> At 11:44 PM 8/17/97 -0400, Allan Goodall wrote:
SNIP
> When I used Binhan's rules to create the stats, one thing became
ARMOUR This is the change over from iron to steel armour, isn't it? I think
Conway's
1860-1905 describes the relative strengths of iron and various types of
steel
armour. Also, a set of pre-dread rule called "Devil at the Helm" (which
I found to be unplayably complex).
> Note that I used an additional rule in my platest. I required that the
SNIP
> Allan Goodall: agoodall@sympatico.ca
cheers,
Well, I finally had time to try Binhan's "Wet Thrust" rules for the
Russo-Japanese war. I decided on a fairly small engagement. I gave the
Japanese the battleships Fuji and Shikishima, and the light cruisers Yashino,
Idzumi, and Suma. For the Russians, I gave them the battleships Petropavolovsk
and Borodino, and the cruisers Pallada, Aurora, and Novik. This is the force
balance I've used in the past for playtesting
Russo-Japanese war rules the first time I try them. The forces should be
pretty even. The Russian battleships have more tonnage but are slower than the
Japanese ships while both sides are armed primarily with 12" guns. The
Japanese cruisers are pretty small compared to the Russian cruisers. The edge
should go to the Russians, but the Japanese have the better chance of
"crossing the T".
When I used Binhan's rules to create the stats, one thing became immediately
obvious: the Fuji's stats are out of whack. The Fuji had an armoured belt of
14" to 18" thick. This is compared to the other ships of the period with belts
about 9" thick. According to Binhan's rules, the Fuji should have "level 3
shields" and 10 armour boxes. The other ships of it's time are either level 3
shields without any armour boxes (Petropavlovsk) or level 2 shields (Borodino,
Shikishima). This is a bit strange as every other game I have rates the Fuji
as slightly inferior to other Japanese ships due to smaller tonnage, but here
we've created a much superior ship. The cruisers had no shields by Binhan's
rules. This would have a major effect later.
Note that I used an additional rule in my platest. I required that the ships
could only fire at other ships within line of sight. Pre-dreadnoughts
needed to site the fall of shots visually or they couldn't adjust their fire
properly. I also required that sinking ships stay on the table until the end
of the turn, so that they blocked line of site for a full turn.
The ships began just outside of range of each other, each fleet in one line.
The Russians were at an angle to the Japanese. The Japanese line moved
straight ahead, while the Russians moved to cut them off. The Russians would
make two turns of 30 degrees as the lines approached in an attempt to cross
the Japanese "T" but it would be the Japanese that first crossed the Russian
"T". The turning of the Russians would cause their cruisers to have a blocked
line of site, while late in the game the rest of the Japanese line
accidentally blocked the Fuji from firing at the Russian cruisers.
At long range the game felt about right. Fire was able to hit only
sporadically. I didn't do anything due to the fact that this was plunging fire
(I should probably have doubled damage whenever a ship hit as none of the
ships had a lot of deck armour but I didn't) nor did I use the rule for
magazine explosions, though I probably should have used both rules. By the
time the 12" guns (A batteries) got within medium range, the Petropavlovsk had
taken about 3 points of damage. The Fuji had taken about the same, but it's
excessive armour belt absorbed all of it.
As the range closed, damage was far more excessive. The Fuji's armour belt
began to really tell as the Petropavlovsk crossed a threshold. Due to Binhan's
rules, the 10" guns of the Yoshino were classed as A batteries, adding to the
Japanese throw weight. After they got to close range, the C batteries kicked
in and the battle became quite deadly. The Fuji continued to pound the
Petropavlovsk while the Shikishima and Yoshino concentrated on the Borodino
with it's "level 2 shields." The Borodino was sunk by two broadsides and a
couple of pot shots, turns before the Petropavlovsk!
Next, the cruisers got within range and line of site. The Pallada destroyed
the Yoshino in one salvo. On the following turn the other two Japanese
cruisers were sunk. The Fuji concentrated fire on the Petropavlovsk while the
Shikishima made short work of the Aurora. One turn later, the Shikishima
destroyed the Pallada with half of its guns and dropped the Petropavlovsk to
two hull points with the other half. The Fuji gave the coups de grace while
the Shikishima finished off the Novik.
End result: all Japanese cruisers sunk, with mild damage to the Fuji and only
light damage to the Shikishima. All Russian ships were sunk.
A few things come out of this. I used Binhan's ratio of three 10" guns
equalling 2 A batteries, one 11" gun representing 1 A battery, and two 12"
guns representing 3 A batteries. I think instead of this formula a rough
approximation should be used. The capital ships should all have been rated for
maybe 2 A batteries each. The number of C batteries due to Binhan's
calculations (14 on one ship, for instance) was far too many. A better way of
doing this is to give capital ships one or two B batteries based on
9"
and 10" guns, and some C batteries based on 4.7" and 6" guns. The capital
ships should have no more than 2 A batteries and a hand full of C batteries.
The hull points seemed okay based on mass, but the Fuji had too much of an
advantage with it's armour. The capital ships with the level 2 shields were at
a distinct disadvantage to those with the level 3 shields, a disadvantage that
greatly out did the difference in armour thickness on the real vessels. The
cruisers were doubly hurt. They had a very small number of hull points and no
shields. They died far too easily. Perhaps giving capital ships level 3
screens, cruisers level 2, destroyers level 1, and torpedo boats none would
help. I would ignore the extra armour boxes for extra belt armour.
This shouldn't hurt things too much as--after all--things like turrent
and casement armour aren't taken into account when threshold checks are
determined and they could be potentially more important.
The problem is the coarseness of this system. The differences between most of
the various ships would be simply hull boxes and speed, with each class
(regardless of nationality) being armed very similarly. At the level FT is
played, that might be the best that can be achieved. Most of the ships will,
indeed, look very similar at the squadron level. For a proper
Russo-Japanese
war game, the Russians need to have a qualitative inferiority, perhaps by
giving them a lower rate of fire. I'll have to think about this.
The main surprise I got from the system was that the movement system worked
reasonably well. It could use some tweaking for naval combat (versus space
combat) but it wasn't too bad. The system runs pretty quickly, the above game
being completed in 1.5 hours. I think it holds promise as a fast
playing, beer-and-pretzels naval combat game. I also agree with another
poster that if too much is changed to make it a proper naval wargame, I'd
probably just continue using General Quarters as my prefered system.
Thanks to Allan for giving FS a Dreadnaught playtest. I'm not particularly
well versed in the technology or history of that period so my modifications
were straight adaptations from FT. I think I'll have to do abit more research
on that area to get the rules to fit well.
Some other considerations that may be applicable -
Quick firing guns did not occur as much in the larger calibres in this period.
Perhaps A batts will get the added range band but not 2 dice at medium? Or
perhaps grouping more guns to form 1 A batt (3 for 2, 2 for 1 and 1 for 1?)
Allan's suggestion for having capitals have armor 3, cruisers armor 2 and
destroyers armor 1 may work out also.
Since deck armor is not very prevalent, perhaps when crossing the T and firing
down the deck(i.e. hitting from directly fore or aft of the target), hits are
calculated against the deck and not the hull.
Torpedoes may also be a problem since few ships had torpedo bulges or large
amounts of compartmentalization. This may require increasing damage done by
torpedoes.
This was a really good set of comments by Allan since it shows which areas
need work and suggests ways to improve them.
--Binhan
> At 11:24 PM 8/18/97 -0400, you wrote:
I
> think Conway's
Damn! I knew there was something I forgot last night. I have
Conway's 1860-1905 (it's almost my only Really Expensive Book) so I'll
have a dig in it tonight. One thing I do remember is the "Invincible"of 1880
having 24" of metal armour with 18" of timber backing in her citadel! I must
confess to a certain fondness for the "2 turrets en echelon" Duilio
style battleship (one reason I'd quite like non-adjacent firing arcs
permitted in FT).
cheers,
> At 02:28 AM 8/18/97 +0000, Rob wrote:
> ARMOUR
I believe it might be. That would explain the different thickness. The Fuji
was built in Britain based on the Royal Sovereign. It could be that it used
the heavier but weaker (thush thicker) iron armour. Unfortunately the Conways
I used was at the library and I don't own a copy myself.
> At 10:30 AM 8/18/97 -0600, Binhan wrote:
I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
> Since deck armor is not very prevalent, perhaps when crossing the T and
I don't think just crossing the T should make for deck hits. I think it should
be a function of range.
> Torpedoes may also be a problem since few ships had torpedo bulges or
True, but torpedoes were inaccurate and smaller than their WWI counterpart.
15" torpedoes were common, as opposed to the 18" torpedoes that came later.
These might work to cancel out the differences between WWI and predreadnought
(smaller size and poorer accuaracy versus lack of torpedo belt).
Here's some stuff from Conway's on pre-dreadnought armour:
The Fujis and their cousins the Royal Sovereigns had compound armour, ie a
steel face on a wrought iron backing. The other Japanese predreads (except
Mikasa) and their cousins the Majestics had Nickel Steel armour. Mikasa had
Krupp cemented armour.
The Majestic-derived Japanese ships had a different armour layout to the
Fujis- although all 6 ships had the armour deck at the level of the top
of the belt, the later ships had the edge of the deck slopingdown to meet the
_lower_ edge of the belt, effectively making a second differently angled
belt inside the true belt.
On the effectiveness of different types of armour: HMS Centurion (2nd class
Battleship): belt 12" compound
HMS Renown (2nd class Battleship): belt 8" nickel steel _but giving
equivalent protection_
HMS Canopus (1st class Battleship ("close to being 2nd class"): belt 6" Krupp
Cemented "equivalent to 8" of Harvey"
It appears from this that the conversion is approximately:
3" Krupp = 4" Harvey/Nickel Steel = 6" compound
I vaguely recall "Devil at the Helm" giving credit of 1" of iron for each 6"
of timber backing.
Ihope this is of some use cheers Rob
"
> Allan Goodall wrote:
snip
> >Since deck armor is not very prevalent, perhaps when crossing the T
Factoring in deck armor versus Belt armor brings to mind something I had read
a while back...In (defunct) Metagaming's Interplay (house mag.) #4.
That issue had a designer's notes artical for Metagaming's Command at Sea. In
that artical, the designer said that older games either used a composite armor
value, or had the problem of setting a strict range at which shells switched
from belt to deck armor for hits. The effect of that was one momement your
battleship was bouncing shells, the next it was sunk! He said they found a
solution, but he didn't exactly discribe it in the artical.
snip
> [quoted text omitted]
> At 03:00 AM 8/20/97 +0000, you wrote:
Rob, that's great information. Any idea what armour was used (in general) on
British and German ships during WWI? I'm assuming it was Harvey and Krupp
armour respectively. I'm going to use these figures to adjust my
Russo-Japanese war stats for General Quarters.
> At 09:06 PM 8/20/97 -0400, you wrote:
I don't have the 1906-21 volume but I _think_ pretty much everyone was
making their armour by the Krupp process by WWI- certainly the
London/Implacable/Duncan classes of predreads were using KC, and
"1860-1906"
says the Americans were quick to adopt Harvey and slow to adopt Krupp armour.
I also recall a "whose BB is best" thread a while ago on sci.military.naval,
in which one poster quoted post WW2 tests on BB armour. These apparently found
that for a given thickness of plate, Japanese armour was much poorer than US,
and that German and British plate was significantly better (I think the latter
two were about equal).
cheers, Rob
"