Naval Games
I've been designing games since 1982. I ran a small game company called ArmourSoft Inc. from 1991 to 1998. The projects on this page include some game designs from my pre-ArmourSoft Inc. days, some that I worked on during my tenure at ArmourSoft, and some I've tinkered with since then.
These are all free downloads, provided on an "as is" basis, with no promises of support, functionality, accuracy, playability, completeness, or usefulness. Some have documentation, some don't, several are in various stages of nonfinishedness. Some of these projects I'll likely finish in the next few years, others I'll probably never finish, so do with them what you will. There are many other projects that aren't even as far along as these, but I haven't the heart to dig them out and inflict them upon the world.
- American Civil War ship data spreadsheet: Compilation of ACW ship lists from Conway's, Ospreys, and the games Ironclads (Yaquinto), Smoke on the Water (Canis), and Stars Tars and Bars (Benjamin King). Over 500 ships listed. 144K MS Excel spreadsheet.
- Age of Sail Master Ship List and
- Age of Sail Scenario List: Compilation of "Age of Sail" era (Napoleonic wars, American War of Independence, and War of 1812) ship lists from scenarios in the games Wooden Ships and Iron Men (Avalon Hill), Frigate (SPI), Fighting Sail (SPI), Close Action (CoA), Beat to Quarters (Command Perspective), and Man o' War (SimCan), plus the battles of Trafalgar, Navarino, Copenhagen, and Cape St. Vincent compiled from various web sites. Ships are listed by number of guns and cross-indexed according to the types of ships available in Hallmark/Figurehead's series of 1:2400 scale miniatures. Over 750 ships listed. The master ship list spreadsheet is 181K, the scenario lists spreadsheet is 580K. MS Excel spreadsheets.
- Fire When Ready: My first computer-assist naval wargame project to reach the playable stage. Based closely on Metagaming's old micro boardgame of the same title. Covers the pre-Dreadnought period (about 1880 through 1906). 68K zipped archive with program, source code, scenarios, and brief documentation.
- Shipbase I (also known as Seabase I due to a misprint in a review of Shipbase III in a British wargaming magazine): My second shot at computer-assist naval wargame rules, this one based closely on Seapower II/III. Covers WWI through WWII. 217K zipped archive with program, source code, scenarios, ship data, and brief documentation.
- SB1 Ship Data Spreadsheet: All the ship data (740 ship classes) from Shipbase I converted to MS Excel format.
- Shipbase II: My third computer-assist naval project, this one based on TFG's Battlewagon boardgame. Covers WWI through WWII. 163K zipped archive with program, source code, scenarios, ship data, and brief documentation.
- Shipbase IV: Originally thrown together in a couple of months in mid-1993 but intended to eventually cover naval combat from antiquity through to about 1895, where SB3 picks up. This is version 1.2. Several bugs fixed, nations added, scenario utility and ship database utility added. Scenarios for Lissa 1866 and Yalu 1894 are included. Still includes the original SB4 testbed gunnery system, based somewhat on TCS's Age of Iron, which was intended to be completely replaced in the next version, which I never got around to. 165K zipped archive with programs, source code, ship and scenario files, scenario editor, ship database editor, still no docs.
- Shove Off, Gridley!: one of my current (November 2008) projects, this is actually my first naval wargame design that isn't computer-assist to reach the playtesting stage. Designed to be easy to learn, fast and fun to play, with just about everything the player needs to know on one side of one sheet of paper. Pre-Dreadnought naval miniature rules, specifically for the 1880-1900 years. Each player controls one or two ships, as opposed to all my other naval games in which each player can control 50 ships or more.
- D-CATR Naval: the Windows upgrade of the Shipbase series of computer-assist naval rules
- The Shipbase 5 Anti-Aircraft Factor Calculator: this stand-alone utility can be used to calculate AA factors for Shipbase III, Shipbase 5, and D-CATR Naval. This calculator is built into the D-CATR Naval program.
Irvania.com webmaster: Dave Ferris
Last updated: January 13, 2011