"Tabletop ranges for rules" Topic

I just realized that looking at suggestion for rules I forgot one thing, table top ranges. By that I mean how far does my little 1/6000 dreadnought fire on the table. 12 inches or 48 inches makes a big distance. I have a 9 x 5 table to use, but like to use less space if possible so I can sit and still see my ships. So how far does the Queen Elizabeth or Baden fire in the most common rules for WWI dreadnoughts? I really don't want to play on the floor, a bit too old and stiff for that.

In Dreadnought max range is 20"

By that I mean how far does my little 1/6000 dreadnought fire on the table.

Depends on the ground (sea?)scale.

Fear God and Dread Nought give actual ranges (i.e., in thousands of yards). Then it's up to you to figure the range in tabletop scale. with 1/6000 that's 1' = 1 nautical mile so it works out perfectly. Course, playing the River Platte, I had ships shooting at each other at 12 feet…

er…sorry…mixing WWI and WWII references there.

General Quarters 3 gives ranges in thousands of yards.
Standard scale is 1cm = 100m, but for 1:6000 you'd use half scale, so 1cm = 200m.
So a ship firing at 20,000 yards range would be 2 metres at standard scale, 1 metre at half scale.

Wow, ranges are long. I forget that about naval, being used to land games. Going to have to rethink this whole idea. I want room to move ships around, but if ships are firing right away at each other. Maybe I should do predreads before the range opened up so much. But then if I do the pre dreadnought era, means using larger ships and then the scale changes again.

Doug,

You don't have to use the scale specified in the rules. For example, you can cut it in half, double it, etc. Doing so has no effect on game play, as movement would halved/doubled as well.

So if you desire everything to happen in a 4-foot-square area, you want the maximum gun range to be about 2', thus allowing adequate scope for larger formations to maneuver without constant repositioning of the entire battle back to the center of the table. I suggest a scale of 1" = 1000 yards for 1/6000 WWI naval on a small table.

MH

You could go with ironclads. 2000 yards is extremely long range ;-). Even the occasional ramming and boarding parties.

Movement can become fiddly if you reduce scale too much.
It's important to keep moves and gun ranges in scale so that ships can't dash into close range without taking a realistic amount of fire.

Movement can become fiddly if you reduce scale too much.
It's important to keep moves and gun ranges in scale so that ships can't dash into close range without taking a realistic amount of fire.

Dexter, you are correct for the case of range-re-scale-only, but notice that I am suggesting that he scale *everything* up/down, meaning ranges *and* movement. In the latter case, your issue disappears, as *everything* is re-scaled to the same degree.

Think of it this way. You are floating in space watching a naval simulation. Do simulation dynamics change just because you move closer or far away? No.

There *is* one minor potential effect of re-scaling, which is that it *may* have an effect on unit concentration (the equivalent of counter stacking limit in a board game). However, for naval this only really matters if one has a very long battle line (i.e. Jutland), and a very small ground scale. In an extreme example, suppose you decided to play Jutland at a scale of 1" = 20,000 yards. This would clearly result in an unacceptable inability to concentrate your forces, even if you put your 1/6000 ships nose-to-tail. However, the suggested 1" = 1000 yards works adequately well in my experience. You could also explain away a minor reduction in the ability to concentrate as visibility issues (smoke) or C3 issues. Finally, the 1"=1000 yards suggestion is no worse than the scale used in the AH Jutland board game referred to in his other thread, IIRC.

MH

This all goes back to me buying "Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century" a decade or so back, and playing a naval game the other month. Loved the ships and then loved going through the book reading the history and looking at the pictures. Then I think what a fun period to game, each player could command 3 or 4 ships and fight meeting engagements on the table top.

So what does everyone else enjoy about this period of battleships?

Mini-campaigns!!!

If you can find a copy of the old SPI game "Flight of the Goeben", it makes a great framework for the first several weeks of WWI in the Med. Losts of variety, with British, Germans, French, and sometimes Austrians and Italians.

I remember one of the Yahoo group sites (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/GenQuarters/files/) had PDFs of the game components, which could presumably be printed out, colored, and used. However, an original copy of the game (which came with issue #21 of Strategy and Tactics magazine) would be best. For my copy of the game I made some atmospheric posters, intended to decorate the table on which the "Flight of the Goeben" game is setup. Basically there is one for each of several of the towns around the 1914 Med, with a couple of images relating to each town. Major bases have their own posters, and minor ones share.

MH

In Naval Thunder, most of the shooting happens at ranges of about 20" – 30" normally.

Hey, "TheDreadnought", glad to see you're posting again!

However, note that my point is that, whatever the rules, players can and should consider changing the game scale (both ranges and movement by the same percentage) to fit their needs. The fact that the rules contain a default scale is essentially unimportant to the experienced player, and IMHO is just there as a suggestion for novices.

MH