Idear for swarm fleet "problem"

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

I just thougt about that ships could get an Armour Value. With this i mean an amount of damage a ship can take before critical hits are possible at all.
Something which would bigger ships would have a lot more of than smaller ships.
I had the idear as i remembered the old Battletech game, where your mechs had Armour damage before you could get through to the internal systems.

I believe this could help to make the battle and above lvl ships more competive compared to the little ones.

Exactly how much Armour would be needed is a matter of playtesting then.
And no i dont think that hull 6 is enough... that is something small ships have as well sometimes.

Sorry if that was brought up already someday and is old news..

What do you think?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

This idea will get shot down in flames by the book-keeping-is-evil brigade. Heaven forbid we might add a little complexity to the game in the interest of fixing a perceived problem...

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

Thanks for your answer which really made me laugh well said i guess.
But what would be complicated about having some more boxes before "real" damage is dealt?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Nothing, that's my point. People were moaning the seperate crew and damage tracks were too much book-keeping at one stage... :roll:

I actually like this idea, although I think the Redundancy X trait proposal was a simpler and faster fix. Either would work, however, and achieve the same end result with about the same amount of extra book-keeping.

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

Redundant systems would bee cool as well, but then there should be an amount of redundant systems for every system there is on the ship. Which then would be a little more complicated then armour i guess. But in the end both idears would help.

 

[inq101]

Or maybe a damage threshold where you have to do X damage before you have a real chance of hitting something important.

edit
Means fighters have no chance of doing real damage so a bad idea.

I think the armor idea has potential, but I do like the fact that 1 lucky critical can kill or disable most ships.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Or maybe a damage threshold where you have to do X damage before you have a real chance of hitting something important.

edit
Means fighters have no chance of doing real damage so a bad idea.

I think the armor idea has potential, but I do like the fact that 1 lucky critical can kill or disable most ships.

That's exactly our learned colleague suggested. A damage threshold before any criticals can be suffered is just another way of wording his suggestion.

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

Fighters still can do damage... They can chip away the armour and once its gone they can do crits. But fighters will lose effect against big ships but they shouldnt kill an armoured Battleship in one shot anyway (at least in my opinion).
Oh and i personally dont like the one shot "Armageddon" down effect at all ^^ because that usually ends the game real quick .

 

[inq101]

I meant on every shot, not on the entire vessel.

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

@inq101
Im sorry but i dont understand what you mean. Would you mind to explain it?

 

[Admiral Phlop]

I think this a great idea. It would help solve alot of the complaints about the one-shot kill. The paperwork would be negligible. The people that it would affect the most would be Burger and Chernobyl, as their print out sheets would have to be changed. As a house rule, this is something I will have to bring up with our gaming group.

 

[inq101]

Something along the lines of each weapon system needs to do X damage to be able to cause any critical effects. If it causes damage below that threshold any critical hits cause no special affect. e.g. an engine crit would cause extra damage, but would not slow the vessel or need to be repaired. The big problem with this idea is fighters that can get in close and target vital systems wouldn't be able to cause critical hits.

Another option would be modifiers to the crit table. Something like -1 for every 10 points of hull a ship has (bigger ship, more redundant systems), +1 if under 4" range (easier to target at close range), +1 for every 10 points of damage caused, etc., etc. A bit more maths to slow down the game, but it could work.

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

@inq101

That would indeed be complicated.. at least compared to my idea. I just mean something like: First 30 Points of Damage to a Victory are Armour and can cause no criticals (for example).

 

[Karhedron]

I like the idea of big ships being more resistant to crits in principle, the question is wether this is the right right approach. Another set of thresholds would be OK I guess but doesn't quite hit the spot for me.

Maybe a new trait, Redundancy X. A ship can ignore the effects (but not extra damage) of the first X criticals it suffers in a game. This has the disadvantage of being an extra trait to keep track of but seems better to me than splodging another set of thresholds ontop of the existing crippled/skeleton ones.

Maybe restrict the Redundancy trait to Battle PL and higher ships. Some of the advanced ships that are currently seen as being a bit underpowered could be given fairly high Redundancy scores to represent all the adnaced tech under the hood (Nemesis springs to mind).

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

@Karhedron
Actually both approaches are ok i think.
The redundancy sys is just more random and gives more power to small damage weapons as the armour aproach.
Since armour has to be shot away, which means more powerfull weapons will deal with that quicker than small weapons.
So in the redundancy approach many small weapons will still be better than will still be better than one hard hitting. Because of the more AD from the small weapons.
Maybe im wrong there but thats my line of thinking right now.

 

[akenatum]

That "armour" factor is a great idea, you and it's not really all that difficult to track after all think of the shadow ships and there physical disruption from beam weapons.

one question is would it be the first (x) damage a game or turn? because if it's game i'd suggest high values that drop off instead of a set ammount per turn which is what i think your suggesting...

for people with stat cards they could just recolour the first x boxes on the little damage chart's they have to ships for crit immune damage the drops to normal "critabe" colour then into the red for the crippled...

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

@akenatum
I meant a set value of Damage per ship type per game.
For example a ship goes into the battle with 100 damage points in total and 30 of that are the armour value. So till that 30 points are chipped away from the ship, it can take no criticals because the hits only scratch on the plates ^^.
And yes the normal damage tables wouldnt change you just had to mark which part is armour. Pretty easy to do i believe.
You just have to test which amount of armour achieves balance... by belly i would say 1/5 for Battle, 1/4 for War and 1/3 for Armageddon... for smaller ships less id say but since their damage gets smaller as well it shouldnt drop much under 1/6.
But those numbers are totally untested.

 

[Sulfurdown]

Critical Threshold at 66% of Damage Track?

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

Armour value of Armageddon lvl ship 33% of damage value.

So a Victory would have 110 total of which the first 33% are armour and the other 66% would work normal (insert any value you like ^^) its just an example.

 

[akenatum]

I know it would be a night mare to work out but you would probably want certain races and ships to have more than the normal guidlines and others to have less...

but for play testing purposes your sugested fractions look like they would be good targets to start with.