Crippled Ships Suggestion

[Asguard101]

I wanted throw this suggestion out there for a change to the Crippled Status.

Instead of only being allowed to fire one weapon, have each weapon AD rolled for, like the stats, and they may continue to use the ones not lost, unless criticals prevent it.

 

[Da Boss]

I am happy with the rules as is - but I suggest if you want to go down this route just to roll for each weapon rather than AD - mcuh easier to track and half the weapons are only 1AD anyway.

 

[Asguard101]

but I suggest if you want to go down this route just to roll for each weapon rather than AD - mcuh easier to track and half the weapons are only 1AD anyway.

True

As the rules stands Crippled ships have very little hope of survival, anything bigger than a frigate can not turn and not being able to warp out, tends to lead to a quick death.

 

[Da Boss]

I think thats kind of the point - they are crippled and near helpless - usually need to head for somewhere to hide!?

They can however still perform Special Actions and also (often briefly) act as In sinks.

You could also consider the previous editions version of crippled which allowed one gun per arc (but then SF has many more arcs which is a pain)

 

[Asguard101]

I think thats kind of the point - they are crippled and near helpless - usually need to head for somewhere to hide!?

This is why I'm suggesting a change, only being able to go 6" and pretty much anything other than a Frigate won't be turning, thier chances of being able to go hide is slim. Though I still think any ship should get a turn at the end of thier turn if they haven't made one that turn, but that was talked about in a different thread.

At the very least they should be allowed to Max Warp Now, assuming criticals don't stop them.

 

[MongooseMatt]

At the very least they should be allowed to Max Warp Now, assuming criticals don't stop them.

Not to highlight the obvious but...

If your ship is Crippled, it is already too late to make that decision. You should have warped out the turn before, when the enemy was closing in on all sides

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

At the very least they should be allowed to Max Warp Now, assuming criticals don't stop them.

Not to highlight the obvious but...

If your ship is Crippled, it is already too late to make that decision. You should have warped out the turn before, when the enemy was closing in on all sides

Lol, you mean the turn before the turn before? Because if you go on the special orders and then get crippled, it prevents you from warping out does it not? I can't see how that would be a better tactic than just fighting it out to the death.

IMHO the crippled rules are too severe - not because the ship doesn't deserve to be in that state but because its a 1pt threshold that brings a ship from being near fully functional to utterly useless. My crippled suggestion:

-Roll for each weapon system like traits to see if they are destroyed
-Ship's movement is halved (so 6 for most, but more or less if you are slow/fast)- turning ability stays the same (although they Might lose agile in the roll above)
-May not use any special order that has power drain

This will make the crippled ships next to useless instead of just useless.

-Tim

 

[tneva82]

Lol, you mean the turn before the turn before? Because if you go on the special orders and then get crippled, it prevents you from warping out does it not? I can't see how that would be a better tactic than just fighting it out to the death.

Well if choise is non crippled ship escape or dead ship guess which one gives less vp's to opponent. In campaign double benefit.

 

[SneakyPete]

A crippled ship comes more into play when doing campaign play. In a one off match a player has very little incentive not to commit a ship to battle until it is crippled, which by definition means it is severely impaired and of little use anymore, the crew is just trying to keep their ship from dying.

A campaign player needs to know when to cut his losses and warp out (or exit the edge of the map under normal movement) while he still can to repair and fight another day.

 

[Asguard101]

Lol, you mean the turn before the turn before? Because if you go on the special orders and then get crippled, it prevents you from warping out does it not? I can't see how that would be a better tactic than just fighting it out to the death.

IMHO the crippled rules are too severe - not because the ship doesn't deserve to be in that state but because its a 1pt threshold that brings a ship from being near fully functional to utterly useless. My crippled suggestion:

-Roll for each weapon system like traits to see if they are destroyed
-Ship's movement is halved (so 6 for most, but more or less if you are slow/fast)- turning ability stays the same (although they Might lose agile in the roll above)
-May not use any special order that has power drain

This will make the crippled ships next to useless instead of just useless.

-Tim

That does sound fairer.

 

[Rambler]

KISS - Keep It Simple... :twisted:

The way Crippling works now is fairly close to what you would see in a game like SFB. by the time you get down to a third of you starting points on your ship most stuff has stopped working or there is just not enough power to move shoot and maintain life support, choose wisely.

If your just dying to add complexity create a new threshold between pristine and crippled and at that threshold roll to see what weapons still work.

 

[GamerDude]

As the rules stands Crippled ships have very little hope of survival, anything bigger than a frigate can not turn and not being able to warp out, tends to lead to a quick death.

That's the definition of "crippled".. they ain't going no where they ain't doing much.

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

KISS - Keep It Simple... :twisted:

The way Crippling works now is fairly close to what you would see in a game like SFB. by the time you get down to a third of you starting points on your ship most stuff has stopped working or there is just not enough power to move shoot and maintain life support, choose wisely.

If your just dying to add complexity create a new threshold between pristine and crippled and at that threshold roll to see what weapons still work.

You know the funny thing is the rules for crippled in ACTA are not that simple. What I proposed actually takes out a couple of steps in remembering what you have to do to be "crippled".

I also think if a ship has lost two thirds of its internals that actually takes it closer to being with about half its energy and half its weapons - because a bunch of the initial internals were on hull or labs etc.

I'm not clear how just continuing to roll down the weapons chart (since you already had to do this for each trait) is adding a lot of complexity to it? If anything I think its clearer. The weapons cross off you cannot use. What is frustrating and not intuitive at all is if you fire a single Ph3 defensively before crippled, and then you can't fire anything else that turn. That's not at all like SFB/FC.

I think complexity is saying "half your speed and double your turn mode" when i reality it should read "you can't turn if you move".

 

[MongooseMatt]

That's not at all like SFB/FC.

No. But it is ACTA.

Remember, we are not trying to model SFB or FC (those games already exist). It is the SFU we are modelling, under the lens of ACTA.

I do feel your suggestions for what a heavily damaged ship should be capable of to be a little generous, and it has no bearing in the real world (as Steve likes to keep referring to). For example, in the new Victory at Sea (WWII ships), the Crippled threshold is at 50% of damage - these ships are tough, but they cannot take _that_ much damage without some pretty serious effects. Just because you have a phaser bank that has not taken any damage itself does not automatically mean it should be able to fire...

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

That's not at all like SFB/FC.

No. But it is ACTA.

Remember, we are not trying to model SFB or FC (those games already exist). It is the SFU we are modelling, under the lens of ACTA.

My comment was actually more directed at Rambler who was suggesting that the crippled rules as they are now are like SFB/FC in that a ship that badly damaged wouldn't have enough power to fire more than one weapon. My comment was just pointing out that it wasn't as in SFB there is a big difference between firing one bank of 4-photons vs. a single ph-3 - both of which you can do with a crippled ship in ACTA.

I do feel your suggestions for what a heavily damaged ship should be capable of to be a little generous, and it has no bearing in the real world (as Steve likes to keep referring to). For example, in the new Victory at Sea (WWII ships), the Crippled threshold is at 50% of damage - these ships are tough, but they cannot take _that_ much damage without some pretty serious effects. Just because you have a phaser bank that has not taken any damage itself does not automatically mean it should be able to fire...

Well my suggestion may be too generous or it may not be generous depending on how the die roles go. Keep in mind the ship may also have a number of critical hits at this point, so it capabilities could be compromised in other ways.

I guess my big beef is just that you lose so many weapons so quickly. In SFB you lose them gradually - and really you lose a lot of phasers - about at the same rate you lose power. The critical hit charts in ACTA don't really reflect that. Had I been involved with playtesting I'd have been tempted to reduce Impulse crits to only a "1" and add a Phaser crits to the table. Each hit on that table would do something plus take one one random phaser bank.

Anyway, our group is going to try the rules I proposed for crippled ships and test to see if its a painful thing to roll all the weapons and if crippled ships are indeed to powerful with those rules.

-Tim

 

[storeylf]

I guess my big beef is just that you lose so many weapons so quickly.

One of our groups first comments about ACTA was exactly the very opposite. In FC/SFB you lose weapons at a fairly constant rate, you can be pretty defanged before you are crippled. In FC aimed volleys in particular can strip off lots of weapons and little else. In ACTA it is pretty common to lose no firepower before you are crippled.

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

I guess my big beef is just that you lose so many weapons so quickly.

One of our groups first comments about ACTA was exactly the very opposite. In FC/SFB you lose weapons at a fairly constant rate, you can be pretty defanged before you are crippled. In FC aimed volleys in particular can strip off lots of weapons and little else. In ACTA it is pretty common to lose no firepower before you are crippled.

Sorry, that's what I meant by quickly. Non-crippled - you have all your weapons, then when you become crippled you have 1 (which you may have already fired that turn).

 

[storeylf]

I guess my big beef is just that you lose so many weapons so quickly.

One of our groups first comments about ACTA was exactly the very opposite. In FC/SFB you lose weapons at a fairly constant rate, you can be pretty defanged before you are crippled. In FC aimed volleys in particular can strip off lots of weapons and little else. In ACTA it is pretty common to lose no firepower before you are crippled.

Sorry, that's what I meant by quickly. Non-crippled - you have all your weapons, then when you become crippled you have 1 (which you may have already fired that turn).

Yes, but ACTA generally leaves with you with far more firepower prior to that. So swings and roundabouts. Looking to modify one aspect to be more like SFB but not the other is ... odd.

At the end of the day I don't think ACTA isn't looking to be SFB, I believe it is looking to provide a different system for battles in the SFU. The minutae of damage allocation in SFB is really neither here nor there in that context.

 

[JohnDW]

Yeah, i mean, the ship is crippled after all, which i generally think of as the warp reactor is offline, low levels of power, not being able to escape, declaring the order to go to life pods, that sort of stuff.

 

[Captain Jonah]

If you watch the various series there are a number of examples of crippled.

They generally involve lots of internal explosions, people shouting the shields are down, the drives are off line, weapons are offline, medics to everywhere. Chunks of beams fall on passing crew, smoke and showers of sparks everywhere and lots of heroic acting by the heroes.

Generally they end in "Abandon Ship" or a while drifting while the engineering crew try to patch something together.

Think of scotty calling the captain to say he has re routed enough power for one last Phaser shot. Characters hand loading a photon for that last desperate shot. A half human science officer dying to get the ships warp core back on line.

A ship isn't suddenly rendered useless, it is a steady process as it takes damage but the crew are able to keep it running. Crippled is that point where the crew and damage control teams are no longer able to keep ahead of the fires. The bulk of the crew are either casualties or running for the life pods and firing a weapon or two is the heroic action of those named characters that feature in the stories.

Think of crippled as the point where the captain sounds abandon ship then he and a few loyal personnel stay to try to save the ship anyway.

Or look at some of the big space battles from say the series based on the space station at war with the shape shifting types. You see ships take heavy hits, half the saucer blown away and they tumble off and drift, the ship is still there but for sure its not doing much. Crippled is that point, either from a single huge hit that took out half your crew or from many smaller hits that have taken out primary and backup systems one by one till suddenly it is no longer possible to re route power and you lose weapons. The weapons are still there but the power relays in the core of your ship are destroyed and only an engineer franticly patching things allows enough power do do a single something.