What happens when two ships collide? :question:
Is this still actual?
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The largest ships moves first, than all remaining ships (in order of size) move as far as they can, stopping when they touch the base of another ship. Friendly ships that collide take damage. Enemey ship do not take damage, but might get entangled and can board.
Surely enemy ships, which collide, should still suffer some damage and what about a deliberate ramming attack?
I see this is where house rules will come into play. If the rules do not address ramming, that, too, I am sure will be developed here. It is one of the reasons I am not too worried about the official rules. Even tournaments can employ house rules as long as they are disclosed early enough for folks to adapt. I really enjoy the house rules folks created for WoG, and we're suing some in the OTT campaign, and using them to good effect.
David, I agree with your sentiment about enemy ships suffering some type of damage. The entanglement result should be possible regardless if enemy or friendly ships collide.
House rules. Off hand, I would say if ramming (collision where the entirety of the front edge of your base would overlap the enemy at any point during the completion of your move (using normal collision resolution).
Then, attacking ship does damage in long range ball counters (can't remember what letter) equal to its burden to itself and the enemy. If it is ramming the side, treat as raking for recipient only, if the rear, treat as raking the rear for recipient only. This would be if using standard movement or at 2 sails. If at 1 sail setting, no damage (just normal resolution). If at 3 sails, add 2 damage to both ships.
If there was a head-on collision ships would each damage themselves and the other, so massive damage all around.
I think the damage only when colliding with friendly ships is there to dissuade players from using ramming as a standard tactic.
...and we're not playing with Roman or Greek galleys.
I'm not the one who want to try to ram an enemy 3rd rate's broadside with my ship.
To what degree does ramming have historical support in the age-of-sail? Such a question should determine if ramming is a legitimate option in SoG. I remember a similar discussion on the Aerodrome. If memory serves me correctly, there was some leaning towards ramming, at least by several members, due to historical precedent.
Fire ships are an example of deliberate ramming, however this tactic was largely abandoned by the Napoleonic era. If there is some precedent for ramming I would think it is a one off event rather than a tactic per se. The object was to try and capture the enemy ship and collect prize money, etc. Deliberately damaging both ships runs counter to the prize system anyway. Although laying alongside the enemy ship did often result in entanglements so that rule should certainly apply to both sides.
Eric
The other possible reason for this rule could be to keep friendly ships from lining up in base to base contact. I could see that messing up some scenarios. And another thought... it could also give players pause for just piling a bunch of ships into an entanglement or boarding action.
I think all battles started with nice lines or tried to. I know of jibs being lost by running into the ship in front. Bad seamanship, weather and damage. The British did end up just piling in at Trafalgar. Locked ships did happen as did using one ship as a bridge to get to the next one. In the end a number of battles ended up as lots of melees between two or more ships.
Be safe
Rory
Starting out or sailing into a line is great. Blocking a section of the playing surface off completely by being in base to base contact with your ships is quite a different story I think. Think of a cutting out mission where there is a narrow entrance leading to the harbor, if the optional rule Surrendered Ships is in play, it could be possible for a player to make the mission unattainable by the other side.
And breaking jibs and such would be reflected by the friendly ships taking damage.
Some paintings of the era plus hex based board games such as WSIM tend to give a false impression of the quasi linear nature of AoS combat. As with many wargames the control that players have over their ships is pretty absolute. In reality it was far from true, with ship speeds varying on a minute by minute basis due to variations in wind strength, local blocking, wave action, etc. In FLoB and some other sets of rules there is a certain randomness within the movement rules that means players aren't entirely in control, and so a sensible spacing between ships and some linear displacement is advisable - as it was in real actions.
Depends on the period -- early in the period, when guns were neither numerous nor reliable, ram-and-board was still used; by the period the game covers, rams were few and far between, save for accidents or when someone figured a boarding action beat a gunfight (see the coverage of John Paul Jones's famous battle at Flamborough Head elseforum). Oddly, the advent of steam power allowed ramming to make a (brief) comeback, as one was no longer dependent upon being upwind; look at the naval battles of the American Civil War, and note how prominent ramming was in them (esp. note the infamous "Ellet's Brigade", which consisted of a brace of unarmed ram-equipped steamboats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Ram_Fleet ).
Frankly, I see this rule as a serious, if not game-breaking, flaw.
How so? What are your thoughts?
If ramming, for the time period covered, does not have historical support, I could exclude it easily from games I run. As for the piling up and boarding, again, I would ask the same question about historical precedent. It is unclear to me why that would be a prohibited tactic, and I readily acknowledge I am speaking out of a lack of knowledge. All of this does not apply, though, to what-if scenarios. It could be interesting to see how ramming works when trying to break a blockade, for example.
I think this is compromise we have to make for WoG and SoG.
If planes collide in the air, the party is normally immediately over.
Due to my historical interest I try to avoid such situations like "deliberately ramming another plane" to bring it down.
To ram a ship does not belong to Napoleonic maritime warfare tacticts, but Ares Games needs to cover this section somehow, because you can't avoid it sometimes on the table.
Historical in Napoleonic maritime warfare, it was a great danger to ram a warship in battle.
Normaly you were not able to sink for example a frigate with a 3rd rate by a ram maneuver. The hulks of the ships were solid enough to resist a ram attack.
!Don't get me wrong! I'm not talking about a 1st rate that crushes a sloop (by mistake) or about an anchored frigate that is rammed by a full rigged 3rd rate in a 90 degree angle with full speed!
To ram a warships means always a risk to get heavily damaged by yourself or to loose your ship or great parts of your crew.
- You can be entangeld with the rigging, giving the enemy the chance to board you.
- Damages to the bow had influence on speed and maneuverability.
- Damages to the rigging have influence on speed and maneuverability, too.
- Carronades are that effective on close range.
- There is a high risk to catch fire or get heaviliy damged by fire or an exploding gunpowder magazin.
- The time you need to ram another ship gives the enemy the chance to give a lot of full broadsides on your vulnerable bow parts and you can not return fire in an effective way.
- Also smaller ships with smaller cannons can can inflict heavy damage in such an situations.
- As long as the enemy has sails and the possibility to maneuver he can easily avoid to be rammed
- etc...
This is not a complete list, there are many other points.
So you always try to fight the enemy down with broad sides, try do demast him, damage his rigging do decrease his speed, try to fire into his vulnerable stern (or escape :wink:) instead of raming him.
Apart from sporadic desperate situations I can not imagine a situation when an intact Napoleonic warship tried to ram an enemy.
You find galleys in the Napoleonic aera. I think the Spanish or French used them in Mediterranean harbours.
But I don't know about ram attacks.
Normaly the had guns in the front section as the most dangerous threat.
Galleys in this era (and for centuries before) definitely not desigbed for ramming. Most were of very light construction and would have been highly susceptible to self damage if they rammed another vessel.
One tactic I've found is pretty effective is to entangle an enemy with one ship so it can't move and then have a second ship pull around back and rake the heck out of it.
From Andrea:
Quote:
The thread seems to be very correct. And true, the rule of damages only to friendly ships is to avoid collision tactics. Home rules are possible, and of course if unarmed ramming ships will be introduced we will do special ramming rules. For the moment, as in Wings of Glory, avoiding collision tactics seemed better. But in WGF and WGS too we could admit ramming rules in special cases (mostly with Russian planes, but I remember several more cases including Italian and Greek pilots).
All the best,
Andrea
Great comments Sven!
I think it is also important to emphasize the difference between ram attacks and collisions. A captain might collide with an enemy ship in an attempt to grapple and board, or their rigging may become entangled leading to a possible boarding action. However this type of collision was not meant to deliberately cripple the enemy ship, whereas a ramming attack, i.e.; ACW rams or classical galley warfare, was designed to sink the enemy ship.
Eric
Well, most of my concerns have been addressed by others above. Collisions happened often enough -- read through the historical encounters listed in the Historical Discussion conference. However, as was pointed out by Sven: There were a myriad of problems associated with it -- getting tangled up with the opponent; increased effectiveness of cannon at close range; the chance of fire on the opponent spreading to one's own ship; and so on.
What I would have preferred to see is rules for collisions which address these matters -- preferably to the extent where deliberate rams become a case of "the game ain't worth the candle". (Someone mentioned ram-attacks in _WoG_: I allow them, but have them arranged such that at best it's a 1:1 exchange, as was the case historically; this means that some ram-happy nitwit is never going to be able to achieve better than a no-score draw unless he also uses his guns. In a campaign, the ramming pilot may survive; if memory serves, there were a few Soviet pilots who scored multiple ram-kills -- they just never scored more than one per mission, as the act of ramming forced a landing shortly afterwards.) Having ships "just bounce off" is going to generate from Portland laughter audible all the way back to Italy.
In the standard and advanced rules they don't just bounce, they cause damage or can be entangled/boarded. As in life, nothing is for free.
Having your ship halted and having to re-start is quite a tactical drawback. If you're even more unlucky, your physical position may require you to back up, stop, then start going forward. If you're even more unlucky, you're entangled. Simply colliding with an enemy ship could easily end your tactical ability to maneuver for a major portion of the game and likely the latter half when things get crazy.
If it's really chapping someone's hide they can't cause ram damage on top of this, then work within the system. Use the friendly ship damage rules as well and then you can play Phoenecian ram ship to your heart's delight.
Checked the rules for collisions and I'm ok with this rules.
I like the penalty for collision with friendly ships, too. :minis:
This can get nasty if you have to take as much damage tokens as the ship's burden value, you collide with. :erk:
In general I like the "right of way" for the bigger ships. :sly:
If we get French 1st rates some days, nothing can stop my course. (Maybe a few broadsides from the RN, but we're talking only about maneuvering here. :wink:)
What we did in our last game is use the "Friendly Ship" collision rule and then added the "Entanglement" rules for indicating collision with enemy ships. Because of the size of the playing area it seems collisions could be a common occurrence. After all you are trying to stay in fairly close to get the best effect with your cannon fire.
True, and thats a feature of the movement system rather than "real life". Unlike the fairly regular examples of bumping ships which we seem to be experiencing in games our real life counterparts were actually quite good at manoeuvring and fighting at close quarters without running foul of other ships unless and until one side or the other wanted to do so. I suppose its a feature of the card based manoeuvre system (I've noticed that unintentional collisions are more prevalent using the Standard/Advanced system but still are a feature of the Basic system as well), and also that there is no option for our 1/1000 commanders to take the kind of evasive action that they would do if they were in some of the situations in which they find themselves on the tabletop.
I don't think tight space is problem generator. Even when you play on 12' x 4' table, there still would be the problem. And it usually occurs when melee starts. Also, if first ship colides, whole line has problem... I'm even thinking of adjusting (or even ignoring) collision rules.
Well, sailing with real sailships, I will play a collision like it is...no different between friendly and enemy...in both cases you will get the damage, and, if an enemy ship, more action (rifle fire and so on) will follow.
Thinking about only one little houserule: ramming in 90 degrees or face to face is special: think in that case the rigg (mast and sails) will come down and makes a heavy damage. That is the imported reason not to do it. There I will give special damage points.
By the way, running aground can have the same effect..
I believe so. But, I also believe that game designers wanted to avoid deliberate ramming between the enemies (and to save ramming for Oars of Glory :wink: ). They probably had in mind historical precedecy. What I don't know is, did collisions between friendly ships happened during battle in such scale that ignoring them could bring bad consequences to the game mechanics. If collisions were rare enough, I'm really thinking of ignoring it, or use entanglement rules both for friends and enemies.
(I believe so. But, I also believe that game designers wanted to avoid deliberate ramming between the enemies)
Yes , of course, you right.
But I find it is not reality, so it is fantastic the the game allows houserules.
The mean thing is to have fun; and this game is one of those ones who did it well.:thumbsup:
You are quite right.
General problem with wargame rules is - fast rules aren't detailed; detailed rules aren't fast. And I find ?oG rules well balanced. You also pointed well, they stand house rules implementation fine. And certainly are fun :happy:
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My son Will and I played as a team, French, in a game recently. We had an accidental bowsprit to bowsprit frontal collision, became locked, unable to back sails. Do we drift, do we remain locked? We decided to allow the larger ship to push aside the smaller ship. The latter was forcibly backed away from the entanglement and missed its move turn. Both ships drew one chit of damage. We were playing our second game only and using basic rules. Is this covered in the Advanced rules? Any other suggestions?
After the initial collision stops them, the ships can sail right through each other on the next move. Read through the collision rules again. One thing you might notice is that, per rules, they will only collide if their end positions would overlap.
If their end positions would overlap, you basically do a collision with movement in progress.
If their end positions do not overlap, you ignore the in progress movement and only worry about their end positions that they then move to.
Think of this mechanic as the huge bases being a vague representation of threat area and the ships can actually make minor emergency corrections to avoid. There has to be some way to actually collide, so the rules provide the lessened chance of at least the end position to determine that this was the case where the ships failed to make said minor emergency corrections.
Greetings Gentlemen,
Please forgive this question, but what page in the rule book lists damage for collisions (friendly OR foe)? I was unable to find the method for determining how many chits from which bag need to be drawn (of course, under the stress of a "live play test"!)
Thank you,
Lance
There is a "Collisions" rule in the standard rules section page 25th, Lance.
The funny thing is there are no collisions between enemy ships...only the friendly ones.