Calling All Ship Graphic Designers!

[Mercator]

Originally posted by GePap
What would nukes represent? Neither side had any weapons guaranteed to take out an enemy ship in one shot.

Well, I know nothing about the historical details, but I guess you're right.

But this gave me the idea:

Originally posted by Boco
Another subtlety that's probably beyond Civ2 is command control. Ships sailed in lines because it was a manageable formation in the age of flag communications. Here, a player will likely sail abreast to create continuous impenetrable lines. Even so, I'll bet there'll be some creative ballistics in this game. The person who solves this conundrum should earn a virtual pat on the back.

If missiles affect more squares it will be better to stay behind each other, rather than sail in close formation.

But you are indeed right. Their guarantee to sink ships is not so nice. Maybe nukes can be given by events in very limited amounts? That way they'll pose enough of a threat to make players think twice about lumping their ships together, while not unbalancing the game too much.

[Exile]

Merc is referring to the area-target effect of nukes in Civ2 to create an incentive for players to avoid tight grouping of ships.

Up for discussion; The "Line Ahead Rule"

On my reading of the material, it seems that, whether we are discussing either of the battlecruiser groups, or either of the battlefleets, the primary formation used by fleets during this era was the Line Ahead. It was a venerable formation, conceived and perfected during the Age of Sail. In the 20th century, the interrelationship between turret size & weight, engine room spaces below, and armor weight & distribution on steel battleships also tended to group turrets in such a way so that the "broadside" still presented maxium firepower on any given ship (even though this period saw considerable experimentation in turret layout). Jellicoe's fleet was steaming in several lines prior to its arrival on the scene. Everyone steamed in lines.

But how does one make this a workable rule using the Civ2 engine?

And is it even advisable? When daylight failed, the High Seas Fleet broke formation and ran. After all, Line Ahead is just a convention in naval tactics--why shackle inventive players with such unecessary constraints?

Response?

[GePap]

Another house rule? Though I see no possible way-

UNLESS:

You did make it land, made all ships land units and made the terrain such that a few lanes of movement are available for quick movement, while breaking from these lanes would incur massive movement problems, meaning that you move your capital ships on these lanes unless you want to see yourself stuck in the sea.

This would also make it more difficult to just turn at 90% angles, depending on how you set up the lanes.

[fairline]

Originally posted by Exile
I can't see any reason to change the oceanic graphic, except to eliminate the resouces. Is there something I'm missing? I can't imagine it'll have any bearing on your graphics, Gareth.

I tend to use quite dark blue for sea graphics which requires fairly light ships to contrast against it; the reverse is also true with light sea graphics. I just like to have an idea how the unit gfx look in-game before putting the finishing touches to them, so that they don't 'merge' or lose detail such as masts against the terrain.

[fairline]

Another random thought: would this work better with 4 civs/players representing Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet, Beatty and the BC Fleet, Scheer/HSF and Hipper/Aufklaerungschiffe? This would add to the confusion and the rather independant nature of Beatty's actions. Just a thought.

[Boco]

Since you're familiar with board games of yesteryear, you might want to try the old 'optional rules' idea. In the 'rule book' describe some of these 'house-rules' for the grognard. Then before the game, the opponents can agree on which ones to use.

I dug up an ancient S&T article on Dreadnoughts. Here're a few excerpts. Just remember that S&T authors occasionally overemphasized obscure facts.

The German Dreadnoughts were designed against one enemy - Great Britain. They were intended to operate only in the North Sea. The British ships were designed to operate anywhere in the world and cruise long distances....Every Dreadnought is a compromise, a tradeoff of different elements to make the best ship possible....As a result, the British found themselves emphasizing armament and speed at the expense of protection. The Germans had the opposite emphasis....German Dreadnoughts also had superior compartmentization....The British needed sizable living and refrigeration spaces for long voyages, as well as large coal bunkers for the fuel for overseas operations.

Therefore, a German Battlecruiser might have only 7% of its area below the armor deck subdivided into compartments larger than 1100 cubic yards, while a contemporary British BC would have 44% of its area in such large compartments.

...the Germans had given more thought to the problems of damage control. Unlike the RN who relied on the ship's XO and regular seamen to deal with damage, each German warship had a specially trained Damage Control Officer who commanded working parties formed especially to contain and minimize damage. They were aided in this by the large pump capacity of German warships, which helped limit flooding if they were hit.

British fire control was more highly developed than the Germans. The British had centralized fire control using coincidence rangefinders. This enabled the different turrets on the ship to be coordinated better and with less interference. The Germans used stereoscope RF's and relied on individual turrets to do their own rangefinding.... The methods of 'ranging in' on enemy ships differed as well. The RN favored the use of single spotting rounds. The Germans used their full battery and made it difficult to sustain fire soon after the range was found, but it enabled them to frequently obtain the range, straddle the target ship and start doing damage before the British had the range. To an extent, this reduced the advantage accorded the British by their larger weapons.

Both sides suffered from defective armor-piercing shells. The German shells showed poor ability to penetrate armor. The British shells penetrated armor better, but had a tendency not to explode.

The initial BC phase of Jutland opened at 16,000 yards.


If you haven't already thought of this yourself, perhaps you can simulate poor visibility by decreasing the range of your projectiles.
At a few critical stages in the battle, the wind blew gun and funnel smoke in front of the RF's of only one side. This gave a significant advantage to the opponent. During the initial BC phase, the RN was hampered. Some 3 hours later in the initial BB phase, the HSF was blinded by their own smoke. To simulate this, one sides projectiles could be slightly weakened. This scenario could end up relying a lot on CivSwap!

@Mercatore Uno. Does CivSwap have a randomize option? It'd be useful to make reduced visibility a random event.

[Boco]

Are projectiles going to be conventional air units or para air units?

[Case]

Originally posted by Exile
And is it even advisable? When daylight failed, the High Seas Fleet broke formation and ran. After all, Line Ahead is just a convention in naval tactics--why shackle inventive players with such unecessary constraints?

Response?

Jellicoe is often criticised for his reliance on flag signals and ships steaming in formation: as is often pointed out, exhurst plumes from the ships often prevented flags from being seen, and radio should have been used a lot more then it historically was (even allowing for the unreliability of radio sets at the time).

The result of Jellicoe's continual use of flags was that the RN wasn't as flexible as it should have been, and ships had to steam very close to one another. There's no reason to force players to repeat Jellicoe's mistake.

Re Nukes: if the map is large enough, you could use them to represent the major minefields both fleets had available to cover their bases.

[Case]

Originally posted by Boco
I've read that ~12-15,000 yards was considered the ideal range for engagement. Shorter ranges risked torp attacks and heavy damage. Longer ranges were usually a waste of ammunition. Exile, Case, Fairline you have any info on that?

Yep, that's about right. However, 'ideal' battles were few and far between. The typical battle in the dreadnaught age was fought at short range due to poor visibility (ie, Jutland and all the battles off Guadacanal) or at extreamly long range as the weaker/less brave side tried to run for saftey (ie, almost all of the British-Italian engagements in the Med in WW2). Most of the 'ideal' fights occured when one side had outsmarted the other and conditions were near perfect.

Case, no offense to your colleagues, but wouldn't naval history be more interesting than labor stats?

Yeah, but I get paid significantly more then I was offered at Treasury (and vastly more then I would have gotten at Defence, which I imagine is the natural home of battleship talk in the Australian Public Service).

[Boco]

The HSF's use of radio had a downside. The RN had a better idea of their location. Still the RN's radio silence was carried to ridiculous extremes, as Fairline pointed out with HMS Engadine.

[Exile]

Boco, I'm an ex-subscriber of Strategy & Tactics magazine. That's how I got the game CA. Is there any way you can send me that entire article? They may over- and under-emphasize things . . . but they sure are thorough. I sure would like to see that article.

[Boco]

Ouch, it's 15 pages and my scanner is sloooow. It'll take a few weeks days. I also found an old AH General article on Jutland that has some good info on gunnery.

Btw, with all the emphasis on spelling around here, is it Dreadnought or Dreadnaught?

*Boco after dusting off texts from classical times.

[fairline]

It's spelled dreadnought, isn't it? My spelling is appalling so I've probably used 'aught' a few times in this thread

Originally posted by Exile
Great looking units, Skip. I've seen some of your stuff around.

Yep, the German naval site is perfect for isolating ship classes, and this is the site that I actually used when doing it. I just wish there was a similarly thorough Royal Navy site.

While it's not as nicely laid out as the German site, this one lists all the classes/ships of the RN for the late 19th century - WW2. Ship type is selected right at the top of the page...

http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/battleships.htm

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Boco
@Mercatore Uno. Does CivSwap have a randomize option? It'd be useful to make reduced visibility a random event.

No, and as it is now that wouldn't be possible either.

I guess I could implement that, but I'd have to add the user notification dialog (for when to load a new savegame) to CivSwap, rather than have it depend on a text event.

A possible problem with that is also that when all the swapping gets a little too frequent, it will still get to be a little pain in the ass.

[Boco]

Another house rule?

IIRC, in the old boardgames, visibility checks weren't made so frequently to become a pain.

Okay how are you going to handle this one.

HMS New Zealand was one of the few big British ships that took part in all three major naval actions in the North Sea. In the Battle of Jutland, fought on 31 May 1916, she flew the flag of Rear-Admiral W. A. Pakenham, and her commanding officer was Captain John Green, who had succeeded Captain Halsey when the latter was promoted to flag rank.
When action was joined with Admiral Hipper's five ships, the New Zealand was fifth in the line of Beatty's six battle-cruisers. Barely twelve minutes after firing had begun, the Indefatigable, astern of the New Zealand, was hit several times in quick succession. Her magazines blew up and the ship vanished in an enormous cloud of flame and smoke, taking with her more than 1000 men. The only two survivors were picked up hours later by a German destroyer. Twenty minutes after the loss of the Indefatigable, a like disaster overwhelmed the Queen Mary. Twelve hundred and fifty-eight men died in one tragic moment, which spared only seventeen of the entire ship's company.
Throughout the battle, Captain Green wore the Maori piu-piu and greenstone tiki given to the ship by an old chieftain at Rotorua in 1913, with the injunction that they were always to be worn by the captain of the New Zealand when she was fighting. Captain Halsey had worn them in action in the Heligoland Bight and at the Dogger Bank. With the gift went a prophecy that the ship would one day be in action and be hit in three places, but her casualties would not be heavy.
At Jutland the New Zealand was hit only on her after turret and there were no casualties. The old Maori chief had been emphatic that the same officers and men would be in the ship in action, and he was right. The outbreak of war had prevented the ship paying off on her due date and many of her original ship's company were still in her at Jutland and later.
Much faith in the Maori mascots was shown by the seamen. More than a year after Jutland, on the last occasion that HMS New Zealand sighted enemy ships and went to action stations, a seaman was seen to mount the ladder to the bridge and take a quick look round. ‘It's all right. He's got them on,’ he was heard to tell his mates on the deck below, thus assuring them that the new captain was wearing the piu-piu and the tiki.

from Record of HMS New Zealand
Fairline, can you make a RN captain with one of these? Could be a vital wonder!