Naval Combat
Naval Combat is at the very heart of Imperialism. Control of the Sea is the primary objective of the campaign since without the ability to ship resources back to your Home country your economy will be strangled and you will lose everything!
Yes, of course you need to consider your land and air forces but these can only be sustained by a constant flow of raw materials. Without the raw maerials that are delivered by sea, you cannot build or repair the facilities necessary to produce your combat forces.
These rules are primarily for use with my soon to be released Vassal Module Imperialism, which is intended to allow players to go head-to-head over an internet connection to play-out at a tactical level the naval engagements that come about during the course of the campaign.
Acknowledgements
I have to confess that I am not in any way a writer of rules! Although I use many different sets of rules to play wargames I have yet to produce my own.
In working on Imperialism I have had to rely on ideas and inspiration from a number of different sources.
All I can say is that I knew what I wanted to achieve and in order to achieve it I had to create a composite set of rules, a hybrid that took what I considered to be the best from many different sources and married them together.
The Naval Combat rules presented here draw on numerous threads which I have attempted to marry together into a playable and not overly complex set of rules. My only contribution in this respect has been to slightly rework some of the ideas and i apologise to the authors concerned for my taking such liberties.
I have contacted various authors for their permission regarding the copyright of their material or my use of their ideas even when presented in a slightly different way to the original.
This is a non-profitable venture and I trust that any author who sees his/her ideas being used here will understand that my driving objective is to bring the fun of wargaming to as many people as possible and that in gratitude for their work I sincerely hope that my game, Imperialism, will promote their games and encourage people to go out and buy them in their full editions.
Sources of Inspiration
I would like to thank the authors of several publications for granting me the permission to either reproduce or modify ideas from their works. In particular I would like to thank the following;
Sea Battle Games by Phil Dunn and John Curry, . I am particularly indebted to Phil Dunn since the whole concept of Imperialism has been developed based upon ideas and game mechanics from this book. It has now been revised and a new, expanded edition, is now available.
This was the first Naval wargaming boook that I ever bought (back in 1970) and it is as good a resource now as it was then.
Dunn's book covers wargaming in several periods: Napoleonic, Ironclad, Pre-Dreadnought and World war 2.
Naval Thunder Battleship Row by Harry Pratt. An extremely innovative set of naval rules which I found to be easy to use, exciting and well worth purchasing. I bought this set of rules as a digital download and was impressed.
Naval Thunder Battleship Row is very much the 'playable' version of the much more complex Seekrieg even though they are from different authors.
Presented in an extremely readable and relaxed style the rules take you through each facet of the game and are accompanied by worked examples that I found to be very helpful.
Seekrieg IV by Richard Sartore & Jack Joyner. Seekrieg IV is available in it's entirity as a FREE download from the Seekrieg website
This is a hyper-realistic set of rules and as such they have their adherents although I found them far too involved. Nonetheless, some excellent ideas and mechanisms which I found useful. Also, a superb set of ship profiles containing a wealth of information to accompany the rules is also available.
