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hello all

Just wanting some input for ideas for a world war one naval campaign? Between me and several others in our gaming group we have well over 300 2400 scale ships mostly ghq among others. Now we love doing battles using Seekrieg 5 rules, but we have all been thinking of trying to do a naval campaign. Just haveing a hard time coming up with ideas. Now what i mean for ideas is ok we have the nations Britian, Germany, France, USA, Russia, japan, & Italy. And other minor navies if the CD is ever finished.

Any way the real question is what insentive does a navy have to leave port, if there is no objectives? We have thought of a few like guarding coaling stations, transport trains, land objectives ie.. gibraltor, suez ** CENSORED **. etc...

Just wanting others thoughts or ideas on this plan for a naval campaign starting in 1902.

Some early concepts we are playing with, is each nation has a starting amount of naval points to purchase begining fleet. Each year each nation gets money to repair, buy new ships, ports etc... Thought of haveing teams in this time period germany & russia vs britian & france.

Any suggestions or thoughts or even past play tests from others would be welcomed.

fullmetaljacket

How about the loss of the USS San Diego:

Promps the entry of the US into the war in 1916.
The USS send 5 Dreadnauts to England and when on Patrol the US ships encounter the German battle Cruisers on a an attempted raid:

US:
BB Delaware
BB Florida
BB Utah
BB Wyoming
BB Arkansas

Germany:
BC Von Der Tann
BC Molke
BC Sedlitz
BC Deffinger
BC Hindenburgh

The US out guns the German Fleet , butthe German fleet has superior speed.

IRISH

Starting in 1902 I would take into conideration colonial interests rather than targets like Suez or Gibraltar both, I think, out of the possibilities of the German fleet.

The main problem was the coaling. While a small force could coal at sea with coaling ships a large force would need to coal at a harbour (neutral or allied) and, therefore its presence will be signalled by intelligence unless it has its own coaling stations all along the route and may keep some secrets. A good reference for this will be tha travel of the Russian Fleet from the Baltic ti Tsushima.

Isolated coaling station could be a target for a small force like Admiral Spee at the Falkland but no more than that. In any case the British fleet was well able to react.

thanks guys Tammy & Irish for the ideas. Like both ideas. I guess the bigger question is something that will hold or interest more than one or two gaming sessions. Some in the group want to use a real world map others a hypotheical map. Because is real world map Russia & germany can be blocked in. Like i tried to tell them that would cause battles though.

The ideas of supporting colonies I like a alot to and trying to figure out how we could factor that into the campaign.

Thanks

fullmetaljacket

The Med makes a pretty good setting for a naval campaign. Navies exist to enable other things to happen, so your objectives in any such campaign would be along the lines of escorting/intercepting troop or supply convoys. This almost makes inevitable some form of land combat resolution process to enable the sides to try and meet their objectives.

The historical situation is pretty unbalanced, but if you assume Mussolini got into a position of influence a decade earlier than he did, you could have the Italians honouring their treaty obligations and joining the war on the side of the Central Powers. With the Italian and Austrian fleets, and perhaps a beefed up German squadron in the Med when war breaks out, you have a strong force to offset the French and UK fleets.

The land campaign could be played out in two areas - the French/Italian border and the Holy Lands (assuming Turkey is a German ally). Our local group fought a number of such campaigns twenty to thirty years ago, and the rules are still around somewhere. The next expansion for the Supremacy at Sea rules will be a campaign module based on some the larger campaigns we have fought. That will cover land, sea and air combat using a hypothetical map.

I thinks that all depends on the size of the battles you have in mind. If you have in mind a maximum of 5-6 ships per side you may plan on a world map.

For bigger engagements a more limited area will be better. Consider that the average range of a German battlecruiser was around 5.000 nm at 12-14 kn.

If you need a ready list of bases, local maps and distances I suggest the book "Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I". It was published in 1919 and I have a reprint of 1990 by Studio Edition. In the firs pages there are the maps of all the dockyards of the major navies.

I was in a campaign in 1991 that had a lot of good points to it.

First was the economic structure. Home ports (or ports that can build ships) were 500 points each. Smaller ports were 200 points. At the end of the campaign year you add up all the ports you own and that is the money you have to repair and build ships.

Each ship cost is equal to its damage point value. This would apply to aircraft as well. To take a port you have to remove the naval defense and put troops ashore. (Use a simple abstracted ground to ground combat system if a port is defended by troops.) You will need troops ships each can hold a battalion.

You also had to pay points to start a war, pay to operate your fleets and pay points to repair ships. Any points left over could be used to build new ships.

The goal of the campaign is to emerge the richest country on earth, with the biggest Navy.

The weakness of this game was that there were no basic diplomatic rules. Some basic ones that would have helped were. 1) Unless you are at war you cannot stop a player from accessing the high seas. 2) You have to pay extra to break an alliance and start a war with them in the same turn.

The next thing I would do is give the ports some value besides just points. For example let’s say you have to have coal to sail, and steel to build ships and chemicals to make ammo. So players have to occupy ports that give them these supplies or setup and defend alliances that allow them to purchase these supplies.

We sent our moves to a game controller during the week and he setup games on the weekend.

Anyway just some ideas.

Voltigeur

Nice ideas I think we may play with most of those ideas you posted. Really like the idea of ports being worth points, that way others have to go out and take ports out. So, i figurewhen lets say germany would take scapa flow over they would then get those points for their navy? And where ports pro rated that is if you played with a real world map ie... Scapa flow is worth more than gibraltor?

fullmetaljacket

I think it would be better to give two different values to a base/harbor. One value as a base and another one as a source of supply.

If you take an enemi base you get its value (or part of it, considring possible damages) as a base and give a minus to the enemy for the base lost and its supply (if any). It is difficult that you will get supply from an harbour unless you organize a large invasion of the land behind it. An harbour may be a source of supply only if someone feed it.

Moreover navy bases (like Scpa Flow or Gibraltar) should not give supply to anyone but shoud have a value as a base only.

i agree tammy, but my thoughts was that each country gets maybe 4 bases to start the game with, 2 that are able to repair, one for building one for supplies. Then down the road if lets say some one takes teh supply base or port. then that nation loses maybe half their ammo limits per ship coal consumption repair material..... Plus the loss of the points of the port itself.

We as a group are looking for something detailed but not over the top that if boggs down game play. We all know that some times to many rules and charts can slow game play and lose peoples interet quickly. KISS is still one of the best things to do when it comes to gaming.

Love the thoughts though guys keep them coming already jotting stuff down for a basic set of rules for our group.

fullmetaljacket

It'is a question of duration of the campaign. For example, if it lasts one year you may avoid ro consider the building of new ships except may be some torpedo boats or the launch of ships under construction.

For the enemy bases I would take in consideration damages to it rather than taking it. A force arrives in front of the enemy base and bombard it. May be with a small raid on land to destroy installations but nothing more. Then you may add a timing for rebuilding the capacity of the damaged base.

The idea that we used on our port system was first economy (the points represent the economic value of a port) and its supply potential. For a port to have any significance it must at the very least be able to re-coal the ships. This way if the Germans want to sail around the world they will have to own ports that can resupply them or have alliances so they can buy supplies from other players.

The idea behind the 500 point ports is those are the ports you can build out of and repair ships and are your home ports (Scapaflow would be a home port for the British). A 200 point port can only resupply a fleet (maybe allow 25% repair of damage) this way if a fleet gets a thrashing it has to get home to be repaired. We also had a rule that if a 500 point port was taken it became a 200 point port for most of the campaign. This kept British defending Britain and Germans defending Germany.

Without getting too complicated there will be a reason to have and honor alliances, as well as a reason to expand and hence have to fight and have wargames.

The only problem I see with each player starting only with 4 ports is it encourages the wimp factor. If everyone is the same then there is a tenancy to hold what you have and not risk your fleet until you can build an advantage. (Of course if everyone does the same thing then you have a boring campaign.)

Another rule we had was that you could not commit more ships to a battle than you have models for. Example you could have 8 Battleships but if you only owned 4 models of those ships then 4 would be the maximum you could commit to a battle. This keeps you from having cardboard ships and keeps the folks at GHQ happy.

Voltigeur are you looking over my shoulder as i type out thoughts and ideas. I took the thought and of ports and divided them into three types. port, Harbor, and seaport. With the port being the smallest and can only do up to 25% repairs, Harbor 75% plus garrison and airfield and up to 6 coastal guns for defense. Seaport 100% repair, new ship airfield, and up to 12 coastal guns. I dont know if anyone here has looked at seekrieg rules that is what we use for combat. It covers many many many other aspects of naval warfare. Fuel consumption, ammo limits, airplanes ww1 and ww2. So, many of my ideas are coming from trying to wrap the rules for the campaign around the seekrieg combat rules.

i agree and that is my biggest concern about making it an incentive to go out and attack other navys and ports. If everyone starts out with the same amount then everyone sets back and does nothing. But on the other hand if you give lets say Britain to many ports or to much resources then no one can every catch them, and in this time era Britain is the major power when it comes to naval. Because we are wanting to start in 1902. We had started another campaign about 3 months ago, but it since then has went to the way side. Due to player conflicts, and it was more of a economic, colonization type of a game. We want more of a nval based game. So, we are going thru and reworking ideas and rules to help make it more of what we want. I love the ideas you and your group came up with voltigeur thanks for the ideas, and also everyone else that has replyed so far.

fullmetaljacket