Age of Sail

DM

Mongoose
Several months ago, after chatting with Matt, I drafted a set of age of sail rules. They were initially based on VAS but the scale of the project meant a few alternate mechnisms needed to go in. Anyway, after being prompted by a few readers I've decided to post them to see if anyone likes them :) They should be up on my website this evening.
 
It'll concentrate more on riverine than open ocean , at least to start with, but I have the fleets for Lissa so it'll cover the bigger battles eventually :)

Hopefully it'll work with any scale - 1/1200 and 1/600 being the main ones for battles on the rivers.
 
Nice set of rules Dave. But do you intend to include National characteristics as at the minute Turks,Spanish, French etc are the same as British, American, Dutch etc
 
Depends on the reception they get. If there's any interest then I'll develop that side of the rules too.
 
DM

Good work so far, although I Have not yet done a real thorough read through, I have a couple of queries ref General Chase

Page 9 Gunnery table
As the Die roll can be reduced to 0 or -1 and the table only goes down to 1, does the 0 or -1 roll mean no damage?

Page 9 second worked example under the gunnery table
One extra hit is scored for each point of the die roll above 6 (example: a ship is shooting at Close Range with an Elite crew, with a total modifier of +3. A 5 is rolled for a final score of 7. It has 25 Gunnery Points. This causes 8 hits, +2 for the excess points of the die roll)
Should Elite crew read Veteran crew as the mod is for veteran and elite are not in the list on Page 2?
Should final score be 8 not 7 (Roll 5 + 3 modifiers)

Page 10 damage table
Die roll 3 (High) does Rigging / Marine mean Both ?

Page 12 crew casualties
It starts by saying there are three levels but then says there’s a fourth

Page 13 damage control
Transfer Prize crew ~ I assume the ships lose/gain crew boxes etc but are there any requirements for remaining crew (e.g. may not be done if crew are (or would be reduced to) spent ) ?

Couple of small spellings: Page 13
Last word in Jury rig (missing g).
Ninth word in transfer prize crew En should be an.

Page 14
Query ~ Will you add Fire Ships here ?

Now lastly Page 3 game turn
Is there any reason why the activation (movement and firing) is completely different to the VaS .

I quite like the VaS alternate move then alternate fire as it forces players to make decisions without the godlike ability of waiting for an opponent’s whole move before deciding where all your ships go


Terry
 
DM few more for you

1. Is the gunnery factor in the table on Page one, per side (as odd numbers suggest) or is it split

2. Traits ~ Page 2 lists traits available, How do you propose assigning these, as no-one would ever pick a negative one by choice

3. Do you plan fleet lists per Nation (+ Pirates/corsairs/junks etc) with a min/max or do you plan for Priority level etc as I know how you love points based games

4. Note from 3 are you statting Junks

:D
Terry
 
Is there any reason why the activation (movement and firing) is completely different to the VaS .

Because it doesn't work for linear battles (which is what you should be doing for squadron actions or larger). It would work fine for frigate actions though, so I'll add it back in as the way to go for that type of battle (its what I use for my "Privateer" part game which is typically 2-4 ships per side)

Responses to the other questions and comments are now in a revised file which I'll post tonight. Yes there will be fire ships, and yes there will be junks and other special types.
 
Some more thoughts on why things are the way they are in the AoS rules.

The gunnery system started off very similar to VAS but I found that in order to get the right sprad of potential damage from everything from a 144 gun first rate to a small frigate, plus combinations of raking effects, required serious handfuls of dice. Thats where the "Gunnery Points" idea came in, as (initially) one "Gunnery Point" represented once d6. Statistically speaking the gunnery tables are close to the distribution of the expected number of hits scored for the corresponding number of d6 (and wasn't THAT fun to work out!)

The movement system (alternate for fleets) came about because the style of game that I was working to was the fleet action. Using alternate movement for squadrons was rather time consuming and, to be honest, pretty irrelevant given the tactics of the day. Of course I could recast the rules as a set primarily for frigate actions but with alternate rules for fleet actions and hence just switch the turn sequences and ship tables. I suspect most people would play the game that way anyway so its probably a good thing to do.

I think the above is a roundabout way of saying that the VAS system in its standard form isn't entirely applicable to different periods and quires necessary tweaking to represent them properly. The ironclad variant works OK, at least at "riverine" scale (not sure yet about fleet actions, but I think it should be OK). Against my better judgement I've eve started thinking about a modern version. My initial thoughts are not hopeful however (but its early days).
 
DM said:
Is there any reason why the activation (movement and firing) is completely different to the VaS .

Because it doesn't work for linear battles (which is what you should be doing for squadron actions or larger).

VaS allows movement and fire by squadron, surely this could be similar couldnt it, with more of a must do rather than may do for the larger actions

Plus didnt the British (at least) allow individual actions when close up ?
 
Dm's rules v0.2 states on P9 said:
For example, a ship has a modified gunnery factor of 12. A 5 is rolled. 3 hits are scored. If the ship had been firing at Close range with a CRM of +2 then 5 hits would have been scored.

Should that read veteran crew modifier not CRM, I thought CRM changed the gunnery factor, which would not add 2 to damage in this case, or im not sure what factors you started at but it would have to get from 12 to 22 to get 5 damage on a roll of 5

And another question. How should crew and captain ability be assigned
 
VaS allows movement and fire by squadron, surely this could be similar couldnt it, with more of a must do rather than may do for the larger actions

Possibly. Worth thinking about.

Plus didnt the British (at least) allow individual actions when close up ?

All the major fleets did, but not as a matter of course. There could well be an option to chop between one approach and the other when one fleet believes they have reached a level of ascendency over their opponent, although there ought to be suitable penalties if they break formation too early.
 
Couple more for you DM

1. Both Speed tables (Attitude & Threshold) only go up to 11. Now a normal speed 10 ship can get +1 for racing lines giving a speed of 11. Question is : Is the +1 for strong winds added before or after looking up the attitude table. (Im guessing after or the table needs a 12)

2. In the main stats table on page one some gunnery factors for normal range (Not CRM) dont seem to add up as follows

small merchant 2-6 guns gets gunnery= 1
Medium merchant 2-8 guns gets gunnery= 1-2
Large merchant 2-12 guns gets gunnery= 2-3

Now compared to the following

Unrated 20 gunner only has gunnery 1
6th rate 24 gun frigate only has gunnery 2
6th rate 28 gun frigate gets the gunnery 3

this leads to the following

Out of CRM, merchants can equal or outshoot a warship of twice their guns

Is this right ??
 
Probably not :)

I've been away this week and drafted a few changes to the rules. They'll be typed up and posted later this week I hope. The ironclad version (which is much closer to classic VAS) might also be done then :D
 
DM said:
v0.3 posted

If I read correct,

a large merchant with 20 guns gets a gunnery factor of 2 (being top end of the range)

However a 20 gun unrated is only a factor 1 gunnery

So at large merchant can outshoot the 20 gunner when not within CRM range, Is this deliberate ?
 
Back
Top