Am I playing this right?

[Soulmage]

As far as I can tell, the only time you take crew damage is on special critical results that inflict extra crew casualties.

It seems like ships almost never take any significant crew losses. Is that the way its supposed to be played or am I missing something?

 

[E Nicely]

You're playing it right. Crew damage from crits only. I've played some games where crew damage was a pretty signifigant factor.

 

[Der Kommandant]

yeah it sounds wierd soulmage but ive played some games of acta where i actually lost ships due to crew loss rather than damage.

FYI... acta is similiar to VaS in regards to crew and crew loss if you didnt know.

 

[E Nicely]

The difference is 1 point of damage in CTA causes Crew and Damage loss. In VaS 1 point of damage causes Damage loss, crew remains unaffected.

 

[Der Kommandant]

ahh good point.... forgot about htat.

 

[The Greek]

Mind you if you get those fires burning they can be quite horrific. Managed to decrew the Prince of Wales entirely in a game this week.

ACTA is different in that a big hole in a space ship is VERY bad for anyone nearby. A hole in a ship far less so (although far from pleasant!).

 

[Soulmage]

The difference is 1 point of damage in CTA causes Crew and Damage loss. In VaS 1 point of damage causes Damage loss, crew remains unaffected.

Yeah, I thought I recalled something like that from somewhere.

Can any of the playtesters speak to the reason this rule was dropped in the conversion to VaS?

ACTA is different in that a big hole in a space ship is VERY bad for anyone nearby. A hole in a ship far less so (although far from pleasant!).

This is a good fluff reason, but lots of people get killed when a 12" - 16" shell hits your (relatively small, all things considered) ship too!!

As the rules work now. . .unless you are unlucky enough to serve on a destroyer (since they almost always get sunk! LOL!!) or your ship happens to be one that goes down. . . naval combat in WWII seems to be one of the safest combat zone wartime professions!

It something I might consider house-ruling back the other way unless there is some game mechanics reason it got dropped in the first place?

Anyone??

 

[E Nicely]

I think the very first draft of the game included the no crew loss rule. I wouldn't house rule it myself, if you get multiple fires going you're going to be losing a lot more crew than you want.

 

[Soulmage]

Well, I'll give it a while longer and see what kind of results we get. Its true we've never had more than 2 fires on a ship at any time so far.

I demand higher body counts though!! LOL!!

 

[chaos0xomega]

As far as I remember, being in the Navy during World War 2 was extremely safe and heavy crew losses were somewhat uncommon in normal situations(I.E. not the Hood or Pearl Harbor). If I remember correctly, unless the ship was hit very badly, it wasn't uncommon for a good portion of the crew to be found alive in shark-infested waters for some-time after the battle.

 

[Baldrick]

Naval crew losses were low, for example at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the USN lost around 550 people, but that includes pilots and air crews. Of course, this would not apply to submarines, which usually sink with all hands lost.

 

[DM]

I did some research on this a few years ago when looking at escape and evacuation arrangements for real ships. Casualties were either fairly low (in most cases) or near-total (in cases of catastrophic loss). Casualties on ships that were not lost were generally caused by the immediate weapon damage itself rather than longer term secondary effects such as fire. The simple explanartion for why is that people move away from the areas of fire and flood, after which the DC/FF teams go in to secure the area (if its worth it). I wrote up some of the results as an article for the NWS. I'll see if I can find it.

 

[jfox61]

I nearly only nearly mind you got rid of the KG V with crew losses but my final salvo knocked the rest of the hull out before the crew damage kicked in. I personally think that losses due to crew casualties will be few and far between especially if you have anything from a mil grade crew upwards