House rules for beam-less Centauri?

blackphoenix

Mongoose
So I got to thinking, with all of this talk of Centauri not using beams and AOG adding beams to the Primus, what would they be like without any beams period?

So I decided to try replacing the centauri beams with ion bolt style weapons, kinda like 5th season mentioned. Using the Rutarian as the base, here's what I came up with. Feel free to shoot me. LOL

I left the beam on the Morgrath since its based on tech from the League fleets. The following replace the current beam weapons.

Centurion:
Ion Cannon---24"---F---5AD---Double Damage, Precise

Dargan:
Ion Cannon---24"---F---5AD---Double Damage, Precise

Darkner:
Ion Cannon---18"---F---5AD---Double Damage, Precise

Octurion:
Ion Cannon---32"---F---12AD---AP, Double Damage, Precise
Ion Cannon---32"---A---4AD---AP, Double Damage, Precise

Primus:
Ion Cannon---24"---F---10AD---AP, Double Damage, Precise

Sulust:
Ion Cannon---18"---F---8AD---Double Damage, Precise
 
not bad, I'd love to see the Dilgar "masters of destruction" rule myself, with centauri ships pummelling foes with overwhelming amounts of ion cannon fire like in "the fall of night"
 
Lord David the Denied said:
I think you mean Aft for the Octurion's second ion cannon. Shouldn't they use plasma accelerators, anyway?

perhaps but the thing is "ion cannons" are one of the few weapons ever named in the show, yet never featured in the games.
Some people have interpreted ion cannons and plasma accelerators to be one in the same, others have said twin arrays are ion cannons. We don't really know of course!
 
Fixed the Aft listing for the Octurion.

I'd personally prefer weapons of different feel rather than special rules like the dilgar.

Double Damage and Precise for the Ion Cannon, and the heavier ships gaining AP.
 
blackphoenix said:
Fixed the Aft listing for the Octurion.

I'd personally prefer weapons of different feel rather than special rules like the dilgar.

Double Damage and Precise for the Ion Cannon, and the heavier ships gaining AP.

What I meant was had the Dilgar not got it and the Centauri had no lasers it'd have been ideal, lots of ifs and buts....

I can't see the rationale for precise though, these are rapid firing bursts of energy fired in saturation
 
I based it on the rutarian. Figured the Ions could be more likely to effect critical systems, kinda like how an ionic burst emine screws with special orders by temporarly disrupting systems.
 
It would be nice if each race had something that no other race had. Problem with taking away Centauri beams is they will have nothing that ignores interceptors so then you up the number of AD then races like the narn get absolute smashing cause of no interceptors. A way round it is have them ignore interceptors but can't reroll but then you still have raise the AD slighty to counter this.

I read on forums that the Dargan has a Chamelon suite, i thought they might give her stealth, raised her a priority lvl and maybe given her rutarians to represent that she is one more modern Cent vessels. Probably just wishful thinking.
 
I like the idea behind this, but I'm less convinced by the stats. Beams are the game's ultimate weapon, really, and to replace them with something and remain aproximately competitive, you had better make that something pretty spectacular.
Case in point, as already mentioned, the Dilgar; the wonderful Targrath doing 12AD of AP Double, going up to Triple on crits- and that at raid level. Now that is viable. In fact, it's downright vicious.
This lot, for their levels, lack hitting potential. Even when the dice don't flow, you still get a decent initial barrage with the beams because of their Super AP. I doubt most of these would land enough hits to make the Precise pay for itself. (It's a rule, not a physics term. In fact, a charged (ionised) particle beam in space would be nearly useless- the ions repel each other, you get smeg all energy density on target. It's just fluff text, don't sweat it.)
Go with Light, Medium and Heavy Ion Cannon, perhaps-
Light Ion Cannon; range 18, AP Precise
Medium Ion Cannon; range 24, AP Double Precise
Heavy Ion Cannon; range 36, Super AP Triple Precise.

How many dice of Heavy Ion Cannon would you need to match the killing power of, say, the Sharlin's forward beams? Assuming a similar target, call it a Warlock.
Average luck, ish, at 4's, 3AD hit. At 5's, 1 more AD hits. At 6, probably none. (fractions be damned.) Four hits, uninterceptable, doing one and maybe a second crit. Now that's actually a pretty poor result- sequences of eight to fifteen hits seem more common, although less probable they do turn up.
How many dice would I need to match that?
Assuming half would hit, to get 3 hits I need 6AD. Now, interceptors. They're a racing certainty to stop the first two hits, but after that, it gets more problematical. Say three. So I have to land six hits to get three in, and against a fifty percent hit rate to start with, that's 12AD.
'Overwhelming amounts'? Only just.
 
Target said:
It would be nice if each race had something that no other race had. Problem with taking away Centauri beams is they will have nothing that ignores interceptors so then you up the number of AD then races like the narn get absolute smashing cause of no interceptors. A way round it is have them ignore interceptors but can't reroll but then you still have raise the AD slighty to counter this.

I read on forums that the Dargan has a Chamelon suite, i thought they might give her stealth, raised her a priority lvl and maybe given her rutarians to represent that she is one more modern Cent vessels. Probably just wishful thinking.

not necessarily true, as Dilgar, Vree etc have high volumes of such fire

I did hope we'd get such a Dargan
 
Slightly Norse John said:
I like the idea behind this, but I'm less convinced by the stats....

...Go with Light, Medium and Heavy Ion Cannon, perhaps-
Light Ion Cannon; range 18, AP Precise
Medium Ion Cannon; range 24, AP Double Precise
Heavy Ion Cannon; range 36, Super AP Triple Precise....


I see everyone's point, I was just trying to avoid overpowering them from the start. Being conservative. ;)

I like the Light, Medium, and Heavy Ion Cannons, so maybe something like this? But I'm not sold on triple damage though.

Light Ion Cannon; range 18, AP and Precise
Medium Ion Cannon; range 24, AP, Double Damage, and Precise
Heavy Ion Cannon; range 36, Super AP, Double Damage, and Precise

Redoing the ships as follows...

Centurion:
Medium Ion Cannon---24"---F---6AD---AP, Double Damage, and Precise

Dargan:
Light Ion Cannon---18"---F---10AD---AP and Precise

Darkner:
Light Ion Cannon---18"---F---6AD---AP and Precise

Octurion:
Heavy Ion Cannon---36"---F---12AD---SAP, Double Damage, Precise
Heavy Ion Cannon---36"---A---4AD---SAP, Double Damage, Precise

Primus:
Medium Ion Cannon---24"---F---12AD---AP, Double Damage, Precise

Sulust:
Medium Ion Cannon---24"---F---8AD---AP, Double Damage, Precise
 
Nice idea, but as with anythign else you cant be sure of anythign till you playtest it!

I agree about not using tripple damage though. Triple Damage combined with precise has the potential to be hugely overpowering (1 decent crit with Triple damage can take alot of mid sized ships out of the game!).

I'd always thought of the Centauri's twin arrays and heavy arrays as the 'ionic explosive pulse weapons' they talk about in the show. AoG had them listed as particle weaponry but then again Ions ARE particles so....

(in fact neutral charged particles (ie particles that AREN'T Ions) would not be fireable (you would need some kind of charge on them to focus them with EM fields to use as a weapon). Now you could just blast them out of a tube like a belows I suppose if they werent charged but then your essentially just firing a cloud of boring old gas. Somehow I cant Centauri Wind Cannon taking off :p (which is not to say by REAL science that Ion weapons would be much better but you could at least use EM fields to accelerate the particles to stupidly high speed (similar to the way a rail gun works but with particles rather than chunks of metal at much higher speeds)
 
Ok, started off simple.
Just a Hyperion vs a Sulust.

The Sulust wins initiative.
Needing 4s because of AP, it gets 6 hits. The Hyperion interceptors manage to knock down 3 of those leaving 3 hits.

Being precise there are no bulkhead rolls, so far it's 6 points of damage.
One critical is rolled, and lands a 6/3 "Weapons Control" and takes 4 more damage and crew (doubled to 8) and looses one weapon arc. Hyperion is down to 10 damage and 16 crew with aft weapons lost.

Beacause of the overzealous Centauri player, he moved and had allowed the Hyperion to boresight.

Needing 3s with the Heavy Laser Cannons, it gets 4 initial hits, 3 secondary hits, 1 tertiary hit and none further. 8 hits with a full potential of 16 points of damage. Rolls, but comes up with 2 bulkheads and a single critical. Total of 14 points of damage and a critical of 4/1. One extra crew and the Sulust looses 1AD to all it's guns. The Sulust is down to 21 damage and 24 crew.


Sulust wins initiative again, Centauri player declares CAF! and moves within 7" of the Hyperion. Firing Twin Arrays first he scores 5 hits and Hyperion interceptors open fire. The Interceptors chew through the 5 hits, stopping 4 of them before being depleted. The remaining one scores a bulkhead hit, no damage. Now the Ion Cannon fires, with CAF! it scores 6 hits for 12 points of damage and then scored 3 criticals! The Hyperion is effectively destroyed at this point, but he rolls the criticals anyways.
3/4 (Reactor Gas Leak)
6/1 (Bridge Hit)
2/6 (Engines Disabled)


This was just a minor test, but I will try a larger battle soon.
 
Locutus, the way I always understood it (going back to Traveller) was that the actual accelerator tube, linear or cyclotron, take your pick (a cyclotron weapon could have some very interesting rules twists- variable stats, depending on how long you wind the beam up for?) worked on charged particles; to get a neutral particle beam, suitable for space combat, you fire positive ions, and neutralise them by passing them through an electric current at the muzzle end of the tube. On the other hand, charged particle beams seem to be necessary for in- atmosphere use; the charge interacts with the atmosphere, compressing the bolt back in on itself.
It's the neutron lasers and neutron cannon I'm really boggled by. There's always the Trek answer to the question of how they work- 'very well, thank you'- but, even so, how? Non- magnetic, perhaps, given Minbari tech, gravity wave accelerators? That would be evil. Fast neutrons are electromagnetically inert, so they only stop when they hit a nucleus- which would make them extremely difficult to defend against. Beam Super AP Precise? My god, it's true.
 
I'm going to try a 2pt Raid fleet next.

1x Dargan
2x Darkners

Any suggestions of what to pair it up against? Earth again?

Maybe...

1x Nova
2x Olympus
 
I think this is worthy of further consideration. I like the light, medium, heavy idea put forward earlier, but I think triple damage for the heavy version isn't too bad. The White Star's beam is triple damage, super AP and precise, and while only 1AD it can do a lot of damage with just a few hits. I think this would compensate for the loss of the beam trait for the Centauri's main weapon.

Some ships could still mount the plasma stream, giving you a beam weapon for use against interceptor-heavy fleets. What do people think?
 
Hrm........

TD on the Heavy version? I dunno really. The WS only has a single AD. against hull6 thats a 50% chance of doing nothing.

Personally i rate Precise to be nearly as good as DD. MAybe not quite. But defnitely eual the boost of going from DD to TD.

Beam is harder to fathom, never thought about it much. But id consider the Primus Medium Ion cannon a bit too much as a baseline replacement. But then again im used to be interceptorless, or simply suck at rolling them.

12 AD of AP, DD, Precise.....you lose the super, gain Precise and double the AD. Doesnt feel right. Yer sounds funny, but im not so sure.

But against a ceptorless ship, beam should be an ok loss for gaining precise. Against Hull 6 you compare 4 simply hits against 3 with precise. Its simply which are far more potent. Now about replacing the AD to represent the loss of AP. a 50% upshift should be ok.

The above only values interceptorless ships. How to compare it with ceptorships im not too sure. Unfortunately Centauri arent to heavy on fighters...although we get to see some of them on screen time and again....if the had them in ample supply we could fomr Centauri ceptordrain tactics. But even High interceptor number rarely block more than 3-4 hits. And if they block more, they just as rarely block less.

The Oct 12AD array seems too good. You replace Beam with Price AND double the number of AD.

I love the idea, but its hard to balance. But as always its vulnerable to houserule munchkinism. (With battletech you get a free buildsystem and the accompanying munchkin stuff free house ^^)
 
Numbers of AD are negotiable. I think the basic traits should be fixed. Say, AP, Precise for light; AP, Precise, Double Damage for medium and Super AP, Precise, Double Damage for heavy. What do you think?
 
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