Idear for swarm fleet "problem"

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

@akenatum
Thats true, some races build tougher ships than others, but most of that is reflected in the damage value anyway. But if one likes he can do that.. its not like i own the rights on that idear .
And yes the numbers are just a first idear for testing.

 

[Ripple]

This approach basically exists now, it's called shields.

The Abbai traded damage points for shield point in going from 1st ed to 2nd ed. All shield does is be a damage/crew point that can't be crit'ed (or bulkheaded, but beside the point). It still takes the x2, x3 or x4 effect so deals with the more AD is better argument.

So your proposing Shield 30/0 for your conjectural ship's armor stat.

Flip side of the Redundancy debate is that the proposed Armor stat unfairly penalizes weapons with the precise trait. An across the board reduction of the effect of precise would need to be balanced in some way, as a number of races use it as a basic part of their firepower.

Ripple

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

@Ripple
What you say is true.. so Precise could just do more damage as long as the armour is intact... because the precise weapon is able to hit weak spots in the armour.
EDIT: I would suggest that a precise weapon causes one base damage more against armour if it scores a "critical" hit. So it has still an effect.

And no its not like shields because shields work "on top" of the damage table. The armour is "within" the damage table. That means ships dont get more hitpoints because of armour, they just gain immunity to crits for a certain amount of time.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

This approach basically exists now, it's called shields.

The Abbai traded damage points for shield point in going from 1st ed to 2nd ed. All shield does is be a damage/crew point that can't be crit'ed (or bulkheaded, but beside the point). It still takes the x2, x3 or x4 effect so deals with the more AD is better argument.

So your proposing Shield 30/0 for your conjectural ship's armor stat.

Flip side of the Redundancy debate is that the proposed Armor stat unfairly penalizes weapons with the precise trait. An across the board reduction of the effect of precise would need to be balanced in some way, as a number of races use it as a basic part of their firepower.

Ripple

That's true, but actually adding the shields trait to every ship would be a bit silly.

I like this armour idea more as I think about it, and as our learned colleague pointed out, races with tough ships like the Abbai could get higher numbers while fragile races would get lower.

 

[Delthos]

Not only would it be in addition to shields, but armor wouldn't regenerate like shields do.

Precise weapons wouldn't be all that decreased by this. You forget that not only does Precise increase the chances of getting it critical, it also ensures that there are no bulkhead hits. This ensures that every successful hit always does full damage. I don't think it needs rebalancing all the ships with Precise weapons. It's just not going to be that big of a factor.

 

[Methos5000]

I always thought the Critical hit should have done 2 damage and 2 crew plus the damage of the crit.

That alone would make precise weapons effective against the proposed armor rule then non-precise weapons as even those the crit is negated its still doing more damage. Other ships can still get that extra damage to just not as often as precise weapons.

Besides then at least when you get a 1-1 crit it at least feels like you did something to their ship.

But I suppose that is another topic of discussion.

 

[katadder]

I do quite like this idea as well. having to get through the ships armour before doing major damage seems right to me.

 

[ShopKeepJon]

Remember, shields stop hits rather than damage. If you only have one point of shields left, it will still stop one quad damage hit without anything leaking through.

What happens when you have one point of "armor" left and you get hit by a triple damage weapon? Just like with shields, you have to answer this question.

The easy way to handle this would be to make armor work just like non-regenerating shields. The shield mechanics have been fairly well established and most of the questions have been answered.

Oh, and take a look at the Abbai. They didn't really get shields tacked on top of the damage track. Their ships had their damage tracks reduced to compensate for the added shields. The end result is pretty close to what you are advocating (except for the name...).

ShopKeepJon

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

@Shopkeep
Ok my thougts on 1 point left and triple damage hit. Since that hit actually got THROUGH the armour, its able to crit. To me it would be illogical if not, since that hit actually did manage to do internal damage.
Armour does stop hits from producing crits as long as there is armour left to take the damage.
But the armour itself takes 3 points of damage from a triple damage hit.

And no i dont want to reduce the amount of damage a ship can take since its not needed as armour is only a part of that total amount.

 

[Da Boss]

Its an interesting idea - ah BattleTech - takes me back

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

Its an interesting idea - ah BattleTech - takes me back

Hehe i liked the game ^^ but ACtA is way easier to play ^^.

Oh and i will test the armour idear with a friend of mine after my tests at university (in about two weeks im done with them) and post what we found out. Maybe some of you who like the idea, could do the same.
I think if we manage to get our results together we could get this to work properly (if there is interest in it).

 

[Taran]

It does read a lot like CBT.
This is a big part of why they did the whole Armour chart and Internal Chart.

But they also did one more:
A Crit was actually just a CHANCE for a crit. You had to roll again to see if you got the Crit. That's the way I was thinking of going...

 

[akenatum]

In regards to the precise trait, instead of criting on a 5 or 6 while in the armoured section perhaps they can crit on a 6? so still retaining thier use...


alternatively when rolling for bulkhead/crits this trait could give a minus 1 to the roll that would mean more bulkhead hits preserving soe damage and the only weapons able to crit would then be precise....


does this sound like a good suggestion to that problem?

 

[Ripple]

Couple of clarifications...

ShopKeepJon has covered this to a degree but...

Just like when the abbai got their shields, I assume you would be changing the damage numbers... and you are, your changing the first set of damage points to something they are not right now. In the abbai case they became 'shields' you are changing them to 'armor'.

If the second number of a shield is 0, as in 30/0, there is no regeneration. So again, exactly like what your are proposing.

Virtually the only difference I see is that you are saying roll on the damage table, ignore all critical table rolls until the armor is breached. Shield skip the roll to avoid issues with precise weapons, both low end bulkheads and high end crits. You need to answer damage multipliers weapons (partial hits beyond the armor get the crit or no?), bulkheads (still strip armor or not?), what happens with crew scores? (stay the same, get reduced to the non-armored damage amount), depending on that answer what happens when your armor fails on one track but not the other.

This adversely affects precise races (akenatum's answer addresses the issue in a reasonable way, but I still think the abbai are doomed under these rules as they NEED critical affects to give them a chance). You substantially reduce their damage potential (any precise weapon can get the big damage moment) and their ability to force the enemy to deal with reduced effectiveness. Just giving them a +1 damage for armor penetration is inadequate compensation if you have any interest in balance.

Ripple

 

[akenatum]

well if you think about it abbai would have thier sheilds then they would have this armour trait after it so they would be covered the same way... if it's adifferent trait to sheilds then they will get the benefit too as abbai are a more deffence race i could see them hacving a slightly largter armour percentage than other races...


So abbai would retain thier sheilds and then get armour afterwards till thier armour ran out their sheilds would still be arround and this could also help keep them arround even longer stilla s they wouldn't get early crits that could remove their sheild trait alowing them to stay in fights longer...


Anyway enough on the abbabi, i really don't see how this would unbalance any fleet in the game if they all got it but it would help to counter one of the things in the game that restricts some fleet/play styles (i.e big huge ships having a bit more of a chance against swarms)

i dont have the rule book with me so can't check but someone said sheilds stop a hit whole so even if it's like quad damage you only lose one point of sheild (how i read thier post i'm prolly wrong and confussing myself) if that is the case armour would still also be taking the full effects of quad tripple double damage etc so that's another way it differs to sheilds.


Basically don't look at it like just sheilds for every one, look at it as the outer hull being striped away to expose the internals every ship has it if you happen to have sheild you just have this as well so first got to beat sheilds then break through the hull then you can cremate the internall systems.


Anyway sorry for the long winded post hope that helps.

 

[katadder]

Remember, shields stop hits rather than damage. If you only have one point of shields left, it will still stop one quad damage hit without anything leaking through.

What happens when you have one point of "armor" left and you get hit by a triple damage weapon? Just like with shields, you have to answer this question.

The easy way to handle this would be to make armor work just like non-regenerating shields. The shield mechanics have been fairly well established and most of the questions have been answered.


ShopKeepJon

the armour wouldnt stop hits though, it would stop damage, just that 6s count as solid hits until out of armour. so in the above case the triple damage hit would have the chance to cause crits.
this is mainly because armour is part of the standard damage track, its just a threshold on that damage track unlike shields which are something differant.

 

[Delthos]

That's what I'm hearing from everyone is that they are just shields, but they aren't just shields. He isn't suggesting giving them some extra damage points for armor. He's strictly speaking of having another damage threshold, like skeleton and crippled. Until enough damage is done to bring a ship below it's armor threshold, no critical hits can be done to it.

Blunting Precise weapons I don't think is as serious a problem as some feel either. They still don't get bulkhead hits so they always do damage and will quickly peal away any armor.

 

[Grimbart_Kriegsaxt]

Hello again to you
I dont understand why some think this would be just like shields. Which it is clearly not, as Delthos said correctly its another damage threshold just like crippled. And triple damage weapons would deal triple damage to it and would still do 1 point of damage in case of a bulkhead hit, but would not be able to crit unless at least one point of damage dealt would be going "thrugh" the armour.

The precise weapons issue could be dealt with during testing. They could do more damage for example in case of a "critical" that would be a fair trade i think. Or if not, they still cant do bulkhead hits.

Crew damage is another issue.. but we could just assume that poeple still die the same as before (balance reasons) because of the shaking ...
Ok its not logical but it would unbalance the whole game if crew would not die from hits against the ship.

So i would just say crew is affected as normal (logical or not) because we just need a solution for critical hits and not for crew damage.

Thanks for all your helpfull comments by the way i really like the discussion and the feedback

 

[Taran]

There are always crew in compartments near the surface and with less armour protection:
Weapons crews, DC crews, Engineering personnel.

Do a solid hit and you can just about guarantee at least 1 crewmember death.

 

[Ripple]

There are some differences between the armor proposal and shields with a regen of 0, but the most basic effects are the same. A number of damage points that have to be removed before a critical can be scored.

The armor proposal requires adding a new stat to each ship, a new line on the damage track. It would be just as easy to do what was done with the abbai and instead of adding the new threshold remove damage and add a shield trait with no regen. It acts the same, with the exception that the shield trait has answered the questions about damage order and partial hits.

If I get six hits with my double damage beam on a ship with ten armor, and I roll dead average, scoring a 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, do I get a crit? I should score 11 damage, 10 crew and a crit against a normal ship... but what happens with armor? Shields tell me I lose the shield and roll one AD on the damage table., armor tells me right now that the order of the roll is important and if I roll the crit last I get it, but not if I roll it first.

I'm not against armor, I just only see minor differences from shields, and most of those differences are simply undefined under armor. I also believe that a general crit immunity has a much more adverse effect on ships like the sulust and the abbai fleet that is being generally acknowledged. You are talking about adding crit immunity to every ship in the game, if I added DD immunity to every ship in the game for x number of hits you'd be crying bloody murder.

Ripple