Perfidious Albion? Dystopian wars???

[YPU]

The title says it all really,

I'm not sure how I found out about the perfidious Albion rules, but the way ships are constructed and the little rules tidbits around it (the way you have to trace ammo supply through a ship for example) are just right up my alley.

I adore the designs of pre-dreadnought ships, but I don't own any models... I do have a decent pile of early Dystopian wars ships though, so that does provide me with an extra silly option.

For example the dingy little Uwatsu class Frigate



Can be fitted into the system with just a little bit of fiddling




Dystopian wars claimed a model scale of 1/1200. The doors and windows on the figures could be said to dispute this (let alone the visible rivets!) but it gives me a place to start. measuring the model and using that as length and beam to decide on the vehicle size in the system.

This also reveals a potential problem with this idea. The Uwatsu is the size of a torpedo boat, but it actually looks fairly armoured. That I can ignore I suppose, torpedo boat hulls can look quite tough and not count as armour in this system.
Weaponry wise however it caries the broadside worth of a scout cruiser, and a pair of advanced high-velocity guns in a top turret to boot! I expect games with this will become quite lethal. If I find it too much, I may end up adding that armour back in.

Now I'm curious if the esteemed membership of this forum with their refined taste may actually have tried this themselves already? I'd love to hear about it.


Even if you haven't, but have experience with Perfidious Albions ruleset there are a couple of things I could use some assistance on from more weathered captains. I know the ruleset has gone through years of updates, the current version being 9.0. There were rules for aircraft, airships and submarines, but those were taken out out at some point. These can be found in the free rules suplement on the A&Agames website,  but only in part sadly. I may try bothering them directly for answers if nothing pops out, but I figured I'd ask here first.

-The Victorian fantasy scenarios pdf has submarine rules, but only one sub (the red october ;p) without any construction rules. Did those ever exist for subs?

-The Air War supplement allows the building of airships and  fliers, it covers 2 types of gass and rotor lift even! There are some limitations I'm encountering though. Airships can only mount quickfire guns and MGs with no simple solution for adding bigger gun turrets? Were there ever more involved rules for this, when the airships were still integrated into the main rules?

-There is a system for airships capable of recovering aircraft (using a sky hook) which is easy enough to convert into the silly flying aircraft carriers of dystopian wars.
But Dystopian wars also has normal wet ship aircraft cariers, and for some reason I own 3 of them. From my first reading, there is no simple way to convert the carrying systems from the airships over to the boats, which can by default only be equiped with floatplanes (which are very cool)

-Aircraft come in squadrons of 3-6 on a square base, which is perfect since dystopian wars offers that already (though I'll probably end up 3d printing flying versions) there is mention of an aircraft record sheet, but none provided. Did that ever exist?

-the "empire of the sun" ships often have rocket batteries. I know they werent common in the real world, but naval rocket artillery was a thing to some level, are there any older rules or home rules that would suit these? Worst case scenario I use them as "quickfire" batteries and be done with it.

ps. I must admit I haven't gotten round to the "Fighting Fleets" book with 200 ship samples, I believe this does not include any submarines either though it does have some zeppelins.

[YPU]

I did play around with the stats and sheets for a couple more ships to get a feel for it, I figured I'd put them in their own post though.





The Britannia frigates I have, their silly wide tumblehome gives them more depth than most light boats. Also full long range beam torpedo tubes in triple broadside. Thats one way to do a "torpedo boat"







Moving to a more "baseline" cruiser, though again all broadside no turrets here, also narrow enough to still not get that depth 6 layer. As mentioned, rocket batteries done as quickfire guns for now until I find a better alternative.



And finally, I wanted to stretch some limits.





This thing is wider than most cruisers are long!

It also goes over the absolute maximum displacement allowed by the system by a good 50% though its length roughly still fits with the conversion of "real world" length to game chart.
6 tripple turrets, four double sub turrets and a pile of torpedos for good measure.
Not sure Majesty is the name I'd use, but sure. It can be quiped with "shield generators" in Dystopian wars, luckily my second-hand models did not them them glued down.
(they are glued on the cruisers, need to think what I want to do with that...)

[YPU]

And because I can't help myself, I tried doing the britannia Doncaster class bomber. Which really, is one of the middle-sized airships for dystopian wars.



I think we've reached the point where Dystopian wars really breaks the bank. The aircraft is pretty much a flying ship, wood-clad deck and all. I've tried to be relatively conservative with the choice of equipment but obviously, the "sturginium" or whatever handwavium was used in Dystipian wars to explain giant airships working does not translate over amazingly to this system.
The system does allow for purely rotor-lifted vehicles, but they need a lot of lifting power quickly. "Rot" here indicates rotors, which stand in for the wings in my mind. The Props do the actual pushing.
on the upside, if part of its wings are lost, it will fall down slowly like an airship losing lift, not like an aircraft with tis wings shot off. This is going to be "fun" When I get round to the giant flying aircraft carrier later., though I feel like that would permit more "hellum cells" since it's so huge and doesn't need that much equipment on the sheet.

Requiring 30 points of lift where 21 is the maximum (engines to keep it up also weigh it down you know) we are breaking the system here.
10 bombs is less than a squadron of heavy "normal" bomber aircraft would cary
the model has torpedos, which airships normally can't use. (Shocking I know) but working back from how bombs are calculated between them I've devised a quick proxy.
Two MG nests to match the miniature added and we are as done as it can be.



Coming in at over half the cost of the Majesty dreadnought, but only bearing the firepower of an average regular fixed wing bomber group.... Its darn fast and dificult to shoot down though!
 I do wonder if I should have approached this by counting the wings as helum bags instead, or maybe create a full aircraft squadron and "count it as" this one model?
Something to try later I suppose.

[Macrossmartin]

Ahh, you poor man! I too have recently been bitten once more by the steampunk sea lice, leaving me with a compulsive urge to eat coal and belch cordite smoke. 

Twisting historical systems with a technical bent to meet the needs of sci-fi / fantasy 'handwavium' tech is always a tricky task. How your results pan out will have to be discovered once dice are thrown in anger.

Regardless, it is great to see the old DW models getting some love. I recall it being THE game round these parts in its heyday, but the new ed. of DW hasn't won over anyone, it seems.

A pity really, because it is certainly an original take on military VSF, although the giant rivets are possibly the most fantastical thing about the designs... 

[The_Beast]

You had me a bit confused by Perfidious Albion, as I was aware of several games with the name but none matching your work. Your mentioning Fighting Fleets may have set me right.

A and A Games? At least, the ruleset on WargameVault sounds about right.

Will look into it a bit further, and watching your progress with keen interest.

Not that the pile of untried rules isn't the least daunting already!

Doug

[YPU]

You had me a bit confused by Perfidious Albion, as I was aware of several games with the name but none matching your work. Your mentioning Fighting Fleets may have set me right.

A and A Games? At least, the ruleset on WargameVault sounds about right.

That's the one.
Their website is uhm, charmingly old school lets say as well. The rulebook is pretty bare bones with the layout is readable, to the point, and pretty short. Though not always as clear on all the details when you really try to run trough it in practice I fear, but we shall see. If nothing else I quite enjoy the overly involved maths of calculating the speed a particular weight of ship would have.

http://www.aandagames.co.uk/pa.html

Ahh, you poor man! I too have recently been bitten once more by the steampunk sea lice, leaving me with a compulsive urge to eat coal and belch cordite smoke. 

Twisting historical systems with a technical bent to meet the needs of sci-fi / fantasy 'handwavium' tech is always a tricky task. How your results pan out will have to be discovered once dice are thrown in anger.

Regardless, it is great to see the old DW models getting some love. I recall it being THE game round these parts in its heyday, but the new ed. of DW hasn't won over anyone, it seems.

A pity really, because it is certainly an original take on military VSF, although the giant rivets are possibly the most fantastical thing about the designs... 

I have a bunch of mixed feelings about dystopian wars. Their rules were always clunky but clearly made with a vision, and did get a bit better before the end. Some of the models are amazingly creative while keeping much of the styling and design ethos of the pre pre dreadnought era... and others not so much.
The actual figures are I think mainly designed to look good and readable at tabletop size, even if that means some elements are too large or very exaggerated and frankly these days I can only applaud that. The planks making up the decks are way too wide, but about as small as you can make them and still have it show up from a gaming distance for example. And when you are designing a ship intended to fight a robot squid and a catamaran airship carrier, I think the exaggerated elements don't deserve as much vitriol as some people gave it when they were first released.

As for making them work in this ruleset... I should probably play some simple small games first to get a feel for it, but for every ship you pin down its elements to a technology level (usually from -3 to +3) and part of me is already thinking how those technologies could be extended to allow for dystopian wars more wild elements.
Probably wont touch the generators though, never been a part of the setting I enjoyed, always felt to obviously game like to me.