The Age of Sail rules as proposed by Carl are below. Please read, think about them, and get your ship plans ready They are a work in progress, and will probably be changed somewhat as we actually get scale warships in the water and try battling in 1:48. The copy below is the current official (beta) rules set for Age of Sail. Construction rules: Scale: *All ships shall be constructed in 1:48 scale, ± 5% on all major dimensions. *There is no current time frame for ships, but primary emphasis shall be on the Napoleonic era. *There is no single fixed source for data on ships, but plans and data must be reasonable for the period. Penetrability: *All penetrable areas shall be sheeted with 1/32” balsa wood *The total hull length that can be solid material shall not exceed 15% of the overall length of the hull. *Solid material in the bow may extend no more than 2” aft following the contour of the bow. *Solid material in the stern may extend no more than 1” forward, following the contour of the stern. *Side penetrable windows shall extend from 3” above the waterline, down to 60º down the turn of the bilge, or 2.5 inches below the waterline, whichever is shallower. *if a ship's main deck is within 3” of the waterline, the ship may have up to 3/8” additional impenetrable area to account for the deck. *Armed gun ports may have 1/4” of reinforcement on all sides. Unarmed gun ports shall be painted on, and penetrable. *Side galleries may be present, but windows and all vertical surfaces must be penetrable. *Solid material on the stern penetrable window shall extend 1/2” from the edges of the stern, following the contour of the stern. *The stern penetrable window shall extend from 3” above the waterline down to the bottom of the stern galleries. *hulls must be able to pass the Fast Gun drop test at any time. *Blocks, ladders, doorways, gun port hatches, decorative carvings, and other hull features not specifically permitted shall not be used to increase impenetrable area. Propulsion: *primary propulsion shall be a ship's sails. *sail plan shall be as per plans, or modified in a period-appropriate manner. *secondary propulsion may be provided from a single Tamiya Submarine Motor with stock motor and screw. *ships that historically carried oars (galleys, etc.) may use one electric-driven prop for propulsion, or oars. *an electric motor used to represent oars shall be limited to a speed of no more than 45 seconds per 100 feet when under electric power alone. *oars used for propulsion may be 100% oversize and have no speed limit. *All oars must be present on a galley, and must break when subjected to the same drop test as hull sides. *The rudder may be used to “fishtail” for propulsion and/or steering. *no additional motors may be used for propulsion. *The rudder may be up to 300% oversized by area. The extra area may be added in any shape, so long as the rudder appears reasonably scale above the waterline. (subject to change as necessary) *additional underwater hull features (stabilizer fins, lead bulb keels, etc.) are permitted so long as they do not affect hull penetrability and remain below the waterline. Armament: *all cannons shall fire 0.177” bbs. *cannons shall not be operated in excess of 150PSI. *all cannons shall have safety barrel pins, or a gas safety switch immediately after the regulator that bleeds all downstream pressure. *if a ship's rate or gun rating is not listed on the plans used for construction, then either a gun-port count or two reasonable alternate sources may be used to determine the ship's armament. *no more than 50% of a ship's cannons may be in any one arc, except chasers. *all cannons shall go in historically accurate locations. *any ship operating in combat without at least one square-rigged sail shall arm only half its allotted cannons. *bow and stern chase armament shall be limited to no more than 2 cannons in each direction. *oar-powered vessels (galleys) may only arm chaser cannons. *rate of fire shall be no faster than one shot per cannon every 4 seconds. *cannons shall be allocated according to the following chart: Classification Rating Historical Guns Armament Ammunition Ship of the Line 1st Rate 100+ 18 900 Ship of the Line 2nd Rate 90 to 99 16 800 Ship of the Line 3rd Rate 61 to 89 14 700 Ship of the Line, Cruiser, Heavy Frigate 4th Rate 44 to 60 12 600 Frigate 5th Rate 32 to 43 10 500 Post Ship* (see note) 6th Rate 20 to 31 8 400 Brig, Sloop, Cutter, Galley, etc. Unrated Under 20 6 300 *any ship with 20 to 31 guns is called a Post Ship, regardless of its rig. Damage Control: *Primary pumping capacity shall be limited to 30GPH *Secondary pumping capacity is unlimited, but activating secondary pumps counts as striking the colors. *ships need not sink all the way to the bottom of the pond, but must clearly indicate when sunk, ie fo'c'sle or quarterdeck awash, one or more open gun ports underwater, emergency floatation devices inflate, etc. *ships that cannot sink all the way to the bottom but indicate when sunk are called “unsinkable”. *unsinkable ships that reach their indicated “sunk” point are counted as striking their colors. Combat Rules: *Sorties shall begin when the Combat Director calls “commence fire”, and end when all combatants have sunk, surrendered, or completed their five minutes. *4-second rate of fire shall be strictly enforced by electronic timers. *When a captain desires to withdraw from a sortie, he shall call “Five Minutes”. *During “five minutes”, the withdrawing ship may not fire, but other ships may fire upon it. *upon completion of five minutes, the withdrawing ship may no longer be attacked. The ship may then be removed from play by reaching shore. Boarding (optional): *if two ships become entangled, neither may begin or end “five minutes” until one ship or the other strikes the colors. Active countdowns may continue. *When two ships are entangled, they may board each other. Boarding shall be resolved by a match of Rock-Paper-Scissors between the two skippers. *the loser of the boarding action is counted as striking the colors. The winner is free to continue fighting. Striking the Colors: *A skipper may surrender his ship by announcing “I strike my colors.” *If a ship is successfully boarded (optional), activates secondary pumping, or is unsinkable and reaches the sink point, then that ship must strike the colors. *ships that have struck their colors shall incur a point cost, as listed in the Scoring section. *Ships that have struck their colors shall return to shore and withdraw from combat if possible. *if withdrawing is not possible, struck ships shall wait until the end of the sortie, or ask the Combat Director to call “cease fire” for recovery. *if a skipper voluntarily strikes while he is still able to fight his ship, he shall be subjected to a series of French taunts. *if a skipper allows his ship to sink when striking would have saved it, he shall be subjected to a series of French taunts. Ramming: *ramming is defined as contact between two ships that causes hull damage or an outright sink. *contact between ships is permitted so long as no ram damage is inflicted. *if any ship inflicts ram damage, it shall take a point penalty equal to the ram-damaged vessel's strike value. If the ram-damaged vessel sinks, the ramming vessel shall take a penalty equal to twice the ram-damaged vessel's point value plus damage, and withdraw from the battle. *Penalty = 2x(point value + damage) Scoring: * holes above the waterline shall be worth 10 points * holes on the waterline shall be worth 25 points * holes below the waterline shall be worth 50 points * holes in the stern galleries shall be worth 50 points * broken oars shall be worth 25 points *Struck or sunk 1st-rate vessels shall be worth 900 points. *Struck or sunk 2nd-rate vessels shall be worth 800 points. *Struck or sunk 3rd-rate vessels shall be worth 700 points. *Struck or sunk 4th-rate vessels shall be worth 600 points. *Struck or sunk 5th-rate vessels shall be worth 500 points. *Struck or sunk 6th-rate vessels shall be worth 400 points. *Struck or sunk unrated vessels shall be worth 300 points. *scenario-specific missions may be assigned point values, as determined by the Combat Director. *to determine victory, add up all the damage points, penalty points, and strike/sink points for each team. The team with the lowest score wins.
It may be worth considering a limit on how far down the penetrable area goes other than just at the 60 degree mark on the bulge. If I've scaled my drawings of the Valmy correctly, the 60 degree turn on the hull is just around 3.5 inches under the waterline at one point.
What does it normally come to? 2 inches? You could say it must be between 60 degrees and 2 inches, or whichever is less? I'm not sure, it depends on what is considered "fairest" I guess, you don't want people to shy away from a particular hull because the hull has a shape that would have a large penetrable area below waterline... Like I said, it depends on what is considered the norm or is fairest, really... Daemon.
Are you doing the 60-degree line or the 30 degree line? 60 degrees is way up the hull and 30 degrees is pretty far down; we'd actually floated the idea of using the 45 degree line.
ahhh... Perhaps we should put 60-degree-line OR X inches below waterline, whichever comes first. More than 1" would be good. 3" sounds excessive. Maybe 3" would be good.
What kind of depth can a fast gun cannon reach and still penetrate? I would say not really deeper than 2-2.5" most of the time. However with ships heeling over in gusts 2" could be above the waterline quick. I would tend to agree with 3" or 60(45?)deg. turn under the hull based on that. Das Butts
Remember that AOS ships are not level, most of the time. I don't want to see a ship heel so far over that it no longer has target area below the waterline, which would happen quite easily if we simply went 1" below the waterline. Perhaps a simple 45 degrees all around would be best.
I'm wondering how much the 1:48 scale ships will heel. I built Minerva to a 45-degree standard, but I can make it 60 degrees by adding a little material right quick. Which'll it be?
I understand that sailboats do heal (I do have a Victoria class), but they will have to level out at some point. So my question is, how much does it really matter if the impenetrable area is occiasionally lifted right out of the water? I would imagine a cap at 3" from the waterline would be sufficient.
I can't imagine it heeling past 40 degrees if ballasted properly. I sailed a 36'. With about 2 feet or so of freeboard and it took 30 degrees to put the rail in the water, as a kid I watched that gauge all the time just to see it hit the highest number. I'm just going to build at 45 and see what happens.
Yeah, I have a hard time imagining exposing below the 45 line unless really really bad things have happened, sufficient to cause loss of the ship to the briny deep. Can everyone live with 45 degrees, no more than 3" below the waterline?
There are armament provision for small ships but they would be difficult to build. If someone wanted to build something small and difficult to arm could there be a 3/8" additional depth clause? This would apply to small guys around 250t or so (5lbs or less in scale). As long as the 3/8" looks scale and is applied where it would increase the penetrable area I would think it would not be frowned upon. Das Butts
I'd like to run a thought by you guys before I write it into the rules. The forwardmost part of the ship is one of the more complex areas to construct. There are ornate carvings, various decorative rails, and often some sort of enclosure around the heads to so sailors wouldn't get splashed while relieving themselves. Since it has not been discussed in the rules yet, I am thinking of allowing that forward structure to be impenetrable. When I put my little 1:48 scale figures up there, I don't want to worry about them getting blown away. Thoughts?
@Mike - I'm cool with the 3/8" additional depth (maybe even 1/2", we're in a bigger scale) for ships that would otherwise not have at least say 1/2" of penetrable area. But, it'd have to be invisible when the ship was in the water. @Carl - I was more or less reading the rules as saying the forward 2" were to be impenetrable, as is. If you want to add verbiage to the effect that the figurehead and fancywork be legally impenetrable, I'm okay with that, but there has to be some kind of reasonable limit on how much fancywork one gets to declare solid. The Swedish ship Vasa comes to mind. And does fancywork on the back end get to be solid? All the ships' name scrolls that I've seen generally go in the 1/2"area that's allowed to be solid around the bottom (well, all sides, but the bottom in this case) edge of the sternlight. So that takes care of the name scroll. I've been planning to carve mine and make castings (one to use, one spare). I think that in AoS, people are going to be less prolific (shipbuilding wise) than in powered naval combat, if only because we're still learning So pretty fancywork and scrollwork (And yes, figureheads) make sense.
I think before too many scale rules get proposed it needs to be brought up that most of the ships built in this era were not built to pre-drawn plans. They were built to loose specifications provided by the purchaser (length/breadth, cargo capacity, number of guns, etc.). It was generally left to the builder to design the ship and this was usually never documented. Ship design and building in this period was a black art and the shipbuilders guarded their knowledge and skills very closely. Even in cases where plans were provided, a builder may or may not have followed them and would have just built what they had been building for years. Most drawings that we see today were drawn after the fact (sometimes centuries after the fact) and are the artists best guess as to what the original ship may have looked like. Paintings from the era are not a good guide as the artists add their artistic bent to make a good looking painting and not a technically accurate one. If were lucky, a half hull model may have survived and we can take fairly accurate offsets from that to get an idea of the dimensions and shape of a particular ship. Back in the day, ships were built by eye, displacement was how many ballast stones it took to get her down to her lines, and drought was how many knots in a rope. Nothing was exact and enforcing exactness in AOS in my opinion would lead to endless rules arguments down the road. Steve
As Steve points out, there was a lot of variability in the building of ships. Vasa's constructor testified back in the 1600's that he had built her a foot and a half wider than the plans indicated, without updating the plans. Honestly, my heartfelt feeling is that as long as it looks right, battle it. My only desire is to have a relatively simple set of rules that outlines what the penetrable area is, regardless of the hull shape. How best to word this, I'm not sure. But that's my 2 cents. If it looks like it would've been in a Napoleonic navy (or thereabouts in the Age of Sail), battle it.
I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. All unarmed gun ports are required to be closed and penetrable, just like the rest of the hull. Extra gun decks are no exception. The only extra solid area allowed is around armed gun ports. And since we're only using one thickness of balsa, there's no bonus there for being a two-decker or three-decker.
