Hex movement nightmares!

[WittyDroog]

Okay so I'm attempting to develop a naval combat game, and for a few reasons I've chosen to deal with Hex Maps. This is not set in stone, but I wanted to see if I could even pull off advanced naval movement on a hex grid while maintaining the size of vessals. Hex grids are in no way forgiving of this, but it is a lot more flexible than square grids. I have not abandoned the idea of open space movement like most naval games, but I'd like to try to fix the struggle with hexes.

So I present to you, my graphical diagrams of turning a ship ona hex grid. Note that these do not account for Speed, it simply represents all the possible turns and their hex configurations until the ship turns into a "straight" hex line. For simplicity, Ships can perform one of three turn types, Soft (in Green), Medium (in Blue), and Hard (in Red). I'll explain how I calculated the turns at the end.

Below is the turn for a ship only one hex long. Easy as pie to represent.


Now ships that are two hexes long. Still fairly easy to represent. No complex configuration.


Ships that are three hexes long start getting tricky, but still nothing I can't handle.


Four hex long ships start becoming a pain, I've numbered the lines so it's easy to see which is which.


Five hex long ships, the largest in my game, was the most difficult to figure out. Using the formula I had been using, I think it can be done easily once you get the hang of it. Still nuts.



So what's the formula? I need to be able to explain movement in a easy way so that people can figure it out on their own without constantly referring to these diagrams, so here it is.
The ship moves forward a number of hexes based on the type of turn (Soft moves 3, Medium moves 2, Hard moves 1), then the nose is pointed one hex towards the direction of the turn.

What I don't like about this is how wonky it is to get at first, hopefully playtesting will prove that it becomes a lot easier in practice than on paper and visualizations. What I really like about it, however, is how it organically represented the wide sweeping turns that larger ships have to make. A Captial Ship taking a soft turn could potentially take forever to come to a new bearing, whereas little ships dodge around like it's nothing and can weave through tight corridors.

So, thoughts?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Your illustration and explanation don't seem all that difficult to follow. I just don't understand why you really need that rule in the first place. What kind of ships are these, and what sort of range does each hex represent? Most naval games take place on a scale where ships wouldn't be multiple hexes long!

WW-I gun engagements were somewhere in the order of three to ten kilometers, WW-II gun fights theoretically at twice that distance, and throwing in aircraft, you could engage at 250+ kilometers. If its modern missiles we're talking about, 20-250km would not be unreasonable, though torpedoes are notably shorter in range. Oh, and in space, a quarter light second is about your max (depending on ship relative speeds...)

As such hexes between 500 and 1500 meters are the norm, and sometimes even more. Ship models just don't scale to the combat ranges to avoid needing to play with microscopes on hand.

Maybe an 80 foot PT boat vs an 800 foot battle ship might on some scales result in a massive discrepancy. However, torpedoes are good for a maximum range of four and eight km depending on the speed setting, so 250 or 500 m hexes for reasonable table top size would still dwarf a 175 meter battleship. (Range based on WW II MK-15 torpedo and a New York Class Battleship respectively.)

As such, the solution might be to make all ships fit in one hex, but the number of hexes over traveled varies. ie a PT could do a 180 in its hex, while a battleship will need one hex forward movement between each turn facing. Hard/medium/soft turns would be simulated through other means - such as a hard turn imposes a big penalty to gunnery, though it makes torpedo and bombing runs less likely to hit. Meanwhile, taking turns steady mans more accurate outgoing fire, but less chance to avoid the shells coming back.

Depending on what kind of what kind of tech is in use here, perhaps tighter turns might risk damaging internal components, or simply burn extra reaction mass.

[WittyDroog]

I should probably explain more about the system.

The setting is that of whimsical fairytales. I don't have terribly much yet, but two of the possible nations include Automatons and Toads in victorian outfits and big admiral hats.

The reasoning behind large ships was to give girth and size to the ships themselves, but the damage system could accomodate single hex ships as well. I just wanted to try to make this work to give the game a more graphical feel when a large battleship goes plowing through a school of smaller vessels.

The main problem I'm seeing after spending so much effort figuring this out is that at certain angles, it completely fucks up my simple firing arc mechanic...

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Ah, that is a quite different idea for the units.

After all that research for ranges, I actually did think of a way to retain some of the original idea.

As you point out, it gets difficult once you are on the size four and five ships. Well, just get rid of those two sizes, and presume there are only three turning arcs. Smaller units operate in squadrons or flotillas, which in turn behave like a gestalt larger ship.

An individual patrol boat is only 10% the size of a battleship and could literally run rings around it. However, when you account for trying to coordinate maneuvers, they need space to avoid collisions and maintain fire-arcs. Thus ten of them will cover a lot more ocean than a single larger vessel.

So in WW II terms we have Battleship, Heavy Cruiser, Light Cruiser, Destroyer Squadron (2-4, turns like an LC) and gun boat flotilla (6-12 with HC radius).

Given the whimsical nature of your game, another possibility is to allow for some ships to be articulated. Giant snakes/centipedes/hookah-smoking caterpillars bend around the turn rather than maintain itself as one line.

The squadron idea still shows the magnitude since damage can represent members of the squadron being taken out of the fight rather than progressive damage to one vessel. One salvo sinking four little boats maintains the feel if not absolute size difference between the big guns and the little swarms. And of course models would still be one big item or a chain of smaller ones.

As to fire arcs - well only three sizes might simplify that a bit too. Or else, work out the arcs for the ship in sections/hex and target from the most convenient angle.

[WittyDroog]

After wracking my brain over firing arcs I've decided I simple cannot do this kind of movement for that long of ships.

I will keep these movement diagrams if I ever need it for a similar project. I dunno if I was making a dock manager simulation game or something silly like that.

For now I'm just going to use single hex ships for most vessals, and double hex for extremely large ships. There is still an advantage for size since the firing arc is much wider.

[Kinslayer]

I think I see the core of the dilemma. Large ships mid-turn are stretched out oddly through their respective hexes. You might try using a pivot point somewhere in the middle of each multi-hex ship. This will let you set things so that the occupied hexes aren't so odd, and won't screw up your firing arcs. If it seems like the big ships are flinging themselves sideways across the map, then turn up their turning radii.

[koipond]

Or you can say that another disadvantage to large ships is that they take up more space. That means if you're on a line between two hexes, it means you take up both.

Yes, no?

[Kinslayer]

That still wouldn't help determine firing arcs from the larger ships, unless you don't use a graphic for that. It would add a disadvantage to the big ships for taking up more space if that would conceivably put them in an enemy's arc by being counted as in more hexes.