Naval Battles in the Age of Sail

[Hans_Lemurson]

Square-Rig Caravels, Frigates and Flagships have one thing in common: Their attack strength is significantly higher than their defense strength.

This creates a situation where the only rule of naval warfare is: If you attack first, you win.

There is no terrain in the ocean, just open flat terrain with no defense bonuses. On this battlefield, we place units with movement rates well in excess of their vision, and an attack twice as strong as their defense.

The result is a situation where ships either wander blindly through the oceans simply hoping that they locate an enemy before it locates them, or they spend all their time hiding in port waiting to ambush unsuspecting prey.

Now, this is not all THAT different than other eras (initiative still matters in trireme battles), but at least when Attack and Defense are balanced, the defender has a chance, and naval superiority becomes a matter of built-strategy rather than luck and tactical first-strikes.

Would you be willing to fight a war with nothing but cavalry on an open plain? And yet we accept these A4/D2 Frigates because "That's how Civ2 did it".

To restore balance on the high seas, I propose that ALL ships should have a Defense strength that is no lower than their Attack strength. In fact, an interesting case could even be made for making the Defense strengths higher than the Attack...

[Wahazar]

In AU2 ruleset naval vessels have significantly higher defense than attack, but they can carry one or more turret units.
However turret unit have worse HP than ship itself, and usually is lost, but after turret attack wounded enemy ship can be finished by turret carrier.
So technically it is similar to current "high attack, low defence, who attack first, win", but on expense of turret unit cost.

[Hans_Lemurson]

So turrets represent ammunition?

One thing I think would be nice to see with defense higher than attack is that ships could actually do some good while out of port. We have a brief glimpse of this with Longboats and Caravels having A1/D2, but in the latter case Square-Rigs become wolves on the water.

Galleons should have enough Defense to resist a Frigate, and I definitely think that Ironclads should have more defense than attack, given their early history.

[Wahazar]

So turrets represent ammunition?

Not necessarily, damage of turret can be rationalized as damage of barrels due to overheating after long fight with tough target.

[Corbeau]

Defence bigger than Attack may create another set of problems, being it is increasingly difficult to fend off an invasion fleet.

my idea would be a close A and D (maybe A=D+1) but also a limited number of combat rounds, possible for a ship to sink, but it may also survive.

[Hans_Lemurson]

Defence bigger than Attack may create another set of problems, being it is increasingly difficult to fend off an invasion fleet.

my idea would be a close A and D (maybe A=D+1) but also a limited number of combat rounds, possible for a ship to sink, but it may also survive.

What's the problem with navies actually being able to do something useful like "Defend Transports"? Currently all they do is sit around in port until a target comes foolishly into range.

D > A would allow navies to actually travel the ocean and be a real "presence" there. You could even to shocking things like use your navy to GUARD places!

Maybe the simplest thing to do would be to keep all ships at A = D, but then have the Ocean provide a defense bonus.

[Wahazar]

Accidentally* I was playing ruleset with ship's D<<A and it was pretty boring and annoying.

* it was by design because turrets were intended to attack, but they didn't work due to freeciv bug, thus only ships were able to attack - both sides were just blocking each other.