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

[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.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by seasalt

The tricky part here is that it runs up against the blunt "numerical sum" of the Mass Combat system. Instead of just having spellcasters give a generic bonus like the ones in the example section, I think it would be better to classify spellcasters by what kind of spell they're capable of, and assign different values to them. This could be a hassle and is very subjective, but I think it's better than having the same flat value for everyone.

What I did in my Fantasy Mass Combat game was create a new Special Class called "Magic (Mag)" which counted as Recon or C3I for any situation where those classes gave situation bonuses - so Magic superiority reduced the Indirect Attack penalty, gave a bonus for the Raid strategy, etc. But it was distinct from those classes, so a magicless army fought differently than a mage heavy army.

You could subdivide a Magic special class as much as you cared to, and give magic elements additional special classes - so Communication mages might be (2) C3I, Mag while Elementalists are 4 (Arm), Art, F, Mag.

[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.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

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.

Off the top of my head...in pre-dreadnought days...the ranges were relatively short, the speeds relatively slow and 'rangefinding' was not far from the Mark I eyeball. Centralized gun direction and the rest was after Dreadnought. Electrification of warships is late 1880's, the first US ship was electrified in 1883.

Two illustrative examples were:

The Sino-Japanese War 1894-5 expected engagement range 1 mile - 1.5 miles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War

The Russo-Japanese War 1904-5 expected engagement range 3.5 miles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yellow_Sea

Part of the growth in range was the growth in the threat of the 'new' weapon, the Whitehead Torpedo and its ilk.

Basically it was throw a lot of metal and hope for hits. Individual gun crews on the same ship could vary significantly in skill. Individual ships would vary wildly in the same fleet and many fleets and nations had minimal or no time spent training in gunnery.

Edge of engagement range hits basically semi-miraculous as the range dropped occasional hits, by the time the secondary and tertiary guns were in play hits would be 'regular' but that could mean 1 or two hits from a 'salvo'.

[Prince Charon]

OK, thinking about dragon carriers. Lets assume a carrier about the size of a mid-19th century ironclad, like the larger vessels at the Battle of Lissa (but lightly armed for the size, since she's not supposed to be in gun-range of other vessels of similar tonnage). Lets also assume that an air-cavalry dragon takes up as much space as an elephant, eats enough meat for ten sailors, and drinks enough rum for twenty (necessary to breathe fire during battle). So, how many dragons can this hypothetical dragon-carrier ship carry?

[mlangsdorf]

A Kaiser Max ironclad displaces 3,500 tons and has a crew of about 400. Each one was about 250' long and 50' at the beam. Each one had 8 8" cannon in the central casement, and each gun probably weighed around 6-10 tons. There were a variety of secondary guns, most of which weighed 1 ton or less.

You could probably swap a main gun and its crew for a dragon on a 1:1 basis, and maybe all the secondary guns for another dragon. The ironclad armor probably weighs between 700-1200 tons (on the low end, I'd expect) so stripping half of that off might free up the weight for another 20-30 dragons. In theory, there might be deck space for ~120 dragons, but that's packing them shoulder-to-shoulder, nose-to-tail, and ignoring the funnel, masts, and other super structure. Most of that space isn't actually available, so maybe another 10-12[1], and maybe twice that if there is a dragon hangar below deck and a deck park.

So I'd guess between 8 dragons for an armored carrier with plenty of below deck space per dragon, to a maximum of about 40 for a minimally armored carrier with tighter packing and some dragons sleeping under the stars.

[1] The Japanese carrier Hosho carried around 15 aircraft on an 8,000 ton displacement, but aircraft are substantial larger but lighter than dragons. It's kind of hard to figure out how those factors trade-off, but I think I'm in the ballpark.

[Rupert]

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.

That's the really big downer, yes. Even if the GM's feeling nice, once the bombs start flying there'll be a depressing amount of own-goals, unless the GM is really nice and just has mis-ported bombs all blow up fishes.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

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.

Friedman mentions 50% at 6,000 yards being possible in 1906 (for battleships - small ships would do much worse), and in 1916 5% at 16,000 yards was considered good shooting - and that's most likely when in training, not actual combat shooting.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Friedman mentions 50% at 6,000 yards being possible in 1906 (for battleships - small ships would do much worse), and in 1916 5% at 16,000 yards was considered good shooting - and that's most likely when in training, not actual combat shooting.

Fair...but the rate of advancement from 1886 to 1916 for top end naval technology is quite significant.

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.

So the earlier the time period the shorter the engagement ranges will be and the lower the hit ratio.

A few questions the OP/GM will need to decide:

• How relatively expensive is powder? Are gunners routinely conducting live fire training?
  
• How large a priority are the various national fleets making the science of gunnery? (The Royal Navy did not really settle on a 'satisfactory' system until 1927 after quite a bit of effort.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_...tillery_ranges
  
• What date (approximate) is he shooting for the naval tech of the campaign to be?

Also remember that while the goal is for a ship to demonstrate good shooting, plenty manage just average, and some are flat terrible.

Exercising a Navy costs quite a bit of money in fuel, ammunition, and increased maintenance.

Some powers have built a Navy but not chosen to invest in keeping it healthy.

All are factors what performance can be expected at the end of the day.