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The WW1 fire control and other modifiers have been modified based on our post game discussions. See both the original and modified charts to the right. 

Both centralized fire control and local control are improved, making it therefore easier to hit. Modifiers have been simplified somewhat which should make the calculations faster and easier to memorize. 

Rakes are eliminated as we did last game, even without them players have plenty of incentive to fight broadside as was generally done historically. 

Evasive movement means the ship zigs and zags a little, if necessary going to flank speed in order to stay basically in formation. Evasion makes the target harder to hit (-1), but also throws off the evading ships gunners even more with sudden turns (-2). Evasion is indicated by the letter "E" at the start of the movement plot. All ships in a column must evade if any ships evade. 

I left in a modifier for both firing and target ships moving in a straight line, however I based it on the movement plot for the turn regardless of whether a ship in a column turns based on last turns orders. After all when in line ahead fire control officers already know how  the lead ship in the column moved. With the same logic ships not operating in formation are a little harder to hit. With our current rules this would only apply to damaged ships attempting to disengage from the battle. It also saves us trying to project backwards to determine which ships were still turning based on previous orders. 

I did not add modifiers for range. While it is true that it is easier to get fire control solutions at closer ranges there is already a severe range penalty built into the to hit chart. Although it is easier to hit a ship at five miles compared to ten miles in both cases the fire control officer is stuck using the same clunky technology - some kind of comparative or stereoscopic range finding equipment coupled with a primitive mechanical "computer" including a range clock to determine shell time in flight and a plotting device to calculate the relative projected movement of the target ship.  My inclination at this point is to consider the penalty in the to hit chart sufficient to encourage players to use historic tactics, in other words to target closer rather than more distant ships. In a sense that is all most of the modifiers are - reason to play historically rather than an exacting model of the science of ballistics.  

I have added a modifier for smoke. This would come into effect once we have rules laying smoke screens. Draft rules are as follows. Smoke occurs in three ways - it may be laid by destroyers, it interferes with attempts to fire over a ship or column of ships, and it interferes when firing at a ship fleeing directly away from an enemy. Ships may only fire through smoke using fire control, ships using local control are completely unable to fire through smoke. 

Destroyer rules are pending. Using fire control ships may fire other ships or columns as long as they are closer to the firing ships than the target ships. However each ship or column fired over is assumed to be emitting immense clouds of smoke from coal burning boilers, (also possibly fires on damaged ships), therefore each ship or column creates a -2 modifier for fire control.  

At the option of the referee ships fleeing directly away from the enemy may be considered to effectively create a smoke screen for themselves. Consider the smoke to be directly behind the ship interfering with fire from a 22.5 degree angle aft, the same angle we use in pre-WW1 games for rakes. 

I have given much consideration to plunging fire especially considering the potential player trauma when heavily armored primary batteries are penetrated at extreme range. At this point I am inclined to leave the rules as is without the added complexity of turret top armor. As currently written only guns of strength 8 or better get a chance at plunging fire, typically representing 12" guns with shells of close to 1,000 lbs weight - if by some miracle a turret wasn't penetrated the concussion should be sufficient to disable the crew and damage the more vulnerable parts of the weapon.

It is true as was pointed out that primary turrets don't represent 1/6th of the profile of a ship. The six column system we use exaggerates the size of gun positions and minimizes the size of unessential superstructure. This is because I am assuming that misses represent both complete misses as well as hits on non-essential portions of the hull or superstructure. Therefore I consider primary guns to be 1/6th of the part of the ship that makes a difference. This is of course an abstraction, dreadnoughts for example have many more primary guns than pre-dreds - perhaps pre-dred primaries should therefore be harder to hit? I think however that such considerations add more complexity than we would want to consider at the level of commanding a fleet.  

Critical hits have been downgraded a little. Double hits have been eliminated, thereby removing the odd chance of a single crit eliminating both the fore and aft primaries on a pre-dred. Instead most crits just cause an additional hit in column four. There remains the slight but important chance of a hit on fire control, steering, or a catastrophic hit on the magazine; which is what crits should basically be about. For each penetrating shell there is about a half a percent chance of either a magazine explosion, steering hit or fire control KO.

Write comments to the discussion board, or bring them for discussion after the battle Thursday.