Earlier I had mentioned that I was going to rant about Cruel Seas. Not that it is bad ruleset, it’s not. I think that the game is quick to learn and fun to play. I do think that it was rushed into production to meet a Christmas deadline leaving a multitude of small errors, and I also think that some of the rules don’t reflect what it is like at sea. Be warned: Naval Officers love to rant, but I will endeavour to keep this as short as I can. I will go through what I see are issues, give my perspective, and then suggestions on how I would change the rules.

Note: pictures here are either my own, from the creative commons, or from Cpl O’Connell, a CAF Image Tech who deployed with me several years ago.

Background

I am in the fortunate position of not only having fired hundreds upon hundreds of rounds at sea, both at shore targets and small craft and other targets, but have also commanded small vessels around the size of a large MTB (~30m). Admittedly, the majority of my experience at sea has been in larger surface combatants, but I feel that I can speak to the Cruel Seas ruleset from an operator perspective.

Caveat

This is not about having BADWRONGFUN, but about pointing out what works at sea and what rule changes you might want to consider in your gaming. If you think that a particular rule makes for a more exciting game and you want to ignore some (or all) of what follows, please do. Our hobby is about having fun, and I won’t gainsay anyone who focusses on that.

Start at the Beginning 
(A very good place to start)

Cruel Seas is a wargame published by Warlord Games and its stated goal is to have a fast paced game “recreating the swirling naval dogfights taking place on the seas around the world in the dark days of the Second World War.” I think it achieves the fast paced aspect, and also brings people in and introduces people to naval wargaming, and I think that is great.

The one part of the stated aim where it falls down is the realism aspect. Now games must balance realism and playability, but I think that ruleset falls down on three major areas: Fighting Equipment and Sensors, Ship Movements, and Damage Control. I will be looking at each aspect as we go forward.

The one ranty bit I want to throw out before we get into the three main areas, is the use of the word “crafts” vice “craft.” The IMO uses watercraft for singular and plural. I know that colloquial usage changes the language, so words like irregardless become accepted (which is a sign of our civilization’s coming demise I am sure) but using “crafts” isn’t kosher. I am seeing it more and more and it gets my hackles up. Please stop. The plural of aircraft is aircraft. The plural of watercraft is watercraft. “There were many crafts…” makes my blood pressure rise.

Second ranty bit to get me warmed up before getting into the rules, the ship sizes are rather, well, wrong. Tankers smaller than liberty ships?! Frigates larger than destroyers? In which navy? Some navies don’t use the term destroyer, sure. Modern frigates are the size of light cruisers from WW2 and corvettes now displace 3000 tons, but the order of small to big hasn’t changed. Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, etc. If you think of WW2 frigates, the River class is an excellent example. It is also 77 feet shorter than a Tribal class destroyer. I hope that it was merely a miss-print when they put the destroyers in the large category. In fact, in the Royal Navy ship roster (p94), destroyers are listed as huge. Granted, this is not a big deal, but you erode trust when simple things are messed up. If you get the simple things wrong, how do you fare with the more complex?

Fighting Equipment and Sensors

Splash Spotting (Plumes p 26)

This is a Hammerhead target. They’re highly manoeuvrable and we use them for live-firing training. They top out at over 40kts and as you can see, at 17 feet LOA, they aren’t big and can be hard to spot in a lively sea or large swell.

I have fired at many of these targets and have never seen small naval guns (under 5”/127mm) or 5” guns themselves obscure them. I have seen AAW missiles fired in Surface to Air in Surface to Surface mode (SASS) against small boats and a supersonic missile coming down almost vertically doesn’t obscure the target for more than a second if it misses – and really gives a lovely show when it does hit!!!

The process is that the gun is shot (we do not say “fire” but rather “shoot” so no one thinks that there is a fire aboard – serious). So the gun goes bang, the splash happens, and the target is now left/right/closer/further. A correction is made to bring the splashes onto the target. The splash plumes, even with high explosive (and smoke from prox fuses if used against the target) don’t last long and are relatively small. Even if a larger calibre weapon were to fire at a small target, the target wouldn’t be moving at 3 kts hiding behind it. The image of dozens of giant plumes from battleship guns hiding ships in a confused fight doesn’t work for coastal work, and I’m not convinced that it has any validity even in the Pacific Theatre where the USN was firing big guns in the littoral. Splashes don’t hang around nearly as long as people imagine and the targets we’re talking about would be visible around the splash. Also, near misses with high explosive shells are enough to sink a vessel as the concussion travels through the water.

As for needing multiple rounds to get on target, that is somewhat true. Now, you don’t need to bracket a target the way you do with shore bombardment (or calling for fire in the Army). For land targets if you are short, you adjust to have the shot land a little long and then slowly close the bracket onto the target and fire for effect. At sea with a moving target and a moving firing platform, you don’t have much time and it is far more akin to laying a tank gun than to artillery fire for close range targets – which is what Cruel Seas deals with. So you call the correction to the target and the gunnery team adjusts, shoots and carries on. The more times you correct the better the chances are that you will hit, but worrying about range is less of an issue than you might think.

What about at night? Well, without modern night vision devices you will need some illumination. The white of a splash is amazingly visible in moonlight and almost looks incandescent for a second. So if you can see your target to shoot at it, you can see your splash.

So what? The splash spotting rules as written (p 26) don’t make much sense. Another vessel won’t get any benefit from where your rounds fall. That is simply not the case. Even different gun positions, unless they are controlled by the same fire control director (unlikely in WW2 littoral craft), the splashes from one gun position won’t help the other.

Suggestion: Either scrap the rule (but still put splash markers up because they look cool) OR: have different plume markers for each vessel. This may imply that the vessels gunnery is centrally controlled, but essentially it would represent the improvement in accuracy that occurs during a gunnery duel.

Gun Platforms (p12 – To Hit Table)

Speed modifiers to shooting (p12) have all vessels that are moving at their full speed having a very considerable -2 to hit modifier. If this was a game of small vessels only, sure. It is not. A displacement hulled flak ship moving at it’s full speed of 12 knots is going to be a VERY stable gun platform compared to a Vosper doing its full speed at 36 knots. Ships, and small craft especially, are actually more stable gun platform when underway (on most courses relative to sea/swell) compared to wallowing in the sea and rolling wildly, and this is not reflected in the rules. A non-displacement hull (one that gets up on plane) is less stable at high speeds and in high sea states than a displacement hull. A destroyer doing 36 knots will be FAR more stable than an MTB, which is one of the reasons they were so dangerous. Without getting into it too much, this rule makes no sense being universally applied across ship sizes.

So what? The speed modifiers need to be reworked. Badly.

Suggestion: Tie the modifier to the size of vessel (for simplicity).

Gunnery Modifiers Based on Speed

Shooting Vessel Size	Stationary	Slow Speed	Combat Speed	Full Speed
Tiny	-1	0	-1	-2
Small	0	0	-1	-1
Medium	+1	0	0	-1
Large+	+1	0	0	0

Starshell (p32)

Starshell lasts 2 to 3 minutes for most small to medium calibre naval guns and typically illuminates over 1000m radius.

So what? The star shell needs to be improved!

Suggestion: Illumination be increased to 100cm.
Option: I like the idea of having the illumination last 2 turns as the turns in Cruel Seas don’t correspond to any real length of time. Otherwise you’ll be losing a mount to illuminating for the entire battle.

Torpedoes (p12)

I think that the torpedo rules are probably one of the most criticized part of these rules. Yes, you need the game playable, but it is silly to have the average damage be 56 (maximum damage be 192 – if you roll a 6 with every die and then roll another 6 with it, which is highly unlikely). Most likely you’ll need 2 or 3 fish to sink a minesweeper. Added to that, there are no critical hits! So the ship takes a hit and is unimpaired and able to fight the ship. Really?

So what? These rules need changing. They shouldn’t change so far so that torpedoes are going to sink everything on the first try, but they need to have more of an impact (ha!) in the game itself. Now a caution: modern heavyweight torpedoes are far, far more deadly than WW2 torpedoes so you may need to realign your expectations. Modern torpedoes do this to ships:

During WW2 there were many ships that survived the first shot but were badly damaged and second torpedo finished them off. Many merchant ships and naval vessels needed 2 or 3 shots to sink them. HMS Cassandra lost her bow to a torpedo in the Atlantic and was towed to Kola. HMS Stork in the Med was another. USS O’Brien in the Pacific, and so on. SS Ohio bringing critical fuel to Malta was making 13 knots after being torpedoed. Granted, many vessels did sink on the first hit. My uncle was sleeping and woke up in the water when he was torpedoed in the merchant marine (on his second sinking).

So the possibility must be there for ships to survive, but if they are hit, it cannot just be damage with no impact to the ship’s operations. I do think that having a lucky ship survive a hit but be severely impacted is not only realistic, it also makes for a good story and a more engaging game. Maybe a consort needs to take the ship in tow!

Suggestion: Torpedoes should do 60+10d6 damage (averaging out at 95 damage). 6s are not re-rolled but 4 critical effects (p29) take place: Crew Hit, Engine Hit, Gun Hit (to be diced for randomly), and 1 other random effect. This means that while a destroyer may survive a hit, it will be slowed down, possibly unable to shoot, with one gun position destroyed and with maybe its radar knocked out, or a second hit on its engines restricting it to slow speed for the rest of the battle. So a poor dice roll would have a minesweeper still afloat, but it would be nearly dead, and be considerably less combat capable for a while. I think this strikes the balance between fun (it is enjoyable to roll buckets of dice) and realistic (a hit can’t be shrugged off).

Searchlights (p34)

This one is puzzling to me. Searchlights help you find things, sure. They most certainly do not help you hit them. I’m not certain how that would even work. They are not tied to a fire control director. Likewise, using a searchlight will make you a more prominent target, but it doesn’t make you easier to hit. How high is the light above the waterline? If you don’t know that you’ll be guessing at ranges just like normal. Granted, using a searchlight will give your position away, so if it’s all dark and you play Rudolph the Reindeer you’re going to be on the receiving end of a rather lot of firepower.

As for blinding, oh yes. That is 100% accurate. Bright lights at sea are the devil. We darken ships to not only reduce the likelihood of light leaking out, but to ensure that our watchkeepers get and retain their night vision. It takes 15 minutes to get it back. That can be a very long time in a critical situation. I have been on the bridge and illuminated by a small searchlight and even though we were only 36 yards away (we were conducting a replenishment at sea and light discipline did not occur to the allied tanker) it took me a long time to figure out where the light was coming from (apart from that ship over there that I was trying to keep station on while driving at an absurdly low RAS speed)!

When we use our large searchlights (which we call the Xenon Deathray) you would be blinded for a long, long time if not permanantly injured (over 150 million candle power). WW2 20″ bridge signal lights used by the RCN had 20 million candle power and when used as a searchlight had 45 million candlepower. The blinding effect is so bad (and so real) that use of searchlights to illuminate a bridge (or an aircraft) is carefully controlled using rules of engagement in the modern world across all Navies. So blinding a gun position is absolutely possible. Choosing which gun position to blind, not so much.

So what?  The searchlight rules need to be re-written as they’ve got it only half-right. Blinding a bridge is realistic but too hard to model.

Suggestion: Searchlights illuminate out to 100cm and can blind a gun position out to 45cm. A vessel illuminated will dice randomly for the gun position impacted, which will be unable to act for that turn (aren’t I generous) with no skill check to save.

Mines (p34)

The rules and errata are a bit muddy. Note that driving quickly in a naval minefield is a VERY bad idea.

So what? The errata has a table for minefields that reflects the increased chance of survival at low speeds. The skill modifiers are backwards though. If you are trying to roll under the activation, veteran crews should not be adding to the die roll.

Suggestion: The minefield rules are used as per the errata with the modifiers added not to the die roll, but the activation roll required.

Shiphandling

I had written a very long and involved piece on shiphandling principles but I scrapped it all and am going to keep it simple-ish. For those who want to know more, BR45 Vol 6 – The Admiralty Manual of Navigation – Shiphandling volume is great. So is Bowditch. Crenshaw’s Naval Shiphandling, while dated, is excellent.

Turning

So, a quick primer on shiphandling. A ship does not turn like a car. It moves around a pivot point. When the ship is at rest, the pivot point is roughly amidships. This is why ships with balanced superstructures fore and aft lie beam to the wind. When getting underway, the pivot point jumps forward to the stem and then moves to a place about a third of the hull length back from the bow. This is conveniently where the bridges of most warships lie.

When a ship turns, the pivot point follows the path of the turn, with the bow slipping inside and the stern skidding out. You can see this in the diagram above.

The rate of turn does not always correspond to the size of the tactical diameter. You can have a high rate of turn at 20 knots (likely 3 times higher than the same warship at 5 knots), but your tactical diameter will be about 10-20% larger.

Now warships are designed to turn far more quickly than merchant ships. This is from a combination of factors, but the hull shape is a big one. So Cruel Seas is right that merchants should turn more slowly, but they still make it far too quick for a merchant to turn, and too hard for a small MTB or a fast destroyer.

Turning at rest is also an issue. A stationary vessel does not have a higher rate of turn than a ship underway. That is not possible without modern propulsion systems and a complete lack of environmentals. Even light craft are challenged with this – I know this from experience.

So what? A vessels speed impacts its turning diameter, but it also increases its rate of turn. The errata for Cruel Seas has clarified things a bit, but it is still a mess. The rules do have it right that going faster turns you faster. You should not be allowed to turn with a higher rate of turn when travelling slower. How then, do you prevent cumbersome vessels at 12knots from turning inside an MTB at 24?

Suggestions:

1. Vessels should be pivoted about their bow, not their stern. Does this kick their stern out past the old line of travel? Yes. That is what happens in real life and why we spend hundreds and thousands of hours teaching shiphandling in pilotage waters, canals and locks, and alongsides in the Navy.
2. Medium and smaller vessels should be able to turn after each speed level moved. If they move at slow speed, the can only make 1 alteration. They are allowed to make the first turn prior to moving forward (as they are already at speed). This reflects the importance of rate of turn. Large and huge vessels must move prior to their first alteration and can only make 2 alterations regardless of speed travelled while merchant ships can only make 1 alteration.
3. When stationary, medium and smaller vessels can pivot about their midpoint 45 degrees. Large and huge vessels, 30 degrees.
4. A disabled vessel should be moved 30 degrees per turn to lie beam to the wind – which should be diced for prior to the start of the game.
5. Ship rosters should include a notes column, so that vessels that were noted to be pigs are slowed in their turns, and those noted to be nimble gain some advantage. Over to the interweb to figure out which is which.

Astern Movement (p24)

No. No. No. You cannot alter your ships head by 90 degrees when going astern in the same time it takes for a ship at full speed to alter 90 degrees. That is highly unlikely unless you had azipods and a bow thruster to help you out. Wind and sea have a real role to play in turning while going astern and if you do it wrong, you’ll have your stern fly up into the wind regardless of your helm orders (rudders are not good at controlling direction when they lead the way through the water).

So what? This rule is laughably wrong. If it were used, I would just drive astern at slow speed the whole time and easily turn to open my gun arcs rather than drive forward. Scrap it.

Suggestion: A vessel going astern can move at slow speed and only alter its heading by 30 degrees per turn, pivoted from the stern (and that 30 degrees is being generous).

Crossing a Wake (p24)

This one is humerous. Wakes are absolutely a problem to what Cruel Seas calls tiny, small, and medium craft. In fact I’ve seen a 30m patrol vessel almost capsized when it was in a high speed turn itself and was hit by the wake of a 5000 tonne warship going at 30+knots. Small boats cannot deal with the wake of what these rules class as large and huge.

So what? Why do I find it funny? A MTB going at 5 knots will not be swamped by a tug going 8 knots. Additionaly, the preamble to the rules talk of medium and smaller vessels, but the rule itself does not.

Regardless of skill, a small fast boat cannot cross a large wake with impunity. When we do small boat drills with the USN, we are dealing with skilled boat coxns, but are limited in our speed in our warships. This is because highly trained people have been tossed overboard, and engines badly damaged when small boats hit the wake at high speed. Also note that it is more likely that you will go airborne than be swamped if you are underway. If this is an issue of experience (which it somewhat is – no one can drive a tiny boat at 30 knots over the wake of a destroyer weaving at 30 knots without issues), then this is a perfect chance for a skill test to be used.

Suggestion: This rule has 3 conditions: (1) A medium or smaller vessel while (2) travelling at combat or full speed when (3) crossing the wake of a large or huge vessel proceeding over 20 knots must make a skill check or be impacted by the wake. If the skill check is failed roll 1d6. On a 1-2, the vessel turns 30 degrees to port, on a 3-4, reduces its speed by one category, on a 5-6, it turns 30 degrees to starboard. Tiny vessels take 1d6 damage (if they failed the skill roll).

Collisions and Ramming (p24-25)

This one bothers me. “The sea is a very big place!” When you are in close proximity to other vessels it is not. Collisions were VERY common in WW2, and cost the lives of many sailors. They are still common at sea. A large part of my job is developing training to reduce this occurrence so this one is close to home. If you are dealing with a naval dogfight, you’re going to get far too close fairly often. It is far too hard in the rules to collide with or ram another vessel. Ramming was not rare. It was a tried and tested technique to sink U-Boats. Look at Hipper and Glowworm for surface forces. Collisions also sunk vessels when not at full speed – something required for damage in the rules. As an example, HMC Ships Margaree and Fraser were sunk in 1940 due to collisions with allied units not moving at their full speed.

So what? If you cross too close in front of a destroyer or merchant, it should not be considered ramming when the bigger ship hits you, (which it is in the rules) but rather piss-poor driving on your part. In the rules, you need to be a veteran crew to simply maintain course! So if your MTB is 2 move segments in front of a tanker, the tanker MUST alter. This makes no sense. You also need to be at full speed – which is not realistic. The game designers were clearly worried about ramming becoming the main mode of damaging the enemy, but the fact that colliding with another vessel does damage to you as well is enough of a deterrent in my mind. The inability of either vessel to do anything following the collision is in stark contrast to the as-written torpedo rules (where you just carry on as normal) and is not realistic – look up USS Borie for what the crews actually did after ramming.

Suggestions:

1. Vessels are not obligated to avoid collision in a battle. If a vessel will impact another vessel when executing forward movement, it can maintain course and speed. Only naval vessels can turn into collisions (or increase speed to create a collision), but merchants are not obligated to deviate from their course. All naval vessels, regardless of experience can impact another vessel.
2. Collisions and or ramming does not need to happen at full speed. If a vessel will be hit by another at any speed, the collision/ramming rules apply. The inertia of a 3,000 tonne ship hitting your tiny wooden boat at 5 knots is more than enough to ruin your chances at promotion.
3. If a collision will happen, either from an intentional move or poor driving of a vessel passing too close under the bows of a vessel unable to alter, the “ramming” vessel does not make a skill check. Only the vessel about to be hit makes a skill check.
4. The vessel about to be impacted DOES NOT receive an out of turn chance for last minute firing (that one really makes no sense).
5. Rudder/steering damage doesn’t make sense if you hit another vessel with your bow. This part of the rule should be removed.

Wind and Sea (p47)

The direction and speed of the wind (and the sea and swell) are still of primary importance to mariners. You can turn into the wind much faster (and tighter) than you can out of the wind. I have been stuck in irons on a ship with 50,000 shaft horsepower on a lee shore due to the force of wind and a rudder hard over too soon. As shiphandling is complex and its inclusion in all of its applications doesn’t really add much to fun, I do not think that how the wind and sea affect it is a worthwhile addition. A simple problem that can be addressed is that the rough weather rules do not differentiate between MTBs and destroyers at sea.

So what? In order to add realism to the game, the rules should reflect the greater seakeeping ability of larger vessels. The rules also frame speed options in the negative.

Suggestion: Use the following table for impact related to size of vessel (and using the rulesets academic rating of sea states)!

Vessel Size	Choppy Sea	Rough Sea	Stormy Sea
Tiny	Skill test to go combat speed. No full speed	Tiny craft are unusable	Tiny craft are unusable
Small	Skill test to go full speed	Skill test to go combat speed. -1 to shoot. No torpedoes. 1d3 damage a turn.	Only slow speed. -3 to shoot. No torpedoes. 1d6 damage a turn.
Medium	Skill test to go full speed	Skill test to go combat speed. -1 to shoot. No torpedoes	Only slow speed. -2 to shoot. No torpedoes. 1d3 damage a turn
Large	No impact	Skill test to go full speed. -1 to shoot	Skill test to go combat speed. -2 to shoot. No torpedoes
Huge	No impact	No impact	Skill test to go full speed. -1 to shoot. No torpedoes

Sandbars (p45)

Vessels draw more water when they are at speed (called “squat”). In shallow water there is an additional (and aptly named) “Shallow Water Effect” which further increases the amount of squat and reduces your ability to maneuver properly.

So what? Sandbars should force a change in the maneuvering of a ship.

Suggestion: When crossing a sandbar, the following modifiers should be applied to the skill roll: full speed, -2, combat speed -1.

Optional – single screw shiphandling

An interesting aspect about shiphandling, is that single screw ships turn in one direction faster than the other. I will spare you all as to why. Suffice to say “it is so.” This means that single screw tankers always turn the same direction for a man-overboard regardless of the wind, as it is simply that much faster to turn that direction.

So what? If a merchant vessel turns to port at 45 degrees vice 30, it would make for a more interesting escort op, especially if there is terrain that restricts its freedom of movement.

Suggestion: Merchants should be noted in the ship roster if they have a single screw. If so, what direction they turn faster should be included.

Damage (Control)

Repair (p30)

In the rules as written, there is no limit to the amount of repairs that can be done to a ship. The only note is that you cannot end up with more hull points than you started with. This is very unrealistic and makes no sense, The table restricting speed during repairs makes enough sense, but this rule needs more thought.

So what? In order to recreate the battles of the time, the damage must be serious and harder to repair. An MGB isn’t going to send divers down to patch the hull – come on Warlord, you should be better than that.

Suggestion: Vessels have a limited number of repair dice, based on their size. Tiny: 1d6, Small: 2d6, Medium: 3d6, Large 4d6, Huge 5d6. Once these dice are used there are no more resources aboard and no further repairs can be made during that action.

Criticals (p28-29)

The critical effects impact the entire crew more than they impact the gun positions – when you don’t have accessories it defaults to crew hit.

So what? This doesn’t reflect history, where successive gun positions were knocked out. It is only a 1 in 10 chance of knocking a gun out, which, in my mind is too low.

Suggestion: Additional accessory hits are to be counted as gun hits vice crew hits.

In Conclusion

Well! That was certainly longer and more involved than I thought it would be! I will be compiling the above into a document linked to the House Rules label, so you can find information more easily. It should be completed by the end of the month.

I hope that you got something out of reading the above, and that what I’ve suggested adds to your games. If you’ve got any comments or critiques, please let me know!

That is all.

BT