Sea fight 38

[martin goddard]

Some ideas about sea fight.

It is the intention that a warship should have a good chance to board and capture a merchant ship. This chance should be greatly reduced if the warship is small and the merchant large. A second prize should be very difficult but not impossible.  The game should lean toward success for the defender, to compensate the natural war gamer desire for the best stuff with the best options . It is important that players want to run a merchant fleet.

1. Warships can convert  any or all guns to crew at the start of any turn. Risk = 1,2 = gun lost.
Cannot be re-converted. This might be good in that it stops a warship being great at gunnery and boarding.
2. Maximise crew at 5 for boarding actions so the chance of winning is not guaranteed.

This adds a bit to complexity, but does temper the advantage.  Otherwise a large number of boarder crew will "out fight" any attempt by a merchant to resist.

eg   small ship with 5 crew versus medium merchant with 2 crew  =  11D6  versus 7D6.  Stage 2 =12D6 versus 7D6. Plainly no real chance for the merchant ship.

Present system with both ships having lost 1 crew marker.
Note. if the warship has lost all crew then it has been hit badly (2 or more hits twice).  If merchant ship has lost no crew than it is ready for fight.
Stage 1 small ship with 3 crew (having lost 1 from 4). Medium merchant with 1 crew. 9D6 versus 6D6. Stage 2  10D6 versus 5D6. Very good odds.


At extremis. Small warship with 1 crew (badly damaged must have received two lots of 2+ hits and had no recovery) versus medium merchant (untouched)with 2 crew. Stage 1 = 7D6 versus 7D6. Stage 2 = 8D6 versus 7D6. Still  a 40% chance of a prize.


The other way of giving the attacker more wins is to adjust victory points, which is easy.

Thoughts?

[Colonel Kilgore]

I like the way this is going. Probably also historical, with pirate ships overloaded with crew for the very purpose of boarding?

I'm not sure it would have saved my small warship outnumbered 6-to-1 on Saturday, but it might have had a better chance of recovering some sails and scooting off too...