I specified "a *well-handled* SDN", John ;-) You're either
assuming that most of the missile boats will retain both sensors and missile
racks long enough to launch successfully or that most of the salvoes launched
will actually be on target. In my experience, the SDN player can do quite a
lot to invalidate either or both of those assumptions.

Basically, this match-up hinges on how many missile boats the SDN can
cripple before the boats get into missile launch range. By shaping its vector
away from the missile boats the SDN can force the boats to come
quite deep into the SDN's direct-fire weapons envelope before their
missiles range on it, and if the velocities are high enough it can force

them to spend several turns under fire before they can launch. Given the

fragility of a missile boat - eg., on the design you posted even the
first damage point inflicted has a 30% chance of neutering the boat by
damaging
either or both of the FCS and the SMR - and the amount of firepower that

SDN can put out even at ranges >24mu, that is seriously bad news for the

missile boats.

Of course, as Laserlight wrote the outcome of this battle depends heavily
on the set-up. If the starting range and/or the initial velocities are
too low, the SDN won't be able to shape its vector appropriately before the
missile boats range on it - but if the SDN's captain has allowed 30+
unidentified ships to get that close without even beginning to do something
about it, I'd say he deserves to lose his ship!

> Which reinforces my original point---that there are no small boats

Basic premises are reasonably OK - though note that neither torpedoes
nor
SSMs/ASMs are necessarily single-hit-kill systems against today's
warships!
- but the conclusion you draw from them is not. In historical wet-navy
conflicts the weapons carried by small ships were usually unable to even

damage large battleships until the torpedoes and missiles came around; but
in Full Thrust even a tiny B1 battery can damage a superdreadnought -
and a lot of B1s can destroy an SDN with a hundred tiny cuts. This fact alone
severely upsets comparisons between Full Thrust and historical wet-navy
fleets.

> What I'm driving at is this: For any given points cost system, there

Don't bet too much money on that. Yes, there'll always be *some* bias -
but if the bias is small enough that player skill or even luck with the dice

overshadows it, its effect on the game is minimal.

In addition the biases don't have favour either end of the scale; they can
also favour the *middle* of the scale - eg., in the CPV case the
"favoured"
TMF range is roughly 80-150 (due to the interaction between the
progressive hull costs and all the game mechanics that actively favour larger
ships), and the bias against other sizes isn't very strong until you get up to
TMF
350+.

In short, there's still plenty of use for your TMF 250-ish SDNs - it's
just that you've built your mental image of the GZGverse campaign setting at
least partially on the NPV points values which are heavily biased in favour of
the largest possible ships, so it might take you a little while to adjust to
paying costs closer to what your capitals are actually worth on
the gaming table :-/

Regards,

> First, the German Navy had a minimal surface combatant force and as a

Your first statement answers the second I think. The Bismark was built as a
fast commerce raider wasn't it? Did German escort vessels have the
range/endurance to keep up with B. while out at sea for any length of
time?

> On 1/16/06, damosan@comcast.net <damosan@comcast.net> wrote:

Not a clue, but I have have a strong feeling you are headed in the right
direction with that line of thought.

Now, that's something else to bring into a campaign game, is cruising
endurance.

This is non-trivial, as one of the major failing of David Weber's
latest two books is a total reworking of the entire strategic underpinnings of
his universe by changing the rules in this regard. Previous to these books,
naval campaigns were plotted around taking systems in a methodical and
understandable manner, creating a chain of bases leading into the enemy's core
territory. In the latest books, he has totally abandoned that in favor of
terror raids ranging throughout the entirety of the war zone and climaxing
with an direct assault on a home system. Part of the problem is that he's
forgotten how to write coherently, and is abandoning every single aspect of
the Honor Harrington series that made it enjoyable to write.

But the biggest "What the HELL?" was the abandonment of conventional
pseudo-naval strategy in favor of deep penetration terror raids.  If
these were feasible, why weren't they happening at the beginning of the war?

> Now, that's something else to bring into a campaign game, is cruising

I can honestly say I have never played a campaign that takes ship/crew
endurance into account.

Ships require downtime just like people do.

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l  The Germans had a
history in WW2 of using their capital ships unescorted primarily as commerce
raiders e.g. the cruises of the Sharhorst and Gneisenau (BCs) – sinking of
the Rawalpindi, their engagement of with Renown (she had an escort of 3 DD),
the sinking of the Glorious, the 1940 sortie during which they sank 22 ships
(116,000 tons) all unescorted. The cruise of the Admiral Hipper (CA) in
February 1940 sinking 7 ships (32,8900 tons), not to mention the purpose built
commerce raiders Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer and Lutzow.

German DDs while heavily armed were poor sea boats and they did not have that
many and their range compared to capital ships were limited.

  Ian

> John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Of course, what throws the math off is that you'd never

<snip>

I submit that this was a freak event, caused by a number factors. First, the
German Navy had a minimal surface combatant force and as a result focused on
fast ships intended for independant commerce raiding rather than decisive
engagements with the RN's battleline. Second, the decision to ditch the
escorts early on, which baffles me. Third, the decision that getting the Prinz
Eugene into action against convoys was more important than nursemaiding the
Bismarck back into port.

John

The Bismarck's cruising speed was something like 28-32 knots.   There
were relatively few British ships that were able to keep up with it. The King
George V class, battlecruisers, and true cruisers on both sides were able to
stay with it, nothing that was able to match up with it very well in a
straight fight. The British battlecruisers were always envisioned as
cruiser-killers and not things that were intended to stay up against
real battleships, except that nobody seemed to ever tell the Admiralty that,
and numerous instances in which they suffered catastrophic magazine explosions
in such fights from armor that wasn't able to trade hits with battleships at
all needed to happen before the Admiralty figured it out for themselves.

So yes, the Prinz Eugen and German destroyers were perfectly capable of
staying with the Bismarck.

E

[quoted original message omitted]

Urk. Destroyers might not have had the endurance. I'm not awake today.
 I
stand corrected most likely.

E

[quoted original message omitted]

> On 1/16/06, Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@telia.com> wrote:

> Basically, this match-up hinges on how many missile boats the SDN can

??? 4 beam dice, 3 pulse torps that have a 1 in 6 chance of hitting. That's
not exactally overwhelming.

> Of course, as Laserlight wrote the outcome of this battle depends

True.  And a lot of that goes into campaign assumptions--specifically,
the range at which the SDN captain can spot 30+ bogies.

> Basic premises are reasonably OK - though note that neither torpedoes

To be fair, SSMs or ASM may not sink a ship, but they will very likely mission
kill them.

> - but the conclusion you draw from them is not. In historical wet-navy
but
> in Full Thrust even a tiny B1 battery can damage a superdreadnought -

You need a LOT of B1s, and I wouldn't want to try it with real human beings
under my command. Of course, that's a factor that will always
be missing from a game--there are strategies that may be effective but
not cost-effective (in terms of lives), and there is no way to enforce
that consideration when dealing with notional people.

> In addition the biases don't have favour either end of the scale; they

True that -- but there is always a favored part of the scale and
fleets designed for efficiency and effectiveness will gravitate towards having
a majority of their ships being at that part of the scale.

> You need a LOT of B1s, and I wouldn't want to try it with real human
Most land combat games make morale a factor to prevent / discourage
suicide tactics.

Would introducing a morale system into FT be worthwhile?

Each ship could get a leadership value just like in Dirt Side and could take
leadership tests at the end of every phase they take hull damage.

This could make ships drop out of the fight as they get damaged. Reading
accounts of Jutland ships seemed to drop out of the LOB when crippled rather
than stay and fight until sunk.

In addition you could have the Admiral on the flagship have a leadership and
the admiral takes leaderhip tests when his ships drop out of the LOB until the
admiral fails the leadership test and fleet departs.

Thus you could get a suitation like at Jutland where the Germans sunk /
damaged more capital ships yet they fled back to their base and left the
British fleet to hold the high seas. Who that makes the winner of the battle I
am not sure?

What this would do to the points value to have a green crew on your SDN and
therefore its more likely to break off against well lead veterans on the
cruisers I don't know.

Could be worth considering.

John Atkinson schrieb:
> On 1/16/06, laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

I suspect it was because the destroyers did not have the range for the
extended operations planned for the Bismarck.

There were quite a number of instances where capital ships operated as single
vessels or at most in pairs, with a very light escort of other vessels.

In WWI, the Goeben in the Mediterranean comes to mind, with a single light
cruiser escort.

The battles of the Colonels and the Falklands were fought on the German side
by 2 heavy and 2 light cruisers.

The Graf Spee in WWII is another example. Various German operations against
Arctic convoys also were by single capital ships, though these were usually
escorted.

Various Third World Navies, especially in South America, did not have more
than one or two Capital Ships.

So there are enough examples of operations by a small force including no

more than one big ship plus some escorts. Typically these old be because

either the navy could not afford more ships or because the theater was of
minor importance and the bulk of the fleet was needed elsewhere.

Greetings Karl Heinz

> On 1/17/06, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote:

> Each ship could get a leadership value just like in Dirt Side and

I'm not entirely sure of this. My read is that the crew didn't get to vote
with their feet like in a land fight. What I mean is that if an infantry
unit's morale crumbles the troops may surrender, run for the hills, or just
hunker down and hide. This is not an option on a warship except in the case of
boarding actions.

What was more likely was that the officers make a professional judgement that
their ship can no longer contribute to the fight, and that withdrawl is
practical at that time. Either that, or upon reading the damage reports they
send up, their senior officer orders them to withdraw. As that is a matter of
professional judgement on the part of somewhat senior officers I'm not
comfortable making it a pure dice roll.

What I would prefer would be victory conditions that value withdrawal of
damaged units, to give the players a motive to act like historical admirals.

> On 1/17/06, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote:

> What I would prefer would be victory conditions that value withdrawal

Something like 50% of the points is retained if the ship withdrawals instead
of the 0% you keep is it's lost. Or inversely, your opponent only gets 50% is
you successfully retire the ship instead of hte full amount.

[quoted original message omitted]

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l

> The Germans had a history in WW2 of using their capital ships

> German DDs while heavily armed were poor sea boats and they did not

The Bismarck was a third generation battleship and not a surface raider. What
happened was Hitler told the navy that he did not expect to go to war till
1944 and the navy started building the longer to build ships first. Although
the Bismarck had a maximum speed of 30 knots it was listed as having a cruse
range of 8,100 miles at 19 knots. Compare this to the Graff Spee (which was a
surface raider) which had a range of 19,000 miles at 19 knots.

To make matters worse, although it was the US and British fleet policy to
refuel a warship as soon as it entered harbor (during wartime) it was not
German fleet policy. When the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen entered the harbor in
Norway they did not refuel and when they were ordered to leave they didn't
have time. When the Bismark and Prinz Eugen left harbor to make their run into
the Atlantic they had not topped off
  and were down 1,000+ miles in range.

By the way, the Prinz Eugen had a max range of 6,800 miles at 18 knots and the
German pre war destroyers had max cruse ranges of 4,400 to 5,000 mile at 19
knots.

> On 1/17/06, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote:

I fully agree here, John. Ignoring the occasional case of an overzealous or
suicidal captain being relieved of command by the rest of his officers, a
warship will generally stay in the fight until its Captain decides it's time
to leave. Of course, there are a lot of
things that will influence when that point is reached - one of the
most important being the sort of "mission motivation" that we use in SGII, so
that a ship engaged in a defence of its homeworld against a ravening alien
horde will be much more likely to fight on until destroyed than one that is
currently tasked with intelligence gathering or on a diplomatic mission...

This can be reflected in game terms in a number of ways, but in FT terms I can
see two good options: one is the victory
points/conditions discussed earlier - either a simple 50% value for
ships withdrawn, or grading it for amount of damage taken, which in FT terms
is most easily represented by threshold points reached: a ship withdrawn after
it passes the first threshold is worth only 25% of total VP to the enemy, at
the second threshold 50%, the third 75% and if totally destroyed is worth full
points.
The other option is making it dice-based, but variable according to
mission motivation - a modified version of the old "strike the
colours" rule from More Thrust; roll for continuing in combat at each
threshold point: at 1st threshold, fail on 1, at 2nd, fail on 1 or 2, at
third, 1, 2 or 3. Failure means the ship must disengage from combat and leave
the table. Modify this for mission motivation if
desired: -1 to score needed if HIGH motivation (mission success is
more important than ship loss), +1 if LOW (preserving ships is more
important than the mission). Desperate last-ditch defences of home
planets might test at -2, or simply be ruled not to need a test....
Of course, there is no reason why the two options might not be combined, using
the die roll for forced disengagement but also using the VP modifiers to
encourage players to withdraw voluntarily even if the dice say they may fight
on.....

Obviously the above thoughts are based on standard 4-row hulls and
would need tweaking for 3 or 5 rows.

Jon (GZG)

> --

From: John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>

> Would introducing a morale system into FT be worthwhile?

I'd be all for this as an add-on rule.   You can get into a few hairy
situations though: once morale cracks will the ship try to run away? Jump out?
Surrender to the opposing side?

On 1/17/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 23:08:38 -0800 (PST)

> Something like 50% of the points is retained if the ship withdrawals

That can still end up with "gamey" results. The player figures out he's lost
the scenario on points. He knows there is a small, but real chance that
keeping his SDN on the table could destroy the other guy's ships (for
instance, he rolls a bunch of 6s on his last beam attack). So, the player
keeps the ship on the table. He would lose if he
removed it, just not as badly. Since it's a one-shot game, he's still
going to do a "death ride" because of the small possible chance of winning
from good dice rolling.

Your idea does help a lot, particularly in the early stages of a game.

Probably a better bet would be to tie victory conditions to the number of
ships destroyed. A player may have to inflict X points of damage on his
opponent to win, but automatically loses if he lost Y ships.

A better idea is various levels of success/failure (Avalon Hill's
Panzer Leader had Decsive, Tactical, and Marginal victories and defeats). You
could assign numbers to these and keep a total going between games. In a
metagaming sense, your total across the games becomes your campaign system. At
least it would encourage a player to minimize his losses.

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lBut how would
morale rules cope with situations such as the Glowworm v Hipper, Jervis Bay v
Scheer, Rawalpindi V Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The RN ships had no chance of
winning, only the Glowworm got some return on her sacrifice by damaging the
Hipper so she required several months dockyard repairs. So how would you model
this in FT?
  Ian

> damosan@comcast.net wrote:
  From: John Tailby

> Would introducing a morale system into FT be worthwhile?

I'd be all for this as an add-on rule. You can get into a few hairy
situations though: once morale cracks will the ship try to run away? Jump out?
Surrender to the opposing side?

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Ian Downing <iandowning112@yahoo.co.uk>

> The RN ships had no chance of winning...

It depends on how you define "winning." Winning and losing are defined by the
mission (scenario) at hand and the backstory to date. Is winning always about
the total defeat of the enemy? Probably not.

John mentioned mission motivation which, I think, is a better way of dealing
with morale in a ship to ship game. We're not talking about modeling the
morale of Ship's Cook 4th Class Jones but the command staff.

If the weaker force has a High mission motivation then I can see them willing
to take the hits. If, on the other hand, they have a low motivation then they
make take a few paint scratching hits and decide to bail.

How popular would Admirals/Captains be today if they burned ships like
we FT players do?

--
Damo

--NextPart_Webmail_9m3u9jl4l_7404_1137531970_1
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="0-17956130-1137531333=:57865"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

--0-17956130-1137531333=:57865
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

But how would morale rules cope with situations such as the Glowworm v Hipper,
Jervis Bay v Scheer, Rawalpindi V Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The RN ships had
no chance of winning, only the Glowworm got some return on her sacrifice by
damaging the Hipper so she required several months dockyard repairs. So how
would you model this in FT?
  Ian

> damosan@comcast.net wrote:
  From: John Tailby

> Would introducing a morale system into FT be worthwhile?

I'd be all for this as an add-on rule. You can get into a few hairy
situations though: once morale cracks will the ship try to run away? Jump out?
Surrender to the opposing side?

--
Damo
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l

---------------------------------
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo!
Security Centre.
--0-17956130-1137531333=:57865
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

<DIV>But how would morale rules cope with situations such as the Glowworm v
Hipper, Jervis Bay v Scheer, Rawalpindi V Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The
RN&nbsp;ships had no chance of winning, only the Glowworm got some return on
her sacrifice by damaging the Hipper so she required several months dockyard
repairs. So how would you&nbsp;model this in
FT?</DIV>  <DIV>Ian<BR><BR><B><I>damosan@comcast.net</I></B>
wrote:</DIV>  <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px;
MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">From: John Tailby
<JOHN_TAILBY@XTRA.CO.NZ><BR><BR>&gt; <BR>&gt; Would introducing a morale
system into FT be worthwhile? <BR>&gt; <BR><BR>I'd be all for this as an
add-on rule. You can get into a few hairy situations though: once morale
cracks will the ship try to run away? Jump out? Surrender to the opposing
side?<BR><BR><BR>--<BR>Damo<BR>_________________________________________
______<BR>Gzg-l mailing

list<BR>Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu<BR>http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/
mailman/listinfo/gzg-l<BR></BLOCKQUOTE>  <DIV><BR></DIV><p>
<hr size=1><font face="Arial" size="2">To help you stay safe and secure
online, we've developed the all new <a
href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/default/security_centre/*h
ttp://uk.security.yahoo.com/"><b>Yahoo! Security Centre</b></a>.</font>
--0-17956130-1137531333=:57865--

--NextPart_Webmail_9m3u9jl4l_7404_1137531970_1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

> John Atkinson wrote:

> >Basically, this match-up hinges on how many missile boats the SDN can

Not in a single turn, no - but when each of those beam die has something

like 20% chance of knocking a missile boat out, and a pair of beam dice more
like 70%, even that firepower whittles down the missile swarm surprisingly
fast. It gets even worse inside range 24, of course. Been there, done that
several times over.

> >Of course, as Laserlight wrote the outcome of this battle depends

Yep. But when active sensors have a 54mu *identification* range (FT2
p.21),
detection range is likely to be longer than that... and detection cuts both
ways: the missile boats can't begin to shape their vector either until they
detect the SDN.

> >Basic premises are reasonably OK - though note that neither torpedoes

Depends on the exact type of missile we're talking about. The bigger modern
ones most likely will, that's true.

> >...but in Full Thrust even a tiny B1 battery can damage a

Sure, I need a lot of B1s to kill an SDN, and the swarm will most likely

take massive casualties (unless the SDN screws up badly so all those B1s

manage to get into close range very quickly). If the alternative is to lose
a planet/critical shipyard/insert high-value strategic target of your
choice, even real-world armed forces would go into such a battle.
Cornered rats, backs against the wall, desperate last stands, and all that.

The point is that since the small Full Thrust ships *can* damage and even
destroy SDNs, there is a finite balance point between these two types of

ship which the tactical points system can measure. The tactical points system
does not care about the morality of sending a swarm of tiny ships to
near-certain death (that's a campaign issue, not a tactical one); all it

cares about in this match-up is how many B1-armed scoutships it takes to

get a ~50% chance of destroying the SDN before all the scouts have been
destroyed.

FWIW I have seen some campaign systems which did take crew casualty rates
into account in various ways - some iterations of StarFire, for example.

(It was pretty difficult to build more ships than you could find crews for,
but I vividly remember occasions where I couldn't man the ground forces
necessary to maintain control over conquered planets :-( )

Regards,

> On 1/17/06, Ian Downing <iandowning112@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
The RN
> ships had no chance of winning, only the Glowworm got some return on

When I was a lad, I tried my hand briefly at ASL. It wasn't my bag, mostly
because it was too complicated for any of my friends to bother trying to play
with me. But one of the rules that always struck me as interesting was the
Berserk rule, where troops under fire, when rolling for their morale, and
failing miserably, would, on a 2d6 roll of 2, would go berserk instead of
breaking.

The reason I mention it is this: in certain cases, depending on the situation
and enemy, a crew whose morale is completely crushed, if they feel they have
no hope of survival or humane treatment in surrender, may decide that since
they're going to die anyway, they might as well die gloriously. The old adage
about wounded animals.

In the game, if you decide to House Rules morale, you may want to
consider some sort of random table or card set-up to allow for all
sorts of possibilities, including surrender, scuttling, self-destruct,
fleeing, and fighting to the death.

> From: Brian B <brianbinor@gmail.com>
The RN
> > ships had no chance of winning, only the Glowworm got some return on

Either the mission parameters stiffen the morale of the captain so the captain
keeps going. There might be some "racial" motivation differences, in the GZG
universe the NAC might hold their crew and ships in more value than saw the
ESU so NAC ships might be better trained but more "cowardly" and the ESU might
be more fanatical but lower skilled. The captain of the outclassed ship passes
a series of unlikely morale tests. The captain of the outclassed ship knows
that his ship can't get away unless the enemy ship is damaged and so fleeing
isn't an option. In the examples quoted it sounds like the Germans had bigger
ships with bigger guns and probably just as fast as the RN ship. So how does
the RN ship get way under these circumstances.

In what cases would an immobile ship strike

Andrew Apter Wizzard Software Corp. Deerfield Beach, FL offices
(954) 678-4155  Ext. 213  Voice
(954) 678-4182 FAX
 http://www.wizzardsoftware.com
www.wizztones.com

[quoted original message omitted]

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lElite or highly
motivated crews - the cost would have to worked somehow
as currently crew quality and morale are not tracked separately when designing
ships or scenarios.

--Binhan

________________________________

From: gzg-l-bounces@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
[mailto:gzg-l-bounces@lists.csua.berkeley.edu] On Behalf Of Ian Downing
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 1:56 PM
To: gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Re: [GZG] John's Shipbuilding

But how would morale rules cope with situations such as the Glowworm v Hipper,
Jervis Bay v Scheer, Rawalpindi V Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The RN ships had
no chance of winning, only the Glowworm got some return on her sacrifice by
damaging the Hipper so she required several months dockyard repairs. So how
would you model this in FT?

Ian

> damosan@comcast.net wrote:

	From: John Tailby

> Would introducing a morale system into FT be worthwhile?

        I'd be all for this as an add-on rule. You can get into a few
hairy situations though: once morale cracks will the ship try to run away?
Jump out? Surrender to the opposing side?

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l

========================================
Message Received: Jan 17 2006, 08:56 PM
From: "Ian Downing"
To: gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
Cc:
Subject: Re: Re: [GZG] John's Shipbuilding

But how would morale rules cope with situations such as the Glowworm v Hipper,
Jervis Bay v Scheer, Rawalpindi V Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The RN ships had
no chance of winning, only the Glowworm got some return on her sacrifice by
damaging the Hipper so she required several months dockyard repairs. So how
would you model this in FT? Ian

> damosan@comcast.net wrote:
From: John Tailby

> Would introducing a morale system into FT be worthwhile?

I'd be all for this as an add-on rule. You can get into a few hairy
situations though: once morale cracks will the ship try to run away? Jump out?
Surrender to the opposing side?

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l

========================================
Message Received: Jan 17 2006, 09:08 PM
From: damosan@comcast.net
To: gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
Cc:
Subject: Re: Re: [GZG] John's Shipbuilding

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Ian Downing

> The RN ships had no chance of winning...

It depends on how you define "winning." Winning and losing are defined by the
mission (scenario) at hand and the backstory to date. Is winning always about
the total defeat of the enemy? Probably not.

John mentioned mission motivation which, I think, is a better way of dealing
with morale in a ship to ship game. We're not talking about modeling the
morale of Ship's Cook 4th Class Jones but the command staff.

If the weaker force has a High mission motivation then I can see them willing
to take the hits. If, on the other hand, they have a low motivation then they
make take a few paint scratching hits and decide to bail.

How popular would Admirals/Captains be today if they burned ships like
we FT players do?

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l

*more sniping than a Saville Row tailors*
I like the Idea of victory points being slanted _ IE a destroyer getting
lots of points for damaging, say, a fleet carrier even though it gets
vaporised. The mechanisms for keeping track of points may be tricky tho
:)

PLEASE set your format to plain text, not HTML / RTF !

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lIt must depend on
whether FT models Age of Sail naval warfare or WW1 or 2. In the Age of Sail it
was difficult to destroy warships so often they surrendered. However there are
very few instances of warships in WW2 surrendering in combat. Even the German
destroyers at Narvik, out of all ammunition, and virtually out of fuel
scuttled themselves rather than surrender. If I recall correctly in WW2 only 3
or 4 submarines surrendered, often when they thought the boat was sinking. So
I don’t favour the surrendering of warships if FT models “modern” naval
warfare, however merchant ships and scuttling are another matter.

  Ian

> andrew apter <apter@bellsouth.net> wrote:
In what cases would an immobile ship strike

Andrew Apter Wizzard Software Corp. Deerfield Beach, FL offices
(954) 678-4155 Ext. 213 Voice
(954) 678-4182 FAX
http://www.wizzardsoftware.com
www.wizztones.com

[quoted original message omitted]

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 1/18/06, Ian
> Downing <iandowning112@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Why can't FT be its 'own' Age? Space ain't like the ocean, and scuttling a
spaceship is tantamount to suicide if done right (ie, total destruction of
said ship, making it completely useless for the other side to salvage or
gain valuable intel - or even use the ship against its owners - and any
escaping crew would likely be unable to avoid the blast of the
self-destructing ship). If an FT ship surrenders in battle, it's likely
to save the crew. At least in WW2, scuttling a ship meant it was near
impossible for the enemy to retrieve it for any purpose, and the crew would
likely be rescued by the attacking enemy ship(s). Or at least had a fighting
chance for survival.

Mk

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l

Another factor to consider when determining whether to scuttle your ship, or
even whether to take to the escape pods, is the chance of survival.

Depending on the setting, some ships may be incapable of rescuing survivors
from other vessels. Submarines, in WW2, had to think hard about rescuing
survivors in some cases. In space, air, food and water will be in just as
short supply for those ships. It depends on the life support capability and
the speed of jumping somewhere 'green' or being resupplied. And all that
presupposes they breathe air you can breathe, eat food you can eat, drink
water you can consume.

Even if the opposition could rescue you, what are your chances if they don't?
In any given battle, what are the chances there's any land nearby for your
lifeboat to reach? In the Tuffleyverse, fighters aren't FTL capable, so escape
pods probably aren't, so your chances of getting somewhere green from many of
the battle sites before life support fails may be slim.

In the end, spacemen simply may not believe there's any chance of surviving if
the ship is lost. And from there, it's a pretty short leap to building ships
with insufficient (or no) escape pods and lifeboats. And economically
speaking, that's a big cash savings so it's not unrealistic that someone will
suggest it. So maybe most ships have just some shuttles, EVA suits, and the
like, but no real plans to escape if the ship is lost.

Hmm, I think you should also consider that scuttling and/or
abandoning ship may be the only way to visibly demonstrate to the other side
that you are no longer a danger that needs to be shot at. This is certainly a
reason why ships were abandoned and scuttled in WW II. So long as they were
afloat and had crew aboard it was nearly impossible for the other side to tell
whether they were still a target that needed to be attacked or not. Typically
the other side wouldn't stop firing at a target until they could see the crew
abandoning ship or the target was obviously foundering. In space combat, it
might take the destruction of the target (scuttling) or ejection of the power
core (in the appropriate genre's) to convince the other guy to stop firing on
you. In such a circumstance, abandoning ship may be the *only* chance to
survive.

  grant

> Another factor to consider when determining whether to scuttle your

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 1/18/06, Grant
> A. Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:

I think these thoughts play into the adopted conventions and combat honor of
the govenrmental/racial powers involved. If a gov't power/race is known
to send up the white flag of surrender, and then fire upon the victors, it is
very likely that future surrenders - whether or not legitimate - would
even be honored.

At the same time, on the flip side, you can then start modelling races who
will fire at a target until dead ("It's the only way to be sure"*, refusing
to take prisoners. ;-)

* translated from whatever language originally spoken into language
understandable for readers of this thread

However, I think this really is outside the scope of FT games, and more in the
realm of campaigns.

Hmmm, campaigns. Is that this thread or another?:dazed&confused:

Mk

Well, there's two major factors at play here. The first is how much an
interstellar culture cares about the lives of their warriors. The second is
how expensive it is to actually support a living crew in the first place. In
real life, these two things have come together in our own space travel enough
that we just don't send manned craft over longer distances than low Earth
orbit very much, and when we do it's often more just to say that we've
accomplished it than for any real mission purpose that requires them to be
there. The sheer amount of extra biomass you have to haul around to service
a living crew is enough that if it's not mission-critical to have one
there, you just wouldn't bother.

However, in a military situation it's not hard to see a scenario where you'd
want a living commander, just because the one thing that humans still do

better than computers is to grasp the complexities of what their superiors
back home really want and be able to make a decision on the spot that will
reflect that. There are some maintenance and other issues that are based off
of this, but a culture that can move a large vessel over interstellar
distances probably has also developed the technology for ships that can
automate their own repairs to a degree that it's not worth having a living
crew just to keep the things running.

Once you get to that point, one of two things is likely to happen in any

starfaring culture that does, in fact, care about their warriors' lives.

One is that you would have a living commander or chain of command with a

fleet where almost all of the grunt work that science fiction loves to put in
the hands of living crews is automated and modularized. If the fleet is in a
winning situation, the commander just executes the battle plan with

whatever operational crew he needs on his flagship. If it's not, the manned
elements would likely withdraw to a safe distance while giving orders to

their subordinate unmanned warships for whatever holding actions or suicide
missions are needed to pursue any other critical missions that the fleet is
required to do, and the manned ships themselves then becomes their own escape
craft.

E

[quoted original message omitted]

> Another factor to consider

For Age of Sail games, two factors played into the decision to strike: a) a
ship could be rendered hors de combat without being in danger of sinking (eg
if it was dismasted). In that case, a captain might honorably strike to aviod
taking further casualties to no prupose; b) a ship could be captured and taken
into service by the new owners; and the ship which did the capturing got prize
money (at least in the Royal Navy). Thus both sides had incentive to strike
before sinking, and to accept that strike. In WW1 and 2, as I recall, there
were a few cases of ships striking, but usually they were in sinking condition
by that point.

I agree, whether a *race* would surrender or abandon it's ships is more of a
campaign or setting issue. I think that the issue of whether it's *possible*
to surrender ships in battle is something we can talk about in general game
terms. What I'm getting at here is that the major problem for surrendering
your
 damaged/sinking ship in modern times (WWI -> ) seems to be
communicating that surrender to the other side. Combat from WWI onwards was
frequently not fought at the kind of ranges where a visual "white flag" was
feasible, and the comm equipment on a ship is often knocked out along with
it's fighting ability. It's in these circumstances where abandoning ship may
be the only way to demonstrate that you are no longer a combatant. Off hand, I
can't think of a single surface ship that surrendered during combat from WWI
on. A few submarines did, but they could demonstrate their surrender by moving
from their normal fighting position (underwater) to the surface and then not

manning the quite visible guns. Surface ships don't have that luxury. I would
think that spaceships have the same problem. It seems like the convention that
has evolved is the "honorable" way to surrender is to abandon your ship after
ensuring that it will be destroyed after most of the crew is off. It gives the
crew a shot (perhaps just a long long shot) at survival without handing over
valuable property and info to the enemy. I would expect that space combat
would be similiar, although I can see an argument for

having the surrender mechanism be to eject the power core and subsequently
destroying any secret weapons or info on board. This would be so that the life
support of the remaining vessel could be used for the crew until other
arrangements can be made.

   grant

> I think these thoughts play into the adopted conventions and combat

> On 1/18/06, Grant A. Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:

A universally accepted pattern of strobe lights or "surrender beacon"
transmitters, similar to distress beacons?

Opening your gun ports as a sign of respect? ;->=

The_Beast

Brian B wrote on 01/18/2006 01:54:43 PM:

> On 1/18/06, Grant A. Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Brian B <brianbinor@gmail.com>

> A universally accepted pattern of strobe lights or "surrender beacon"

How about not actively trying to defend itself either through weapons fire or
movement?

I guess it also depends on what the Naval SOP is. Is it considered lawful to
lay the pain on an enemy vessel that isn't able to defend itself anymore?
Stuff like that.

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 1/18/06, Grant
> A. Ladue <ladue@cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:
 I
> would think that spaceships have the same problem. It seems like the

Could this be a resolution level below FT's granularity setting? Kinda would
be covered with the 'striking the colours' rule, just PSBing it one way or the
other, no?

As for no ships surrendering since WWI, maybe that's just an artifact of how
war at sea has evolved. I have this vague impression (remember: this is
Tuesday, and Tuesday is just a lot of leftover Monday...no, wait, this is
Wednesday - hoo boy!) there was a whole different mindset with regards
to
naval warfare and end results of damaged/losing side ships pre-WWI than
post-WWI.

Mk

Tom McCarthy and Mark Kochte both make excellent and contrary points.

But keep in mind that a 'morale failure' and a choice to withdraw may not be
surrender. It may simply be the knowledge that, with the ship's current state
and tactical situation, the ship may not get a good return by staying in the
fight. Surrender would only happen when the ship cannot escape (dead FTL or
the like), of necessity. It may happen other times by choice, to avoid
destruction while getting ready to FTL out (something I'm experiencing in my
current playtest).

And how do you know if a ship is surrendering or leaving the fight? Well,
leaving the fight might be signalled by bearing off (in cinmeatic) or rotating
away in vector, genreally putting out some sort of surrender signal on all
standard comm channels, dropping your fire control sensors (his ESM suite
would realize your firecontrol just went inactive), and actions like that.
Surrender would be the comm messages, ceasing to apply thrust (thus stopping
or drifting, depending on movement paradigm), and probably launching various
small gigs, shuttles, excape pods and such. That deals with the mechanics.

Now, the feasibility:

People say ship's never surrendered in the age of iron/steel. Well,
maybe not. But keep in mind that generally, a ship could exit the battle (not
alway) and that meant you often weren't forced to surrender. Also, some ships
did surrender (do I not recall several fleets in port surrendering? And some
commercial vessels surrendering to commerce raiders?). And in the water, there
is some chance fisherman or other neutrals might pick you up or your own
forces.

In a losing space battle, there might not be an analogous situation. If you
don't surrender, or if you scuttle, you may die. Surrender may be what buys
your survival. Of course some of that depends on whose space you are in, how
populous, what is at stake in the battle, etc. But I could see withddrawal as
a valid option and surrender if that was not possible in some cases. And using
the aforementioned ways to indicate either.

Scuttling is a tougher one. You can probably easily render a ship a major yard
job to overhaul without doing anything more complicated than purging all the
ship's various
drivers for the various types of systems aboard ("rm -r *.drv") and the
backups. This might render the ship utterly unusable until all new software is
installed, and being foreign gear with foreign specs and manufacturers, doing
this may prove more costly than the entire ship. So you *may* well be able to
scuttle a ship without a charge or explosion anywhere in sight. OTOH, a nuke
does a good job of saying "goodbye" too. So, scuttling could be a valid
option, if you thought the other power or some 3rd party would rescue you (or
you could make it to a nearby habitable biosphere) even after you destroyed
your vessel. If the ship itself is sort of seen as ransom, then scuttling it
might encourage you to be abandoned.

How strong are maritime traditions and international conventions on the
treatment of detainees and prisoners of war? That may factor in some responses
to scuttling or abandoning ship. Do you *have* to stop for enemy prisoners or
is it only common courtesy? Or is it just not done at all?

A lot of this comes down to how you want your campaign to feel. I like the
idea of striking of colours, prisoners and perhaps ransoming of same, and a
strong sense of duty to save those who have fought the good fight and are now
in need of aid.

On the other hand, a more gritty and realistic world might hammer a foe until
he is space dust under all circumstances. The only way to be sure, as was
said.

So it just boils down to what you want to create. You can pretty much justify,
from one perspective or the other, most of the various options you could
choose. If you impose some of them (striking colours, withrdrawing, etc), this
will have some
impact on on-table
tactical points evaluations, but that's just mentioned as a 'watch for' not
'beware of' point.

> On 1/18/06, Thomas Barclay <kaladorn@magma.ca> wrote:
*snip*
> Now, the feasibility:

coincidentally, the Military Channel last night had a documentary on the Nazi
commerce raiders, and spent a great deal of time covering the exploits of the
Penguin, which at one point held the entire Norwegian whaling fleet hostage,
and was eventually sunk by the HMS Cornwall.

> On Wednesday 18 January 2006 19:54, Brian B wrote:

And then you come across a race that considers your distress beacons an attack
against their spirit Elders, so they target all your escape
pods...

(Timothy Zahn, Conqueror's trilogy. Personally I preferred the confusion
caused by baby elephants rolling on their back and sticking their legs in the
air, but you can't do that in space).

> On 1/18/06, Samuel Penn <sam@glendale.org.uk> wrote:

Sure, if you want to be a jerk about it, I suppose you could come up with a
similar objection to ANYTHING that could be suggested as a signal of
surrender.

> On 1/18/06, Samuel Penn <sam@glendale.org.uk> wrote:

I think that was the point....  ;-)
If you're dealing with a hostile first-contact situation, the two
forces don't share any frame of reference at all; in this case,
surrender would (IMHO) be most unlikely - as someone has already
pointed out, you wouldn't even be sure the other side would have
compatible life-support for prisoners, even assuming they didn't just
use them to stock the galley stores..... On t'other hand (oops, sorry,
suddenly went all Northern there for a moment), if the battle is between two
human forces who both subscribe to interstellar conventions and codes, there
wouldn't be such a problem.

Glad to see this has stimulated so much active list traffic, even if
the Gropos must be getting a little bored by now....!  :-)

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l>
> Agreed, Indy; FT doesn't model Age of Sail, WW1, WW2 or Modern Naval

Indeed. This frees us to use EVERY period of naval warfare as a historical
model all at once:D

The Man in Black is: Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum: Annuit Coeptus: E
Pluribus Unum
______________________________________
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/dg.html

> Ground Zero Games wrote:

No worries there.. we will soon begin some SG'ing again as a small break

from FT so expect lots of odd questions then:)

Besides... I would expect the pure Gropos to be able to speak up if they

need it:)

On Thu, January 19, 2006 0:27, Ground Zero Games said:
> On 1/18/06, Samuel Penn <sam@glendale.org.uk> wrote:

I'm glad someone didn't miss it. At least two (that I've read) SF stories have
worked an interesting plot out of the confusion
caused by mis-read surrender signals.

Then there's all that dancing caused by red alerts.

> If you're dealing with a hostile first-contact situation, the two

It may be of interest in a GM run campaign game, but only until the players
figured out why the aliens insisted on fighting to the death.

> Glad to see this has stimulated so much active list traffic, even if

Well, I did mention the Fthip[1] - little baby elephants that
surrended by rolling on their back and sticking their legs in the air. The
humans thought they were playing dead in an attempt to trick them, so shot
them anyway. Of course, the Fthip also shot the humans who were stupid enough
to come out of cover carrying a white battle standard.

Gropos can play that game as well, especially if they're wearing battle armour
in a hostile environment, and *can't* drop their weapons.

[1] Footfall, Niven & Pournelle.

Everyone can detect a ship warming up for FTL (at least in the Tuffleyverse,
and typically in most settings), so maybe there's a mode of the engines you
can easily detect which serves as a white flag (such as FTL and engines gone
cold)? It would certainly serve our purposes. Though a ship with no FTL and no
engines might still be capable of shooting, we could say the culture is that
they cease shooting or actively broadcast that they're still in the fight.

> On 1/18/06, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:

Oh, I understood the point, I'm not THAT stupid. Of course, one would hope
that by the point in the future at which such contact was plausible, your
officers would understand that point as well.

Furthermore, while it might be a fun plot twist for a GM in an RPG, if I was
playing a tactical wargame and my opponent arbitrarily decided to use that as
an escuse to keep firing on ships that I had retired from combat or
surrendered, if the 'first contact' scenario had not been agreed upon, I'd
decide he was a prick and probably would never play him again.

I just get tired of the way when someone suggests something helpful, people on
the list tend to immediatelyt respond with the extreme case that's an
exception to the rule instead of acknowledging that in most cases the
suggestion might be a valid one. The dismissive attitude gets a little old.

On 1/18/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:27:28 +0000

> Glad to see this has stimulated so much active list traffic, even if

That's okay, we're used to it... *s*

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Brian B <brianbinor@gmail.com>

> I just get tired of the way when someone suggests something helpful,

Lets back that up for a second. You mean to tell me that you're getting tired
of having *your* comments being sidelined by a group of people who like to
comment about a given topic but have clearly a hobbyist[1][2] knowledge about
said topic or have only the faintest grasp of historical precedent on which
the topic itself is based?

On a wargaming list?!?

Come on now.:)

It's supposed to be fun damn it. Keep it that way.

[1] SciFi novels don't count in and of themselves here.  Neither does
analyzing the Naval combat footage in Star Wars or Buck Rogers.;)

[2] This isn't directed at anyone in particular mind you.

I'd say "power down your FCS and drives" to surrender. There have historically
been cases where the attacker couldn't tell if the other side had
intentionally
struck--sometimes the attacker kept shooting, sometimes they
didn't. In at least two cases in Age of Sail, the "struck" ship was not
captured and made it back to base; the other side later sent a delegation to
ask for "their" ship to be handed over.

> On 1/19/06, damosan@comcast.net <damosan@comcast.net> wrote:

No, I've been annoyed by the trend for some time, regardless of whose comments
were being sidelined. I waited until it happened to one of my comments to
reply, but it's been bugging me for a while.

But hey, keep up the condescending tone, it really makes me look forward to
more mail from the list.

> It's supposed to be fun damn it.

For whom? Obiously, it's ceased to be so for me.

I think it's reasonable to assume that in almost any setting, two forces with
a history of dealing with each other will have either adopted a 'no surrender'
policy, or have a recognized way to denote surrender.

And powering down FCS and engines is an easy way to do it. If that's our
typical PSB for surrender (our even just the Tuffleyverse version), it means a
ship which has lost all thrust and FCS through thresholds has effectively
struck, should be announced as such, and can't return to the battle, even with
good Damage Control results.

And it follows as an argument that, even in playing groups where threshold
results are kept secret, you can tell if a ship has any FCS or any thrust
available to it (barring nebulae effects and other sensor obscuring effects).

As to the odds of surrendering, I do think a combination of mission
motivation and guidelines/modifiers for how likely one nation is to
surrender to another should give us pretty good morale rules.

I'd argue that morale tests may need to be tied not just to thresholds, but to
losing one (or the last) FCS, losing thrust, and losing FTL.

I might throw in modifiers for having core system problems, too. Bridge hits
should probably be cause for a test, while power core hits almost certainly
are. Life support hits probably concentrate the mind on one's own mortality as
well.

On 1/19/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> It may be of interest in a GM run campaign game, but only until

I read a short story a few years ago by a female science fiction writer (it
might have been Elizabeth Moon, but I don't think so. It wasn't Lois Bujold.).
Humans and aliens were in a bitter war that was dragging on to no real effect.
The humans wanted to end the war, but the aliens would not end the conflict.
If I remember correctly, the aliens stop firing unilaterally but don't stand
down. Instead they let one of their own be captured. The story focuses on a
human who is given the task of interogating the prisoner to find out why the
aliens won't negotiate an armistace.

SPOILER!!!

SPOILER!!

SPOILER!

The human figures out that the aliens have a ritual to end their wars. They
have a symbolic "last casualty". Both sides offer up one of their own. These
two individuals are killed, and the war ends immediately. The symbollic "last
casualties" are then revered in their society.

The aliens offered up one of their own, but couldn't figure out why the humans
had not done the same. They were waiting for the humans to live up to their
end of the bargain.

The story ends with the soldier finding a grenade outside the cell where the
alien was kept. He ends up blowing the two of them up in order to end the war.

It was very well written, and the story has haunted me since I read it. If it
sounds far fetched or implausible, look at the killing at the end of World War
I. The armistace was negotiated and the war would end at 11 a.m. on November
11, 1918. That didn't stop commanders from ordering completely useless
assaults prior to the ceasefire time. The commanders should have been brought
up on murder charges, but of course they were not. It would have been far more
human to offer up a symbollic "last casualty" than to order the butchery that
resulted on the last day of the Great War. I could see an alien race doing
this "last casualty" thing, particularly if it tied into their religion.

The general trend to cut down on 'me toos' dissuades me from acknowledging
many of the good ideas I see floated around. In general, you'll see more
criticism than kudos on this list, perhaps for that very reason.

Again, I think that the general case will be between two races or nations who
have encountered each other before, and who are not only willing to surrender
to each other (or at least to withdraw peacefully), but can communicate that
to each other. There will be exceptions, but those should be noted
specifically in the description of that race or nation, or specifically for
that battle before it begins.

In the Tuffleyverse, assuming the general case above, do you think there would
be some general agreement to let opposing ships exit the board unmolested when
they signal their intent to drop out of the battle? In our group, we regularly
take shots at escaping ships, but perhaps this should be discouraged in the
setting's flavour text.

> On Thursday 19 January 2006 14:42, Brian B wrote:

Well, apologies if it appeared dismissive, but what you said reminded me of a
particular SF plot, so I mentioned it since it might make for an interesting
campaign game. It wasn't an attempt to invalidate the suggestion. I did assume
that it would be obvious that such confusion would only apply in very specific
circumstances, and assumed you'd had a really bad day at the office rather
than being stupid.

[...rearrangement of paragraphs...]
> Furthermore, while it might be a fun plot twist for a GM in an RPG, if

Why would they need an excuse? Unless you've agreed something beforehand, then
there's nothing in FT currently that says you shouldn't fire at a ship that is
trying to run.

IME, anything trying to escape immediately becomes the primary target. I've
had way too much experience with players who absolutely refuse to let anything
surrender.

Hmmm....? Did somebody say something? ;-)

> On 18-Jan-06, at 4:27 PM, Ground Zero Games wrote:

No, nothing of interest. Nothing to get your blood up...

BDS

*laugh, run away*

The_Beast

Tony wrote on 01/20/2006 12:34:34 PM:

> Hmmm....? Did somebody say something? ;-)