Dreadnaught ship classes and names

[Last Hussar]

Hi

Been toying with an idea for early 20th century (maybe late 19th C) ships for ages now.

Any ideas for ship classes?

I'm looking for 3 classes.
Maybe Escort (Destroyers etc), Battleships (Cruisers/battleships), Dreadnaught (big beggars).

Any alternate ideas?

Also, As GB was the world power at this point, one fleet will obviously be RN for names. Anything for opponents? Doesn't have to be historical.

For idea of 'lightness' in approach - shooting will be done by estimating range, then measuring the estimate, and putting the splash template down to see if enemy is under the template.

[FierceKitty]

You can't do it without including battlecruisers. Bigger than dreadnaughts, same guns, faster, but unarmoured. And my 1916 Hochseeflotte wouldn't be the same without its token submarine and Zeppelin.

[Orcs]

If you stick with Pre Dreadnaught, you dispense with aircraft. You could have early submarines, but they would have limited impact

[FierceKitty]

I know. But they're cool, as our Californian brethren would say.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Chile?
France?
USA?
Japan?
All had nascent fleets. Yes, the Royal Navy was huge, but it was spread around the world

Oh, don't forget Cerberus for HM(A)S ships!
 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMVS_Cerberus
https://www.brigademodels.co.uk/LandIronclads/Great%20Britain/VLI-180.html

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

As to names find any fleet list the RN repeat names often. From 1900 Crusiers tend to have town names, armoured Crusiers follow no rules, the TB's and TBD's follow a letter (apart from the Tribals). Thee don't seem to be many rules for capital ships though. Each class should follow a pattern but often don't.

[steve_holmes_11]

I'm not sure I completely understand the question, but here are some related throughts.

There are some interesting match-ups around the Tsushima era.
Cruisers and Pre-dread Battleships can be almost equal in power, through designed for quite different strengths.
Torpedoes are extremely primitive, and generally depend on short range one shot torpedo boats at this stage.
AAnd almost everything is triple expansion coal powered.

There's a fascinating naval arms race brewing in South America.

Once the Dreadnought arrives, everything before is obsolete.
With enough dreadnoughts for a battle line, almost every navy understood this.
The old Predreads were nicknamed "five minute ships".

Of course it depends where you're locating your action.
The Russian Black Sea fleet had an interesting "Three ship control" system which attempted to synchronise six predread turrets on single targets.
I'm sure they weren't alone in this.

[Last Hussar]

The idea is. (NB any numbers etc given are illustrative at the moment)(* are sub points to the main)

Plot Ship moves
*Speed change, Speeds are Stop, 1/3, 2/3, Full, Flank. You can change by 1 speed band. So bands might be 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12.
*Heading change. Turn or Hard Turn; Port/Starboard. You have to move in the range given by the Turn template for that class

Move turrets
Turret facing is simplistic - they move 45 degrees (ie from Starboard to Starboard-Bow)

Move ships with in speed range
So if HMS Fantastic is moving 2/3, and that has the band 3-6, it must move at least 3, but no more than 6 - decided at time of move.

Plot gun ranges (And target? if more than 1 in arc).
The arc is 45', so a turret pointing Starboard-Bow (think 1:30 on a clock), can fire at anything from Forward to Starboard (12:00 through to 3:00 on the clock).

Fire Guns
Measure from Measure Point of firer to measure point on Target. Place Splash Marker at range you estimated.
If any part of Splash Marker is on Target then hit caused (I already have plans for 'near miss' and 'Exactly on target' [will take suggestions on renaming latter].

At this point calculate hit results - I have Ideas for this.

The idea is to keep relatively simple rather go for in depth realism. I think the ships will have to be flats with the turrets on top so you can turn them.

"How did you think that was range 45?"
"It looked 45"
"When you fired at 45 last turn you were well over! How fast do you THINKthe target is going!"

[Orcs]

The idea is. (NB any numbers etc given are illustrative at the moment)(* are sub points to the main)

Plot Ship moves
*Speed change, Speeds are Stop, 1/3, 2/3, Full, Flank. You can change by 1 speed band. So bands might be 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12.
*Heading change. Turn or Hard Turn; Port/Starboard. You have to move in the range given by the Turn template for that class

Move turrets
Turret facing is simplistic - they move 45 degrees (ie from Starboard to Starboard-Bow)

Move ships with in speed range
So if HMS Fantastic is moving 2/3, and that has the band 3-6, it must move at least 3, but no more than 6 - decided at time of move.

Plot gun ranges (And target? if more than 1 in arc).
The arc is 45', so a turret pointing Starboard-Bow (think 1:30 on a clock), can fire at anything from Forward to Starboard (12:00 through to 3:00 on the clock).

Fire Guns
Measure from Measure Point of firer to measure point on Target. Place Splash Marker at range you estimated.
If any part of Splash Marker is on Target then hit caused (I already have plans for 'near miss' and 'Exactly on target' [will take suggestions on renaming latter].

At this point calculate hit results - I have Ideas for this.

The idea is to keep relatively simple rather go for in depth realism. I think the ships will have to be flats with the turrets on top so you can turn them.

"How did you think that was range 45?"
"It looked 45"
"When you fired at 45 last turn you were well over! How fast do you THINKthe target is going!"

I think you need to decide on scale of models first.

If you go for  1/3000  or 1/2400 for which you have most choice (Navwar, GHQ) The turrets even the main turrets are very small so direction of each turret would need to be written down. Some ships had significant secondary and even tertiary guns that would be imposible to detail in any action using more than a couple of ships a side.

You then need to decide on the scale of the action. If its several squadrons a side, you are looking at very detailed bookkeeping.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

To reinforce the point about multiple gun batteries a Duke of Edinburgh class 1st Class armoured crusier  had 6 x 9.2" (6x1 broadside 4 tubes) and 10 x 6" (10x1 broadside 5 Tubes). They also have 22-3pdr and 3 18" Submerged TT.

[fred.]

I'm not sure turret traverse speed is that important, unless you have very short turns. 

Traverse speeds are around 2-4 degrees per second. At 2 d/s it only takes 90s for a turret to go from aimed at one flank to the other.

And tracking turret orientation on a multi-turret ship feels hard work. 

I'm not a big fan of guessing ranges - we played this for artillery attacks in a WWII set - you get to be very accurate pretty quickly. 

[paulr]

Range estimation also strongly favours regular players

When I played Fletcher Pratt rules years ago, I could easily estimate within 5mm at around 1m range

[Ithoriel]

As teenagers we played Fletcher Pratt rules with Airfix models on the back lawn. As Paul says, as regular players my cousin and I could drop shells on target with ease, those co-opted in for occasional games not so much. Did tend to result in either (a) massacre of the less experienced fleet or (b) mutually assured destruction if both players were experienced.

I'd also agree with dropping turret traverse. If you want that level of detail go play Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnaughts where the computer can track that sort of thing without slowing the game to a crawl. The game's ship design module may give some insight into the weird and wonderful design choices of the period too.

[Chad]

War Times Journal (wtj.com) has free downloadable rules for Pre-Dreadnought games. Also Tumbling Dice have a good range of models

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

A word of warning about estimated ranges...
Late 80s, WW1 game, across the floor of a hall
BUG WWI scratch built fleet, beautiful. Firing rules over several turns were:
Estimate range, tell umpire, fire, observe splash, fire, factor in estimated ship turn and movement, dire to adjust, observe splash, adjust, continue until straddle, continue until hit caused
Germans could not understand the British accuracy in getting straddles (which allowed damage the next turn 

Pin point accuracy.

One of our players was a carpenter. We were playing on a parquet floor, he had just repaired one, so knew the dimensions and was counting the blocks and doing the maths!!!