Has anyone found or created a set of consistent rules for ship design and combat? When I first started building my game setting a couple of years ago I was working with material from Mongoose' Seas of Blood. They attempted a rule set for ship design but much of it was pretty arbitrary and inconsistent, and their revision and expansion Book of the Sea evidently abandoned the attempt - offering no rational behind any ship designs and stats presented. WoC Stormwrack and Fantasy Flight's Seafarer's Handbook likewise make no attempt at presenting any consistency in hull design, assigning values to published ship stats in a pretty arbitrary manner. Given the strong nautical element in my gameworld I've been trying to establish a coherent system upon which to develop various ship designs common to specific nations and races. This is particularly vital with regard to the (centuries of) ongoing naval warfare in a portion of the equatorial sea between Khurorkh clans and the powerful human empire controlling most of the regions islands and waters.
Early on I constructed an extensive set of values for speed, maneuverability, hull points, weapon mounting, etc. based upon keel length, beam width and depth of draft (providing four basic classes of proportion to length - narrow or wide and deep or shallow). These are at least consistent in their application and demonstrate an appropriate bell curve with regard to top speed in which vessels are capable of hanging more sail as they get larger, making them faster up to a certain point after which a pattern of diminishing returns manifests such that the largest vessels become more slow and cumbersome. It appears workable, but I've yet to have a second set of eyes go over the system to check it or play test examples. Given the complexity of any such system I've been hoping to find something relatively accessible to players wanting to play with the nautical rules frameworks (designing or modifying their own vessels) in preference to re-inventing the wheel as it were.
I'm curious as to what systems (if any) others are using, or in the absence of any, would be willing to share what I've got with anyone interested in working with me on testing and developing it further. While a lot of people disliked the old 2nd ed. Spelljammer setting, one of the things they did very well with it was to present a very consistent, comprehensive and detailed system of ship design which their published vessels adhered to and permitted players to freely construct there own (game balanced) designs to fit smoothly into the milieu with relative ease. Given that it has been done before I'm rather surprised that no one has repeated this with regard to ocean going vessels.
I know a friend of mine (who moved away and have lost contact with) designed a rule system for using Greco-Roman style naval ramming utilizing the mech rules from d20 Future. I don't know how it worked exactly, all I know is that the Strength of the rowers was averaged to determine the ship's Strength. The other stats were derived from the Ship's captain/leader.
GURPS had a pretty good and balanced ship system in their supplement called Swashbucklers. If you can find it, it may be a place to translate from.
I'll have to check into that - I like what I've seen of GURPS and have wanted to run some games using it in the past (Screamy Steampunk stuff, Discworld, OGRE). It's funny to be going back to that since the first RPG I ever played/DMed was Steve Jackson's proto version "The Fantasy Trip - In The Labyrinth" under the Metagaming imprint. I modified the hell out of it over the years I played it and was pleased to see that most of the modifications I had house-ruled were likewise made in developing GURPS from that system.
Heck, I just miss Car Wars. GURPS was always good source material. Lots and lots of books.
What about ICE's Sea Law? It's been a long time since I read it, but they were usually pretty good about publishing consistent and detailed rules for things like that. I'd dig it out and see, but I'm pretty sure my copy is boxed up in storage right now.
Has anyone picked up that imprint? They did do some good material - I used to uses patches from it and steal LoTR sites and adventures to mod into my game. I also really like Silent Death, but I could never find anyone to play it.(It's still available on Amazon and on my wish list, but I would need fellow players to warrant investment.) Seems I'd heard about someone picking up rights to their material but can't remember whom, or which stuff they would re-release. . .