Shipmates,

I've been reading a lot about how ships were surrendering or "striking their colors" during the course of battle, it seems to be the most likely outcome of battles in the time period.

This made me think we don't have any morale rules that I know of. Ships effectively fight until all the crew boxes have been destroyed (or all hull boxes destroyed). To add a bit more randomness to the game, here's what I was mulling over on this front.....

Whenever a ship reaches half her crew damaged, you are forced to draw a B damage counter. If the counter exceeds the number of crew slots remaining, the ship strikes it's colors. This means for bigger ships, there's a smaller chance they'll strike their colors, and for smaller ships, a greater chance.

Another alternative would be to say, once you exceed 50% crew damage slots, draw an A counter, once you exceed 75% crew damage start drawing B counters. This would result in larger ships being more or less immune to this rule at 50% crew damage, and really only having to worry about it once 75% crew damage comes about.

Every time you take another crew damage box, you draw another counter to check ships morale. This of course opens up some additional rules in terms of having stalwart crews (say needing crew level +1 to surrender) or particularly weak willed crews (say needing crew level -1 to surrender). These are some rules I'm mulling over....if anyone knows of any other morale type rules out there that someone else has worked up, happy to take a look at them!