How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by ehrbar

Note that if you've got late TL5 power plants, you've got Draw Power and Teleport Other to teleport bombs. 4,345 hp worth of engine not used for something else will feed a mage 9 energy/second to first cast Air Vision (thus negating any hiding behind smoke, fog, etc.) and then launch 49-lb bombs (likely lightweight cases around more than 40 lbs of HE) to a range of up to 10 miles (dependent, of course, on the height of the mage's optics and thus visual horizon).

Teleport Shield enchantments are of no real use; you have to pay through the nose for height, so the Teleport Other side just aims a bit higher and sets the bomb to fall before detonating.

That, of course, will eliminate small torpedo boats. A torpedo launching platform will have to be big enough to be armored against battering by multiple 49-pound bombs to have a chance to fire its torpedoes.

Only if you also have good enough magic to negate the fire control problem - you'll need a fairly exact range, speed, and bearing for the target (relative to your ship), or you miss. Tell Position only gives the first.

If the GM doesn't like this they can also rule that it's very hard (or impossible) to teleport into open air, because you can't 'see' the exact spot, and you need to teleport onto something visible.

Also, you're casting at a -6 to skill, and that means unless you've got a very skilled caster there will be many bombs ending up who-knows-where. As it's a common theme for mis-teleports to go to similar-seeming places, I don't think I'd want to be on friendly ships when this form of attack was underway.

Given that IQ13, Magery 3 mages are most likely quite a rare commodity, I don't think this is the best use of their talents.

Wizard Eye, used to create an eye that's sent straight up will let a ship see much further, especially with other vision enhancing spells. There are many other knowledge spells that would be very useful as well. I think that this sort of magic will be a more useful of mages' talents than direct offensive uses.

[johndallman]

The 1866 Battle of Lissa is a good example of naval warfare at this TL, and shows how disastrous wilful player characters in charge of a fleet can be.

The naval part of the War of the Pacific was on a fairly small scale, but illustrated the unchanging parts of naval warfare.

The Battle of Santiago de Cuba is early TL6, without many of TL6's innovations, and is also worth a look.

Originally Posted by seasalt

Maybe throw in an aircraft carrier equivalent which serves as a hangar for dirigibles and/or a roost for flying beasts of war like dragons or griffins?

The beasts are actually easier to believe in. Dirigibles are really large and quite fragile. Getting them in and out of a hangar at sea, where there's always a wind and truly calm seas are very rare will be very hard, and accidents extremely destructive. A dirigible that can lift significant weaponry is larger than any sane ship.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The beasts are actually easier to believe in. Dirigibles are really large and quite fragile. Getting them in and out of a hangar at sea, where there's always a wind and truly calm seas are very rare will be very hard, and accidents extremely destructive. A dirigible that can lift significant weaponry is larger than any sane ship.

Never mind non-existent. The cargo capacity of the largest zeppelin ever built was 15 tons. They were also insanely dangerous; of the US Navy's five airships, the Los Angeles was the only one that survived to be decommissioned. As far as the "really large" bit goes, just for comparison, a Ford-class aircraft carrier is only half again as long as the Los Angeles was, and the longest ship ever built was a little over twice as long. I admit myself to a touch of "But zeppelins are cool!", but that ain't gonna fly, Orville. As John says, aircraft carriers toting dragons isn't a whole lot more fantastic.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Never mind non-existent. The cargo capacity of the largest zeppelin ever built was 15 tons. They were also insanely dangerous.

But an enchanted zeppelin with magically strengthened frame, Armor spells and magical materials which replace flammable hydrogen with gravity repelling gas could fly and might be viable.

Heck, cut out the middleman and have flying ironclads like Space:1889.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The beasts are actually easier to believe in. Dirigibles are really large and quite fragile. Getting them in and out of a hangar at sea, where there's always a wind and truly calm seas are very rare will be very hard, and accidents extremely destructive. A dirigible that can lift significant weaponry is larger than any sane ship.

One...a dirigible never 'landed' on a carrier...there were ships built with docking masts and a floating hanger or two attempted, personally I would not bother.

Of course Base Magic has quite a bit of weather magic. If your dirigible has a weather mage or six as the officers...quite a bit of historical incidents with weather might be avoided.

A offensive/defensive arms race around weather magic might develop if dirigibles and other forms of airships come to be.

Without higher TL powered aircraft, the dirigible is hands down the best fleet scout that can be had. Superior range, superior speed, superior visible horizon; if the weather problem can be solved. With communication magic to relay observations to the fleet the concept might be workable.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Only if you also have good enough magic to negate the fire control problem - you'll need a fairly exact range, speed, and bearing for the target (relative to your ship), or you miss. Tell Position only gives the first.

Tell Position gives exact range, azimuth, and altitude relative to the caster, according to my copy of GURPS Magic. It doesn't give speed, but you can plot the range from two successive castings of Tell Position and determine speed from the change in position over time (and there's helpfully Tell Time to get accurate time stamps).

Accurate fire from naval artillery at long distance - or for casting Teleport Other spells at moving targets, I suppose - still requires all the machinery of a mechanical range keeping calculator, but historically, the hardest part was getting the range readings correctly and rapidly. Tell Position and Tell Time can be enchanted in jewelry with a Power enchantment, and then anyone (they're not mage only items) with the jewelry can be providing constant but correct ranges. It's not quite as good as late WWII radar, because it doesn't provide blind-fire capability, but it's supremely better than the early optical rangefinders.

Somewhat fortunately, Scryguard is a relatively cheap enchantment for large ships (500 energy * 1 + SM) and protects against Tell Position.

I'm mixed on the effects of 40 lb LE teleport bombs. They're trivially easy to make, and even at a 25% hit rate they are significantly more accurate than late TL5 and early TL6 naval artillery. They have to be teleported outside of the armor, but 40 lbs of LE can still wreck a ship's superstructure. On the other hand, Teleport Shield isn't that expensive for covering 30-50 yards of radius, which should be enough to cover the most vulnerable parts of the superstructure. So they end being closer to 6" or 8" non-armor piercing explosive shells, and well made ships survived a surprisingly large number of such hits.

It looks like it would be possible to use Water Vision to see under a ship, and if water doesn't count as a solid object, that would be where I would be sending my teleport bombs. Preferably larger ones - 250 lbs of LE would be a decent torpedo warhead until the start of the 20th century.

Though re-reading the failure effects of Teleport make me think teleport bombs are not going to work. A 25% chance of success is a 75% chance of failure, and having 2/3rds of the bombs going somewhere is not really acceptable.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Though re-reading the failure effects of Teleport make me thing teleport bombs are not going to work. A 25% chance of success is a 75% chance of failure, and having 2/3rds of the bombs going somewhere is not really acceptable.

No idea off the top of my head -- this sort of thing is Witchking's wheelhouse -- but what's the hit ratio of naval gunnery generally? I can't imagine the percentages are that outrageously different.

[mlangsdorf]

The accuracy of naval gunnery is really complicated. As far as I know, we only have good records for 20th century attacks, and those were generally made at much longer ranges than earlier attacks. Better fire control offsets that some, but fire control systems were constantly evolving. Radar range finding, for instance, dramatically increased accuracy and engagement range.

Anyway, the best documented fight I'm aware of was the Battle of Jutland, which was mostly fought at moderately long range using some early fire control systems. And the hit rates were around 2-5% overall, with brief moments of higher or lower accuracy.

I'm not arguing about the overall accuracy - as I said, 25% accuracy is enormously superior to naval artillery. I'm concerned about the effects of failed teleport spells: "If you miss your roll by more than 1, you suffer no physical injury – but you go somewhere else. The location is up to the GM! A critical failure with this spell can send the caster anywhere the GM likes – make it interesting! – and cause physical injury, as long as it doesn’t kill the caster outright." Having 0.5-2% of your teleport bombs appear within your own ships' armor envelopes is not acceptable, nor is having 2/3rds of them going somewhere undesirable, even if you're getting 25% hits overall. Making attacks that rarely hit is acceptable, if you make enough attacks, but not if some of those attacks hit your own ships.

And of course, if the enemy ships have partial protection of Teleport Shields, that both decreases the potential hits and increases the dangerous misfires.

I'd expect teleport bombs to be forbidden by any sensible navy. But Tell Position/Tell Time, especially if the caster has Air Vision and Dark Vision, effectively gives radar range finding decades before it was historically available.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I'm not arguing about the overall accuracy - as I said, 25% accuracy is enormously superior to naval artillery. I'm concerned about the effects of failed teleport spells: "If you miss your roll by more than 1, you suffer no physical injury – but you go somewhere else. The location is up to the GM! A critical failure with this spell can send the caster anywhere the GM likes – make it interesting! – and cause physical injury, as long as it doesn’t kill the caster outright." Having 0.5-2% of your teleport bombs appear within your own ships' armor envelopes is not acceptable, nor is having 2/3rds of them going somewhere undesirable, even if you're getting 25% hits overall. Making attacks that rarely hit is acceptable, if you make enough attacks, but not if some of those attacks hit your own ships.

Mm, but here's the rub: the critical failure rate of magic generally might work for a tabletop RPG game, but would not remotely cut the mustard in real life. If for ANY spell there was nearly a 5% chance it didn't work, and (generally) a nearly 2% chance of a critical failure, no one who wasn't insane or desperate would be a spellcaster. Think of that naval artillery, for instance: if a naval gun suffered a critical failure one shot in fifty, either they'd have to use condemned criminals as gunners, or they'd hang the engineers from the yardarm. But, according to GURPS rules, unless the gun crews all have Gunner-16+, that's exactly what would happen.

HMS Warrior, as an example of late TL5 naval technology, had a 15-gun broadside, which guarantees a critical failure a little better than once every three broadsides. So ... do we put a higher failure rate on military magic than anyone IRL would accept with military machinery?

Originally Posted by Witchking

If I am reading the OP correctly he was thinking late 1800's max and since the thread seems to have a current of ironclads rather than pre-dreadnoughts the actual date might be closer to mid-1800's.

According to High-Tech, TL5 runs to 1880, which is why I figured on the Warrior-class ironclads as representative of "late" TL5. I'd be interested in the OP clarifying that.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Mm, but here's the rub: the critical failure rate of magic generally might work for a tabletop RPG game, but would not remotely cut the mustard in real life. If for ANY spell there was nearly a 5% chance it didn't work, and (generally) a nearly 2% chance of a critical failure, no one who wasn't insane or desperate would be a spellcaster. Think of that naval artillery, for instance: if a naval gun suffered a critical failure one shot in fifty, either they'd have to use condemned criminals as gunners, or they'd hang the engineers from the yardarm. But, according to GURPS rules, unless the gun crews all have Gunner-16+, that's exactly what would happen.

HMS Warrior, as an example of late TL5 naval technology, had a 15-gun broadside, which guarantees a critical failure a little better than once every three broadsides. So ... do we put a higher failure rate on military magic than anyone IRL would accept with military machinery?

Yes. But we don't use military magic to duplicate things that mundane equipment does more reliably and and often better. There actually was a time when you could expect that kind of misfire rate with firearms. You'd be lucky to get medieval handgonnes to be that reliable. The result was that they weren't used much because crossbows did the same thing more reliably.

Also few of the critical failure results are actually dangerous instead of just annoying and useless.

But there are things that you can do with magic at sea that TL 5 gear can't do. Divination. Long distance communication. Finding the enemy. Creating favourable weather conditions. Turning small vessels invisible and making them fly. These are things where the occasional misfired spell isn't going to outweigh the strategic and tactical advantages of being able to do things that can't be done any other way.