Some suggestions for Criticals

[Foxmeister]

why make a patrol HPC when a HPC is a HPC? thats the point.

Simple beecause it is the whole weapon naming concept in ACTA is an abstraction! How many different type of HMG exist today? Are they are all identical in every way? We just use the label HMG to refer to them all generically, and ACTA does the same.

In "reality", an HPC on a Nova might be a Weyland-Yutani Heavy Pulse Cannon Model WY012-A, and the one on an Omega might be a Barnes & Noble Pulse Gun (Heavy) 129B3. They would almost certainly have different performance characteristics, but ACTA abstracts them into a single weapon, the Heavy Pulse Cannon. Getting tied up on a name is just ridiculous, because names can be changed when it suits the right purpose.

I'm not saying that PL-based weapon system "crit saves" are the only way to go, and not even that they are the best way to go, but an objection based on an unwillingness to adjust an abstract naming convention is insufficient reason (IMHO) to dismiss it out of hand especially when the same type of name changes are being used to promote another type of weapon change.

Maybe you're right, and a PL-based crit save doesn't really work in the game itself, but all the while it is a thought experiment it is no more or less valid than most other suggestions until such time as it is demonstrated not to work.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Methos5000]

I want a Barnes & Noble Pulse Gun (Heavy) 129B3. Is there a truck bed mounting kit for it?

 

[Foxmeister]

I want a Barnes & Noble Pulse Gun (Heavy) 129B3. Is there a truck bed mounting kit for it?

They don't make that model any more - you'd have to get a Barnes & Noble Pulse Gun (Heavy) 135A7. Basically the same gun, but it has a much higher muzzle velocity!

Regards,

Dave

 

[captainsmirk]

Yet why would any fleet operate six different models of the same weapon? There are many different types of HMG yes but most armies only use one of them...

Similarly there wouldn't be enough of a performance range to make each priority levels weapons different, otherwise why use a medium pulse cannon, why not use a lower priority level heavy pulse cannon instead?

The priority levels themselves are even greater abstractions than the weapon names. If you are going to make ships less vulnerable to crits based on priority level then only the level of the target should be taken into account not that of the firer, a higher priority level ship will (individually) generally have more chance to cause crits due to rolling more dice.


Nick

 

[skavendan]

Yet why would any fleet operate six different models of the same weapon? There are many different types of HMG yes but most armies only use one of them...

Nick

they would operate 6 different models because smaller ships wouldn't have the POWER that bigger ships do!

It's really simple when you think about it the more power a ship has the faster the batteries can fire and for longer and so on and so on.

 

[katadder]

true so they dont mount as many of the same weapon. hence the lower AD as they dont have the power to mount lots of the weapon.

 

[skavendan]

I still dont buy into the number of AD balancing it of at all.

And that brings you to the range argument bigger ship better hull could have better turrets with longer range yet the same weapon

 

[Foxmeister]

If you are going to make ships less vulnerable to crits based on priority level then only the level of the target should be taken into account not that of the firer, a higher priority level ship will (individually) generally have more chance to cause crits due to rolling more dice.

Where I have an issue is when a *single* hit from a fighter has twice the chance of rendering a Ka'Bin'Tak adrift than it does a Sho'Kov, when in "reality" the Ka'Bin'Tak is going to have massive amounts of redundant systems compared to the Sho'Kov, and the critical systems are going to be buried far deeper into the superstructure and protected by more armour, which means that this result is so far out of whack it is untrue. The amount of AD rolled initially is completely immaterial since *any* single hit can create this issue.

The "armour" of a ship is supposed to be abstracted into its hull score and the amount of HPs hit has, but there is nowhere near enough granularity in the hull scores to accurately represent ships at both ends of the PL scale. In addition, the sheer abundance of AP, SAP, and Beams/Mini Beams also renders the hull score largely immaterial.

The nett outcome of all this is that buy downs are positively encouraged, even with the new FAP, because having multiple ships means you are protecting your firepower and manoeuverability against the worst of the crit effects.

So, IMHO, something needs to be done to protect larger ships against crit effects. Now, I don't have a problem with an Adira cutting huge chunks from a Ka'Bin'Tak, so I rather like the idea that any form of crit protection doesn't protect you from ships of your own "class" (PL) or higher, which is where the PL of the firer becomes important.

If you had say a flat redundancy score for each ship, whereby it could ignore that many crits a turn, IMHO what you would find is players who attempt to "overload" the redundancy (much like is currently done with interceptors) before bring their big guns to bear.

What I would like to see, and I believe a PL-based crit system would deliver somewhat, is for fleets to act like fleets - where the big ships tend to duke it out against each other, and the smaller ships go up tend to face ships in their own class. You could still swarm a big ships with a load of piddly gun boats, and you may get lucky and knock something out, but the chances are significantly reduced.

Regards,

Dave

 

[silashand]

Since hull points are supposed to represent redundancy, thickness of armour, etc., why not simply introduce a Critical Threshold to all ships, whereby all of them are immune to crits until this threshold is passed? Something like 25% hull points sounds about right I think. It would be simple to implement as well as support the notion that bigger ships could withstand more punishment before being vulnerable to such things. Besides, it would more closely represent the fact that critical systems just plain aren't mounted out in the open where the enemy can shoot at them willy-nilly like is pretty much how it works now.

Just a suggestion anyway.

Cheers, Gary

 

[Ryueokami]

A different idea for handling crits:
Why don't we give the ships "saving throws" against criticals?
The threshold that must be achieved in order to ignore the critical
could depend on a.) the priority level of the ship and b.) if it uses
CBD or not.

Patrol level base save throw: 7+ (so none without CBD)
Skirmish-Battle save throw: 6+
War-Armageddon save throw: 5+

If CBD is used in the turn, then the threshold of the saving throw
is reduced by one:
Patrol level base save throw: 6+
Skirmish-Battle save throw: 5+
War-Armageddon save throw: 4+

If the roll succeeds the critical is ignored, and if not, the results
for the critical are rolled as normal.

When using that method, races that are known for their extremely
redundant systems could have a threshold that is decreased by 1
(5+ becomes 4+), and races that are known for their fragile systems could have a threshold that is increased by one (5+ becomes 6+).

 

[silashand]

You missed one level. I think you mean:

Patrol: 7+
Skirmish/Raid: 6+
Battle/War: 5+
Armageddon: 4+

While it's also a good idea, I think I still prefer the Crit Threshold since the more damage a ship takes, the more vulnerable it should become IMO. But anyway.

Cheers, Gary

 

[Foxmeister]

Patrol level base save throw: 7+ (so none without CBD)
Skirmish-Battle save throw: 6+
War-Armageddon save throw: 5+

Skirmish->Battle is too wide a band IMHO. If there was going to be something like this, I'd prefer the bandings to be?:

Patrol/Skirmish
Raid/Battle
War/Armageddon

However, part of me thinks that "large" ships really begins at Battle PL (Explorer and T'Loth being obvious exceptions) and I'd be quite happy to only see crit saves/redundancy at Battle and above.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Foxmeister]

While it's also a good idea, I think I still prefer the Crit Threshold since the more damage a ship takes, the more vulnerable it should become IMO. But anyway.

I don't disagree in principle, but it's going to be very hard to balance the thresholds.

A saving throw, or crit confirmation roll, will reduce the frequency of crits and thus the likely number of them, whereas a threshold confers complete immunity until the threshold is passed. So where do you put the the threshold to make this fair?

Regards,

Dave

 

[G Quan]

The crittable is ok like it is - but the ships should have a little space in the raster at that the crits are not effeckiv. It is not fluffy when a large battleship suffer an crithit from an little craft in this first conflict.

I think all ship in all fleets should have the same strukture point value that they may crippelt, markert in (blue) where crits have no effect!

Example:
ShoKov Cutter
Damage 12/3
00000 00000 00
GQaun
Damage 55/13
00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000

If the ship suffer more than the blue raster hits, so split the dice and roll the blue first with no crits effekt at all - than roll the remaning dice aganist the green sektor as normal.
Example at the ShoKov Cutter:
It suffer 4 hits - 3 of them roll against the blue and have no crits effekt - 1 roll aganist the green as normal. At the first 3 rolls aganist the blue is one an bulkhaed hit of 1 and the last roll against the green is an 6 with crits effekt! But discard all hit from behind the raster. All blue Points are leaveing if the ship suffer 3 hits.
If all the 4 hits are DD or TD roll just as up, only just discard more points.

 

[katadder]

Since hull points are supposed to represent redundancy, thickness of armour, etc., why not simply introduce a Critical Threshold to all ships, whereby all of them are immune to crits until this threshold is passed? Something like 25% hull points sounds about right I think. It would be simple to implement as well as support the notion that bigger ships could withstand more punishment before being vulnerable to such things. Besides, it would more closely represent the fact that critical systems just plain aren't mounted out in the open where the enemy can shoot at them willy-nilly like is pretty much how it works now.

Just a suggestion anyway.

Cheers, Gary

this has been suggested before basically as armour.
its an idea I could get behind as I prefer this to random arbitary saves depending on PL as you can never get rid of said saves.

 

[Methos5000]

Since hull points are supposed to represent redundancy, thickness of armour, etc., why not simply introduce a Critical Threshold to all ships, whereby all of them are immune to crits until this threshold is passed? Something like 25% hull points sounds about right I think. It would be simple to implement as well as support the notion that bigger ships could withstand more punishment before being vulnerable to such things. Besides, it would more closely represent the fact that critical systems just plain aren't mounted out in the open where the enemy can shoot at them willy-nilly like is pretty much how it works now.

Just a suggestion anyway.

Cheers, Gary

this has been suggested before basically as armour.
its an idea I could get behind as I prefer this to random arbitary saves depending on PL as you can never get rid of said saves.

The problem I have this is it penalizes precise weapons and MoD until the armor is gone. It would require more then just a simple adding of a new threshold. Those weapon systems would have to be adjusted or something to compensate for the fact that they cannot crit until armor is gone. Even if it was something like No crit effects until the armor is gone but the damage/crew loss from crits is still applied that would at least not nerf the Weapon systems in question as much.

 

[Foxmeister]

The problem I have this is it penalizes precise weapons and MoD until the armor is gone.

MoD doesn't improve the chances of scoring a critical, so this can be worked around by allowing the "critical" hit to score the double/treble damage, but have no critical effect.

Precise would be an issue though with a pure armour score though.

Regards,

Dave

 

[katadder]

precise and MoD would lose out to saves as well as they are causing less crits. at least precise against armour score allows you to ignore all bulkhead hits.

 

[Foxmeister]

precise and MoD would lose out to saves as well as they are causing less crits. at least precise against armour score allows you to ignore all bulkhead hits.

No - precise wouldn't lose out any more than a regular weapon system to saves. Yes, less crits are being caused, but you still have twice the chance of scoring a crit because twice the number of saves would be required.

Regards,

Dave

 

[katadder]

TBH the best and easiest thing to implement in crits is the 1st one - redundancy.
bigger ships have more tick boxes for crits to ignore. narn ones could have one more than other races, or more fragile races could have one less.

if you want to go more complicated you could do it where a ship has certain amount of redundancy in engines, weapons etc.