Basically, what all of this is about is a bloodsport where opposing teams of warships try to shoot the shit out of each other. The anime 'Haifuri' gave me the initial idea, while Ghazkull's Tankery game, based off the anime Girls und Panzer, furthered that idea.
Each team or school has one capital ship. It is generally recommended to make this your heaviest vessel, but it is permissible to designate a small, fast, hard-to-hit destroyer as your capital ship.
Victorious teams get 10000 points after each match and are then able to move on to the next round. Losing teams get 15000 points and are eliminated from the season. At the end of each season, the winner gets a 50000 Point prize to buy himself stuff. However, in season 2 and onward, there will begin to be limitations, which means that the champion will not have too large of an advantage. The champion gets himself a BYE for the first match of the season.
Each of you starts with 2000 points that you can invest in ships. Later on, you can also invest points into the crew, crew training facilities and upgrades. For now, though, I will generate crews to man the ships.
Available are only ships from prior to and including World War 2. Initially, you will have relatively few options to choose from... That's still around ten or so ships per nation. As the game progresses more and more ships become available for exceedingly prohibitive costs.
When you submit your sheet, I will roll a number of die. Each dice will correspond to a complement of the crew, navigation, command, engineering, weapons, etc. This represents the average skill of that complement as a whole. For simplicity, the size of a complement is (Number of necessary complements)/(total crew size)
If a complement is effected by a shot, I will roll 1d6 to determine how many are killed or permanently injured. After the round, you must pay to refill the crew with fresh people, then the skill of the complement is averaged out. For example, if a skill 4 complement loses half, after the battle, the player pays to replenish the crew (it's relatively cheap) and the average is lowered by half to skill 2.
The following list is going to be expanded. An asterisk (*) indicates that not all ships have this complement.
Command: By far the most important. If this is knocked out, the crew will not be able to do their jobs properly. A dead command center will force the ship to fly a white flag and retreat.
Artillery: Determines how accurate primary gunfire are.
Artillery (s): Determines how accurate secondary gunfire is
*Torpedo: Determines how on-target torpedoes are.
*AntiAir: Determines how accurate machine-guns and autocannon are against scout planes
Navigation: Determines chance of evading shots and torpedoes and determines the chance of running aground.
Engineering: Determines how quickly and easily engine failures are. Also determines fix speed of critical components.
[more]
Catering/supply/other complements are put into 'spare hands' which will attempt to fill a position in the heat of battle and repel boarding.
In addition, crews can be trained in ship-boarding action and counter-boarding action. Generally, a crew at AA emplacements and spare hands will attempt to repel boarders. If those fail, then navigation and engineering attempt to fight boarders, fire and moving forgotten, the ship stuck at one speed. If that fails Command, Artillery and any other crews roll for morale and either surrender or attempt to fight the boarders. If they then die or surrender, the ship is considered under the control of the boarders and will be able to transfer crews across ships.
Unless both players agree otherwise beforehand, taken ships become the property of the team which took control of them. They can be sold back (at a lower-than-store price) if the captor agrees or kept. Kept ships benefit from traditions and do not count towards gaining them.
While an Umikaze has no hope of out-gunning a Yamato, an Umikaze can deny the Yamato access to an area with its torpedoes and mines.
Name of Ship:
Price:
Speed:
Acceleration: +-x per turn - how quickly the ship can change it's speed.
Armor {
Hull:
Deck:
Citadel:
Extremities:
}
Main Armament:
Secondary Armament: Guns which are (usually) manually aimed and fired by a crew.
Tertiary Armament: Machine-guns or autocannon for shooting at aircraft and boarding parties.
Special Quirks: Anything unique about the ship. It may have regular engine failures, for example. Quirks can be either good or bad.
A ship with a top speed of 35 knots/hour can move up to 4 hexes per turn with a fully functioning crew. If the engine crew has left their post, the ship MUST move the same number of hexes as last turn, and if Command has left their post then the ship MUST continue in a straight line.
There are a few types of waters. Deep waters or Ocean Waters are the most common. Then there are shallow waters where the speed of a ship is halved. Debris-filled waters or rock formations quarter the movement speed and can cause serious damage. In deep waters, a destroyed vessel is sunk and must be recovered at a price. In shallow waters, the cost of recovery is halved. If a ship is run aground then there is no recovery price. If sunk in debris-filled waters (where other ships have sunk or rocks, etc, are located) then the cost is doubled.
Mobility represents how far (in degrees) the ship can rotate in one turn. It is also a stat which changes constantly. The formula for mobility is ((current speed)^2)/(2*pi) and then further divided by ship type. For a destroyer, that number is 1. For a cruiser, it is 1.5. For a battleship, it is 3. A stationary ship cannot turn. The Umikaze, for example, has top speed of 33 (but can go slower). The Unikaze can turn ((33^2)/2pi)/1 = ~173 degrees at full speed and that is rounded so that the ship is facing either a point or edge of the hex it is in.
Mobility is also used to evade shells and torpedoes. To evade a torpedo you can choose not to travel into the path in the first place or you can roll (1d(mobility))/50. If the result is above 1, the torpedo is evaded (you can sometimes roll multiple times for multiple torpedoes) Below that, and it hits somewhere vs the waterline armor belt.
Range is set at 1km per hex. Obviously, that's not accurate since apparently destroyers can move 3-4 hexes per turn, but for range, it's balanced for gameplay.
Two adjoining hexes are considered point-blank range. One hex between two ships means that the two ships are 2km apart. 3 hex separating them means 4 km. And so on.
Range is set at point/close/medium/far with 1/3/5/9+ kilometers.
We're getting serious now. Now there's a lot of rules since its the main part of the game. This part will only go around the mechanics of shooting, hitting stuff, injuries and ship damage
Let's say that our Nagato class battleship sees an enemy Umikaze at long range. Our artillery crew is skill 4. It sees the Unikaze is heading west at full speed so fires 3 hexes in tfront of it.
First, we determine how good our artillery crew does this turn: roll 1d6+ Collective gunnery skill.
Then we determine how hard the shot is: 1d6+Factors
Factors making a shot harder:
Point range: default +0
Close Range: +1
Medium Range: +2
Far Range: +3
Target moving: +2
(that's all I can think of at the moment)
Factors making a shot easier:
Ship grounded for stability: +2
(all i can think of at the moment)
If the 1d6+skill is higher than the shot difficulty result than the shot hits IF the ship moved there that turn. At point range, hitting is done before any movement, so the player just declares the ship as a target. At close range, a ship may move a maximum of (normal movement limit/3). At medium range. it is (normal movement limit/2) and at long range the full movement is possible before the shot hits. This is leading the target.
Let's say that our Nagato passed the roll-to-hit test. We have eight guns which can hit at that range, HOWEVER, to be able to aim all four dual cannons at the enemy ship we need to angle ourselves so we can hit with a broadside. If we have it move broadside (predictably, possible into enemy torpedoes), we roll it eight times. If we keep going straight at the ship, we can only fire the two frontal turrets, so we would only roll four times, so long as the ship has actually moved into the declared hex.
Now we determine hit location with a 1d10: Crews located in these areas are in (brackets)
1-2: Tertiary armament (*AntiAir, Spare hands)
3: Deck (spare hands)
4-5: Armament (coin toss between main and secondary)
6: Engine (Engineering) (Deck armor)
7-8: Citadel (Command, Artillery, Navigation, Medical, *Torpedo)
9: Fuel Tank (Citadel armor + deck armor)
10: Ammunition Magazine (Citadel armor + deck armor)
We then compare the shell's caliber with the armor thickness. Our Nagato has 410mm guns vs the Umikaze's 6mm armor. It's a no-brainer that this is going to hurt for it. (NOTE because of the huge difference in numbers, this is automatically critical hits for all shots which hit.)
However, if there wasn't such a large difference, you roll 1d6 for damage severity.
Skip this part if your gun is at least 10 times as large as the armor value
now we determine damage: 1d6+ (Gun diameter/Target armor rounded)
Result: 1-4 Glance Shot, nothing happens
5-9 Hit Damage Happens
10+ Critical Hit, bad things happen
Tertiary armament
1 - Nothing
2 - The gun is jammed (easy +1 engineering roll to fix)
3 - The gun is broken +2 engineering roll to fix)
4 - The gun is ripped off (No recovery)
5 - The gun is blown clean off, the gunner is dead
6 - The gun is blown off and the crew on it are dead.
Deck:
1- Nothing
2- Small deck fire (easy engineering test, can kill Spare hands)
3- Large deck fire (normal engineering test, can kill Spare hands)
4-6 Catastrophic deck fire (hard engineering test, spare hands will roll for morale and throw themselves overboard)
Armament:
1 - Nothing
2 - The gun is jammed (easy +1 engineering roll to fix)
3 - The gun is broken +2 engineering roll to fix)
4-6 - The gun is ripped off (No recovery)
Engine:
1 - Nothing
2 - Engine stuck (cannot change speed, easy engineering test)
3 - Engine broken (ship stops until fixed, normal test)
4 - Engine broken + fuel leak (Ship stops. normal engineering test + easy engineering test
5 - Engine fire (Ship stops. hard engineering fix, roll for damage to engineering complement)
6 - Engine explosion (Engineering complement all die, ship is stuck.
Citadel:
1 - Nothing
2 - Equipment damaged (easy engineering test, -1 to primary artillery and torpedo rolls)
3 - Equipment broken (Normal engineering test, -3 to artillery and torpedo rolls)
4-5 - Bridge hit (roll for Command, Artillery, Navigation, Medical crew deaths)
6 - Bridge annihilated (Command, Artillery, Navigation and Medical all dead, ship flies white flag.)
Fuel:
1 - nothing
2 - Fuel leak (can be fixed with an easy engineering test)
3 - Large fuel leak (can be fixed with an engineering test)
4 - The fuel tank bursts (needs several difficult engineering tests to fix, should the ship be hit it will burst into flames...see engine fire)
5 - Ship explosion (crew gets to roll field medicine tests to escape, otherwise they die)
6 - Catastrophic explosion (Ship explodes everyone instantly dies)
Ammunitions:
1- nothing
2-4- Catastrophic fire (see Engine Fire)
5-6- Cataclysmic Explosion (ship explodes everyone dies)
Injuries
Every time a crew gets injured, make an injury roll: 1d6
result/6 = amount out of dead (does not stack; two rolls of 3/6 will kill the whole crew, two rolls of 1/6 will kill 2/6 of the total complement)
For failed fires, roll again.
Basically what's on the tin, ONCE per turn, Navigation can use this on one of two occasions: either directly when being shot at or if the ship suffers critical damage.
In the first Case, when the ship is being shot at, you have to declare evasive manoeuvres before we resolve whether the ship is hit, in which case the shooting ship's artillery crew has to not only test against the normal shot difficulties but also half of the enemy Navigation's skill (to a minimum of 1, rounded up), if the shot is unsuccessful continue as normal.
If you fail, the ship capsizes, and the crew has to take a collective light death roll (1d6-3 to a minimum of 1) which simulates getting to the lifeboats. This even holds true if the shot normally couldn't penetrate!
As our ships become more and more advanced, the lower tiers seem less and less interesting: their cannons cannot penetrate anymore and their armor is too thin to withstand even a single shot.
Well, no more. Another new Drivers Skill: Cozying up is being introduced. It brings some parity between the super ships and the little ones. Stolen from Ghaz's Tankery thread, it basically is the attempt of Navigation to bring a smaller ship close enough that the other ship cannot fire upon it anymore, while the little ship still can.
It's an opposed Navigation skill test, which, if successful for the attacking ship, renders it invulnerable to the cozied-up ship, if it is failed the other ship gets a free shot at the citadel with secondary armaments.
If two ships with the Cozy Up trait are next to each other, they can both continue firing or use the skill to hit the citadel of the other.
Warning this is not available for all ships but only for ships with that trait. A point to note is that this makes torpedoes ineffective.
Torpedos travel much slower than shells and must travel at least two full hexes (3km) and travels 3 hexes per turn. This means no torpedo can hit a ship the turn it was fired. The damage/penetration from a torpedo is the diameter of the torpedo.