Critical Damage.

[Stonehorse]

I'm sure many people will agree that the Critical Damage system is heavily in favour of luck, and does provide some rather annoying moments. Like a Skirmish ship turning a War level ship into a useless collection of metal etc.

I was wondering if anyone has tried any house rules to try and reduce the 'luck factor'. From What I can see the biggest annoyance is have the additional effects applied as well as damage.

What I think might be a good way to counter this is that any Critical Damage roll does an extra D6 points of Damage and Crew which will be multiplied in the usual method for weapons with DD, TD, or QD trait.

It does mean less book keeping, but removes the felling of being cheated out of a game, and helps tone down the luck aspect.

Any thought?

 

[Court Jester]

How about...

When you score one or more critical hits on a ship from a single weapon system, instead of rolling for each critical result individually roll once on the Systems table.

Add up the number of critical hits the attack caused. This is the number used to determine the result of the critical hit.

For example, the Galactica has just been targeted by a missile salvo from a nearby Basestar. The atack is resolved and 4 critical hits are scored.
Rolling once on system table tells us that the Galactica’s Reactor has been hit. Now instead of rolling on the Reactor damage table we simply look at result 4 and apply the damage and effects the ship.

 

[chainmailler]

I don't know. the luck factor is there for a reason, cause one lucky shot could go into hte reactor and cause a chain reaction. OR it could just hit a bulkhead or just bounce off intirely. Plus criticals add lots of fun to a game, like when 8 of my nial bases made a sharoos into a floating pile of useless nss, by reuding it to 0 spd, no repair, no fire out of front arc, and its ad reduced to about 2-3 on all its remaing weapons. But I understand where your coming from, but the game would last much longer and in my opinion be much less amusing.

just my 2 1/2 cents.....

 

[Stonehorse]

I'm guessing this is from your work in progress BSG ACTA... I must read through that at some point soon.

That does sound like a nice way to balance out the number of Criticals and the amount of damage they can inflict to several systems.

 

[Darken]

heh it can be bad my Warlock got nailed by a battlewagon and got 3 crits, Adrift, rear weapons disabled and engineering section hit I sacrificed a Marathon to give my warlock time to drift off the table

 

[darklord4]

I would prefer fewer but more damaging Critical hits to accommodate their increased rarity.

 

[akenatum]

Yeah the critical hit system is very random...

Granted I like the idea of the Armoured hull system that means there is a damage threshold to bust up before you can score criticals that someone suggested in a thread long ago... kinda stops small ships one shotting a big ship with opening salvos to ct back that sort of thing...

Even though the critical hit table is random though about the only thing i would change is maybe a modifier to see what type of system you critical, though i have no idea what that should be.

 

[Karhedron]

I kinda like crits. Sure they can occasionally be crazy but they keep the game interesting. The are also somewhat in the spirit of the show as it was not unusual to see ships sliced up by particularly devastating hits.

 

[GhostRecon]

Could make it so you do crits normally (6+, 5+ with precise) but instead of rolling on the critical chart, you have to roll another 5+ to damage a critical system... (Sort of like the OP's suggestion)

The Armored Hull system sounds good, though.

 

[Ripple]

actually its not terribly like the show... when do we see a low priority ship slash a giant ship in half?

What we see in the show is that big beams destroy things, and large pulse attacks destroy things, not lucky single shots. By that reasoning we should see more AD/damage from main weapons and crits should be for special effects (like lighting an Omega on fire).

Just a thought...

Ripple

 

[akenatum]

actually its not terribly like the show... when do we see a low priority ship slash a giant ship in half?
Ripple

There is always the scene where a Vorchan butchers a G'Quan with one salvo after coming out of hyperspace, in the Earth minbari war movie, forget the title of that one....

 

[CZuschlag]

Keep in mind when you alter the Critical Hit rules that, if you change them, the very fact that you do so changes the balance of Precise (proportionally, but still), enhances the EMine property (part of the balance on this is the loss of the chance of a critical hit), and particularly because it disproportionately affects one race in a different way than the others, Masters Of Destruction (which accounts for 16% of all Dilgar Bolter firepower and 30%+ of all Dilgar Pulsar firepower -- that's a lot).

When you do your balancing, keep these in careful mind.

 

[Ripple]

I find a lot of times the single scene examples to be pick and chosen over for game effects... G'Quans can't shoot to the side, there is a scene supporting that... as easy to say that G'Quan was weakened already as to call it a lucky crit.

More to the point, that would be the exception rather than than the rule (plus the Vorchan seems a pretty hardy ship in the show). It would strike me that criticals are rare, not the common deciding factor of almost all games.

Chris has a good point above though... criticals are a touchy mechanic to fiddle with as it effects the different races in drastically different ways.

Ripple

 

[akenatum]

Yes this is true i just wanted to point out an example and yes, that is a rarity...

And also agree with you on the critical issue it's a hard one to toy with.

in regards to the armoured hull thing stiopping criticals till it's beaten a simple change to keep the dilgar bolters and pulse weapons on par would just be to give them tripple/double repectively on a role of a 6 on the damage chart instead of making it tripple/double on a critical... that way even with armoured hull they retain that effectiveness of increased damage, and seeing as they only get criticals on a 6 they would obviously retain this for criticals once the ship is down to critical level......


But that's beside the point for game play issues it's random and hard to mess with but still rather nice...



A suggestion to the critical table change, you get a +1 bonus to which critical system you damage if the ship is at 1/4 or less health or some other such? that should increase bigger critical chances later in the game, but not early enough to be overpowering early on....

 

[GhostRecon]

Maybe make Armored Hull like Shields, only against critical hits?

So if you get hit by, say, Masters of Destruction, it deducts three Armored Hull points instead of just one (If its the TD MoD hit)? (So once you're out, they start doing crits, meaning Dilgar mow through Armored Hull faster).

 

[Triggy]

actually its not terribly like the show... when do we see a low priority ship slash a giant ship in half?
Ripple

There is always the scene where a Vorchan butchers a G'Quan with one salvo after coming out of hyperspace, in the Earth minbari war movie, forget the title of that one....

Just to remind people, that was a CG goof - it was meant to be a Primus coming out of hyperspace and destroying the G'Quan in a single salvo, not a Vorchan.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Just to remind people, that was a CG goof - it was meant to be a Primus coming out of hyperspace and destroying the G'Quan in a single salvo, not a Vorchan.

we believe it was a CG goof, there is no conclusive evidence AFAIK Triggy. Just like the lasers from the opening scene of "Severed Dreams"

 

[akenatum]

If it was then i am very annoyed with the CG people, cause the Primus is a dead sexy ship and you don't see enough of them in combat in the show.

 

[captainsmirk]

Well considering that other than when acting as the Emperor's limo or bombarding a defenseless planet with large rocks Primi are only ever shown getting their butts kicked thats probably a good thing...


Nick

 

[lastbesthope]

actually its not terribly like the show... when do we see a low priority ship slash a giant ship in half?

Ripple

Well when Lennier beats that Drakh ship to the jumpgate he gives it a good one, OK it had been worked over by a few WS before that, but it was a good killing blow.

LBH