[FT Historical] Full Steam Playtest Report (Long)

Hi, gang.

As some of you know, I've been writing a set of pre-dreadnought era
rules
using Full Thrust as the basis. I've been interested in the period for a
while, and my order of 1/6000 scale (that's right one to six thousand!)
ships
has just arrived at my local miniatures store. I found myself alone last
weekend and so I conducted a playtest of my rules. I thought you might
be
interested in the playtest report.

RULES

I won't go into them here in any detail. I'll have a copy of the rules
in Word
and PDF formats when I'm done (for free download, of course). If anyone
is
interested in playtesting these rules, I will gladly send all that I
have
written so far. If you are just interested in the rules for the sake of
curiousity, or to play at a later date, I ask that you wait until I have
the
rules finalized. Please e-mail me (and NOT the list) if you want to
playtest
the rules.

Unlike some other "Full Steam" attempts, I have based my rules on the
FTFB
rules: 6 arcs and the new "beam" weapon symbols being the main things I
took
from the Fleet Book. The other major change is that I adapted the
movement
rules from General Quarters. 

Most of the ships had 12" main guns and 6" secondaries, the only
exception
being the Peresviet (Russian battleship) with 10" main guns. 12" guns
acted as
class 6 beam batteries. That is, they roll 1 die at extreme range, and 6
dice
at close range. For the purposes of playing on a tabletop, each range
band is
6", NOT 12". So, 12" guns have a range of 6/12/18/24/30/36 inches doing
6/5/4/3/2/1 dice in damage. Therefore, 10" guns have five range bands,
while
6" guns have three. 

Torpedoes were fired using my own cobbled together rule. Torpedoes hit
on a 6
at 4" to 6" and hit on a 5 or 6 at 3" or less. On a hit, 18" torpedoes
do 3d6
damage while 14" and 15" torpedoes do 2d6. 

Destroyers were lumped together in flotillas, similar to fighter
squadrons in
FT. They each have one Anti-Torpedo Boat Gun per ship factor, but they
didn't
come into play. The Russian ATBGs did come into play. They hit on a 6"
at 4 to
6" and a 5 or 6 at 3" or less. If they hit, they rolled a die that is
read
like a beam weapon, subtracting that number of destroyers from the
flotilla.

Larger calibre guns could fire at destroyers, but each gun had to fire
at one
specific destroyer (in other words, to attempt to kill 6 destroyers you
needed
to fire 6 individual guns) and there were some nasty modifiers that the
ATBG
ignored. Since each destroyer is considered to have one hull point, any
hit
from these guns destroys one destroyer in the flotilla.

This brings me to the modifiers. I won't go into detail, but they
allowed for
things like being the second or subsequent ship firing on a target,
destroyer
squadron evasive manoeuvres, and coal smoke interference (not many
modifiers;
just enough to give a feel for the period). They subtracted from the
number
needed to hit. Normally 4 and 5 do 1 point of damage, and 6 does 2
points of
damage. With a -1 modifier, a 4 becomes a 3 (thus a miss), a 5 becomes a
4,
and a 6 becomes a 5 (doing only one point of damage). 6s still allowed
rerolls, though and the rerolls were NOT subject to these modifiers
(well,
with an exception that I won't get into).

Ships were designed as historically presented. Each main and secondary
gun
battery was represented. Smaller batteries were factored into ATBGs.
Each ship
had 1 hull box for every 200 tons of ship, giving an average of 50 to 80
hull
boxes. This is pretty large, which I discuss more fully later. Each gun
tube
rolls the number of dice as listed above. Ships lost speed as they lost
rows
on the hull box part of the ship design sheet, but otherwise the
threshold
rules applied. I haven't finished my critical hit rules yet, so I didn't
try
any out. This made for a spartan, but easy to play game.

SCENARIO

The scenario was reasonably large. The Japanese had 5 pre-dreadnought
battleships in a line at about 50" distant to the Russian line. They
comprised
one division with the ships (in order) Asahi, Mikasa, Hatsuse,
Shikishima, and
Fuji (5 of her 6 battleships). Four flotillas of 6 destroyers were in
support.

On the other side of the battlefield were two Russian divisions. A
division of
battleships: (in order) Peresviet, Pobieda, Imperator Alexander III,
Borodino,
Orel; and a division of light cruisers: Pallada, Aurora, Diana, and
Novik. The
cruisers were armed with 6" guns exclusively.

As a comparison, the Battle of Tsushima---the largest battle of the
pre-dreadnought era---saw the Japanese with four battleships (all of the
above
except for Hatsuse), 10 armoured cruisers, 16 protected cruisers, and
the
equivalent of about 10 destroyer flotillas. The Russians had 9
battleships, 8
armoured cruisers, 7 protected cruisers, and 4 destroyer flotillas.

The wind was diced for, and was coming from the direction of the
Japanese,
giving them a slight disadvantage (as it happened, however, the Japanese
managed to maneouvre so that coal smoke wasn't an issue). The Japanese
ships
proceeded directly at the Russians, with the flotillas arcing off at an
angle
to the right. The Russian line proceeded straight ahead.

No damage was done for 3 turns as the ships advanced. Speeds were 7.5"
per
turn for the destroyers, but the battleships were at 4.5" (except for a
couple
of Russians at 4") and the cruisers travelled at 5" per turn. This
allowed for
a fair amount of manoeuvre before contact. 

On turn 4 the Russians hit the Asahi for 6 points of damage, while the
Japanese failed to hit the Russians (an ahistorical outcome if ever
there was
one!). The Russians moved their cruiser division off at an angle,
anticipating
the Japanese to try and cross the Russian "T". If successful, the
cruisers
would cross the Japanese "T" from behind as both lines engage. This type
of
tactic is difficult to pull off, though. Due to line-of-sight rules, if
the
cruisers stuck to close the the battleships, the Japanese could force
the
cruisers to screen the battleships. To prevent this, the cruisers
departed the
main battle line in a long sweep around the Japanese. In fact, this was
a
sound strategy but one that never quite came off. In retrospect, holding
the
cruisers in behind the battleships would have allowed them to break off
to cut
off the Japanese more effectively.

On the following turn, the Asahi takes more damage, a whopping 15 boxes
from
accumulated hits on this turn. She's now hurting with hardly any Russian
damage to show for it. The destroyers aim at the Russian ships, taking
only
minor damage from the long range guns. Evasive manoeuvres save the small
but
fragile boats.

The turning point in the game came on turn 6. The Japanese angled to
port
while the Russians---gambling on the Japanese' intentions---moves
straight
ahead. The Japanese had crossed the Russian "T" first. The angled turn
masked
the Shikishima and Fuji, preventing them from firing, but brought the
Asahi,
Mikasa, and Hatsuse into broadside fire on the Russians. The Russians
had
misjudged the range and figured that a turn wouldn't come until next
turn. It
would be a costly error. The Asahi takes another 8 points of damage from
accumulated fire, but the lead Russian battleship, the Peresviet, takes
29
points! In one turn the Japanese had made up for the Russians'
suprisingly
good rolls.

The destroyers weren't so lucky. Small calibre guns hit them as they
made
their torpedo run (preventing evasive manoeuvres) and two flotillas were
sunk.
This turns out to be mostly from a poor reading of my own rules, that
made the
ATBGs a little too powerful... :-) Even still, it outlines the danger of
small
destroyers trying to take on a line of battleships.

Elapsed time: 2 hours, 15 min. of real time.

The Russians turn, but their curve was still at a disadvantage to the
Japanese. On the following turn, the remaining flotillas fired
torpedoes. One
flotilla completely missed. The second fired 5 torpedo salvoes, hitting
with
two. Imp. Alex took 19 points of damage. Broadside fire sunk the
Peresviet and
put Pobeida in jeopardy. The Japanese, meanwhile, made a beautiful move
that
masked the badly damaged Asahi from the Russians. However, this brought
more
fire down on the Hatsuse who now had two Russian ships firing broadsides
at
it. 

The turning battle continued, with both fleets coming nearly parallel.
Imperator Alex. is sunk, as is Pobeida. Hatsuse was badly damaged, while
Mikasa lost a 12" turret and a couple of 6" mounts to threshold checks.
The
destroyers, their tubes now empty, rush off the battlefield. No longer a
threat, they are left alone.

On turn 9, Hatsuse succumbs and starts to sink. This left a hole,
exposing
Asahi. Borodino took multiple broadsides and sunk as well. The cruiser
squadron charged forward but it's arrival was too late to save the
Russians. 

On turn 10, Asahi sunk with combined damage from the Orel and the
cruisers.
Orel is sunk by the Japanese, the Fuji being virtually untouched.

In spite of the smaller calibre guns, close range makes all the
difference.
Shikishima, badly damaged by the Russian battleships, takes damage from
the
three lead cruisers and sinks. The cruisers, however, are no match for
the
remaining Japanese ships and try to break off the engagement.

The Aurora is sunk on turn 12. On turn 14, the Pallada falls victim to
the
Mikasa. Novik leaves the board but the Diana is sunk on turn 15 by Fuji.

Game over. Winner: the Japanese, but it's a very costly victory. The
Japanese
lose 3 battleships with one badly damaged, and over half their
destroyers. The
Russians lose all but one, small cruiser.

Elapsed time: 4hours, 40 minutes of real time.

CONCLUSIONS

Somewhat surprisingly, the game works! It is playable and not radically
removed from history. While in a game with that much dice rolling luck
is a
part of it, the game was won quite soundly by the side with the better
tactics. The Japanese would have done better, too, except that for
experimental reasons they activated the destroyer flotillas early in the
turn
instead of activating a battleship. The result was an ineffectual
torpedo run
(usually with the flotilla mauled) with the Russians firing a broadside
back,
badly damaging the Japanese battleship. 

However, there are some issues that I need to resolve:

The biggest problem was the length of time to resolve fire. This is due
to the
number of dice. The largest ship, at close range, would fire 4 12" guns
and 7
6" guns, for a whopping 45 dice! Half way through (time wise) I
experimented
with cutting the number of dice rolled in half. For instance, at close
range
6" guns get three dice each. Five individual guns would roll 5 x 3 dice,
which
I halved to 7.5 dice. The half dice was diced for (roll a 4-6 to get the
actual die) but could get away with being rounded down I suppose.
Batteries
with two guns would roll one die instead of two. Likewise, I cut the
number of
available hull boxes in half (1 hull box representing 400 tons). It took
over
2 hours to get to turn 6. Turn 7 took an hour on its own, including
attacks on
the flotillas. However, turns 8 through 15---all of which involved
gunfire---took just an hour and twenty minutes.

Dividing the number of dice in half is somewhat cumbersome. It works,
but not
as well as I'd like. What I'm planning on doing is flipping around the
results
so that a 1 does 2 points of damage and gives a reroll, and 2 and 3
gives one
point of damage. This allows me to have turrets of two guns roll d6s and
turrets of 1 gun roll d12s! This is a bit of a compromise. The Japanese
ships,
with lots of single 6" gun mounts, will still roll a lot of dice, but
the
Russian ships with their 6" gun turrets with two guns per turret will
resolve
fire more rapidly. And, of course, there will be fewer dice to roll when
firing 12" broadsides.

Movement was not written. On the other hand, movement wasn't
simultaneous,
either. Basically I planned out the movement for each fleet, then moved
the
ships accordingly. Writing orders would have slowed down the game
(though
orders are generally written for the entire division) but actually
moving the
ships would have been faster.

Torpedoes were a little under powered. Leaving the torpedo rules as is
should
work well with the fewer hull boxes. I will also allow rerolls for
torpedo
damage, allowing a good torpedo hit to sink a ship.

The 6" guns were very powerful. Too powerful, in fact, against the
battleships. Checking some sources and other rules, I have decided to
half the
amount of damage done by smaller calibre guns fired at the battleships,
except
at short range.

These rules actually give a nice feel for the differences in the ships.
One of
the problems with General Quarters is that some of the numbers are so
abstracted that many of the ships seem to be equivalent on the game
table when
there were real differences in battle. These rules show more of those
differences. However, a comparison with other rules sets shows a
disparity
between them and Full Steam. Full Steam is 2 to 3 times more deadly than
General Quarters. That is, it takes two to three times as many turns to
destroy a ship in GQ as Full Steam. At the same time, General Quarters
removes
guns on ships about twice as fast as Full Steam. In other words, Full
Steam's
guns are much more powerful and the ships hold onto them for longer. 

To account for this, I'm upping the speed of the ships slightly. This
will
make a game turn in Full Steam represent 1.5 times as much "real time"
as a GQ
turn. I will also give ships one hull box for every 300 tons of ship. To
make
ships lose their guns more readily, I will give ships 6 rows of hull
boxes,
instead of 4. This means fewer hull hits before a threshold. The ships
will
tend towards floating wrecks, which is more realistic. 

I still have to implement the critical hit rules. This will allow for
jammed
rudders, bridge hits, and the occasional magazine explosion. This will
speed
the game up and add much needed "chrome."

I need to add rules for the time it takes a ship to sink. 1D6 turns
should be
sufficient. Until that time, the ship is still on the board and other
ships
risk colliding with her, and she blocks line of sight. Speaking of
which, I
will add rules for collisions, ramming, and running aground.

Rules need to be conjured up for crew quality. This isn't necessary for
pick
up games, but IS necessary for historical games. The Japanese were far
superior to the Russians.

I hope you found this interesting. I'm still looking for playtesters if
anyone
is interested. 

Allan Goodall	       agoodall@sympatico.ca

"We come into the world and take our chances
 Fate is just the weight of circumstances
 That's the way that Lady Luck dances
 Roll the bones." - N. Peart