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Old 06-11-2023, 02:43 PM   #31
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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Good points. Though I'm not particularly worried about teleport bombs detonating on top of the armor deck, just on the lightly armored parts of the superstructure
Given we're talking early ironclads, smaller coastal defense boats will look like the monitors and gunboats of the US Civil War, and both of those designs would be effectively invulnerable to 45 pound boxes of gunpowder being dropped on them. As long as the ship is enchanted to stop them being ported inside, I think they'd be pretty safe (and you'd want that to stop teleported boarding parties anyway, if teleportation is common enough for this to even be a threat).

If the threat was known, and built for, so would the larger ironclads - they just don't have much superstructures at all, except for their sails and rigging. You'd see those disappear faster than in our history, and magic-enhanced steam engines would probably become reliable and economical a bit faster than in our history, but the production bottle-neck would likely be very severe.

But, as I said before, I'd be very iffy about having a whole lot of lightly built boxes stuffed with gunpowder in in an exposed position, as they'd need to be for rapid teleportation, and the stuff is notoriously shock sensitive making handling them and moving them from a magazine up to a launching room on deck risky in itself. If I were trying this trick, I think I'd use napalm bombs instead - less risk to launching ship, just as bad for an unarmoured ship, and possibly more use vs an armoured one.
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Old 06-11-2023, 08:49 PM   #32
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

The discussion about teleporting bombs, regardless of whether it's economical or viable, is making me think it would be better to just not include movement spells. The "reverse projectiles thing" could also get silly. The whole idea is to have military technology similar to the historical equivalent so anything that obsoletes whole classes of vessels needs to be nixed. Teleporting bombs in particular just feels like a very... banal and un-sexy way to use magic. I really want to avoid "magitek", though I like the idea of power plants being harnessed to power spells, it should be a one-way street. Honestly I would rather just see large fireballs being thrown.

Thanks for all the ideas by the way.

One more thing is what the optimal size of operations should be. The intention here is that the players would be commanding some kind of large, significant group. The kind of thing that can alter the fate of small nations and whose operations will be printed in newspapers. But, at the same time, with some room for autonomy.

I was thinking of a sort of composite, reserve fleet composed of two armored cruisers, a "carrier" (with flying cavalry beasts), two protected cruisers to guard their supply line or flanks, two divisions of torpedo boat destroyers (total of 6) and one division each of modern frigates and obsolete sloops (another 6), plus two specialized minesweepers, and three troop ships carrying two regiments of marines between them. A powerful force, but still light enough that it has to evade serious strike forces, and about an even match for the full navy of some third-rate island nation.

I'm sure there is a school of thought saying it should be much smaller and focus around a single ship, maybe even a single small ship. But that's too small a scale for much in the way of tactics, and either you'll be fighting small duels or under someone else's command with starkly limited initiative. Part of the reason for a large scale like this is that it creates a certain kind of "wealth effect" for rpg gamers, both making them feel powerful for having such a huge number of guns and soldiers under their command as well as fearful of losing it. And that way, they can indeed lose ships and suffer hundreds or thousands of casualties without the entire campaign being over.

One old truck that I think works well in war themed rpg games is to be given a mission to, say, steam to a distant island chain and capture a fortress guarding a vital strait or oil field, and have it described by their superiors in such a way that it sounds mundane, then allow the players to make skill checks and do their own research which allows them to figure out they have basically been sent on a suicide mission for reasons of domestic politics - that the "allied forces" they are supposed to rendezvous with are unreliable at best, that the route is lousy with mines and commerce raiders, that the fortress, though old, is manned by crack troops, and, the cherry on top, that they won't have enough coal in their bunkers to return home, meaning that if tenders don't get through (or high command "forgets" to send them any), they'll have no way to retreat if the enemy sends a serious strike force to retake the objective.


Edit: after a bit of reading it's seeming like they didn't actually have minesweepers in the 1890s/1900s, and mines were mostly used to guard harbors instead of getting strewn all over the damn place like they were in the two world wars. I might say that that's one of the great uses of powerful wizards - they can fire lightning bolts into the water and detonate mines!

In order to stop it from taking over the entire battle space I would probably say that any underwater creatures harnessed to military purposes are not smart or dexterous enough to deploy "torpedoes" against ships without getting themselves killed in the process. Seems like the kind of thing antagonists or desperate, morally questionable players might do. Rig up majestic, centuries old sea beasts with explosives and sacrifice them just to do a little damage to the enemy.

Last edited by seasalt; 06-11-2023 at 09:01 PM.
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Old 06-12-2023, 12:42 AM   #33
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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Edit: after a bit of reading it's seeming like they didn't actually have minesweepers in the 1890s/1900s, and mines were mostly used to guard harbors instead of getting strewn all over the damn place like they were in the two world wars. I might say that that's one of the great uses of powerful wizards - they can fire lightning bolts into the water and detonate mines!
Personally if I was a Navy Mage entering a harbor and mines were in play, I would want the Seek Earth (Magic p.50) spell in my Grimoire.

Since per RAW you can pick 'a type of metal' and you can exclude 'known sources of said metal' it should work quite nicely for locating mines on a slow approach into a roadstead. (exclude your ships)

Since it is using LD modifiers if you get a reading long enough to be onshore the way ahead should be clear...if short of that you should have distance and bearing of either a mine or perhaps a shipwreck (unlikely tho as in the 1800's salvaging such wreck for the metal value and clearing the harbor is more likely).

Once located one could go with the traditional early method of minesweeping. Rowboats with grapnels (to pull them to the surface or near) and riflemen to explode the mines harmlessly. Rowboats, grapnels and riflemen should all be cheaper than Mages.
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Old 06-12-2023, 03:53 AM   #34
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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Personally if I was a Navy Mage entering a harbor and mines were in play, I would want the Seek Earth (Magic p.50) spell in my Grimoire.

Since per RAW you can pick 'a type of metal' and you can exclude 'known sources of said metal' it should work quite nicely for locating mines on a slow approach into a roadstead. (exclude your ships)

Since it is using LD modifiers if you get a reading long enough to be onshore the way ahead should be clear...if short of that you should have distance and bearing of either a mine or perhaps a shipwreck (unlikely tho as in the 1800's salvaging such wreck for the metal value and clearing the harbor is more likely).

Once located one could go with the traditional early method of minesweeping. Rowboats with grapnels (to pull them to the surface or near) and riflemen to explode the mines harmlessly. Rowboats, grapnels and riflemen should all be cheaper than Mages.
There's also Water Vision to let you see through water clearly. The base 20 yards depth will be plenty for harbour entrances, etc.
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Old 06-12-2023, 11:22 AM   #35
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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I'm sure there is a school of thought saying it should be much smaller and focus around a single ship, maybe even a single small ship. But that's too small a scale for much in the way of tactics, and either you'll be fighting small duels or under someone else's command with starkly limited initiative. Part of the reason for a large scale like this is that it creates a certain kind of "wealth effect" for rpg gamers, both making them feel powerful for having such a huge number of guns and soldiers under their command as well as fearful of losing it. And that way, they can indeed lose ships and suffer hundreds or thousands of casualties without the entire campaign being over.
In my previously mentioned Fantasy Mass Combat game, the PCs started as leaders of a fledgling nation in command of a few companies of troops and ramped up to leading an empire of several nations with a couple of allied nations and commanding tens of thousands of troops across two fronts. It worked surprisingly well.

I think you're approaching this correctly. A small fleet that is easy enough to manage and personalize but large enough to take some losses is a good place to be.

One thing that my players forced on me, but ending up working well and might work very well for your game, is troupe style play. Each player controlled two characters, only one of which could be onscreen at a time. My players mostly split it into a "diplomacy and generalship" team and a "direct action" team, but the diplomats sometimes got into personal fights or went on small raid, and the direct action team sometimes had to conduct diplomacy or command troops in battle. And characters sometimes moved between the teams, depending on circumstances.

With your game, you might want three characters for each player: a senior officer (overall commander, intelligence analyst, carrier commander, etc) of the main fleet; a captain of one of the sloops or frigates; and a member on an "away team" on one of the frigates. That would let the players meaningful make decisions at all levels: the senior officers set policies and strategies and command in fleet actions, while the frigate captains do all the detached scouting work, and the away team does exploration, preliminary diplomacy, and any special operations/commando work. It also means if a player has some bad luck in a Mass Combat game and loses their ship or their character dies, they have another character or two already established in the game.
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Old 06-12-2023, 11:30 AM   #36
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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There's also Water Vision to let you see through water clearly. The base 20 yards depth will be plenty for harbour entrances, etc.
Fair alternative. IMHO either would work. Line of sight has both benefits and limitations and the LD modifiers are nice to have.

Probably would be a case of 'what spells do we have to hand'?

If mines are common enough that Navy Mages are being specifically trained for it I might go 'belt and suspenders' and have both available.
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Old 06-12-2023, 11:37 AM   #37
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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One thing that my players forced on me, but ending up working well and might work very well for your game, is troupe style play. Each player controlled two characters, only one of which could be onscreen at a time.
One of the campaigns I referenced up thread was this. (Just on one ship).

My 'senior officer' was the Chief Engineer, the other was a Marine Sgt. (think Drake from Aliens complete with articulated powered weapons harness an effectively a squad heavy weapon). It worked rather well.

The Captain was an NPC all PC's had a Senior Officer / Lower deck split. For any particular Mission (usually 2-5 run sessions) one PC was the Senior Officer and 'in charge' and the others were enlisted and senior enlisted as his/her support team. Worked with relatively little friction.
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Old 06-12-2023, 01:19 PM   #38
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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There's also Water Vision to let you see through water clearly. The base 20 yards depth will be plenty for harbour entrances, etc.
Not as useful as you'd think. It's not the looking straight down that's the problem. It's how far ahead of your ship you need to be looking to be able to see mines or other obstructions in a useful enough time frame to do something about it.
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Old 06-12-2023, 02:50 PM   #39
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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Not as useful as you'd think. It's not the looking straight down that's the problem. It's how far ahead of your ship you need to be looking to be able to see mines or other obstructions in a useful enough time frame to do something about it.
Ah, but the spell tells you how far down it makes the water clear for you, which implies that horizontal distance is unlimited. If this isn't how you understand it, then mages will have to pay more and extend the 'depth' the spell reaches.
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Old 06-13-2023, 09:18 AM   #40
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Default Re: How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

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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.
Note that critical failure rate in general in GURPS cannot be the same in routine use as in adventures, the classic example being airplane landings.

Now you might state specifically that magic specifically does not benefit from the "non-adventuring crit fails are much rarer" setting switch, but this is not required.
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