The ‘Mark 2’ version of a ship record chart (actually more like mark 8!). I am a lot happier with this version as it is far ‘leaner’ and user friendly. The ship details are at the top whilst the bottom covers the weapons fit.
I mentioned in my previous post that I had been busy beavering away on the rules for the new book and so you can now see a couple of examples of what I have been up to.
The ship record chart I am rather pleased with as it is a lot tidier and far more obvious as to what is what. Having said that I have just spotted something that will need amending - the arcs of fire for the turrets do not account for port and starboard fire. The chart also reflects a rule change that I have incorporated. Essentially secondary guns get one box per two barrels whilst tertiary guns get one per three barrels. This was incorporated to help to equalise the hits between the hull (flotation) and the weaponry. I have also incorporated a very simple hit location table. In a nutshell, for each hit a ship suffers the owning player rolls a D6. A roll of 1 to 3 is a flotation hit, 4 is a tertiary, 3 is a secondary and a 6 is main guns or torpedoes. If a ship does not carry any of the weaponry listed then the hit is classed as flotation.
The beginnings of a firing arc diagram. I created this rather crude diagram using MS Excel. It was a royal pain to do so and worst of all, when you try and add it into Word you can see where the lines do not quite line up (the bold lines are where this occurs). This diagram illustrates the arc for forward firing guns.
I was rather pleased with the above until I tried adding it to a Word document. It looked horrible so the above is very much a work in progress. In the Portable Ironclads Wargame I used models and my hexed playing mat for the arcs but I was keen to add them as a diagram this time. I shall continue to experiment with this - I reckon that I just need to check out a couple of You Tube tutorials to get this bedded down. Aside from diagrams it will also allow me to draw battle maps on a hex grid which will be very useful indeed - way beyond naval games!
David -
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons for my keeping blank hex grids on file its to make adaptation easier. One can use Microsoft Paint or some such software to crop the grid.
Some time ago I had a similar notion of ship speed, flotation and gunnery sheets, but concluded that, even with several ships' worth on one sheet, for a largish action, the thing would turn into a paper squall. So I just run a single sheet log instead, two or three lines per vessel. A bit cryptic and not easy to record the effect of critical hits. But I use it more as an aide memoire to events than a definitive record.
I was going to post an example from my 'Arctic Convoy' game, but, owing to a problem connecting my phone-camera to this machine, I ended up losing the whole gallery of pictures. I shall simply have to redo the action. O dear. How sad. Never mind.
Cheers,
Ion
Hi Ion,
ReplyDeleteThese are very much play test versions as it helps to everything to hand. I have never been concerned about having lots of ship charts to deal with - the clipboard was a wonderful invention!
I have managed some hexed diagrams but it was a tedious process and they could certainly use some tidying up. Again, for play testing purposes they are fine.
Good luck with the Arctic Convoy refight - and I hope you get some better pictures to make up for the ones you have lost!
All the best,
DC