Command Checks too Rare?

[bede19025]

As far as I can tell, the only time you take a Command Check is when you get a Bridge Critical hit.

You get this only on a roll of 1-2 on a Critial Hit roll. That means you've got a less than 5% chance to have it happen on a normal Critial Roll (yes, 10-20% on Superstructure Critical, but that's in and of itself very rare).

Given this it is surprising to me how many special rules apply to Command Checks.

Am I missing an event which causes a Command Check?

[afilter]

I think Command checks are more of a hold over from CoD which came before BR. They are much more prevelant in CoD and RotB.

[TheDreadnought]

Yeah, command checks are something I struggled with in writing NT: BR. Too rare, everybody fights to the finish all the time. Too common and possibly good games get ended early. But I also wanted to keep the rules as simple as possible.

I probably would make them more common if I were writing the game today. Maybe whenever the ship reaches 50% of its hull value. . . or whenever a ship from a heavier weight class is sunk or fails its own command check.

[warchariot]

Sounds like a change to me...

[aman]

I like those ideas. Any chance of developing them into a finalized product / optional rule?
I also like the variable crew/cr optional rules.
Granted, captains may have a lot of reasons to fight under desperate circumstances. And of course, some captains are cowards while others are reckless. But I think every good game needs a sound basis for historical variables. Generally speaking, the player in NTBR is a rear admiral commanding 5-10 ships in a task force. In game terms that means that the only ship the player should be free with is the FF. The others should fight / withdraw at the discretion of their captain (who might be court-martialed or bemedalled later...).

[TheDreadnought]

LOL. . . well you don't need it printed in the rulebook to start playing with it. You can consider it an official option if you like.

I might add it next time I do an update, we'll see.

[aman]

hah, but as newbies, we don't want to mess up the rules before we have some more games under our belt. We'll be looking forward to the optional rules. I think that is is tough to be a designer - you have to make decisions that arbitrarily say "this is typical of the war" but there may not be anything that's typical. overall, I favor restrictive / conservative basic rules with more detailed optional rules is best.

[regiamarina]

I've always found command/morale a problem for any naval game. Left up to a player the ships fight to the death but putting in arbitrary rolls takes away some of the player control which can wreck a game.

In all the games we've played since getting the rules a command check only came up once so we did find them quite rare and decided to house rule them.

Basically we used a similar rule to the one Dread suggests above but with extra modifiers for being 25% damaged +1, 50% damaged +2, and 75% damaged +3. Also after playing a few times with the house rule we decided instead of making rolls when you reach arbitrary 25%, 50% bracket, etc. you roll every time you take damage from any source once you reach 50%. So a ship that has an ongoing fire or flooding still has to roll even if it is no longer taking damage from an enemy ship. We found this has worked quite well for us with ships far less likely to fight to the death and they usually fail their command rolls around the 75% damage mark.

Martin

[aman]

Stealing an idea from another (land) game I like, one thing you can do is base victory points on the state of your own fleet at the end of a battle. Ships represent a major capital expenditure for any nation, so being at fault in wrecking them can also wreck one's career! Some ways to do this are:
- At game end, subtract your point losses from the point losses you inflicted. A positive number is a victory. 10% of force total is a minor victory, 20% a victory, and 30% or more a major victory. So if you're playing a 1000pt game and you win by 100 pts that's 10%, etc.
- you can also toy with this by "typifying" missions. A routine patrol doesn't fight to the death (usually). They withdraw when heavily pressured. So if you're on a routine patrol and take greater than 10-20% points losses, you automatically lose.
Rules like these can solve the problem of "fighting to the death" by encouraging players to act more like a real commander - attempt to follower orders without taking unacceptable losses. One thing a lot of historical reading emphasizes is that both sides in naval confilcts are wary of open battle and losing an irreplacable asset like an entire fleet. Not to mention turning all those sailors into shark bait!