I'm done for now. Call me if 3rd edition fixes things.

[Burger]

Since you have each PL is double the one below it, you might as well just have a points system instead, it would work out the same. Patrol=1, Skirmish=2, Raid=4 etc. Then your "2 war 2 skirmish" game, becomes a 36 point game. You could still buy your War, 2x Battle and Raid fleet. It would be the same, but simpler to explain

 

[CratZ]

Sounds simple and good. I like it. Though need a bit fine tuning since raid ships might not be that atractive choices?

@ Burger: wouldnt actually be the same. Andrews system atleast forces you to take some of the bigger ships. so you cant go all swarm here.

 

[Hash]

Swarms are effective because to chose a ship that is roughly 50% better you pass up the chance for two of the lesser kind.

e.g. The Raid ship is 1.5 times as good as Skirmish but you get 2 Skirmish Ships for the same price!

...and this works all the way down.

How about allowing splitting but removing some of this advantage, recognising that multiple ships is a bonus anyway because of how initiative works?

Instead of:

1 PL (higher) = 2 PL (lower by one)
1 PL (higher) = 1 PL (lower by one) + 1 PL (lower by two).

e.g.

1 War = 1 Battle, 1 Raid (instead of 2 Battle)

You then let players keep splitting as much as they want but buying down gets you much less for your points

e.g. 1 War = 1 Battle + 1 Raid = 2 Raid + 1 Skirmish

You seriously Nerf swarms recognising that multiple ships have their advantages elsewhere (less reliant on crits, more initative sinks etc.)

Buying up would be the same as current system

A standard game at 5pt Raid would allow...

4 RAID = 1 War choice
2 RAID = 1 Battle choice
1 RAID = 1 Raid choice
1 RAID = 1 Skirmish, 1 Patrol choice

So I could have (examples) fleets of:

3 WS, 2 Nolo'Tar and 1 BS
2 G'Quan, 1 Thentus, 1 Sho'Kov (2)
1 Sharlin, 1 Torotha, 1 Wing of Nials (2)

Say I wanted to "swarm" it, best I could do would probably be something like:

5 Strikehawks, 5 Sunhawks

 

[nekomata fuyu]

An alternative would be to fix the initiative system itself, balance the ships properly, and then there shouldn't be a problem with someone choosing to take a load of small ships in the first place...

 

[skavendan]

An alternative would be to fix the initiative system itself, balance the ships properly, and then there shouldn't be a problem with someone choosing to take a load of small ships in the first place...

I don't know anyone has said this before but what if 1 side has 10 ships and the other 20 the side with only 10 ships has +10 ini on the basis of easier to organise the fleet as less transmittions are required. making them the more organised force.

 

[CratZ]

So how about the system I suggested earlier. Each player has a certain number of activations during his turns? each activation can can be used to move separate ships or a squad.

So no matter how many ships you have, you still wont get outsinked? You can take a lot of small ships yes, but only so many you can squadronice will be of any use.

I dont know how many activations would be good and requires play testing. maybe 5? and depending on the size of the battle you get a bonus.

skirmish: +1
raid: +2
Battle: +3

Those are just numbers I came up with ofc.

 

[darklord4]

I dont know how many activations would be good and requires play testing. maybe 5? and depending on the size of the battle you get a bonus.

Maybe start with the FAP designated for the force, e.g. a 6 FAP Raid force has 6 activations, then have the command special trait add activations instead of to initiative.

I would also state that the All Stop special action is a free action not requiring an activation. Ships that cannot do a special action must then drift.

Also, only non-fighter ships require activation.

 

[katadder]

sounds like someones been playing AT-43

 

[CratZ]

No seriously I havent played any games where this system was used. Just something a thought about that would fix the ini problems for good.

Ya maybe free all stops allowed after all activations have been used. Fighter would work as they currently do. Im not sure about letting command give more activations.

The idea with limited activations is mainly to fix issues with ini sinking. Makes boreside that much better and easier to use =)

 

[darklord4]

No seriously I havent played any games where this system was used. Just something a thought about that would fix the ini problems for good.

There are many systems that have this type of action system for the exact reason of modeling the ability to command a force. From my experience, you see it in larger scale games, i.e. where a small model scale is used to model large-scale battles. In my Mechwarrior games, you get 1 command for each 150 points of a force build. Actually, the only thing in common with AT-43 is that you're calling it an activation. In contrast with the suggestion, in AT-43 every unit gets activated(barring some morale issue etc.) in every turn. I've seen this system most often in ancient-battles type games.

Im not sure about letting command give more activations.

The idea with limited activations is mainly to fix issues with ini sinking. Makes boreside that much better and easier to use =)

I was stealing this idea directly from Mechwarrior. Some MW units have a command ability that allows you to get an extra command. I was thinking a command ship would allow you to do more.

 

[l33tpenguin]

I like the idea of 'command' giving extra activations, or allowing more moveable groups. It gives a good bonus to the trait and givse you something to do with those command ships. Also, if you want that command bonus, chances are you are going to have to pull a larger ship to do so, cutting out points that would have been spent on more little ships.

So, with a 6 war point game, you get 6 activations. You divide the number of ships in your fleet by 6 and thats how many move per activation (rounded up)

If you have a ship with Command, you get that many extra activations, so a ship with command 2 would give 2 extra activations.

Then its I go you go I go you go, until we've moved everything. a small fleet of heavy ships (with 1 command ship) against a large fleet of small ships is going to end up with the large fleet having moved all their ships and the heavy fleet with extra ships left to move. Making lining up bore sights nice and easy

 

[Ripple]

as always, any system which simply evens out the number of activations bones the drazi, as it almost guarantees the loss of at least one ships firepower per turn. Loss of initiative can be devastating, especially if the drazi start losing activations earlier than their opponent.

Ripple

 

[CratZ]

Well we are talking about a new edition. We can think outside the box and just fix the fleet lists afterwards.

 

[AdrianH]

Another couple of possibilities might be to allow the person who won initiative to move last. One way is to simply allow one ship to be held back; move everything else as per normal rules, then move your last ship after the other player has finished. Another way would be to reverse the current movement order; if the player who lost initiative has more ships, the excess number of ships are moved first, then the players take it in turns to move.

I don't think the first version would harm the Drazi much; they'll lose one target, but all their ships should still have something to shoot at. It just means that if the enemy has a ship with a big boresight gun, it gets something to shoot at as well. The second version means the Drazi are encouraged to take a few bigger ships rather than a swarm of small ships, which is the whole point of the exercise.

 

[Ripple]

If we're talking a major rework of fleet lists then your right we can change anything. I was hoping we'd try to maintain some flavor though. I would like to be able to run an all G'Quan fleet and have it be viable though...

Okay,

option 1 has a fixed number of activations, not necessarily evenly divided. So you max out your squadrons and try to move them last, to minimize loss of firepower. This leads bad to the old sink issue... the drazi will have more ships, which under this stacking, get forced earlier into the activation sequence than races with truly viable large ships. If your opponent stacks his first several activations with scouts and jump point activations you end up not being able to shoot at all, with a number of activations worth of ships. Since the Drazi don't benefit from scouts, they are pretty restricted on what ships they can take to 'sink' within the limited system.

option 2, with holding back one ship, doesn't work better for the Drazi, as their large ships are worthless compared to their pl mates.

Just saying, as always, you must fix bore sight at the ship level not the overall game level, at the same time you fix initiative sinking. And while changing the drazi fleet to make it less bore sight dependent might cover up the issue, it still means you have to sink ie buy small ships to make your bore sighted ships effectively more maneuverable, in any race that uses bore sights. Bore sight needs a mechanic addition that removes the need to sink to line up on targets that would otherwise be normally targetable but for lack of sinks.

Ripple

 

[Triggy]

as always, any system which simply evens out the number of activations bones the drazi, as it almost guarantees the loss of at least one ships firepower per turn. Loss of initiative can be devastating, especially if the drazi start losing activations earlier than their opponent.

Ripple

If there is a Special Action to reduce the penalty of boresight-heavy fleets then the whole issue of Drazi getting boned is reduced.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

I'd still go with the option of individual ships having initiative modifiers rather than the fleet as a whole. It doesn't need to be cumbersome - you can still roll just the once for each fleet - but it will mean that you can't get away with using a multitude of unimportant ships as initiative sinks for the important ships.

 

[Silvereye]

The second version means the Drazi are encouraged to take a few bigger ships rather than a swarm of small ships, which is the whole point of the exercise.

In everyone elses fleet this would be a good thing, but the bigger Drazi ships are proportionally a lot poorer than a mob of the smaller vessels, simply due to the weaponry ranges and the overall boresight dedication of the fleet. Missiles aside, the ranges top out at 15"-18", which tends to mean that your eating your opponents secondary weapons.

as always, any system which simply evens out the number of activations bones the drazi, as it almost guarantees the loss of at least one ships firepower per turn. Loss of initiative can be devastating, especially if the drazi start losing activations earlier than their opponent.

Maybe a racial rule for the Drazi to distort their place in the even activations initiative.

I'd still go with the option of individual ships having initiative modifiers rather than the fleet as a whole. It doesn't need to be cumbersome - you can still roll just the once for each fleet - but it will mean that you can't get away with using a multitude of unimportant ships as initiative sinks for the important ships.

But this would fall down for the huge but slow boresight ships like the Bin'Tak. Which, with their likely to be poor inititative would result in them never being able to line up a bore as they have to move first.

A special action for lining a boresight up on a target that's yet to move would get around this. It signals your intention to your opponent early in your movement phase. Something like: letting the boresight ship make its (final) turn at the end of the movement phase (but only to align a boresight on the declared target) after all other ships have moved (the opponent may still be able to manoeuvre the target so that it could still be out of arc). However the vessel also needs to be limited, so it fires last in the the shooting phase. But you could also just make the firing phase happen in reverse initiative so the highest initiative ships (most likely the smallest/most manouvreable least well armed) move last and fire first.

 

[l33tpenguin]

I don't really like the idea of a 'bore sight' special action. It gives a massive advantage to bore sight heavy fleets that would just flip flop the argument. If all your ships had bore sight weapons, and the bore sight firing special action allowed them to move last, you could just declare it for all your ships and then they are all going to move last. It actually makes the problem worse.

A simple fix to bore sights would be just making it a 15 degree arc. Then you don't have to be so retarded precise with them. You might not be able to get the ship you WANT to hit with the bore sight, but you have a better chance of there being a ship to hit

 

[nekomata fuyu]

I'd still go with the option of individual ships having initiative modifiers rather than the fleet as a whole. It doesn't need to be cumbersome - you can still roll just the once for each fleet - but it will mean that you can't get away with using a multitude of unimportant ships as initiative sinks for the important ships.

But this would fall down for the huge but slow boresight ships like the Bin'Tak. Which, with their likely to be poor inititative would result in them never being able to line up a bore as they have to move first.

Not quite true. Such ships would have a fair chance of winning initiative against other big ships, and would still be able to win initiative against more nimble ships albeit with diminishing reliability. Boresight weapons on monster ships would be weapons with a main purpose of taking out other monster ships - something I consider to be a good thing.
In return for their initiative becoming more restrictive, large ships would also get a decent boost to their weapons and/or survivability during the balancing process, and become something to be feared.