Critical Hit Tables

[Silvereye]

I created a new topic for this tangent that came out of the fighter re-jig thread.

There have been a couple of discussion on the crit tables. Some folks love them and some folks hate them.

I guess I am in the hate them camp as I do not like the x-6 crits at all.

We are finding more and more that a 'speed 0' is instant death against certain races that take assault ships (brakiri being the best known) to battle or Dilgar.

The 4-6 no fire crit is rarely fixed before the battle is decided one way or the other.

And of course the 6-5/6-6 crits are the end of any ship raid or below. Even with single damage weapons these tend to be enough with the damage that spawned the crit.

Most battles are won and lost on the critical table from what I have seen rather than on manuever. This is often unsatisfing. I would have prefered to see a few changes like engines 5 being lose a turn rather than lose specials, I mean how does that affect my ability to concentrate fire? I would rather see the speed zero's be adrift, move forward at half speed minus crits no turns. I am okay with the reactor hit, still think it should drift but that one can mess with specials. The no fire one I would rather see be half AD all weapons, round down. The no damage control I do not like, maybe if a single crit couldn't invalidate my whole ship but it can.

I am not to bothered by the x-6 criticals - they can affect my opponent just as much as me. The 6-5 and 6-6 criticals I like, they are the lucky shots that can change battles. However your ideas about the engines table definitely make sense, though this may require a tweaking of the Mass Driver rules to compensate for the lack of ships moving at Speed 0. I would suggest allowing Mass Drivers to fire at any target that has moved less than 1" during its last movement phase.

Do you fancy helping to put together an alternative critical hit table?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

While you're at that, how about a rule or special action to deliberately target a ship's engines? Call it Target their Engines! (duh) and make it a CQ 9 check. If successful you score minimal or even no hull damage or crew loss but knock an inch off the target's speed per successful hit. Fixable like any critcal, repairing the entire speed loss in one turn if the CQ check for damage control succeeds.

This would make boarding actions more useful as well as mass drivers for those who choose to use them, without accidentally blowing apart the target ship.

Anybody have any thoughts? Am I crazy or inspired?

 

[katadder]

well i did put something in another post about fighter crits as they are usually used for taking down engines and weapons, plus hits to the hull cause crew damage. so created a fighter crits table:

1-3: engines
4-5: weapons
6: crew

you could take this further and say fighters do crit hits with a -1 so can never get the top result. but the above table allows fighters to hit what they are supposed to but none of the stuff buried usually deep inside a hull.

 

[cordas]

The two things that most bug me about criticals are:

1. Precise, its just too damn powerful with doubling the chance of gaining a crit. This does vary across the races as it can make up for the lack of range weakness (and ap beam not sp ap) of the Abbai for instance, but in the case of the Minbari it can just be devastating. I have a couple of ideas on how I would chnage this but getting my mate with his Minbari fleet to agree to them would be impossible *LOL*.

2. Crew Crits, they are just insulting. Hey I just rolled a 6 on crew... oh you loose 2 / 4 woo..... Wish they had put some specials on this, like NO SA, Reduced effective crew quality (inc puting a forced roll in for automatics), Reduced ability to do damage control and no DC. This would make these crits actually mean something to anything apart from tiny ships.

 

[Burger]

1. Precise, its just too damn powerful with doubling the chance of gaining a crit. This does vary across the races as it can make up for the lack of range weakness (and ap beam not sp ap) of the Abbai for instance, but in the case of the Minbari it can just be devastating. I have a couple of ideas on how I would chnage this but getting my mate with his Minbari fleet to agree to them would be impossible *LOL*.

Tinashi: 4AD B/DD/P/SAP
Primus: 6AD B/DD/SAP

Teshlan: 2AD B/DD/P/SAP
Prefect: 3AD B/DD/SAP
Sulust: 4AD B/DD/SAP

I'd say they're pretty equally matched. Minbari have a severe lack of AD compared to other races, so those AD need to be better quality.

 

[H]

you hate Precise? you should have seen accurate. Personally, I wish it had stayed, made Vorlons and Shadows truly terrifying.

 

[philogara]

1. Precise, its just too damn powerful with doubling the chance of gaining a crit.

Like any modifier in this game, it is a problem because of the die size. Now a D10 system on the other hand..... (think I've been here before).

 

[Burger]

Like any modifier in this game, it is a problem because of the die size.

I've got some huge D6's.

They still get crits at roughly the same frequency as a small one.....

 

[H]

however, crits, personally, I don't see the current crit table as being too broken, sure, i laugh when someone does crew crit to a t'loth, you did what now, yeah whatever, bu the other crit tables seem fine, they represent the chances of war, a stray shot, that hits the one weakpoint, or somehow ignits the poweder chest, Crits "can" change a game, but your view that they kind of make tactics unimportant seems a bit flawed., With bad tactics, your going to get a lot less chance to crit, the enemy will swarm you dumoing their crits into you. as a Narn player, I mostly shunned anything tactical, just trying a steamroller approach, and lost, lots, recently tried variations of the hammer and anvil, and started winning, you could argue that maybe my crit rolling just got lucky, but as my last win was against vorlon, and I only had one precise weapon system, I can counter that. I just think, overall, crits balance out between sides. Minbari get some precise loving, the centauri get more dice. the Abbai get more dice than a bag full fo weasels, I really can't see any major need to change the crit tables.

 

[Chernobyl]

Its not the size of your dice, its how you roll them.

 

[Sulfurdown]

For my two cents, the problem I have with the crit table is that there is just as much chance for a Fire as there is for an Engines Disabled (as an example) which have drastically different impacts on the game. At least on the 1D6 crit tables they have the same chances. There are four distinct percentages of criticals on the table which to my mind mean that they should have roughly the same impact on a ship, but they don't.
11%
Power Relays Destroyed
Thrusters Damaged
-Same chance but the "Thrusters Damaged" has more then twice the impact.

8%
Capacitors Damaged
Targeting Systems

5.5%
Fire
Multiple Fires
Engines Disabled
Fuel System Ruptured
Reactor Gas Leak
-RGL does the same crew damage as MultiFire but with an added No SA

3%
- the rest of them. Which means Hull Breach and Reactor Implosion have the same chance of happening but, again, RI can have a much bigger impact.

Maybe a 2D6 or 3D6 chart would allow for more variance and better impact value. It wouldn't complicate the game in play since you just roll the dice and check the chart anyway, it would just change the probabilities of criticals.

{{Sidenote back to the Fighters, one could state that Precise gives a +1 to both the hit die and the dice rolled on the critical charts for capital ships and +1 to the hit die and a -1 to the dice rolled on the critical charts for fighters.}}

 

[TenaciousB]

Its not the size of your dice, its how you roll them.

or who u get to bless 'em - Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and the Pope won't return my calls!

 

[Burger]

Its not the size of your dice, its how you roll them.

or who u get to bless 'em - Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and the Pope won't return my calls!

I'll send them over, when they've finished doing mine

 

[locarno24]

I've always been a fan of voodoo curses, myself.


Yes! Bring Back Accurate! And keep the Shadow Ship at it's current statline!

Then you'll know what Armageddon is.....

 

[Geekybiker]

Ive always been bothered by the stronger crit effects.
the x-6 as you call them.

I dont mind the minus on speed, the minus on AD or the extra damage for most part. But some of the special effects are so debilitating that they might as well be dead. Whats worse is that you need a pretty good roll to fix any of these crits. I would reduce the CQ check by 1 so you can fix it 50% of the time. Perhaps also add something like for everyturn to spend trying to repair the crit, you get a +1 to your roll.

EG you get a no weapons crit. You lose weapons for a turn, and end of the next turn you repair on a 4+ (for cq 4) you roll a 3 and fail. Turn after that it becomes a 3+ etc etc.

Oh and I know it goes the other way, but please please give the crew chart more damage/crew or special effects. right now its the worst table you can possible roll on. Its like rolling a bulkhead for a critical. It does less damage/crew than other tables AND has no special effect now.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

EG you get a no weapons crit. You lose weapons for a turn, and end of the next turn you repair on a 4+ (for cq 4) you roll a 3 and fail. Turn after that it becomes a 3+ etc etc.

I don't remember this? Fixing critical hits gets easier each turn you roll for it???

Kremmen

 

[Silvereye]

It normally doesn't. GB was just making a suggestion on a possible tweak of things.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Oh, thanks for that. Sounds like a nice idea in theory though it is one more thing to keep track of.

 

[Arcadia]

And Reaverman’s Redundancy idea?

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20821

 

[katadder]

i think the redundancy could work, but it would be better if for each redundant box you could use to repair a crit instead so that it shows that you are rerouting systems etc instead of instant control. so the crit would effect you for a turn but when it comes to repairs cross of a box instead of rolling if you wish. also gives you more leeways in how you use the redundancy.