Line of Battle

[Scott Washburn]

I’m new to the game and I don’t know if this has been discussed before, but I’d be surprised if it had not. In the Age of Sail the most common formation was the Line of Battle with the ships following each other in a long line that presented the massed broadsides of the fleet to the enemy. Ships of the line almost always did it and even lighter ships usually did so. It was a good way for a commander to keep his ships under control and bring them to bear on the enemy. But it doesn’t seem to be possible with the Black Seas rules. A long line of ships with the wind astern of them would be activated with the last ship in line activated first and then each other activated one after the other from back to front. The rear ships would overtake the ships in front of them and have to turn to avoid a collision. The formation would quickly come apart. Theoretically if you kept a space between the ships that was slightly greater than their speed, you might be able to do this, but unless you kept the ships at Light Sails, the gap would be very large. And even then, if you had a squadron that was a mixture of 1st through 5th rates, the speed differences (1st and 2nd rates 3″, 3rd-5th rates 4″) would again cause the formation to come apart. So how is this handled? The most common formation ought to be allowed in the game. One possible solution would be to have a squadron declare itself a Line of Battle and have one ship as the flagship. It is only activated when the flagship is activated and then the whole line is activated at once.

[Nat]

Core rulebook – pg 35
“Sailing in Lines”

basically they are all bow to wave marker & activate when the slowest /last ship would with the ship at the head of the line going first… if they dont end the turn touching the wave marker then they arent in line next turn so activate normally.  (the full rule is about 1/4 of a page… so yes this sentance is missing chunks of the rule :p)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Nat.

[Scott Washburn]

How did I miss that????????? Thanks!

[Briec]

I tried the line of battle, but I didn’t understood if the line can navigate with every rates of sails ?

In the rules, it wrote that it possible with battle sails, but if the wind change and the ships have to navigate only with light sails, then the line is it broken ?

If the line have the wind in bow so every ship have to tack ? the line is it broken to ?

thanks for your help

[Nat]

a battle line is calculated at the start of the turn.

You use the lowest level of sails/ speed ship as the speed of the line
You use the position of the last ship in the line for working out where the whole line is in the wind gauge
You move the line from the lead ship

the whole line moves as a single element in regards to the wind gauge.   Any ship that has left the line is counted as a new line /individual ship at the start of the next turn.

[Briec]

thanks :-))

if there is a line battle with HMS Victory in light sail, the whole line will progress with 3 inches.

best regards

 

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