Here’s a Question for you

[Big Al]

When you score a critical hit and the result is Fuel Hit, you roll a dice and on a 4+ you cause a fire on a petrol driven boat, or 5+ on a diesel.
What happens on a steam driven boat? It happened to my sgb the other night and I blindly accepted a 4+ result, but thought about it afterwards. Coal doesn’t catch fire that easily. I mean, have you tried to light a coal fire? It’s bad enough getting the barbecue started!

[invisible officer]

Good point.

Well, one may say it’s a Boiler explosion. A steam ship engine System is much more vulnerable than a Diesel one. And even a Petrol one.

Filling the engine room with deadly boiling steam. Hard to get under control, similar to a fire.

So the 4 + result would be OK in my view.

[George]

I think the steam gun boats had oil fired steam turbine engines. If that helps.

[elcee]

I agree with IO on the 4+.

While i didn’t find what fuel the SGBs used we can assume it they were oil fired:

They were powered by two 4,000 hp steam turbines using special flash boilers.

Flash boilers are normally fired by liquid or gaseous fuel because this allows a quick response to changes in the demand for steam. However, experiments with solid fuel firing have been made.

It’s also mentioned that the ship’s engines were very vulerable, so they added some extra armour plating.

[Niall]

As the result is “fuel hit” not engine damaged, the vulnerability of the engine to damage is not relevent.

As fuel oil is less flammable than petrol, in my opinion, they should be treated as diesel engined ships.

[Big Al]

This is my line of thinking, too. A boiler hit would be more permanent than a fuel fire. Usually, when the boiler goes, the ship goes, too.

[invisible officer]

Not ever. If some steam pipes are pierced you get burned in a steam bath but it was possible to repair.
Similar to fire fighting.

Many men gor well deserved medals for that.

[Big Al]

“Some steam pipes” isn’t the same as a boiler blowing, though!

[elcee]

As fuel oil is less flammable than petrol, in my opinion, they should be treated as diesel engined ships.

That depends though, if HFO was used it has to be heated or thinned, both will increase the flammability of the oil.

And a flash boiler takes less time to raise steam from a cold start, so a fuel that will burn well will be required, otherwise the use of such a steam boiler would make no sense (this makes it more likely that the fuel was thinned with heating oil or similar substances).

[Author]

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