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At the Trumpeter Salute convention March 12-14 we will be putting on the following WW1 and WW2 naval scenarios:

Scenario: Revenge of the Romanovs. As the Bolsheviks tighten their newly gained hold on government in January 1918, supporters of the Czar raid the gold reserves, free the Czar and bribe the Russian fleet to make a dash to the West. The Germans are initially caught napping, but respond strongly. The British graciously allow the newly arrived Sixth Battle Squadron, consisting of four U.S. dreadnoughts, to ride to the rescue.

Scenario: First Clash at Jutland. Historically, the cruiser screens of the Grand Fleet Battlecruiser Force and the High Seas Fleet Scouting Group brushed at the very edges, making the first contact an affair of a couple cruisers and destroyers. This scenario is based on the possible situation where the two cruiser screens collided head-on, with each trying to force its way through to report on what is coming up behind.

Scenario: The Battle of Surigao Strait, revised. This version of the battle has the Japanese with a more balanced and concentrated force and assumes the Northern force remained on schedule, leading to some of the U.S. supporting force at Surigao being detached to protect the invasion beaches. However, the Americans still have radar, though it can be a little problematic in the confined waterways.

In addition, we will be running our introductory scenario with CA, CL, DD forces randomly chosen, and a massive slugfest with all UK BB and BC versus the combined capital ships of Germany, Italy and Japan.

The convention is at the Bonsor Recreation Centre in Burnaby BC.

A solid weekend of naval wargaming later, we have some fairly burned out gamers!

Here's one picture from the Sunday Slugfest. On the left you see the Royal Navy, led by Vanguard, Hood, Renown and Repulse, followed by the KGV class, Nelson and Rodney, R Class and Queen E class bringing up the rear. On the right the Axis - Yamato and Musashi, 2 Cavours, 3 Littorios, 4 Kongos, 2 Nagatos, 2 Duilios, 2 Bismarcks, 2 Scharnhorsts, 2 Hyugas and 2 Fuso's.

At this point, Cavour has taken an 'all power lost for die roll turns' special and two of the Littorios a 'speed to 10 knots' special. Nagato has circled under smoke due to an 'all guns silent' special. It only got worse for the Axis from there.

We were trying out a higher point value for the Yamato and Musashi guns, based on the Navweaps website figure of 2 rpg per minute. That seemed a little high, and checking out the detailed US Navy technical mission report on the Yamato guns and mountings on the Fischer-Tropsch website, we are going to go back to 1.7 rpg per minute.

Just a comment on rate of fire of heavy guns. It is not a fixed value because it depends on the range,

For the Musashi the reloading time at +3° elevation (fixed value) was about 30 seconds to which you have to add the time to lower the gun from firing elevation to +3° and to return to firing elevation. This value was about 11 seconds overall at 40° elevation corresponding to about 44.000 yards range.

But the point is that the ships ususally adjust fire taking range on falling shots and the flying time at 44.000yrds it was 90 seconds. At 30.500 yards it was 49 seconds. At 18.000 yds it was 26 sceonds. So the rate of fire of 1,7 rpm was possible only at range in the area of 20.000 yards, unless the Japanese fired with a different adjustment method.

If I can digress into a little about game design mechanics here, this was an issue when the original version of the Supremacy at Sea rules was being created back in the mid-70s. Any time you abstract a complex process into a set of game rules, you have to make some decisions to simplify, and those choices can have a big effect on playability and realism.

We started with the intention of averaging ballistic performance by size of gun. The hit chart uses a number of different categories - 5" to 5.5", 5.9"-6", 7"-7.5", 8", 11", etc. and gives an averaged hit probability and vertical/horizontal armour penetration for each of those gun categories by range group. At one time, the point value for the guns was based on the shell weight/10. However, we realized through playtesting that this meant there was no recognition of the value of a high rate of fire, and the smaller guns particularly were undervalued since their rate of fire was much higher than large capital ship guns.

We decided to use a maximum rate of fire times weight of shell to generate a point value. Although the actual rate of fire will vary throughout an engagement based on tactical considerations, this gives some measure of the theoretical destructive value of the gun.

The issues relating to tactical effects were implemented through adjustments on the hit chart. For example, there is a first fire reduction to simulate finding the range, reductions for excessive turning and target chasing splash, and accuracy improvements for slow targets and radar direction. Any game system will be only an approximation of the real-life complex process, but we have been pretty satisfied with the mix these rules provide.

With better information being available through recent books and the Internet than we had in the mid-70's there is some effort underway to validate or update some of the ship statistics that were developed many years ago.

I agree that the comment on a single detail of the mechanics of a game is a bit academic as what is important is the overall result and of the various mechanics adopted.

I don't know the time scale of the game so my comment is generl. In any case try to take in consideration this point. I understand your choice but I would have applied it to medium (CL and CA) and light guns only. For heavy battleship guns I woul have used the weight of a single shell not considering the rate of fire for various reasons:
The rate of fire of big guns was generally slower and deliberate to limit the consumption of shells. Consider also that if both target and firing ship manouvered you have to may possibly faire no more than two-three full salbvoes before starting adjustement again.
The number of hits was quite small even for full and rapid salvoes except at very close range.
As i said in my previous post the rate of fire became irrilevant above around 20.000 yards.