"Ideas for single ship WWII combat" Topic

I am refining a set of as yet unpublished (still in the home-brew phase) rules I have been working on that is meant to give the players a feeling of "fighting the ship" as they captain only 1 or 2 ships among a larger battle.

The issue here is that most Naval rule sets are of the traditional you-go-I-go variety and there's not much beyond moving and shooting. That's okay when it is one-on-one with each player controlling the tactics of a larger force, but leaves something to be desired when you are only Captaining 1 vessel out of the fleet.

To make things more interesting for the players I have been trying out various Initiative rules, as well as some resource management style allocation mechanics and adding more granularity to the effects of critical damage on the ship.

I have found that this really isn't as overwhelming as it may seam, since each player is only having to keep track of the records for one ship.

So, my question to the larger community is:

What type of mechanics would you look for in a game like this, what would make it "fun" for you? What would draw you into a game like this, make it enjoyable and keep your interest?

My personal preference would be a destroyer ,sub or convoy escort in order to re-create command on those everyday engagements. such ships would undertake a huge variety of missions and roles.

Great idea, Dameon. I'd prefer controlling a DD (or maybe even light cruiser), DE, or corvette, and would like to have granularity in Gunnery, including the AA, Damage Control and general crew placement/replacement in this type of rule.

Good Luck!

For nail-biting tenseness, a torpedo boat stalking a DD among some islands. On a very dark night…

Plotting movement. Bismarck vs Hood.

HMAS Canberra vs a cryptic German Commerce raider, and it to be an equal fight.

Maybe phases during the turn, where all movement, firing, etc. Happen during the phase. Star Fleet Battles and Mein Panzer uses a system like this, allowing each player to move,fire and react during the turn.

Italian battleship versus French Battleship.

Thank you for the responses. Now to clarify and address some of your responses:

It is not a one on one ship-vs-ship game. It is a rule set designed for mutli-player games where each player only controls one ship. The focus in on surface combat between smaller combat vessels such as Destroyers, MTBs and coastal vessels.

Even though it can include Destroyers and other vessels that did serve in an anti-submarine capacity, I have found that to do submarines "right" you really need a rule set developed specifically to represent the asymmetrical nature or submarine warfare, rather than trying to tack some sub rules onto a rule set meant for something else.

Turns are split into phases, and players move on an initiative order in each phase. This helps to deal with "crowd control" when handling so many players and keeps the pace more active for everyone.

A Commander wouldn't have finite control over their crew in combat to be able to, for example: reassign crewmen on the fly, but he could tell a damage control party what to prioritize.

I have toyed with the idea of plotting movement, and even waffled back and forth between using a Hex Grid system vs no grid. I've found that having to plot movement adds a tedious layer of bureaucracy and record keeping that can remove players from the pace of the battle.

Hiryu under aerial attack. See if your damage control can keep her from burning up.

I've always wanted to try GHQ Micronaughts one on one. Take a destroyer and multiple the number of damage boxes by 3 or 4 vs. another destroyer. A slug fest.

A decent set for one or two ships a side is a bit of a Holy Grail for me.

As I like Kriegsmarine vs RN many of these involved very small numbers, from 2 DDs a side at Cromer to the heavies at Denmark Strait.

With traditional sets the "Captain's" decisions are non-existant and the "Admiral's" decisions are limited – which way to point the ship and which ship to shoot at (yes, I know I'm exaggerating to make the point, but you get my drift).

I've been playing around with a home-brew variation of toofatlardies Chain of Command dice mechanics for the "Captain" to have command decisions. It seems to be working pretty well; ships start being able to fight normally but as damage is taken fire becomes more sporadic and tough decisions have to be made to prioritise repairs and damage control.

A nice side effect is that me and the lad actually seem to be more likely to behave historically, pulling back to sort things out rather than just blasting away. Of course, decent scenarios help – as I'm usually the KM forcing the RN player back so I can slip away is usually just as much of a victory as sinking their ships.

Oh, and detailed hit location and critical hits is no where near as clunky as some might think – we use "hit chits" drawn from a bag – it's very quick and easy and needs no paperwork.

Good luck with your project – I'll be very interested to see how you get on.

Nick

We wrote Coastal Command back in the late 1980s. It also contained a campaign system. The focus was on small ships and doats of destroyers or smaller. Though Light Cruisers were in a few scenarios.

In regards to combat mechanics, in play testing we tried several systems. It all cases we divided the boats into sections based on location and function. One system used the car wars/ battletech/ SFB of allocating hit pips to each section. So when the pips were filled by hits the section was destroyed. It worked well but was not used due to the extensive production time and costs of having to do custom ship templates for each boat type. The publisher wanted a simple single template which was modified as needed. The mechanic became a good-impaired-destroyed combat system.

If you are talking about the command of one ship. Then I would make damage control a large part of the equation. You would need several damage control teams and you would have to prioritize where they would be allocated. The more teams you send to a certain area the more chances you would be successful.

You would also need to allocate resources. How many sailors do you allocated for gunnery, medical, operations and damage control. If you don't control the fire and it gets to the paint locker then the fire could threaten the entire ship (been there done that). If it reaches the magazine, well it's curtains.

If a fire is on deck then you have to be careful how you maneuver. Go too fast and you fan the flames. Go too slow and you are even more of a target.

My issue with modern naval gaming is that it is too tedious. Plotting moves is not very fun for me. I have done dead reckoning and was taught how to navigate. It was no fun. Most players just want to just maneuver and shoot. They want to execute a strategy not spend ten turns maneuvering to get a very few shots off. A hex system would be the best way to go.

I remember the old S&T game "CA" and we played the heck out of that. It was easy and fun. Each ship was represented by a counter and all the ship info was on the counter. You could easily substitute model ships. It used a hex grid. I don't normally like the look of hexes on a miniatures game mat, but in this case, it would be the way to go.

OP back again;

Oh I like the idea of drawing chits from a bag to deal Critical damage. That eliminates having to roll on tables. The downside I see is the critical would need to be made more generic rather than specific to certain ships with different systems. Also, chits would need to be returned to the bag otherwise it's no longer a equal chance every time you draw.

I keep going back and forth with hexes. I like non-hex based rule sets, but I agree that hexes do make movement and calculating distances much easier. However, since the focus in on smaller ships (Destroyer and below) I wanted to use large models (1:350 or 1:200) with a bath-tubed scale and it's hard to make or find 7" or larger hexes…

The original Coastal Command was done for a basic game mat, no hexes. Due to numerous requests by gamers and publishers wanting to consider a board game version, we later did a revised hex system. It was not hard.

We Ben have design versions called Devil Boats and another having modified area movement which has turned out to be fun and challenging.