Redundancy/Armour - Which Version?

[Triggy]

In the Powers & Principalities supplement there is a chance that redundancy/armour as a rule could be introduced. The odds of this happening are not necessarily good but they will be better if everyone gets on board the same ship. By this I mean if we can come to a majority consensus over which version of the rule we will playtest then we can test out that rule thoroughly and feedback on what we would like to see added.

Most versions of the rule have it only affecting Battle+ PL ships, with War and Armageddon PL ships getting a bit more protection than Battle. I've seen many versions floating about and many reasons behind them. There are a few criticals that players do not like (e.g. lose a whole arc of fire, -4 speed/adrift, no damage control, 6-5 and 6-6 crits) of which some deal a lot of damage/crew and others deal harsh effects. The idea behind redundancy/armour is to reduce the number of harsh criticals crippling a larger ship before it's had a chance to do something in the game. The question is do you want to see this rule introduced and if you do, in what form would you like to see it?

NB. Where I have put the "first criticals" each ship may have the ability to "save" more than one critical and these would be the first few that the ship suffers.

 

[SylvrDragon]

I voted for effects being ignored, but not damage. Partially because it makes sense, and partially because the damage from crits makes up a fair portion of the damage caused by many fleets. If you took this damage away it would really nerf some fleets much more heavily than others. However, I do feel that the crit chart could really use some work. I think changes there would go much further than any redundancy or resistance would. We really could use both changes imo.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

I've also voted for effects (but not damage) being ignored. The damage boost from criticals isn't the problem in my eyes. The problem is that larger ships tend to be crippled from crit effects after suffering much lower amounts of damage (percentage-wise) than smaller ships.

 

[SylvrDragon]

I've also voted for effects (but not damage) being ignored. The damage boost from criticals isn't the problem in my eyes. The problem is that larger ships tend to be crippled from crit effects after suffering much lower amounts of damage (percentage-wise) than smaller ships.

Agreed.

 

[l33tpenguin]

When ships like the KBT and other large War and Armageddon vessels are getting critted out of the game (crits making the completely unusable) while they still have half of the damage left, then it just goes to show that it is the crit effects on large ships and not the extra damage that is the problem.

Voted for the crit save w/ damage/crew.

A redundancy score would be a great balancing tool, like hull, to making ships better as well as more different. Look at something like the Explorer. A massive ship that has a weaker hull but redundant systems. I mean knocking off the scout trait on that thing should be nearly impossible!

Balancing redundancy would be as easy as making across the board 'base' levels and the modifying each ship from there. I have already proposed this before. When a player scores a crit on a ship they must then confirm the crit by rolling against the target ship's redundancy. (just pick up those crit dice and roll them again!). If the roll ties or beats the redundancy, the crit is successful. If not, the effect is ignored (but not the damage).

Base scores would be
Patrol-0, Skirmish-0, Raid-2, Battle-3, War-4, Armageddon-5. Ships would then be given scores around these bases. Since the crit has to meet or beat the redundancy, scores of 1 have no effect. Some skirmish ships might have redundacy 2, some raid ships might not have redundacy. There could be Armageddon ships with a 6!

 

[Banichi]

I voted for ignore the crits, but not the damage. It's nice and simple, and seems to reflect bigger ships having more backups than little ships.

Patrol-0, Skirmish-0, Raid-2, Battle-3, War-4, Armageddon-5

I do like the idea of it being scaled on what priority level the ship is.

 

[l33tpenguin]

I voted for ignore the crits, but not the damage. It's nice and simple, and seems to reflect bigger ships having more backups than little ships.

Patrol-0, Skirmish-0, Raid-2, Battle-3, War-4, Armageddon-5

I do like the idea of it being scaled on what priority level the ship is.

I felt it made sense. And, again, I use that as a base. Redundancy could very well be used as a racial themed defense. Take the Narn, for instance. They might have higher than average redundancy scores since they lack any sort of active defense.

I've also written a revised CBD. With the redundancy trait, CBD gives a ship 3 redundancy or increases a ships redundancy by 2, to a max of 7.

Also, some weapon traits, like precise, give a bonus against redundancy.

As an example, I have the KBT as having redundancy 6. When the KBT uses CBD its redundancy goes to 7. This means that it can only be critted by weapons with precise.

My rules also have redundancy able to be reduced. Any successful crit that scores a 5 or higher (modified) against redundancy reduces that ships redundancy by 1, to a minimum of 0. This does not effect redundancy gained from CBD.

CBD also absorbs damage equal to the current redundancy score per turn, making it more valuable to larger ships!

 

[SylvrDragon]

I see some real potential in that system. Maybe better than some of the other redundancy systems. I like how you incorporate a difference on PL's for crit confirmation, and I like how precise grants a bonus to this; one of the problems, as I mentioned, that I see with a redundancy is it hurting races that rely on crits. But granting them a bonus on the confirmation could help solve this issue.

 

[katadder]

I voted for ignore the crits, but not the damage. It's nice and simple, and seems to reflect bigger ships having more backups than little ships.

Patrol-0, Skirmish-0, Raid-2, Battle-3, War-4, Armageddon-5

I do like the idea of it being scaled on what priority level the ship is.

i could go with this one. tbh i voted ignore 1st # of crits and damage but would also go on ignoring just the crit effects.
this is my favoured version rather than just a save. which could also leave the new narn CBD to just the narn

on this i mean as redundancy values as a # of crits that can be ignored, not the saves.

 

[Ripple]

I voted effects, players choice, as I would hate to see this wasted on -1 speed crits.

For larger ships I think that handles things fairly well, and it still gives moderate sized ships a chance to live through a 6-5/6-6. Yes, the effects suck, but it would suck just as much to have your Command Omega die in the first round of combat without firing a shot due to a lucky 6-6. The 6-6 instant kill was removed for a reason, I have always hated that they left in a ghost of it.

Personally I don't like the crit table much myself, as I think it forces too many small ships. If your fleet needs sinks, you have to take twice what you would really want, because you know you'll lose at least a couple to lucky crits.

Chris made a good suggestion today. He suggested a 'Plot Point' that you can use to negate a crit, based on the size of the game. This benefits big ships more than swarms, as the crits you stop are more important, but allows a swarm fleet to still preserve a raid ship or two.

The idea being the authors of the universe are supporting you based on how important the battle is to the script... =). Say start at one point for patrol fights (meaning you can actually play races that need to go up to raid to compete... Minbari), all the way up to 6 for Arm. Divide them as you need, meaning big ships could be really epicly hard to kill, but a swarm could keep a couple ships from going down too.

Ripple

 

[katadder]

couldnt include players choice as the really big crits dont come up that often and if you negate them as soon as they do then its too much.

 

[silashand]

I voted for the crit save (effects and dmg/crew) because it already exists in Victory at Sea and players I know who use it like it a lot.

Cheers, Gary

 

[Triggy]

If it were player's choice it would of course be a lower number that a player could stop. With the save, unless the save is a 4+ or better, for my money this would still see ships with the first critical suffered almost all of the time and it could be the first one that is the one crippling a ship.

I wouldn't mind it being damage/crew ignored too but this doesn't hugely fuss me.

I like the concept of really low numbers but the player can choose when to use it. This means big ships will start degrading right away but that critical that immobilises or kills its weapons (or triple damage 6-6s it) can be shrugged off.

One thing I would say, I think the numbers proposed earlier in the thread are way too high. Maybe Raid PL ships should get 1 but it shouldn't IMO be any higher than Raid 1, Battle 2, War 3, Armageddon 5. My preferred distribution would probably be Battle 1, War 2, Armageddon 4 but this is theoretical and would need testing between the two.

 

[l33tpenguin]

One thing I would say, I think the numbers proposed earlier in the thread are way too high. Maybe Raid PL ships should get 1 but it shouldn't IMO be any higher than Raid 1, Battle 2, War 3, Armageddon 5. My preferred distribution would probably be Battle 1, War 2, Armageddon 4 but this is theoretical and would need testing between the two.

Remember that the confirmation roll has to meet or beat the score, so a score of 1 doesn't do anything, since any roll will meet or beat a 1. Which would also put it right in line with your Armageddon at 4. In my system the score is also reduced by 1 every time the confirm roll scores a 5 or higher. Ships with redundancy 5 or 6 will automatically have their score reduced as soon as they take a successfull critical. And, precise is factored in as well, so these weapons are still more likely to cause crits. I'll post it here if I can find it when I get home from work this morning

 

[greenboy]

I voted for ignoring the first critical effect but not damage assuming that it may in fact be more than one crit on larger ships this still leaves room for a crit save special action like the proposed change to close blast doors

 

[Lord David the Denied]

When ships like the KBT and other large War and Armageddon vessels are getting critted out of the game (crits making the completely unusable) while they still have half of the damage left, then it just goes to show that it is the crit effects on large ships and not the extra damage that is the problem.

Voted for the crit save w/ damage/crew.

A redundancy score would be a great balancing tool, like hull, to making ships better as well as more different. Look at something like the Explorer. A massive ship that has a weaker hull but redundant systems. I mean knocking off the scout trait on that thing should be nearly impossible!

Balancing redundancy would be as easy as making across the board 'base' levels and the modifying each ship from there. I have already proposed this before. When a player scores a crit on a ship they must then confirm the crit by rolling against the target ship's redundancy. (just pick up those crit dice and roll them again!). If the roll ties or beats the redundancy, the crit is successful. If not, the effect is ignored (but not the damage).

Base scores would be
Patrol-0, Skirmish-0, Raid-2, Battle-3, War-4, Armageddon-5. Ships would then be given scores around these bases. Since the crit has to meet or beat the redundancy, scores of 1 have no effect. Some skirmish ships might have redundacy 2, some raid ships might not have redundacy. There could be Armageddon ships with a 6!

This man gets my vote. Consider one of the "other" votes to be a vote for this.

 

[mollari_uk]

Bigger ships already have more damage/crew resistance than lower PL's, it's called having more damage and crew than lower PL's!

What they currently don't have is a higher crit effect resistance. Adding an additional save to ignore damage and crew will severely unbalance ships that rely on DD/TD/QD weapons especially if they are also precise. These ships are balanced on the fact that they score this damage on crits too. To ignore this is a massive disadvantage.

I've voted for saving against crits but not damage/crew. Ignoring only one crit could be a pointless 1,1 crit then the next ones can be the one we all don't like. A save makes the most sense from what we are trying to achieve.

 

[Triggy]

Seems like the vast majority are in favour of only ignoring the effects of certain criticals, without ignoring the damage/crew loss.

It's almost 50-50 so far between a save and ignoring the first criticals with a few favouring the player's choice of criticals instead.

A further factor to consider - which would be simpler to track and/or implement during play? Saves are consistently used with no tracking of score but require a dice roll for every single critical suffered. A redundancy score requires tracking of how many points are left but no additional dice rolling.

l33tpenguin - nice as this system may be not only is it complicated enough that Matt won't want to see it included in a supplement, but frankly it would take far longer to playtest and balance. The time to playtest is what I see as the most important factor here as we're running to a (rough) deadline.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

l33tpenguin - nice as this system may be not only is it complicated enough that Matt won't want to see it included in a supplement, but frankly it would take far longer to playtest and balance. The time to playtest is what I see as the most important factor here as we're running to a (rough) deadline.

Actually it looks simple enough to test to my way of thinking. Assign the base number for PL of the ship, then vary up or down by individual vessel and by race - Narn/Abbai get more, Minbari, White Stars, etc, get a little less. Fine tune through playtest.

 

[Triggy]

l33tpenguin - nice as this system may be not only is it complicated enough that Matt won't want to see it included in a supplement, but frankly it would take far longer to playtest and balance. The time to playtest is what I see as the most important factor here as we're running to a (rough) deadline.

Actually it looks simple enough to test to my way of thinking. Assign the base number for PL of the ship, then vary up or down by individual vessel and by race - Narn/Abbai get more, Minbari, White Stars, etc, get a little less. Fine tune through playtest.

There will not be any race-specific adjustments in P&P, this assumes that a race's ships are universally weaker/stronger than the norm and whilst it would be good if building the system from the ground up, it isn't practical here.

Also, this method not only combines more bookkeeping and more dice rolling but is simply more complicated than ACtA in general is looking for. Again, from the ground up and systems like this may have a chance but I'm trying not to raise expectations given that Matt hasn't even agreed to redundancy/armour in the first place. He certainly won't go for anything that is any more complicated than the simpler systems suggested with a lot of playtesting to back it up and even then he may not.