Age of Sail Rules (beta)

I think you guys would be surprised at how hard it is for everyone to beach themselves in dead ducks cove. Square-riggers fighting is like airplanes dogfighting: being higher (or upwind) gives you an advantage. These ships do sail upwind pretty well, and most of the time not spent trading broadsides will be racing upwind to try and gain or maintain that advantage. if ships locked in combat are getting too far downwind, it adds additional pressure to head upwind and gain maneuvering room.

 

Nothing contrary at all. The British rating system was in place 250 years before anyone even thought of building a 120+ gun ship and was pretty much set in stone by the 1800's. The proposed "1st Rate Heavy" designation is a simple extension of this system that would recognize this largest class of AOS ships built. There are several examples from the US, British, French, and smaller powers that could take advantage of the proposed rating. I say if anybody were nuts enough to build a Pennsylvania, Mahmudiye or Caledonia, throw them a bone and give them the two extra guns.

 

At the moment, anyone that builds a 1st rate would have the only 1st rate. If that isn't incentive enough, why toss them another two cannons?

I can foresee in the future that given at least a few 1st rates on the water and a few battles to see how they perform, perhaps a higher designation could be good. Heck, I kinda want to build another ship after the Requin ... maybe it'll be a 1st rate. Heh.

 

What about sailing ironclads like the HMS Warrior, which although it may have had a smaller amount of guns, was still a powerful battleship of its time. Perhaps a new class needs to be created for sailing ironclads?

 

The mid 1800's is a very transitional time, and I think that the wish is to keep the focus before that time period. This keeps it to all wood ships with only sail propulsion. In the Napoleonic Era alone there are a rediculous number of ships to pick from. I would venture to say the oldest feasible/desired ships are back in the Golden Age of Piracy (1600s?). It seems to me that it would complicate things a little too much to introduce ironclads.
Das Butts

 

I don't think it would complicate things at all so long as we only consider the ones that had a full set of sails. Lets be real here, an HMS Warrior is 8ft long it 1/48, so realistically, nobody is going to build it anyways unless they are crazy. But I like keeping options open, as I still consider ships like the Warrior to be of this era Age of Sail.

 

Don't forget the hybrids, such as the first ship ever to have a screw propulsion (French I might add). It was a wooden sailing ship with a prop positioned in front of the rudder post.

 

I agree. What's the point of an iron clad, if its made of the same thickness of balsa? This is already an obscure branch of an obscure tree, and while interesting in a historical perspective, its really just a huge target. Sails and oars. Let's leave it at that and have some fun, no insults intended.

 

fair enough. it would probably need concessions in other areas just to be playable. i just thought it would make a cool build. but as was mentioned earlier there are plenty of other interesting ships to build.

 

OK, some input and rule modification based on lessons learned so far with the Requin ...

We set the bottom of the penetrable window at 45 degrees. That works ok as long as the hull curves past the 45 degrees. But for areas such as the bow and stern, the hull never passes 45 degrees until it reaches the bottom corner of the keel. That gives a miniscule area (about as sharp or rounded as the corner is) in which to glue the sheeting on. That is not a lot of area to keep the bottom of the sheeting attached to the hull.

What I suggest is something like: The bottom of the penetrable window is the 45 degree mark on the hull curvature or 1/2" above (measured horizontally) the bottom of the keel, whichever is greater (higher?).

We'll have to play with wording to get it to sound better.

Basically, this will guarantee at least 1/4" to 1/2" of gluing area to attach the bottom of the sheeting to.

 

what about wrapping the balsa around the bottom of the hull? so essentially you would be using the same piece of balsa to cover both sides of the stern area (I can't really tell by your pictures if this is possible or not, so please forgive me if it isn't).

 

There are some WWII ships that have the same problem, in the same area. I'm thinking a good solution would be to run the troublesome impenetrable area at the same height as the midships impenetrable area, whenever meeting the 45 degree rule is impractical. The trick is finding a legal-ese way to describe it so I can add it to the rulebook.

 

I spent today visiting with my old shopmaster, and he came up with a couple of ideas to make arming the smaller boats like bigs and converted easier. I'd like to run these ideas by you guys before I write them into the rules.

The first idea is very, very simple. Currently we regulate both the number of barrels and the amount of ammunition each ship gets, to be effectively 50 rounds per barrel. This first idea is to allow ships to arm fewer barrels with bigger magazines, so the smaller ships still carry the same amount of ammunition. For example, the basic unrated ship gets 6 guns with 50 guns each, total of 300 rounds. A ship using this idea could do 4 guns with 75 rounds each, still totalling 300 rounds. Or even 2 guns with 150 rounds each.

The second idea is a little more complex. Rather than reducing the number of cannons by merely increasing their individual ammunition, my shopmaster suggested firing up to three rounds from a single barrel, with a single pull of the trigger. This method is already used very successfully in WWCC torpedoboats, such as my own Z-25. The result is a somewhat less-powerful gun than three separate barrels, but still far more respectable than a single barrel and far more compact and lightweight than three separate barrels. It can be done mechanically using Big Gun Arizona-style cannons, by using a taller breech that loads three balls, or by firing a fast gun cannon three times electronically.

 

I think the three shot gun would be especially usefull in big ships with multiple gun decks, you could arm the middle gun deck out of three decks, which would help with weight.

Merry Christmas btw

 

I like the idea of multiple fire arizona guns, as these were what I was building for it anyway. I was wondering what sort of opportunity for firing we would get with sailing, and if the battles would take far too long, so arming say half available guns with double shot but not reducing the number of guns might work.