Wednesday 5 October 2011

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....;-)

2 comments:

Paul O'G said...

There are also a range of interesting mechanics using die types and moving up or down depending on penalties and advantages.

You could do something similar, maybe using die size as an indication of calibre, and the number of dice relative to the number of barrels/turrets firing. That way a d12 14" gun can still hit hard even with a single barrel.

David Crook said...

Hi Paul,

A good idea with using variable dice types and not one I had previously considered.

One to ponder over methinks....

All the best,

DC