Captured ships

[X-ETN/Maire Cwyllmie (Libor)]

What is rules-wise the situation when you capture enemy ship? I imagine you have the ship itself (likely damaged), but without crew. So is that ship usable or can it be made usable later (and how)? What cohesion it has? Does recover action work for it?

[X-Tuornen/LF (Geir)]

What is rules-wise the situation when you capture enemy ship? I imagine you have the ship itself (likely damaged), but without crew. So is that ship usable or can it be made usable later (and how)? What cohesion it has? Does recover action work for it?

it could be just fluff ;-)
If you can capture it follows that the ship gets a status after that match the rules. Likely not OK or W, but D would remove the point of capturing ships. Well save the fluff effect

[X-DM Jon]

What is rules-wise the situation when you capture enemy ship? I imagine you have the ship itself (likely damaged), but without crew. So is that ship usable or can it be made usable later (and how)? What cohesion it has? Does recover action work for it?

The ship will need a new crew. Meaning you would probably take some damage on one of your own ships present, in order to man the captured ship, bringing it up to a status equal to the amount you removed.
 Recovers, and possibly repairs, would then be required.

[X-Tuornen/LF (Geir)]

What is rules-wise the situation when you capture enemy ship? I imagine you have the ship itself (likely damaged), but without crew. So is that ship usable or can it be made usable later (and how)? What cohesion it has? Does recover action work for it?

The ship will need a new crew. Meaning you would probably take some damage on one of your own ships present, in order to man the captured ship, bringing it up to a status equal to the amount you removed.
 Recovers, and possibly repairs, would then be required.

sweet! ;-)

[X-ETN/Maire Cwyllmie (Libor)]

What is rules-wise the situation when you capture enemy ship? I imagine you have the ship itself (likely damaged), but without crew. So is that ship usable or can it be made usable later (and how)? What cohesion it has? Does recover action work for it?

The ship will need a new crew. Meaning you would probably take some damage on one of your own ships present, in order to man the captured ship, bringing it up to a status equal to the amount you removed.
 Recovers, and possibly repairs, would then be required.

Thanks. That makes sense. And if you capture a ship in port, it probably wouldn't be necessary to damage your own ships (maybe you don't even have any), just to recover the captured ship to refill it with new crew. Am I right?

[X-DM Jon]

What is rules-wise the situation when you capture enemy ship? I imagine you have the ship itself (likely damaged), but without crew. So is that ship usable or can it be made usable later (and how)? What cohesion it has? Does recover action work for it?

The ship will need a new crew. Meaning you would probably take some damage on one of your own ships present, in order to man the captured ship, bringing it up to a status equal to the amount you removed.
 Recovers, and possibly repairs, would then be required.

Thanks. That makes sense. And if you capture a ship in port, it probably wouldn't be necessary to damage your own ships (maybe you don't even have any), just to recover the captured ship to refill it with new crew. Am I right?

 I'd think that makes sense.

Btw. my approach to taking over ships comes completely from various pirate games! YARRRRRR! A prize crew for me new ship mateys!

[X-Tuornen/LF (Geir)]

darn it's on the coast the real life is! These riverbarges just dont do it! I'm moving! 

[DM B]

Captured ships are Broken.

[X-Avanil/Aubrae Avan (Thorsten)]

Living on the coast is overrated. It's windy and cold, and the salt and brine wreaks havoc on your hair.

As for the manning of ships, it doesn't really make any sense for me, that an undamaged ship should take damage in order to man a captured ship. Sure, if you want to use the ship straight away, that could be the solution by transferring half your crew over to the other ship, and hope that it isn't hulled or in any other way crippled, but really I'd think you'd drag the ship to a harbour for repairs and refitting, and give it a new crew instead of breaking up an old one (especially if you have an experienced or veteran crew).

A captured ship should be *is* Broken, and probably spend however long on the drydocks it takes to repair and refit it. Getting it into harbour shouldn't really affect the fighting prowess of other ships, since it takes a skeleton crew to man it for such a task - and I seem to recall that (war)ships have been known to historically carry extra hands just for such tasks.

If you want what I believe is a more accurate rendition of the what and hows of nations capturing ships and manning them for the purpose of bringing them to the nearest friendly harbour, take a look at the Hornblower-series (or books).

(Besides, I'm not sure pirates are the best example, since firstly they don't really answer to anyone, and don't consider themselves part of a nation or a fleet per se. And secondly, I imagine any pirates climbing aboard a captured vessel wouldn't be looking to get back onto their original ship and join their old crew. They'd see it as a way of branching out and start their own little piratey-gang, no?)

[DM B]

Clearly there could exist a number of extra rulers for a navy-heavy and/or small-scale game.

The basic rule is a captured ship is Broken, regardless of what its damage status etc. were before the capture.

(side note, some parts of the rules have great detail, others not - ideally there should be some simple basic rules, with another more complex layer on to of that)

[X-DM Jon]

The prize crew is quite historical and was used as the standard way to get your ship home. You can't tow a ship in the high seas without incurring serious danger to the towing ship. So that would be silly to say the least...

 And yes, Hornblower does the job as a prize crew captain for a time, but he came from another ship = "broken up crew".

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_crew

The broken status rule would emulate this, at no cost to the capturing party (who would ordinarily have to send over at least a skeleton crew, hence the "damage" to their own ship, because a ship's damage is a result of both the ship's status and the percentage of needed crew on board).

 So the basic rule would be one ship can capture another at no cost (they have the extra Hornblower crew ready as the "prize crew"). Anything in addition to that is going to damage the capturing ship, untill the point when you have to scuttle the enemy vessel due to a lack of a crew of your own.

 Obviously this isn't even taking damage on the capturing ship into account (which again is damage to both vessel and crew).

[X-Avanil/Aubrae Avan (Thorsten)]

I think we're talking along the same lines here

If you want anything more than a broken ship with a skeleton crew, it'll mean damage to other ships. But that'd probably be something for advanced naval rules - so far there's been little to none naval combat involving players.

[X-DM Jon]

I think we're talking along the same lines here

If you want anything more than a broken ship with a skeleton crew, it'll mean damage to other ships. But that'd probably be something for advanced naval rules - so far there's been little to none naval combat involving players.

 Indeed

[X-Haelyn's Aegis/RK (Andy)]

Possibly an enhancement to an existing ship could be designed (extra marines / prize crew) if it was important enough, or you could allow a prosperity hit (press gangs!) to restore the captive, etc, but I'm not sure how often the situation would occur to need a specific rule.

I'd suggest that DM bribes and fiat should be the order of the day rather than fixed rules.  Restore costs for capturing a ship after sending a fireship fleet into the enemy harbour would have very different restore issues than capturing a ship after an intrigue lures the sailors ashore to dance with sirens leaving the SASI amazon squad to steal the vessel intact...