Naval Rules...Part 2

What follows presumes you don't want to use a computer to do all of this.

What are the fundamental issues of naval combat. The simplest is that if you let the water in the ship will sink. What can do this? Holes in the hull, they decrease the reserve buoyancy of a ship. Reduce it to less than zero and the ship becomes one with the bottom of the ocean. This is such a simple concept that everyone except the State of Washington EPA can understand it (they were ruled negligent in making a bridge sink, but that's another story).

So we need to calculate the reserve buoyancy of a ship. This is a long and laborious process for a set of wargaming rules. So instead we pick a value that is easily calculable, say the volume of the hull or of a box the hull would fit in. Everyone should be able to calculate length x width x depth (from waterline to keel). If you can't, you're hopeless. Go pay good money to learn what your school should have taught you, hire a lawyer, and sue the school district for misfeasance or something.

How does the water get in? Obviously, holes in the hull, but also captain's will let in water to keep the ship on an even keel. What causes those holes? Torpedoes, shells, and rams. We'll rule out the latter, these aren't galleys.

But what about shells? What about fire, the most dreaded ship killer around? KMS Bismarck sank, in large part, because the Germans scuttled a wreck (by the way, what does it say about the self-confidence of a Navy that designs ships with scuttling charges?). The British had shot the German battleship to pieces with their 14" and 16" guns (though the 8" guns also employed helped, too). The IJN Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu were gutted by fires from bomb hits, but all three carriers had to be sunk by torpedoes from other Japanese ships? The German battlecruiser Lutzow at Jutland sank, in large part, because two 12" hits from HMS Invincible let some 600 tons of water into the hull, initiating bulkhead collapse and progressive flooding that doomed the German ship. But 22 other hits had an impact, too. At the same battle the SMS Seydlitz took 21 major caliber hits, and a torpedo, and was still (barely) afloat at the end of the battle.

It is customary in naval rules to assign shells a point value. What is interesting is that this is generally by weight, as handy a number as any. It can't be by explosive effect. A 15" shell contains less than 200 pounds of explosives, making them, in effect, smaller than a 200 pound general purpose bomb. But when you explode it inside a ship you knock down bulkheads, and if the shell goes off close enough to the waterline (as happened with the Lutzow) you get water flooding into the ship.

So, for quick references, shells are worth their weight in poundage. Ships are worth their weight in hull volume. But, and this is a big but, a shell hit, say, on the searchlight platform, while bad for the crew manning the searchlights, doesn't effect the watertight integrity of the ship. Thus we need a modification factor of some kind to account for this. We need to see where the shell hits, and go from there.

Now 30 years ago there was a set of rules called Battle Stations that did just that. It was written by somebody who, I believe, had damage control experience. It was ideal for actions where a player ran 2-4 ships. You had all the things you needed for a superior naval gaming experience (as we found out in the dozen or so Battles of Bunghole Strait). The authors even had the modifiers so you didn't have to worry about a hit on the steam whistle causing the ship to flood.

The only thing I had a quibble with (after a lot of experience with the rules) was the gunnery. It was range estimation, and that is an acquirable skill. Of course there are tricks you can do to improve your accuracy. A friend, playing Fletcher Pratt, used to bring a camera to 'take pictures' of the fighting. It also had a range finder good to less than 1". Another guy I knew was a Master Carpenter, and could accurately guesstimate ranges out to 50', and usually be off by no more than 1-2". And there are people I know who are like me, with one or more eye unable to acquire that accuracy, and not about to crawl around on the floor (our knees can't take it). So we need something else.

A side note - professionals had 9', 11' and 15' rangefinders, why should we rely upon our own eyesight? I know, it's more "fun". But let's look for an option.

Enter Seekrieg, I forget which edition. You factor in all sorts of things, and kabango, a table tells you how many hits. You throw the dice, see how many hits you managed, and then roll dice to see what got hit.

Gee, we've gone full circle. Instead of developing a set of rules, we now have the rudiments of a combination of two sets of rules for gaming.

Now for the alternate idea. You go buy a copy of Fire When Ready, and you let the computer do everything. A bit abstract, and you don't know what each shell does, but fun. And did I ever tell you what happened when we reduced the training levels to 1-2? It seems an 18,000 ton pre-dreadnought battleship makes a dandy ram, especially when you run it into a light cruiser.

That's a story for another time. In Part 3 we'll look at exactly how to merge the two rules to produce something playable.