EasyShips

Copyright 2003 by Mike Fischer

Last modified: 02/15/2006
I. Introduction a. Air Strikes
II. The Ships b. Gunnery
III. Setting Up a Battle c. Torpedoes
IV. Playing the Game d. Depth Charges
V. Movement e. Ship Damage Markers
a. Basic Movement Rules f. Sinking a Ship
b. Collisions VII. Damage Phase
c. Smoke Screens a. Fires
d. Evasive Action b. Flooding
e. Submarine Movement c. Repairs
f. Submarines and Sonar IX. Winning the Game
VI. Combat X. House Rules
XI. How I Got the Numbers
XII. Designer's Notes

I. Introduction

My All the Ships project is as close as it probably will ever get to its goal: to portray
every major combat ship in the world, from the late 1890's to the end of WWII, as a
free downloadable counter. So far, there are over 7500 ships represented, not counting
aircraft. One thing that I didn't include is a set of rules, since I figured that most naval-
game buffs already have a rule set in mind, and are using my counters to beat the cost
of ship miniatures. But all the rules I've seen are too complex for my taste, which
means I can't play a game with my own counters. So, just for the heck of it, here are
some simple rules for naval engagements.

EasyShips assumes you have some of my All the Ships counters, or a set of naval
miniatures. You'll also need hex maps of open sea, like the letter-sized map that
comes with the game. These rules are meant for simplicity and fast play, not for
extreme realism; the emphasis is on surface combat. The intended era is the first half
of the 20th century. All you provide is some 6-sided dice, a 20-sided die, and pens and
paper for some simple record-keeping if you use carriers or submarines.

II. The Ships

Ships in this game are defined according to their real-life specifications. The game
includes tables for most of the world's navies that owned capital ships.

Each ship can have up to four gun ratings, a torpedo attack, and an air attack. The
other ship attributes are armor, defense strength, and moves.
Gun ratings are expressed as "#x#", where the first number is the quantity of guns,
and the second number is the gun size. Quantity of guns determines the likelihood of
scoring a hit. Gun size determines the guns' range and damage. The biggest guns on
the ship are called its primaries. The second-biggest, if any, are called secondaries.
Some ships have tertiary guns, and a few have quarternaries (the fourth-biggest).

Torpedoes have short range and do great damage.

Air strikes have a range of 100 (essentially unlimited in this game). They can
concentrate on one enemy ship or divide their strength among several targets.

Armor is the heavy steel plating that protects the important parts of the ship. The
higher the armor, the bigger the gun necessary to pierce that armor and do damage.

Defense strength is the ship's resistance to being sunk. This depends on the size of the
ship -- it takes more damage to sink a 30,000-ton battleship than a 1000-ton destroyer.

Moves is how many hexes a ship can move in one turn.

III. Setting Up a Battle

You'll need a big hex map to play a decent battle, no matter how many ships you use.
This game includes a sea map that fills a letter-sized page; nine of these will be a bare
minimum, in a 3x3 square. You can also make your map from the "Open Sea" map
tile in my M8 map system, which also includes islands and coastline. The nice thing
about using such map tiles is that, if your fleets approach the edge of the map, just
take a few tiles from the far edge and move them to where they're about to be needed.
Alternately, any large hex map will do.

To create a fleet, you have three choices.

1. You can recreate a historic battle, using the ships that actually appeared in that
battle.
2. You can use one of the pre-defined fleets in the document that accompanies
these rules.
3. You can play one of the scenarios that come with the game.
4. You can buy ships for your fleet using a point system.

Historic battles can be interesting to re-enact -- can you fight Jutland to a conclusion,
or do better than Halsey did at Leyte Gulf? The trouble with such battles is that they
are rarely fair. One side or the other usually has a significant advantage in numbers.
You'll need some books on naval history to know which ships you should use for a
particular battle.

The pre-defined fleets are balanced pretty closely, so they will make for a fairly even
game. Of course, they are not historically accurate.

As of this writing, I haven't written out any scenarios. But rest assured, I will.

To buy ships with a point system, each ship gets a point cost which is a function of its
armor, defense, moves, main-gun size and quantity (or number of torpedoes if a
submarine), and air-attack strength. Under this system, small destroyers will go for ten
points or less, while a good-sized cruiser can set you back 30 points or more, and
monster battleships like the Japanese Yamato go for over 100 points.

Decide on a total number of buy-points for each player; I recommend multiples of 100
or 250. Choose the year your battle will take place. This determines which ships you
can buy, based on the two-digit year on each ship counter. In other words, if you're
fighting a battle in 1935, then 1935 is the cut-off year for ships you can use. Spend
your points on the ships you want. Unused points are lost.

Regardless of how you choose your ships, set them up on the map. You will normally
want them in line-ahead formation (a single line). If you're playing a historical battle,
then history will tell you which way the lines are facing. If not, then each player rolls
a d6. The low roller sets up his ships first, at one edge of the map. Then the winner
sets up on another edge, with all ships out of gunnery range of the enemy and vice-
versa, facing in the direction he thinks best.

IV. Playing the Game

Each game turn goes through the following phases.

1. Initiative Phase: players roll a d6. The winner is called Player 1 for the current
turn.
2. Player-1 Movement Phase: Player 1 moves all his ships. Smoke screens happen
at this time, and sonar pinging happens at the end of this phase.
3. Player-2 Movement Phase: Player 2 moves all his ships. Smoke screens happen
at this time, and sonar pinging happens at the end of this phase.
4. Combat Phase: resolve all air strikes, gunnery, torpedo attacks and depth-
charge attacks. Player 1 goes first in each category. Apply all damage at the end
of the entire combat phase.
5. Damage Phase: damaged ships try to repair themselves. Smoke screens may
dissipate.
 6. Victory Phase: determine if a player has won the battle.

V. Movement

V-a. Basic Movement Rules

1. For ships with double-length or triple-length counters, the ship's location is the
hex in which its bow is located. Such ships must always be lined up in a row of
hexes, facing one of the six directions; they cannot sit at an angle.
2. A ship can move some, all, or none of its move units each turn. It takes one
move unit to move one hex.
3. You can move your ships in any order. Each ship must finish its move before
another ship can move.
4. Destroyers can turn three hex-faces per turn. Escorts, submarines, carriers, and
most cruisers can turn two. Battleships (including pre-dreadnoughts) and battle-
cruisers can turn only one hex-face per turn. A ship cannot turn more hex-faces
per turn than its current maximum speed, regardless of type. Ships can turn at
any point in their movement except at the very end.
5. Ships with double-length counters turn by moving the stern into the hex where
the bow was. Triple-length ships turn by moving the midsection into the hex
where the bow was, and swinging the stern out to the side to keep the counter
in a line of hexes.

V-b. Collisions

If any part of a ship's counter ever enters a hex occupied by another ship counter, a
collision results. Both ships lose 1-2 units of speed (roll a d6, odd=1, even=2) and add
1-2 units of flooding, and are done moving for the turn. If one ship's Defense is more
than 20 below the other's, the larger ship loses 0-1 speed instead of 1-2.

V-c. Smoke Screens

Making smoke was a common defense tactic before radar became prevalent. It hid a
ship from view and made it harder to shoot at. Smoke could easily be blown aside by
the wind, of course.

Any ship can make heavy black smoke from its funnels. This hides the ship, filling all
the hexes where the ship is, and moves with the ship. Destroyers and escorts can make
chemical smoke as well; this fills each hex the ship leaves, and stays where it is until
it dissipates. The owner of a ship making a smoke screen must announce this at the
start of each move where it makes smoke. Use "Smoke" markers for both types of
smoke screen. A ship can make or trail smoke for a maximum of five hexes, and must
wait five turns after ending a smoke screen before it can make smoke again.

No ship can shoot guns or torpedoes through smoke. Air strikes are unaffected.

During the Damage phase, roll a d6 for each Smoke marker laid by a destroyer. If the
roll comes up 1-2, remove the smoke marker.

V-d. Evasive Action

A ship can choose to take evasive action to make itself a harder target; place an
"Evasive" marker on that ship. Multiple ships cannot keep formation on each other
and evade at the same time. A ship whose speed is 1 cannot evade; this includes
submerged submarines. Carriers cannot launch or recover aircraft if they are evading.

Air strikes and gunnery attacks must add 2 to their to-hit rolls when attacking an
evading ship. Torpedoes aimed at an evading ship must subtract 1 from their to-hit
rolls, and a second torpedo hit is impossible. An evading ship loses one move unit for
that turn, and must add 1 to its own gunnery rolls. Remove the "Evasive" marker at
the end of the turn, assuming the ship doesn't take evasive action again.

V-e. Submarine Movement

A submarine can occupy one of four depths: Surface, Periscope, Shallow, and Deep.
A sub on the surface acts like any other ship. Subs can fire torpedoes from Periscope
depth, but not from Shallow or Deep.

It takes all of a sub's move units to change from any depth to the next deeper or
shallower depth, to dive or surface, or to move one hex underwater. So a sub can do
only one of the above per turn.

As soon as a sub dives, remove its counter from the map, and keep a written log of the
sub's location and depth. Replace the counter in the appropriate hex when the sub
surfaces.

V-f. Submarines and Sonar

Sonar, or asdic, can be used in any battle set in 1920 or later. This enables destroyers
to locate a submerged submarine.

A destroyer or escort vessel can "ping" at the end of its move. This searches the hex
immediately in front of the sonar-using ship if it moved 2 hexes, or the three front
hexes if it moved 1. If the sonar-using ship did not move, it can search the front three
hexes, plus the three hexes in front of those. At speeds faster than 2, sonar does not
work.

To "ping" a sub, the destroyer's owner announces that the destroyer is using sonar,
indicating the hexes he's searching. The sub's owner secretly rolls a d6, subtracting 1
if the sub is at Shallow depth or 2 if Deep. If the result is 1 or higher, the "ping"
successfully reveals whether there is a sub in one of the searched hexes, and the sub's
owner must tell the other player which hex, or that he found nothing. If the
unmodified roll is a 5-6, the sub owner must also reveal the sub's depth. If the result is
less than 1, the "ping" is inconclusive; tell the sonar-user that he found nothing. One
"ping" can reveal more than one sub if they are in the destroyer's sonar range; if this is
the case, roll for each sub separately. If there is no sub in the pinged hexes, roll the die
anyway so the enemy won't know he's off target, and tell him he found nothing.

VI. Combat

There are four kinds of combat in this game: air strikes, gunnery, torpedoes, and depth
charges. They are resolved in that order.

VI-a. Air Strikes

A carrier can launch its planes once every 12 turns. Each player adds up the total air-
strike strength of his fleet and decides which enemy ships he will attack, and how
many planes he is sending at each. Each group of planes assigned to a target is called
an attack group. You can divide your air strike among as many targets as you wish, to
a maximum of six targets and six attack groups, as long as each attack group contains
at least eight planes (unless your total air strength is less than 8). You can assign more
than one attack group to a single target, giving a chance for multiple hits.

A fleet with air-strike ability will also have fighters to defend itself. Defending fighter
strength is the same as air-strike strength.

Carriers that are more than 10 hexes apart cannot combine their air strengths, for
attack or defense. In such a case, each carrier or cluster of carriers launches its own
separate strike, and defends itself with its own fighters.

Because airplanes move so much faster than ships, an air strike is considered an
instantaneous event, just like gunnery. The planes of an air strike are not represented
by counters on the map.

Resolve air strikes as follows:

 1. The attacker writes down which ships he is attacking, and the size of each
attack group.
2. If the enemy fleet has any air strength, the air strike must make its way through
the defending fighters. For each 4 defending fighters, roll a d6. The attacker
loses one plane on a roll of 1-2, two planes on a roll of 3-4, or three on a roll of
5-6. If the air strike is made of more than one attack group, assign a number to
each group and roll a d6 for each group of fighters to see which group they
attacked. Each group of fighters shoots down attackers in the same attack
group. If the air strike outnumbers the defenders by 2-1 or more, the attacker
loses 0-2 planes per four defenders instead of 1-3. If the defender has leftover
fighters after forming groups of 4, roll a d6; even numbers mean they shot
down one attacker.
3. Now identify which ships are the targets of each attack group. Don't bother
mentioning any ships whose attacking planes have all been shot down.
4. Next, resolve anti-aircraft fire (AA). Any ship within 4 hexes of the target
ship(s) can try to shoot down some attackers. Each ship making an AA attack
must specify which target ship it is trying to protect, so the attacker knows
which attack group will suffer losses. To fire AA, divide each ship's Defense by
8, dropping fractions, but not less than 1. Pre-dreadnaughts and armored
cruisers always get a result of 1. The result is the number of d6'es you roll for
that ship. Each die that comes up 6 means one attacking plane was shot down.
If the year is 1943 or later, or if the ship is an anti-aircraft ship (like the USS
Atlanta, HMS Dido, or IJN Teruzuki), a roll of 5-6 shoots down a plane.
5. Now, from the attacking planes that remain, half of these (round up) will make
dive-bombing attacks. Each bomb acts like an 8" gun at point-blank range.
Thus, if four dive-bombers attack, treat it as a ship with four 8" guns firing at a
range of 1. If your game is set in 1941 or later, bombs count as 11" shells
instead of 8".
6. The remaining attackers are torpedo bombers. Treat these like a torpedo attack
at a range of 1.
7. Keep track of the lost aircraft. If you have more than one carrier, divide the
losses among them equally. Lost aircraft will also reduce the carrier's defensive
fighter strength.

VI-b. Gunnery

Gunnery was the warship's primary weapon for several hundred years, and is the heart
of combat in this game.

Each ship can fire its main guns at one enemy ship per turn. If it has
secondaries, they can fire at the same ship or at a different ship; ditto for
tertiaries, and a ship with quarternary guns could conceivably fire on four
different targets in one combat phase.
The range from attacker to target is the distance in hexes from the attacker's
bow to the target's bow.
A gun's range in hexes is equal to its size plus one.
A ship cannot fire through another ship's hex to hit a more distant ship. If the
line of fire (from the center of the firing ship's bow hex) passes through 50% or
more of another ship's hex, that shot is not allowed.
The number of guns that can aim at a target depends on how the attacking ship
is facing. There are six main directions a target can be found: ahead, starboard-
bow, port-bow, starboard-quarter, port-quarter, and aft. If the bow of the target
ship is in the arc from bow to quarter, all the attacker's guns can aim at it. If
outside those arcs, only half the guns (round up) can aim at it.
Guns 6" and smaller fire twice per turn. Guns 3" and smaller fire three times.
If a ship fires 20 or more guns of the same size, you must divide the shots into
groups. Choose the least number of groups possible, as long as the number of
shots in each group is less than 20. Resolve each group as a separate attack.
For each ship or group of shots, roll a d20, with the following modifiers (use all
that apply):
1. +1 if the range is greater than or equal to the gun size.
2. +2 if the ship has just begun firing or if its guns have just shifted targets
from another ship.
3. -1 if the range is less than or equal to half the gun size (round down).
4. -1 if the range is less than 4.
5. -1 if the range is 1.

A result less than or equal to the number of guns is a hit. An unmodified roll of
1 is always a hit, and if you get such a roll, you can try again for a second hit. If
that roll is a 1, you can try for a third hit, and so on (to a maximum of half the
shots fired).

If the attack is a dive-bombing attack, and no hits were scored, but the d20 roll
was just one too high for a hit, a bomb scored a near-miss. This causes 1 unit of
flooding on the target ship.
For each hit, each player rolls a d6. The attacker adds his gun size, and the
defender adds his ship's armor. If the attacker's gun size is at least 7", and the
range is more than half the gun size, the attacker adds 2 for the effects of shells
plunging down on the enemy deck. If the defender's result is higher, the armor
stopped the shell and the hit did no damage. If the results are equal and the
target has less than 3 fires burning already, the shell hit the target's
superstructure and started one fire.
 For each hit that pierced the armor, take the result from the previous step
(attacker's modified roll minus defender's modified roll), and consult the
Critical Hit Table to see what the hit did to the target ship.
Damage is not applied until the end of the combat phase. That is, if a hit takes
away some of a ship's guns, those guns can still fire in the current turn.

Example: The DKM Scharnhorst, with nine 11" guns, fires at the
USS Wichita, which has an armor rating of 4. The Scharnhorst needs a d20 roll of 9
or less, because she is shooting nine guns. She rolls and gets a 7, which means a shell
hit the Wichita. Each player rolls a d6. The Scharnhorst rolls a 2 and adds the gun size
of 11, for a total of 13. The Wichita rolls a 5 and adds her armor of 4, for a result of 9.
13 is greater than 9, so the shell pierced the armor and did damage. 13 - 9 = 4, so
check the Critical Hit table and apply a result of 4 to the unfortunate Wichita.

VI-c. Torpedoes

Most ships can launch torpedoes only once per battle. Submarines can reload and fire
once every three turns; heavy cruisers and larger ships can reload every four turns.
Submerged subs cannot be torpedoed. Submarines, and ships with 8 or more
torpedoes, can split their torpedo attacks evenly between two targets; other ships must
fire all their torps at one target.

A torpedo has a range of 6. Roll a d6 for each torpedo. Rolls of 1-2 are hits at ranges
of 1-2 if the attacker is a submerged submarine; otherwise, you must roll a 1 to hit.

A torpedo hit always causes one level of flooding when it hits, and usually causes a
critical hit. For each hit, roll two d6, subtract 2, and consult the Critical Hit Table. The
flooding from the hit doesn't count as flooding from the Critical Hit Table.

If a submerged submarine launches torpedoes, whether they hit or not, the torpedoes'
wakes will give away the sub's position. Pick one of the hexes adjacent to the
attacking sub (or its actual position) and tell the enemy that's where the torpedoes
came from.

VI-d. Depth Charges

Depth charges can be used only in wars set in 1918 or later. Before then, a submerged
submarine cannot be attacked.

Only destroyers and escort vessels can drop depth charges. To do so, the attacker must
pass through the submarine's suspected location during the movement phase, or end
its turn there. More than one destroyer can pass through such a hex in a turn, so
multiple destroyers can attack a submarine at once.

During the combat phase, each destroyer must announce the depth setting for its depth
charges -- Periscope, Shallow, or Deep. The sub's owner rolls one d6 if his sub is at
Periscope depth, 2d6 for Shallow, or 3d6 for Deep. If the attacker's depth setting
doesn't match the sub's depth, it's an automatic miss, regardless of the rolls. If all rolls
come up 1, the depth charge scored a direct hit and the sub is destroyed. If the rolls are
all 2's, or a mix of 1's and 2's, the depth charge was a near-miss and the sub must
surface immediately, reducing its depth by one per turn, not moving out of the hex it
was in when it was damaged. A damaged sub that is surfacing cannot fire torpedoes as
it reaches Periscope depth. It can fight normally once it reaches the surface, but cannot
submerge again. Make sure the attacker doesn't see how many dice you rolled, or how
the numbers came up, or you'll give away your sub's actual depth.

VI-e. Ship Damage Markers

Any time a ship suffers damage, stack a damage marker of the appropriate type with
that ship. Remove the marker when that damage has been repaired. Markers are
provided for cumulative damage, so your ship-and-damage-marker stacks don't
become the leaning tower of Pisa after the battle has been raging for a while.

If you prefer, you can write each of your ships' names on a piece of paper, and stack
the damage markers on or next to the name. The other player can ask if a given ship is
on fire, and you must answer truthfully, but you can keep other kinds of damage from
him.

VI-f. Sinking a Ship

A ship sinks under any one of the following conditions:

1. It suffers a magazine explosion.

2. It has too many fires burning on board.
3. It suffers too much flooding.
4. Its crew abandons ship during the Damage phase. The ship sinks automatically.

Remove a sunk ship from the map; it can play no more role in the game.

VIII. Damage Phase

VIII-a. Fires
Few things frighten a sailor more than a fire on his ship, because there's nowhere to
run. It doesn't help when the ship is full of ammunition. Fires can force gun crews
away from their guns, or shut guns down entirely by forcing the magazines to be
flooded. If fires get too far out of control, they destroy the ship. See the Fires &
Flooding Table for damage effects.

Ships that carry aircraft must subtract 1 from their damage-control die rolls when
fighting fires. A ship with a fire burning can launch no air strikes. At the end of each
turn, reduce the aircraft on that ship by one for each fire still burning. These aircraft
can be transferred to another friendly aircraft carrier instead of being lost, if the other
carrier is not afire and has lost some planes so it has room to take on the planes from
the burning carrier.

VIII-b. Flooding

Water is the opposite of fire, but both are equally unwanted inside a ship. When a ship
is hit near or below the water line, the resulting flooding can eventually sink a ship if
the holes are not patched. Such holes can come from torpedoes, cannon shells that hit
near the water line or land just short of the ship, near-misses from bombs, and
collisions.

Every turn, at the same time you are resolving fires, you must deal with flooding.
Flooding poses no risk to a ship's guns; it can cripple your speed, however. See the
Fires & Flooding Table for damage effects. Apply damage from flooding (such as loss
of speed) only the first time that level of flooding occurs.

VIII-c. Repairs

At the end of each turn, damaged ships can try to repair some of their damage. Bigger
ships, with bigger crews, can make more repairs than smaller ones.

For each ten points of defense, or any fraction thereof, a ship gets one d6 roll for
repairs. If a ship gets more than one roll, you can choose to take each roll separately,
or take a pair of rolls together and choose the higher value. For example, a ship with a
Defense of 25 would get three rolls, so it could roll three times, or roll twice and take
the higher roll, then roll once and take that value as-is. You must make this decision
before rolling. Choose which area you want to repair, roll, and consult the Damage-
Control Table to see if you were successful.

If a ship with fires doesn't try to fight them, or if a ship with flooding doesn't try to fix
it, that ship must roll for those categories anyway, and ignore any result that makes
fire or flooding go away.
A ship that has too many fires or too much flooding will sink at the end of the
Damage phase.

IX. Winning the Game

Conditions for winning depend on the battle you're fighting. A duel to the death is one
option, but one which rarely happened in real life. Another possibility would be to set
a limit on the number of game turns, and award points for each sunk ship.

X. House Rules

Because these game rules are simple, they don't take a lot of variables into account. If
both players agree, you can add rules to cover the many historical exceptions. You'll
need some naval reference material to get the details on most of them. Here are a few
suggestions of what I mean.

1. Japanese torpedoes in WWII were bigger than anyone else's. Japanese ships in
this era could get +2 on torpedo range.
2. The rule for half the guns firing forward and aft can be altered if you know the
firing arcs of your ships' guns. For example, the French Richelieu-class
battleships carried all their big guns up front. Such a ship could fire a full
broadside at a frontal opponent, and get no primary-gun attack on a rear
opponent. This rule would also affect how many guns would be knocked out by
a hit -- the Richelieu would lose four guns from a primary-gun hit, not the
default of two.
3. You could consider the effects of weather. Some ships could not fire their
smaller guns in stormy conditions because the guns were too close to the
waterline. Carriers have to face into the wind to launch and recover aircraft.
Low visibility can make long-range gunfire impossible.
4. Some large ships, like the American Iowa-class battleships, were unusually
maneuverable, and could turn as many hex-faces per turn as a destroyer.
5. Night battles present their own complications. A ship out of visual range (say, 5
miles) cannot be attacked, so all battles would be close-range slugging matches.
You might require a ship's secondary guns to fire star shells instead of armor-
piercing shells if the target is out of searchlight range (which would be about 2
miles).
6. Some ships in WWII were equipped with gunnery radar. Such ships' guns could
ignore smoke, bad weather, and reduced visibility at night.

XI. How I got the numbers

The ships' abilities were determined by the following rules, which you may use to
figure out the ratings of a ship I didn't define.

Gun quantities are the maximum number of guns of that size, whether they
could all fire on the broadside or not. The gun size is the actual size in inches,
rounded off.
Torpedo attacks are the maximum number of torpedo tubes that could fire in a
single direction.
Air-attack strength is the number of planes carried, divided by two.
Armor is the average of the ship's belt and deck armor.
Defense strength is the ship's tonnage divided by 1000 (not less than 1).
Moves is the ship's maximum speed plus 1, divided by 5, and then reduced by 2
(not less than 1).
Point value uses the following formula:

a = (armor + defense + moves) x 2

b = (pri_gun_size x pri_gun_qty) / 3
points = (a + b + air_attack) / 2

Round upwards to the nearest point. For submarines, use the number of
torpedoes for pri_gun_qty and 12 for pri_gun_size.

XII. Designer's Notes

As anyone who looks at my ship-counter collection can tell, I like warships. There are
plenty of rule sets out there for reenacting naval battles with varying levels of detail.
But none of them are simple or quick enough for my taste, so I wrote these. My goals
were (a) fast, fun play, (b) little or no record-keeping, (c) maximum simplicity, and
(d) preserving the many aspects of naval warfare, especially the many sizes of guns
carried by older ships. Rules for submarines and carrier battles were added for the
public; my main reason for these rules is naval gunfire.

The emphasis on fires and flooding, as opposed to the generic "damage boxes" used
by many games, is because most battle-damaged ships were more threatened by fire
and water than by the damage directly caused by shell explosions. Most other types of
damage aren't considered in the name of simplicity. The chances of scoring a hit are
small because that's how most naval gunnery worked out. It also adds to the
excitement of the game -- when hits are uncommon, every one could be a major event.

I'm thankful to Marc Shefelton for his many comments as he playtested the game, and
especially for pointing out that the submarine rules from my StarMarinesuniverse
were much better than the sub rules I'd initially written for this game.
Revision History

11/2004: revision 2.0. Submarine rules completely changed, combat rules altered, ship
lists now include point values, many other changes.
2003: first released.