Rule Suggestion - Naval Overhaul

[Jokern]

Ok, so this is the new naval rules that we've been working. They are far from perfect, and it would be appreciated if you brought any suggestions and revisions to it.

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Wars of the Roses RPG Naval Rules

Levy Ship
Stats: Can transport 100 men
Hiring cost: Available only through requisition rolls
Upkeep: 50 per ship requisitioned

Hulk
Stats: +2 against Levy Ships, can transport 500 men per ship (can be equipped with cannons: -400 men per ship, +3 against any ship type)
Hiring cost: 15,000
Upkeep: 5,000

Cog
Stats: +3 against Levy Ships, +2 against Hulks (can be equipped with cannons: +3 against any ship type)
Hiring cost: 30,000
Upkeep: 10,000

Carrack
Stats: +4 against Levy Ships, +3 against Hulks, +2 against Cogs (can be equipped with cannons: +3 against any ship type)
Hiring cost: 50,000
Upkeep: 20,000

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Hulks, Cogs and Carracks can be equipped with cannons. This will increase their upkeep, but also their battle power. Levy Ships cannot be equipped with cannons.

Cannons
+10,000 crowns to maintenance
+3 against any ship type

Levy Ships can only be gained through Requisition. Requisition will lead to a D50 roll which determines how many Levy Ships the player is able to get. Charisma traits and RP (e.g. promising payment) can give bonuses to the roll.

Carracks, Cogs and Hulks are part of the Naval Fleet, while Levy Ships can only be called when the Naval Fleet is ordered to sail to war.

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Tier I
- (Coastal Only) Dockyard: Requires wood. +5% income, player might build ships.
Tier II
- (Coastal Only) Large Dockyard: Requires wood. +10% income, player might build ships, -20% ship recruitment and upkeep cost.
Tier III
- (Coastal Only) Major Dockyard: Requires wood. +10% income, player might build ships, -40% ship recruitment and upkeep cost.

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[Poach]

The costs seem disproportionate to land unit costs.

[Oznerol]

Ships are much, much, much more expensive than any land unit. In fact, Royal navy had 20 ships at most, sometimes even as few as 6 at the same time. So, it's actually accurate.

This proposal is truly good.

[Mary The Quene]

support

[Jokern]

The costs seem disproportionate to land unit costs.

That's the entire point of the prices. You will not have individual lords with their own private fleets, at most one or two ships. The main bulk of the naval power at sea will be the royal navy.

[Poach]

Ships are much, much, much more expensive than any land unit. In fact, Royal navy had 20 ships at most, sometimes even as few as 6 at the same time. So, it's actually accurate.

This proposal is truly good.

I'd welcome a source on that because the Royal Navy's yearly operating budget is one third of the British Army's and the capital budget for new surface ships is nearly £9Bn compared to the Army's £7Bn for their own new equipment, and two thirds of that £9Bn are 2 Supercarriers.

Conclusion: Maintaining ships is substantially cheaper than maintaining an army and buying enough ships for a navy isn't much more expensive than buying enough tanks for an army.

Operational costs source. Capital costs source.

That's the entire point of the prices. You will not have individual lords with their own private fleets, at most one or two ships. The main bulk of the naval power at sea will be the royal navy.

You don't achieve that by arbitrarily and artificially making ships ridiculously expensive, you achieve that by the King telling people they can't have their own ships. Are the prices of land units going to be jacked up by several hundred percent to limit private armies, too?

[Gandalfus]

Poach, Oz is talking about the royal navy in the fifteenth century , which was limited to about 5 professional ships at the start of Henry VII's reign.

Its not like GoT, with families like the Redwynes controlling 200 or so warships. Building and maintaining a fleet was extremely expensive, even moreso than maintaining an army.

[Jokern]

You don't achieve that by arbitrarily and artificially making ships ridiculously expensive, you achieve that by the King telling people they can't have their own ships. Are the prices of land units going to be jacked up by several hundred percent to limit private armies, too?

I would disagree, since higher costs means less chance of people investing in ships, which is the entire point. And no, we are not raising the prices on private armies.

[Poach]

Building and maintaining a fleet was extremely expensive, even moreso than maintaining an army.

I'm still waiting on any sort of source to back that assumption. Maintaining a Navy today is not nearly as expensive as maintaining an army is, when did that reverse and why?

[Gandalfus]

Well, you didn't have the mass production technology/cheap materials you had now to put together a warship, as well as there being very few ports. You had to hire skilled craftsmen, and a crew. Wood also rotted, meaning that it would have to be replaced/measures would have to be taken to ensure it didn't rot.

The fact that Henry VIII was only able to build and maintain a larger fleet due to the income from the dissolution of the monasteries also says a lot about their price, as well. If building and maintaining a navy wasn't expensive, how come almost no medieval king thought to build one until the late 15th century-early 16th century?

[Jokern]

Also, you will be able to decrease costs through RP, like building dockyards, implementing new shipbuilding techniques, open naval academies, etc.

[Poach]

Lack of strategic importance, lack of large overseas territories to defend, lack of technologies to make naval battles decisive, lack of reliance on overseas imports to maintain the domestic economy, lack of national coordination necessary to track enemy fleets and to allow for mobilisation of one's own fleet to intercept invasions (enemy forces have landed on mainland UK 73 times since 1066, almost exclusively occurring during the Age of Sail).

One or all of those might be utter crap, just as yours might. You're making assumptions that aren't backed up by anything: ships are ridiculously expensive because you, who knows nothing about military expenditure, think they should be.

Naval battles in ancient Greece and Rome involved hundreds of ships, as did the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, and the Battle of Sluys in 1340, and the Battle of the Solent in 1545. The Battle of Winchelsea involved nearly a hundred ships, and the Battle of La Rochelle around 50. Amassing that many ships with these rules would be ruinously expensive: a mere 25 ships would cost, at the cheapest, 375,000 Crowns to build and 125,000 Crowns a year to maintain.

[Gandalfus]

Yeah, and how many professional ships were involved in the battle of Sluys and Winchelsea?

The English did not at that time have a purpose-built navy; however, this was resolved by the prevalence of the Cog, a type of merchant vessel, among English traders. Cogs had a deep draught and round hull that was driven by a single great sail set on a mast amidships. These ships were requisitioned^[6][a] from the merchant service and converted into warships by the addition of wooden "castles" at the bow and stern, and the erecting of crow's nest platforms at the masthead, from which archers could use bows or drop stones on to enemy craft alongside. The cogs weighed two or three hundred tons and were well able to carry many fighting men. Their high freeboard made them superior to the oared vessels in close combat, particularly when they were fitted with the castles. By common law, the king was required to compensate the owners of ships impressed into service.^[4][7]

Yeah, they were requisitioned merchant ships... something we have represented through the levy ships.
The ships in those battles you have mentioned were either extremely small (the roman trireme) and/or merchant/fishing vessels that were basically taken control of by the crown.

Yeah, maintaining 25 ships would be expensive. But as we have said, there are buildings that can reduce the cost of maintaining and building vessels. Which makes logical sense, since the building of the royal navy didn't really occur until Henry VII began expanding the dockyards in England.



I'm not making assumptions that aren't backed up by anything... The evidence is there to suggest that a professional navy would be a white elephant. Expensive to build and maintain due to the various ship sizes, and without seeing much use except in times of war.

[Jokern]

Adding this to the rules, building bonuses:

Tier I
- (Coastal Only) Dockyard: Requires wood. +5% income, player might build ships.
Tier II
- (Coastal Only) Large Dockyard: Requires wood. +10% income, player might build ships, -20% ship recruitment and upkeep cost.
Tier III
- (Coastal Only) Major Dockyard: Requires wood. +10% income, player might build ships, -40% ship recruitment and upkeep cost.

[The Mad Skylord]

I'd welcome a source on that because the Royal Navy's yearly operating budget is one third of the British Army's and the capital budget for new surface ships is nearly £9Bn compared to the Army's £7Bn for their own new equipment, and two thirds of that £9Bn are 2 Supercarriers.

Conclusion: Maintaining ships is substantially cheaper than maintaining an army and buying enough ships for a navy isn't much more expensive than buying enough tanks for an army.

That's 6bn on two warships. How exactly is that not more expensive than buying tanks and guns?

[Poach]

Yeah, and how many professional ships were involved in the battle of Sluys and Winchelsea?

And how many in all the other battles? We're still talking hundreds of ships while you lot are proposing to make individual ships cost tens of thousands of Crowns to build and maintain.

Yeah, maintaining 25 ships would be expensive. But as we have said, there are buildings that can reduce the cost of maintaining and building vessels.

No there aren't. Not until Jokern's last minute post above, anyway.

I'm not making assumptions that aren't backed up by anything... The evidence is there to suggest that a professional navy would be a white elephant. Expensive to build and maintain due to the various ship sizes, and without seeing much use except in times of war.

You're quite plainly making assumptions: you have asserted X, have no proof of X being accurate, and have dismissed out of hand irrefutable evidence that X is, in the present day, not even close to accurate. You have asserted that modern day comparisons bear no resemblance to Tudor times despite having no proof of that, either. By the very definition of the word assumption, you're on two so far.

Jokern: Minus 40% isn't even close to reasonable with the costs as they are. 30,000 Crowns for one Carrack? Are you suggesting the majority of the aristocracy in this game would have to spend an entire year's earnings (or very close to that) to afford a single ship? How does a realm amass hundreds of ships without disbanding their army and ending all other government expense under such circumstances?

Skylord: £6Bn on 141,000 tonnes. The Army's also spending £7Bn on their own programmes. So what, are the Army just spending money for the fun of it on nothing in particular? My point stands: capital expenditure on the fleet is almost the same as capital expenditure on the land forces, so why are ships so much more expensive here? I want hiring land units to be equally as stupidly expensive, because my figures back that up. I want maintaining land units to cost 300% of that of ships, for the same reason. Or, I want these costs balanced to be somewhat rational so that navies aren't so expensive as to be absolutely worthless investments in this game, made more so by the lack of player enemies across water to deal with. Ships are useless with this rule set.

[Gandalfus]

You're quite plainly making assumptions: you have asserted X, have no proof of X being accurate, and have dismissed out of hand irrefutable evidence that X is, in the present day, not even close to accurate. You have asserted that modern day comparisons bear no resemblance to Tudor times despite having no proof of that, either. By the very definition of the word assumption, you're on two so far.

The logic you're using is that if its true in 2016 (and arguably, its not, as Sky pointed out) then it must be true in 1460. Which is a HUGE assumption.

Also, you're plainly ignoring the fact that even when professional ships were used and maintained, these fleets were still hugely augmented by requisitioned merchant fleets. Even at its prime under Henry VIII, the royal navy only had about 25-30 or so purpose built ships, ranging from smaller vessels to flagships like the Mary Rose. The bulk of the navy will be made up of LEVY SHIPS, which as we've said, are obtained through requisitioning rolls and paid for with a flat upkeep of 50 per boat. Thats how fleets reached huge numbers at Sluys and Winchelsea. Requisitioned ships from merchants, which varied in size and build.

No there aren't. Not until Jokern's last minute post above, anyway.

Neither are these rules implemented yet.

[The Mad Skylord]

Your point is moot. The Army is spending 7bn on the entire army's new stuff. The Royal Navy is pending 6bn on two warships. If you can't see how disproportionate that is then you bloody well need glasses.

At this point ships were levied and actual warships were rare. That is it. Navies do cost more than armies - always have and always will.

[Gandalfus]

The Mary Rose cost roughly £1000 pounds in Tudor England - compared to the annual income of the Duke of Clarence in 1470 (at the time, the kingdom's greatest landholder after the king) which sat at around £4500, that is quite a sum.

[Poach]

25-30 purpose built ships still amounts to (at the cheapest) 375,000 Crowns to build and 125,000 Crowns to maintain. I've cited proof that equipping a modern Navy costs as much as equipping a modern Army, and the upkeep for a modern Navy is cheaper than that of a modern Army. Why do sailors cost more than soldiers in Tudor England?

£1,000 to build for a land income of £4,500 versus the max income in the game of 50,000 Crowns suggests a Carrack should cost 11,000 to build, not 50,000. Please reflect that.

I've made my case, I've presented the facts. I invite you to do one of two things:

1. Fix ship costs so they're not so outlandishly expensive as to ensure no one ever buys even a single one of them. There are no player enemies overseas anyway, so the case for buying them is already heavily reliant on people's willingness to do so for RP purposes.
2. Retroactively change your Admiral appointment to a character that's not mine. I'm not going to have my character doomed to failure and his reputation damaged as a result on the account of you forcing through rules so blatantly biased against naval units that any attempt to RP a naval-orientated character is doomed to total failure from the outset.

I really don't mind which one you do: make it sensible or take me out of the role you're rigging to fail.