Remember that this is completely optional. If players wish to use a larger scale to dictate Leviathans engagements, they can forgo the combat section described here.
All Batteries, Fire at Will! (Combat)
Once all ships have moved, combat can begin. Players check ranges and arcs on their ships to determine if there are any targets in range, and declare their attacks. All ships must have attacks declared before any rolls are made.
In larger games, it may be necessary to break the attack declaration phase up into whatever various pockets of combat exist on the map, and resolve each individually for more streamlined play.
After all attacks have been declared, players then roll each attack, taking the appropriate dice and comparing the roll against the target's breach value.
In what order players declare and roll attack is up to the group, but no rolls should be made until all attacks on all sides have been declared. A general recommendation would be to go in reverse initiative, by class.
Sight the Barrel (Attacks)
Each ship may only make one attack per location for each weapon listed, assuming the location has any. Some ships will have locations lacking an attack value. These locations cannot make an attack.
An Attack Stat will look like standard Leviathan's battery slot.
Some will also have a stylized 'T', triangle or one or more squares next to them. A T indicates that location has one or more turrets. The Square indicates a particularly powerful gun array. The triangle represents a group of coordinated guns.
The colors on top are the dice to be rolled for the attack. The bottom numbers are the range associated in hexes to the die color above it. The range and color on the left is the short range value and die. The number and color on the right is the long range value and die.
Aim For the Big One! (Choosing Targets)
Each attack is made against any target that is in its arc and within range. If no enemy ship meets either criteria, then no attack is necessary.
Tip: Attacks can be made at targets beyond the long range value, they just won't get attack dice, and thus won't hit anything. It is an automatic miss.
Each location has an arc into which it can fire. See Conversion below for the details
Any ship occupying a hex in that arc may be attacked by that location. If the arc happens to be a target rich environment, the controlling player must choose which ship he will roll against. Remember, if you want to cause damage, it also better be in range.
Line of sight is not an issue in a standard attack. The hexes are quite large compared to the ships. This is also a game of aerial combat. It can be assumed that ships can maneuver in their hex, up or down, slowing down or speeding up, in order to bring a target into its gun's sights. As long as the ship is in range and inside the arc, it does not matter if another one looks like it might be in the way, because it isn't.
Once a target has been found that fits the range and arc requirements, it is necessary to find where the shot will land on the target. This gives the defensive number that a die roll must be compared against. To find this, it is simply a matter of finding which part of the target can attack back. The standard, arc of a location that can attack the attacker's ship is the location that will be hit. Its breach value is the target number that the die roll must beat in order to score damage.
Fire!(The Attack Roll)
Once a target has been found and declared, and it meets all the criteria above, being in range and in arc, then the player rolls the die or dice for the appropriate range. Compare the result to the target location's Resilience value. If it's equal to or greater, than the attack was a success. If there's more than one attack, each is accounted for individually.
Tip: Players will find that is is easy to roll all the dice in an attack on a single ship in most cases, and simply look for any that are successes. This isn't advisable when a dialed up attack is using multiple dice. Also there will be situations against larger ships where players will get to attack more than one location if they so choose. Advanced rules for including BattleShips will be available once the Core Leviathans Boxed Set is released.
Damage Report! (Tracking Successful Hits)
In Leviathans: War Fleet, the goal is to destroy a ship’s location, and eventually the ship. While there may be minor damage inflicted during a turn, for the most part, it is inconsequential at this scale. One can assume crews are rushing to make repairs and so on. Optional rules will be added later for those who want just a little more detail.
When an attack succeeds, it has destroyed the location.
A destroyed location doesn't necessarily mean a destroyed vessel. Observe that a destroyed location still has a breach value and SI modifier. This means that a destroyed location has merely lost all functionality. It can still take hits which can potentially destroy the ship.
However, a destroyed location could mean a destroyed ship.
When a location is turned to its destroyed stats, roll an immediate SI test. If the ship survives, any further hits to the destroyed location will also force SI tests until the ship finally succumbs, leaves the map for any reason, or one side declares victory or defeat.
She Can't Take Much More O' This, Cap'n! (SI Tests)
A ship's hull can generally hold it together under the most trying of circumstances. The internal support structures and mechanisms on a flying Battleship are another matter.
When an SI test is forced, a shot has dealt damage deep in the ship and could potentially cause something bad to happen. To see if it had, simply roll a dRed, add all SI modifiers from all destroyed locations on a ship and compare the final result to the target's SI value.
For SI tests forced from a destroyed location, its SI modifier is doubled.
If the result is equal to or greater than the SI value, then that bad thing happened, and the ship is a casualty.
My God! She's Sinking...(Treating Casualties)
Failing an SI test is the only way to truly destroy a ship. Until then, it could remain on the field as a giant hulk.
Once a ship is destroyed, it is generally removed from play. However, since damage doesn't apply until the end of combat, if the destroyed vessel still has shots to resolve, it gets to finish them. It resolves its attacks under the damage conditions from which it ended the movement phase.
Tip: In such a case, it is wise to either turn the mini or marker on its side until it has had its chance to fire, or resolve its shots right away. The latter, however, could lead to cascading deaths. Still, it's up to the group.
Imagination at Work: What happens when a ship's integrity fails? Well, on a flying battleship, it could be many things. Maybe a magazine is hit and the vessel is ripped apart in a giant fireball. Maybe support structures gave out and the ship falls to earth in many pieces. Perhaps the ship experienced flashover, turning it into a giant arc reactor, spewing bolts of lightning into the air around it as she sinks from the sky ocean. Or, maybe it was something as simple as the boilers giving out, and the vessel simply, symbolically sinks from view beneath the clouds below.
While campaign rules to assess a destroyed ship's aftermath are in order, for now, it is left to the imagination of the players to imagine the demise of any ship on the aerial battle plain.
Very Powerful Guns (Square Icons)
Tip:Players familiar with standard Leviathans will recognize the Saturation Fire Icon. Where that game gives the gun extra slot dice to roll it has a different, although surprisingly recognizable, effect in Leviathans War Fleet.
Attack values that have a square icon next to them are particularly potent guns. When making an attack, a player gets to roll extra dice matching the one in the attack (after it has been dialed) for each square on the attack stat. Each die is considered a separate attack for attack resolution. Note that these extra dice do not count as extra guns, and cannot be declared at other ships. They only get rolled against the ship the main gun is attacking.
Mechanic's Primer on Turrets(T Icons)
Attack values which have a 'T' next to them are turret mounted.
A location with turrets may attack into its arc under the normal combat rules above. Turrets also have extended arcs which allow for a wider variety of targets. Remember, however, that extended Turret arcs do not count when determining which location on a ship takes damage. Only the arcs listed for Fore, Aft, Starboard, and Port guns do that. For the most part, turret arcs are simple. They extend into the appropriate adjacent arc. Side turrets are a little more complex in that they cannot exceed 180 degrees, or the line of hexes that bisects the ship down its center from front to rear.
Gunner's Primer on Coordination(/\ Icons)
Attack values which have a '/\' next to them can use Bracketting Fire.
When making a Bracketting Fire attack, it must be against one ship, and all guns participating must share the same name. The attacker declares which guns are participating. Instead of rolling each attack separately, the player rolls one attack, basing it off the die for one gun, and dialing it up a color for each extra gun participating.
Dialing Up
This is simply improving a die's potential results by one step. Dice in Leviathans are analogous of the polyhedrals most war-, board-, and role-playing gamers are used to. For them, dialing up would be to choose a die with more faces. In Leviathans, the dice are color coded, and each one has a top number that it can reach with any higher result being impossible. The progression from lowest to highest is: Green (4), Blue (6), Yellow ( 8 ), Red (10), and Black (12). To dial up, is to move from the current die to the next highest. Once you reach a dBlack, or if you start there, the next step is to add another die, starting at the lowest end of the progression, or dGreen. Then, after that, slowly progress up the scale again as needed.
Line of Sight
Most combat does not involve issues where intervening ships block shots to another ship behind it. Most attacks don't rely on proximity in order to resolve. However, two cases exist where line of sight is an issue and are resolved with the following rules.
To determine if LoS (Line of Sight) exists between an attacker and its target, a straight-edge is required.
Tip: String works best, because it can be customized to the situation and drawn tight. However, any object with a long, straight side will suffice.
Even though a ship can be anywhere inside its huge hex, LoS is drawn from center of the attacker's hex to center of the target's hex. If part of the line enters the smallest portion of a hex occupied by an object which will specifically block line of sight, like certain terrain or ships in a special situation, then LoS is blocked.
LoS is checked during the attack declaration part of combat. If a situation regarding LoS arises, once Los is checked, an attacker may declare an attack on a different valid target if desired.
The following situations are only a couple instances important to the core game where Line of Sight plays a roll.
Screening
As I'm not sure if this has been revealed yet, or is safe to reveal, I'm not going to post it until the box set is released, or Randall tells me to.
Straight Shot Torpedoes
(Randall, this will not work by simply porting over the torp rules from Leviathans, but I have it done for completeness. Ideas I'm toying with are a kill-zone, and straight line resolution. Either way may prove faster, but I guarantee you that the current rules for SSTorps will bog down games with large fleets. For everyone else, I'm not sure if the rules for Torps has been made public, yet, so I'm not including them here until the box is released or Randall tells me its okay.)
