[belaran]

Hi all,

Unless I've somehow missed it, I did not see any kind of rules to handle "naval warfare" in a general sense (so rules to handle large boat, ie ships, interactions). I went back to 2ed and took a look of the rules about it in Cyberpirates, but I found them easy to (forward) port to 5ed but a bit scattered, which means not really addressing my questions in an organized fashion. So here are several questions for you guys:

1) Did I miss rules from 3ed or 4ed on this topic (that are worth checking out) ?

2) Is there (good) house rules "out there" I should check out ?

On top of those general questions, here is some more precise of (in game) situation, I would like to have (clear) rules for:

A) Infiltration

How does one ship "sneaks" upon an other. Let's say a Pirate ship wants to get within "close enough" range to either fire weapons maneuvers to get close enough to board. In terms of game, this means handling the "infiltration" or "sneaking upon" (for lack of a better term) above the "extreme range/spotter" from Rigger 5 (p.174). To simplify the complexity of "real" navel encounter, I will see that, until you get into such range, each ship are too far apart to be able to see each other (the good all fashion way, using eyes, not sensor).

So above this spotter range, up to the limit of 35km or 50km (mentioned in Cyberpirates), it is only about fooling sensor, including sonar. In 2ed, they created a separate attribute for sonar, but I would rather keep it simple, and stick to the rather "abstract" sensor array concept of 5ed. I would however (forward) port the rules about *cavitation* - which basically makes a ship "speeding" easier to spot, because of the amount of water it ends up moving around it. Rather than apply it as a dice penalty, I would used as a limit penalty.

Here what kind of rules this leads me too:

Pirate Ship would roll: Reaction / Pilot + Sneaking / Stealth Autosoft (- Signature Masking) - [Handling - (Cavitation)](10km)

Target Ship would oppose: Intuition / Pilot + Perception / Clearsight [Sensor]

Note that this "stealth" would be an extended test, that I've measured more in terms of distance (separating the boat) than duration.

Do you have any feedback on this ? Does it appears "fair" and "balance" ? Can you see anyway this could go "wrong" or "break" ? Is there any other modifier missing ? (except for environment, obviously smog / rain will help, and sunny and quiet water will give a penalty to the Pirates).

Note: of course, the reverse applies, the Pirate ship, if not aware of the target itinerary would need to be able to spot the target.

B) Chase

Once close enough to be in "spotter" range, I would start apply the Chase rules (the advanced one from Rigger 5), allowing some maneuvers, specific to large boats, to make it more complicated. I have still to wrap my mind around this, so any inputs on this topics is welcome.

C) Battle

OK, that is really the difficult part. Given the scale of the heavy gunnery on board of battle ship, I would simplify by giving each ship "one shot" by round. Other action, like electronic warfare ones, would be based on the rigger(s) initiative. Unless the boat are purposely "static", I guess one action by turn would also be "chase/breakaway" and (at last) a control vehicle test.

On this part too, any experience or feedback is welcome...

[Reaver]

I see you like to make your life difficult


There are some naval rules in the 4e WAR! book.... but not many.


I generally follow standard vehicle rules when running naval combat myself. The only difference is the ranges of engagment...

To give you an idea of the ranges of ships. The largest battleship ever made could fire it's main cannons accurately to a range of 30km during WW2.
That is now considered 'short' range in the era of surface to surface missiles with naval ranges of hundreds of kilometers...

(Also, frigates and cruisers are about as bug as naval ships get - next to carriers - missiles and airplanes made battleships obsolete

[belaran]

First of all, thanks for the tip about the range of canon during WW2. This is making the need for me to adapt/rehaul the current rule even more clear. In this particular instance, it's going to be two frigates and cruisers (or like) ship trying to best each other, so I don't have to make it "scale" for large aircraf carrier and missile. (o

So, anyway, yes, increasing the distance in the range table is probably a key to it, but we also need to increase the combat duration. I mean, let's assume the Pirate Boat starts at Spotter range, do one Chase/Breakaway action, makes 3 net hits, it is now at Medium Range within..... 3s.

I hope people on the boat have their hat screwed on - because, man, wind is going to blow !

So during the infiltration phase, when the Pirate boat tries to dodge radar and get closer, I'm thinking having using the Chase rule with a different Range table and lenghtier combat turn. I'm no expert but I would say something like 5 to 10 minutes by combat turn (just to make it easy, technically the speed of boats should be used, converted into km/s, and then do a lot of math, but fuck it).

So now, the question is out is the range of a ship sensor. As mentioned previoulsy, Cyberpirate mentioned that above 35km (or 50km, not sure exactly), the curve of the planet makes it litteraly impossible for the target ship to spot the pirate ship.

Did I get that right ? If so, the infiltration phase would start when the boats are at 50km apart from each other. To make nice and simple, I would therefore have the following range table:

Close	5 to 10km
Short	10 to 15km
Medium	16 to 30km
Long	31 to 45km
Extreme	46 to sensor limit (~50km)

(Starting point of 5Km is based on how far one can see at sea level)

So each turn, the Pirate boat will do a Chase action, to reduce the distance from its target, along with the infiltration test. The minute it fails the later, things will escalate, but maybe the target will send warnings, or call'em, so maybe the Pirate boat will have an extra turn to try to get closer, before it falls back to regular rounds.

Most likely, if the pirate boat is "too far away" (Medium Range or above, according to the table I just proposed) the chance of an actual boarding are slim.

Do you see this would be "close enough" to reality ? (and fair enough in terms of game) ?

Notes:

(1) For the record, i'm not trying to make my life complicated, but I'm trying to adapt the rule framework to make it a bit less abstract, and allow my players to decide and influence their action based on realism rather than game mechanics (because my players does not know well the mechanism of SR5 and will based their action on what seems probable rather than pool of dice...)

(2) Take a look at The Last Ship TV Show, if it is remotely accurate, battleship are not so obsolete

[Reaver]

Naval combat, from my understanding of it today, is all about electronic warfare.

Sensor systems, be they radar or sonar are so advanced, that you don't need to see a ship to shoot at it. A radar lock is all you need to launch a missile at the target, or lob some arty at it....

So naval warfare has evolved into a game of target locks. He who gets Lock first and longest, wins.

Boardings by small vessels can still happen because of how small their signature is... (well, small as in a cigar boat, or zodiac anything that can hold 30+ people starts getting a little big!)


If you are wanting to understand this type of conbat better, reading up on the Somali Pirates of 2006 to 2012 is a start. Those guys would attack merchant shipping off the somali coast in 8 man fishing boats!!

And get blown out of the water at a range of 4km when they got cute and launched an RPG at a British Frigate....



For what is worth, naval combat generally takes HOURS to complete when its between warships.

The battle between the Bismark and the Hood took 6 hours until the bismark landed a single hit to the Hood's deck, blowing a magazine...

So you may be better off increasing your time intervals from 3 seconds to several minutes, otherwise your not using sailing ships, your using space ships! (Typical ship speed, 30 knots. Or 36km/hr.... or 30 meters in 3 seconds...)

[Spooky]

As Reaver pointed out, naval maneuvering takes time compared to land or *gasp* aerospace maneuvering. So increasing the time of a turn makes sense. And yes, battleships are powerful, but they are also relatively obsolete now because they have a very large signature and relatively short ranged weaponry. If you get the chance, visit one of the museum battleships scattered around the country, and ask questions.

[belaran]

Granted, naval warfare is from an other era - but I still need a good comprehension - and set of rule, to implement my "pirate goes after copro boat" scene, in my game, in a way that is fair (rules wise), somewhat consistent and more importantly fun for my players

What I have more/less established by now is that there is 2 phases to this:

1) getting closer without getting seen - aka the infiltration phase, where it is all about signature masking and electronic warfare.

2) Actual battle of ships if spot - which would happens with far slower pace than the regular, 3s by round battle.

Now, here what is most likely going to happen in my game. My PCs going to try to sneak onboard, using a submarine, while the pirate boat is going to get as close as possible, while not being seen. Once the pirate boat is close enough to "make his move" or when it got spot, the "naval battle" with start. In between "naval battle" round, my PCs, hopefully on board of the target, will have group of x (regular) CT to get shit down.

I'm thinking about making that simple enough by using 10 CT in between "naval battle" round.

[Spooky]

Sounds workable to me. Let us know how it works out.