Ship and naval combat

[ArchSinccubus]

Hi! I'm making a TL 4 campaign, with a sea fairing theme. Ships, guns, pirates, the whole shebang. Now, my players also want ship combat to be involved, and I do too. The question is, where can I find rules about ship combat in GURPS? I can most likely simulate it with normal character combat rules, just give the ships lots of HP and SMs that make it easier to hit, but I wanted to know if there are rules for naval combat specifically already written somewhere.

Thanks in advance!

[Gigermann]

Most here will probably point you to 3e GURPS Swashbucklers for this—which is basically a variation on Mass Combat. It works well enough, but it's a little more "abstract" than I generally like.

I had plans to use an Age-of-Sail miniatures ruleset in my campaign, specifically Don't Give Up the Ship!, because it would allow me to fold in some GURPS without too much fuss—but it didn't actually come up in the first run, so I haven't had a proper test. I think Hearts of Oak is a little more popular to that end.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

Most here will probably point you to 3e GURPS Swashbucklers for thisd.

Yes _but_ it's 3e book and its' ship stats aren't compatible with 4e examples.

There are a few of those in Fantasy along with what might be enough ship's guns. You might want Low Tech for some TL4 personal firearms.

You can sort of make low tech sailing ships with Spaceships. You'd need Spaceships 7 as well as Spaceships 1. There is a TL4^ sailing ship in 7 but even toguh it flies in space changing it to be water only would be a matter of altering a few stats. Things like use regular wooden armor instead of "Etherwood".

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You can sort of make low tech sailing ships with Spaceships. You'd need Spaceships 7 as well as Spaceships 1. There is a TL4^ sailing ship in 7 but even toguh it flies in space changing it to be water only would be a matter of altering a few stats. Things like use regular wooden armor instead of "Etherwood".

You can, but I don't see how it would help for combat rules. Spaceships combat rules are wedded to Spaceships scale, and the shortest range it understands is longer than WWII battleship gunnery, never mind TL4 sailing ship gunnery.

[Mercurae]

I came here to say 4e Spaceships is an excellent place to start. After all, spaceship combat is depicted as just naval combat in space. It has a really nice modular ship design system with stats for regular wooden armor and projectile weapons. The combat rules involve ship maneuvers for interception, closing range, facing, ramming, rendezvous and things like boarding, damage control. There are rules for running it on a combat map too.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

You can, but I don't see how it would help for combat rules. Spaceships combat rules are wedded to Spaceships scale, and the shortest range it understands is longer than WWII battleship gunnery, never mind TL4 sailing ship gunnery.

You can just ignore the precise ranges given which are like 10,000 miles IIRC. Instead use the more abstract Short, Medium, Long, etc. range scale. You'll need to adjust the ranges and speeds but that shouldn't be too difficult. Maybe just pick a much larger scale to get the relative values then scale down.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by ArchSinccubus

Hi! I'm making a TL 4 campaign, with a sea fairing theme. Ships, guns, pirates, the whole shebang. Now, my players also want ship combat to be involved, and I do too. The question is, where can I find rules about ship combat in GURPS? I can most likely simulate it with normal character combat rules, just give the ships lots of HP and SMs that make it easier to hit, but I wanted to know if there are rules for naval combat specifically already written somewhere.

Thanks in advance!

Low-Tech Companion 2 has stats for frigate, caravel and sloop of war.

[Shuckster]

So the basic set goes over vehicle combat on page B467 and that goes over the different maneuvers water vehicles can take as well as how they move, attack, defend and collide in combat etc. B554 has a hit location table for all the different locations a vehicle might have.

As for the actual ships themselves Low Tech has some additional sailing rules for sailing against the wind on page LT141

The problem is the basic set lists no TL 4 ships stats, and High Tech as well as Low Tech don't actually list any Vehicles that use the Ship handling skill at all...

Of course some people build vehicles as characters to get around this and the template toolkit 2 provides a meta trait:

Boat: Horizontal [-10]; No Legs (Aquatic) [-10]; No Manipulators [-50]; Numb [-20]. "Notes: No Legs (Aquatic) is priced to reflect the vessel’s inability to dive and dependency for mobility on masts, oars, or propellers that can’t be armored." -90 points.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Shuckster

The problem is the basic set lists no TL 4 ships stats, and High Tech as well as Low Tech don't actually list any Vehicles that use the Ship handling skill at all...

They were shuffled into Low-Tech Companions 2 (warships) and 3 (cargo ships), presumably for page count reasons.

[hal]

If you want, pick up some age of sail naval miniature rules. The Ship to ship combat is dealt with via the miniature rules, and the role playing is done via GURPS.

Fantasy Games Unlimited has a set of rules called PRIVATEERS AND GENTLEMEN that you can pick up for about $18 - with guidelines for campaign play and reasonable rules for ship maneuvering relative to the wind. Each "Gun factor" is based upon the premise that it is 50 lbs of throw weight per factor. Thus, a crew that is handling an 18 lbr could fire roughly 4 times before their "hits" would do relative damage to the enemy ship.

It isn't hard to integrate GURPS characters into P&G characters, and it isn't hard to have ship encounter rolls to determine what the next set of sails sighted over the horizon may be. Individual ships are assigned missions that may include Cruzing (not a mis-spelling of the word), Convoy protection, Mail delivery, etc.

There is sufficient detail in that set of rules to get a decent age of sail campaign set up from the British point of view or the American point of view (sadly, the original author didn't try for a French point of view).

There are other rules out there if you've a mind to look into it.

[Mercurae]

Originally Posted by Anders

They were shuffled into Low-Tech Companions 2 (warships) and 3 (cargo ships), presumably for page count reasons.

Originally Posted by hal

If you want, pick up some age of sail naval miniature rules. The Ship to ship combat is dealt with via the miniature rules, and the role playing is done via GURPS.

Fantasy Games Unlimited has a set of rules called PRIVATEERS AND GENTLEMEN that you can pick up for about $18 - with guidelines for campaign play and reasonable rules for ship maneuvering relative to the wind. Each "Gun factor" is based upon the premise that it is 50 lbs of throw weight per factor. Thus, a crew that is handling an 18 lbr could fire roughly 4 times before their "hits" would do relative damage to the enemy ship...

I guess that shows my bias. I have a bunch of Spaceships stuff but never even saw that Low Tech has naval ship stuff. And just using a ruleset specifically for naval combat sounds way better than my nonsense.