How to simulate space warfare

 To begin working on some good rules for a LOGH wargame it's first important to identify the core principles that we want them to embody and what are the most important and distinctive features from the series, the stuff that would make it distinctive from a Star Wars game or a Battlefleet gothic.

I believe these are:

• Important and influential commanders which are able to distinctly impact the effectiveness and the way their fleet behaves.
• Large scale warfare, battles involve thousands of ships and millions of men
• Formation warfare with the battle-scale arrangement of the ships being highly influential.

 

 The next step is to figure out what time period from history best simulates and resembles LOGH battles. I think this would be the napoleonic period: ranged warfare with soldiers arranged in firing lines and  famous and distinctive leaders with strong personalities.

 Units being hit in the flank or rear take more damage and break formation similar to the ships from the series which are also vulnerable in the same way due to the majority of the firepower being concentrated in the front arc.

I've chosen  Snappy Nappy  as our starting point rule-wise, they're very easy and can mostly fit on a two sided piece of paper. 

The morale system for taking damage is very interesting in that system units start at 6 morale and when they take a hit do a dice check against their rating, if they fail their morale goes down one step and they roll again until they succeed. Each step down the morale ladder has different effects such as moving a certain amount of distance away from the firing enemy, this would adequately simulate units being hit hard and breaking out of formation.

Maybe giving bonuses to the morale check roll for units in formation would be a good strategy (haven't thought yet how to define units "in formation" or out of it and what bonuses should be applied). One possible idea would be to assign each player some straight markers (like sticks) that they would deploy on the battlefield to mark firing lines and all units with bases in contact with firing lines would be part of a formation, or units touching those units.

 

Another aspect I'd like to incorporate is the temperament of leaders. It would be interesting to have each leader have some modifiers that have a chance to make it change the orders it received from the commander in chief. For example let's consider Bittenfeld is a very brash and daring commander always looking to move forward and charge the enemy. In this system once he gets an order (like maneuvering, retreating or anything else apart from charging towards the enemy) the player would do a command check and upon success would execute the command but on a failed roll the available command to execute would shift 2 levels of aggression.

 

 

This implies the existence of an available order list ranked from most aggressive to most cautious and each order would only allow the activation of units to do specific actions. Possibly defined by moving towards or away from enemy units based on distance. So maybe a retreat would mean each unit has finish their turn at least X cm away from the enemy or move their full movement allowance away. Units that do not follow the specified order would be then subjected to penalties, maybe they can only move half or they  get morale hits.

Lastly another important aspect to be developed needs to be how to differentiate each ship. Hopefully customizing ship types gives more variety to the fights and encourages tactical actions like close quarter combat, flanking by faster ships  or long range barrages. Initially ships will likely be divided into just half a dozen main types (Flagships, battleships, carriers, cruisers, frigate? destroyer?) with similar stats but maybe different values for morale rolls, to hit and movement speed.

I'll devote a post to each significant aspect of the rules as i slowly develop them. The next post will likely be on morale system and a review of Fleet File Vol 3R as it has some of my favorite models in the range.