Advanced Quickfire Optional Rules

GUNNERY & TORPEDOES
301 - Range Guessing

A popular and traditional method of recreating the feel for period gunnery is for players to guess the ranges from their ships to the enemy ships in order to score hits. It is a fun and interesting way to conduct gunnery and also reflects - albeit abstractly - the influence of personal skill on the effectiveness of gunnery.    

To incorporate range guessing into Advanced Quickfire, players estimate ranges between firing vessels and their declared targets before the gunnery dice are rolled (as with the rest of the rules, measurements are taken from/between forward funnels). The proximity of the guessed range point modifies the ROF die roll and is measured in "cables," which is listed as a range increment in the rules (a cable equals 1/10th of a nautical mile). There are several possible ways to apply the ranging modifiers, here are a couple of the more obvious:

A) For range guesses that "land" directly on the ship model, subtract one point (-1) from the ROF die roll. For range guesses that land within a one-cable distance of the ship model, no additional ranging guessing modifier applies. For each additional cable of distance error, add one point (+1) to the ROF die roll.This last modifier in cumulative. For example, if players are using the Small game scale where one-cable equals 1" and the guessed range misses by three and a half inches, the firing player suffers a plus-three (+3) to the ROF die roll.     

B) All range guesses within one cable give the player a minus-one (-2) on the ROF die roll. Range guesses more than one cables are considered complete misses.

Players can use the Battlefleet 1900 Range Log for recording range estimates. Make "pointers" out of card stock to help clarify which ships are being targeted for ranging (not used for aiming per-se). Range guess may also be recorded on the bottom side of the target pointers. Note that with range guessing, the second gunnery phase may become too much of a guaranteed hit for some players. In such cases, just eliminate that second phase and handle all gunnery and torpedoes with one gunnery phase per turn. This forces fresh range evaluations between firings.

Ranging Shots - As part of the range guessing system, players may make ranging shots out to one nautical mile beyond maximum normal (long) gunnery range. The ranging shots are recorded on the range log and measured normally, but they require no gunnery die roll and can inflict no damage.

302 - Split Light Gunnery

At point blank range, a vessel may split its light fire gunnery points amongst multiple targets (this in addition to being able to fire both heavy and light values simultaneously). This can only be done after the normal ROF fire check to see if the ship fired its light rating at all. This rule makes it possible for a vessel with a heavy secondary armament to set-up a "curtain of fire" for purposes of torpedo-boat/destroyer defense. Smallest point packets allowed per base gunnery value are as follows: 1-6 points may split down to one-point packets, 7+ point base gunnery value may split down to two-point packets.

Splitting fire must be done as evenly as possible, so for example a ship with a 12 light gunnery value could split its fire as x2 attacks at 6 each, or x4 attacks at 3 each, but not x2 attacks with one at a 2 and one at a 10.

303 - Open Barbettes

Ships with open barbette main armament are more vulnerable to having their guns taken out of action by light gunnery. This can be represented in the game as follows:

For the ships listed below, place a "<" symbol between the Heavy and Light ROF values instead of the standard "-" dash symbol. This indicates that once the Light ROF value reaches zero, future G hits are taken off of the Heavy ROF value next, instead of B Hits as would happen normally. Once the Heavy ROF hits are depleted, then any further G hits would convert according to the normal sequence of B Hit, T Hit, R Hit, etc.

A list of open barbette ships includes (but not limited to): Royal Sovereign, Benbow, Camperdown, Collingwood, Amiral Baudin, Admiral Nakhimov, Kronprinzessen Erzherzogin Steffani, Italia, Andrea Doria, Ting Yuen (with hoods removed).

304 - Landed Torpedo Warheads

Many ships of this time lacked armored storage for torpedo warheads, which were commonly stored separately from the torpedo bodies and launchers. Between this and the possibility that a ship's captain might sense that he would not have a good chance to launch torpedoes, it was sometimes decided to "land" the warheads before heading out to sea (e.g., take them off the ship). This avoided the extra risk of fire if the warheads were hit by enemy fire while still aboard.

For this optional rule, players may choose a "Zero" torpedo rating before the game starts - even if the ship shows having a rating in the warship statistics list. This means they have chosen not to carry live torpedo warheads. Obviously they cannot launch torpedoes, but any torpedo rating hits rolled against them during the game are treated as No Effect, including no need to roll for Fire Hits on the T Hit Effect line of the damage table.

305 - Boat Gun Attack

Boat guns like 12-pounders and smaller are typically meant for use against destroyers and torpedo boats. But... if passing each other within point-blank range, many larger warships will open fire with everything they have, boat guns included. This rule allows boat gun dice to be used against any enemy ships within point-blank range, even those larger than Size 1. If firing at Size 2 or 3, the boat gun die roll suffers a minus two (-2) to each die result. For firing at ships Size 4 or larger each boat gun die roll suffers a minus four (-4). This means that against larger ships, firing at them with boat guns is generally serving to knock out the other guy's boat gun crews - with some chance of causing fire due to pesky rounds getting into places nobody expected. For Size 4 ships and larger, boat gun fire cannot cause explosions.

DAMAGE
501 - Torpedo Induced List

If three or more speed boxes are lost to SX Hits due to a single torpedo hit, four unrepairable G hits are also inflicted (evenly balanced as possible between heavy and light gunnery values). This reflects the degrading of gunnery efficiency due to the heavy list suffered by the ship.

502 - Fast Play, Fast Sinking

For players who want the game to move quickly, a good way to do so is clearing seriously damaged ships out of the way once they are battered beyond a certain point. For this rule, ships which have lost all speed for either S-hits or SX-hits (both repairable and unrepairable) will roll for sinking. The two types of speed hits continue to be applied the same way, it's just that the ship start rolling for sinking as soon as it grinds to a stop. If it somehow starts moving again or even one speed box gets repaired, the sinking roll is held off unless/until those boxes are crossed out again.