I have a desire to experiment with my own naval warfare rules in a modern/WWII setting but with a few sci-fi premises.

Trouble is, despite what my name and avatar might indicate, I'm not actually all that knowledgeable about modern naval warfare.

Could you guys point me to your favorite cheap/free naval warfare rules that use hexes/squares and counters/chits so that I can draw inspiration from them?

Depends a great deal on the type of warfare and the scale.

Assuming tactical, and WWII to present, these are all very different:

• Submarine/ASW
• Aircraft carrier
• Surface combat (from PT boats to destroyers to battleships)
• Modern post-missile, post-electronic warfare

Maybe if you can narrow it down I can point you in the right direction.

You know how in D&D all kinds of techniques and weapons and armor get used at the same time without regard to their context in the evolution of combat? Whatever I'm tooling around with would be similar. Absolute realism isn't the goal, so I want to have a tactical battlefield full of carriers, PT boats, submarines, minefields, stealth ships out of Tomorrow Never Dies, maybe mecha sea monsters and uplifted dolphins and shit.

What I need is to study a few rulesets that are capable of handling such expansion on their basic premises so I can feel grounded enough to do my own thing.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;799908You know how in D&D all kinds of techniques and weapons and armor get used at the same time without regard to their context in the evolution of combat? Whatever I'm tooling around with would be similar. Absolute realism isn't the goal, so I want to have a tactical battlefield full of carriers, PT boats, submarines, minefields, stealth ships out of Tomorrow Never Dies, maybe mecha sea monsters and uplifted dolphins and shit.
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What I need is to study a few rulesets that are capable of handling such expansion on their basic premises so I can feel grounded enough to do my own thing.

have you tried drawing a 20 by 20 grid for each side of the battle and then deploying your ships across multiple squares unseen by your opponent. Each side could then try to target the ships on the other side by dropping ordinance blind say by calling out the grid reference of the target. The opponent would call out if it was a hit or a miss and then fire back .....  

You could add special rules for uplifted dolphins and shit.

@jibbajibba

Funny guy.

I would second the AH game Submarine. Had fun with that decades ago.

It doesn't use hex maps or cardboard chits but I have a game called Seekrieg that was fun to play. Horribly written rules, but once you figure it out (or have someone teach you) it will be fun.

I would look up a book by Donald Featherstone called simply Naval Wargames. It's been reprinted by John Curry. Curry also has this, which has got a nice blurb from Featherstone but I can't vouch for it directly: http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781445742977?redirected=true&v=A7V6J&selectCurrency=USD&gclid=CNXgyoLNisICFYOUfgodjUoANg

Featherstone's book is comprehensive for early-mid 20th century. Carriers, battleships, and subs are accounted for. Not very complex but it's got what you want. Except for missiles/electronic warfare. Also, I don't remember exactly how it handled gunnery. Really the best for that is probably Ironbottom Sound II and related games by the same designer, whose name eludes me ATM. EDIT: Jack Green.

Curry's site: http://www.wargaming.co/

Thanks!

You bet. Featherstone is minis but I'm sure you can adapt the concepts to hexes.

About IBS II and surface combat, one thing that may be missing in that particular iteration of Green's system is armor. (Not sure if it only covers lightly-armored destroyers and such). In a nutshell if you look at the original IBS or The Royal Navy, he has a chart with a line for each type of gun that graphs armor penetration vs range. So when you hit a target and determine the location, you look at the thickness of armor at that spot and use the chart to see if any damage is inflicted. For something like that it's also important to have hit location charts based on range since at longer ranges you start to get plunging shots that strike the deck instead of the side armor. But that is basically just for nuts who want to refight Jutland and the Battle of the Denmark Straight shell-by-shell.

For a more abstracted approach to surface combat a current best bet is Stephen Newberg's Battleship. (Was published by Simulations Canada, republished & revised by somebody else.) It focuses on WWII and in my opinion the model it uses is most appropriate there. It has a sister game called Line of Battle for WWI but for technical reasons I don't think it is right for that war. (Basically it seems to assume that all long-range fire will be plunging fire, but ignores the fact that many WWI battleships had limited gun elevation and thus effectively no "long range". I tried to raise this with Mr. Newberg but he never answered my specific concerns, so I don't know if I might have been missing something.)

Okay, I have a second and I'll add another disclaimer. For mid-century carrier warfare, a key element is the search for the enemy. I don't know if Featherstone has that, but I'm not aware of any games that are in-print. The classics are the original Midway (AH, and probably cheap because so many were printed) and Flattop (Battleline/AH). Possibly better, because simpler and with newer research, are the new Midway and the new Guadalcanal (both Smithsonian/AH), and Victory at Midway (Command). There are others in the same vein, probably by Newberg or Green. As I said the key is the use of search, combined with managing the preparation and allocation of planes for various types of strikes and CAP--something highlighted in the movie Midway with Charlton Heston. The new game I'm most interested in is a revision of Markus Stumptner's Solomon Sea and the sister game Bay of Bengal. But I don't know where he is on those or what the prices will be.