Re: Wet Thrust/Full Steam Playtest

At 11:44 PM 8/17/97 -0400, Allan Goodall wrote:
>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.
SNIP
>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.

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
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.
>
SNIP
>Allan Goodall:  agoodall@sympatico.ca 

cheers,
Rob Paul

"
Rob Paul
Dept. of Zoology
University of Oxford
South Parks Road
Oxford
(01865) 271124

rpaul@worf.molbiol.ox.ac.uk

Once again, villainy is rotting meat before the maggots of justice!
"