Problems with GURPS and Age of Nelson stuff

[hal]

I appreciate you weighing in on this Kromm. Unfortunately, the rules as you mention, are lacking as of this time - having been unpublished to date :(

I did forget that most cannons will be considered to be Huge Piercing, and thus inflict a further wounding modifier of x.5

But taking this further based upon that, would result in the following:

6dx4 (Fantasy page 144 stats for an 18 lbr): Average damage 80. Damage after DR 24 = 56. Damage after the x.5 wounding modifier, becomes 28.

6dx5 (High Tech page 140 for a 12 lbr): Average damage 100. Damage after DR 24 = 76. Damage after the x.5 wounding modifier becomes 38.

So, either 52 hits to bring the HMS VICTORY to zero hit points using the 6dx4 method, or 38 hits using the 4d6x5 method. MUCH more within reason to be sure - until you realize that I was using as an example, already published data from GURPS 4e rules, and that none of the damage ratings are those for the expected armaments of Spanish or French ships.

For example:

French 74 gun third rate with undamaged broadside:
14 x 36#
15 x 24#
8 x 8#
2 x 36# carronade

That is some SERIOUS firepower, for which GURPS has yet to publish. Maybe GURPS LOW TECH will contain some of the information, or perhaps GURPS AGE OF NELSON if ever republished in GURPS 4e format will contain that data, but for now, I don't see it being available NOW :(

In any event - it is my hope that by bringing this thread into being, that when GURPS VEHICLES DESIGN (or what ever the book will be titled) is finally published, it can answer some of the above mentioned questions.

[hal]

One more thing before I forget...

While looking at the tables for naval gunnery in AGE OF NELSON, I was rather surprised at the damages listed for the various weapons.

Since I had submitted the damages for naval cannons - I can only presume that one of three things happened:

Either:

I made a MAJOR goof in those tables when I had submitted them to the author (a possibility!)

The cut and paste department mixed things up a little by accident

The tables got garbled in transmission via the net

Those weapons should have been incrementing in damages as the weight of the projectile increased. Instead, we have 18 lbr cannon balls doing the same damage as 24 lbr cannon balls. We have long ranged 18 lbr cannon balls doing the same damage as 42 lbr cannon balls.

I can only apologize for that mess :(

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by hal

Those ship's were TOUGH. Question is - why doesn't the current set of rules give that level of toughness to the ships outright?

Grabbing GURPS FANTASY page 142, the spanish galleon has a hit point value of 680, and a DR of - are you ready for this? DR 15.

Because GURPS Fantasy contains vehicle rules that are completely unusable. The book is written early in the 4e era, lacks proper line editing and the research for the ships sections appears to have been limited to copy-paste from earlier books and a slipshod use of the 3e Vehicles book complete with incorrect conversions.

GURPS currently doesn't do ships. It's better for GMs to come up with their own rules than try to make sense of the mess in Fantasy.

[smurf]

I thought I read somewhere that because the cannon ball is subsonic DR gets a bonus.

I haven't dug out those rules for ages.

You may want to check out the use of cannon and their loading times.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by hal

So, either 52 hits to bring the HMS VICTORY to zero hit points using the 6dx4 method, or 38 hits using the 4d6x5 method.

...which, firing 18 guns at a time with a faintly optimistic hit rate of 25%, means at least nine full broadsides.

Originally Posted by hal

MUCH more within reason to be sure

Is it? Perhaps I'm overlooking something in the above posts, but I'm not seeing anything about how many hits, historically, it actually took to disable or sink a ship. Surely any question of what is or isn't reasonable turns on that.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by hal

I can only presume that one of three things happened

You missed option four: the author decided not to use your suggestions and came up with something else.

[Crakkerjakk]

One thing I've found that helps makes vehicles more survivable is using the vehicle hit location table on B554. Course, this is more with assault rifles v. cars, where the problem is that single hits can be large fractions of the vehicle's HP. I'm not sure if it'll be as useful for having a vehicle be capable of taking lots of repeated small hits.

[Apache]

GURPS has habitually sucked at certain things.

Vehicle combat is one of them.

If my players want to actually game out a Age of Sail battle, I break out 'Wooden Ships And Iron Men'.

Otherwise, Dramatic Generic Combat (roll dice and shout alot) works well enough.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by hal

Skill 12 crew

at a range of 20 yards, -6.

20 yards is unreasonably close.

http://www.napoleon-series.org/milit...msglatton.html

Although highly-effective at smashing through hulls and at repelling boarders, the main drawback of the carronade was still the short range of the weapon (captains were unable to use it properly until their ships had acquired a target less than half a kilometre away).

Of course if you do get that close:

All doubts about the effectiveness of carronades were dispelled in 1782, when HMS 'Rainbow' engaged the large French frigate 'Hebe', forcing her to strike her colours after a single broadside.

I don't, incidentally think at that time in history that ship gunners would even try to go for an aiming bonus. After all, most of the time they'd be on a platform that is yawing.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

It's a bit tangential to all of this, but I wonder if massed fire (archers in massed combat, ship broadsides, Napoleonic and Civil War troops) shouldn't, for ease of resolution, use the rules for rapid fire weapons.

Using the GURPS 4e rapid fire RAW for attacks involving massed fire ought to disintegrate suspension of disbelief in seconds. The hit fractions for very high ROF attacks are comedically low.

Small ships, perhaps even frigates, might have few enough guns not to make it too horribly obvious, but a ship of the line may be impressive.

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

One thing I've found that helps makes vehicles more survivable is using the vehicle hit location table on B554. Course, this is more with assault rifles v. cars, where the problem is that single hits can be large fractions of the vehicle's HP. I'm not sure if it'll be as useful for having a vehicle be capable of taking lots of repeated small hits.

The wounding-modifier based blowthrough houserule might be some help to the car, and seems appropriate. But that wouldn't do anything for ship, if only because the cannonballs are huge piercing or crushing.