That was an interesting pair of blog posts Ruckdog. I had a pleasant (but unsuccessful) few minutes trying to ID the two battleships in the image used on the blog. I wondered if it might be
USS Nevada trailed by either
USS Texas or
USS New York but I could not find anything like hard evidence. (But I rather miss the days when all battleships closely resembled each other.) The photo looks like it was taken post-Tripod Masts but pre-Radar, maybe late 30s?
Do you know which ships those are?
I had a couple of thoughts about the essays. I have played a set of naval wargame rules where the smallest game element was a soldier rather than a ship. You can see an example from that very rules set here on the cover of the book that contained the rules:
The author used 15mm soldiers and scratch built ships. To be fair each soldier represented a squad of javelin guys or archers although the Captain figure might perhaps have been an individual. When I created my own set to try the rules I used 1/72 plastics for soldiers and a slightly modified design for the ships.
So, smallest element in a naval game: usually a small ship, but not always.
The other thought I had was that Space Navy games are (or should be) a different animal. But it depends on the way the rules for the space game are written, some space battle games
are* just a naval game with a starry backdrop. (*disappointingly so...)
In a naval game you can't roll ship to expose a fresh, undamaged batch of turrets. Nor can you pivot using attitude jets to bring your spinal weapon mount to bear. But there is no reason (other than poor rules) you could not do such things when your ship is sitting in vacuum. Water constrains the facing, maneuvering and positioning of a ship in ways that vacuum does not. A good set of space battle rules would high-light that difference.
In most space battle games ships don't block line of sight. Usually this is the effect of representing the vast distances and the capability to maneuver in 3D. In naval games a battleship usually blocks line-of-sight.
