Boresight question

[Harry Lonsdale]

"Follow the Ship" would be a boon to the Drazi, but not I think overpowering. They'd still have to make the CQ check to pull it off, and failing would mean that ship may well not be able to boresight anything for the turn (though you could use your first turn to boresight something else just in case you fail the CQ check).

 

[Burger]

If you made it:

All Patrol PL ships move as per normal
Once both players have done this, all Skirmish PL ships move as normal
Once both players have done this, all Raid PL ships move as normal
Et cetera

then this could possibly work.

Who would win: 1 Tigara versus 137 Warbirds?

 

[Greg Smith]

However, if you both have to move those high-priority ships first, you both have a more equal chance to line up boresights on those big ships;

I see what you are saying. However the player who moves first will have nothing to line his biggest gun up on, since his opponent will not have moved a ship. If the first player keeps his first ship behind an asteroid field, then both players have nothing to line up boresights on.

 

[harikaridog]

Ah... perhaps a choice to use a raking fire option, then? Halve the attack dice or raise the 4+ to 5+, but you can change the boresighted weapon to a "Fore" arc?

Everything goes 'full circle', I'm still of the personal opinion that if you really want to fix this without changing stats, adding SA or changing your whole move sequence then we should fall back on the concept of Full AD if in actual boresight, 1/2 AD if target in forward arc......it does keep it simple.....i.e the beam skewers the target like a butterly on a pin......or brushes it causing less damage.

 

[katadder]

the only problem with that is some races have less AD for having foreward arc. so these races might want to gain boresight then to increase the AD when fully lined up.
if you do it for one weapon you have to do it for all. make all beams boresight but half AD and foreward arc. this doesnt feel right though IMO. I like boresight and have never had a problem using it, even when using 5 hyperions as a whole fleet with no init sinks.
yes you cant always target what you want, but if you win init you can usually target something, and eventually your opponent will run out of "expendable" ships that he can let you line up on.

 

[harikaridog]

the only problem with that is some races have less AD for having foreward arc. so these races might want to gain boresight then to increase the AD when fully lined up.

Good point

I like boresight and have never had a problem using it, even when using 5 hyperions as a whole fleet with no init sinks.
yes you cant always target what you want, but if you win init you can usually target something, and eventually your opponent will run out of "expendable" ships that he can let you line up on.

.... All you say is perfectly reasonable..........I just hate the whole intiative sink concept in general.....and specifically how it affects boresight ships... I guess if some good 'fluff' could be developed for this maybe I would be happy......I mean its like the Bismarck not being able to fire on the Hood cos of a few destroyers the British have bought.....(yes i know you can extrapolate destroyers and smokescreens)......but the look of the game and the mechanics do not illustrate this.....after all my 'sink' ship could be on the other side of the gaming table from my prefferred target.

Simply speaking it just feels wrong

 

[Lord David the Denied]

They could always go from the you-go-I-go sequence to a your-turn-my-turn sequence á la Battlefleet Gothic. Boresight ships would still need to line up and be restricted in their movement but you'd always get to use them without needing iniative sinks.

 

[GhostRecon]

the only problem with that is some races have less AD for having foreward arc. so these races might want to gain boresight then to increase the AD when fully lined up.
if you do it for one weapon you have to do it for all. make all beams boresight but half AD and foreward arc. this doesnt feel right though IMO. I like boresight and have never had a problem using it, even when using 5 hyperions as a whole fleet with no init sinks.
yes you cant always target what you want, but if you win init you can usually target something, and eventually your opponent will run out of "expendable" ships that he can let you line up on.

Well, you'd think that's the point... you have the choice of either getting more beam shots in at less AD because of the change to the "fore" arc, maybe with the addition that beam weapons of 1 AD can't do raking fire, or going boresight and doing more damage.

Compare that to races which have innate arc beam weapons; they get that AD level no matter what. A boresighted beam has its AD halved to gain that same advantage. Maybe raise the 4+ to hit for beams to a 5+ as well, if doing raking?

I personally like this idea and might give it a try in my games to see how it feels; alot of the beam fire you see from bigger ships is more "raking" damage anyway, very rarely in the series do you actually see a boresight shot that burns right through a ship. And... most of the boresights you see tend to be from far more maneuverable ships, such as Whitestars.

 

[katadder]

thats the point though, the races with forward arc already have lowered AD because of this as a balancing thing. I would love to get more dice on forward arc weapons by boresighting them.
boresight stops the whole beam team thing alot too, just think back to the Centauri in 1e to see what i mean.
yes the minbari can still do it to a degree but they are about the only ones now.

 

[Da Boss]

thats the point though, the races with forward arc already have lowered AD because of this as a balancing thing. I would love to get more dice on forward arc weapons by boresighting them.
boresight stops the whole beam team thing alot too, just think back to the Centauri in 1e to see what i mean.
yes the minbari can still do it to a degree but they are about the only ones now.

Vorlons are very beamy even their fighters...............

 

[katadder]

true, but tend to be expensive or fragile. and am sure they would like increased AD on a boresight

 

[Greg Smith]

IIRC, the idea of boresight weapons being able to fire in a front arc comes from either the old AoG ships which had two beam mounts, which could only fire on the same target directly ahead.

Or from the show, when we see the G'quan fire sideways in 'And Now For a Word', it does so with one beam.

Now if you assume that ships like the Sharlin can get multiple beam mounts to fire at targets throughout the front arc, while the Omega can only fire a single beam mount at a target in the front arc, the fluff behind it explains why the Omega can benefit and the Sharlin doesn't.

I presonally would only allow the front arc fire on ships that clearly had multiple beams such as the twin barrels of the G'Quan.

As for Vorlons, I think they should be boresight anyway, based on the show.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

With regards to the idea of being able to fire boresight weapons in the forward arc, I do like the idea of half AD whilst not boresighted.
This would fit in nicely with the advanced focusing lense upgrade. It can easily be that all beams use targetting/focusing lenses, but that they're inefficient whilst not targetting along the boresight. The advanced upgrade is then just a more efficient system that makes deflected fire a more attractive option. This also explains why boresight weapon ships seem to fire along their boresight whenever possible.