Shipbucket

So I was wandering about and I had a vague idea for some sort of role playing game involving bucketeers.
My basic idea so far is that the players play CO's from a joint task force, most likely starting with a war in Iran (yeah, it would be twenty seconds into the future). It would most likely be led by me, operating as the CO and flag officer from either HMS Ocean or USS wasp or some other ultra-light carrier equivalent. This would enable me to send of parts of the task force on missions and such, while not having that much impact on the game in terms of fighting.
Ships available to choose from would be:
-Any real world vessel from a nation involved in the Iraq Afghanistan operations, because they are most likely to join in with this
-Any realistic refit of a real world vessel, such as a Daring configured for anti-shipping roles rather than AAW.
-Any real world AU nation allied with the nations above, or with a good reason for getting involved. Obviously this cuts out those that have dramatically different time lines, or are enemies with, say, the US or the UK. Oh, and if you wanted to use a ship from an AU nation that isn't yours, I would ask that you ask the author.
-Might allow well designed AU ships for real nations. Probably will. But only if they are nicely drawn.

In terms of playing, it would all be written role playing on your end. I will use percentage rolls to determine the outcomes of things like shooting and such on my end. So something like:
GM writes: "Captain, Missile launch detected. Range, 7km's."
Player writes: "Active CIWS. Return fire with 4.5."
GM rolls: CIWS hit roll. Gunnery hit roll. (two percentage rolls)
GM writes: The CIWS fires long bursts at the oncoming missile, hitting it and forcing it to splash into the ocean (CIWS roll hit). The ships forward guns barks several times, throwing shells across the sea, but to no avail. Whatever launched the missile is still out there (Gunnery roll missed).

I hope that all makes sense. So, if anyone is interested, please make yourself known.
Oh, and if any mod has an issue, I am perfectly willing to run this on another site, while keeping links to here.

This sounds interesting.

And will you be able to recommission ships like the Iowa's?

Depends on the ship. Iowa I would have to say no too, because... it's a hideously expensive battleship they don't have the parts for.
Basically depends on you reasoning. Say a nation that has just decommed its only AAW frigate for some reason, recomm's it for the war. that'd be fine.

Iowa is no longer property of the United States Navy- she has been purchased by the city of Los Angeles for use as a war memorial. This means that there are no longer any battleships available for reactivation by the United States Navy.

None of the ships are in any kind of condition to be reactivated.
People are old at seventy... things are ancient at seventy. Not only is there no way to make spare parts for the Iowa and her sisters ATM, there is no one alive that knows how to make and operate the equipment that would make the spare parts for them. We would have to start off by educating an entire generation of engineers to construct and maintain a big-gun warship, then they would have to design a support base, then you would have to begin construction on that... after wrangling funding in the worst economic climate since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Any new battleship would have to be a new build... as a part of a game set in the past.
You could probably try out a more modern design for a naval gunfire ship using the 8"/55 Mark 71!


The game sounds similar to some of the Springsharp games I have been involved in.
An interesting idea- what system would you be using for combat resolution?

Me as the GM doing percentage rolls. It would mainly be description based. So say I decide that a phalanx has an interception rate of 70% +10% per gun available on that arc -5% for each projectile over 1. A single phalanx gun attempting to shoot down 3 inbound missiles would have a 60% chance per missile.
Say I roll: 45%, 59% and 98%
That's one projectile hitting the ship, doing damage with 89% severity..

It's very rules light with basically nothing in the way of rules.

If you think that would be a bit light, I'm very open to suggestions... but it would need to be pretty intuitive.
You interested?

I personally don't think that the mod being the commander is an good idea.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

It could work better if you where an Admiral of a fleet and you could chose your own ships.
And was set in the Dreadnought era.

As in me as GM being the overall flag officer? How come? Do you think it would be better as a player?
ETA: I thought I would clarify. Do you think it would be better if a player was commanding the task force?
The point is, you get to choose one ship, and you are the commander of that. I don't want each player having a fleet, that would break down fast.
And no to the dreadnought era. I want modern day.

well barnest, the problem is that an mod would use the power he had if you had 2 mods, each commanding one fleet, that would be a lot more logical.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

Well... I think you've missed what was going to happen. My idea is that several players take the part of the task force, and I run the over-all game, such as controlling enemy forces (in this case the iranians). With me as overall commanding officer of the task force, I also give the players missions and tasks.
Mods wont be able to do anything special even though they are mods. And no player is going to be in overall command of a task force, the players are going to control individual ships. Make sense?