need info befor buying

[jbdenney]

I have not yet purchased the simulator but I need some information before I buy it.

I want to be able to do a miniatures game - Naval Miniatures. ( have two games in mind - a navel wooden ship game and the battle of Jutland in WWI.)
I need a large table top - I want to have the ranges to scale with the ship models - i.e. a ship 30 meters long with a gun range of 2000 meters. I don't mind scales in mm where 1 mm equals 1 meter as long as it is consistent and measurable.
I need to be able to measure angles such as angles of movement in relation to wind direction or angle from bow to the center of the target (in game protractor)
I need to be able to measure the distance, in scale, between ship counters. (in game ruler)
I need to be able to rotate the ship to port or starboard a fixed number of degrees and to be able to move the ship forward what, ever their Forward angle is, a set distance.

I also don't want to have to spend weeks creating the game.

Will Tabletop Simulator deal with these requirements?

jbdenney
Thanks in advance.

[Cabledragon]

You can check pretty much all those boxes except for: "I also don't want to have to spend weeks creating the game."

That is going to be true whether you make the game in TTS, any game creation program, or even just actual tabletop miniatures.
(Although, I think the last of those would be your best bet with TTS coming in just behind it.)

Sure, if you sat down and grinded on it, you could create the exact thing you asked for in less than a week.
But it's not going to be feature rich, it's going to have some bugs, and the ship models are going to have to be gotten freely or be of very low quality.

The biggest limiting factor in designing the sort of thing you speak of, is actually time. Especially to get something that looks nice.
This is where the benefit of "pen and paper" comes in. If you actually sit down and just draw little images of these ships from a top down perspective, then it wouldn't take you too long at all to have a playable prototype. The rest of the game you described just requires a measuring tape and any form of angle measuring device.

In TTS, much the same, there are tools built in for most of the stuff you ask about and you could also use imported drawings of the ship from top down and keep track of all the maths yourself. BUT, if you wanted to have actual ship models, and you wanted the game to be scripted to handle ranges, angles, and rules for you, then that would take quite a bit of time, especially without prior experience.

In conclusion, TTS is great for doing this sort of thing, pen and paper is even better, BUT, no matter what route you choose, I suggest you spend not only "weeks" creating it but "months."

Games Take Time. That's just how it is, you wan't something fun and interesting that you're gunna get hundreds if not thousands of hours of play time out of? Well you're gunna have to spend some reasonable fraction of that time putting effort IN to the game in the first place.

[cche]

I will expand cabledragon's comments to some degree. The tabletop simulator workshop contains a huge quantity of objects some of which may be close to your need. There is a Jutland mod, though it does not have miniatures. There are many WW2 naval miniatures you could use to prototype your game. The measuring requirements and scale are there. You can have a table 10 feet square, and measure to the millimeter if you want. You WILL need to use scripting (look up lua programming on the web) to automate your activities. If you are a skilled programmer this will take a little time; if you are not, expect to spend the time to learn. So to throw together a prototype, with a little help, you can start with the existing workshop mods and materials and have something you can play with in a week. If you decide you want a polished product, you will need to invest accordingly.

[cche]

I also just noticed another workshop mod called sails of glory, which implements much of what you speak of for sailing ships Take a look at it too.