House Rules compilation

[nekomata fuyu]

My prefered "redundancy" (AKA durability) versions are the ones that allow the ship to ignore a proportion of critical effects, rather than definitely ignoring the first X criticals before the ship turns back to toilet paper.
Whether or not this is done by giving the ship a durability save or by incoming criticals having to roll and equal/beat a durability stat is mostly unimportant to me.

One houserule that we use is that when you get allied ships from an Other Duty roll, you get a skirmish point to spend on the appropriate allies rather than just getting one ship of up to skimish level.

 

[Juzza]

whats needed is a pts system per ship like every other game out there then the game will balance out better between the fleets. Then nothing would need nerfing or buffing or rules changes which is just a can of worms IMHO

just my 2 cents

 

[Da Boss]

unless its the vital one, then as you say the g'quan has 4 soaks for this and you hope it would be one of those.

Which reminds me of something I wanted to add to this thread!

Back to proposed house rules!

1. Vital crits should be repairable, though perhaps at CQ10
2. "No SA" crit effect should not apply to "All hands on deck"
3. Permanent "No DC" should be dropped entirely, or reduced to a DC -ve modifier.

Regards,

Dave

these are already in as a option

 

[Da Boss]

My prefered "redundancy" (AKA durability) versions are the ones that allow the ship to ignore a proportion of critical effects, rather than definitely ignoring the first X criticals before the ship turns back to toilet paper.
Whether or not this is done by giving the ship a durability save or by incoming criticals having to roll and equal/beat a durability stat is mostly unimportant to me.

One houserule that we use is that when you get allied ships from an Other Duty roll, you get a skirmish point to spend on the appropriate allies rather than just getting one ship of up to skimish level.

can you give me a bit more detail on how that works?

can't see any issues with your version of the allied ship rule

 

[Banichi]

I think Target's 'Close blast doors' house rule is damn site better than the current RAW one. Where 1s and 2s roled on the damage table result in bulkhead hits, and a 6 only gives you the chance of a crit on a further role of a 4+. Precise weapons just roll of table as normal, no +1 bonus. (I'm not actually sure if thats it exactly, I can't find the thread. But I'm pretty sure thats the gist of it)

It save the time of having to count up, and role all those freaking dice at the end of the turn. And in our groups eyes, catches the feeling of closing blast door better than the current rule.

 

[Dave G]

We use proportional reduction of speed crits.
We don't use redundancy, but this instead:

House rule 1:
Crits can be repaired at the end of the move they are inflicted.

House rule 2:
Patrol level ships have no damage control parties.
Skirmish & Raid ships have 1 damage control party.
Battle & War ships have 2 damage control parties.
Armageddon ships have 3 damage control parties.

Each damage control party can attempt to repair 1 crit per turn.

All "No SA" crits kill one of the damage control parties instead.

"All hands on deck" adds 1 to the number of damage control parties, and improves the chance of fixing a crit.

House rule 3:
Patrol & Skirmish level ships have 1 bridge position.
Raid & Battle level ships have 2 bridge positions.
War & Armageddon level ships have 3 bridge positions.

All "Bridge hit" crits knock out one of the bridge positions, kill the admiral on 4+, reduce any command bonus & (fleet) carrier bonus by 1.

 

[KennyBoy]

Presently I am officially part of "Gregs Crew"

What do you mean Presently? Are you planning to defect to the Rabbits? :lol:

 

[Burger]

House rule 2:
Patrol level ships have no damage control parties.
Skirmish & Raid ships have 1 damage control party.
Battle & War ships have 2 damage control parties.
Armageddon ships have 3 damage control parties.

Each damage control party can attempt to repair 1 crit per turn.

All "No SA" crits kill one of the damage control parties instead.

"All hands on deck" adds 1 to the number of damage control parties, and improves the chance of fixing a crit.

I really like this one! Though I think I'd be tempted to increase War to 3 and Armageddon to 4...

 

[H]

hey, we rabbits have our own t-shirts (ok I do, and i think Hash has, but the othersd might not have bought one) and I am only an honourary rabbit, me living 300 miles away from rabbit HQ!

 

[greenboy]

I think Target's 'Close blast doors' house rule is damn site better than the current RAW one. Where 1s and 2s roled on the damage table result in bulkhead hits, and a 6 only gives you the chance of a crit on a further role of a 4+. Precise weapons just roll of table as normal, no +1 bonus. (I'm not actually sure if thats it exactly, I can't find the thread. But I'm pretty sure thats the gist of it)

It save the time of having to count up, and role all those freaking dice at the end of the turn. And in our groups eyes, catches the feeling of closing blast door better than the current rule.

I like this rule alot

 

[silashand]

I think Target's 'Close blast doors' house rule is damn site better than the current RAW one.

It save the time of having to count up, and role all those freaking dice at the end of the turn. And in our groups eyes, catches the feeling of closing blast door better than the current rule.

Agreed. I do admit to liking this version a lot better than the current one.

BTW Da Boss, are you planning on putting up that compilation doc you promised or did I miss it somewhere in the thread?

Cheers, Gary

 

[Da Boss]

yep - but fun things keep being thrown up here - which was the point of the thread 8) - hopefully up at the end of thee week if I get time to work on it tommorow night

 

[Dave G]

Dave G wrote:
House rule 2:
Patrol level ships have no damage control parties.
Skirmish & Raid ships have 1 damage control party.
Battle & War ships have 2 damage control parties.
Armageddon ships have 3 damage control parties.

Each damage control party can attempt to repair 1 crit per turn.

All "No SA" crits kill one of the damage control parties instead.

"All hands on deck" adds 1 to the number of damage control parties, and improves the chance of fixing a crit.

I really like this one! Though I think I'd be tempted to increase War to 3 and Armageddon to 4...

In combination with being able to repair crits at the end of the move they are inflicted increasing to 3 for War and 4 for Armageddon gives them a bit too much, in my opinion.
But try it and see, you could be right.

The end result of this is that the bigger ships suffer the same number of crits as presently, but have a much better chance of fixing them.
The "end of same move repair" could be seen as a sort of redundancy, re-routing power lines or whatever to provide a rapid fix.

 

[Ripple]

Giving a plus one to both the altered close blast doors and the damage control parties.

Does the alteration to All Hands to Deck effectively mean that your last damage control party can never be killed? If so I especially like that.

Don't really like the bridge one... though do like the idea of knocking out command (carrier is harder to see).

Ripple

 

[Foxmeister]

I'm not certain that allowing crits to be repaired on the turn they occurred is particularly desirable from a game point of view.

As it is, even the Shadows and Vorlons have to suffer crit effects for 1 full turn - what are you going to do with them? If they auto-fix on the turn they've been inflicted, what's the point? However, if they have to wait, they are being unfairly penalized because everyone else would get a chance to fix crits, whereas they have to wait - so much for "Redundant Systems"!

I don't like the crit system in ACTA much, but my issue with them is that they are just too frequent in the game, and that it currently unfairly penalizes spending FAPs on larger ships over smaller ones. However, I think if you've taken a crit, you should have to suffer it for at least a full turn as you do now.

Regards,

Dave

 

[nekomata fuyu]

My prefered "redundancy" (AKA durability) versions are the ones that allow the ship to ignore a proportion of critical effects, rather than definitely ignoring the first X criticals before the ship turns back to toilet paper.
Whether or not this is done by giving the ship a durability save or by incoming criticals having to roll and equal/beat a durability stat is mostly unimportant to me.

can you give me a bit more detail on how that works?

Option 1:
Ships gain a redundancy save (this can either be allocated by PL or by hull points - this part isn't important to the core of the idea). Whenever the ship suffers a critical, they can ignore the effects (but not the damage) of the critical by rolling equal or higher to the save value.

Option 2:
Ships gain a redundancy stat, which is treated in a similar way to the hull stat. For each critical threat that a ship scores on the target, they must roll a dice and score equal to or higher than the redundancy score of the target in order to convert the threat into a critical.


As an extra option for option 1, you can change CBD so that it isn't a save against damage, but instead improves the ship's redundancy score. If a ship doesn't have a redundancy score, it can gain one using CBD. (this mirrors Stealth/Run Silent)


On a separate note, I'm currently redoing the campaign system with some friends. I'll be posting that up separately when we've made more progress. Key features will be that you have more options than to just try and take over targets, the missions fought will be more representative of what you're trying to achieve, and campaigns won't be decided by 1 or 2 key targets.

 

[l33tpenguin]

I'll have to find where I hide my in progress house rules.

Its... somewhere...

 

[AdrianH]

A house rule which we play, doesn't affect the game much but is just because that's the way it seems to happen on TV:

When a Shadow ship dies, it withers, crumples and disintegrates. A dead Shadow ship does not roll on the usual table to see if it runs adrift, is a burning hulk or explodes; it is simply removed from the game.

 

[Dave G]

I'm not certain that allowing crits to be repaired on the turn they occurred is particularly desirable from a game point of view.

The way we play it is that Crits can be repaired in the move they are suffered.
The major plus point on this, for us, is that it removes the need to keep track of which crits are this move, and which ones are old. In large games, with the wine/beer/spirits flowing this can easily get lost.

The other arguments fall into (IMO) roughly balanced point.
I was going to call them pros and cons, but after reading through them I realised that each could be either a pro or a con depending on point of view.
1) The overall effect of crits is reduced if there is the potential to repair them at the end of the move they are inflicted.
2) Because (in our system) the number of crits that can be attempted to be repaired is dependant on ship level the larger ships are given an boost.
3) Crew quality becomes more important, as the better quality crews are better able to maintain/repair crits before they have a major impact on the ship.
4) It's irritating to score a crit, and then see it repaired before it really has an impact, unless it happens to be one of your own ships (although the extra damage/crew loss doesn't go away).
5) Does the ability to try and repair crits in the same turn balance/overbalance things in favour of the big boys/high quality ships?

As it is, even the Shadows and Vorlons have to suffer crit effects for 1 full turn - what are you going to do with them? If they auto-fix on the turn they've been inflicted, what's the point? However, if they have to wait, they are being unfairly penalized because everyone else would get a chance to fix crits, whereas they have to wait - so much for "Redundant Systems"!

For the Vorlon/Shadow special ability to repair crits we have our own "house rule", which I didn't include in order to keep the original post down to the essence of the solution.
Vorlon/Shadow ships can attempt to repair all and any crits, in the turn they are suffered and any subsequent turns, with a +2 modifier on all repair attempts.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

A house rule which we play, doesn't affect the game much but is just because that's the way it seems to happen on TV:

When a Shadow ship dies, it withers, crumples and disintegrates. A dead Shadow ship does not roll on the usual table to see if it runs adrift, is a burning hulk or explodes; it is simply removed from the game.

I'm pretty certain that was the rule in 1st edition and got scrapped for some reason in 2nd...