USN Monitors

NO new die roll modifiers and keep the d6. Monitors have never been extremely effective in any of the navy battles and until they are then we should drop this topic.

The subject of this thread is monitors. :roll:

As I mentioned above, adjusting the number of 'miss' columns is a perfectly fine answer; 3 does seem excessive to me, except in small craft. OTOH, based on the monitors I saw in action, the hits generated seemed to work just fine.

I don't particularly mind complexity....when it is called for. The game system here is very simple. Fire doesn't even have to be specified in advance! So what is gained by adding any modifiers to the die roll? Does it make it more realistic, or a better feel? My opinion, for what it is worth, is that making the effect structural (i.e., incorporated on the ship hit location matrix) is at once easier and more elegant. This gives me a better feel for the period and differences in ship design than a DRM. YMMV.

A d10 system would give a better range of results. The only issue is the playability and speed, since everything is currently worked around the d6. That makes resolution very quick, using the same dice.

Not to be to blunt - but please stop focusing on monitors - I'm not hung up on monitors - I dislike the mechanic wether it is used on monitors or on cruisers. There have been a number of "fast" or "small" cruisers which have had the same mechanic applied - I suppose I am forced to confess that having one "miss" column isn't a big deal...having 2 is questionable and having 3 is downright wrong.

Also - I agree die roll modifiers on a d6 are harsh, should we go to a d10? (d8/d12 whatever?)

As for rules complexity - we're not talking avalon hill level rocket science here, a small box with a few drms would easily fit within Tims standard "one page" format without overly complicating things - in fact we already have them in the form of the "crossing the T" modifier.

And just to tie another thread in here - if we wanted to do a "critical hit" system I would recommend a d10 system anyways..that way you could have a "1" or "10" be a possible-crit or some such mechanic.

Monitors were deployed in the period primarily as point defense of a given harbor. Their advantages were that they were cheap, could be fairly heavily armored, and were maneuverable. Disadvantages were a slow speed, lack of steaming range, and a questionable seaworthiness.

Should they receive miss columns? To be honest, I prefer the miss columns to die roll modfiers. I suppose it is one of semantics; when a gamer "hits" the target, they feel cheated when the hit location is a bust. Frankly, though, I hate die roll modifiers. I'd rather have something clean and integral to the layout of the ship to represent its idiosyncracies, rather than having to remember "Monitor subsection 10.2.3, DRM at medium and long ranges". Perhaps there are too many 'miss' sections; if so, replace one with an armored hull section.

There are enough wierdnesses with the hit allocation system, most of which exist for simplification and playability, to make me wonder why this one should be singled out. The 'miss' columns on the monitors have not shown them impervious to being hit and their other drawbacks, primarily slow speed, limits their applications in most instances to their historic function of point defence.

Trying some more

A large part of the problem is that the "miss" columns don't scale with range/hit chance or anything else.

I am perfectly willing to accept that a monitor would get hit significantly less at long/medium ranges - but what about when it is practically at ramming distance? Does the monitor STILL deserve a 50% save vs the incoming fire? (Or any ship for that matter) What about when it is "dead in the water" at close range? etc.

I would be much happier with "to hit" modifiers rather than miss columns. As it stands the "miss" column is entirely too much like a good ole GW "unmodifed save" - it just happens regardless of range/circumstances.

i like the miss colum system but you must concede to game balance in this type of fast game. dont give any ship a 50% miss chance. remember the monitors were low but they were long. a ship that big even under the surface of the water will still get hit. if the gunner shoots a little low the shell could and would still hit under the water line.

Murph, your post repeated below makes a lot of sense to me,

“as for your question of "what is it with people who dislike monitors" people like the romance of other vessals and the beutiful lines of ship in this time. monitors look like pieces of junk and make people laugh because of the percived inferiority. people also really hate it when they cant sink that crappy, stupid, little,piece of crap!”

Faster targets are harder to hit, but in this period I think the effect was minor, hence we do not use any mods for speed. Certainly the Spanish cruisers fleeing Santiago were fast, but the USN didn’t have a lot of trouble shooting them up.

Short range in those days was still a mile or two away, not at all like short range in land battles or sailing ship battles.

Naval (and other artillery) fire in that time was very inaccurate and could not be corrected because each gunnery crew could not distinguish the shell splashes from those of other guns. If a ship achieved 3-4% hits vs a moving target it was hitting very well for the times. Fire was distributed in a long rectangle, the longer part being overs and unders due both to the greater difficulty in finding the correct elevation of the gun in comparison to pointing the gun, and to the guns having a relatively flat trajectory.

Short range back then was still a mile or two away, not at all like short range in land battles or sailing ship battles.

With all this in mind consider two targets, identical except that one has twice the height of the other. With fire distributed over an area much larger than the size of the target would not the smaller target take half the hits? In other words if the larger target took 4% hits would not the smaller take 2% hits? This of course is representative of a monitor compared to a battleship. And this was a consideration in the design of monitors historically, the virtue of a lower target “signature”.

So I would ask the following questions:

1) Should we take into account target size? It could after all be eliminated from the game.

2) Should we use a different system for target size? We could without even without changing ship data sheets by treating every miss location as a “referred hit”.

3) What would be a superior system?

Even though at this point I prefer the simplicity of the miss columns I am impressed with how annoyed players are with them. This is useful information and suggests that even if the rules were not changed there should at least be a good rationale for them written up as designers notes or even discussed in the content of the rules. Possibly also optional rules for eliminating miss columns entirely.

I look forward to your responses.

Should then the Spanish fast cruisers have a really hard time hitting anything? Too many of these questions will bog down the beauty of the system.

i agree that miss colums should be limited for game balance. keep it to one colum or two if really necesary. and eric brings up the important speed issue if a ship is that slow is it not easier to hit?

My complaint is simple - and it isn't restricted to monitors - I just really really really dislike the ships with multiple "miss" columns. I think it stinks as a mechanic and results in a ship which is unreasonably hard to damage wether it be a monitor, fast cruiser or TB.

It is exacerbated for the spanish who have a preponderance of "few big guns" but it can be true for anyone - with the current to hit numbers it is hard enough to generate 1-2 hits on any ship at "battle" range 30-40" - having half (or more as luck dictates) of those shots "lost" to a miss column is silly.

I haven't read a lot of tactical analysis for the period - but were ships that slow and unwieldy really hard targets at "medium" range? (a full 50% harder to hit than a "fast" cruiser?)

I don't think monitors need a "sunk" column..but I do think they need to have 2 (or preferably all 3) miss columns replaced with some variety of hit.

Basically, I just really dislike "miss" columns - I can live with them as a gimmick for TBs/TBDs as they are really sort of "below" the scale of the game...but nothing Cruiser/Monitor sized should have them.

After reading what you said Tim, the speed of the monitors is so much of a disadvantage that they should be hard to sink. Big deal if the monitors can out-gun a Spanish cruiser, the Spanish lost.

i have posted so much that i cant always remember exactly what i have said. i do however belive that monitors are a pain in an !@#$ to sink. moniters were good gun platforms but were not very sea worthy. i feel that moniters should not have more than one miss column. i want to propose a question for tim. if moniters were so powerful and new why did they stop making them? i am not sure that moniters have really shown their worth. in most battles i have seen them fight they were ussually only effective at long range.

as for your question of "what is it with people who dislike moniters" people like the romance of other vessals and the beutiful lines of ship in this time. moniters look like pieces of junk and make people laugh because of the percived inferiority. people also really hate it when they cant sink that crappy, stupid, little,piece of crap!