"Looking for rules that emphasise fleet command and control" Topic

Ahoy,
I've come back to historical naval wargames after a long pause, mainly because of the Black Seas models. The plan sez that over the course of the winter, I will to paint up two smallish fleets of, say, 9 SotL a side.
However, the Black Seas rules do not really appeal to me. I say this after reading them, I have yet to play a game. My main gripe is that, as far as I can tell, each ship will do exactly as the admiral wants it to do, without any fog-of-war, broken chain-of-command or other suchlike shenanigans.
So, what I'm looking for (in a Platonic ideal way, approximations are fine) is a rule-set that does not have to be a heavy-weight on gun mechanics; that models sailing points and resultant speeds adequately, without being a cross-indexed-tables demon of doom; and that has mechanisms for command-and-control decisions (placing orders hidden and revealing them simultaneously, grouping ships into divisions, morale, that sort of thing).
Any ideas, gentlemen?

I have a house game based upon wooden ships and iron men and SOL (an old board game). send me a private message and I'll end you a set of the rules. What I do is that if SOL are in a line of battle (follow the leader) everything is okay. If ships operate independently, they have a chance of not following the plotted order, depending upon the grade of the captain. (elite, good, average or poor). Ships do turns by "points of sailing" (16 points= 360 degrees). When independent there is a D10 die roll for changing the written. e.g. Changes are: 1 two points to port, 2,3= 1 point to port, 4,5,6,7 no change, 8,9= one point to starboard, 10= two points to starboard.

The boardgame "Flying Colors" by GMT sounds like just what you are after. Treat each hex as " inches and you are set.

There was a system in an old issue of Miniature Wargames where each admiral had a pack/box of cards with signal flags on them and each side had a sheet of what the flags meant. The admiral of each side then set out the flag cards for order changes and maneuvers, then each player had to interpret what that meant from the flags. I remember our group adding it to one of our Heart of Oak games and it was definitely an interesting experience! We abandoned it as the games were already fairly long and the flag system just made them longer. However, it was a pretty realistic attempt at command and control for the age of sail.

I'm working on just such a set at the moment (Far Distant Ships). It is well down the playtesting route and I'm hoping to have it finalised around Christmas time or not too far into New Year. Written over the last 20 years or so initially to let me get my 1/2400 models into play (and hence to work for large fleet actions), but the playtesters have been busy using 1/1200s mostly. Very much a "command and control" game with plenty of scope for the kind of issues that admirals of the day faced in terms of missed or misread signals, issues with visibility, limitations on what can actually go in a set of orders transmitted by flag (especially with pre-Popham systems). And because the focus is on C&C the combat system is not "heavy" (the players as admirals will be more concerned about keeping their fleet effective and coherent rather than worrying about how HMS Nonsuch's no.4 gun has just come adrift)

Jeff Knudsen, the War Artisan, is also interested in command problems, as distinct from ship control-which he also models well I think, and has included various mechanisms for such in his rules sets "Away, Boarders" and "Admirals" found here for free:

warartisan.com/rules

In "Away, Boarders" the model is more ship control and not fleet control, but "Admirals" is designed to model fleet control and may be what you are looking for. In any e event, as it is free it is certainly worth a look.

Dennis

Edit:<delete>

Never mind.

send me a private message and I'll end you a set of the rules.

He can't. He's not a Supporting Member.

I am still using 'Heart of Oak', the game that came with the old 80s Fantasy Games Unlimited Age of Sail RPG called 'Privateers and Gentlemen'. It is more a sailing and control game, with a relatively abstracted combat system. You have a ship with X crew factors and you have to assign crew factors to sail the ship, perform gunnery and so forth. Sounds complicated but actually is not at all. We have played games with 20-30 ships per side and apart from a bit of record keeping it flowed pretty well.

Wonderful, thank you gentlemen, that should give me some reading fodder over the coming weeks.
@David Manley, very much looking forward to your publication. That sounds like exactly the focus I had in mind.
@1986billsfan, if I could trouble you to send the files to 'letterofmarque [ätt] web.de', I'd be much obliged.

"Fire as she bears" does exactly what you've asked.

Almost every ruleset I have tried emphasized the detail of ship actions. Most of what I tried has already been mentioned above.

One that I am working with now is General-At-Sea which is purely designed for fleet actions. The few games I tried seemed to go over well. However, combat is very abstracted. It is simply a die roll on a chart, no detail on boarding, grappling, carronades, chain shot, etc…

Command is the emphasis. If you want an evening fleet game this is it. If you want more detail for flavor move on…

As for me, it seems to work but can't say it is THE ONE. However, if you want detail AND fleet control it will be quite a lengthy game. Hard to have cake and eat it too.

General-at-Sea sounds promising, too, but appears to be out of print. I'll scour the online used-book-shops to see if I can get hold of a copy.

Try "Fire as She Bears". (2nd Ed. )The rules emphasize fleet battles with command and control represented. There is a supplement with rules for signaling as well.

I believe the rules are available in PDF on Wargames Vault.

They are indeed, thank you for the pointer.