Small ships (west coast style)

HAHA

Well first of Bill my name does not have a "y" in it and as far as the fact that the US fleet halted I think they were content to hole up and fire away at the advancing Spanish. It was a mistake of new players who are learning the system. They make two mistakes on a regular basis first is they tend to stop there fleets from time to time and fight gunnery duels, second they tend to have poor fire discipline and tend to divide there fire among a number of ships. They'll learn quick when we do the China/Japan battle I have planned and then they'll see what happens when you have better fire discipline. But I will point it out to them what you said "Byll"

Jayson, I have one thought on the battle you ran, why did the US fleet stop? Unless the hull was gone one should never stop their ships in this system, it has zero benefit. Anyway, as you saw, Sampson and Schley linked up and brought the Oregon over to help in the Atlantic battle in the camapaign we did here.

All are encouraged to check out the new ship stats on www.timsgamedesign.netfirms.com. Anti-monitor partisans will note the weakening of most of the USN monitors based on player feedback and more research. Jason if you are so inclined I encourage you to try out the new stats on the west coast. I would not recommend a sink column for monitors, you will note on the new stats only TBs and other exceptionally weak ships rate a sink column. In any case the USN monitors are the size of armored cruisers, these are much larger ships than the Civil War era ships from which they evolved. I have already slowed down the monitors a little on the assumption that they are not in a coastal battle, if you want to assume the seas are rough you can penalize them even more with a few knots off their speed, or if you want to simulate a harbor action in very calm waters you might add a couple knots to their speed.

Excepting the Sino-Japanese war PCs, CCs, and TBs should probably not even be allowed in fleet actions. Wargamers will gleefully sacrifice weak ships in desperate torpedo attacks, in realty it seems no battleship era commander would even consider a torpedo run with light ships except at night in surprise harbor attacks, or at night against crippled nearly defenseless targets. It is probably better to assume that they are somewhere off the board ready to exploit victory or help cover a retreat. Daytime massed torpedo attacks did not become feasible until the WW1 era.

Monitors were specialized for shallow waters and were not especially seaworthy compared to other ships. However the US navy made them work as high seas ships anyway. In this time period the Miantonomah, one of the better monitors, made it across the Atlantic to England and back, just because the USN wanted to show it was possible. Also 2 monitors successfully transferred from California to the Phillipines during the SpanAm war. It is true that US monitors were usually towed by BBs or merchant ships, however the important consideration is that it worked. While the US Atlantic fleet was split into 2 squadrons the main force under Sampson included 2 monitors, they were not dispensed with until Cervera was trapped in Santiago. Sampson wanted the monitors for the extra firepower against the Spanish capital ships. Later all 4 monitors were used in the Carribean for port blockade. My point being that during the Span Am war the USN monitors historically were used offensively, I don't believe there was any point at which they were tied down to port defence.

Mike you are correct on a preceeding post in that this was a period in which other ships could stand up to a battleship, depending of course on just which ships and which BBs. The Japanese successfully organized their fleet around one squadron of BBs and one squadron of ACs and kicked Russian butt. It is important to note that the ACs had good quality high velocity main guns, compared to US ACs which had a much lower velocity main gun. USN monitors were also relatively powerful ships except for their slow speed. The capital ships of the time were BBs, ACs, and in the exceptional case of the Americans the Monitors. On any particular year there were generally some newer ACs in the worlds navies that could completely outclass some of the older BBs. There was typically a big difference between such ships and the next class down - PCs (protected cruisers) - which usually could not stand up to a battleline.

All of this being said the Sino-Japanese war still provides an exception, where Japanese mostly unarmored cruisers stood up to German built Chinese Battleships. The couldn't sink the BBs historically, but did win the battle by defeating the other Chinese ships. Both the Chinese and Japanese fleets included european built heavily armed lightly armored cruisers designed to defeat battleships through superior manuver and firepower.

Just one point to remember; very rarley did a ship actually sink during battle, usually it was on the way home that ships sunk. Tim's newest rules seem to reflect that even more, and I must say, they are much more accurate and simple. Monitors had huge displacements, they just werent seaworthy enough to make it across the ocean unless they were towed. Maybe adding some hull hits instead of a sink column would be better.

Actually, this was probably the last of the period when something else with big guns could stand up to a battleship. With the introduction of the all-big gun Dreadnought in 1906 with centralized fire control, this era would rapidly draw to a close.

An excellent point of course is that the little PC, CC, TBs, and TBDs are not meant for line of battle work; they are difficult to hit, sometimes, with their miss coulumns, but present very little danger to armored cruisers and battleships. I suppose you could strip the miss columns, but, really, why? They aren't meant to take a beating and sink gradually. They should be out raiding commerce and overawing the natives.

Monitors might do without a miss column. OTOH, monitors are really meant for port defense duty. They aren't particularly seaworthy. Cheap, gamey players might buy these for a battle on the high seas, but referees should disallow them for any but blockade/port fights. If you want to use them in a campaign, I would give them punitive rules for any sailing done outside of coastal/shallow waters.

Anyway, take that for what it is worth. YMMV