"Fleet Games and Boarding Actions & Morale" Topic

I posted originally at the end of a thread on the sci-fi board, but it would appear not to have been noticed, and was a bit of a tangent anyway: Boarding actions never really seem to figure in space fleet games (abstracted of course),although i think FT at least has provision. Neither do i know of any attempt to abstract morale factors/command factors to crews/captains. i've never seen after action reports or discusions of such games anyway.

Does this strike anyone else as a little odd? Maybe morale isnt as critical as during a grouind forces close assault, but surely crew/commander quality has some impact on the ability to run/fight a ship effective?

These factos are such a feature of many ground actions, it seems a little d to me that they never seem o feature, espacially since they could legitimately provide an effective balancing factor for battles between asymetric forces.

As to boarding actions, I've worked up a simple system for including them (abstracted, of course) in G.O.B.S.!.

Morale, not so much, although I've also created a system for adding elite crew members with special skills that can modify different elements of the game, such as movement, attack, initiative, etc..

I suspect that morale isn't a factor in spaceship gaming simply because the only way for the crew to "break" is to mutiny and take over the ship— a very rare thing in battle. I suppose an element for cowardice in a captain might be a possibility, but again, that's a very rare thing as well. Both of these factors are probably true because while an individual (or even a group) may face the instinct to run, there's nowhere to run too. Also, while it's easy for us as players to look at a block of men and conceive of them as becoming afraid or misunderstanding orders, it's hard to look at a spaceship and conceive of it as behaving in the same way. It's a thing, and we don't readily imagine the crew within it.

Battlefleet Gothic includes boarding actions, although they're quite abstract. A Call To Arms likewise. The other games I own are for settings where boarding actions don't occur, for whatever reason.

I can see having differing levels of crew, or command effectiveness. That might make sense in some circumstances.

As for morale, unless the ship has been boarded, or it's crew/marines are boarding another vessel, I doubt it really applies.

Of course, you might want to introduce some rules for fleet morale, so admirals don't fight to the last ship in battle, unless their FTL drives are all shot out, or badly damaged.

Noble Armada – take a look at that game, out of print but you may be able to find it. In that universe, ships are rare so you try and capture ships and not destroy them. There are grappling weapons to draw ships together and the control sheets are designed to show boarding parties and the path they must battle through to get to the bridge.

The morale of the captain is all important in naval wafare yet most games wet or space simply ignore it.

The capatain or acting captain decides when the ship is no longer battle worthy and therefore when to withdraw.

As a rule real life captains have what in game terms would be very high moral but look around and you can see where a different man would have made a different decision.

At the battle of Savo Island for example one USN Cruiser commander lost the plot and sailed away from the action. Said he didn't know where the Japanese were despite the gun flashes that everyone else could see. Later the poor fellow committed suicide. On the ups side his was the only cruiser engaged that wasn't sunk so perhaps history has been to hard on him.

Bob

In Attack Vector, ships are pretty darn expensive and fights usually end with one ship with a few laser holes poked through it and their heat storage used up. Ships extend their radiators to get rid of the heat, thereby signalling surrender (radiators are very fragile). No boarding actions though, unless the aim is to take an asteroid base, whereupon you'd need some extra rules.

Hmmm. . . we're working on our space navy game right now. Although the rules prototype allows for boarding actions, I'm not sure if we will include it in the final game.

What is people's opinion of the results of a boarding action? Seems to me to be highly unlikely that even after a successful boarding action the victorious side would be able to crew and operate the ship. I would tend to think a ship that has been successfully boarded is simply out of the fight. Thoughts?

@ M C LeSingeDew -
If you're looking for a wet-navy game with morale, look no further:

navalthunder.com

> surely crew/commander quality has some impact on the ability to run/fight a ship effective?

Ah.. now *there* is a hole in most rules.. and a lot of it
would be both morale and training..

Morale would affect:
* overall maintenance of the ship before the battle.
Reliable well-maintianed systems vs systems that fail.

'Gee.. only 12 of a 16 rocket salvo got off..
Hmm.. when were those ingnition couplers last tested..??'

* Initiative.. does that battery fire when the Comm to the bridge goes down.. or does it 'wait for orders'..?

Training would affect:

* crew use of systems

Sonarman A: notices an anomoly.. and reports it.
You have an extra turn to react.

Sonarman B.. anomoly..?

ECM Tech A: Sir..! 70% miss ratio..?
They're using that A7 evasion pattern..!
We need to switch to the old C40 attack program..!

ECM Tech B: Sir..! Reporting a 70% miss ratio..

Rocket programmer A: C40 conversion completed..
Rocket Programmer B: huh.. C40..? That's some old
pattern.. Isn't it..?

How this would affect the game depends on the rules..
(just to say something a bit obvious..? :-)

A and A Games Engineering used to produce a wet navy game called "Action Stations" which was at the time unique in that it rated the ship's Captain, Gunnery, Torps, and maybe (working from memory here) Damage Control and Propulsion officers individually.

The ratings reflected both the officer himself and the impact he had on o his subordinates.

This led to some nice variation in the actions as the officer quality affected things like gunfire and torpedo accuracy, efficiency of damage control etc.

Loss of a given officer could a real problem too if he was a good one.

That game metamorphosed into "Stations Manned and Ready" and I can't recall which if any of these features was retained in the newer game.

Bob

TheDreadnought:

Thanks for the link.

As for the inclusion of boarding actions: I suppose in a fleet battle game the question becomes "do boarding parties only board ships that are already mission killed OR are boarding actions another method of mission killing an enemy ship"?

If the former than a boarding action which might be a very interesting game in itself would be irrelevant to the ongoing fleet battle except perhaps in campaign play.

If the latter then boarding actions are part of the fleets' arsenal and should be represented.

As for taking action with a ship that has been boarded… it does seem a desperate act as the ship must be the worse for ware to begin with and then presumably operate at a standard even lower than the damage would allow, due to crew/boarding party loss of key technicians.

Bob

Our group is working on a set of rules and these questions have come up as well.
In regards to boarding actions we will have them as optional rules. Historicaly after the age of sail capturing an enemy ship was more do to "dumb luck" then any standard tactics. Also to me the biggest challenge would be how to keep a crew from blowing there own ship up if the battle turned against them.
As for the "human" factor, you bet. Even recent history has proven that sometimes commanders make strange decissions under the stress of battle like M C LeSingeDew stated. Another example if you like:
In the famous engagement between the Bismark and Hood the german admiral was so concerned about following the letter of his orders not to engage enemy combat units (they were suppose to raid convoys only) that he wouldn't give the order to open fire even after the Hood had fired 3 salvos their way. Finnally it was the captain that, techniqualy disobaying orders said, " I refuse to have my ship shot out from under my ass!" and gave the order. It was the admirals same thinking that fifteen minutes later wouldn't allow the germans to chase down the crippled Prince of Wales and finish her off. So it does happen.
We think moral would factor more in to the ships performance then "OMG we have to run away". We plan to have veteran vs average vs poor crew/officer training to affect gunner, damage control, speed etc of a ship to a small degree. We think it should be there but not over whelming, ie: an elite crew in a destroyer still wont be able to beat a poor crew in a heavy cruiser but could hold its own to a average or poor crew in a light cruiser.
Just my 2 cents worth.

FT's boarding rules are VERY abstract, and for good reason: relative velocities are such that unless a ship is totally disabled, you won't be able to dock. Also, boarding actions will probably operate on a totally different timescale to that of space combat.

Full Thrust ignores leadership and morale altogether-- and I agree that that's an almost critical gap, especially as their ground games do so well with it.

Battlefleet Gothic has boarding actions of two kinds. Hit-and-run attacks represent, well, exactly that: small teams of soldiers who teleport/taxi aboard to execute precision strikes on vital equipment and crew. Full boarding actions are also possible, though hard. Both systems are relatively simple and decisive. Though they're not terribly realistic, I think the "terribly realistic" option is not to have boarding actions at all.

BFG has extremely simple rules for leadership (though not morale), but that belies their elegance. The leadership rules permeate the game: tactics, fleet design, maneuver are all heavily influenced by them. The leadership rules are one reason why BFG can scale from one-on-one cruiser duels to massive battles and still work pretty well in terms of complexity, tactical flexibility and game play. The BFG leadership rules are probably the single best game design decision I've ever seen (even more than Full Thrust's vector movement, which is another triumph of rules design).

BattleSpace (the Battle Tech space combat game, now replaced by AeroTech) is probably the Worst Space Combat Game Ever Published. It has extensive boarding rules. Leadership and morale are included. Badly. They add complexity without adding fun or tactical options. It becomes yet another game-stopping race to the rulebooks to while away the hours rolling towards a largely foregone conclusion. Which is another reason why most systems lack systems for those things.

All this in my opinion, of course. :)

Any kind of boarding action to me would probably involve munitions that would punch through the first couple of layers of hull and disgorge little demolition and hacker 'bots to cripple the ship and/or take over its systems. Or else some kind of EW hacking, but that's pure handwavium.

So much comment. Thanks for the insights.

It seems that i am not alone in thinking this way. I find it also find it odd that ground games seem to have moved towards command decisions/orders being central but space games do not seem to have evolved in this way. Spacew games seem to have evolved with a streamlining of systems/displays.

Naturally, a command based system would be more suitable for crew quality to be modelled, as whether the crew respond to the orders effectively can be modelled in more easily.

Whhile i broadly agree withte comments on morale, it may be that morale would still be effective as the crew become less effective if systems are breaking down and they fear for their lives/judgement becomes impaired. otherwise, they are acting like a "super human crew"

The ideas from action stations sound like an interesting concept.

I also agree that boarding might not have be of significance to anything other than a campaign game (unless it was part of the victory conditions to capture a ship), but not only could captured ships be a critical asset in a campaign game, but withdraqwing asstes from the main battle to concentrate on boarding could hav an affect on that battle.

So, rules coul focus on an abstract version which also alows for how long it takes to board/capture an in what state the ship captured is in as a result.

More detailed actions should be undertaken with skirmish (or Space Hulk type) rules.

i would certainly welcome evolution in this direction.

I also liked Lampyridae's suggestion of 'bots, but this is almost another type of hybrid weapon system, and a very interesting one too!