"graduating from GQ II?" Topic

Hi all

I last played a naval war game 35 years ago, at which time I enjoyed WW1 and the General Quarters rules.

They were pretty good and if I were to get back into this I'd happily go back to them. There must be new sets by now, so what do others now use and like? Who has moved on from GQ having liked that set to something you think is better?

GQ2 still seems to be pretty popular – I still use it for WW1 though I'm happy to try other sets

And welcome back!

Nick

For WWI naval actions, I vacillate between GQ2 and FAI ("Fleet Action Imminent", the WWI version of GQ3). With a few modifications and experienced naval gamers, I find FAI a great game, but with all the effort I put into GQ2 it still plays faster, and especially so with new players and in huge games. I will probably use GQ2 to refight Jutland a few times next year.

Until GQ3 came out, I hadn't seen any real improvements in the WWI naval gaming experience I got from GQ2. There are plenty of games around, but they either leave out things I consider important, use mechanics I don't like, or are simply more complicated and slower.

- Ix

Interesting, thanks.

One thing that always slightly puzzled me about GQ2 was the offensive value of a gun. Eg a British 12" shell weighed 850lbs and has an AF of 2.25 per gun. A 15" shell weighed 1,950lbs so logically you'd expect it to have an AF of 2.25 x (1950/850) = 5.2, but the given value is in fact 4. Am I missing something? The rate of fire was surely much the same, or was it?

From what I understand, the shell calculations are not straight line. So the differences you noted are not out of line. Also keep in mind, those calculations are 30+ years old and much of the data we have now was not available back then. That said, the game results are generally consistent with historical combat results.

I believe the 12" guns were faster firing than the 15".

What coastal2 and rmaker said.

Results of shell hits are non-linear. It's nowhere near as simple as "weight=power". In addition to caliber, shell weight, muzzle velocity, aerodynamic efficiency, bursting charge, tip type, rate of fire, and many other gun/shell design characteristics, one must also consider the differing armor schemes and structural details of each target. GQ2 summarizes all of it with a letter code and a few numbers.

I chuckle every time I read a WWI fleet synopsis that mentions the "weight of broadside" each ship/squadron/fleet could fire. That is so 19th century! I suspect such statements were just Royal Navy PR in terms the public could absorb, but engineers knew the reality was considerably more complicated. Hopefully the naval professionals did, too. :-)

If you want high levels of detail, look at games like Seekrieg or Fear God and Dread Nought.

- Ix

Thanks all, that makes sense. I did experiment with giving ships with eight 15-inch guns a fire factor of 41, but it definitely unbalanced the game. You tended to let them do all the shooting since they could usually defeat the High Seas Fleet unassisted.

To balance this I altered the German values from 2,500 tonnes of displacement = 1 hull point to 2,000 points. At this point I noticed I had done two things to achieve nothing.

Has anyone ever come up with / used alternative stats for the two different types of 13.5-inch gun?

GQ II is still a good set. My new go to rules are Decision games Battlestations Battlestatioins. If you want large battles in a reasonable amount of time they are what you want. They are a WWII ruleset.

I second FAI. It's a much more detailed game than the previous version, but not muCh more complicated, at all. Excellent rules IMHO

I agree with the praise for GQ3/FAI but for really big Jutland size games, GQ2 is still probably ideal if you want a faster game.

I so wish Battle Stations/Battle Stations would do a WW1 variant although I could probably cobble together one if I wasn't lazy.

All good, but does anybody know where you can GET GQ2 (in the UK)?

Go for GQ3 it is so much better and not much more complicated.
In gq 2 those turrets without positions on ship… Come on.
You already have 75% of the system known.

They have the sister rule for ww1.

With you their regarding "Battlestations! Battlestations!" Mac – they're an excellent set.

I use them for WW2 and I'd love to see a supplement for WW1. If anything the design philosophy chimes better with WW1 – I think it could handle Dogger Bank easily as a fun two player game over an evening.

Nick

And sorry Colkitto – no idea. My dog-eared copy is about 30 years old!

I so wish Battle Stations/Battle Stations would do a WW1 variant although I could probably cobble together one if I wasn't lazy.

I told the author this while we were playtesting BSBS, but as I understand it he pretty much lost ownership of the rules on the way to publishing and won't be involved with them again.

I've often thought the system would work fine for WWI as printed if it just had stats for WWI ships/guns/torps, but like you, I'm too lazy to do all that work. :-)

- Ix

Has anyone ever come up with / used alternative stats for the two different types of 13.5-inch gun?

I'm assuming you mean the 13.5 MV and 13.5 MkVI. In game terms, there really isn't enough difference to justify two different values.

As to GQ2 availability: The only publisher is Navwar and I haven't seen it available on their site for a long time. My understanding is they're sold out on the current print run and have no intentions of doing a reprint. Your only source would be second hand market (ebay, etc).

I told the author this while we were playtesting BSBS, but as I understand it he pretty much lost ownership of the rules on the way to publishing and won't be involved with them again.

That's my understanding, too. And the publisher (being a complete idiot) has completely abandoned the rules and has provided zero support. Pity, too, since the rules were rather good. One point in favor for FAI; ODGW actively supports both GQ3.3 and FAI. And both are still in print. As they say in sports, the best ability is availability…

In BSBS! are there any calculation/formulae available for the weapons, or is it a case of having to back-engineer from the WW2 stats?

As to GQ2 availability: The only publisher is Navwar and I haven't seen it available on their site for a long time. My understanding is they're sold out on the current print run and have no intentions of doing a reprint. Your only source would be second hand market (ebay, etc).

He told me recently that he was considering reprinting them, but was concerned that he couldn't hold the circa 5 pound price point. I told him that even at 10 pounds they would probably sell, given the price of the competition. To put my money where my mouth is, I recently ordered 4 copies of GQ1.

Mark H.

I always thought working backwards using the Brit 15" and US & IJN 14" guns could let you get the relative strengths for WW1 close enough although the SMS 11' and 12" might be a challenge.

I wish GQ1 and GQ2 would get moved into a print-on-demand service like Lulu or Wargamevault. Such services nicely solve the problem of providing new copies to a trickle of customers too small to make a print run economically feasible. Nobody is going to make a killing on selling these rules, and it's just bad for the hobby to deny games to people who want them because an outdated economic model can't be forced to work.

- Ix

coastal2 wrote:

I'm assuming you mean the 13.5 MV and 13.5 MkVI. In game terms, there really isn't enough difference to justify two different values.

Probably not.

Wikipedia (yeah, I know!) says that the "light" 13.5-inch fired a 1,250lb shell, and the heavy fired a 1,400lb shell.

GQ2 assigns each British 12-inch gun a factor of 2.25. Grossing up from the 12-inch gun's 850lb shell, this would give the light 13.5-inch a factor of 3.3 and the heavy a factor of 3.7.

Neither of these is the value (2.9 per 13.5-inch) GQ is using. I was really just musing on whether the difference was large enough to be worthy of modelling, given that there are 8 or 10 such guns per ship.

It has just occurred to me that maybe the reason GQ uses 2.9 rather than 3.3 or 3.7 is to reflect the dud rate?

I do have a copy of GQ2 somewhere, but infuriatingly I can't find it. I'd pay £10.00 GBP for another one, for sure, if that was the price.

Tony (Navwar) has on and off threatened to do a reprint for years. Considering that Tony has been consolidating his operation for some time, I wouldn't hold my breath on another print run of GQ2 (plus he'd need the go ahead from the copyright holder). And at $15 USD a pop, the ex-retailer in me tells me that's a loser price point. The small demand at that price wouldn't justify it.

As for print-on-demand, that'll never happen. The author is foursquare against that.

A pity because I need a copy of GQ2 now, and of rule sets I've played, I think GQ is the one to which I made the fewest amendments. I added additional fire factors for German battleships' tertiary batteries, but that was about it. I never felt the need for a major rewrite, just used it out of the box.

The only thing I might change is to make hull damage less even. Instead of a ship's hull boxes being 10/8/6/4/2, I'd make them 10/9/8/3/1, or something, reflecting the way ships could stand up to quite a bit of punishment then abruptly find themselves in acute trouble.

You should try out FAI. It works pretty well right out of the box and covers more aspects of naval warfare than you even knew existed. The GQ3/FAI system takes a very different approach to gunnery and damage than the old GQ1 or 2 rules

I usually have pages of house rules for the games I play, but I've only made 3 modifications to FAI:

1. No plotting (I just use igo/ugo like the old GQ rules)
2. ranges changed to 500yd/inch, movement left at 1 cm/knot (fixes "half speed" written into the rules)
3. torpedo rules

As I explained above, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to deal with torpedoes in FAI/GQ3, because I really don't like the book rules, but lots of people like them just fine. You might as well.

By contrast, I made a lot of changes to GQ2.

- Ix

That ODGW website is epically bad. I have absolutely no idea where on it to go to buy these FAI rules.

Looks like it's Battlestations then…

I don't like the ODGW site much either, but you have to give the owners a little leeway for being miniatures gamers first, web designers second (or maybe third, or ninth, or seven-hundred-and-twenty-eighth). It looks like if you go to odgw.com, you can click the Buy Now button under the picture of General Quarters 3, which will take you to a page where you can select which GQ3 product to buy (including FAI).

If that's too hard, it looks like you can also buy FAI from Scale Creep Miniatures.

- Ix

If you're looking for the printed version in the UK, Caliver carries it as well.

link

Thanks folks – it was a mystery finding the right link on a 'phone but slightly easier on a proper screen.