Redundancy/Armour - Which Version?

[AdrianH]

If the armour/redundancy system is based on damage points rather than PL, the Warlock, and indeed most War level ships, will get better protection than the Sharlin. The Vorlon light cruiser won't, and tough luck on the White Star Carrier. In fact, if it's damage based, the Ashinta will get better critical protection than the White Star Carrier!

On the other hand, should variants with different PL's but the same basic hull, e.g. Ashinta and Tinashi, get different protection?

 

[Burger]

That's why I advocate it being based solely on PL :lol:
It is a meta-gaming concept. No "realism" is required.

 

[Foxmeister]

That's why I advocate it being based solely on PL :lol:
It is a meta-gaming concept. No "realism" is required.

I believe it has to be targeted. If you have decent dodge or stealth, you are receiving significantly less hits (in general) and therefore are already more stealth resistant IMHO. Active defences such as these are already "better" defences than just simply having more hits.

Making it purely PL based would mean that the Sharlin would "gain" more than a Warlock because it is already likely to take far less hits due to stealth, so active defences need to be taken into consideration.

Regards,

Dave

 

[mollari_uk]

All current defenses have been taken in to effect for the current ships stats. Hence why a Whitestar has 10 hits and a Shadow Scout has 25.

Adding more of something new to one ship over another will swing the balance in favour of the former. It has to be equal per PL.

 

[Burger]

Making it purely PL based would mean that the Sharlin would "gain" more than a Warlock because it is already likely to take far less hits due to stealth, so active defences need to be taken into consideration.

You are correct. Defences such as dodge, stealth and interceptors remove hits before they can become crits... so a Tikrit that takes a hit will have a 1 in 6 chance of a crit, whereas a White Star Gunship that takes a hit will have a 1 in 2 chance of dodging it, therefore a 1 in 12 chance of taking a crit. The Tikrit takes more crits from the same attacker, therefore should have higher redundancy.

But it can't be based just on hitpoints either... then ships with GEG or Adaptive Armour are being punished... these traits cause the ship to have reduced hitpoints, but don't offer any crit protection.

How about based on PL, minus one for each "active" defence (stealth, dodge, shields)? What about interceptors....
Also Drakh on Critical Systems Defence lose their redundancy. And pak get a -1 too, due to their redundant systems bonus... or, lose the bonus and give all pak ships a +1.

 

[katadder]

it cant be based on defences as ships with defences tend to have less damage as well to make up for it.
a WS has 10 damage rather than around 30 due to active defenses and this applies to all ISA variants. minbari ships tend to have damage 1 PL below their level (apart from veshetans) and also have a 33% cripple threshold when most ships are 25% or lower. drakh have generally low damage for PL and only hull 5 because of their defenses.
this is why all ships at the same PL should get the same redundancy as the defenses have already been taken into account in the balancing.

 

[Foxmeister]

this is why all ships at the same PL should get the same redundancy as the defenses have already been taken into account in the balancing.

Sorry - I don't see that! Less hits means less crits, so active defences *do* make a significant difference. Not taking them into consideration causes an imbalance.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Burger]

OK, an example.

A Liati and a Tikrit both take 18 hits, single damage, precise.
Tikrit will get on average, 6 crits. Redundancy 2 for being Battle level, so 4 crits go through.
Liati dodges half of the hits, so 9 hits go through. On average 3 crits, redundancy 2 for being Battle level, so 1 crit goes through.

Both ships are battle level. Both took the same amount of incoming hits. The Tikrit took 4 crits, but the Liati only took 1. Is this fair? I think not!

 

[Foxmeister]

ints either... then ships with GEG or Adaptive Armour are being punished... these traits cause the ship to have reduced hitpoints, but don't offer any crit protection.

My formula does a reasonable job (IMHO anyway) of determining redundancy. Details on the following thread.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=37193&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75

IMHO, anything that doesn't take in consideration active defences will just make ships with those traits better than those that don't since they already have a form of crit protection and will therefore "burn" redundancy at a lower rate than those without.

Regards,

Dave

 

[katadder]

this is why all ships at the same PL should get the same redundancy as the defenses have already been taken into account in the balancing.

Sorry - I don't see that! Less hits means less crits, so active defences *do* make a significant difference. Not taking them into consideration causes an imbalance.

Regards,

Dave

they are already taken into consideration in the damage scores of the vessels with the defences.

and using burgers example a tikrit has 44 damage compared to a liatis 26. and the tikirit has alot more weapons so yes it is fair.

take what you want to do -1 redundancy for each defense - WS gunship has no redundancy, and crits can take away his active defences. is that fair when other battle ships with more damage and weapons because they dont have these defences can ignore these crits? I think not.
are you going to include AF and interceptors in the defences? as they surely are defenses things like WSs and their variants dont have and stop crits just as well. in which case no EA battle level ship could get redundancy either.

the ships are balanced against each other already to a degree. allowing certain ships to get more crit protection at the same level is giving the balance to the ships with no defences who already have other things to make up for this.

 

[Burger]

they are already taken into consideration in the damage scores of the vessels with the defences.

and using burgers example a tikrit has 44 damage compared to a liatis 26. and the tikirit has alot more weapons so yes it is fair.

Yes, but as repeatedly said, active defences offer a form of redundancy already. You are taking less crits than a ship relying on passive defences because you are taking less hits from the same attack. Essentially you already have some redundancy. Therefore the redundancy score given should take this into account.

take what you want to do -1 redundancy for each defense - WS gunship has no redundancy

Uhh, 2 for being Battle, -1 for dodge = 1. AA is not an active defence.

TBH I don't really like your formula Foxmeister... where do the "U" and "D" columns come from, are they just arbitrarily assigned? Hull shouldn't be in the equation because beams ignore it anyway, and shouldn't be based on damage points because that nerfs adaptive armour and GEG.

 

[Foxmeister]

they are already taken into consideration in the damage scores of the vessels with the defences.

We've already established time and time again that extra HPs mean less and less as it goes up due to the hideously imbalance crit system, so I'm afraid I can't agree with this.

are you going to include AF and interceptors in the defences? as they surely are defenses things like WSs and their variants dont have and stop crits just as well. in which case no EA battle level ship could get redundancy either.

In my opinion, interceptors and AF are far less valuable active defences than stealth or dodge, since there is *far* more in the game that either ignores these, or overloads them. Your mileage may vary of course, but I consider Dodge 4+ and Stealth 4+ the starting point for really useful active defences.

the ships are balanced against each other already to a degree. allowing certain ships to get more crit protection at the same level is giving the balance to the ships with no defences who already have other things to make up for this.

What "things" make up for this? If you're going to say additional HPs, I'm afraid that is just not borne out in the game. A floating hulk that still has HPs but has been critted to death is just about as valuable "tactically" as one that has been destroyed. Yes, it won't concede VPs, but that's part of the meta-game.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Foxmeister]

do the "U" and "D" columns come from, are they just arbitrarily assigned? Hull shouldn't be in the equation because beams ignore it anyway, and shouldn't be based on damage points because that nerfs adaptive armour and GEG.

AA is taking into consideration and U and D are not arbitrary as it is here where active defences are taken into consideration- see below.

where Hits is multiplied by 2 for ships with AA. The "30" is just a figure I've given as the average number of hits for a Raid level ship but it was a finger in the air estimate rather than a true average.

The resulting figure was then rounded up, unless the ship has better than Stealth 3+ or Dodge 5+, in which case it was rounded down.

Hull is in because whilst beams may ignore it, not every weapon system is a beam, and there are enough non-beam weapons to make this significant IMHO.

GEG isn't in simply because, for the most part, the Drakh figures come out at the PL average.

It's just supposed to serve as a starting point for assigning values - I didn't say it was perfect! It's just that I believe that Redundancy should targeted, meaning that ships should be assigned individual values and this was just one method of doing so - it's never going to be better than individually looking at each ship and just picking an appropriate value.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Methos5000]

In my opinion, interceptors and AF are far less valuable active defences than stealth or dodge, since there is *far* more in the game that either ignores these, or overloads them. Your mileage may vary of course, but I consider Dodge 4+ and Stealth 4+ the starting point for really useful active defences.

I'm sure the Dilgar and Vree would disagree that interceptors are far less valuable a defense. pak'ma'ra as well but at least they can create Plasma Webs if the conditions are right.

The problem with factoring a redundancy that ignores interceptors is the few races that actually do not have beams will have to fight through interceptors and redundancy while their beam equipped opponents only have to worry about redundancy.

Hull is in because whilst beams may ignore it, not every weapon system is a beam, and there are enough non-beam weapons to make this significant IMHO.

should this not also make interceptors significant even as a minor contribution to redundancy? Not all weapons can ignore interceptors after all and interceptors can reduce how much redundancy is used up by the many many fighter based weapons that do not ignore interceptors.

 

[Burger]

Yaah, interceptors and high hull are both equivalent defences. Both ignored by beam/mini-beam, and both good against non-beam.

If I put my formula in I get very similar figures to yours Fox! Only "extreme" ships are different, such as Victory (you gave it 7, I give it 3), T'Loth (you give it 3, I give it 1 - it is a Raid ship after all). Most other ships get the same result, or just 1 different.

 

[Foxmeister]

should this not also make interceptors significant even as a minor contribution to redundancy? Not all weapons can ignore interceptors after all and interceptors can reduce how much redundancy is used up by the many many fighter based weapons that do not ignore interceptors.

Most races can "gain" interceptors by using fighters. I know it's not universally true, and I'm sure someone will say you can also "gain" Stealth using "Run Silent" (but that comes with a set of drawbacks!), but it is also true that anything beyond about 4 interceptors provide a diminishing return.

So no, the formula isn't perfect (and no formula ever could be), but as a general rule I'm happy with the levels of Redundancy it calculates for the vast majority of ships even though interceptors aren't part of the calculation.

However, if something for Redundancy does make it into P&P, I fully expect it to be a purely PL based solution simply because it is simple and whilst it may introduce a small level of imbalance within PL (IMHO anyway, the Sharlin vs Warlock being a good example), it's still better than nothing at all.

Looking forward to a 3e though, I would like to see something that takes active defences into consideration because I personally do believe it can be significant.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Foxmeister]

If I put my formula in I get very similar figures to yours Fox! Only "extreme" ships are different, such as Victory (you gave it 7, I give it 3), T'Loth (you give it 3, I give it 1 - it is a Raid ship after all). Most other ships get the same result, or just 1 different.

The Victory is down to my doubling of AA. It definitely gives the Victory too much IMHO, but then it does work very well for the WS Gunship and WS Carrier. Of course, I've always though that that Victory had too many HPs anyway..... 75 would work better!

The T'Loth though I'm actually quite happy with - ditto the Explorer. Comparing these to a purely PL based solution, I think that a T'Loth and an Explorer with Redundancy 1 gain far less than say a WS with Redundancy 1.

Regards,

Dave

 

[nekomata fuyu]

No no no... ANYTHING but a fluff-based mechanism please. The idea is totally a meta-gaming concept, it is intended to fix the current problem, that a swarm of big ships will always beat a large ship. It is not intended to add flavour, interest, or fluff to the game. It needs ot be based on PL only, or damage points... I prefer the former but some ppl prefer the latter.

Besides, the Warlock's strength is already represented by its hull 6 and more damage points than the Sharlin. The poor Sharlin doesn't need to be punished doubly.

I'm going to have to pick you up on this I'm afraid. The proportional redundancy idea is not a meta-gaming concept - it is a fix based on giving large ships the same vulnerability to crits as small ships (rather than being more vulnerable as they are now). Basing it on damage is part of the same idea - two ships of different sizes should on average suffer the same number of criticals when they've lost half of their damage points.

Fluff based input into redundancy (such as saying that Narn ships are sturdier) would be fine, but such tweaks should be done by hand after we've agreed on a way to add redundancy wholesale to all the ships in ACTA.

 

[mollari_uk]

Wouldn't basing the redundancy scores on damage work better if proportional values are to be assigned?

If a ship has no defenses whatsoever (like the narn) then they have high damage values. Ships with defences like dodge/stealth/sheilds have low values.

This gives you a base to work with. You could then modify the redundancy values for those with other types of defence (AA, GEG).

 

[Arcadia]

OK, an example.

A Liati and a Tikrit both take 18 hits, single damage, precise.
Tikrit will get on average, 6 crits. Redundancy 2 for being Battle level, so 4 crits go through.
Liati dodges half of the hits, so 9 hits go through. On average 3 crits, redundancy 2 for being Battle level, so 1 crit goes through.

Both ships are battle level. Both took the same amount of incoming hits. The Tikrit took 4 crits, but the Liati only took 1. Is this fair? I think not!

So? If there was no redundancy the Tikrit takes the 6 crits an the Liati only 3 crit. So is this fair?

Redundancy base on PL has the same “Balance” as the game! Also redundancy only ignores the effects not the damage, so the HP and Crew become more relevant with Redundancy.

Fore the Liati only 1 “crit effect” goes through but it has to take the damage of the 3 crits. So having only 26 HP to the Tikrits 44 becomes a liability.