AOD - British AP shells?

[Charon]

Had my first game of AOD last night and was genuinely impressed, they certainly seem to capture the flavour of the period without players drowning in charts and tables. We had a quick game with 4 light cruisers and 2 battlecruisers each and managed to pick up the rules within about half an hour. We also learnt not to take a light cruiser anywhere near a Battlecruiser!

One thing that the game didn’t reflect as far as I could see was the problems that the British had with their Armoured Piercing shells, my opponent and I felt that perhaps removing the “AP” from British guns (at least until the latter part of the war) might be an easy solution to this – what does anyone else think?

 

[Tim63]

My group has also noticed this problem. I have sent a message to DM asking what he thinks would be a good way to address this. One idea we are playing with is when the British score critical hits they must roll another 6 to confirm the hit.

 

[Charon]

Thanks Tim, I like the idea, although I think rolling a 6 followed by another 6 might be a little too harsh on the British :wink:

IIRC the estimate was that 30-70% of British shells were defective - perhaps rolling a 6 followed by a 4-6 for critical hits might work better - what do you think?

 

[DM]

I'm mulling over a few alternatives to deal with this. The most promising so far is looking like a requirement to reroll armour penetration (probably a straight roll vs. the target's armour rating for simplicity, although that could be too harsh) against certain criticals - there are several where the penetrative characteristics of the shells isn't relevant.

Its an interetsing subjct to "read in" to as well, since it exposes anumber of issues that plague military procurements (in all countries) even today.

As an aside I did a review of several other sets of WW1 naval rules and its a feature that doesn't seem to be covered elsewhere, so AoD could end up "leading the way" in this regard

 

[Tim63]

We played last night using the crit reroll of 6 to confirm, it was a little harsh on the British I think 3 out of 17 crits made it. I think we will go to the 4,5,6 or 5,6 to confirm, I'll let you know how that works, we are playing again this Friday. Also thanks DM for your advice

 

[DM]

Some more meat on my thoughts of last night. This seems to work well - Selected critical hits require a second roll to penetrate armour. Those hits are:

Hull + Crew
6 - Multiple Explosion

Engines
1-2 - Boilers Damaged
5 - Fuel systems ruptured
6 - Engines Diabled

Weapons
6- Magazine Explosion

Vital Systems
3 - Engineering
6 - Catastrophic Explosion

And apply this for British (and Japanese) battleship guns for games set in mid 1918 or earlier.