3rd Edition.

[Stonehorse]

So it has been a good while since 2nd edition hit the shelves, in that time a few issues have cropped up.

These are Beams, Critical damage, Stealth, and Swarm fleets.

Now a good number of people have come up with ideas to fix these issues.

Burger's idea on Beam is;
This weapon rolls a number of dice equal to its AD. On a roll of 4 or 5 it scores 1 hit on a roll of 6 it scores 2 hits. Any dice that miss may be re-rolled.

Not a very complex change, but one that will both tone down beams and give them some reliability.

For Critical damage I think it should be extra D6 points of damage with the weapons relevant special rules applied. Ships that have their speed reduced I have found end up becoming more mobile as they can then turn tighter corners... which I think counter acts the idea of a ship going slower.

Stealth... is a big mess, too many rules that result in some pointless maths. Stealth I think should just that the ships Hull always counts as 6... Regardless of what is being aimed at it. This helps reflect that the ships endurance comes from being hard to hit. This also helps stop the hit or miss Stealth is, and makes the game more enjoyable for both sides.

Swarm Fleets. This I think is the easiest to fix.
Add a ship count that is the number of the PL being played, plus half of the number rounding up. For example in a 5pts Raid game there could be 8 ships.

Feel free to add any other ideas to these, or feedback.

 

[The Adept]

I like most of these suggestions, apart from the crits one. I love the way that the crits applied to a ship match the sort of problems a ship under fire would have, and makes it makes damage a lot more interesting than just deducting numbers.

I do agree that crits may be a little too effective at the moment, but that could be solved by re-writing the tables. Maybe a 2d6 table for crits, rather than rolling one to see where and another to see what.

It would streamline the system, and would allow the weighting of the likelyhood of a given crit happening. At the moment, a small fire is about as likely as a massive explosion. With the 'bell curve' of 2d6, crits 1 and 12 would be rare, and crit 7 the most likely. With a properly thought out table, this could be a very good thing.

 

[Taran]

Just one thing, really, while some people claim these are the biggest problems with 2nd Ed., it is my opinion (heavily supported by the constant bickering and rulesmasters submissions and the length of the FAQ) that THE single biggest problem with 2nd Ed is the lack of clarity in the RAW.


Tidy up the language, and make it painfully clear which rules take precedence when.

 

[Bostich]

I like Beams as they are frankly.

That change (basically) makes Beams just SuperAP, DD. Yes Beams can be make it or break it as-is, but whenever I'm on that 7th-10th single die being rolled there's just this nice chain that really feels like the beams from the show. Plus many beams are BORESIGHT (and rightly so, again for balance and because they obviously work that way in some cases). Nerfing the Beam would mean you'd need to seriously rebalance a lot of ships.

Would 2D6 create enough crits? It would speed things up a bit, but at the cost of (albeit limited) realism.

 

[Target]

I like the way beams are.
The critical table just needs a little tweak & make everything fixable.
A system of redundacy would be nice.
Problem with stealth that whatever way they do it we will probably hate it. Many threads with different ideas & no concensus.
Fighters need to way faster, being slower than capital ships annoy me somewhat.
3rd edition i don't is needed for quite sometime & probably doubt it will come into existance.
Something that clarified 2ed would be useful.

 

[Bostich]

Fighters need to way faster, being slower than capital ships annoy me somewhat.

Yeah, I did that in a game: One use of Engines Full and my fighters were left as a rear guard.. kind of odd. I'd say you could get around this by just saying Fighters can ignore the setup-zone restrictions and start at their initial max movement. That way your fighters would actually start out ahead as a screen, assuming you use them that way.

Alternatively always start with your capital ships at the rear of the deployment zone and your fighters up front.



j.,

 

[darklord4]

Burger's idea on Beam is;
This weapon rolls a number of dice equal to its AD. On a roll of 4 or 5 it scores 1 hit on a roll of 6 it scores 2 hits. Any dice that miss may be re-rolled.

I don't like the reroll. Make it 4-6 is 1-3 hits respectively. I think the reroll makes it very unlikely to do no damage, which for beams should be a reasonable possibility. The idea of TL weapons is that they shoot a barrage so a lot of shots go out increasing the number of hits, without increasing the max damage.

For Critical damage I think it should be extra D6 points of damage with the weapons relevant special rules applied. Ships that have their speed reduced I have found end up becoming more mobile as they can then turn tighter corners... which I think counter acts the idea of a ship going slower.

I think the decrease in overall speed counteracts any increase in maneuverability. I would like to see something like VaS's crit system where crits only occur on a 4+ roll for each possible crit 6.

Stealth... is a big mess, too many rules that result in some pointless maths. Stealth I think should just that the ships Hull always counts as 6... Regardless of what is being aimed at it. This helps reflect that the ships endurance comes from being hard to hit. This also helps stop the hit or miss Stealth is, and makes the game more enjoyable for both sides.

You could still break stealth to shoot at the base hull right?
Weapons with AP and SAP still roll against 6 when stealth is in effect right?

Swarm Fleets. This I think is the easiest to fix.
Add a ship count that is the number of the PL being played, plus half of the number rounding up. For example in a 5pts Raid game there could be 8 ships.

I don't like this idea of a fix in general. I could see this restriction for a tournament just to simplify games so they can be completed in a round. I would prefer a proportional movement system. This doesn't solve the drazi problem though. I don't think there is any real fix except to give all races attractive ships in all PLs so they do not feel like they are wasting allocation just for an initiative sink.

 

[darklord4]

Swarm Fleets. This I think is the easiest to fix.
Add a ship count that is the number of the PL being played, plus half of the number rounding up. For example in a 5pts Raid game there could be 8 ships.

Another tweak would be to make squadrons more attractive. What about giving ships in a squadron the escort trait for each other.

 

[armbarred]

I like the beam rules as they are. The dice are meant to account for chance and a beam currently has a wide arc of possibilities and I enjoy that.

Swarm fleets a problem? Since when? Limiting the number of ships will essentially change the entire feel of certain fleets (ie. Raiders) The game from the very start was meant to represent the canon of the universe, and giving every fleet access to every PL will defeat that.

Although I do like the idea of letting fighters start out at their movement from the edge.

I don't mind Stealth as it is, I don't think it is that complicated at all.

Crits I enjoy the possibility of inflicting a 6-6 crit, I miss the old 6-6. Instant destruction was so fun! And yes, making a ship slower does mean it turns faster, but it really isn't that beneficial when compared to the drawbacks.

I would like to see squadrons revamped. A special action that allowed them to be formed in game and a slightly larger distance between them so that emines won't hit two ships at once would be great.

 

[Stonehorse]

I like most of these suggestions, apart from the crits one. I love the way that the crits applied to a ship match the sort of problems a ship under fire would have, and makes it makes damage a lot more interesting than just deducting numbers.

I do agree that crits may be a little too effective at the moment, but that could be solved by re-writing the tables. Maybe a 2d6 table for crits, rather than rolling one to see where and another to see what.

It would streamline the system, and would allow the weighting of the likelyhood of a given crit happening. At the moment, a small fire is about as likely as a massive explosion. With the 'bell curve' of 2d6, crits 1 and 12 would be rare, and crit 7 the most likely. With a properly thought out table, this could be a very good thing.

Very true, but in my experince, it has been annoying when a Patrol level ship makes it so my War level ship can't fire and is then attacked by a swarm of fighters which for want of a better word sting it to death.

Just one thing, really, while some people claim these are the biggest problems with 2nd Ed., it is my opinion (heavily supported by the constant bickering and rulesmasters submissions and the length of the FAQ) that THE single biggest problem with 2nd Ed is the lack of clarity in the RAW.


Tidy up the language, and make it painfully clear which rules take precedence when.

Agreed, even Matt said in the Shadow Fighters thread that he didn't expect anyone to understand the rules as is being said in regards to shields and AAF/AF.

I like Beams as they are frankly.

That change (basically) makes Beams just SuperAP, DD. Yes Beams can be make it or break it as-is, but whenever I'm on that 7th-10th single die being rolled there's just this nice chain that really feels like the beams from the show. Plus many beams are BORESIGHT (and rightly so, again for balance and because they obviously work that way in some cases). Nerfing the Beam would mean you'd need to seriously rebalance a lot of ships.

Would 2D6 create enough crits? It would speed things up a bit, but at the cost of (albeit limited) realism.

The new Beam rule which was Burgers idea isn't a nerf, but rather a boost. Beams as they are, are either do an horrid amount of damage, or fail to hit the ship. I speak from expreience as a Minbari player when I have rolled my 6AD of beam and not rolled a single 4+, and then to have see my Sharlin turn into space dust as the enemy return fire.

I like the way beams are.
The critical table just needs a little tweak & make everything fixable.
A system of redundacy would be nice.
Problem with stealth that whatever way they do it we will probably hate it. Many threads with different ideas & no concensus.
Fighters need to way faster, being slower than capital ships annoy me somewhat.
3rd edition i don't is needed for quite sometime & probably doubt it will come into existance.
Something that clarified 2ed would be useful.

I think the SM trait is a good way to show how fast and mobile Fighters are. My idea for Stealth is one that fits in with the game mechanics without adding needing to add any over complex rules. Plus it avoids the EM sniping of Stealth, which to be honest is a abysmal abuse of the rules.

 

[Taran]

I would like to see squadrons revamped. A special action that allowed them to be formed in game and a slightly larger distance between them so that emines won't hit two ships at once would be great.

I don't, frankly, see the problem with squadrons, as-is. You get a Major advantage of all that firepower lashing out simultaneously in the firing phase, and the dual drawbacks of loss of init sinks and of emines being likely to hit more of your ships.

As for fighters, well, they should be faster than MOST ships (significantly faster) and either the same speed as or slower than White Stars (since that's how they're shown in the show).

 

[silashand]

The current game system is highly based around luck (i.e. crits) and the current beam mechanism fits that design philosophy perfectly. While I'm not a fan of critical hit systems myself, this one works as it is and provides a mechanism for differentiation between fleets. Every fleet/system has its advantages & disadvantages and this is no different.

However, if it had to change I think I would probably make them more like pulse lasers of the Eldar in BFG, i.e. you only get extra hits up to a certain maximum. The problem with this, however, is that the reason it works in BFG is because ships have a lot fewer damage points and this would in a lot of ways cripple beam fleets ability to compete as well as some others. I know some feel that heavy beam fleets like Minbari are unbalanced, but the reality is it seems to reflect the B5 background relatively well and that's something that has to be kept in mind when suggesting such changes. Granted, I'm not saying the current rules are perfect, but they seem to work pretty well and are fun. JMO though...

Cheers, Gary

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

I would like to see squadrons revamped. A special action that allowed them to be formed in game and a slightly larger distance between them so that emines won't hit two ships at once would be great.

I don't, frankly, see the problem with squadrons, as-is. You get a Major advantage of all that firepower lashing out simultaneously in the firing phase, and the dual drawbacks of loss of init sinks and of emines being likely to hit more of your ships.

Agreed, I had 2 squadrons of Vorchans running around tonight in a Centauri vs Dilgar game and beat the livign hell out of 2 Targraths in one go.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

If we're talking about a 3rd edition here, then we have more freedom to fix the initiative problem by adding a simple initiative stat to each ship. This way, you lose the problem of having a massive swarm of initiative sinks combined with a couple of heavy unboresightable ships, as the initiative scores will force the big ships to move first.

 

[GhostRecon]

I think something to make Fighters more effective versus CapShips would be good; precise, or targetted crits, as has been suggested in the Fighters thread ("Fighter Supremacy - winning is losing" thread). Simply put, you generally need masses and masses of Fighters to get any use out of them, in anti-ship attacks: I would love to see them made more dangerous against Capships, and in return attacking Capships made more dangerous (Like, flying into AF range should be a major consideration).

A random thought, as well:

Why not give Fighters the Shadow's SM rule? You move SM how much you want, to the ship's current stat, or you turn 90o degrees, and move at twice that rate: Anytime you see Fighters (And Whitestars, for that matter) they are completely and utterly outmanuvering everything on the battlespace, zipping all around space, dogfighting around ships, strafing them, etc. Yet, the way things are in 2ed, often Fighters are easily left behind by the Capships.

 

[dag'karlove]

If we're talking about a 3rd edition here, then we have more freedom to fix the initiative problem by adding a simple initiative stat to each ship. This way, you lose the problem of having a massive swarm of initiative sinks combined with a couple of heavy unboresightable ships, as the initiative scores will force the big ships to move first.

Yeah Then You screw The Big ships Out of thier shots which is Kinda pointless. Need to think of a btter way than that and actually the Big ships should have teh best initiatve due to one having the Battlegroup commander abord (In Most Cases) and Having better sensors and being able to see teh battlefield better. Just Because you are faster doent mena you have the initiative.

 

[Burger]

Best fix for swarm fleets is to go back to Armageddon FAP splitting rules. Imposing a ship limit doesn't really fix the problem, and it screws over races such as the Drazi. Unless you're going to fix Boresight/Initiative as well, leave a ship limit out of it!

 

[Tolwyn]

I would appreciate the SFOS Point Splits.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Yeah Then You screw The Big ships Out of thier shots which is Kinda pointless. Need to think of a btter way than that and actually the Big ships should have teh best initiatve due to one having the Battlegroup commander abord (In Most Cases) and Having better sensors and being able to see teh battlefield better. Just Because you are faster doent mena you have the initiative.

You screw the big ships out of their ability to boresight smaller, more manouverable ships - the exact ships that they should have problems boresighting in fact. The current system screws bigs ships out of their ability to boresight slow lumbering targets - the exact type of target that they should have a relatively easy time boresighting. For the movement phase at least, the order the ships move in should mostly be about how quickly they can react to the enemy's actions, and therefore which ships are the most manouverable.

Best fix for swarm fleets is to go back to Armageddon FAP splitting rules. Imposing a ship limit doesn't really fix the problem, and it screws over races such as the Drazi. Unless you're going to fix Boresight/Initiative as well, leave a ship limit out of it!

If possible, I would actually prefer to fix the initiative system and have the ships properly balanced rather than bring back that poor crutch.

 

[Poi]

So long as race A has all its ships at any given PL worse than race B at the same level, race A will lose most of its games at that PL.

For example, Vorlons vs Dilgar at War. Who would put their money on the Dilgar?

Balancing ships is the single biggest thing which can be done to

fix

CTA.