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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5675555" data-attributes="member: 4937">The problem with that, is that it doesn't match IRL in the slightest.  A 14 gun sloop-of-war armed with a mixture of say 8 and 12 lb cannons is virtually useless against a 72 gun ship-of-line because a 8 or 12 lb cannon would have pretty much zero penetration on its armor belt.  You have to remember, the SOL's had armor belts of 24in. thick oak.  Small cannon balls literally bounced off of them.  Sure, you could fire some chain shot and maybe tear up some sail, but that's about it.  On the other hand, the SOL's 32 lber's would smash clean through the sloop.  Any one direct hit could potentially sink her.Before the introduction of torpedo's and guided missiles, the interaction of the ship's armor belt and the caliber of the guns they fired was the dominate factor in combat.  Post age of sail, ships were classified according to the size of the guns and their intended invunerability to guns carried by the smaller class.  So, a light cruiser might carry 6" guns and be designed with armor that could not be pierced by the smaller classes 4" guns.  Whereas, a heavy cruiser might carry 8" guns and be designed with armor that could not be pierced by 6" guns.  And so forth.  The small was basically true through the age of sail.  Throughout the age of cannon, the dominate strategic consideration was whether you could bring the most ships capable of carrying the largest class of cannon.   If you have a game where a fleet of small ships can threat by gunfire a larger warship, then you might have an interesting game but it doesn't really capture the reality of naval warfare.Of course, you could always apply a D&Dism and simulate DR through penalties to hit, but I would think that getting this to work out right would be difficult.  Not saying it couldn't be done, and if it was done well (compare cannon size class to target's armor and come up with a to hit penalty maybe) then it would satisfy my minimum realism requirements.All of that is true, but at some point you have to put it on a computer.  I think you have to decide which details you consider most important to prevent the complexity from overwhelming the game play.  Deck pitch due to weather is a fairly straight forward modifier, but things like drift is something I'd probably give up in favor of critical hits or some other complexity.  Very few systems, land or sea, really have good systems for handling realistic limitations in the coordination between units.  I suppose DBM maybe might provide a example of how to make it work, but unlike combat on land, you can't really assume unit remains motionless without orders.  Maybe assume unit stays on course without orders?  Not sure.Your point is well taken about flat movement rates not in the slightest capturing the feel of sailing.  I probably should have added a third requirement.3) Speed of movement depends on the points of sail (varying according to rigging), and differences in how close a vessel can haul to the wind according to the rigging are accounted for.</blockquote>

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