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By RAW it is legal to have a ship built in a port where a fleet sits and delay forever the reinforcement. Let's say that our evil spanish player (spaniards are evil by definition of spaniard) has the typical one ship fleet sitting at a port like Cadiz and a few, several, or a lot of completed ships being delayed... he can always risk his small fleet having a replacement almost inmediate (at most 3 turns later, time to buy again the fleet counter).
My question... is this often see in your tables around ? Sane players don't do it ? What do you think about a house rule to prevent having a fleet counter with space in it at the same port where a ship reinformcement is being delayed ?
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Edward Kendrick
United Kingdom
Redditch
Worcs
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I don't see any reason to prevent this. It was common in reality to have partially-completed ships, or ships that were complete but weren't rigged or crewed, lying in port - often because of shortage of crew, provisions or money to commission them. They could fairly quickly be brought into use if needed, or if the resources became available.
The advanced (optional) naval rules made this explicit by introducing the concept of hulks.
Do you feel this is illegitimate in some way, or that it spoils the game?
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Ken
United States
Crystal Lake
Illinois
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I've seen it happen, but it's very rare. A ship that isn't in a fleet is very vulnerable - if the port gets taken, it just burns. Plus, for the investment, it doesn't make much sense to spend $10 and a year to build something and never use it. You're far better off putting it in a fleet and making it more of a threat.
But there's really no need to house rule things in my mind. If a player wants to do that, then it's really because it aligns with some strategy that they have. I don't think it's particularly good strategy, but then there may be situations where that's not correct (like preparing to surrender unconditionally and leaving the ships "off the table" if fleets are chosen).
As Edward said, ships often sat around port because they weren't crewed (this was actually a massive problem for the Spanish throughout the period - they didn't have sufficient manpower to man all of their ships). The British actually had a good number that were in a reserve state for that reason as well as repairs, refits, etc.
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Warren Bruhn
United States
Portland
Oregon
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The Austrian player, Tom, in the current Portland campaign regularly does this. I see no problem with it. If you lose a fleet you still have to buy another fleet counter in the economic phase (assuming you have one that is not currently on the map) in order to place the new fleet with a waiting ship into it. (You can see photos and read sessions reports on the Portland campaign here on BGG.)
Note that the 1796 campaign variant in the files section here (a PDF) has hulks listed at the start based roughly on historical navy lists.
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John Hines
United States
Noblesville
Indiana
I'm afraid the DEFLECTOR Shield is..... Operational!
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"By RAW it is legal to have a ship built in a port where a fleet sits and delay forever the reinforcement"
I actually like this ability! I have never used it or seen it used, but I'm going to file this one...thanks. No house rule for my group. I agree with the other guys on liking the historical aspect of it.
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