Critical Hits on Large Ships - February Update

[Nerhesi]

Again - looks great.

Minor update required as your ability to be crit by a torpedo or missile isn't really based on bay size. Because you're being hit by a Salvo, not a bay. So Matt, we have 2 simple options:

Option A:
Missiles can only crit up ships Under 100,000 tons.
(Torps can crit anything of course)

Option B:
Salvos of 100 missiles (50 torps) are required to crit ships between 10,000 and 100,000 tons.
Salvos of 500 missiles (250 torps) are requird to crit ships over 100,000 tons.

Or something like that. Depends on how you imagine missiles going boom-boom and hurting a ship.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A 100 kt ship might have 500 - 1000 Engineers + Maintenance. It can attempt to repair all crits every action step. Only high severity crits will be a problem. A few crits every round will just be repaired before next round starts and not be a noticeable problem.

It's only a problem if you receive say 20 or more crits per round and that's not likely with the new limitations.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Is this a good summary of the phases of Crits and Repairs?

Round 1, ship gets hit and gets Criticals, Severity 1 for example. Minuses to various systems assessed. End of round.

Round 2, damaged ship continues to fight, taking into account the minuses for that round. Engineers attempt to repair the damaged systems. Severity for this round is still at a 1
Ship is damaged again in the same spot, Severity 1 Critical, upgraded to 2. The repairs to the system have to be started again (pg 161). Severity now level 2. End of Round

Round 3 Ship fights, Level 2 Crits in effect. Engineers attempt to repair. No Critical taken to the system this round. They succeed. (despite the -2 to the Roll from the Severity of the Crit) and the system is repaired. End of round.

So a Crit in one round impacts the ship for the next round, damage cannot be repaired in the same round it occurs? I say this because the repair attempt takes 1 round to perform, so six minutes of space combat. Given that the moving, attacking, evading, and damage took up some time to actually cause the damage, it cannot be fixed in less than a full round. So Action step to Action step for the full phase of time. IMTU is means that anyway. Otherwise you end up having Wolverine ships that never get hurt.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

No,

Phase 1: Manœuvre
Phase 2: Combat
Phase 3: Action Phase, e.g. Repairs

So Repairs will happen immediately after Combat (when damage is incurred). If successful the damage is gone before the next Round starts.

 

[PsiTraveller]

My issue with that summary is that the damage is being repaired faster than a round. There seems to be no time needed to repair a system. The damage done has no strategic or tactical value if you have engineers on hand. Buy them all toolkits and you cannot fail. To me the harsher, and more realistic is at least one round of repair.

House ruled IMTU anyway, but thanks for the fast reply and clarification.

 

[Nerhesi]

A 100 kt ship might have 500 - 1000 Engineers + Maintenance. It can attempt to repair all crits every action step. Only high severity crits will be a problem. A few crits every round will just be repaired before next round starts and not be a noticeable problem.

Those engineer numbers will be fixed of course as it's based on the "woops" that made us miss the actual crew #s chart for big ships. Even if you look at a 100kton ship with 50 or 100 engineers - that isn't going to help.
If you get hit by a salvo of 1000 missiles - sure no problem.

It's only a problem if you receive say 20 or more crits per round and that's not likely with the new limitations.

If that same salvo comes from a lot of ships launching 20 missile salvos, that is 50 possible crits. It has nothing to do with the damage they do. You will instantly get some systems annhilated from concurrent criticals to the same system. So even though you're taking 1-severity criticals, you've actually just got your powerplant destroyed despite taking something like 10% hull damage for example.

So for missiles and torps, like we've done for other weapons, it should come down to the force of that impact within a limited time. For direct fire weapons, it's easy to say bays... for missiles and torps, it should be by salvo size or seperate missile and torp type. I think the second method if best because it gives even more benefits to Torpedos (and they need it due to massive difference in launch rate)

 

[Chas]

There should be some time delay here. You can't rush off to the cargo hold and grab a spare set of capacitors and rig them up in an instant.

It is important because right now it is the only advantage big ships get over small. And I'm not sure how important it is in the bigger picture with the crit / 10% damage. If turret missiles are doing enough damage you're going to be taking crits in any event.

What is the general ratio of crits made under dice attacks? It's not something I've ever looked at...

 

[MongooseMatt]

Minor update required as your ability to be crit by a torpedo or missile isn't really based on bay size. Because you're being hit by a Salvo, not a bay.

I was thinking about this while tapping that rule out, and I am kinda okay with how things stand - a salvo launched by a small or medium bay cannot crit a 100+k ship. It... works, and keeps things simple. It does not help a salvo launched by a hundred triple turrets, but that just gives a bigger nod to bays (especially large ones), which we can say is down to a better co-ordinated launch from one point rather than across the entire ship.