Tinkering with Naval Gunnery

After having returned home last night from a college viewing with my daughter (she will tackling A levels next year) I had little time for anything gaming related last night although I was able to give some thought to firing systems for use with the Portable Naval Wargame.

Originally I was considering using a 'range reduced number of d6' - similar to the usual method seen in Battle Cry and Memoir 44. Simply put a unit has a number of combat dice that are rolled and this number usually drops by one or more for each hex of firing range. I have decided against this as it tends to reduce the maximum firing ranges as the unit takes damage e.g a ship with a combat dice score of 8 could have a maximum range of 8. Say it loses 1 die as a result of damage. This will mean it has seven dice thereby reducing the maximum range to 7. I realise this could be tinkered with but in my opinion the maximum range of a gun should not be reduced due to damage - unless of course the gun itself is damaged in some way. Taking this further, if the forward turret on a typical dreadnought was rendered hors de combat for whatever reason that should not mean that the fully functional aft turret should be penalised for range as a result.

I have therefore, settled on using a set number of d6 for each ship based on the simple expedient of having 1d6 per two barrels firing. Typically then, a battleship will have a number of d6 for the main guns and for the secondary weapons e.g 4d6 for the 8 x 15" on a QE class battleship and 3d6 for the 6 x 6". Having settled on the number of weapons firing I now need to consider exactly how they score a hit and the effects of the same.

Thinking cap time again....;-)