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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 3020024" data-attributes="member: 99">Okay, so I pounded out some rules for maneuvering ships and I hope they're relatively clear.  I've toyed with a few scenarios in my head but as of yet I've not officially playtested these so there may be holes or inadequacies.  I figured I'd post them here as a work in progress...ManeuveringI’ll be using a battlemat with 1” square grid.  There are eight possible facings for a ship and the bow of each ship will be pointed toward either a corner of the square or the middle of a side of the square.  Turning a ship will always involve going from the bow pointing toward a corner to a side and so on as the ship makes its turn.SpeedShips are either Slow or Fast.  Slow ships have a base speed of 2 squares and Fast ships have a base speed of 3 squares.  Speed is affected by Wind Speed and Point of Sail.Wind SpeedI’m going to chop Wind Speed up into five categories called Dead Calm, Light Winds, Moderate Winds, Heavy Winds and Gale Force Winds.  The default assumption is that most battles will take place in Light, Moderate or Heavy winds.  In a Dead Calm, only ships with oars can move and other ships are very slow to turn.  In Gale Force Winds the captains should be more concerned with simply keeping the ship afloat and less concerned with blasting their enemies.  Plus, even if there is no rain involved, the tossing of the ship on the waves and the sea spray would likely combine to cause cannons to be utterly ineffectual anyway.  So…Dead Calm:  Only ships with oars can move.  Other ships may turn 1/8 turn each round.Light Winds:  Ships use their normal base speed.Moderate Winds:  Ships add 1 to their base speed.  Increased difficulty of turning upwind.Heavy Winds:  Ships add 2 to their base speed.  Increased difficulty of turning upwind.Gale Force Winds:  Ships add 3 to their base speed but cannot fire any cannons.  Ships cannot sail Close Hauled.Points of SailStarting at the top of an eight pointed star and going clockwise we’ve got Eye of the Wind in position 1, 2 is Close Hauled, 3 is Beam Reach, 4 is Broad Reach, 5 (bottom of the star) is Running, 6 is Broad Reach, 7 is Beam Reach and 8 is Close Hauled.Ships can never sail directly into the eye of the wind.  Aside from that, ships can sail in whatever direction they want but the angle of the wind on the sails will effect the ship’s speed.  This will (in my game anyway) be dependant on the ship and her sail design.  As a general rule, Square Rigged ships sail better directly with the wind and Fore and Aft Rigged ships sail better across the wind.  Therefore these two types of ships will have different “Favored Points of Sail” (FPOS).  So…Square Rigged Ships FPOS:  Broad Reach (either 4 or 6) and Running (5)Fore and Aft Rigged Ships FPOS:  Beam Reach (3 or 7) and Broad Reach (4 or 6)While faced to a Favored Point of Sail, a ship may add 1 to her speed.  All ships suffer -1 to speed when sailing Close Hauled (2 or 8).TurningI’m (somewhat arbitrarily) dividing ships into two categories based on how they turn:  Tight and Wide.  Tight turning ships may turn 1/8 turn each time they move a square.  Wide turning ships may turn 1/8 turn for every 2 squares they move.A ship can always turn “with the wind” without having to make any sort of check, so long as the crew is trained in handling a ship.  Crews lacking the necessary skills (like maybe a group of PC’s who have never set foot on a ship before) will have to make a Sailing check every time they turn.  Turning “against the wind” will require a roll against the appropriate skill AND immediately reduce the ship’s speed by 1, taking away 1 point of movement remaining for that round.  If the roll fails then the ship was unable to make the turn upwind but still suffers the loss of speed.  This can lead to the ship being “Stuck in Irons” and unable to turn.One other maneuver that must be included is a “Tack”.  This would have the ship turn from Close Hauled in one direction to Close Hauled in the other and effectively “skipping” being pointed into the Eye of the Wind.  This maneuver would be resolved with a skill check modified by the wind speed.Any feedback you'd care to give would be welcome.  I may get a chance to playtest these tonight so I'll report here the results if I do.  I'm also going to dash off one more post that covers a brief breakdown of which ships I consider Fast, Slow, Tight and Wide.</blockquote>

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