Im working on some morale rules for VAS. My thought on this matter is because ships dont fight to the end in the real world why should ships in your game.
1. If a capital ship is over half damaged a fleet should check.
Repeat if another capital ship is over half damaged
2. If a Hvy or light cruiser is sunk a fleet should check.
Repeat if another Hvy or light cruiser is sunk a fleet should check.
If the check is failed the fleet will retreat seeding the battle to the enemy.

Now to rate the navies:
USA = 4+
Japan = 4+
British = 4+
Germany = 5+
France = 4+
Italy = 5+
Russia = 5+

Im looking for suggestions and Ideas so please respond.

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"Official Naval Boffin"

Kinda of not always a Yes No answer. I feel it is a useful thing for some campaign battles and for individual specific scenarios, but not necessarily for a big face to face fleet encounter - so Yes to it for some issues, but No for a general default rule.

My reasoning is all games turn into big slugfest with most ships sunk and this tends to not be accurate to real life. So if I would like more realistic games, morale will complete this. But as you said this very important for campaign games.
Ray

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"Official Naval Boffin"

I'm wondering if it should be on a ship-by-ship basis, rather than an all or nothing roll for the entire fleet. From what I can remember, there were a lot of cases where damaged ships broke off from an engagement leaving the rest of the fleet to carry on.

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"Truth is a 3-edged sword" bit like a toblerone, really.

Good Point.

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"Official Naval Boffin"

How about a command check for every 25% lost or critical hit with a +1 to the die for each 25% lost.
If the roll exceeds the command rating the ship tries to retire from the fight till it passes another check after repairing at least one damage effect.

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With Jesus in your life you have all the love you will need.

http://chrisbrann.wordpress.com/rpg-campaign-stories/

In my mind, a player should be pulling their ships out as best they can in any case - laying smoke from the smaller ships to cover their withdrawal and reforming the fleet to cover any gaps... it shouldn't really be the case that suddenly a ship turns tail and runs - doing so would not only risk itself (since there's likely not a smokescreen to hide it) but also the fleet since there could be a gap in the coverage.

Also, turning tail and running may actually be the worst chance of survival for the crew - at least if the fleet fights off the enemy, a friendly destroyer or two may actually be able to recover them from the water - a lone ship would be prone to aircraft attack, being found by a destroyer patrol (a larger ship would not necessarily find that a threat, but it would mean that its position would be known) or torpedoed by a sub (even more likely if the ship's position is known).

I generally get around issues like this through campaign play. If your games are linked in some way then the "death or glory" tendency of some players leads to inevitable defeat in subsequent games.

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I just want more than fight till the bitter end which is how I see most players play.
I guess Im to used to mini games always having morale rules, other than naval games.
I tend to put my ships into squadrons. Then I would have my squadrons check morale. "There are many cases of fleets retreating from battle after getting hit hard. Italians fled from far less based on there willingness to lose small ships but not lossing anything capital ship.

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"Official Naval Boffin"

Well, one good way is, rather than morale, to award "victory points" at the end of the game for a surviving ship, even if it's crippled... rather than simply ignoring it. There will be times when an enemy ship is nearly defeated and it's the main goal of the engagement, but then they would keep fighting until the end... and often the British or Americans would keep fighting even if it cost the ship, if it meant that the enemy ship was going to be damaged or slowed down and it was important enough... (eg convoy protection - knowing that the supplies were vital).

Basically, I feel it should be the top priority, just as in war, to bring the ship home safely and then to defeat the enemy - OK, so there'll be casualties, that's a given, but a captain that loses a ship is less likely to move up the chain of command unless he's lost it in a good fight, not joining in the piling on of another ship when the current fleet seems enough - withdrawing to a safe distance should be a priority at the least.

If your players are refusing to be sensible, either introduce campaign rules where any given ship that is destroyed may not be used in later scenarios (so if the Ark Royal goes down, it's not going to be available for any later scenarios - although they can substitute any equivilent or lesser ship from the fleet roster to avoid people unfairly picking off ships they know will feature later... but it does mean that capital ships will suddenly not be risked so much (only so many of them) but also that when they are risked, they'll pull back when they take damage. Smaller ships may choose not to, but eventually even destroyer casualties will start to add up...

Well said.
I agree with everyones ideas. I was just thinking about games at cons and such were your only playing one game. Maybe a scenario situtation with a morale similar rule for Capitals and the squadron they lead . Such as the Capital ship takes 50% damage back off 75% retreat the squadron.

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"Official Naval Boffin"

From the feedback given, it looks like a set of optional morale rules might be a good addition - but only if both players agree to use them before the game. I've only seen morale rules in one modern naval game (they seem to be most applicable to Age of Sail era fleets) and those tended to work reasonably well.

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"Truth is a 3-edged sword" bit like a toblerone, really.

Yes, Age of Sail, each captain was pretty much left to his own devices, unless they could get a signal across... in WWII, they had the signal lamps, which made things easier to coordinate (as opposed to someone running flags up or standing there in plain sight using semaphore...).

Yeah, I guess it's pretty much up to each group - although I suspect that the players who need the morale rules most would be the ones who'd agree to use them least.

I more or less want them for myself but wanted to know if anyone else was interested. If you are PM me to help if interested.

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"Official Naval Boffin"

Good luck - I would urge you to consider a victory points system that counts surviving ships that are crippled as at least half a ship, if not full value... it might convince them to pull the ships out themselves... and you'd need to be careful not to impose any rules that would stop a withdrawing ships from fighting, in case it's the last surviving ship on the side and it's being pursued... even a withdrawing ship would be fighting on as best it can if need be.

Lastly, be sure, once you've done it, to send it to Matthew for S&P... other people may want it too...