Re: [FT] Full Steam was: Re: [GZG] Revised Salvo Missiles Update

On 6/29/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
<gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 10:17:55 -0500
> From: Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu>
>
> I faintly recall you talking about this attempt, but thought you
ultimately
> gave it up. Which method worked better for your game? Any further
thoughts
> you'd be willing to share?

I actually got quite far with it. There were ultimately two problems
with it.

I wanted to differentiate gun sizes. The era had 12", 11", 10", 8" and
6" guns as standard armament. I basically had the gun size divided by
2 as the number of dice rolled at close range. I also ran with 6"
range bands. This gave 12" guns 6 dice at close range and 1 die at
36". 6" guns, by contrast, had 3 dice at close range and 1 die at 18".

This caused the first problem. If you fired a 12" broadside at close
range you roll 24 dice. That's quite a bucket of dice. Add the fact
that a lot of pre-dreadnoughts had 5 or 6 6" guns on the same
broadside, you were usually rolling somewhere in the neighbourhood of
40 dice at close range. Ouchie!

So, to shrink this down I tried putting the two 12" guns in a single
salvo of 6". I then gave the ships half the number of 6" guns. This
resulted in some rounding issues, giving less ship differentiation. It
was quicker, though, especially since I cut the number of hull boxes
in half.

The second problem was a less than realistic probability curve. Real
life guns don't lose their ability to hit in a linear manner, but on a
curve. With the above problem, I just got tired of going forth with
it.

However, I am looking at the rules again. They may not be totally
accurate, but they were fun, at least with smaller ships and not so
many dice rolls. I think I can live with the lack of realism if I can
get the first problem licked. I think I can.

When I first looked at Full Steam, I realized that the d6 mechanics of
FT wouldn't work as is (I wanted to differentiate between 12" guns and
10" for instance). One thing I thought of using were different dice
sizes. I inverted the rolls (1, 2, 3 hit instead of 4, 5, 6). 12" guns
rolled d6 and had 12" range bands. 10" guns rolled d8s and had 10"
range bands, 8" guns rolled d10s with 8" range bands, and 6" guns
rolled d12s with 6" range bands. This keeps the game down to three
range bands per weapon. A 12" broadside would still only roll 12 dice
maximum. A broadside at close range with 12" and 6" guns would roll a
maximum of 30 dice.

The movement system is actually lifted mostly from General Quarters.
Movement rate is tied to hull box rows, not to a single "drive"
system. There are five hull rows per ship. The ship travels at full
speed until it loses the first row, then it drops in speed. Each hull
row lost lowers the ship's speed. There are critical hits, similar to
"core systems". One critical hit is the boiler, which reduces the
ship's speed by an additional two hull rows for the first hit and four
for the second. (I might change this to 2 and 3, as you can't lose it
a second time until you've gone through at least two hull rows
anyway).

The movement rules I outlined earlier today worked well enough. For a
fun, pick up game they aren't too bad, especially for big battles.
What you lose in all the moving you gain in not having to write down
orders for a bunch of ships (especially since, in most cases, you just
end up moving the lead ship, with the other ships following behind).

This discussion has been good. I think I'll dust off the rules. They
are actually in a pretty complete format. It wouldn't take a lot of
effort to whip them into shape.

Allan

-- 
Allan Goodall		 http://www.hyperbear.com
agoodall@hyperbear.com
awgoodall@gmail.com
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