Chicken Race on the Arumbaya

[Helen]

Sorry, I have enough trouble coming up with a name I like for the barky itself.

...

How about 'Sixten' for  the cat? Or 'Freya'?

Both good names Peder.  Sixten is a street artist fromSweden and Freya from Norse Mythlogy. How about Freya?

Thanks Peder,

Helen

[Blackwolf]

Lovely,Hammers; Looking forward to seeing everthing on the table

[Remington]

Beautiful boat, Hammers! Love where this is going. Very very inspirational.

[Hammers]

What are these called in English?



They are called 'maskintelegraf' in Swedish but googling machine telegraph doesn't render any correct hits.

[Westfalia Chris]

The english term, AFAIK, is "engine telegraph" or "engine order telegraph". One of the most iconic modern nautical items, IMHO. Your boat certainly needs one, with lots of polished brass.

[Westfalia Chris]

Westfalia Chris
Considering the impression Hammers is striving to create anything polished would be rare!  More likely to be a tarnished green.

There's got to be one piece on that poor old vessel that is in pristine shape. Not everybody delights in having dirt, grime and mildew everywhere, you know.

[OSHIROmodels]

There's got to be one piece on that poor old vessel that is in pristine shape. Not everybody delights in having dirt, grime and mildew everywhere, you know.

The ships bell 

cheers

James

[Hammers]

Thank you, I may indeed make one for this vessel to. I have done one before:



You can't see it very well due to over exposure but it is the top middle gadget.

Anyhoo, I am asking because I have been contemplating the T&T rules for the vessels.

Having read the vehicle rules a few times I don't think they are quite adequate for this scenario so I will knock out some of my own.



Activation
The ship and its operating crew will get its own unit card. The crew will be divided in sub-crews (watches, if you like) which will all have their own unit cards. The player will have the option of activating watches and vessels in which ever way the think is strategically suitable. I think this will work best since the ships will not only be competing to get to the end of the board first but also need to fight each other and get out of various obstacles on their way. Not all orders are available to the ship or are work slightly different. Orders such as 'Cavalry Action' is obviously not relevant and 'Move and Shoot' involves no penalty.


Movement

All player begins the turn by plotting in pencil the sea route the ship he or she controls on a provided sea chart before anyone moves.

As suggested, the ships will be navigating within speed intervals, and that's where the engine telegraph comes in. Each player will be given one flat cardboard telegraph per vessel which can be set for each activation. The indicated speed will remain till next activation because you can only change speed from one interval to the next one up or down. (Maybe it should be possible to to go between any speed interval in any direction but at the risk of damaging the ship. More about that below.).

So for example:

Ahead

Full 30cm + 2d6cm
Half 20cm + 1d6cm
Slow 10cm + 1d6cm
Standby Still in the water

Stop 5 cm astern (to account for river current)

Astern
Finished with Engines Still in water
Slow 10cm + 1d6cm
Half 15cm+ 2d6cm
Full 20cm + 2d6cm

Speeds will vary between types of crafts. The RN motor launches will obviously be faster than the steamer for example.


Combat

The fighting crews can move about the deck and shoot fight as per the regular rules. Fixed weapons, like deck gun, harpoon gun or rail guns and machine guns must be pointed out in the unit card and are fired as a part of the ships activation as long as they are manned according to its rules (more about the specifics later). The orders for the boat are basically always a 'Move and Shoot' without movement penalties (reduced gun crews will have an effect though).

Close Combat - Ramming and Boarding

Ramming is a bit tricky since the ships I am using for this games are not battle ships per se and not built for it. That said a heavier vessel ramming a smaller midships will obviously have its effects. The way the game will almost certainly mean that some collisions will not be planned and possibly quite bad for both parties. I plan to create a 1d10 damage table close similar to the T&T Vehicle Damage Table to use for ramming and collisions.

If two are within 1 inch/2cm/a miniatures base's bredth from each other the respective parties may board each other. This is where the Close Combat rules will kick in. There are some rules regarding Unit Coherency, ships breaking off from boarding action which have  not quite banged out yet.


Ship Dammages

Since the  ships are quite big I don't think I will go with  the T&T Vehicle rules as they stand. I think a bar adding up accumulative damages I more appropriate. Consider a bar for each barky with a peg which is moved for each damage point taken by a ship. The bar has the traditional green-yellow-orange-red-black intervals where one at the end each turn rolls for effects.

When the peg is in the

Green pretty much nothing happens,
Yellow, small fires  may break out or some small speed reduction is the result,
Orange can mean that steering is affected
Red an explosion or severe hull breaches,
Black the ship sinks, is permanently beached or blows up in a spectacular fashion.

The intervals will obviously be shorter for smaller crafts than for the larger.

Damage points can come from many sources. Being rammed should cause a certain number of points, hitting submersed logs or river banks also. All Ranged combat dice from handguns and which is not being absorbed by enemy ship crews should be re-rolled to see if they've hit the ship they on board.


That's t do far. I would very much appreciate your input on this.

[Plynkes]

[Hammers]

*kicks Chris and Driscoles* Oy! I'm talkin' to ya! Any opinions on the boat rules? Too complicated but you are to polite to comment?

[Westfalia Chris]

*kicks Chris and Driscoles* Oy! I'm talkin' to ya! Any opinions on the boat rules? Too complicated but you are to polite to comment?

I'm sorry, I was quite busy over the last few days finalising my dissertation and chasing after the last missing signatures, so didn't pay the thread the attention it deserves.

As for the rules, without having given them a test run, I would say they should work out very well. The movement rules for various speeds look reasonable enough, and you have provisions for smaller craft being more nimble (I don't think they should be that much faster, but rather more manoeuvrable in the confined areas).

As for damage, taking a cumulative approach is probably a sensible decision. I would hesitate to use the single damage table for anything larger than a launch - you might consider mapping out different sections of the larger ships for purposes of differenciating damage, e.g. a hit on the superstructure (with pilot's house) would yield different results than on the aft section of a sternwheeler. Maybe also to limit the impact on small arms on solidly-built vessels - I would suspect some inches of oak or teak are better at stopping a rifle bullet at long range than the thin planks of a rowboat.

As for firing from vessels, that might be tricky to avoid ships dishing out disproportionate amounts of damage. You could limit the fields of vision of mounted weaponry, add some dead angles close to the hull (lowest depression of the gun barrel) - so a deck-mounted gun on a high-freeboard vessel could not engage anything within, say, 6" of the hull. I am convinced you will use good judgement on that. Close combat reads well, too - no worries on that, and unit coherency could be relaxed in that regard, e.g. measuring a distance from the leader instead of another model - Raw figures within 5" of their leader, Trained and Veteran within 6", and (rare) Elites might go up to 7" without suffering negative effects - figures marooned on an enemy ship could either surrender, fight it out to the death or be removed outright, depending on quality.

[Hammers]

Thanks, Chris, I appreciate your input very much.

I am going away with the Katzenhammers for a few days so I thought I'd show you how the painting of the beast is coming out:



It is very much a WIP. SOme small but I feel significant details is not in place. I also need to tidy up the messing-down of the superstructure a bit. It came up to splodgy.

[Calimero]

Oh, that ship seriously need a fresh coat of paint

Great WIP Hammers, I really like it

[Centaur_Seducer]

To be honest Hammers. It's not that common that you see something well painted on the hull, especially not when its just a craft for privateers and criminials

[OSHIROmodels]

I like how it's coming together, especially the details   

cheers

James