"Unrealistic firing ranges" Topic

I've been wondering about gun ranges and the effect this has on tactics and manoeuvre.

It always strikes me that we start firing as soon as we come into visual, and yet this was rarely the case in real life; for example Holland's squadron sighted the Bismarck at 34,000 yards in the Denmark Strait, and yet closed to 26,500 yards or so before opening fire. This was some 17 minutes after contact, which in GQ1/2 would be 3 game turns.

Looking at various rules and considering what the maximum distance that Hood's 15" guns can realistically achieve a hit (i.e. at a base chance, before modifiers for radar, spotter planes, etc, have been applied), the following ranges apply:

General Quarters: 30,000 yards
Victory at Sea: 33,000 yards
Battlestations! Battlestations!: 35,000 yards

I don't know what the maximum is in Naval Thunder.

Putting this against the fact that the longest range hit by a naval gun against a moving target was by HMS Warspite at the Battle of Calabria at only 26,000 yards. And yet, in a recent replay of Cape Spada using VaS, Young Henry achieved a hit at the same range with the 6" guns of HMAS Sydney.

Do our games, unless restricted by visibility, take place at too long a range?

This also has another effect: as the radius of engagement stretches to the limits of visibility, then there is little reason to manoeuvre before coming into range – one may as well draw up on a parallel course and lob shells – or dice – until someone gets lucky.

So, my question is; despite many big gun engagements during WW2, hits over 26,000 yards were unheard of, so why do we have such generous ranges in our rules?

Jonesey

Because people just look up the technical maxima of the guns in books and use them, instead of trying to figure out what was actually practical or reasonable IRL at the time.

-Kle.

Good point. In theory it may have been possible to get lucky at 30,000 yards or so but as a practical matter, ammunition was limited and no sensible captain or admiral wanted to waste ammunition hoping for a low chance dumb luck hit. I believe all the rules you mentioned don't track ammunition. If they did, while the possibility of a hit might stay in the 30,000+ range, the willingness to gamble limited resources might well see most players hold fire until the range closed.

It gets worse the earlier you go. In WW1 & WW2 we do at least have a good deal of actual battle firing data to work on but prior to that it is little more than guesswork.

GQ-1 and GQ-2 track ammo, which is one of the many reasons why I prefer them over GQ-3. However, I admit that this particular issue is easy to fix with a house rule.

MH

There are some who postulate 10% hits at 30K despite the lack of historical evidence that exists concerning this possibility. "They" extrapolate from practice shoots, as if such an approach can ever approach practical validity. To me, one strives to base game heuristics on mechanisms that can approach historical results, and thus this topic is right on. I would not consider any game that is offering up anything other than very remote hit possibilities at 27K and above. House rules can indeed modify game-mistakes, but one wonders why the occur in the first place. The historical record is readily available. Dud rates are also a factor that are seldom considered, and these could range up to 33% in early war US shells, as well as some types of German shells. All sorts of variables to consider, and not all of them are difficult to research.

In the GQ3 charts the Hood carrying eight 15 inchers in four turrets would be able to roll four d12s at anything at 24K yards or less. Above 24K and up to 30K the number of D12s are cut to only two and you have to roll 1s to get a hit. I will let someone else calculate the percentages on that. I'm too rusty.

Gentlemen!

Not only do the vast majority of naval war games encourage fire at ranges far beyond practical effect, but they also demonstrate serious ignorance of the nature of naval gunfire. Playing such games, and then drawing conclusions from them (outside and beyond the game itself) is an enormous waste of player's intelligence and often sincere interest in the subject.

Shells do not have flat trajectories to begin with, and the greater the distance they fly, the higher their arc becomes such that at extreme ranges they fall almost vertically.

Naval war game rules falsely imply that a shot ranged to an exact point will make a hit only if the target is under that point. While this is possible, it would be the rarest of all actual outcomes.

The writers of such rules betray their ignorance--and disappointing lack of research--by not considering the widely variable "Danger Space" (or "shadow," if you prefer) for every specific gun size/caliber when ranged to a target that occupies vertical as well as horizontal space.

That is, a shot does not have to fall "on" the target to be a strike, it only has to PASS THROUGH THE VERTICAL SPACE THE TARGET OCCUPIES while on its way behind the target to the range at which it would drop into the sea.

That length of surface area BEHIND the target is that gun's/target's Danger Space (or, again, "Shadow").

Danger Spaces are not set or standard distances, except for specific guns against specific target heights at specific ranges. And though nominally of the same size (4", 8", 12", 15", etc), not all guns have anywhere near the same ranges, penetration potentials, and Danger Spaces.

For example, the British 6"/45 caliber gun when ranged to 15,000 yards has a different Danger Space for each 5 feet of the target's height. At that range, the target would have to be at least 40 feet high for that gun to have any Danger Space, and that space would only be 100 feet beyond the width of the ship itself--a very poor chance of hitting, indeed.

This is what rules don't allow for and which is the actual reason fire is almost always held until the range has closed. Until the target becomes sufficiently close for the guns in question to have enough Danger Space to make shooting worth the costs (ammunition use, crew exhaustion, risk of mechanical breakdowns, etc), the order to "Open Fire" is held until the right time.

The larger the target, and the closer the range, the greater the chance of scoring hits by firing at ranges somewhat beyond the actual straight-line distance to that target.

To put it another way, hits can really only be counted on when ranged somewhat BEHIND the target, and the closer the range, the truer this is.

Previous poster George Elder addressed the whole issue very well, though relying solely on the "historical record" really isn't sufficient for the same reasons of the limits of extrapolation he alludes to. The only way to put a set of naval war game rules on a solid foundation is through technical research, and that has meant computers since the early 1970's when this poster--with the invaluable aid of a number of first generation computer nerds--first began working out the particulars on main frames.

"Cordite And Steel" was the product, and though long out of print, we are at least at the point where we could begin offering the product of all these years of running and re-running our programs that provide all the gun data--for every navy and every gun from the 1880's forward--in ready to use form.

TVAG

What are the chances of hits at those distances, with the various rules systems?

I agree, tracking ammo will do a lot to alleviate wasteful usage.

Laudable though your efforts are TVAG, the gun data is only one of many data sets that you need to truly predict the hit probability.

Details of methods of sighting and ranging vary between navies, even between ships. That can dramatically affect hit probability even at quite short ranges.

The variation in the power of the propellant charge in battle conditions is probably enough to throw out most gun data – which were all taking from proving ground trials.

The biggest problem is that, for guns prior to about 1905, we simply don't have enough battle data to know how good the predicted performance from proving trails really was.

You mean we really shouldn't have to play on the floor --

I have always played on a table for the following reasons:

I distort the ranges anyway as the models are just that to me--"models", My game is a sort of jszzed up "broadsides" anyway, It's just a game for me, I care about my back, and I don't want my models stepped on.

regards
Russ Dunaway

If you want anything approaching realistic results, you should probably stop playing VaS.

The OP makes some good points, but speaking more generally, nearly all aspects of gunnery in the faster-playing naval miniatures rules are too effective. I think this is mostly a side effect of highly abstracted mechanics, but can also be better or worse depending on the author's care in researching the topic. Sometimes a simple house rule can crudely patch up general imbalances (e.g., in GQ2 I use d10s instead of d6s for damage dice, and double the movement rates), but if you really want an appreciably more realistic game you're probably going to have to rewrite large parts of your favorite game system, switch to one of the slower-playing rules sets (e.g. Seekrieg, Command At Sea, FG&DN, etc.), or write your own rules system.

In the interest of playing with people I like, I usually opt to modify rules with some popularity, and try to keep the modifications minimalistic, simple and clear. Playing unrealistic rules can be severely grating to those of us who "know too much", but if you have to conscript gaming buddies with only a mild interest in naval gaming to fill out your naval games, they will be equally annoyed by rules they find too complicated or too fiddly.

On the specific matter of over-effective long range gunnery:

• You could change the range bands in rules like GQ3/FAI and NT.
  
• If you don't want to remove the chance to shoot at super-long ranges (naval gaming is all about "what ifs", after all), you could consider adding an "extreme" range band to every gun with abysmal odds of hitting anything, which goes from what you perceive to be maximum effective range out to the full theoretical range of the gun.
  
• A simple way to worsen the odds at extreme ranges in GQ3/FAI would be to use 2d12 or even 2d20 and require snake eyes for a hit. I'm sure similarly simple fixes could help shorten engagement ranges in VaS or NT.
  

- Ix

All interesting responses, gentlemen.

It's something that strikes me quite often that as a breed naval gamers are perhaps a little too tied to manuals and tables of data. Ask a land gamer what the range of, say, an FN SLR rifle is and they'll most likely say between 200 and 300 yards. Now, I've used one of these and I'd agree, and although I also know the round would travel a lot further the question is always – implicit or otherwise – what is the EFFECTIVE range?

Most 20th century land rules I've played or read seem to be based on what was reported as common on the battlefield, rather than under test or training conditions. I have no doubt rule writers know their onions, but seem to prefer theory to actual battle experience.

I like a game to have a nice 'feel' and to have similar decisions to make. I'm not worried by simplification or abstraction, but essentially if Holland and Lutjens felt it better to wait for the range to close then, really, I should think the same. If I still think there's a 16% chance of hitting at extreme range (Bwanabill – sorry if my maths is off here!) I am bound to lob a few speculative salvoes – I'd be a fool not to!

So there are two ways forward: either (a) use ammunition rules, or (b) reduce the ranges to 'effective ranges'.

Personally I prefer b: reduce the ranges, like land gamers do. The problem with ammunition rules is that games don't last long enough for this to be a factor – IF I remember rightly in GQ1/2 ships have 18 turns of main armament ammunition. This represents an hour and a half – most engagements will not have this prolonged and intensive fire, so I can still engage at ships on the horizon without much fear of running out, unless I'm in a campaign scenario.

Jonesey

What you're talking about is not necessarily a fault of the rules (with the notable exception of VAS), but a fault in the players. Gamers (and that includes the 'serious' types) will fire off every gun at any target, regardless of how remote the chance of a hit or minimal the effect (looking for that mystical 'Golden BB'). That's just reality of gaming (in total defiance of historical reality). The easiest way to modify this behavior is by imposing ammo limits (such as the optional rule in GQ1/2). But the problem there is the almost pathological loathing that most gamers have for such rules (in fact, such a rule was originally proposed for GQ3. It was dumped since the same rule in GQ1/2 was almost universally ignored. Plus, nominal ammo loadouts are not that easy to come by). To quote the bard, 'the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…'.

And I'd go easy on radical changes to a games combat engine without a complete understanding of the mechanic and the impact of such changes. The rule of unintended consequences may well rear its head…

Ayup Coastal – agreed, to a point. The problem comes with action/consequence; if long range fire carries no cost then any normal player will try it, and the chances of hits are not really that remote.

To take our scenario as a baseline – Hood firing on Bismarck at 30,000 yards – then I think the chances of hitting each turn are:

GQ1: 17%
GQ1 with revised tables for D10: 10%
GQ3: 16%
VaS: 33% PER GUN! (so 99.986% chance of getting at least 1 hit)
B!B!: 5%

Now, taking GQ1 with GQ2 mods as our Portsmouth Yardstick, I reckon three salvoes while I close means I have a 1 in 5 chance of getting a sneaky hit on Bismarck in the 2 moves before Holland actually did fire. With no reason not to, I'm going to fire at those odds.

So; what will stop me? Certainly ammo rules, but they'd need to be unrealistically severe to stop speculative salvoes.

Jonesey

Actually, your math (at least for GQ3) is off. I can't calculate for the others since I either don't have them (VaS) or they're packed away (GQ1/2 and Battleship! Battleship!).

Let's assume Hood fires 8 tubes at Bismarck at 30000yds.

First, the base number of dice is 4 (1 for each 2 tubes). Which is reduced to 2 dice (the 30000yd row dictates half the dice are rolled). Finally, you use a D20 instead of a D12 (also dictated by the 30000yd row). And you need to roll a 1 to get a hit (also dictated by the 30000yd row).

Now that's a successful Pk of 5% per die. Using binomial distribution that results in the following spread of hits: 90.25% 0 hits, 9.5% 1 hit, .25% 2 hits.

Just for comparison, lets move into 24000yds.
Now you're rolling 4 D12s with 1 as a hit. The distribution is: 70.7% 0 hits, 25.6% 1 hit, 3.4% 2 hits, .2% 3 hits, .1% 4 hits.

Now, that's a distribution over several minutes of fire (defined in GQ3.3 as 3 minutes of activity spread over a 6 minute turn) with several salvos delivered. So that would have to be factored in, plus the manner in which the damage mechanism handles hits. (And since GQ1/2 and GQ3 have the same author, I suspect the same Pks apply for GQ1/2).

So careful with your Pk calculations and their impact; its not a simple 'adding up the percentages' matter…

To my mind, a hail Mary roll with a sub 10% chance of success is not worth it (although they are some who would; none in my gaming group would do such a silly thing). And that's where ammo tracking would need to come into play (and good luck getting that through…).

And one more factor (which everyone has ignored): Those long ranges would have more likely come into play if the firing ship was using remote aircraft spotting (something that the USN definitely had as doctrine during the pre-war period). So, to reflect the doctrine of the period, the possibility (which was actively trained for) of such long range shots needs to be accommodated. That it was rarely (if ever) used during WWII (with the notable exception of shore bombardment) is certainly not the fault of the rules designer.

It's not so much that the maths is off, just that I don't have GQ3 so was working on what has been said before. If results are in the order of 5%, then this seems a lot better.

With regard to allowing for pre-war naval doctrine I'm not so sure – aren't we in danger of fighting actions the way commanders thought they would be fought, rather than the way they were?

Let me be clear on this point though: I don't give a monkeys how people want to enjoy their gaming – if it's sticking to longer ranges than were historically used or using ammo to close this down or reducing the ranges to effective ranges, rather than theoretical.

Mind you – and here I have to admit to a degree of hypocrisy – it does annoy me when I see, as I have done, players deploy their ships in line abreast in mixed formations of BB, CA, C and DD and then charge the enemy. This might be easy to beat, but a game that feels that unreal would be deeply unsatisfying. I have lost most of my games against my lad, but it really doesn't matter – when I look at how the games unfolded the did so in a way that felt 'real'; if I were to plot the tracks they would look like those in historical books and real-world tactics were used and prevailed. That's what I like :-)

Jonesey

I have studied the science and black art of naval gunnery for about forty years. Precious few naval wargames model gunnery in an accurate fashion. Some of these rule sets are old, having been written before the availability of good research data; others have been purposely written as beer and chips games with no real intent to accurately model gunnery; others, of course, just get the analytics wrong for one reason or another – often as a consequence of pursuing a "simple" system of gunnery mechanics. All this being my personal opinion, of course.

Naval gunnery is a highly complex exercise. Shooting at 30,000 yards is the equivalent of trying to hit a target two or three towns away while both parties are simultaneously moving at 25-30mph and any given shot takes a minute or more to arrive.

<<<<< Reduced to its most elementary component >>>>>, gunnery efficiency is roughly proportional to the "sampling rate" – i.e., the number of salvoes that can be discharged in a given unit of time whose fall relative to the target can be seen with sufficient clarity to provide an idea of the degree of error in range and direction relative to the target. Sampling rate varies with time of flight, and the relationship between time of flight and range is much greater than linear.

I don't have time this morning to expand on this to the degree that I would like, but if anyone is interested, I can continue to provide more boring detail in a further post.

B

I found with VaS it was the speed and maneuvering that got to me, with battleships whizzing around like motorboats. Although I did come across a mod for VaS, where the biggest thing on the board would be destroyers and on that scale it worked a lot better.

If you read much naval history, one conclusion you come to is that the really critical decisions are usually made well ahead of shouting and shooting; which is hard to replicate on a board.

That is, a shot does not have to fall "on" the target to be a strike, it only has to PASS THROUGH THE VERTICAL SPACE THE TARGET OCCUPIES while on its way behind the target to the range at which it would drop into the sea.

That length of surface area BEHIND the target is that gun's/target's Danger Space (or, again, "Shadow").

However, as the danger space decreases the actual target area increases. That is because the ship has more horizontal area exposed to attack than vertical area. Danger space is a false way of looking at a ship target. What is important is target area exposed and gun dispersion. How much of the gun dispersion area is taken up by the target area? That is what should be looked at.

GQ1 with revised tables for D10: 10%

BJ, I think your calculations are off on GQ1/GQ2 ("revised tables") as well. The 10% (roll a "0" with D10) is the chance of a "straddle", and this, by itself, does not guarantee a hit. For Hood versus Bismarck you then must roll on the 3:2 column of the "Gunnery Damage Table", which yields about 50% chance of actual damage given a straddle. Thus overall, the chance of a damaging hit is about 5% under the stated conditions, during the GQ 6-minute turn. As stated previously, use of the ammo limitation rule in a campaign setting would discourage such low-probability shooting in GQ, especially at the start of an action.

As a side comment, I see that a number of posters above seem to be confusing detail (and/or use of computers) with simulation accuracy.

Mark H.

Dear Mobius,

I believe you may have misunderstood something.

While Danger Spaces definitely become shorter at the longer ranges of the gun and target in question, the ship's target area NEVER increases, except in relation to the Danger Space itself.

A 50' wide vessel never becomes a 100 foot wide vessel, or 51' feet, and it never gets any narrower, either. The target does not change size, though the CHANCES to hit the vessel directly, rather than via the Danger Space, can be said to go up as its beam is always some fraction of the Danger Space.

The "target area exposed" is the same at 1 yard as at 25,000 yards because the vessel never changes size--though it may look that way from a distance.

No shots fired at any vessel are guaranteed to strike it, unless at Point Blank range at a stationary target by another stationary platform using direct sights--which is effectively impossible. All that can be determined with reasonable accuracy is the chance--expressed as a percentage--that one or more given shots will strike.

Except perhaps for Aircraft Carriers, warships do not present solid silhouettes of equal height to incoming fire. Height and arrangement of the superstructure, masts, funnels, etc--the very things that give a vessel its recognizable profile--offer only a decidedly ragged target shape with spaces through which shots can fly and never strike.

(Which raises another common failing of most rules that suggest that a hit on a funnel, superstructure, etc, above the waterline still contributes to the sinking of a vessel. Of course, random events--such as the observed deck fire at one of Hood's secondaries just prior to her explosion--can indeed lead to destruction, but generally for a ship to SINK it must be holed at or below the waterline by shots striking there, and not feet above. This suggests that some distinction must be made between strikes based on location, or at least those that cause flooding.)

And I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "gun dispersion." Do you suggest, for example, that a vessel with 8 primary guns in four turrets are just pointed at right angles, and not individually aimed/ranged at the target? Are you suggesting that Dreadnoughts fired in level Broadsides as at Trafalgar?

Fire was commonly delivered in "ladders" with shots spaced by some distance apart in a line in order to maximize the chances of scoring at least one hit, possibly directly on the target, but most commonly by falling in its Danger Space.

As Gildas Facit observed above, there are indeed many variables that interact to produce the result of a given shot. He didn't mention atmospheric pressure, relative humidity, ambient air temperature, and any number of factors that are beyond any human control, but which tend to apply to both sides in the same action and can be argued to "average out" in practice.

The chances to hit a given target with a given gun at a given range can indeed be influenced by the effectiveness of range finding, both technologically and doctrinally, but these are influences, not final determinants, and as such can be applied as modifiers to the final estimation. Indeed, so can crew training/experience/exhaustion, and even "morale."

It can all be done in a reasonable manner and reduced to a single percentile dice roll.

TVAG

A couple thoughts:
1- How many times were ships actually in a position to engage at over 30,000 yards? Most of the surface battles I remember reading about the starting engagement range was dictated by the weather, night or obstructions like islands.
2- If ships really weren't capable of damaging each other beyond 30,000 yards why did they bother making their guns capable of firing that far? I've seen the turrets on the Iowa and NC classes and it's overly complicated in order to allow that elevation (shore bombardment may be a valid argument).
3- you don't necessarily have to hit the target to do damage, HE would be pretty ugly against even BB's covered with crewed AA guns and there's always soft places that shrapnel would punch through. It might be possible to open up at long range with HE (that you wouldn't miss in a big gun engagement) just to do some soft damage before you started with AP at shorter range.

Thank you coastal2 for a very nice walk through of the GQ3 math, and also for reminding me why I like the GQ3 system so much – nearly every time I think I've run across a flaw, careful reading shows I just missed the rule that fixes that problem. In this case, I've mostly gamed WWI (using FAI), so I never noticed the switch to a d20 at hyper-long ranges in GQ3. Very cool!

- Ix

It was possible, with the advent of the director, to artificially spread individual shots of a salvo to potentially improve the chance of a salvo to straddle the target, but the benefit of doing so was very limited; too great an interval between the fall of shots in a salvo prevented the observer from sensing the center of salvo impact relative to the target, which was the real reason for firing grouped shots in salvoes

Not trying to be contentious, but laddering fire relied upon fire by salvo …even double-salvo in RN practice.

B

It may be outdated, but in one of the references that I read (Battleships and Battlecruisers, Breyer?) I read that the decision to go with 8 guns as the norm was that due to dispersion there was a 12 percent probability of obtaining a hit on target if everything else was calculated correctly.

Also that under central fire control then that the turrets were trained such that the theoretical point of impact was the same for the entire salvo.

Based on that, one would presume that partial salvoes would see a significant decrease in hit probabilities when doing so. I have read therefore of it being one method used to more quickly establish range at the expense of obtaining a hit with the ranging salvoes.

TVAG…I believe Mobius means shell dispersion when he stated gun dispersion. A salvo was aimed at a mean point of impact. However, the shells would fall all around that point and rarely would 1 actually hit the MPI. IIRC during the 1930 US BB gun firing exercises, the dispersion area of the shells was 300yds by 300 yrds. So what I believe he is saying is one must figure a ratio of the target's area and the shell disperson area to get a percentage of possible hits provided the MPI is centered on that target (a straddle).

FYI-- Danger Space, Hitting Space and Dispersion of shells are defined here.
link

"Based on that, one would presume that partial salvoes would see a significant decrease in hit probabilities when doing so. I have read therefore of it being one method used to more quickly establish range at the expense of obtaining a hit with the ranging salvoes."

….. Speaking in WW1 terms, it must be appreciated how terribly difficult it was to actually "find the range" – a function of (a) getting a straddle to establish the actual range to target at that moment, and (b) having the correct rate of change of range over time set upon the range clock. Perhaps 1 in 8 or 10 salvos resulted in a straddle over the course of the Run to the South at Jutland. Range-finders might provide some modest degree of assistance in this effort, but the overwhelming majority of the work was in firing salvos, spotting their fall relative to the target shot, estimating the error, and adding corrections to the aim of the next salvo. A salvo of 4 shots was considered to be the most efficient in terms of (a) enabling the observe to judge mean point of impact, and (b) economizing on ammunitions. In addition ….. and this is important ….. an 8 gun dreadnought could fire two 4-shot salvoes for every single broadside within the same unit of time. This gets back to the importance of "sampling rate" which I mentioned in an earlier post. Fire by broadside was actually rather/very rare.

…. Some VERY ROUGH Rules of Thumb to understand general exterior ballistic characteristics -

> Range varies approximately as the square root of gun elevation in degrees.

> Time of Flight in seconds equals approximately the sum of [gun elevation in degrees] + [range in yards divided by 1000].

Example: US 16in/45 = 36,900 yds @ 45deg elevation:
01deg elevation = approx 5500 yds and 7 sec TOF
04deg elevation = approx 11000 yds and 15 sec TOF
09deg elevation = approx 16500 yds and 26 sec TOF
16deg elevation = approx 22000 yds and 38 sec TOF
25deg elevation = approx 27500 yds and 53 sec TOF
36deg elevation = approx 33000 yds and 69 sec TOF
45deg elevation = approx 36900 yds and 82 sec TOF

The rapid rise in TOF beyond 20,000 yards is a crucial factor in the difficulty of hitting at such ranges.

FWIW.

B

It's the gamers.

If you CAN hit a ship theoretically then any time you don't fire you give up the chance, no matter how extreme of causing damage It's the same reason that as soon as they come in range gamers will fire every last AA and pom pom at an enemy ship. Every little bit of damage helps..

If you point out the real ranges and physics and how it's just a waste of ammunition the gamers get all red faced and pull out a book showing that once, with the wind right in a test firing range, the 15" gun could fire 58,000 yards and scream bloody murder if you don't let them fire on the enemy ship while it's still out in the driveway just pulling up in the owners car.

The late great John Hill said once "If you put it in the game rules it will show up in every game." The appetite of war games for tiny marginal advantages knows no bounds. That's why in my modern games it's Light Tank, Medium Tank, Heavy Tank, 6, 5-6, 4-5-6 to hit enemy targets respectively. Move on gentlemen.

@The Virtual Armchair General

A 50' wide vessel never becomes a 100 foot wide vessel, or 51' feet, and it never gets any narrower, either. The target does not change size, though the CHANCES to hit the vessel directly, rather than via the Danger Space, can be said to go up as its beam is always some fraction of the Danger Space.

The "target area exposed" is the same at 1 yard as at 25,000 yards because the vessel never changes size--though it may look that way from a distance.

Wrong. You are thinking in 2-D, while gunnery is a 3-D affair. The target area exposed is the vertical area times the cosine of the impact angle PLUS the horizontal area times the sine of the impact angle. So the size of the target changes at every range the impact angle changes.

Warship International No. 3 1991, Evolution of Battleship Gunnery in the U.S. Navy, 1920-1945. Uses error in mean point of impact instead of "dispersion" but it works the same.

If you CAN hit a ship theoretically then any time you don't fire you give up the chance, no matter how extreme of causing damage It's the same reason that as soon as they come in range gamers will fire every last AA and pom pom at an enemy ship. Every little bit of damage helps..

Given the limited playing time and number of turns that will be played before people go home any chance to hit has to be taken. That is the cost of playing a game rather than a simulation.

"If you CAN hit a ship theoretically then any time you don't fire you give up the chance, no matter how extreme of causing damage It's the same reason that as soon as they come in range gamers will fire every last AA and pom pom at an enemy ship. Every little bit of damage helps.."

Nice, if you have an unlimited magazine. Gunnery officers were trained to be oh so parsimonious with their limited rounds.

"Given the limited playing time and number of turns that will be played before people go home any chance to hit has to be taken. That is the cost of playing a game rather than a simulation."

In my group, we take a different tack: Don't waste valuable playing time throwing dice for Hail Mary, Golden BB shots. Its also historically accurate…

Here's a suggestion to stop gamers loosing off volleys of 15" shells at long range.
Count the number of shells each ship fires, and deduct that from any victory points at the end of the game.
If you sunk the enemy but used all your ammo to do it, you might still lose.

In its ammunition outfit, your favorite WW1 BB/BC might have about 60 rounds per gun of APC, the most suitable shell type for engaging an opposing capital ship. At typical battle ranges (14-15,000 yds) the traditional rule of thumb for rate fire was 1 round per gun per minute, hence an hour's worth of fire. In terms of 3 minute wargame turns, your APC shell outfit is exhausted in 20 game turns of firing. So one solution to speculative pot-shots at extreme range is tracking of ammunition expenditure.

An easier cure, IMO, is to limit visibility. Average North Sea visibility, for example, is only about 7 sea miles. Allowing 20,000 yds would therefore be generous and still solve the pot-shot problem.

B

Another consideration not mentioned here is a concept of "ready" ammo. Most of the ammo is in a stationary magazine somewhere, and only so much is available to the rotating turret for immediate fire. After you fire your ready ammo, you're rate of fire will go down to whatever you crew can deliver, up from a magazine, and transferred to the rotating portion of the turret.
I don't know how much ammo each turret on the Hood had available, maybe 20? So one way around preventing players from taking low percentage pot shots is to allow only 5 turns of full Rate of Fire, then halving it afterwards.

Having read this fascinating discussion, I'm inclined to just restrict ranges to what was actually considered achievable in practice. I know I could just desist from the 'Hail Mary' shots, but OSchmidt is right – if there's a chance it will be taken; especially as most naval players seem to play a lot of the time with non-naval players.

I really don't have a problem with this because, as I said before, using effective, rather than notional ranges is accepted as the norm in land games: my FN rifle might be able to chuck a bit of lead a mile or so, but I would never have hit anything beyond 300 yards (especially as I wasn't a very good shot).

What I really like is some of the imaginative mechanisms suggested though – I' m not sure they'd necessarily work, but things like reducing VPs for shots fired and reducing RoF after the ready ammunition is spent are the sort of interesting innovative ideas that help our games develop.

Cheers,

Jonesey

BJ:

Thing is, there were certain circumstances where long-range shooting *was* effective range. Consider the all the pre-war planning WRT immune zones and over-the-horizon fire, especially for the USN and IJN. This didn't happen in WWII due to the unanticipated effectiveness of aircraft, with the consequent impacts on operations. But it could have, in certain circumstances. If you were playing an Interwar campaign such as ODGW's 1937 "Sudden Storm", you would want to keep the long-range capability in your rules. Another situation would be a RN-versus-IJN "what if" campaign. For example, see the section "The Daylight Fleet Engagement" in the book "Kaigun" by Evans and Peattie.

Thus, I think one would be better off using ammo restrictions (most rule sets have this as an optional rule), and set battles within a campaign setting. That would solve the problem in a simpler, more realistic, and flexible way. If people must leave before the battle is over, record where everything was, and set up to continue in the next session. Particularly easy to do with a naval game, with its simple "terrain" and limited number of playing pieces.

Mark H.

The advantage of firing off the first salvo is not getting a hit but in observing the fall of shot to make range estimation corrections to get a straddle before you opponent does. The quicker you can get the range the quicker you'll straddle and start getting hits. However, it takes at least a few minutes once you sight the target to take enough range finder readings (about 3-5 per minute) to get range, speed and heading information to plot. Firing first gives an advantage here but only if you have good targeting information. To get hits you need to straddle and have a salvo that is small enough in length to get a hit. If the salvo is too open you'll straddle with no hits. The larger the salvo length the better chance of a straddle but lesser chance of hit because the shells are too widely separated. The factors involved are range finders, plotting methods, observation of salvos and director control to get tight salvos, Danger Space, Hitting Space and angle of descent. Once you straddle it's best to tighten up your salvos if your fire control and directors allow it. That will increase hits but you may miss a straddle if the target starts evading.

The biggest reason for missing is the range estimation error. A 5% error at 15,000 yards would put the MPI of the salvo short or long about 750 meters. If the salvo is 300 yards in length (150 yards over and under the MPI) it's a miss. At 15,000 yards with a salvo of 300 yards in length you need to estimate the range to 2% or less to straddle. If the target changes course your salvo will most likely be over or under.

I feel that reducing these aspects of naval gunnery to die rolls to determine "hits" does not really duplicate the flavor and experience of naval gunnery in small ship to ship engagements. The only games I'm familiar with that are close to simulating aspects of naval gunnery with more than just die roll modifiers are Cordite and Steel and Seas of War. Unfortunately plotting the fall of shot on the floor with a ship target that is not in scale is too difficult and danger space at long ranges will be 50-100 yards, too close to measure on the floor. There are other games that do a good job of abstraction with die roll modifiers to determine hits but don't really recreate the mechanics of naval gunnery. I'm sure people will disagree with me.

The way we try to duplicate aspects of naval gunnery, plotting salvos and determining hits in our group is to have a scaled "Salvo Plotting Board" about 12" x 12" representing 1,000 yards by 1,000 yards off the playing surface (no bending over on the floor) that you can place a salvo template over a scaled target (paper cutout or you can also use a real model in this case) with the correct orientation to the firing ship. The salvo template (we have them from 50 to 400 yards in length) automatically plots each shot in the salvo without die rolling and knowing the danger space behind the target you can determine with some measuring how many shots in the salvo will hit. The only die roll needed is to place the MPI of the salvo based on the range estimation, correction from the previous salvo and target evasion.

If you can spot the salvo you make a correction for the next one. Historically you made corrections based on your salvo length as you did not know exactly how long or short the salvo landed. So if your first salvo MPI was 800 yards short using your 300 yard length salvo the next one would be about 500 yards short, then 200 yards short (a near miss) and then a straddle. That's an average and if the target cooperates. We can do that in our game with the plotting board and take into account target course changes and evasion.

I think Seas of War gives the best representation of this by giving an option of close or open salvos and the differences and advantages/disadvantages of the British and German ranging techniques. I've only played the WWI version. Cordite and Steel does it by measuring ¼ inch increments on the floor needing correctly scaled targets which is not very playable. Of the two I like Seas of War better and it is more playable. It appears to factor in length of a straddling salvo and number of rounds with the shell angle of descent and ships danger space for the correct table to roll the dice.

The bottom line is that in reality there was an advantage to firing first at maximum long range. The reason you can't just fire off a salvo as soon as spotting is that if the salvo does not land directly in front of or behind the target you can't determine if the salvo was short or long so the information is worthless. It takes time to build up a plot of the targets speed and course to lead it correctly. Whoever gets that targeting information first gets to fire. That's what I've found from my research and reading.

Wolfhag

If it was just up to danger space to hit a ship then the Italian 15" gun would be the most accurate up to 18,000 yards as their high velocity assures a shallow impact angle. But, these guns had a large dispersion.

I agree with Wolfhag that a smart approach to naval gunnery mechanics is to first check for straddles, then only check for hits in the event that a straddle has been achieved. That is how I do it my home-grown rules and I find that it plays faster. Also, as the rules penalize straddle dice throws for (among other things) radical maneuvering by the firer and high relative motion situations between firer and target (highly converging/diverging course), more realistic maneuvering is promoted.

B

FWIW when we did WW1 North Sea naval some years ago we had:
* visibility at 12,000 yards + 2,000 yards x 2D6
* all guns limited to 10 rounds firing

The games seemed to work well. My impression of tactics is that the choice IRL was at what range to throw dice at your enemy.

In the old, old days firing was a 3% chance of a hit with +1% of every previous round of sole firing at the same target to a maxim total of 5%. Games played quickly!

You need to be careful about percentages taken from an entire battle. While a battle may have 2-5% of total rounds hit the only rounds that hit at longer ranges are the ones that straddle. If you straddle with an 8 round salvo one hit equals 12.5%. An estimate from memory of results from an 8 round salvo 400 yards in length on a WWI battleship that straddles could be 10% chance for no hits, 80% chance of one hit and 10% chance for two hits. A 300 yard straddle would decrease the chance of no hits and slightly increase the chance of one or two hits. This is why straddling in naval games is important and should be reflected in ship-ship battles. No straddle equals no hits with few exceptions. This is what makes naval gunnery unique from other games that use a to hit with die roll modifier game mechanic.

If you straddle and have been able to observe the fall of shot and have good target tracking data and the target stays on course you have an excellent chance of straddling again. Since you have the range you might even tighten up your salvos (if you can) to generate more hits. So you might have three salvos that do not straddle and then get three consecutive straddles resulting in 3-5 hits at which point the enemy should be maneuvering to get out of the straddle.

Using local turret fire control is much different as each gun should have a certain % to hit. They don't fire coordinated straddles without director control.

Mobius: I'm sure you know more about this stuff than I do but I expect the less accurate a round is the greater dispersion of the salvo MPI and inability to fire tight salvos. A gun itself may be "accurate" but if the ship has poor fire control, range finders, directors and coordination between turrets the dispersion will be too much to really take advantage of the accuracy. I think no matter how accurate the round is the smaller the angle of descent has the greater the danger space.

Danger space rapidly reduces in influence as the range (hence ToF and angle of fall) grows. Assuming a 30ft tall target, danger space -

@ AoF
03deg = 190 yards (~point blank range)
06deg = 95 yds (~short range)
12deg = 47 yds (~battle range)
24deg = 22 yds (~long range)
48deg = 9 yds (~extreme range)

B

While I too assume in my rules hitting is a subset of straddling it really isn't. That is because a straddle assumes splashes each side of a ship. If a hit is made by the longest or shortest shell there will be no splashes that outline the ship. So a three shell salvo spread only the middle shell could hit at the same time straddle, the other two would actually hit and there would be no straddle.

Engaging at extreme range was one of my bugbears with VAS (that and using a d6 for everything). one of the things I've lobbied hard for in VAS2 is a maximum engagement range. With luck and a following wind its gone in there. I agree most naval rules don't reflect the minutiae of gunnery very well – but they shouldn't have to. The palyer is taking the role of the ship's CO (and often a higher level of command). he has a gunnery officer to sort that stuff out for him, and the gunnery officer has a team that is (often) well equipped with trained personnel, range finders, RFC, etc. So nless one s going to go into details on things like rudder angles to determine course change, boiler pressures and revs to determine speed than I reckon its OK to let the gunnery system aggregate fire control and gunnery effects into something relatively simple and straightforward.

Other thoughts – ammo limits work wonders in stopping those pesky very low probability long range shots. Especially in campaigns.

DM – I understand your thinking as to the normal role of the player in a naval game, but, even in his capacity as a captain or higher level commander, his inputs would affect gunnery efficiency. At the end of the day, a commander's responsibility was to maneuver his ship(s) into the best possible position to deliver the most effective gunfire. Avoidance of radical maneuvering, heading of ship relative to wind and sea, position of own ship relative to target and sun, heading of own ship relative to line of incoming fire, and, perhaps most importantly, what sort of range rate is produced as a result of own ship heading versus target ship heading – all would materially affect gunnery performance.

Most naval rules sadly ignore these factors, which IMO is one reason why unrealistic gunnery results occur on the tabletop. Strictly my opinion, of course.

B

While I too assume in my rules hitting is a subset of straddling it really isn't. That is because a straddle assumes splashes each side of a ship. If a hit is made by the longest or shortest shell there will be no splashes that outline the ship. So a three shell salvo spread only the middle shell could hit at the same time straddle, the other two would actually hit and there would be no straddle.

I think the situation you describe is considered, in game terms (I use General Quarters), a straddle. I would think it a straddle IRL as well. I mean, if they are firing salvoes of 3-4 shells, and only one splash is observed next to the target, the assumption would be that the others were either hits or duds. I would doubt that they would assume it was off-target and correct accordingly, if only due to lack of data. So, effectively it is a straddle, and they would try to duplicate it next salvo, building on appropriate previous FC data as if splashes were observed on both sides. Trying to use common sense here…

Other thoughts – ammo limits work wonders in stopping those pesky very low probability long range shots. Especially in campaigns.

As I mentioned previously. :-)

Avoidance of radical maneuvering, heading of ship relative to wind and sea, position of own ship relative to target and sun, heading of own ship relative to line of incoming fire, and, perhaps most importantly, what sort of range rate is produced as a result of own ship heading versus target ship heading – all would materially affect gunnery performance.

Good points. This stuff could be easily added to rules (such as my house-rule-modified GQ) via die modifiers if one desired. If a single die modifier is considered too great an effect for each, then one could mandate several to obtain/avoid the die modifier.

Mark H.

Most of the better rules (GQ 3.3, Seekreig and CaS come to mind) have some of those factors in their CRTs. I know GQ1/2 doesn't (but then the rules are 35+ years old; before a whole lot of research had been done on the subject). Some of those factors would be moot by WWII (given the sophistication of the FC systems in use and the particular games combat mechanism), but some would be in play during WWI (due to the earlier, less sophisticated FC systems).

And, once again, if you want to stop the 'Hail Mary', 'Golden BB', die rolls, use an ammo rule. Or get better players…

26,000 yards. And yet, in a recent replay of Cape Spada using VaS, Young Henry achieved a hit at the same range with the 6" guns of HMAS Sydney.

You may not have a problem here: The maximum 6" range is 25,480 yards is close to this.

In Seas of War the maximum sigthing range of a size 3 (Sydney) vs size 2 ship (Bartolomeo Colleoni) would be 16,000m + 14,000m= 32,800yds. While the maximum range that straddles could be determined for size 3 firing on size 2 ships is 16,000m + 9,000m = 27,000 yds. So what young Henry has done was possible.