Beta critique: Element: travele4.pdf: Concentric Attack

[AnotherDilbert]

Concentric Attack

To set up a concentric attack requires an Average (8+) Gunner (capital or turret) check (D3 rounds plus missile flight time, INT)

All missiles receive a DM on their attack roll equal to twice the Effect of the check (positive or negative) and in addition twice the Effect is added to the damage of each missile.

Average roll: 2D +6[skill]+1[command centre] ≈ 14, Effect 6, DM on attack AND damage +12...
And you can't fail, minimum roll 2 +6[skill]+1[command centre] = 9, Effect 1!

There is no reason to NOT use concentric attack apart from the set-up time, a good gunner basically cannot fail.


Damage increases dramatically:
Nuke missile against armour 15: 6D - 15 ≈ 6 per missile, becomes something like 6D + 12 - 15 ≈ 18 per missile!


This is way too good, at least tone it down to DM = 1 × Effect...

 

[arcador]

Perhaps the difficulty can raise with salvo size representing managing more complex control situation?

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

What's the point of calling it a concentric attack if it's failing? Mongoose Traveller is not a war game. It's written with role-players in mind.

 

[arcador]

It's supposed to be a difficult operation, which requires a specialized operator and a dedicated missile control centre.

In terms of gameplay, if it provides rewards, there should be some kind of risk.

If there is only reward, it's not fun after a while.

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Maybe if the difficulty raises with 1 band for 24 missiles, the operators will have to find a good balance between risk and reward. Smaller salvos with bigger effect, or big salvos with risk to fail, less effect, but if successful, bombastic results.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Good idea to raise the difficulty.

Missile salvoes can range from a few missiles to thousands, it is difficult to find a scaling that would work. It would have to logarithmic, and I don't think that will be acceptable...

 

[arcador]

I was looking it from the size of the pod (of the preview).

A missile specialist only operates with his section of the armament. It's never listed if there is a limit of a section, but I assume that the pod is the kind of "optimal" size setup.

If it depends on the size, it should be something very, very simple - no more complex than the rest of the similar checks in the preview.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

In the Sub-Command example I tried a fixed difficulty of Very Difficult (12+) making the chance of failure very real. Seems to work at a superficial glance.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Let's launch some missiles...

Take my example from the Sub-Command Centre thread and let's launch 2000 missiles against 400 PD turrets.

Launches 2000 Nuke missiles that arrive next round and trivially hit.
Concentric roll: +4[skill] +1[command] +1[probe] = +6, average Effect 5.0, DM on attack AND damage ~+10.
PD:
500 turrets: +4[skill] +1[command] +2[triple] = +7, success on 1+, average Effect 6.0.
333 turrets kills 333 × 6.0 = 2000 missiles, leaving nothing.
Total average damage 0.


Launches 2000 Multi-warhead missiles that arrive next round and trivially hit.
Concentric roll: +4[skill] +1[command] +1[probe] = +6, average Effect 5.0, DM on attack AND damage ~+10.
PD:
400 turrets: +4[skill] +1[command] +2[triple] -2[MW] = +5, success on 3+, average Effect 4.0.
400 turrets kills 400 × 4.0 = 1600 missiles, leaving 400 missiles.
400 MW missiles do 400 × 3 × ( 3D - 15 + 10 ) ≈ 400 × 3 × 5.5 ≈ 6600 average damage.


As we can see Concentric Attack helps trivialise already weak PD and dramatically increase damage from already overpowered missiles...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The time delay built into Concentric attack makes it easier to have several salvoes arrive simultaneously, overwhelming PD.

E.g. at VLong range a Concentric attack of Nukes will arrive in D3+4 rounds.
Launch a Concentric attack of Nukes on round 1, arrives round 5+D3, say 7.
Launch a Concentric attack of Nukes on round 2, arrives round 6+D3, say 9 (randomly it could even be round 7 too).
Launch normal attack of Nukes on round 3, arrives round 7.
Launch Concentric attack of Advanced on round 4, arrives round 6+D3, say 8 (with a bit of luck it will also arrive on round 7)
Launch normal attack of Advanced on round 5, arrives round 7.

So, on round 7 salvoes launched on at least 3 (and possibly up to 5) rounds arrive at the same time, likely completely overwhelming PD.

 

[arcador]

Quite the punch!

It's not clear whether the operator is busy during the setup time + the flight time.
Also, this is a stretch, but are the launchers busy during the D3 time.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

We probably have plenty of gunners, so lack of operators shouldn't be much of a problem. Take the missile pod, it has 36 gunners to launch one salvo or so...

It's still only one rounds worth of missiles, so the launchers should not be occupied more than one round?