Naval Combat

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Orders and Movement

Navies in this era do not have speedy and reliable long distance communications ability. They also do not have radar and air search or even particularly powerful optical instruments (spyglasses are still low powered). Therefore in the entire 200 years between 1700 and 1900 there was exactly one sizeable naval battle that was in what would be called oceanic waters, and it involved the interception of a major convoy (the Glorious First of June).

Navies are organized into fleets and stations. Fleets can conduct defensive or offensive actions, while stations only carry out defensive actions. In peacetime all naval forces are assigned to stations.

Upon mobilization, a player organizes his forces into fleets and stations (which takes one season). Orders are given or changed on a seasonal basis.

Fighting

Each warship has an attack value. That is how many 1d6 it can roll to attack another ship. Attacks cannot be split up, so a battleships with an attack of 4 must concentrate all of its fire on one target. A 6 on a 1d6 is a major hit, resulting in the enemy target losing 1 point of defense (until repaired). If it is reduced to 0, the ship cannot move or shoot and is abandoned and sinks (a lot of the crew will live). If a single attack reduces it to below 0 (say a battleship with 4 dice gets 4 hits on a 1 defense cruiser for example or two battleships attack and hit the same enemy battleship), the ship is a catastrophic loss and has neglible survivors.

In addition, if a 6 results in a hit, the referee rolls again. A second 6 means that the target has taken a catastrophic hit immediately and is utterly destroyed (think magazine hit).

A ship that takes more than half damage has its speed and attack value reduced by -1 for each hit taken at the 50% mark or more.

Missions
Naval forces can conduct the following missions:

Patrol (station or fleet)- the squadrons assigned patrol a sea area and defend shipping from enemy naval forces and pirates.

escort (fleet only)- squadrons are assigned to escort a major convoy of Flota, Transports or merchant flotillas from point A to point B and then return.

make passage (fleet only)- squadrons pass through a sea area en route to another to conduct a mission but are subject to interception

blockade (fleet or station) - squadrons are assigned to blockade a specific section of coast or port.

Evade- (fleet only) - squadrons seek to evade the enemy in order to return to base, make passage, or move to another sea area to conduct a mission. These squadrons are subject to interception

Fleet in being (Station or Fleet)- squadrons remain in port, and can intercept enemies moving through an area if they so choose.

Seek Battle (Fleet only)- A fleet is ordered to find and engage and (hopefully) destroy an enemy fleet wherever it goes.

merchant flotas, flotillas and fishing fleets can only make passage.

Special note: Blockade
A blockade is usually conducted by several frigates and brigs, which remain on station, while a supporting fleet of battleships remains nearby ready to react should a fleet attempt to carry out any mission against the blockading squadron or squadrons or in the sea area it is patrolling. It is always assumed that barring orders to the contrary, that a fleet that is blockaded waits until bad weather or night to attempt to break out.

Naval Geography
For game purposes sea zones are referred to as either 'open sea' or 'coastal waters' and will be so listed.

Sea Lane Wars
You do not have to list the location in every sea zone your merchant traffic is transiting. For simplicity, you can say something like this

Sea Lane between North America and the British Isles
x number of merchant flotillas
x number of a,b,c warship types escorting those flotillas

same with commerce raiding
X number of a,b,c type warships to intercept shipping between North America and the British Isles.

Naval and merchant shipping automatically successfully evades interception in open sea. In coastal waters, naval and merchant units can attempt to evade, and have a 25% chance of doing so and making passage out of the sea zone. The oceans are really big after all

Interception
Naval forces can intercept any naval or merchant shipping that enters a sea zone if based in a port that borders the sea zone, or has been given the mission of 'patrol', 'blockade' or 'seek battle' in that sea zone.

Naming
Departments and Fleets are not known as the "First Fleet" in this era. They are either given the name of the commander (Nelsons fleet) or of the
area they are responsible for (West Indies Station or Channel Fleet)

For ship names, feel free to use historical names of any era, names from pop culture, or whatever else sounds reasonable. I am fairly flexible, but if a name irritates the hell out of me, that will be the ship whose number comes up when a random ship loss occurs.

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Special Rules
fireships- navies may choose to attack ports and harbors that have shipping and warships in them using fireships. Several ships is stripped of crew, loaded with combustibles, powder, and given a minimum crew, and sent into a harbor. It is the special operations attack of the day, and generally rarely works. But when it does.. its spectacular.

Chances of success are 1 in 6 for each unit used up this way, which is destroyed no matter what. Tactical surprise is required, (which is the success roll), otherwise boarding parties from the defenders row up in boats and secure the ships and steer them somewhere harmless.

A success allows a fireship unit to destroy a random enemy warship or warship unit.

Great Captains- although some of the monarchs of the day loved their navy, none of them commanded in battle. However some of the most brilliant admirals who ever commanded a fleet served during this era. Great Captains at sea improve the chance of tactical surprise, provide a bonus to combat, and also improve the chance of spotting the enemy (having an instinct for where the enemy will likely be). They are also prone to die in battle (Nelson).

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Attrition
As it turns out, through research, determined that ship losses to fire, running aground, storms, rot, or just disappearing forever were pretty serious.

Therefore
Each year, remove 2% of your fleet in each category. You can choose whatever manner you like to do so (random or just because you don't like the name of a ship or what have you)

If you have a result that is less than 1 ship lost, then however many years it takes to get at least a 1 can be used. So if you have 50 ships, 1 a year is reasonable, but if you have 49, well then it takes 2 years. As some ships are grouped into squadrons, you can wait until you have lost enough ships to make up a squadron to remove the unit

I will periodically spot check

Those who abuse this may see a major hurricane catch their fleet at sea and reduce their fleet size appropriately

Fortress vs warships
A fortress has a combat value of 30 (meaning, it can take 30 hits before it is destroyed), and has 2 guaranteed hits each turn. It gets to fight every round until eliminated or the enemy withdraws. It is hard to reduce a fortress by sea attack. Note it is also pretty hard to batter into submission as it would take a large number of ships hammering at it to knock it down, while those ships are being hammered in return.

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Rule Changes Effective 1715

Note: Some of these were in the old Naval Units thread, I feel they're more appropriate here. I have also upped the defensive values of fortresses vs. naval units to address the preponderance of naval attacks we had in the last war.

Captured vessels
Warships in this day and age do not fight to the death as a normal rule of thumb. Once sufficient damage has been inflicted and the ship is helpless, it will surrender. 30% of the time the damage will be too great and it will sink anyway, while another 10% of the time too much damage will be inflicted at once and the ship will burn or explode (rare, but catastrophic when it occurs). During combat, units accumulate damage and if their damage rating is met or exceeded they strike their colors and surrender (thus the term "strike" is used). A die roll is made to see if they are salvageable, and if so, they are then taken to the nearest friendly base by the victor and can be repaired and added to his navy. The victors also make a fortune when this occurs, but this has no game effect other than sometimes coloring the actions of your admirals who may chase prize money instead of acting strategically on many occasions.

It is entirely possible for your entire peacetime merchant marine to be lost while you are adding enemy captures to your own over the course of a war and thus end up with more ships than you started with.

Adding a captured warship to your fleet requires paying its maintenance cost, and takes one season. For game purposes it goes to one of your yards and sits there until the winter turn, when you allocate money to fix and crew it and it becomes available during the spring turn.

Laying up ships

This was common practice, but limited to Frigates and above (BB1s and BB2s), as the lighter ships simply rot away too quickly to make it worth while and are cheap to build.

Ships laid up have 10% maintenance cost. To activate costs double maintenance for that year, plus another 50% for every 10 years they are laid up. Maximum length a ship can be laid up is 20 years for FF1s, 50 years for BB1s and BB2s

It takes 1 season to make them operational, 2 seasons if laid up more than 10 years, and 1 year if laid up longer than that. This includes repairs and crewing them.

This counts as new construction for purposes of naval yards and naval factories (so limits apply, there are only so many slips available)


Communications:

I will assume every colonial nation has a communications infrastructure in place to its various colonies.

From Europe
2 week Europe to North Africa (or Constantinople to its European and Middle Eastern territories) or one European capital to another in a neighboring state
3 weeks Moscow or Constantinople to outlying territories (such as Persia, Caucasus region)
or a European capital like Paris to somewhere like Warsaw or Constantinople
5 weeks to North America (including sending the courier to the port to take his dispatches across the sea)
5 weeks to the Caribbean
7 weeks to Brazil/Mexico/New Orleans or New Orleans to distant places like St Louis or Quebec to Chicago
10 weeks to South Africa or Buenos Aires
12 weeks to Peru/Chile
14 weeks to India or California/New Mexico
18 weeks to the Philippines/Dutch East Indies or Moscow to places like Omsk

Transports

Transport rules are now simplified. During wartime, you can transport units across the sea at a rate of 2 brigades per 1 commercial flotilla for a cost of 1. Instead of having to keep track of which flotilla you have in and out of service, just say which battlefleet it is being escorted by as it travels from point A to B (or none, if you want to risk it) and allocate that money in the budget.

Additionally, if you want to try to get away with transport on the cheap, you can transport light infantry regiments over normal naval vessels at a rate of 3,000 sailors per 1 regiment (so 3 BB1st, 4 BB2s, etc). This effectively acts as an extra contingent of marines on your ships, but could make the units extra susceptible to attrition on longer voyages--cramped conditions, low supplies of whatever stops you from getting scurvy, etc.

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