A thought on Adaptive Armour

[Keith]

I have found that ships with the adapitve armour trait complicate the game mechanic.

I am used to marking of hits as they are taken. This makes life relatively simple, particularly if there ar a number of critical hits, but because the damage and crew losses from all the dice of a single weapons system (including the effects of critical hits) must be calculated before any losses can be recorded this is not a viable approach for a target with adaptive Armour.

If no-one else finds this then please feel free to ignore this post.

The aim of the following suggestion is to simplify the game mechanic (by allowing hits to be marked off as the dice or rolled) while retaining the effects of this trait.

Damage and crew hits (both totals and threshholds) for ships with this trait should be doubled; as should any self reparing trait.

The trait should read

The entire hull of the ship compries of .... repel the worst of most attacks. {quoted from the originial rule book} This has been taken into account in the damage and crew stats for this vessel. As a result ships loosing this trait (e.g. through crippling or critical hits) immediately loose half their remaining damage, crew points and thresholds (rounding up the loss). Any Self repairing trait is also halved. If this trait is ever regained double the remaining damage, crew points and thresholds. Any Self repairing trait is also doubled.

Campaign rules should allow hits (both crew and damage) to be repaired at half the normal RR cost.


I belive that this mimiics the actual effect of Adaptive Armour but only requires arithmatic on the relatively rare occasions when the Adaptive Armour Trait is lost or gained rather than in the far more common event of the ship being damaged.

 

[Chernobyl]

hey man, I don't know if I want to make White stars any harder to kill...

Chern

 

[Keith]

They would not be any harder to kill. I realise now the original post was not clear but the idea was that you no longer halve the damage they take, hence the saving on the maths.

 

[Spideredd]

I'm not sure that there is a saving on maths.

I've played against one or two people that when you tell them that they simply have to divide by two, it takes them a good 5+ minutes to figure it out, but then, I'm real close to essex, and I live in webbed finger central.

I feel that it works out much easier to apply the fraction as you take the damage, that is the real time saver.

Don't believe me? try to play an innumerate person when they have the adaptive armour and are using your system.

 

[Chernobyl]

yeah they would be - because you always round down to 1 hit with adaptive armor presently. a 1 point hit that gets through still does 1 hit.

Chern

 

[Right Hand of God]

The one problem lies in the fact that you don't get the same effect by doubling the original crew/damage score and applying that to incoming weapons fire.

Adaptive armour halves damage rounding down, so 3 points of damage become 1 point. If you use your system 3 points of damage are 3 points of damage. You die faster using your system.

A ship that has 10 points of damge and takes 3 points of damage rounding down to 1 ends up on 9 damage.

Your ship on 20 damage but no AA takes the same 3 points of damage and ends up of 17 damage.

Triple Danage weapons are also slightly more powerful against ships using your method instead of AA.

 

[Keith]

Where it gets complex is whn you have 12 tripple damage beam dice hit a single target with 8 criticals (it has happen in a game).

In this case your original damage (without Adaptive Armour) is 36 damage, 36 crew. Rembember this then roll each critical.

Calculate the effects of the first critcal - Triple the damage and crew losses from the table and add it to the appropriate (damage or crew)remembered numbers and remeber the new numbers then Make a note of any other critical effect.

Repeat 7 times (once for each additional crit).

Divide the resulting crew and damage hits by 2 round down and then apply the hits.

Good Luck!

While I grant this is an extreme example it is quite common to have 2 or 3 criticals from a single weapon system in crusade era battles (where both adaptice armour and the precise traits are relatively common).

(With the suggested system the original hits could be recorded before any criicals were rolled and the ship record could be ammended after the resolution of each critical hit).

 

[Keith]

The one problem lies in the fact that you don't get the same effect by doubling the original crew/damage score and applying that to incoming weapons fire.

Agreed, the system does include half points of damage that is currently ignored by the rounding down of damage and could put a significant dampener on ships like the White Star where the dodge means only relatively small amounts of damage form each weaapon system get through.

I'm not certain it is particularly beneficil to TD weapons. Single damage weapons (i.e. those without DD, TD or QD) will have the same advantage under the suggested system (which only occurs if they get an odd number of hits in a turn). You could argue that TD weapons are discriminated against using the current AA system.

It was just a point for discussion in any case.

 

[Keith]

I feel that it works out much easier to apply the fraction as you take the damage, that is the real time saver.

Very true but also incorrect by the letter of the rules.

If we record as we go along.
Assume a TD weapon gets a single hit - result 3 damage (I'll ignore crew for simpility) - AA means 1 damage is noted. The hit is a critical which causes an extra hit- TD so an extra 3 damage - AA means another point is removed. Total Damage 2.

Now as the rules state
Assume a TD weapon gets a hit - result 3 damage (Again ignoring crew for simpility). The hit is a critical which causes an extra hit- TD so an extra 3 damage. This is 6 points before the use of AA. After AA a Total Damage 3!!

 

[Burger]

If halving damage and crew loss is your biggest problem, then count yourself lucky

 

[Hugbiel]

I just carry on a fraction/no fraction damage as the damage is counted. It's not so much trouble an maintain the more than halving damage from average attack/ full damage from little attack effect.

no F = 0 Dom no F
F & no F = 0 Dom + F
F & F = 1 Dom no F

sound basic for me. But I used to do university level Math ( But only the start)

 

[Voronesh]

Well actually, it would be even simpler to just keep track of .5 damage points. No need for doubling and reducing a ships damage track because of regaining or losing the AA trait. No need to round up or down. And less problem with actually affecting self-repair and such ^^.