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Old 01-22-2015, 05:20 PM   #1
Icelander
 
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Default [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

In a world very different from our own, with supernatural powers, widespread magic, supers on every side in warfare and so on, warfare follows a very different path. Hence, warfare in Dungeon Fantasy or, indeed, any Fantasy world with reliable and reproducable supernatural phenomena useful in warfare never develops along lines familiar to our non-magical Earth.

One thing that is prominent is the heavy emphasis on special operations*, with espionage, covert operations and surgical behind-enemy-lines strikes against the sources of their magical powers often deciding the outcome of battles.

In my TL 1+2, TL1+3, TL 2+1, TL 2+2, TL 3+1, TL 3+2, and TL4 campaign, the PCs are prosecuting a war where control of the oceans and the immense logistical advantage conferred by maritime resupply is key to the strategy of both sides. Accordingly, they want to move past merely raiding the enemy ports to destroy shipping and actually capture the ports that the other side is using to supply their three great field armies that are moving against the last bastions of the side that the PCs are supporting. Thus, hopefully, stranding tens of thousands of enemy soldiers in a hostile land without adequate resupply.

At real world TL 4-5, ships' boats were quite sufficient for amphibious operations. The PCs have the equivalent of TL 4 ships, with a few early TL 5 ships, so they have longboats, cutters and captains' gigs aplenty, manned with doughty Jack Tars and marines armed with smokepowder weapons.

They've had some two months to construct more boats to aid in their amphibious operations, however, and it would probably be effective to construct boats longer and heavier than those routinely carried on sailing ships. They only need to sail a distance of 25 miles, after all, and can be dragged behind sailing ships or galleys if needed.

I was wondering what might be reasonable designs for landing crafts for the proposed amphibious attacks on the two port cities. I considered some designs more efficient** than ships' cutters or longboats, such as chalanas, barges, chasse-marées, feluccas, war canoes or catamarans.

Various local people are partial to galleys, feluccas and catamarans.***

What would be a reasonable design for the PCs to order for their amphibious assaults? What would be the GURPS stats for something that was bigger than a ships' boat, but smaller than an average Age of Sail ship, which could be used as a landing craft in TL4 warfare?

*I. e. stuff PCs do in Mass Combat situations.
**In terms of both man-hours needed to construct it and crew needed to work it, compared to the amount of men and materiel that it could land in a given period of time.
***Local pirates who build extremely fast sailing and rowing boats of that design, with whom the PCs recently allied.
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Old 01-22-2015, 08:58 PM   #2
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

Unless you need to roll vehicles off the ship, any boat capable of landing will do the job. Unless you need greater speed and/or stealth, barges are the easiest.
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Old 01-22-2015, 09:54 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

Most ships, certainly most purpose built warships were capable of being beached. Perhaps not a giant roman bread vessel, or one of those monster warships of the Macedonian Succession Wars that they were so ridiculously fascinated with and did little good to anyone but Archeologists. But a typical Venetian galley or Norse longship, or a Macdonald Berlinn(Scotch galley) could do so and would routinely on various missions. No Ancient or Medieval power needed specialized landing craft as such very much.

What was needed was something that could carry the horses and heavy impedimenta of a first class army. But back country polities like the Norse and the Macdonalds wouldn't have such amenities, and powers like Venice that were chiefly maritime would place lower priority on them.
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Old 01-23-2015, 03:01 AM   #4
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

I seem to recall several accounts of crusaders using ships fitted with ramps via which horsemen could ride directly onto the shore - probably the medieval version of an LST.

In the C19, I also seem to recall accounts of shallow draft, square bowed boats being used to land troops - probably modified lighters and mainly used to land horses, guns and/or stores as troops can be landed in regular boats.
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Old 01-23-2015, 08:27 AM   #5
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

Here's an interesting horse transport from the Gallipoli operation, might be inspirational: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:V_..._Gallipoli.jpg
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Old 01-23-2015, 09:26 AM   #6
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
I seem to recall several accounts of crusaders using ships fitted with ramps via which horsemen could ride directly onto the shore - probably the medieval version of an LST.

In the C19, I also seem to recall accounts of shallow draft, square bowed boats being used to land troops - probably modified lighters and mainly used to land horses, guns and/or stores as troops can be landed in regular boats.
They had such things on the Med and plenty of experience transporting horses but neither were as common in the Atlantic. David Howarth believed that if Harold Godwinsson had returned Williams army would have been immobilized by seasick horses. Seasick men too but that is another story.

Unless there was a prolonged inland campaign in mind most amphibious operations had no cavalry involved. A simple island-snatch would have been an infantry op. Even the Great Heathen Army stole most of it's horses from the Saxons on arrival rather then bringing them along.
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Old 01-23-2015, 05:32 PM   #7
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
I seem to recall several accounts of crusaders using ships fitted with ramps via which horsemen could ride directly onto the shore - probably the medieval version of an LST.
Four older war galleys that were captured by men under the PCs have already been converted to hippogogi/taridae, i.e. horse transports that can carry some 25-30 horses each, along with riders and war harness.

They'll be used in the assault againt the larger city, landing a cavalry force of around 100 men on a beach outside the city, meant to screen the advance of the army that lands outside.

They'll probably be packed with men as well, as many as can fit on them, as they'll only be sailing a distance of 25 miles to make the landing.

Quote:
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In the C19, I also seem to recall accounts of shallow draft, square bowed boats being used to land troops - probably modified lighters and mainly used to land horses, guns and/or stores as troops can be landed in regular boats.
Yes, but what are reasonable GURPS stats for such larger versions of ships' boats like longboats and cutters?

I'm principally interested in what kind of Move one can expect, with maybe 12 rowers for the smaller versions, up to 30 for the largests.
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Old 01-28-2015, 07:32 AM   #8
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

Some of the best landing craft look to be captured galleys and the light coastal raiding vessels of local pirates, largely because they are already purpose-designed for landing warriors to loot and pillage.

However, the PCs most likely do not have enough of those to land all the thousands of troops that they need.

Assuming that you can get several carpenters and an infinite supply of semi-skilled labour to work on each craft, what is a reasonable vessel to build in 60 days?

How long does it take to build a TL2 galley like the bireme or any other type that's fairly simple to build (i. e. not the huge polyremes)?

What about the earlier heroic Greek penteconters, which are essentially just long open-decked boats?

Or a typical Age of Sail ship's boat, like the cutter or longboat?

And how much does it change stats to make the galley or boat wider, enough so it could hold maybe as many passengers as rowers?

That would obviously slow them enough to make them useless in ship to ship combat, but these are landing craft, not fighting ships.

How many passengers could one transport with 30 rowers while still attaining Move 3? What kind of vessel would you use?

If I want to transport ca 5,000 soldiers and not need more than 2,000 rowers and sailors*, but I want Move 3+ for at least a thousand of them and at least decent pace of landing for the rest, what size of boats, open-decked galleys or barges do I want?

*For the actual landings. The rest of some 10,000 sailors and about a hundred ships will be busy with the logistics that allow the landing and keeping enemy ships away by controlling the seas.
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Old 01-28-2015, 08:04 AM   #9
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
I'm principally interested in what kind of Move one can expect, with maybe 12 rowers for the smaller versions, up to 30 for the largests.
You might be able to use Ghostdancer's Sailing the Open Skies article (Pyramid #3/64) here. Briefly, a vessel can have up to 3 oar systems, with one giving it Move 1/3 and each additional increasing maximum speed by +1. An SM +5 (30 ton) ship needs 4 rowers per system, SM+6 (100 ton) needs 12 per system, and SM+7 (300 ton, the largest that can use oars) needs 40 per system. The article suggests, in a cinematic campaign, allowing strong characters to count as more than one rower - each doubling of BL from 20 counts as an additional rower (EDIT: If you want to allow characters to have a fractional effect, log base 2 of BL/10 will give you your multiplier. An ST 12 character thus counts as 1.5 rowers. Note this will mean characters with ST 7 or lower can't contribute).

In a highly cinematic setting, or one where humans can be superhuman thanks to magic, it might be appropriate to allow very strong rowers to function as though the ship had more systems than it does. That is, if you have a 30 ton ship with 4 ST 20 rowers, each of those rowers is functionally equal to 3 normal rowers (they double BL 20 twice), so the ship has Move 1/5 as though it had three systems. If the above ship did have three systems, and each of the 12 rowers had ST 20, they'd count as 36 rowers. That's 9 systems, for something like Move 1/11.

Last edited by Varyon; 01-28-2015 at 08:13 AM.
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Old 01-23-2015, 03:54 PM   #10
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Default Re: [Low-Tech] Landing Craft at TL2 to TL4

Quote:
Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
Most ships, certainly most purpose built warships were capable of being beached. Perhaps not a giant roman bread vessel, or one of those monster warships of the Macedonian Succession Wars that they were so ridiculously fascinated with and did little good to anyone but Archeologists. But a typical Venetian galley or Norse longship, or a Macdonald Berlinn(Scotch galley) could do so and would routinely on various missions. No Ancient or Medieval power needed specialized landing craft as such very much.

What was needed was something that could carry the horses and heavy impedimenta of a first class army. But back country polities like the Norse and the Macdonalds wouldn't have such amenities, and powers like Venice that were chiefly maritime would place lower priority on them.
The PCs are using frigates, brigs and 'war caravels' that are TL3+1 or TL4+1 sailing ships. Their allies have TL2+1 galleys and liburnians, as well as TL2+2 catamaran raiding galleys.

The PCs have two large horse transports that are converted medievalish galleys and two more should be ready when the attack is launched.
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