Possible House Rules

[Kadorak]

Just curious what people thought of these two potential changes to 2e. I just got the book three days ago: I tried to support my local gaming store by purchasing through them, but apparently the U.S. distributors don't carry it (I eventually had to order directly through Mongoose after several weeks). Anyways, I haven't gotten a chance to actually try the game against another person yet, just tests with myself, but based on A. those fights; B. comments on the forum; C. my urge to tinker, here are three possible house rules I'd like comments on. This would be for a family, friends & fun group, not for tournaments or highly competitive games.

1. Beams: Cap the number of times a 'beam' die can be rolled at 4. This leaves them mostly intact, but puts some upper limit on freak, lucky beam shots. So you'd roll 4+, 4+, 4+, 4+ then stop even if you had scored a hit on the last shot.

2. Anti-fighter Dice: Allow each unused anti-fighter die to be converted into 2 AD of range 5" weak trait weapons (if you wanted to be more complex, you could decide what trait/range/AD it translated into for each race..). This is just a matter of personal preference: I'd like to see more basic, wimpy weapons again so the more powerful guns feel, well, powerful.

3. Redundant Systems: This was proposed a long time ago - during the last time I haunted the forum - to make high PL ships more viable. The idea is that they can ignore a certain number of critical effects (you don't get to choose, just the first X critical effects that happen to the ship), thus decreasing susceptibility to being 'defanged' by mass criticals. As arbitrary numbers, Battle PL ships might have Redundant Systems 1, War PL ships Redundant Systems 3, and Armageddon PL ships Redundant Systems 6. My vision of this was as negating only what was listed under 'effect' on the crit table, but you could also negate the whole crit, increased damage & crew and all.

The numbers are fairly arbitrary, so even if the basic idea is sound you may have a much better idea of better values to plug in there.

 

[No. 1 Bear]

1. Beams: Cap the number of times a 'beam' die can be rolled at 4. This leaves them mostly intact, but puts some upper limit on freak, lucky beam shots. So you'd roll 4+, 4+, 4+, 4+ then stop even if you had scored a hit on the last shot.

2. Anti-fighter Dice: Allow each unused anti-fighter die to be converted into 2 AD of range 5" weak trait weapons (if you wanted to be more complex, you could decide what trait/range/AD it translated into for each race..). This is just a matter of personal preference: I'd like to see more basic, wimpy weapons again so the more powerful guns feel, well, powerful.

3. Redundant Systems: This was proposed a long time ago - during the last time I haunted the forum - to make high PL ships more viable. The idea is that they can ignore a certain number of critical effects (you don't get to choose, just the first X critical effects that happen to the ship), thus decreasing susceptibility to being 'defanged' by mass criticals. As arbitrary numbers, Battle PL ships might have Redundant Systems 1, War PL ships Redundant Systems 3, and Armageddon PL ships Redundant Systems 6. My vision of this was as negating only what was listed under 'effect' on the crit table, but you could also negate the whole crit, increased damage & crew and all.

The numbers are fairly arbitrary, so even if the basic idea is sound you may have a much better idea of better values to plug in there.

1 Beams many people don't like now as they aren't guaranteed way of destroying ships however i personally prefer them. Yesterday the beam did not work untill the last game but then it was amazing. However putting a cap on it will really destroy some beams. For example a six dice beam only scores 1 initial hit. But then that one goes on to score another 5.

2 That would be insanley complex. I want increased range but want it weak so i get the same number of AD as a SAP weapon with reduced range.

3 Big ships don't get critted that easily out of the game anymore.
I took about 6 crits on my Omega against mimbari it still played a vital part in the game though.

 

[Chernobyl]

Kadorak, Alliance games distribution carries the new books - I got mine through my local game shop and that is who they order from.

Chern

 

[lastbesthope]

I actually like the changes in 2E even to the Beam rule, I wasn't sure I would but I did, even if my BEam dice failed more often than they worked.

LBH

 

[katadder]

there were quite alot of complete misses yesterday with only a few crazy hits (i hit a vree skirmish ship 13 times with one beam but apart from that i was rolling lower than average on beams).

 

[lastbesthope]

My beam dice were atrocious yesterday, 2 AD should statistically hit at least once, I often rolled 2 misses. Though I made up for it at the right times in my 3rd game against Mr Eyle's Minbari, stealth? What stealth? :lol:

LBH

 

[Target]

Actually according to the poll most people like the new beam rules. I certainly do.
Like the way anti fighter works in general.
Redundancy is a very good rule.

We use redundancy based of the the crew score. We don't have a crew score, it's bit a waste of time recording two numbers. The redundancy score is the first number of the crew score + 1 eg 06 is 1 redundancy, 39 is 4, 41 is 5. When this reduced to zero you are skeleton crewed. Most crits are worth 1 redundancy usually *-6 crits are worth 2, 5-* are hits that effect redundancy score. 6-* crits are worth 2-4 . You can use this score to stop some crits if you so choose if you have enough points to stop it. Also you use this score to make CQ check sucessfully for SA or give you a +1 to opposed roll. you don't want to be wasting points of making SA checks all the time as 6-6 crit is still ship explodes which you need 4 to stop & being skelton crewed just sucks. We have been using this to great sucess ( Well we think so). The crit chart is modified a bit. Using this you can take a Octurion vs a Drazi fleet without the fear of being useless after the firs round of firing.

Redundancy is great, not that you have use they way we do it but you could use a similar way to get the score if you assign different redundancy numbers to the crits. Imagine being able to stop that stupid engineering hit one. I would really recommend a similar system.

 

[katadder]

Using this you can take a Octurion vs a Drazi fleet without the fear of being useless after the firs round of firing.

yeah not entirely useless after 1st round of firing just skeleton crewed
i would prefer to take crits than be skeleton crewed cos at least i can repair them. although races that have flight computer must love this rule. in fact my ISA would as WSs always get decrewed but under your rule they would have to actually kill the ship whilst i fly happily until at least crippled and then as long as dont lose flight comp i can fly quite happily for a bit after that too.

 

[Target]

You don't have to use them to stop the crits. You can just take them
The 5-* if you don't have any left it goes to damage + your whitestars can't stop the big crits. Bit of a weakness there.
Losing flight comps just plain sucks.

 

[Taran]

Suggested Houe Rule for Crits:

So you roll a "6" on your Attack. Gives you a Chance at a Crit. Roll again. Another 6 gives you the crit. Or roll 2D6, 8 or higher gives you a crit.
Keeps it simple. Keeps it from being too protective Or too harsh.

Remember: "K.I.S.S."

 

[Locutus9956]

New Beams I like overall, sure they can sometimes score a runaway hit but it rarely happens and on average I find they dominate the game LESS than they used to.

Antifighter, frankly I LOVE the way fighters and antifighter works now, it just about feel right with fighters being a genuine threat without being over the top (well perhaps a LITTLE over the top with the Gaim but frankly its the emines there that I think might be a tiny bit too much rather than the fighters....)

Crits: Big ships CAN still be critted out of the game (I've had it happen) but then again just as often they can get hammered to little ill effect. Personally I would change only one thing for crits and that would be to stop damage mutlipliers (double damge etc) applying to the crit results. My reason for this is simply that it doesnt make sense really! Why should your reactor exploding do more damage if it was breached by a double damage weapon than a normal one? Big ships could still suffer crits like this all over the place but would have time to RECOVER from them if they didnt get nuked to dust by them as quickly

 

[No. 1 Bear]

Crits: Big ships CAN still be critted out of the game (I've had it happen) but then again just as often they can get hammered to little ill effect. Personally I would change only one thing for crits and that would be to stop damage mutlipliers (double damge etc) applying to the crit results. My reason for this is simply that it doesnt make sense really! Why should your reactor exploding do more damage if it was breached by a double damage weapon than a normal one? Big ships could still suffer crits like this all over the place but would have time to RECOVER from them if they didnt get nuked to dust by them as quickly

I really like that idea. I think that may work very well.

 

[Sulfurdown]

Crits: Big ships CAN still be critted out of the game (I've had it happen) but then again just as often they can get hammered to little ill effect. Personally I would change only one thing for crits and that would be to stop damage mutlipliers (double damge etc) applying to the crit results. My reason for this is simply that it doesnt make sense really! Why should your reactor exploding do more damage if it was breached by a double damage weapon than a normal one? Big ships could still suffer crits like this all over the place but would have time to RECOVER from them if they didnt get nuked to dust by them as quickly

Locally we've changed the multiplier from a Damage Multiplier to a Hit Multiplier. A Double Damage weapon that scores a single hit will roll two dice on the damage chart. The results are turned in as if single damage weapons. So in the case of a x2 single hit - you can get both bulkheads for no damage or two criticals, each with their own effects. It means that games tend to get bloody fast - and the Minbari long range double damage precise weapons are vicious. But it also shows that the x2, x3, x4 damage weapons are not just causing the "Munitions to blow up...harder...?" but rather that it is strong enough to punch through the engine and hit the weapons control. Shifts some of the balance away from taking a 4AD weapon over a 2AD DD since now they are more closely equal from a crit perspective. (though still x2 is more vulnerable to interceptors and dodge, etc)

And that 6-6 from 1E was no longer a game ender from a x3 weapon.

After playing it for the last couple months in a campaign the group seems to have thoroughly adopted it as a standard.

 

[lastbesthope]

Critsersonally I would change only one thing for crits and that would be to stop damage mutlipliers (double damge etc) applying to the crit results. My reason for this is simply that it doesnt make sense really! Why should your reactor exploding do more damage if it was breached by a double damage weapon than a normal one?

The same reason a double weapon does 2 points of damage/crew on a hit, because it does more damage, so when it hits the reactor it causes a bigger breach.

LBH

 

[lastbesthope]

And that 6-6 from 1E was no longer a game ender from a x3 weapon.

Well originally it didn't matter what tyope of weapon did a 6-6 crit, it used to be an instakill beofre SFOS came out.

LBH

 

[Sulfurdown]

And that 6-6 from 1E was no longer a game ender from a x3 weapon.

Well originally it didn't matter what tyope of weapon did a 6-6 crit, it used to be an instakill beofre SFOS came out.

LBH

Well, I started playing during the Tourney Pack era - so I never got the Original 1st Edition.

 

[Da Boss]

And that 6-6 from 1E was no longer a game ender from a x3 weapon.

Well originally it didn't matter what tyope of weapon did a 6-6 crit, it used to be an instakill beofre SFOS came out.

LBH

ah yes I remember that - great fun Although I do remember it costing me a Shadow Cruiser to a Starfury :shock: now that was a fighter pilot!

 

[lastbesthope]

Yeah, I suffered from it at the Gencon tourney a few years back, lost 2 WS in a 5 pt raid game in the first round. MAde it through just though. And got whipped in the 2nd round :lol:

LBH

 

[Locutus9956]

Sorry LBH but both those points are invalid imho.

As to the original 1st ed ship explodes crit, thats gone and good riddance frankly, it made the game WAY too vulnerable to single dice roll victory.

As for 'larger breach' again I dont see that as a valid argument either, sure it might do a BIT more damge but your talking a HUGE difference in damage that just magnifies the impact of an already horrible crit result (and the 'munititions blow up harder' point is exactly what I was driving at)

I do however quite like the 'mutliple rolls on the damage table' idea though, and may have to give that a try....

 

[Sulfurdown]

I brought it up as a test rule at the beginning of our current campaign and even though there was the larger number of critical effects accumulating - when I asked if the group wanted to go back to the standard multipliers it was unanimous to keep it as a dice multiplier - even the EA guy who just lost 80% of his fleet to crits (EA vs Minbari he didn't close fast enough) said he preferred it as dice multiplier over damage multiplier.