Multi-format events (Treaty)

When you guys were setting up the relitive power of ships, what was the goal? How much more powerfull was the most powerfull capital ship to be than the average capital ship? How was the power or an average CA to compare to an average capital ship?

Power being the sum of speed, manuverabilty, guns, and gun location.

 

specialist-

I'm not the best one to answer this question, since I didn't help develop the shiplist, but I check the site more then anyone else so I'll have to hope that one of the original founders of Treaty drops by later and clarifies for you. That qualifying statement aside, here's the best explanation I can give you.

Out ship list looks very much like an old fast gun shiplist, before some ships got their units inflated as "counters". For example, Yamato is an 8 unit ship. Iowa, as a 45,000 ton battleship has been returned to 7 units, as I believe it used to be in the old days. The chart for determining ship units bears this out; a 45,000 ton standard displacement ship SHOULD be 7 units. As I understand it, this was raised to 8 units to counter the Yamatos. Using our speed system, an Iowa is 32 knots (as per Conways), and Yamato is 27 knots (also as per Conways). Thus, the Iowa has a 5 second speed advantage over the Yamato, and does not need the extra unit as a "counter" The natural abilities of the two ships are represented by their sum total of speed and firepower. Yamato is more survivable; Iowa is faster and can evade engagements that are less then optimal.

Basically, the original fast gun shiplist seemed to make solid sense, so we dispensed with some of the unit inflation (not all of it, Hood remains at 6 units for us like in the IRCWCC) and returned things back to where they used to be.

 

Mike has it right.

When we went thru the list it was decided that we would go back to the original Dan Hamilton list for units with slight modifications due to our allowing hypotheticals. Between the main groups the biggest change is the Iowa's go back to 7 units and Nagato's go back to 5 1/2 units. The idea is that each ship brings something to the table. If you want high speed in a capital ship, you need to be willing to deal with the larger size of the ship or build a cruiser, light cruiser or destroyer. If you look at the list the faster ships can avoid combat if they need to where as the slower ships are going to be more manoverable or in the case of the Rodney (slow), it carries enought firepower (dual sides) that you'll want to stay away from it. It all depends on what it is you're looking for.

Our main goal with the ships in this group was to give them what they deserved. Using a base reputable source for speed while allowing a ship to have proportionally what the prototype had is what was desired. While this is not perfect, we feel it best bridges our main goal of fun, safe, family oriented combat.

 

I guess I was unclear.
I was looking for a number.

For instance, the most powerfull capital ship A was to be 1.5 times (or whatever) as powerfull as average capital ship B.

I understand that you a using the ships capibiltys and Hamilton's ship list, as a guide.
A real Iowa (for instance) would have blown apart a huge number of real Westfallens.
(like shooting fish in a barrel)
I was wondering on how much more powerfull you made them for your combat type.

 

I don't think there was a ratio of ship A must have 2 times the firepower of ship B. As laid out, the original ship list to me (I wasn't around when the ship list was originally designed) seemed to have some major "milestones" that ships should compare to. The first is the 10,000 ton treaty cruiser, at 3.0 units. As that was the "gold standard" so to speak among cruisers, it seems like a good measuring stick. Heavier ships got the extra .5 units, lighter ones got less. Is it perfect? Not really; some ships like Exeter and Aoba I don't think belong in the same class as the Myoko or Wichita. For the most part though, the cruisers seem pretty balanced in combat power to me (as compared to the real ships). Arming them with non-side firing guns is also representative of the cruiser's ability to cause superficial damage to a captial ship (BB or BC for our purposes) but not to sink them on a regular basis.

The next milestone would be the Dreadnought at 4.0 units. She revolutionized battleship design and is a good place to start as a lower end for capital ships. The final "milestone" would be the 35,000 ton "treaty battleship" at 6.0 units. Ships like of this generation would be the KGV, SoDak and North Carolina. The best of the pre-treaty ships came in at 5.5 units and worked their way down. Looking at how the ships stack up historically, when you compare their gun power and armor protection, the original ship list was actually pretty brilliant in how close it came to providing a ratio of units that was representative in the gap between say, Dreadnought and Queen Elizabeth. Of course, ships above the 6.0 unit treaty battleships were the Iowa and Vanguard (escalator clause, 45k tons) and the blatant cheaters (Axis fast battleships). This is why the Allies have no 6.5 unit ships, nor 8 unit ships, while the Axis is short on 6.0 and 7.0 unit ships.

Where I see the system break down, is when you group speed by length. With those rules in effect (and where the dividing lines lay), the Yamato becomes a superior ship as it's got more firepower, on the same 24 seconds that Iowa has. In fact, the Allies would have nothing to "counter' the Yamato, which is unfair to the Allies. So, Iowa gets more units to make things fair. But then, the Allies have the 6.0 unit North Carolina at 24 seconds, and the Axis has nothing in here that's comparable due to length/maneuverability. So the refit Nagato gets 6.0 units to "counter" the NC, whether a real Nagato would stand a chance against a real North Carolina or not. So, while the unit inflation seen in the IRCWCC/MWC makes perfect sense from a game play perspective (and is indeed essential IMHO given their speed rules) it detracts from any realism in the combat. Also, equalizing the speeds had the effect of minimizing the importance of speed, and thus emphasized the importance of turning.

So, basically we have returned to the original balance of power that the ship list created as far as units goes, and then removed the speed by length rules which took away the speed advantage many ships would have enjoyed. We don't have a mathematical formula to say ship A should be X times more ship B, we just ran with what appeared to be the original spirit of the shiplist which seemed to provide an excellent ratio between ship to ship, and let the trial speeds determine how fast the ships should really go. It seemed to work out pretty well for what we were trying to do.

At least that's my understanding.

 

Given the critical importance of speed, would that not tend to favor fast boats to the extent that building them would be tying a hand behind your back?
Looking at the situation for allies, the best (and there will alway be a best) boat to build would be those with high speed, good manuverabilty and lots of units.
Sence units can be combined, this makes building the big class 6 boats easy. They just have more weight to fit stuff into.
Using that rational, a fleet of Iowa, Vanguard, SD and NC would be all that is requried. Anything else would seam to be a waste of time, as they would either have too low speed, bad turning or not enough units.

A NC setup with 3, 1.5 unit sidemount, and 1.5 units worth of pump, would seam to be the ideal beginer boat. Or maybe even all the boat you would ever need.

Messing about with things like invincible and QE would not be worthwhile, as for the same effort vastly more firepower and speed could be had.

Is there any reason to build any of the dreadnaughts?

 

My Invincible did fairly well last year, and I fairly well held my own against most comers. Granted I am not the best captain, but I did well enough in my opinion. I know I enjoyed myself. I'd be running the Invincible this year if I didn't specifically wish to test the performance of my Courageous. One of the battles I tangled with an Iowa as well. I did fairly well with my I boat, I was able to stay away from his side mounts using my maneuverability and to get a few shots in on his side before he pulled away. It just took a bit of timing to get into firing position, and get out without him being able to hit me with his dual sides. I expect I'll be switching back to the Invincible later this year.

What it appeared last year, was the faster ships seemed more willing to follow people through a turn thinking that they would overtake the smaller ships and get into firing position. I chewed up a lot of bows with my stern gun last year from people following the Invincible through a spiral. When I worked it right, I was able to use that to get my aft sidemount on target and really do some nice damage. I also found success with just turning gentle circles and eventually people would get close enough and I could swoop in and hit them with my sidemounts then pull away. People would think I couldn't get the angle to get my sidemount on target, but I often times was able to.

Where the bigger ships run into problems, is they can't attack the smaller dreadnoughts. Eric Noble ran a Konig last year that made us all look silly when we tried to attack him by ourselves. He loved the ship, and is running it again this year. We even had difficulty sandwiching him, although you could blame my poor captaining perhaps. His turning allowed him to turn away from our guns pretty much at will. I think he would agree he was at no major disadvantage against opponents such as my HMS Invincible, an FN Strasburg or a USS Alabama...all of which he faced at some point last year. Given his experience, I'd say yes, there's reason to build dreadnoughts, and that they are fun to drive. Especially on a small pond.

Also, while we do allow ships class 4 and better to split a unit, it's only ONE unit. So if that NC wants 1.5 unit sidemounts (still can only have 1 per quadrant) he can't have a 1.5 unit pump. He can only have a single stern and two pumps or dual sterns and a 1.0 unit pump.

Also, that NC will still have to face dual sidemount Axis ships such as Yamato and Bismarck. If the NC fights, he's eating duals for the price of singles, and if he turns away, he's stern gunning but not causing the same kind of damage as in fast gun with unlimited rate of fire + triples. So yes, while the NC will still be a good ship, it's not going to rule the pond by any stretch of the imagination. It's simply well balanced.

Those big ships will all have large areas of space to attack that have no guns defending them. It's just a matter of tactics to get in there and hit them, then get away. I'd certainly rather have my little Invincible to fight the big boys then my big Courageous. We'll see. I am running the Courageous at Ravenna this year and am planning on having 2 Bismarcks to take on. We'll see how that works out for me. I don't expect to be a world beater, but we'll see if a little speed advantage allows the ship to be more fun then it was in the IRCWCC.

 

If you are in for the sport no.IF you are in for the hobby you build the ship you love and have fun,running with the boat you like and the people you like.In a david vs goliath scenario goliath will win a lot but every once in a while david wins and that makes it all worth it.

 

How many times out of 10 does david get to win? That was what I really wanted to know.

Does david get to win 1 out of 10? 1 out of 5? or 1 out of 100?

It makes a difference.

 

NOT TO DAVID

 

At some point of decreasing chance of winning, david stops being a brave man taking risk.

 

I firmly agree with Specialist on this point. I drove a Courageous in the IRCWCC for a few battles. I have no intention of ever running this ship in the IRCWCC again. Getting your teeth kicked in 9 times out of 10 gets to be OLD pretty darned quick...to the point where you don't even think that 10th time is going to roll in. Now granted, people don't always have "winning" as their main motivation. The competition can be lived without, but at the same time, nearly every person out there wants to "not suck". I personally don't care if I am ever considered a "good captain". I do not want to be a "crappy captain". I'm perfectly content with some sort of average, and feel I am in that "average" skill range. Certainly nothing special, but I like to at least think the other Allied captains don't secretly want me to build Axis.

That being said, people don't want to go out there with a craptacular boat and be target practice for someone. I tried that, and didn't much care for it. It's not fun to get beat down on a regular basis. Now I don't mind getting sunk...sunk alot...lord knows I got sunk plenty last year, but I felt I held my own. As long as I feel I gave as good as I get, I'm cool with losing, and doing the walk of shame to get my boat. That's fun, dishing it out and taking it. Just taking it isn't fun for long.

This is a part of the reason I am running the old girl this year. I want to see how well the speed rules benefit her. it's one of those things that we can theory-craft all we want, but until the BBs hit the balsa we simply don't know. In a few weeks, I'm going to have a better idea of how well I like the Courageous with a speed advantage. We tried cruisers last year, we tried small battlecruisers, we tried dreadnoughts and we tried fast battleships. What we didn't try is the long, fast battlecruisers. Well this year, we have Renown and Courageous on the water. We'll have an idea of what to expect out of them and how viable they are.

What I expect is, they'll be OK. Probably not stellar, and probably not rookie ships, but I don't think that Renown and I will end up as floating targets either. I think our speed is going to make us dangerous, and allow us to get away from some fights we don't want. Fortunately Ravenna has a lot of open water for us to run on. I think the big BCs will not be as much fun on a small retention pond where we are easier to bring to bay. In those small ponds, the slower ships only have to chase us until they turn, then they can curt a corner and kill us. In a large pond, we can kite them all over the place. The tactical situation will determine the potential effectiveness of those large ships.

So what do I think is the "best" overall ship? Well if I had to pick ONE ship for all situations, I'd say one of the faster 5.5 unit dreadnoughts. A ww1 QE or ww1 Nagato come to mind. They have middle of the pack speed, good maneuverability and excellent firepower/pump options. Not the best in any one category, but very well rounded for whatever situation they may find themselves in. They are simply well balanced ships.

 

We finally decided that what we wanted was to simply generate a set of rules that would resemble the current BBS rules, but with some rules that we liked from the other formats, and clubs.
For instance..

From the 72nd scale club out west, we liked the fact that the goal of the combat was to create more fun, and less competativeness.

From the big-gun groups, we liked the the speed based on actual ship's speed,
different pump capacities based on ship type, a set rate-of-fire, and the mentality that it is up to the captain to police their own build, and to prove that their ship is legal, in the case of it being challenged.

Two of the BBS rules that had proven to be problematical were the rules restricting the pump motors, and circuit-boards for the cannons.

The pump motor rule limited the pump motor to a certain rpm, or something like that.
Not only was it hard to find out what the rpms of any given motor was, but one also had to know what motor was on thier pump, which could also be hard to determine.
We decided that the best way to limit pump volume was to simply limit the pump volume at the outlet.

Now as to the circuit-boards.
The BBS tried to limit the rate-of-fire by restricting the technology (circuit-boards), (high-speed servoes), and such.
But in going about it in this way, they made it difficult for members of the other small-gun clubs to participate in BBS events.

So we decided the best way to limit the rate-of-fire, was to allow all forms of firing technologies, but to limit the rate-of-fire.

So we laid down the first basic set of changes to the rules, and decided to call our new format the Washington Treaty Combat Group, and that we would be the B fleet in the BBS, and remain members of that club.

We also decided that we wanted to keep things low-key for the time being, and not post the news of our new format until we had a chance to have a battle, and make sure everything worked, as we did have rules from all of the various other formats rolled into one. We were pretty sure it would work, but we wanted to make sure.
So we posted it on the BBS forum one evening, and were tickled that things seemed to be on track, and in order. We could take it one step at a time, and see how things played out, at a nice slow pace, before going public with it.

 

The post on the BBS forun took place on October 8 2006 (late evening).
As it turned out. One of the members of the BBS forwarded the post to a
member of the IRCWCC, who posted it on their forum on October 9. Then someone
cross-posted it to the MWC forum shortly thereafter. I don't recall if it made it to the big-gun forums.
But those on the other small-gun forums were hashing it out for quite some time. There was some support, some interest, and quite a lot of debating as to why we would start a new small-gun format, which would in-effect further break-down the current small-gun groups attendence.
But the long-and-short of it is that we in the Treaty group didn't really put the word out.

 

To answer the primary question, as to why we would start a new small-gun club.
The answer is quite simple.
We had no intentions of starting a new club. We were planning to do what we had been trying to do for the last few years. And that was to create a "B" fleet in an existing club that we were all currently battling with. All we wanted was to make changes to the current rules in the BBS that would allow us to attend their events, but battle in-between their sorties, to rules that supported a wider variety of ships, by basing the ship's abilities more on historical accuracy, than game-play.

 

If I remember correctly. The original post to the BBS was written in such a manner that it could be taken more as a statement, than a request, to work us in as the "B" fleet, and that caused some tension at first. But after some calming of the waters, the idea met with more support, than opposition, and it looked like 2007 could be a really great year to be battling small-gun in Ohio, with the BBS having the ability to offer up two different formats of battling at their events.
One could battle to BBS rules.
BBs rules are similar to IRCWCC, and MWC, but with some changes to the units, and speeds of the ships, as well as to the battling rules themselves. But for the most part, a captain from either of the other small-gun groups could participate in a BBS battle with some slight changes.
One could also battle to Treaty rules.
Basically, one could take a small-gun ship from any format, and by slowing it down, regulating the pump volume, watching their rate-of-fire, and possibly de-tweaking their cannons, and making sure their drag-discs were small enough, could participate in the Treaty battles.

 

While we were working on getting our rules package together, the BBS was looking at possibly losing their battle site, and had to cancel a couple of the events in the latter months of 2006.
There was some discussions of rules, but not much interest in having a rules meeting to sort it all out.
So as 2006 came to an close, we in Treaty were not sure that there would be BBS events, as the forum was pretty dead, the battle site was in question, and there was some captains concerned with the damage to the superstructures, and other non-penetrable parts of the ships due to the cannons on some ships being tweaked more than others.
So we decided to take stock of what we had at hand, and keep moving forward.

 

What we had was a small group of captains that were excited about what we were doing. And what we were doing was simply this..
We were planning to schedule events every month during the battling season.
We were working on finding our own battle sites in several different locations.
We were hearing from more, and more captains that found one thing about us more, and more attractive..
WE WERE LISTENING TO THEIR IDEAS, AND PUTTING IT TO THE CLUB FOR DISCUSSION.

 

If it sounded like it would make the game more fun, we added it to the rules.
If it sounded like it would make the game more fun, but there was concern that it might be trouble, then we added it to the rules under R+D, so that we could actually see the results in action before dis-allowing it.

 

I would have to say the game as we set it up worked, and quite well.