Collisions

[evilsam]

Hi guys,

I'm starting to get back into V@S and will be showing a buddy how to play soon.
He's looking for something else to do with his W@S ships and this game is perfect.

One thing that came up the last time I played was collisions. Although none of the ships collided there were a few "close calls" due to some tight maneuvering. I couldn't find any rules on how to handle collisions. Has anyone ever had to deal with this?

 

[rcbecker1]

Unfortunately VAS does not have rules for this. The rules say ships are not allowed to enter each others zones so it cant happen. I assume this is one of those funny ways of keeping the rules simple and not to create that level of play. You could make house rules. Something like a ship does its armor of damage to the other ship or something similar. but I cant see a need since movement is controlled unlike a computer game where you dont have complete control.
Ray

 

[BFalcon]

This might be worth doing sooner rather than later, since destroyers used to regularly ram subs that made torpedo attacks only short distances from them... a sub needs time to submerge and so a destroyer would often charge them quickly in the hope that, if they couldn't ram, they'd be able to drop some shallow charges on them.

 

[Myrm]

We stick to the basic rules given the scale issues for simplicity - at least for general play.

I would suggest that you come up with a house rule specifically for deliberate ramming of other ships and enforce the basic rule for all other occurences - abstract it to the fact a crew will anything to avoid collision in the vast majority of cases. For a deliberate ram then make it based upon the relative size and bulk of the ships somehow - include Hits, speeds and armour ratings in some formula to produce damage dice. Give a signficant bonus to Ships hitting subs as that was the most common event (but not the only one). Ensure that such events are high in critical damage. Make the damage levels high enough that two equal ships hitting will likely cause serious issues for both sides to prevent it becoming a routine tactic. Make it so smaller ships bounce while taking heavy damage.

We tried a couple of methods but never settled on one despite agreeing that ramming was a feature of naval combat and needed to be in there, but also needed to be something that had to be considered and usually rejected. Last time we discussed it we kinda veered to making it only Destroyers and bigger surface taking out subs (remember the only capital ship to confirm kill a sub did it by ramming).

 

[barnest2]

Also remember (Rather importantly) that those destroyers that rammed subs would need months of dry dock time, and could barely keep the sea one their return to said docks. They would be put out of any fight they were in thanks to the damage (they could barely manoeuvre). Hence ramming being banned for the brits at least.