Black Flag Fleet 1880

[MengJiao]

The Black Flag Army was the Chinese bandit force that triggered the war in Indochina between France and China in
1884.  They were operating as early as 1865.  What if the Black Flag Army had acquired German ships sooner than the rest of China and attacked the French Fleet in 1880 with the usual American mercenary cadres on the ships?

Frightening but vaguely possible.  After all, Thetis ended up as a hulk in New Caledonia.

[MengJiao]

The Black Flag Army was the Chinese bandit force that triggered the war in Indochina between France and China in
1884.  They were operating as early as 1865.  What if the Black Flag Army had acquired German ships sooner than the rest of China and attacked the French Fleet in 1880 with the usual American mercenary cadres on the ships?

Frightening but vaguely possible.  After all, Thetis ended up as a hulk in New Caledonia.

So that didn't go well for the Black Flag Fleet.  About ten minutes into the action at ranges around 1500 yds,
One Black Flag ship blew up and the other two disengaged (they are faster than the French by 2-3 knots).
The problem is the French 10.8-inch gun -- very good.  I was wondering how this game would handle that.  It is probably slightly underrated since no French breechloaders in service blew up in this period unlike many other naval guns of the time, plus, of course, it was a reliable (for the time), accurate and powerful gun with a good explosive shell.  The game seems to show it as quite plausibly very lethal against the average ironclad of the time.

Oddly enough, last time I ran a China vs. France scenario, I used the Fighting Iron system, which theoretically covers this kind of battle -- but the French 10.8-inch BL is represented as a muzzleloader on most ships that carried it and it is lumped in with all guns between 9 and 11.9 inches which pretty much halves the lethality of the French 10.8-inch BL of the 1870s.