Latest wave of ships.

[Hjl]

a fleet action set of rules needs to come at the problem from a completely different perspective. The players will be assuming the roles of admirals and commodores rather than ships captains, so the game system needs to deal with all the sorts of decisions that ships captains are making rather than burdening the players with it. Admirals shold lay out their strategy, command aims and issue orders to their subordinates, with the system dealing with how they discharge those orders. In terms of sailing mechanics, combat and repair it necessarily must be a far simpler system.

That would be brilliant! Imagine issues G orders to captains and then using dice or chits to determine how they are followed. Make it an in depth table top strategy game rather than a captaincy simulator.

I think you hit the nail right on the head, I think these rules do an excellent job of simulating a captain in charge of his ship, but fall short when controlling more than a couple of ships. I find any thing more than 3 v 3 to be a burocratic nightmare. Especially as I'm almost always playing solo games and so basically trying to manage six ships.

How do other people manage in big games? Use the intermediate or basic rule set?

[Bligh]

I use the advanced rules but cherry pick, Very seldom have wind strength changes for instance, and use the simple set of ship mats you can see in my AAR's. Just fill them in with a white board marker and return all chits to the bag each move. All ships form line of battle and do not sail as individuals until necessity forces them to do so. ie enemy ship getting in the way.
In this manner I have managed to sail six a side, but would rather not go any higher in numbers.
However, when playing a friend, the inevitable banter makes it much harder to keep an eye on what is happening and exactly where you are.
I think that with practice and developing an order for carrying out each action you can get better at managing larger numbers of ships, but as I said six a side is about my personal limit. You also need to concentrate a lot more if the British are using Carronades.
Rob.