Post naval game thoughts

It's been a few years since I played a game using Paul Hague's rules, but I picked them up again quickly. They're a good fairly basic set, which can be built upon if you want more complication in your naval gaming. 

I added a further two Critical Hit incidents in the shape of Fire and Severe Fire, since these seem to have occurred quite often during battles of the pre-Dreadnought period, the fate of HMS Black Prince at Jutland being one example. In her last moments the armoured cruiser was seen blazing from stem to stern as she sailed into the night after stumbling into the entire German battlefleet at close range. In a recent dive on her wreck a survey showed Black Prince went down fighting, as her torpedo launch cradles were extended.

Revised Critical Hits table.

1. Magazine hit

2. Rudder hit

3. Director/Gunnery control position destroyed

4. Bridge and Conning tower destroyed

5. Fire breaks out. Inflicts normal projectile damage, plus one extra box. Burns at one box per round until extinguished on a d6 roll of 4-6 or until vessel sinks.

6. Severe fire breaks out. Inflicts normal projectile damage, plus two extra boxes. Burns at two boxes per round until extinguished on a d6 roll of 5-6 or until vessel sinks.

7. Turret.

8. Turret.

   Fire. The impact inflicts normal projectile damage, plus one extra box on the record sheet. Burns at one box per round until extinguished on a d6 roll of 4-6 or ship sinks.

   Severe fire. The impact inflicts normal projectile damage, plus two extra boxes. Burns at two boxes per round until extinguished on a d6 roll of 5-6 or ship sinks.

In my recent game the battleship SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse suffered three critical hits to her rudder in the same turn - something really out of the ordinary. In this case as per the rules I rolled a die to determine whether the rudder had jammed to port, starboard or ahead (In this case it was starboard). I then created a house rule that states three shells smashing into the stern totally wrecks the steering beyond the ship's company's capacity to effect repairs at sea, and will also inflict regular shell hit damage, meaning the stricken ship loses power through damage to the propellers. 

At the moment I'm still working out the mechanisms for running a solo naval campaign. Something along the lines of episodic encounters may be the way to go. We'll see.