B52E Space Combat

[Picaboo]

Hello to everyone,

I just got my B52E copy and I must say that I am quite impressed with the good work everyone at Mongoose has been doing. I must congratulate you all.

Loved the new psychic rules. Hated the fact that earlier version telepaths had to handpick powers that they could use. Love the new possibility of doing almost everything you want at a cost.

One thing bothered me though and that is in the space combat rules. I like the new system. It is much more user-friendly in my opinion but I have aproblem with total offence, barrage versus armour. In my opinion, armour on certain ships is too strong. The fact that if total offence does not penetrate armour, nothing happens bothers me. Some civilian ship have a single particle gun for 3 offence. However, no ship has armour that low. The civilian ship cannot join a wing as it isn't a solo craft and thus, with no way to increase offence, the particle gun is TOTALLY useless. It will not even penetrate the armour of a Delta-V, even on a critical hit.

Another example is when two fighters engage one another. Two solo crafts trying to blast each other out will only get sparks on each others hull. A Starfury has offence 12 and armour 14. It will get destroyed only a critical! A starfury versus a DeltaV does not even have to bother: a critical will not even pierce the hull! The show clearly shows us the potential destructive power of ships weapon. A deltaV should be able to destroy another fighter in one shot.

Love the system but needs an adjustment. It could all be solved down by lowering fighter armour. A starfury from 14 to 4. A detaV to perhaps one or two. Perhaps a targeting run could provide a bonus to damamge as well as a single bonus to hit. It would be perhaps more inviting. Moreover, I would like to have some rules about non-critical damage. If total offence does not penetrate the armour, perhaps it could reduce armour by a certain amount for a short period of time so that further volleys had more chance of scoring damage.

I like the idea that a single DeltaV could bring down an Omega with enough time. Sure it will get destroyed before that but hey, it is my fantasy!
:lol:

Thanks to you all for your many feedbacks.

 

[Tegman]

Hi, I like the new space rules too, but the Offensive vs Armor bugs me too. I have made up a house rule that each time a weapon hits it rolls a d20, adds the Offensive and check it vs Armor, if the roll is equal or higher then the Armor drops 1 point (or a d4 or something?). I haven't tried it out yet, I'll have to run a few mock fights etc and maybe let the armor drop more for each 10 that the check beats the Armor.

That way, a weaker foe can weaken the armor of a more powerfull attacker, up to a certain degree. If 20 + Offensive can't beat the Armor value, then the Armor is simply too much for the puny attacker. Try it out and see if it works for you. It's just a house rule that I came up with and it will most likely need some adjustment, but I think it can be used.
And it will let the armor stay weakened until repaired.

Cheers.

 

[Picaboo]

Just seen the adaptive armor special quality. Ouch!!! Coupled with the Victory awesome armour, let anyone try to scratch this vessel now! It is immune to all except perhaps the shadow cruiser and a barrage by a Minbari sharlin.

As for the offence vs armour problem, I have thought about this and implemented these house rules in my 2E campaign:

1) When a solo craft succesfully perform a targeting run on another solo craft, in addition to granting a +2 attack bonus, the armour of the targeted craft is halved (round down). In addition, each hit will at least cause 1 structural box damage despite how low an offence it might have.

2) When a vessel is hit by a barrage with an offence less than armour, tally total offence and mark on a separate sheet. When this number exceeds armour, 1 structutal box is destroyed, whatever the amount it was exceeded by. Following this damage, the number is reset to 0. For example, a civilian trader with a particle gun (3 offence) would need 15 hits to cause 1 structural box of damamge to a vessel with 42 armour. The first 14 hit would rise the tally to 42 and the following hit would cause the structural damage. Following this, it would need another 15 hits to cause an additional structural box of damage.
If a barrage that exceeds armour hit while a tally is present, completely ignore the tally and cause damage as normal, only a barrage which is less or equal than the armour rating will increase the tally.

I think it gives every vessel a fighting chance...

 

[fnord]

I noticed that one as well, the static offence vs armor system creates the possibility of a defence that cannot possibily be penatrated.
A few ideas off the top of my head...

1.) Combined offence, calculate damage at the end of each turn matching the total offence a vessel has taken in a turn against it's armor. This allows a number of smaller vessels to gang up on larger ones. eg. a starfury is attacked and hit by 3 particle gun shots from a group of Narn fighters compares his armor of 14 against that offence total of 21. Ouch...

2.) alternate to that, calculate the offense of squads of solo craft as one attack. So in a squadren of 6 starfuries , if 4 hit an opposing vessel their total offence would be 64 , compared to the targets armor. (enough to damage or bring down most capital ships)

3.) Possibly use the accurate shot mechanics from personal combat in space combat, and seeing Large vessels have lower defense values the success margin will be high for most fighters. You still have t roll high numbers to damage a capital ship though... (you'd have to roll a 29 in attack to damage a star fury with a delta V , or a 32 to damage a hyperion)

Juts ideas, not all of them good

 

[lastbesthope]

Picaboo, the Victory doesn't have the Adaptive Armour, it has the Bio adaptive shielding.

One question, why doesn't the WS have Adaptive Armour, or is that supposed to be covered by the EM shiled and Self Repair?

LBH

 

[Aramanthus]

That is interesting LBH, hmmm. Sounds like someone did some creative decisions. Because in the series they were going to put the adaptive armor on Victory, although it hadn't been done at the time of the movie. It wasn't an adaptive shield from the series. It was a living bio-organic coating similar to the vorlons ships. That wasn't adaptive shielding, it was armor. Someone took some lisense with the game, it is definately different than the show we all love!

 

[frobisher]

That is interesting LBH, hmmm. Sounds like someone did some creative decisions. Because in the series they were going to put the adaptive armor on Victory, although it hadn't been done at the time of the movie. It wasn't an adaptive shield from the series. It was a living bio-organic coating similar to the vorlons ships. That wasn't adaptive shielding, it was armor. Someone took some lisense with the game, it is definately different than the show we all love!

There's absolutely no evidence for any of that from the series. None what so ever.

Given that Garibaldi was very proud of the crystaline (not no mention of any bio properties...) armour on the Excalibur (and its 80% energy defraction rate...) surely he'd have finished his statement with something like "... and it will be so much better when we add the Vorlon bio-adaptive skin."

Let's face it, it wasn't going to happen. Also, if you were going to add another layer onto the hull, you wouldn't paint the name on the side of the ship

I'm not entirely happy with the way that the Victory class is presented in the RPG - the armour is too good and probably doesn't take into account what might be the standard features of the crystalline armour used on most Minbari vessels (where do you think the technology came from..?).

 

[Aramanthus]

Yes, but the Bio-adaptive skin is the armor I'm referring too. It is not a bio-shield system. I'm just pointing out some small things in the system. Plus you have an advantage right now.......My dvd is at home. I'm typing this in at work.

 

[frobisher]

Yes, but the Bio-adaptive skin is the armor I'm referring too. It is not a bio-shield system. I'm just pointing out some small things in the system. Plus you have an advantage right now.......My dvd is at home. I'm typing this in at work.

But the show referred to neither being present on the Victory class...

 

[lastbesthope]

As I recall the show mentions the energy from incoming hits being refracted. I earlier coined the term "Refractive armour" to describe it an earlier forum discussion.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=135540&highlight=refractive#135540

LBH

 

[sigma957]

back to the original point, yes ive noticed that with the rules as written some ships physically cant hurt each other,

perhaps if there had been a worked out example of a trader ship trying to repel a raider.....