Possible house rules

[Steve Burt]

I agree it would be good to have heavy and light carronades. That’s an easy fix; I suspect anything smaller than a ship of the line would only have light carronades.

[invisible officer]

No, for example the Cruiser class Brigs had a broadside of 8x 32 pdr carronades. And at bow 2 x 6 pdr cannon as bow chasers.

Most RN SOL had 32pdr carronades, very few the 68pder. 98 gun St. George just 24 pdr Carronades.

Even very small vessels had the 32pdr Carronade, like the 85 built Commissioner Hamilton class Gunboats that had one each on 360° carriage. And a 24 pdr cannon at bow.

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by invisible officer.

[Steve Burt]

A 32pdr carronade is a light carronade – same damage as a heavy gun of the same weight. A heavy carronade is a 68pdr, which causes more damage (3 dice); you won;t find those on small ships.

[invisible officer]

A 32 pdr carronade is a heavy gun, Standard on most SOL.

The 68pdr was a White elepant, rarely used. It weighted 1400 kg, the 32pdr 864 kg.

Light Carronades are 6, 12 and perhaps 18 pdr. 24 pdr carronades would be medium.

The French heavy 36 pdr Carronade weigted 1250 kg. The light French 12pdr Carr. 389 kg.

The French one was not only bigger, the French Pound was bigger too. 0,4895 kg compared the British 0,4536. Not much but in a full broadside…….

[Lincolnlog]

Steve,

Based on generic stats, it seems the game cut off for heavy guns is 18 pounders. Most 5th rates prior to 1780 will not have guns larger than 12 pounds. There was a shift in the armament paradigm around the same time carronade started to be fitted. If my backward engineering is accurate:

So 12 pounders and smaller = Light Guns
18 Pounders and heavier = Heavy Guns

1 Die is 3-7 guns (round up, the author obviously did).

Carronades were all grouped together, as everyone is already aware. I think the carronade numbers are already so screwy as to be totally mythical.

However, when I’m doing a historical representation card, 1-4 carronade = 1 Die. If you run across heavy carronade (68 pounders) I would halve that to 1-2. Keep in mind that the number of dice was factoring accuracy as well as number of guns.

This is my opinion based on looking at the game mathimatics. I bought the edition of Wargame Illustrated for the designers notes, and guess what, they aren’t really designers notes. Go figure, remember the day when all wargames had designers notes that explained the game mechanics? I really miss those days sometimes.

Bob

[Lincolnlog]

I would caution heavily against house ruling until your an expert on rules as written.

I love this period of history, but I’m far from being an expert. As, stated in another thread, the turn radius of the ships are kind of counter intuitive.

Frigates are faster than Third Rates, but the slower speed, with the same 45′ turn allows a third rate to turn inside a Frigate. As stated by Invisible Officer there is historical precedence on a case by case basis. But I hardly think this would be a common occurance.

I don’t know the rules well enough yet, to change anything. Continue the discussion, though, it is highly enjoyable and informative.

Bob

[Lincolnlog]

@Invisible Officer Quote: “And in some cases they mix ships of same name that got captured and retaken.”

I realize you are correct on this point, but if you don’t have paper it’s much better than making stuff up.

Bob

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Lincolnlog.

[Steve Burt]

Invisible officer wrote:
“A 32 pdr carronade is a heavy gun, Standard on most SOL.
The 68pdr was a White elepant, rarely used. It weighted 1400 kg, the 32pdr 864 kg.
Light Carronades are 6, 12 and perhaps 18 pdr. 24 pdr carronades would be medium.”

Yes, indeed, I agree with all that.
But a 32pdr carronade surely causes no more damage than a 32pdr long gun (probably a bit less, as the the ball is moving slower).
So a 32pdr carronade should cause 2 damage, not 3. Only the real monsters should cause 3 damage. Hence my suggestion to introduce ‘light carronades’ for carronades 32pdr or smaller, which would cause 2 damage instead of 3.
Or it might be simpler (given their rarity) to have ‘heav carronades for the big one which cause 3 damage, and just downgrade other carronades to 2 damage like heavy guns.

[Steve Burt]

LincolnLog wrote:
“I love this period of history, but I’m far from being an expert. As, stated in another thread, the turn radius of the ships are kind of counter intuitive.”

Agreed. I certainly wouldn’t assume that bigger ships have a bigger turn radius. Certainly not true in the age of steam (many WW2 destroyers had terrible turn radii and many battleships had tiny ones). It depends on ratio of width to length in the hull, rudder size and probably a bunch of other factors. The problem is for age of sail the info is almost never available. Many AoS games give all ships the same turn radius and maybe that is a good compromise.

[Andy Watkins]

It seems the simplist approach to carronades is to keep them as they are in all regards except to drop their damage to 2 the same as a heavy gun which is approximately what they were.

The 68pdr is exceptional AND the ships that had them seemed to have them in very small numbers so overall damage of 2 still seems reasonable.

It would probably then be sensible for anything smaller than a frigate to have it’s heavy guns replaced by carronades.

If the damage was 2 then a broadsie of 2 carronades might be sensible for those Cruizer class brigs.

Thanks very much for the mention of the cruizer class, i had not heard of them and they do seem incredibly well armed for what they are.

I must say I am confused by the issues of range regarding carronades. Carronades can fire out to 1000 yards or more whilst long guns are more like 2000 yards. That is all great but I read most battles took place within 100 yards. A specific quote i read was that the British could hit with 10% of their shot at 100 yards!! being able to fire approx 3 rounds in 5 minutes, whilst the post revolutionary french and spanish navies were approximately half the speed AND less accurate.

If that is the best a well trained navy could do at 100 yards I struggle to see the advantage of being able to fire out to 2000 yards BUT everything I read says that many perhaps most british naval captains still preferred long guns to Carronades?? I guess there is more to the real story than theoretical figures show….

[invisible officer]

The ballistics of cannon and carronades and the tactical use had been different.

The cannon was bored with a windage that allowed fast loading. So a lot of the power went past the ball and was lost for power. So a larger powder load was used.
Apart from power the ball also lost accuracy by windage. At same aiming point the hitting point at 100 meter varied for meters from a land based gun from shot to shot.

Worse, the up and down of your ship causes a much bigger variation for range. To time the explosion of the powder in the barrel for the moment the level was as intended was nearly impossible. Even the flintlock introduced into naval use was not fast enough, with linstock it was worse.
So most balls went into water or over the hull. In some angles a ball glancing the water surface will jump like the stones we all have thrown at lakes. So aiming too deep may be better than to high.

Carronades had a shorter barrel. The Carron company worked better, the windage was much smaller. The powder load was much smaller, not half that of cannon of same calibre.
The shorter barrel reduced the time the ball was accelerated. But with less windage the time was used better. The still lower muzzle velocity required a higher trajectory.
That added to the difficult range aiming.

Tactical the Carronade was used to add ball weight to the upper deck guns. That deck could carry less weight. A 32pdr Carronade of 864 kg replaced a cannon that was small, even a 9pr weighted 1300 kg.

So most upper deck cannon got replaced in RN, with the exception of the bow chaser. That cannon needed long range. A lucky shot at extreme range might damage the steering system.
Some CO made aiming aids, the typical Napoleonic gun had no sight!

Few officers spent money for powder on sharp shooter gun training, so most RN tars had no idea about the hitting point of their gun if “aimed” in a certain way.

Small ships and monster guns. Commander William Layman commanded the Cruiser class brig Raven. He replaced the bow chasers with a single 68pdr Carronade on a pivot and did the same with the aft two 32pdr Carronades.

[Steve Burt]

Not sure about 100 yards, but certainly 300 yards or less for most engagements is about right. So, yes, as you say, most engagements would be within carronade range.
Does anyone know what the rough ground (or rather sea) scale is? The ranges suggest about 1″ to 50 yards is about right, so point blank is 150 yards, short range and carronade range would be 400 yards, a long cannon fires 1000 yards if heavy, 700 if light.

[Andy Watkins]

I must say thankyou everyone for replying to this post, the replies i have had have been both more positive and far more informative than I had expected. I have learnt quite a bit.

[Lincolnlog]

I suspect carronades were granted more damage due to the plunging fire effect. Carronades had a much flatter trajectory than mortars, but way less flatter trajectory than long guns. Therefore there was higher probability of hitting the deck over the railing.

Bob

[Steve Burt]

But a carronade fired from a frigate isn’t going to hit the deck of a ship of the line, which is way above it. I suspect the 3 damage is because it’s a fun in-game effect.

[Author]

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