Hey Veeky Forums can we talk about battleships?

navalwargamessociety.org/rulesonline.html

>free rules

Well fuck me sideways.

Thank you . You can share the quirky but lovable Nelson

No problem. I'm yelling your thread in IRC because it's a really cool idea and it deserves some attention.

You are a scholar and a gentleman. I love my old naval ships. The age of the battleship especially went by far too fast so we never got to see them at their theoretical pinnacle of technology. In my mind they seem like the only thing we had that could theoretically battle any alien invader during that time period

So Exeter and her merry band of escorts gotta protect a convoy bound for, say the US, from tripod walkers and all sorts of the weird shit the Martians can throw at it? Sounds like a good time.
If anything I'd like to read the AAR and laugh at the bullshit dice rolls.
>in b4 U-boats kill steal like a motherfucker.

I might let them have HMS Eagle too, but I am undecided on how effective aircraft will be against tripods

I dunno though, I am going to give them a list of ship squadrons and which one they pick decides the campaign

Did someone say Battleships (or at least warships)?

You take over my man, I have to take off for a bit.

If this thread is still going when I come back I'll layout some of the ideas I have for the setting

So are you expanding the Martian arsenal and giving them squids or carriers for their flying machines? Or are they just gonna be VERY tall fighting machines?

When it comes to heroic suicide runs you can't really beat the HMS Li Wo, the most celebrated smallship in British Naval History

youtube.com/watch?v=ucu_N2uq8XA

Actual video here:
vimeo.com/107454954

>vimeo.com/107454954
Great! I never thought I'd say '[Mars: Bringer of War' wasn't quite the right music for something like this, but I couldn't find the original anywhere.

I've just got pictures, not really many thoughts on them or knowledge

Some questions for OP when he gets back:
How useless are airplanes because of heat-rays?
Can Martian heat-rays intercept shells in flight?
Do Martians also get warships or is it just continuously bigger tripods?

Question for /k/ommandos:
What would be the viability of super-battleship paper designs like the Tillman IV, the H-44, the A-150?

The Martians need buffing, torpedo rams were never very good ships and one still destroyed two tripods.

Any real warship would completely outclass the war machines from the book. Even in the original time period the technology existed to defeat them on land too with only a few weeks of preparation.

>but I am undecided on how effective aircraft will be against tripods
Aces who learn to bomb from an obscured viewpoint (smoke, either Black or lain by friendly ships firing smoke shells, from the Sun, etc) or wings with an Ace to teach them, would probably do well. Anyone else? Well, Skuas and Albacores are pretty flammable...

Torpedo bombers, of course, would be effectively worthless. Good luck hitting a leg!

>Not Jeff Wayne's The War Of The Worlds
For shame, Veeky Forums!
youtube.com/watch?v=8Mfz4rMThEE

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>So are you expanding the Martian arsenal and giving them squids or carriers for their flying machines? Or are they just gonna be VERY tall fighting machines?
That's a good question. The Fighting Machines (tripods) can wade through littoral waters, but for deep ocean do they just use the Flying Machines? Would naval action against the Martians be purely shore bombardment & counterbattery? Would they have developed dedicated naval craft?

The Martians arrived via ballistic capsules which all seemed to hit land, so they might not even have oceangoing craft developed (given how arid Mars is) unless they already have a foothold somewhere and have built up an industrial base and spend some effort on radical R&D. Potentially they could have highly advanced technology, but employed poorly due to them lacking centuries of naval tradition and tactics.

Particularly if they rely on the Heat Ray as a primary armament against an opponent with over-the-horizon radar guided projectiles. Which might end up in them pursuing bizarre solutions like super pagoda-masts to raise the heat ray and increase its effective line-of-sight horizon.

This kind of reminds me of Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, where the aliens have inter-atmospheric shuttles, starships, gunships and advanced tanks, but since they come from a desert world they have no understanding of naval technology whatsoever.

>Which might end up in them pursuing bizarre solutions
I can see them sort of using tech illogically compared to us. They're apparently so advanced they just drink blood for nutrients and use it as a fertilizer for their red weed, but apparently skipped developing the wheel in favor of designing mechs. They understand chemical weapons and flight, but forgot that bacteria existed.

Given that Mars has/had no oceans to test things on, I wouldn't see them having dedicated naval craft. Or at least not very good ones. Tough and hard hitting, but not especially well designed.

Besides, most of the stuff they want (people) generally live on land anyhow, so they wouldn't have much reason for a naval force.

I can see island ports/nations with deep water around them being very useful bases. And then flying machine attacks on said bases.

Looks like Pearl Harbor is gonna happen one way or another.

on the martian tech,
i cant place where i read it but i remember it being described as very biological inspired and no wheels at all, all pistons and muscle like things

The book says it is.

For being giant three-legged machines, the tripods move incredibly swiftly, less robots and more like fluid living beings. A later edition of the book also had an extra scene Wells added in where, because he hated an illustration in the book where the tripods look like "boilers on stilts", the narrator actually finds the illustration in a newspaper and rails against it for being inaccurate.

The digging machines also looked like caterpillars or centipedes IIRC

i doubt they even know what a fish is so some kind of airsack on the legs to float for oceanic ops might be a good early prototype to fight

I have a bad imaginiation but I think someone could make something of these.

MCM (Mine Counter Measure) - Sonar, MCM - Vehicles, divers.

ASW (Anti Submarine Warfare) - Sonar, torpedos, mines. Large screenformation is recommended.

ASuW (Anti Surface Warfare) - Cannons, missiles, radar.

AAW (Anti Air Warfare) - Radar, cannons. Usually conducted over time and not as a single moment.

If you put some modern stuff in heres a few.
EW (Electronic Warfare) - Detect and intercept enemy transmissions (radar, radio). Divided into:
EP (Electronic Protection) - Ways to protect yourself from enemy EW like you stop emitting from radar to escape detection.
EA (Electronic Attack) - What it sounds like, attack, missiles or REMS and such.
ES (Electronic Support) - Things like non-active stuff, Automatic things, what material the ship is built in (like stealth-ships).
COMINT, ELINT, SIGINT, HUMINT, INFINT too.

I dont know if anything of this is of use for you OP, I got a little exited (since navy). Anyways let me know if you need any help.

Or they just find an unfinished hull, stick in whatever engines they have for their flying machines for propulsion, and then have tripods hunker down on the ship, standing up for when battle happens.

>I want to run a game inspired by Thunder Child

Please tell me you're running online. I *need* this in my life.

OP lives, he dies, he lives again!

I'm undecided on aircraft atm, I'm thinking because of the time period ill have them used like in Battlestar (which I'm stealing a lot of ideas from) ala Aces do the flying and everyone else does the dying.

As for the shells I dont think so but I want to give the Martians energy shields to compensate for how destructive warships were at the time.

I intend to set the campaign a few years after the invasion, around 1944/45 so we can get all the ships built during the war too like Bismark and ill let Vanguard actually do something. As for the setting im going to have humanity forced to the coast in the beginnings of the war where they only survived because the navies out classed the tripods. Cue years later where the Martians have grown/built ships of their own by imitating ours but much more organic in nature, propulsion systems being like a squids inhale exhale approach, armor being like barnacled skin. So basically ripping off Kancolle a little.

In meat space unfortunately but when i build up a working copy of what rules im going to use/steal/bullshit my way through ill share it with you guys

I might add some existential stuff in too, mist that you can't see a meter a head of you in where strange radio calls are heard, compass dead spots, ghost ships. That sort of thing

>What would be the viability of super-battleship paper designs like the Tillman IV, the H-44, the A-150?

In what context? In the context of this setting? In the real world? What are we talking, because the answer is entirely dependent on that.

If magically aircraft carriers didn't exist and ships still blasted each other on the battleline

In the setting I want only the ships that were laid at the start of the invasion down to be completed. Just easier for me to get a hold of the details for completed ships than paper designs.

>gunturret facing another gunturret
I knew WH40k wasn't the only place I'd seen that.

In the original book, the Martians lose a walker to the Thunderchild because they didn't realize what it was. They just assumed all those metal-y floating contraptions were people-conveyors.

The moment it takes one out, another one turns around and melts it apart with a heatray. It doesn't get a second.

>ASW (Anti Submarine Warfare) - Sonar, torpedos, mines. Large screenformation is recommended.
>ASuW (Anti Surface Warfare) - Cannons, missiles, radar.
You realize that 'Su' is the first two letters of 'submarine' and 'surface'?
I'd go for a contraction less confusing, if you're already going to bastardize it like that. ASfW. Conventional. Whatever.

She had her problems, namely firing her number 3 turret blowing out all the windows on the bridge but the Nelson was a good ship for her limitations

yeah, but it's all officers up there, so nothing of value was lost.

On point rebuttal user. On point.

Question for you anons. With the Americas providing most of Britains oil during this time period and the idea that humans lost the land war would it be a good plot point to have my players either finding offshore drilling platforms or raiding ports for their oil?

Offshore drilling can be used as an opportunity to set up a hidden base close enough to the main theater of operations for your players to resupply and perform up to medium repairs on their ships, so that's pretty good. Plus points if you get an isolated island chain for that.

As for port raiding it'd be cool for it to have larger risks, but larger returns in both oil and the supplies left behind when the land wars were lost. Unless those ports get resupplied from inland, they'd have diminishing returns.

Have the Willie D. Porter in their fleet

My players are menaces to society to begin with, I am not putting a ship that fucked up as badly as Willy Dee in with them.

>Plus points if you get an isolated island chain for that.
Britain is surrounded by thousands of unpopulated or minimally populated islands, over a range of sizes. You'd have plenty to choose from.
NO BULLY

>Willie D. Porter

"Don't shoot, we're Republicans!"

Yeah, my man. Only read the first book but I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it was a simplistic read.

ASuW and ASW are what the US Navy uses for Anti-Surface Warfare and Anti-Submarine Warfare.

In the context of the setting, which I admittedly know little about, the paper designs of ships like the H44 and Montana would probably, barring the issues with the designs themselves, perform well enough, as they would have the firepower to take out the tripods, while having at least some chance of survival due to their immense size and armoring.

At least until the enemy starts coming at them from the air at which point they're as fucked as they were in the real world.

Thats how I envisioned it as well. A battleship against a tripod would be decided more on engagement range than anything else as the heat beams, in my head canon at least, lose their destructive power the longer they travel but if they catch a battleship up close they basically turn it into a giant floating oven, cooking the crew and setting off the munitions

and as for the setting I wouldn't have brought my idea on here if I didn't want you gentlemen to expand, change, and make it your own so go nuts

So?

Remember the Hood

m.youtube.com/watch?v=tb4BWSUV8mM

CMON THUNDERCHIILLDD

Does anyone have a remember that thread we had about half a year ago about something very like this?

The premise was that the Martians were repelled in the 1890s because they didn't actually use any war machines. Why would they even have such things? They hadn't had a war in thousands of years. They were using re-purposed farming equipment.

Shit loads of alien tech gathering dust in the museums of a rebuilding world. We have no idea even of the physical principles most of it works on bar the Black Fog.

Earth was not their only target. They set up colonies on some of the moons of Jupiter and Venus.

Skip forward to 1920. Aliens send a half hearted actual war fleet from their fledgling but no self- sufficient Venus colony. This time they got inoculated.

They start with the nuking of the capital cities of the prosperous nations, most prominent holy cities and then start picking settlements off in order of size from orbit. Earth finds their radio frequency and causes premature detonation of the warheads just as they leave their warships, killing 2 of the 3. Toronto is now the largest surviving city left.

Then OPs scenario of a ground war starts.

Earth manages to defeat the invaders but everything is wrecked. Earth is united in fear and hate and desperation but it's a unity of broken nations.

By this point we have greater scientific understanding on how some of their shit actually works.

This time the alien menace waits until it can muster a proper fleet and doesn't try that shit again till the late 80s.

Well at leas it's a little more original than the "reverse engineer Martian tech for space wars" plot that Scarlet Traces and some other fiction did

this venerable dreadnought aint bad
will probably be stuffed to the brim with captured alien tech as the war progresses

Tripods can be killed by regular field guns, the firepower of an actual warship of any class above corvette would be devastating.

And if the Martians stick with heat rays for their hypothetical ships then they have a range disadvantage.

Reminds me of the Space Dreadnought in GURPS space where B turret has been replaced with a reverse engineered Martian heat ray.

if you extend about 5 years you get mighty mo, with heat rays replacing her 20mm guns, and disintegrators supplementing her main guns

I do realize that but my letters to Nato hasn´t changed it :(
Jokes aside, as another user said its how it is, but not only in US navy, almost every Western Country.
ASuW = Surface
ASW = Sub

>Rodnol and Nelsonol
They were a really clever way of maximizing protection within treaty limits.

There were quite a few ships with "q" and "r" turrets that were behind the superstructure and could only be fired to one side or the other.

The way I see it the Battleships would have the overall advantage, having sufficient firepower to take out the tripods, and having the range advantage, and being able to engage multiple targets simultaneously, but the tripods would be almost able to guarantee a victory if they get close up.

Forgot the image.

this is an amazing idea and you should be happy with yourself for having it

What about HMS Campbeltown, of the raid on St Nazaire?

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Kind of feels battleships are being treated as though they exist in a vacuum in this thread, rather than as a fleet element. There's still plenty of stuff for other classes of warships to do, especially if the Martians get flyers or submersibles. Destroyers would still get to do ASW work and possibly make torpedo runs against surface combatants. Cruisers would still be useful for scouting, AA work, and as flotilla leaders.

Could be interesting to see martian shore emplacements like giant lighthouses to extend line of sight for big ass heat rays.

Actually, come to think of it, land airstrips being at a premium would actually further the use of one of my favorite bits of naval aviation, seaplanes and seaplane tenders.

Would Martians have any sort of Radar equivalent? (It's been so long since I've read War of the Worlds that I can't recall how they fared fighting in the dark, or if it was even a thing).

Martians never had radar. Hell, the novel's set in the 1890s, radar wasn't anything anybody could've concieved of.

And after their first losses against cannons, the Martians just stuck to throwing Black Smoke everywhere

I love me some Battleship-carrier mix ups.

Would you go for ww1, ww2, or in-between for this kind of game? If we choose ww2 I'd work on beefing up the martians just a bit.

in addtion: Assault submarines for retaking captured ports

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Hell, even some of the stuff that actually existed is pretty fun. Too bad Ise and Hyuuga never actually even received their complement before being sank.

That's going to make night raids and the like probably feature heavily as it did in real life.

>seaplanes and seaplane tenders.
For pre-WWI, or even very early WWI, that might work. Seaplanes were quickly superceded once the Aircraft Carrier was developed. Once you remove the floats, that's a lot of dead weight that can now be used for fuel or munitions.
AVIATION BATTLESHIPS ARE BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.

>That's going to make night raids and the like probably feature heavily as it did in real life.
That's assuming that the Martians didn't get new tech to keep up with WW2, since the gap between 1940 and 1890 is kind of far.

Flying battleships with mounted heat-rays, paradropping fighting machines, new forms of chemical and biological warfare, ultra-digging machines tunneling under the English Channel, bringing new alien slaves like those bear creatures they domesticated, basic radar, etc.

>Battlecarriers
shit taste famalam

just use regular carriers

>seaplanes
They still have some serious flexibility inherent in their desgings, with them an island can have a standing aviation force with out a runway, and stuff like that.

>AVIATION BATTLESHIPS ARE BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.

I disagree but I'm more than interested in your reasoning. I assume it's cause that's a lot of tasks and moving bits/people for one ship to have.

I think we should keep the Marty's A bit tied down in terms of movement. Atypical/non-conventional methods of movement and fighting, Subsurface leviathans, HUmming airships and plenty of walkers. Spindly and slugish as they come from a world with lower gravity.

I also like the idea of the main battles for this war taking place on the high seas, with most land engagements resulting in stalmates or routs.

picture source:
history.co.uk/node/220131
io9.gizmodo.com/war-of-the-worlds-martian-tripods-invade-actual-world-w-1642120489

>I disagree but I'm more than interested in your reasoning.
A Battleship sails up to your face and pushes your shit in with sheer firepower, while being armoured enough to reach your face.
An Aircraft Carrier sends it's planes to kick in your shit from far enough away that you cannot retaliate with gunfire.

An Aviation Battleship does not have sufficient aircraft to kick in your shit from a distance. It does not have sufficient armour (due to needing a flight deck and to carry aircraft) to close in, and insufficient armament (due to the flight deck again) to push in your shit if it does get there. Against an aircraft carrier, it'll die far away. Against a battleship, it'll die up close.

The Battleship stopped mattering as a warship because the aircraft carried by aircraft carriers had sufficiently powerful weaponry that they could kill any BB before it could get into gun range of a carrier.

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pics

Fair enough, But battleships 'Facepunching' range could often be miles away, even over the horizon in some cases.

that does bring up an important note, how are aircraft carriers not the hottest shit in this situation? perhaps Marty has Point defense out the wazzo, Or small drone like flyers that can retaliate against near bye planes, leaving the flyers night time attacks or high altitude bombings?

>I also like the idea of the main battles for this war taking place on the high seas, with most land engagements resulting in stalmates or routs.
The opposite might be better: land battles going overwhelmingly to the Martian's Fighting Machines, but held at bay around the coast by naval gunfire support.

Most human civilisation is near the coast, but most agriculture and resources are inland. Leaving trade infrastructure and most human lives intact whilst cutting off most food production puts humanity in a severe crisis situation. Limited food other than fishing, limited supply of metals and coal (though offshore oil and gas, as well as whale oil, are still available) and very little if any material to construct new vessels with. You need a hugely expanded fishing fleet to support the population, but you need an expanded naval fleet to hold the coastlines from the Martians.
Giant Pykrete artificial islands might be a viable use to stretch the remaining reserves of wood over constructing straight wooden vessels.

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Because Marty had flying machines even back in the novel, and heat-rays are gonna be as good as laser for AA defense, especially since people still have to gun each other at visual range.

>that does bring up an important note, how are aircraft carriers not the hottest shit in this situation? perhaps Marty has Point defense out the wazzo, Or small drone like flyers that can retaliate against near bye planes, leaving the flyers night time attacks or high altitude bombings?

The Heat Ray. Line of sight, almost instantaneous travel time. Unlike AA flak or even missiles, if you can see an aircraft, you can immolate it. Kind of like Muv-Luv's BETA in that regard.

oh, I meant that the humans are getting routed in the land engagements, not the Marties. But that is some good thinking! I especially like it because it will help us avoid the 'throw away' continent, Arbitrarily choosing one continent of the world to get curbstomped so the martians have a strong hold and the factions we are focusing still have their home turf. It sucks for the land locked countries, But hey, So be

Will the Walkers perfer certain areas of the world? Maybe deserts and Warmer places?

Ah, point taken.
Could there be room for Zeplins with reflective-material plastered over their hulls as a form of transportation? or would that just be pants on head retarded?

If we're going by book accuracy, the heat-ray isn't a laser or a beam, but more like a camera with flash photography that sets everything on fire.

In this case, the zeppelin would just heat up and burst into flames.

and what about extractive resources? the armies of humanity are very reliant on metal oil and cloth. Unless they are able to hold places like the rocky mountains in NA, The Oil fields of the Middle east or some amount of agriculture humanity will be hurting bad as it's stocks dwindle

>like Muv-Luv's BETA in that regard
And then humanity creates giant robots to beat back the aliens