Redundancy/Armour - Which Version?

[Target]

This is a variation on the Damage Control Crew theme.
Let's say each ship starts with crew score/10 damage control teams (DCT). decimals just go up
Bimith has 5, Juyaca 8 Brivoki 13.
The No DC crits take d6 off, crits of the 1-3 location take 1 DCT to stop, 4-5 is 2 DCT to stop & 6 is 4.
When DCT score is reduced to zero you are at -1 to repair. You don't have use them to stop crits.
This represents DCT getting injured & dying by walking into reactors & so on.
If you base it off crew then should be balanced with other ships as ships that are meant to take more have more crew. Simple & easy.
EDIT
Forgot ancients, just give them hit's divived 10. Should arrive at reasobly similar result.

 

[Ike]

I like it

although one thing I kind of hate is being allowed to pick exactl which crit to stop, your guys arent going to know all the time where they will be hit

I would be happier with some randomness, say roll first die, decide whether to stop roll second die, that way you would know what level of crit but not exact one.. although this would slow things down a bit

 

[Ripple]

The game already has huge amounts of randomness. The whole point of this is to reduce the random element enough that high investment ships' fate is not determined by a golden bb early in a fight. Adding one more die step to the process won't fix the issue of driving 45 minutes to a tourney and being effectively removed from it on the first cool die you couldn't stop.

Ripple

 

[Burger]

The game already has huge amounts of randomness. The whole point of this is to reduce the random element enough that high investment ships' fate is not determined by a golden bb early in a fight. Adding one more die step to the process won't fix the issue of driving 45 minutes to a tourney and being effectively removed from it on the first cool die you couldn't stop.

Ripple

QFT!

 

[nekomata fuyu]

The whole point of this is not to stop freaks of chance. As long as dice are involved, freaks of chance will always be a possibility. The whole point of this is to stop common occurances from screwing up the big ships.

 

[l33tpenguin]

The game already has huge amounts of randomness. The whole point of this is to reduce the random element enough that high investment ships' fate is not determined by a golden bb early in a fight. Adding one more die step to the process won't fix the issue of driving 45 minutes to a tourney and being effectively removed from it on the first cool die you couldn't stop.

Ripple

The greatest randomness is beam results. There are already ideas that have been put forward to reduce the randomness of beams and make them more standardized.

Adding a single additional die to the crit process, not only isn't a huge addition (you mearly need to reroll any crit rolls again against the redundancy) but it REMOVES some of the randomness. You are putting a throttle on crits. As it stands right now, all ships are just as likely to suffer crits. Requiring a roll of 4+ makes a ship half as likely to take a crit as a ship without the save. This gives a degree of survivability to larger, more important ships that is greatly needed.

 

[Triggy]

It's funny how most of the big tournament players want one system (low numbers of crits you can choose being stopped) but the overall numbers are pretty much equal between this and having "crit saves".

The question is, do you want big ships to be able to survive for at least a turn or two, or do you want them to be overall more survivable but potentially still die to a first turn shot? (by the way, 4+ crit saves just won't happen, it's just too good, 5+ on the larger ships could be balanced though with 6+ on medium ones. Just the same as redundancy 4+ on Battle PL ships just won't happen, especially if the player can choose which ones).

 

[l33tpenguin]

My current redundancy rules is you have to have to meet or beat the score to crit, so redundancy 4 means a roll of 4 or higher beats it and the crit succeds. So the higher the score the better.

Anyway, I personnally don't like the idea of allowing to pick which crit is saved. It feels meta-gamed and unnatural to me.

I honestly don't think requiring a roll of 5 or 6 to score a crit on an armageddon ship is that large of an issue. Considering the sheer number of dice a swarm fleet can throw at it, the smaller ships will make up for their lack of saves with their inharent redundancy (critting 1 ship out of 6 isn't that deadly) and their ability to throw more AD and thus have more chances of scoring a crit.

I also have the redundancy score degrading over time (successes on 5 or 6 against redundancy reduces the score by 1, thus a 5 or 6 redundancy will automatically decrease once its critted on).

 

[CZuschlag]

Criticals on a 5 or 6?

You must be absolutely joking.

For some races, the critical hit is exactly the point, it's what you're after. It's why the Abbai throw all those hails of single-damage dice and the single-damage precise beam. It's why the Dilgar love their Bolter arrays so much. It's why the precise on the Molecular Slicer and the Lightning Cannons is so important. Denying these, certainly if for damage and crew, if not for effect in the case of the Abbai and some others, is a massive shift that is WAY overengineered.

I'd argue it isn't metagamed at all. It's sensible. What am I going to make a backup system for, the main reactor in the case of a meltdown, or the ship's cigarette lighter (the -1 speed crit)? This reflects allocating backup systems and spare parts to the parts of the ship that matter most, and not bothering with the small stuff.

 

[katadder]

just put it as a number of crits each ship can ignore rather than a save is what I will always advocate. perhaps dont use on it the lowest crit of each table but anything above that it automatically gets used.

 

[Foxmeister]

I originally voted for "Save against effects", but on reflection I suspect there it is going too far for P&P and any such system would have to wait until a V3 at the earliest.

If I could change my vote, I'd now plump for option 3 (Ships ignore the player's choice of criticals' effects but not damage/crew). I didn't like the feel of this before, because of the "metagame" feel but as I think on it further I' warming to the idea because it allows you to keep the Redundancy scores low and yet still be useful. It also smooths out luck and adds choice to the critical system.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Ripple]

Since I got 'quote of the day' moments here...

All the extra dice step ideas don't stop the random super die, at all. If I drive 45 minutes to my local game shop, spend half and hour setting up a game and lose my Avioki to the the first shot of the game (has happened) due to a lucky triple damage 6-6, that happens to max out, the fact that he had to roll one extra die to get to that result in no way makes me feel any better about the game.

This was the fallacy they tried to shove down our throats about the current beam system. That really big roll ups would be rare. Well it turns out they happen once a game or so, because we have that many opportunities, and if it happens early, that's usually game for the guy taking the hit.

We're not trying to just make it rarer, we're trying to drive it back in time a bit for the game, so that you always get something out of your high end investment. THE reason not to take an Arm, ship is not the lack of damage/crew vs three battle level ships is you less likely to lose them before you lose it to freak dice events.

Especially when you figure out that 'freak' means once a game, or more, not once in the time you own the fig.

Ripple

 

[Triggy]

Indeed Ripple, I'm proposing now that we start some playtesting of this combination of ideas:

Triggy's Beam System
The current beam rolls are replaced by each AD rolling:
1-2 Miss
3-4 1 Hit
5-6 1 Hit plus roll again on this table (can roll multiple times on this table if 5-6 is rolled each time, with 1 hit per 5-6 rolled)

Redundant Systems/Redundancy
Ships of the following Priority Levels gain the Redundancy X trait:

Battle: Redundancy 1
War: Redundancy 2
Armageddon: Redundancy 4

Redundancy: If a ship suffers one or more critical hits from a single weapon system, roll on the critical table as normal to see what effects are suffered. Once all of the criticals from a single weapon system are resolved, a ship can expend one of its Redundancy points to remove the effects of a critical hit (damage and crew losses remain unaffected) and if wanted, multiple critical hits can be affected at the same time if the ship has sufficient points of Redundancy remaining.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Looking at the poll, next to noone wants a system that would protect against your mystical maxed out 6,6 result anyway. At the moment there's 31 votes for a system that would give no protection against the extra damage, versus only 8 in favour. That's pretty much 4:1 against.
Also, if you're that worried about freak damage, surely you should be complaining about just about every other dice roll in the game. Even just with the whole having to roll against the hull score, there's that chance that when you're needing 6s with your bucket'o'dice, most of them will come up at hits. The only defence against this would be to take up chess. Use Tethys as the pawns, etc.

Yes, it can be annoying when it seems like the dice are conspiring against you, but I've often found that that isn't the big problem. A much bigger problem is that crit effects often take large ships out of the game even when they're relatively undamaged, even without especially (un)lucky dice rolling.

 

[katadder]

we dont have a chance of getting a new beam system in as this is a change to the basic game mechanics so kind of pointless testing it for now.

redundancy i would hope for, along with percentage based speed crits but not being able to pick and choose which crits you stop. maybe just say any crit over 1-2 is classed as serious enough to have redundant systems so would be used on any crits 3+ without choice.

 

[CZuschlag]

TBS, in two games, has already become our beam mechanic standard. It is so clearly superior that I consider the issue closed. I recommend it as an optional rule for the General Public, which we will always implement locally.

Redundancy needs to follow after the retest of the White Star, which is at least locally a higher priority due to the certainty of its implementation (my opinion only). Centauri Wolf Pack, Vree Extraction Beams, and the Abbai refits are still high on our test lists, too.

I consider the new EA Fusion Missile already tested and rejected as unbalanced.

 

[Triggy]

we dont have a chance of getting a new beam system in as this is a change to the basic game mechanics so kind of pointless testing it for now.

redundancy i would hope for, along with percentage based speed crits but not being able to pick and choose which crits you stop. maybe just say any crit over 1-2 is classed as serious enough to have redundant systems so would be used on any crits 3+ without choice.

CZuchlag is right though - as a house rule it's pretty popular and anyone who wants to reduce freak occurrences will pretty much use it all of the time already. If you're testing Redundancy it only makes sense to combine it with TBS if you want to improve your gaming experience.

 

[katadder]

this is true, but its a house rule more for DBs house rule compilation. testing of stuff for P&P is more suitable at this current time though.

and looking at nekomata fuyus post on dice rolling well for opponents, even with TBS you have a chance of the huge beams, in fact knowing one of my opponents it probably wont change his beam hits at all, which is why i liked the other beam systems suggested. with rerolls available its always possible, I for one will never forget a 1e WS managing 6 hits against a dargan, needing 3s, 4s, 5s, 6,6,6 and killing it a one shot

 

[eldiablito]

I have to agree with the ignore the effect, but take all damage as normal...

I have both played as vree and as shadow against the vorlons. In both of these games, I got to see some SERIOUS effects of critical hits; both fun and frustrating.

With my Vree, on the very first attack roll of the game, a single Xaar patrol boat scored a lucky critical hit against a Vorlon war-level cruiser, the dreaded 4, 6! Without a gun, the majority of my saucers were able to blast past that front arc and lay waste to the rest of the fleet. Talk about a disappointing way to win a game.

Against the same Vorlon player, his same War-level Vorlon cruiser was able to get a bead on my Armageddon level shadow ship (the only opportunity that was available I might add). His beam roll just went out of control and he scored the almighty 6,6! That in itself is not too bad, I just figured that I'd get stunned that turn. Well, he continued to roll a 6, 6, 6, 5 for the additional damage to the ship! We calculated that the critical hit alone did 92 damage! So, after that player's first and only opportunity to shoot at the ancient shadow ship, he crushed it soundly! However, even though it was a fluke, the effect was incredibly fun and the result was very entertaining.

These 2 anecdotal stories go back to the overall discussion. The extra damage is alright, even if it does outstanding amounts of damage. However, if all you do is make a ship go adrift of loose it's only weapon, then the game looses much of the fun factor. I am not trying to say that ships SHOULDN'T go adrift, or loose the ability to shoot for some time, but this should never happen to your main capital ship, before it gets to fire; it only destroys the enjoyment of that particular game.

 

[Triggy]

this is true, but its a house rule more for DBs house rule compilation. testing of stuff for P&P is more suitable at this current time though.

and looking at nekomata fuyus post on dice rolling well for opponents, even with TBS you have a chance of the huge beams, in fact knowing one of my opponents it probably wont change his beam hits at all, which is why i liked the other beam systems suggested. with rerolls available its always possible, I for one will never forget a 1e WS managing 6 hits against a dargan, needing 3s, 4s, 5s, 6,6,6 and killing it a one shot

Despite what people claim (it's normally a matter of maximising or minimising luck rather than having more/less of it) "lucky" players will be affected just as much as everyone else

More importantly however is that with TBS you're trying to reduce the odds of a runaway happening and they are now almost impossible (the change from rerolls on 4s to 5s is massive when talking about 5+ rerolled hits). To be honest, as you say, it's a house rule but one that looks like becoming more and more popular, particularly in non-Mongoose tournament play. It won't massively affect redundancy one way or the other, it's just my recommendation