"Clear for Action!"

[Dobbs]

Has anybody given any thought to "clearing for action" and how it might be represented in the game? I've been pondering it and have some ideas, but was curious if that territory had already been explored.

Things I thought might be interesting are:

1) What extra damage does a ship that has not cleared for action take? I was thinking that the firing player pulls an "E" chit for every successful artillery hit chit. This is to reflect that the hammocks are not up and the gun deck not cleared of partitions.

2) How long does it take to clear for action? Each turn, a player clearing for action pulls two chits from the "E" collection (one chit if the sailors are lacking experience) during the planning phase. A player must pull three "Crew Loss" chits (no more than one a turn is counted) to clear for action. If "0"s are drawn, nothing happens. After the first crew loss chit is drawn, the owning player may start to load the broadsides. After the second crew loss chit is drawn, the ship may fire at half strength (rounded up). After the third, play proceeds normally.

What do you think?

[7eat51]

Interesting idea. Given the problems with scale and time, I am not sure if there is a good mechanism for time to clear. When does your three-crew-loss-chit-puling scheme begin? When an enemy ship is within a certain number of rulers? I am uncomfortable with leaving the time to clear randomly generated. I would set it to a turn or two, with an additional turn if the crew is not well-trained; again this depends upon when the sequence begins.

[Dobbs]

I was thinking that this might be useful in some scenarios (along the lines of the climactic battle in "Master and Commander" - it's probable that the privateer didn't "beat to quarters" since she was only overtaking a whaler). It strikes me that there are examples in history (such as Constitution vs. Maidstone) of captains caught off guard and having to adjust on the fly.

Think of all the encounters where the captains chose to fly flags of the enemy or a neutral nation up to the point when battle was joined. Would a captain necessarily clear for action if he was approaching a ship of the same nationality (not really) that gave the right signals (because of a lucky acquisition of code books)? For instance, a bold English frigate captain uses the "ruse de guerre" to approach a French 74 with an inexperienced crew using his recently captured codes (from that cutting out mission two days ago)... In this case, the French realize their mistake when the English run up their colors (planning phase) and fire. The next turn (planning phase) the French start to beat to quarters.

I tried to adjust probability to make it very likely (except in unlucky situations) that your average crew could beat to quarters in three turns. An inexperienced crew would be at a significant handicap, and random events certainly play a part with inexperienced crew on a boat in a crisis.

[David Manley]

I included BTQ rules in FLoB when I developed the third edition. This was as a result of certain scenarios arising within a campaign that I was running at the time where BTQ was an important consideration. Since then I've rarely used it but its handy to have it there as a useful piece of chrome or as a vital element of a particualr scenario.