Skin Dance

[Bendigeidfran]

Considering 18 pages of the White Star thread is a bit much to hijack I thought I'd start something new to talk about one of the suggested changes. In the thread there was talk about revising the Skin Dancing so it's less a Ramming technique and more like what we see on the screen. Some of the suggestions got me thinking about this;

Skin Dancing, CQ 10
>Success allows the Skin Dance to proceed as normal.
>Failure results in a miscalculation of the pilot forcing the ship to lose all firing opportunities while the pilot keeps the ship from slamming into their target.
>Rolling a 1 (or less if there are any modifications) results in the ship attempting to Skin Dance to slam into it's target and defaulting to ram rules.

 

[skavendan]

Sounds ok to me. BUT I would add Precise and Accurate weapons can target you normaly as they are more advanced.

Also I would allow the minbari to do it since ya know suposadly Minbari did it first so....

 

[eldiablito]

While I agree to some degree about skin dancing, I think that the Torothas should be able to do the same thing that those white stars can do too.

...Either that or only allow the "Fighters" to perform the maneuver.

 

[Taran]

You know, with the change to the Ramming rule, why does anyone even think they might want to use Skindance as an easy ram?

If you're crippled, straight opposed CQ. And with the ISA having the highest CQ in any fleet (tied with Psi Corps) and a further +1 for Agile...
If you're not crippled, CQ9, which is typically a 50% chance of success (same as SkinDance) followed by the opposed CQ for (higher CQ on average, Plus further +1 for Agile).

Ramming damage:
1/2 starting Damage Points in AD, SAP, TD
WS: 5AD, SAP, TD

SkinDance damage:
Starting damage in AD, no special.
WS: 10AD


Ramming just got made so attractive to WS fleets that SkinDancing lost all appeal as a cheap ram.

 

[Da Boss]

You know, with the change to the Ramming rule, why does anyone even think they might want to use Skindance as an easy ram?

If you're crippled, straight opposed CQ. And with the ISA having the highest CQ in any fleet (tied with Psi Corps) and a further +1 for Agile...
If you're not crippled, CQ9, which is typically a 50% chance of success (same as SkinDance) followed by the opposed CQ for (higher CQ on average, Plus further +1 for Agile).

Ramming damage:
1/2 starting Damage Points in AD, SAP, TD
WS: 5AD, SAP, TD

SkinDance damage:
Starting damage in AD, no special.
WS: 10AD

Ramming just got made so attractive to WS fleets that SkinDancing lost all appeal as a cheap ram.

As I read the damage and we have always played it

SkinDance damage:
Starting damage in AD, Double Damage
WS: 10AD

Alos Skin dancing can be done by Skel crewed ships and by those who can not carry out a SA.

Triggy made a good version back on the threads somewhere.

I don't think non crippled ships should be able to ram...........

 

[Hindsight]

I had a bunch of Blue Stars yesterday, and I was getting raped by a Minbari fleet, and I just strated throwing Blue Stars at my opponent. Never once did it roll to actually shoot... boom... boom... boom...

*shrug*

I think its a silly rule in that it almost always means you blow up. The Rangers were supposed to be bad ass, so I'd like to see this happen where maybe Accurate weapons can still hit you, and you only fail on a one.

 

[Ripple]

I just wish we could get the 'stars to be skindancing stuff actually bigger then them... the whole skin dance on a hermes bugs me.

But yes, it should never have become a free ram.

 

[skavendan]

The Rangers were supposed to be bad ass.

How do you work that out for the most part they where morons with a death wish, take marcus for example how many times did he suicidaly suggest something. Reminds me of a dwarf.

And yes you should not be able to skin dance something the same class as you that is a good point.

 

[Bendigeidfran]

Part of the problem is that there is no size for the ships in ACTA. The priority levels define power, not scale, so based purely on ACTA we don't know if the Hermes is bigger or smaller then a Blue Star or how it compares to Hyperions or Drakh Amu. Not even damage scores really tell about scale, just resilience. Maybe third party sources could tell us but not regarding some of the new ships.

 

[Da Boss]

Triggy's version which seems pretty good


Skindancing
Skindancing is a risky action and only highly trained crews attempt to skindance in a combat situation. Any ship attempting to skindance cannot do so around a ship with the Fighter trait or a ship that in not immobile/adrift and has not yet moved or taken an action in the turn. Also, the ship may not attempt to skindance if it is Crippled. If the Crew Quality check is failed, the ship attempting to skindance only crashes into the enemy ship if the dice for the CQ check came up as a natural 1. If the skindance check fails and the ship does not crash then it finishes its move where it came into contact with the enemy ship but may not fire any weapons this turn as the crew attempt to regain control of their vessel

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=36731

 

[Bendigeidfran]

I missed that in the forums but that's what I was trying to capture (the no-fire-on-failure). The only difference is whether movement stops on contact or can continue on.

I think Triggy's is better!

 

[nekomata fuyu]

If anything, I would expect a Hermes to be fairly large for its PL. It is a cargo transport after all, which implies that it has a substantial amount of its bulk dedicated to cargo space (as opposed to anything useful for a fight).
A better example of something that shouldn't be skindancable by a WS is a Myrmidon. They're meant to be barely any larger than a heavy fighter (despite the rediculously large number of damage points), so a WS is almost definately larger than it.

 

[Greg Smith]

There is a rough correlation between damage and size. But game factors such as stealth, adaptive armour and the like do tend to muck this up with things like Minbari, Vorlons etc.

 

[katadder]

well a hermes also has room for 6 starfurys and plenty of missile reloads on board so must be a fairly large vessel

 

[Ripple]

Guess it's a hold over from the old days when the hermes had an actual length that wasn't very big, and didn't have reloads for the missile tubes. It was never a large ship... rather a marine support ship rather than a naval vessel.. look at the size of the turret... it was originally similar in size to the tiny turrets on the omega...

Ripple