Avast!: Ship-to-Ship Combat Rules

Much of the game’s personality hinges on ship-to-ship battles. I thought it useful to discuss how this will be implemented in our PBP game, particularly since most of these rules appear only in the hardcopy of the SW game book.

Sundered Skies has 2 ship combat rulesets: complex, detailed tabletop rules and simpler “Chase” rules from the Savage Worlds book. The Chase rules are generally preferred, as this leads to faster play, and easier understanding of what is occurring. That said, I do not find the Chase rules wholly satisfying. Thus, I’m making some tweaks that should be fun and I hope still easy to follow.

In short, the rules employed will be more detailed than the Chase rules, but I hope it will still be readily interpretable by the players.

Turn order. Action cards (initiative) will be handed out per vessel and but otherwise initiative will proceed as normal. I will be using a compressed time format as with the standard “chase” rules. A typical round of ship-to-ship combat will last 1 fire cycle for a typical heavy ship weapon (i.e., you fire and reload once per turn), or roughly 6 normal rounds. I’ve decided that cannons reload at roughly half the rate of muskets (assuming a crew of 2 to man them), and thus musketeers sniping from deck may take 2 shots. If you have some manner of magical Bolt based attack, it may take more shots as appropriate.

Ship position. All positions in space will be listed relative to the ship occupied by the PCs (initially, the Swoose) in 10 range increments. If you guys occupy multiple ships, I’ll choose whichever one is more relevant as a centerpoint, although both ships will likely begin combat within the same range increment. There will be cardinal and ordinal directions emanating from the ship as follows (clockwise, 45 degrees apart, if viewed from above): bow, starboard bow, starboard, starboard aft, aft, portside aft, portside, portside bow. The ship is assumed to be heading in the bow direction. Elevation will be delineated on a +/- 10 scale.

Each range increment is equivalent to 50” (~100 meters), such that a range increment of “1” would be 50”-100”. For determining weapon ranges, assume the lower value of each range. The only time I will give explicit ranges is within the same range increment, such as if you are paralleling to board, ram, or when closing in on islands or other objects.

Other ship and objects will be given a position (relative to your ship) as follows:

Identity; Direction from your ship; Distance (in 50” range increments); Elevation; Heading (again, relative to your ship); Current speed (in inches); Change in ship-to-ship distance (relative to last state – either closing or falling)

Example: Pirate Frigate; Portside aft; 4; -1; Starboard bow; 10”; closing.

It would look like this:

Ship Movement. Since time is compressed, dealing with the specifics of ship movement is simplified (unless within the same increment, then I’ll probably zoom in to increase detail). The ship’s crew (in the case of the Swoose, the required crew is just the helmsman) makes a boating roll. This boating roll can move you “forward” 1 range increment on a success or 2 on a raise. In addition, you may change your heading 1 degree to port or starboard (although this will appear reflected in your opponents position, since everything is relative to your ship). Ships may also increase their current speed (up to their top speed) at their acceleration rate or decelerate at up to 2 times their acceleration. The faster ship in each round will receive a +1 bonus to their boating roll, or +2 if they are moving twice as fast as the other vessel. A vessel traveling at half or more of it’s top speed will gain a -2 penalty to handling for appropriate maneuvers and stunts.

Additional actions may be taken by the helmsman at normal multiple action penalties. I will be recalculating the distance between ships between each round – so if you move 2 range increments port to starboard relative to the opposing vessel instead of 2 range increments straight away from it, you will not move as many “final” increments away.

If you wish to continue at current speed and heading, this is called a “steady” action. The steady action has a number of benefits, the first being that no roll is required. This action reduces the “unstable platform” firing penalty from -2 to -1. In addition, the helmsman may make an additional action at no multiple-action penalty.

Much of the fun in boating rolls comes from stunts. Stunts are special maneuvers taken by the ship to give you a tactical edge. These include hard turns (turning 2 or 3 direction points), smugglers’ turns (180 degree turn), climbing the void (increasing elevation to gain a variety of combat bonuses), hard brake (brake by 3x acceleration), parallel (move into boarding position), sideslips (shift 1 range increment sideways - port or starboard - without changing heading), and basically any others you can think of. These have increased difficulty (most of which are listed in the text). If you want specifics (a table?) I can put one together with what these values would typically be. Bonuses to handling apply to most stunts, and bonuses to climbing apply to changes in elevation.

Weapon Ranges and Arcs. As already mentioned, distances between vessels will be listed in range increments. Since cannon are mounted to the ship, they have some limits in terms of firing arcs that I believe are important.

Pintle mounted guns (like those on the Swoose) can fire in an arc of 5 degree points, while mounted cannon can fire only on 3. It is worth noting that pintle guns tend to be smaller and most importantly lighter, so it’s unlikely that you’ll have heavy bronze cannons on a pintle. The end effect is something like the following assuming pintle mounted guns on the swoose vs. fixed cannons on the typical frigate below.

Also note that in some cases, it will seem unlikely that guns can be brought to bear – such as when directly above an opponent. In these cases, I imagine a boating stunt could be used to roll the ship on its side and bring the weapons into line, but otherwise its possible that no firing could occur. Food for thought.

Firing rates. Because of the time compression of the rounds used here, I have worked reload time into each round (assuming weapons are properly crewed). The consequence of this is that some weapons might fire multiple times in a round. If this is the case, I will assume full rate of fire, and let you know if extra rolls (or new targets) are required.

Ship jobs. Each PC will likely be filling a variety of roles on the ship during combat. Each player should choose a default role (such as: Helmsman, gunner, rigger, repelling boarders, sniping, etc.) so that I know where you are likely to start in combat and we avoid the mad scramble to general quarters. Switching roles is a standard action that takes a round. For gameplay purposes, only 1 helmsman may act per turn. Any characters that do not take another action or are taking the rigging action are assumed to be helping in the piloting of the ship, and will be included in the “crew” that assists the helmsman’s boating roll.

Ending ship-to-ship combat. Ship to ship combat will end when one of a number of conditions occur:

Withdrawal – if you ever exceed 10 range increments in distance, I will assume you have withdrawn from the battle. This includes distance on the vertical axis – outclimbing an opponent can be used to withdrawal just like running in a line. That doesn’t mean they aren’t going to shadow you – it just means we won’t deal with it on a turn-by-turn basis.

One side sinks – pretty self-explanatory. See the game book text on sinking rules – it is possible to rescue off of sinking vessels for a reasonable amount of time, and ships can easy parallel a falling vessel until it reaches terminal velocity.

Surrender or other cessation of hostilities – also straightforward. Surrender doesn’t mean they won’t sink you anyway, of course, but sometimes it’s the best option.

Boarding action – In the event of a boarding action, we will switch to round-by-round based standard combat. Ship-to-ship combat will cease (although ship-based weapons may still be brought to bear, but reload times and whatnot will be evident).

Thoughts and questions are welcome as always. If you don’t understand or like something, let's get it out of the way now.