Medieval naval warfare involved building forts onto the front and rear decks of merchant ships (why more ships with the centre of mass so drastically altered with men running all over them in battle etc didn't just sink still boggles me) and like it's land warfare cousin ransom for prisoners or bounty on captured assests were common.
Three ship types:
Frigate
Sloop
Galley
Frigates and Sloops (F&S) had many archers on board as well as men at arms so both types get options for Missile and Melee attacks. F & S can split it's missile attacks against any enemy vessels in range (3 hexes).
Galleys were a special ship that mounted siege cannons on the front of the ship though at the price of regular archerss and men at arms, this was somewhat off set by having a very shallow keel.
Frigates are the largest ships in the navies, slow moving and manouvering but pack in a lot of troops (they have four companies on board)
Colour
Movement
Damage
Red
1
4
Blue
2 or 1 & battle
3
Green
2
2
Sloops are smaller but easier to control and make up the bulk of any fleet (they have three companies on board)
Colour
Movement
Damage
Red
2
4
Blue
3
3
Green
4
2
Galleys have a small keel and oar crews in place of sails for battle turning which uses up a lot of space which means their Battle rolls are reduced by one, though battlebacks are unaffected. Galleys can not split their ranged fire. (they have three companies on board)
Colour
Movement
Damage (Missile, Battle, Battleback)
Red
2
5, 3, 4
Blue
3
4, 2, 3
Green
4
3, 1, 2
Siege cannons - if the last company is removed by cannon shot the target ship is assumed to have sunk and doesn't count toward any victory targets (loss of reward / bounty impact on your side morale).
Terrain
Sand bank
only Galleys may cross
Shallow water
Frigates can not cross
Rocks
Any ship can attempt to cross but must roll a number of dice equal to its inverse colour (i.e. red 2, blue 3, green 4 as quality of the ship / crew worsen)
Island
Blocks LoS, all hexes around the Island are treated as Rocks
Deployment:
KISS says do the following but I think some refinement might be needed:
Frigates replace Cavalry, Sloops replace Infantry, and Galleys replace Missile units (not sure what that says about the goblioid navies)
Still to do:
Creatures Krakens, Squid and Quinotor (oh my!) plus others - this has been the fun bit to research ;-)
Lore cards in particular those three cleric spells. I'm leaning toward fixing an area eg hill one would be any aroud any terrian card, rivers one pick a 'straight' line of seven hexes to affect, trees one larger area (center plus two hexes out) ANY ship, friend of foe gets rolled against, hits do not do damage but trap ships in place for a number of turns equal to number of hits.
Some command cards (Darken the skies I think of you in particular) need a looksie too.
Thought onto how the standard race rules should apply
Create new Lore, Command cards and chits to use as ships
Thoughts and comments on this so far?