Naval afterthoughts... Post Battle.

The Navies of Jono's World - including merchant marine,
landing craft and a few aircraft.

Well, that last action went pretty much as I suspected ahead of time it would. The three monster Raesharn ships, all modelled upon the Japanese Yamato class, were more than a match for the four Bismarck class types opposing them. Here are the 'stats':

Yamato:
Weight: 65,000 tons; Protection: 65,000/4000 = 16 Protection Points (PP)
Guns: 9x18.1-inch; Strike: 9 + 30% of 9 = 12 Strike Points (SP)

Bismarck:
Weight: 42,000 tons; Protection: 42,000/4000 = 11 PP
Guns: 8 x 15-inch; Strike = 8 SP

Multiply the three Yamato types by three: 48PP and 36SP.
Multiply the four Bismarck types by four: 44PP and 32SP.

So the odds lay with Ra'esharn.

Major units of the Imperial Ra'esharn Navy: battleships and carriers.

The action went bally quickly - I doubt I spent half an hour on a game that lasted but 8 turns. It seemed to me that maybe a few more features might be added to make the action last a little longer and add a little interest, but without going into too much detail. I have to bear in mind, I might want to use or adapt these rules for fleet action.

Another view, with better lighting.

1.  Bob Cordery's 'critical point' feature.

Having taken damage affecting Flotation (PPs in my system), once the PPs reach a quarter (rounded) of a vessel's original, it must attempt to break off the action. It may still fire, but can not initiate an aggressive action. 

I admit that this might be tricky to carry out convincingly, but I do like the idea. Such a system, might have led to the survival of the Raesharn ship that was lost, and maybe one or two of the Kiivar vessels as well. Mind you, look what happened to Admiral Graf Spee's squadron off the Falkland Islands in 1914.

Ra'esharn's fleet of cruisers.

2.  Loss of firepower.

The damage most likely to affect a battleship's firepower is, of course, damage to guns, turrets and/or magazines. Probably the damage might accumulate turret by turret ending with, just before the vessel becomes a raft, just one gun in action.

Sequence: 

1st turret lost - dice for which

2nd turret lost - dice for which

3rd turret lost - dice for which, if not last turret

4th turret lost.

Ra'esharn's destroyer fleet

The simplest approach might be to associate loss of turrets with lost of protection. As each quarter (not rounded) of the original PP is lost, the vessel loses a turret, with all its guns. A tentative sequence:

Yamato:
16-13PP - all turrets in action
12-9PP - two turrets in action
8-5PP - one turret in action
4-1PP - guns silenced.

Bismarck:
11-9PP - all turrets in action
8-5PP - three turrets in action
5-3PP - two turrets in action
1-2PP - one turret in action

Instead of this prescriptive method, as each quarter of the original flotation (PP) is lost, there is a 50-50 chance a turret goes with it.

To this has the Kiivar Navy been reduced, after early war
disasters (such as the Battle of Omez Strait)...

3.Loss of speed.

As damage accumulates, and vessels take in water whilst fires break out affecting motive power and damage control, one can easily imagine a vessel's ability to move would gradually diminish. On the other hand, no doubt the ship designers will have built in added protection for those vital functions. I suggest that speed doesn't start to fall off until at least half the vessel's PPs have been stricken off. 

Under my hex system, there are but three possible speeds: full (2 hexes), half (1 hex), zero. Not a swag of wriggle-room there. Probably ought to add one, but then the limited size of my table becomes problematic. I suggest that once the damage has reached 'critical point' the vessel has a chance of losing speed. Roll 1d6:

6 = Vessel slows to a stop (if moving, will slow to 1 hex next turn and dead stop a move later).

5 = Vessel slows to one hex

1-4 = No effect. 

... however, the Kiivar carrier is a big one, with 25% more
aircraft than any other carrier .

All these will require keeping a log of speed, firepower and flotation. But as hits have to be logged anyhow, that seems easily enough accommodated.

The Navy of the Saabian Archipelago. I believe a destroyer has
gone missing: I was sure there were ten...

The canny, gimlet-eyed reader might have observed that the pictures in this posting have little to do with the subject matter of the text - or at least only a tangential one. These are vessels I made up for Jono's World, the world of Ra'esharn and Kiivar, and Kiivar's ally, Saabia.

It was whilst thinking about this article that I bethought myself to these navies, and how a rule set might be developed for them.

There was supposed to be 6 Saabian Battleships, but I made only 4.
They may get a couple of battlecruisers instead.

I think I'll go back to KEV's original system, but expanded to accommodate other types of vessel. In this version of 'Jono's World' all vessels of a particular type have the same characteristics:

• Battleships (BB): 9 guns in 3 turrets
• Cruisers (CA/CL): 6 guns in 3 turrets - no differentiation between light and heavy cruisers.
• Destroyers (DD): 2 guns in 2 turrets (Ra'esharn has the odd two-gun 'A' turreted vessel); armed with torpedoes (3-4 'patterns', yet to be decided)
• Aircraft carriers (CV): no anti-ship guns(?) - they are not there to fight ships directly.
• (Possible inclusion) Battle Cruisers (CC): 9 guns in 3 turrets as in BB, but smaller calibres in smaller vessels - Saabia only.

Of course, each, including the carriers, will have AA capability.

Saabian major units, on exercises in the Great Southern Ocean.