Encounter tables.

 

Thanks to all those who commented on my idea of creating encounter tables for this campaign. I've done some work on the idea, so here goes...

North Sea, Kattegat and Skagerrak map squares adjacent to coastlines are high traffic zones and will have the higher chance of ship encounters. D1 & D2 will have a chance of encounters with Norwegian and Icelandic shipping, and hostile Royal Navy warships.

 

Encounter Zone	1d10 score
Adjacent Coastal Squares - Roll twice	1-4
All others	1-3
During hours of darkness	-1
Fog/heavy rain	-1

Minus scores are cumulative.

Go to type of vessel(s) encountered table.

Plus one to dice roll if transiting squares adjacent to hostile country. Minus one if transiting squares adjacent to own country.

2d12	Civilian Vessel Encountered
0	Own national small civilian craft
1	Own national fishing boat
2	Own national merchantman *
3	Own national passenger liner or ferry *
4	Allied national fishing boat
5	Allied national merchantman *
6	Allied national passenger liner or ferry *
7	Neutral fishing boat
8	Neutral merchantman *
9	Neutral passenger liner or ferry *
10	Hostile national warship
11	Hostile national fishing boat
12	Hostile national merchantman *
13	Hostile national passenger liner or ferry *

In general fishing vessels from hostile powers were left alone to go about their business unless they were really cheeky and sailed close to the hostile shore. Even during WW2 some British boats still fished off the coasts of France. It's up to the player whether such boats are fired upon or captured, but the example of the Dogger Bank Incident should serve as a warning to what can go wrong.

* Roll 1d6: Score of 6 indicates the vessel is equipped with wireless. Go to chart to see if the vessel transmits an encounter message.

Nationality of vessel	Transmits on score of:
Own	6
Allied	5-6
Neutral	4-6

Hostile warships and wireless-equipped merchant vessels from a hostile power will automatically transmit a contact or mayday call. Warships will identify the type and course of the encountered enemy. Merchantmen will merely transmit an encounter with warships. Neutral warships will transmit an encounter message but it will be enciphered. All the hostile power will know is that the neutral ship(s) encountered something. Warship transmissions will be received automatically by their Admiralty. Merchant and neutral warship transmissions are picked up by the hostile power on a d6 score of 5-6. 

For the sake of completeness I've added a neutral warships table. It's up to the player again if there's a chance of a misidentification happening and what the consequences are.

1d12	Warship
1-5	Neutral national Destroyer, Auxiliary or Fleet Courier
6-8	Neutral national Cruiser
9-11	Neutral national Armoured Cruiser
11-12	Neutral national Battleship

Pre-Dreadnought ~ Further operations

I'm shaping up the next scenario in the 1905 Moroccan Crisis series of linked games. This will involve three armoured cruisers, the two Prinz Adelbert class ACs SMS Prinz Adelbert and Friedrich Karl, and SMS Prinz Heinrich along with an escort of light cruisers and destroyers. The objective is to break out into the North Atlantic and commence commerce raiding on British and French shipping. 

Under this scenario the armoured cruiser force leaves Heligoland at dusk on the day of the Battle of the Humber. Security is absolute. Unlike the previous clash where British Admiralty intelligence intercepted German naval wireless traffic and was able to forewarn the fleet of the German move, the cruiser force received all orders via telegraph and fleet courier. 

At the same time a Royal Navy division from the Channel Squadron is on the move, destination Heligoland. Composed of four Royal Sovereign class battleships and escorts, its objective is to bombard and neutralise shore defences and destroy any enemy warships in the area. 

Green arrow: German plotted course. Red: British course.

To set things in context: The Royal Navy was already on a high state of alert following the October 21st 1904 Dogger Bank Incident where a Russian fleet transiting the North Sea opened fire on British fishing trawlers in the mistaken belief they were Japanese torpedo boats. Yes, quite. Although the Russian's profuse apology and compensation mollified British public opinion, the Russo-Japanese War is still in progress and the Royal Navy remains watchful against further 'incidents.'

I'm thinking of taking a leaf out of the Traveller SF rpg book by drawing up a chart of shipping encounters which both sides may come across en-route. There'll be a chance of a wireless equipped vessel - neutral or hostile - transmitting the coordinates of the encountering squadron to all and sundry. This may or may not give advanced warning of an approaching force.

North Sea chart ~ v. 1.1

A bit of thought over this chart showed a slight modification was in order. I added the main Royal Navy base at Portsmouth and the openings to the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal (now the Kiel Canal) as these would be logical targets for attack or blockade.

Many years ago I read an account of the Hughes and Suffren naval campaigns of 1782-1783 waged off the Coromandel coast of India. It's a nice self-contained project requiring relatively few ship models and a definite time limit for those who'd care to look into it. Feeling a bit nostalgic I searched online for any accounts of these actions, and I happily found David Manley's rules for the Hughes-Suffren campaigns in pdf form. There's a number of mechanisms for campaign movement which I think can be adapted to fit pre-Dreadnought warfare, so I'm going to work on these and see what I can do. 

North Atlantic chart

The North Atlantic chart is now finished; the final touch was the list of key Royal Naval bases around the circumference of the ocean. It serves as a basic map on which to plot the movements of ship, squadrons and fleets. These I can add as differently coloured lines much like a WW2 British Admiralty plot. As each map is saved it'll add a record to the campaign diary.

I didn't bother to grid those areas of land away from the coast. No ship will sail there! Likewise since the North Sea is covered by the previous map i didn't bother to add grid lines to that area.

Should the German navy succeed in breaking out into the North Atlantic I'm going to borrow a page from the Traveller SF RPG rules and have an encounter table for shipping met during a guerre de course campaign. At the moment I'm going to assume the British Admiralty will follow their historical policy and not initiate a convoy system for merchant shipping unless or until the German navy has inflicted a certain amount of shipping tonnage loss.

Charts for the Pre-Dreadnought campaign

Now the Neolithic terrain pieces are out of the way, my gamer's butterfly brain has flown back to another subject - my pre-Dreadnought solo campaign based on a Moroccan Crisis-turned-hot premise. I found an excellent resource online in the shape of www.d-maps.com/ . They have a whole range of free downloadable blank maps of locations around the world which can be filled in with details as required. Availing myself of the North Sea and North Atlantic maps, I got to work customising them to my own needs.

And the North Atlantic - currently a work in progress.

I added a grid to both charts. The North Sea grid is (roughly) 96 miles square, that of the North Atlantic 600 miles square subdivided into nine squares of 200 miles. My reasoning behind these choices is that I'm taking the average cruising speed of a warship of this time as being around 12 knots, and the grid will give me a rough at-a-glance idea of transit speeds. In eight hours a vessel would cover 96 miles, in sixteen and a half hours it'd cover 200 miles, and fifty hours 600 miles.

The North Sea map shows the main British ports and bases which the German Navy can reasonably strike at, along with the German bases at Wilhelmshaven and Heligoland. I've yet to add the locations of various ports and naval bases to the North Atlantic chart. At the moment I'm trying to resist the 'mission creep' factor and not make this a global war. My intention - if I can stick to it - is to game German naval attempts to strike at targets in the British Isles and conduct a guerre de course campaign against British shipping in the North Atlantic.

My next modelling session in this project will be to make four Cressy-class armoured cruisers for the Royal Navy. The trouble is, due to the aforementioned mission creep, I'm now contemplating making four London-class battleships too. The class were part of the Mediterranean Fleet for most of their active careers, so it would be reasonable to have a squadron based in Gibraltar to guard the Med.