Just hoping for some quick oversight on some house rules I was looking at playing around with. Essentially looking at how I can speed up the game and make (to me, at least) feel a little more slick without distorting things statistically too much.
I'm after a critical check on my logic that I shouldn't be distorting any of the relative capabilities of fleets too much.
1) Move-and-fire
I've seen several threads suggesting this, and keep coming back to it as a suggestion. It gets rid of the initiative sinking question, and encourages people to focus on their big ships and specialists (like scouts). The turn sequence as revised is:
Initiative
Player 1 moves fighters
Player 2 moves fighters
Dogfights and attacks (alternating)
Player 1 moves, declares special actions (in play till next time ship is activated), uses scout, and fires one ship
Player 2 moves, declares special actions (in play till next time ship is activated), uses scout, and fires one ship
[Repeat as necessary]
End phase - damage control, launch attack craft
The only arguments I've seen against it are:
a) Dilgar pentacons - yes, you lose a free initiative sink but this is more than made up for by the increased value of a larger squadron upper limit. 5 ships shooting in each step means getting a lot of damage in, very quickly.
b) 'Jumping' someone with breaching pods. Yes, you can move after another ship, launch pods and have them latch on and board before the ship next gets to move. But, you still get to intercept them with fighter cover and Anti-Fighter, and you can do this at the moment anyway against 90% of ships; yes, said ship gets to move, but for most ships you can predict a 6" radius bubble that said ship must be inside; you just drop the pods ahead of the enemy. Besides which, this trick requires you to be at extremely close range and to achieve anything meaningful will require a large number of pods - which means something with the Carrier trait - which are usually very ill suited for a plan based around 'fly to close range of an enemy warship'
c) Getting 'two consecutive goes' with a ship. Yes, it's possible. Examples given are a ship opening a jump point at the end of a turn, and then being the first ship activated on the following turn, coming through and firing, or coming off Close Blast Doors And Activate Defence Grid! or Intensify Defensive Fire!, shooting, then at the start of the next turn going straight back onto that special action. In order to do this, however, there are several requirements:
- You need a big ship (i.e. significantly above the priority level of the game) for this, or no-one really cares.
- You need to outnumber the enemy enough that you can go 'last' - which is difficult to achieve simultaneously with the previous requirement.
- You need to feel you can reliably win initiative.
- Any situation involving a jump point or terrain requires a set-up allowing this (suitable terrain on the board, enemy fleet deployed bundled up for a jump point attack).
- Going first means not doing anything else for the rest of the turn, which means at least a turn and potentially more like two (depending on when said ship is used the following turn) of the rest of the fleet acting without you getting to respond.
2) Damage Only
I understand the whole 'crew casualties' thing, but I much prefer only one damage stat; I don't mind two damage tracks where you have shields then damage, for example, as they work differently, but damage and crew always struck me as two damage tracks you cross off simultaneously. On a more 'fluffy' level, important crew are not spread equidistantly around the ship. Short of engineering, damage control central, the bridge and weapons control, casualties don't really matter that much, because if someone is killed when a gun turret is blown off....sucks to be them, but if the turret is gone we don't really need them anymore, do we? Equally, carriers and command ships tend to have higher crew scores - but tacticians and small craft technicians aren't going to make much difference to casualties amongst the 'core crew'.
Intention is therefore only to use the lower stat of the two as 'damage'.
In order not to skew the maths too much, though, I need to bear in mind that crew and damage are lost at different rates; the critical table means that crew is killed faster, varying from 4.2% faster for weapons with the Double Damage trait up to 6.4% faster for Precise or Masters of Destruction weapons without it. As an average, I was going to say that crew is considered to die 5% faster, so if a ship's crew total, reduced to 95%, is lower, use that (and crew threshold).
Crippled rules are used in each case, and Flight Computer stops crippled rather than skeleton crew (assuming it's not lost).
3) Single D6 critical table
This is something that I think might be nice, but I'm not sure how to do per se.
The reason is that if I get 5+ criticals from a single volley of fire (I'm looking at you, Apollo squadron), then it wouldn't half be simple if I could pick those dice up, and roll them as a batch, instead of having to roll them individually. Equally, 6 critical results are easier to remember without going back and forth in my increasingly disintigrating rulebook.
The thing that's required is ensuring that the average 'extra damage' and fires, are essentially the same. (~1.7 and 0.8 respectively)
D6
1-Engines (Renamed as Thrusters to differentiate)
2-Engines
3-Reactor
4-Weapons
5-Crew Compartments
6-Vital Systems
For an average of 1.7 extra damage, that works out as 10-and-a-bit extra damage split between the results. The best way to get the 'and-a-bit' is a D6, which is effectively 3.5, which belongs with vital systems. I then parcelled out the extra damage roughly as I thought it should be - reactor and crew got 2 (since they imply deeply penetrating internal hits) whilst weapons and engines only got 1 (since they tend to be surface features)
D6
1-Thrusters - 1 Damage
2-Engines - 1 Damage
3-Reactor - 2 Damage
4-Weapons - 1 Damage
5-Crew Compartments - 2 Damage
6-Vital Systems - D6 Damage.
My concern was that this didn't allow the proper 'earth-shattering ka-boom' - even with Double Damage, d6 extra isn't that scary. Hence, I moved some about a bit, to make a vital-systems-double-6 a lot nastier.
D6
1-Thrusters - 0 Damage
2-Engines - 1 Damage
3-Reactor - 2 Damage
4-Weapons - 1 Damage
5-Crew Compartments - 2 Damage
6-Vital Systems - D6 Damage. Roll a second D6 as well if the first result is a 6.
Fires were similar; an average of 0.8-and-a-bit fires started per critical means that 'one of every critical' on a D6 table should start 5 fires. I put the reactor as starting a fire (fusion plasma + electricity+ internal compartments), and the weapons and vital systems as starting D3. Engines are essentially redirecting reactor energy so don't get fires of their own, and crew compartment hits are as likely to cause fire-extinguishing decompression as to start fires (net zero).
D6
1-Thrusters - 0 Damage
2-Engines - 1 Damage
3-Reactor - 2 Damage, 1 Fire Starts
4-Weapons - 1 Damage, D3 Fires Start
5-Crew Compartments - 2 Damage
6-Vital Systems - D6 Damage, D3 Fires Start. Roll a second D6 for damage as well if the first result is a 6.
The last element is the critical 'effect' - assuming you've overcome a ship's redundancy. This is probably the trickiest.
Engines/Thrusters: A speed penalty, obviously. I was going to suggest -D3" speed, and adrift if reduced to less than half speed (yes, that does mean adrift if you take an engine critical when already crippled).
Reactor: Not sure on this one. A penalty that hits both engines and general weapons as the power grid gets messed up is what's needed. How you do that without being worse than the Engines and Weapons crit is something I'm not sure of. -1 Speed and something akin to 4+ to fire (but not as bad - 3+, maybe 2+ initially , but getting worse with multiple reactor criticals?)
Weapons: -D6 AD on a random weapon on the arc you're firing into(including turrets in all and boresight weapons in fore/aft if present). If there are no weapons in the arc you're shooting at, randomly select an arc.
Firstly, I would like shooting into a ship's port side to hit the port broadside. It just makes sense. Secondly, there's no 'magic bullet' that takes out an entire arc of fire; one hit taking out a 3 AD heavy laser (one of an Omega's two) I can see, but one hit taking out all seven of a Nova's broadside turrets seems unlikely without spontaneously removing about 1/3 of the ship's hull (in which case you've done enough damage that a single critical roll is the least of your worries); you're more likely to take out one of them (again, 2-3 AD). I thought -D6 AD on a random weapon rather than D3; not sure if that might be a bit harsh, but I suppose it's still only an average loss of 3-4AD or so - it's only going to entirely disable a weapon on a patrol priority ship unless it's a weapon with very few AD (I.E a particle cannon, slicer beam or whatever) - the 'Oh Crud' moment is when you lose a G'Quan's heavy laser.
Crew: Not sure. I was going to suggest decreasing CQ by 1, so Concentrate All Fire! , Scramble Scramble! , Intensify Defensive Fire!, and so on get much harder, as does damage control, and Scout use, and an under-crewed ship is easier to ram and more likely to surrender.
Vital Systems: Losing a random trait seems simplest. I've never liked "No Special Actions" or "No Damage Control" hits.
I'm after a critical check on my logic that I shouldn't be distorting any of the relative capabilities of fleets too much.
1) Move-and-fire
I've seen several threads suggesting this, and keep coming back to it as a suggestion. It gets rid of the initiative sinking question, and encourages people to focus on their big ships and specialists (like scouts). The turn sequence as revised is:
Initiative
Player 1 moves fighters
Player 2 moves fighters
Dogfights and attacks (alternating)
Player 1 moves, declares special actions (in play till next time ship is activated), uses scout, and fires one ship
Player 2 moves, declares special actions (in play till next time ship is activated), uses scout, and fires one ship
[Repeat as necessary]
End phase - damage control, launch attack craft
The only arguments I've seen against it are:
a) Dilgar pentacons - yes, you lose a free initiative sink but this is more than made up for by the increased value of a larger squadron upper limit. 5 ships shooting in each step means getting a lot of damage in, very quickly.
b) 'Jumping' someone with breaching pods. Yes, you can move after another ship, launch pods and have them latch on and board before the ship next gets to move. But, you still get to intercept them with fighter cover and Anti-Fighter, and you can do this at the moment anyway against 90% of ships; yes, said ship gets to move, but for most ships you can predict a 6" radius bubble that said ship must be inside; you just drop the pods ahead of the enemy. Besides which, this trick requires you to be at extremely close range and to achieve anything meaningful will require a large number of pods - which means something with the Carrier trait - which are usually very ill suited for a plan based around 'fly to close range of an enemy warship'
c) Getting 'two consecutive goes' with a ship. Yes, it's possible. Examples given are a ship opening a jump point at the end of a turn, and then being the first ship activated on the following turn, coming through and firing, or coming off Close Blast Doors And Activate Defence Grid! or Intensify Defensive Fire!, shooting, then at the start of the next turn going straight back onto that special action. In order to do this, however, there are several requirements:
- You need a big ship (i.e. significantly above the priority level of the game) for this, or no-one really cares.
- You need to outnumber the enemy enough that you can go 'last' - which is difficult to achieve simultaneously with the previous requirement.
- You need to feel you can reliably win initiative.
- Any situation involving a jump point or terrain requires a set-up allowing this (suitable terrain on the board, enemy fleet deployed bundled up for a jump point attack).
- Going first means not doing anything else for the rest of the turn, which means at least a turn and potentially more like two (depending on when said ship is used the following turn) of the rest of the fleet acting without you getting to respond.
2) Damage Only
I understand the whole 'crew casualties' thing, but I much prefer only one damage stat; I don't mind two damage tracks where you have shields then damage, for example, as they work differently, but damage and crew always struck me as two damage tracks you cross off simultaneously. On a more 'fluffy' level, important crew are not spread equidistantly around the ship. Short of engineering, damage control central, the bridge and weapons control, casualties don't really matter that much, because if someone is killed when a gun turret is blown off....sucks to be them, but if the turret is gone we don't really need them anymore, do we? Equally, carriers and command ships tend to have higher crew scores - but tacticians and small craft technicians aren't going to make much difference to casualties amongst the 'core crew'.
Intention is therefore only to use the lower stat of the two as 'damage'.
In order not to skew the maths too much, though, I need to bear in mind that crew and damage are lost at different rates; the critical table means that crew is killed faster, varying from 4.2% faster for weapons with the Double Damage trait up to 6.4% faster for Precise or Masters of Destruction weapons without it. As an average, I was going to say that crew is considered to die 5% faster, so if a ship's crew total, reduced to 95%, is lower, use that (and crew threshold).
Crippled rules are used in each case, and Flight Computer stops crippled rather than skeleton crew (assuming it's not lost).
3) Single D6 critical table
This is something that I think might be nice, but I'm not sure how to do per se.
The reason is that if I get 5+ criticals from a single volley of fire (I'm looking at you, Apollo squadron), then it wouldn't half be simple if I could pick those dice up, and roll them as a batch, instead of having to roll them individually. Equally, 6 critical results are easier to remember without going back and forth in my increasingly disintigrating rulebook.
The thing that's required is ensuring that the average 'extra damage' and fires, are essentially the same. (~1.7 and 0.8 respectively)
D6
1-Engines (Renamed as Thrusters to differentiate)
2-Engines
3-Reactor
4-Weapons
5-Crew Compartments
6-Vital Systems
For an average of 1.7 extra damage, that works out as 10-and-a-bit extra damage split between the results. The best way to get the 'and-a-bit' is a D6, which is effectively 3.5, which belongs with vital systems. I then parcelled out the extra damage roughly as I thought it should be - reactor and crew got 2 (since they imply deeply penetrating internal hits) whilst weapons and engines only got 1 (since they tend to be surface features)
D6
1-Thrusters - 1 Damage
2-Engines - 1 Damage
3-Reactor - 2 Damage
4-Weapons - 1 Damage
5-Crew Compartments - 2 Damage
6-Vital Systems - D6 Damage.
My concern was that this didn't allow the proper 'earth-shattering ka-boom' - even with Double Damage, d6 extra isn't that scary. Hence, I moved some about a bit, to make a vital-systems-double-6 a lot nastier.
D6
1-Thrusters - 0 Damage
2-Engines - 1 Damage
3-Reactor - 2 Damage
4-Weapons - 1 Damage
5-Crew Compartments - 2 Damage
6-Vital Systems - D6 Damage. Roll a second D6 as well if the first result is a 6.
Fires were similar; an average of 0.8-and-a-bit fires started per critical means that 'one of every critical' on a D6 table should start 5 fires. I put the reactor as starting a fire (fusion plasma + electricity+ internal compartments), and the weapons and vital systems as starting D3. Engines are essentially redirecting reactor energy so don't get fires of their own, and crew compartment hits are as likely to cause fire-extinguishing decompression as to start fires (net zero).
D6
1-Thrusters - 0 Damage
2-Engines - 1 Damage
3-Reactor - 2 Damage, 1 Fire Starts
4-Weapons - 1 Damage, D3 Fires Start
5-Crew Compartments - 2 Damage
6-Vital Systems - D6 Damage, D3 Fires Start. Roll a second D6 for damage as well if the first result is a 6.
The last element is the critical 'effect' - assuming you've overcome a ship's redundancy. This is probably the trickiest.
Engines/Thrusters: A speed penalty, obviously. I was going to suggest -D3" speed, and adrift if reduced to less than half speed (yes, that does mean adrift if you take an engine critical when already crippled).
Reactor: Not sure on this one. A penalty that hits both engines and general weapons as the power grid gets messed up is what's needed. How you do that without being worse than the Engines and Weapons crit is something I'm not sure of. -1 Speed and something akin to 4+ to fire (but not as bad - 3+, maybe 2+ initially , but getting worse with multiple reactor criticals?)
Weapons: -D6 AD on a random weapon on the arc you're firing into(including turrets in all and boresight weapons in fore/aft if present). If there are no weapons in the arc you're shooting at, randomly select an arc.
Firstly, I would like shooting into a ship's port side to hit the port broadside. It just makes sense. Secondly, there's no 'magic bullet' that takes out an entire arc of fire; one hit taking out a 3 AD heavy laser (one of an Omega's two) I can see, but one hit taking out all seven of a Nova's broadside turrets seems unlikely without spontaneously removing about 1/3 of the ship's hull (in which case you've done enough damage that a single critical roll is the least of your worries); you're more likely to take out one of them (again, 2-3 AD). I thought -D6 AD on a random weapon rather than D3; not sure if that might be a bit harsh, but I suppose it's still only an average loss of 3-4AD or so - it's only going to entirely disable a weapon on a patrol priority ship unless it's a weapon with very few AD (I.E a particle cannon, slicer beam or whatever) - the 'Oh Crud' moment is when you lose a G'Quan's heavy laser.
Crew: Not sure. I was going to suggest decreasing CQ by 1, so Concentrate All Fire! , Scramble Scramble! , Intensify Defensive Fire!, and so on get much harder, as does damage control, and Scout use, and an under-crewed ship is easier to ram and more likely to surrender.
Vital Systems: Losing a random trait seems simplest. I've never liked "No Special Actions" or "No Damage Control" hits.
