SirLindsley wrote:
There are many rules in WS&IM that are not very realistic. The attempt here has been to keep to the board game rules as closely as possible. Nice project for somebody. Revise the whole WS&IM board game.
There's an optional rule in WS&IM. Essentially, you need to on the bow-stern axis. The designer notes that the existing rule is a problem, but so is the optional rule.
The problem is that while we conveniently stop the ships on the board every several movement points, the reality is that they are constantly moving. Even if you allow that a skilled gun commander would probably hesitate if they anticipated a possible rake over a given period of time, there just isn't a realistic way to simulate that with the rest of the rules.
FWIW: I do kind of like the way rakes are handled in the more recent versions of Flying Colors. Essentially, if you are "close to" a rake, you'd roll with modifiers for range and commander quality (proxy with crew quality in WS&IM). If you do achieve a rake, damage is doubled. (Most of the rest of FC seems like "see I can do an Age-of-Sail game, too!") |
