Some suggestions for Criticals

[Target]

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.

Agreed. The thing is how much redudancy to give, base it off hits, race or just the priority of the ship.

 

[Foxmeister]

Agreed. The thing is how much redudancy to give, base it off hits, race or just the priority of the ship.

The ideal scenario would be to assign each ship a value individually as you really do need to take into account active defenses which avoid hits e.g. Dodge, Stealth, and to a lesser extent, Interceptors). However, that's probably impractical outside of a new edition.

Some kind of function of Hull and HPs would probably make sense since these two combined "simulate" armour with HPs doubled for ships with Adaptive Armour. For the most part, this would also mitigate against the ships with active defenses since they would tend to have lower Hull and HPs.

The real issue would be what the baseline should be for an "average" ship of any given PL so that you could work backwards towards a formula.

Regards,

Dave

 

[katadder]

would consider an average per PL starting at probably raid with 1 then increasing as you go up by one each level.
then would look at race so narn probably 1 more on each battle level + ship.
something along those lines.

 

[Foxmeister]

Purely as a thought experiment, I've been playing around with a formula for calculating the redundancy score, and the following has been showing some promise:

Hits * (Hull/6) / 30

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.

I calculated the results for most of the Raid, Battle, War, and Armageddon level ships for EA, ISA, Narn, Centauri, and Minbari and the results were quite interesting and can be found at the link below:

http://rapidshare.com/files/145429312/critformula.xls.html

For the most part, the ships came back with redundancy scores of:

1 at Raid
2 at Battle
3 at War

Where redundancy was lower than the PL average, it was almost always those ships with decent Stealth or Dodge scores (e.g. White Stars, Liati, most Minbari. In particular, the Delphi, WS, Liati, Leshath, Tigara all came back with 0 redundancy.

There were a few oddities however:

Command Omega - redundancy 2 (too low)
Explorer - redundancy 4 (probably ok though)
T'Loth - redundancy 3 (probably ok though)
G'Quan - redundancy 3 (assuming hits 65, otherwise redundancy 2)
Victory - redundancy 7 (too high?)
Ka'Bin"Tak - redundancy 6 (probably ok)
Adira - redundancy 5 (probably ok)

If I get a chance today, I'll add a some more fleets onto the spreadsheet to see what comes out.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Foxmeister]

Added the following to my spreadsheet:

Dilgar
Abbai
Brakiri
Drazi
Pak'Ma'Ra
Vree
Psi Corp
Drakh

http://rapidshare.com/files/145460336/critformula.xls.html

Most of them work again, but again a few oddities - the spreadsheet has the details but the Dilgar and Brakiri tend towards higher redundancy as do the Gaim. I'm probably happy with the former, but less so with the latter. I also added "Shields" to my list of "round down" traits, which means that the Abbai tend towards less redundancy.

Regards,

Dave

 

[katadder]

wouldnt multiply hits by 2 for AA as this isnt always the case and also comes in with redundancy too high on victory as you found out.

 

[Foxmeister]

wouldnt multiply hits by 2 for AA as this isnt always the case and also comes in with redundancy too high on victory as you found out.

It does work, IMHO, on the WS, WS Gunship, and WS Carrier though which come in at redundancy 1 below the PL norm.

Regards,

Dave

 

[katadder]

wouldnt have thought the WS series would have alot of redundancy though due to size constraints.
size wise they are probably a PL below what their firepower and assests suggest so not including AA wouldnt be a bad thing.

 

[Methos5000]

Haven't had a chance to look over the list yet (rapidshare seems to go nuts for me, keeps looping back to the premium pay download link but I digress), but I kinda figured shields would be added to the round down as well. Stealth/Dodge/Shields seem to be the hardest defenses to overcome (Dodge is iffy because of accurate guns but since accurate guns are so few and the majority of ignore dodge weapons are e-mines and they can't cause crits I think it evens out in the end.)

I image for calculating redundancy, interceptors can end up causing some commotion. Against races that can't bypass them it could be a problem but for others its not really a problem at all. pak'ma'ra against EA might have some problems with some of the good interceptor EA ships plus redundancy and would probably like to see EA have reduced redundancy to compensate. But then along come the Minbari and they benefit from the reduced redundancy......ah the joys of balancing a new idea for ACTA :wink:

 

[Da Boss]

another thought - the score is a pool that you cna minus of any crits scored so:

A random ship happens to have 3 redundancy it can reduce the level of critical it takes by 1-3 levels or 3 crits by 1 etc

so it takes in order

a 1,5 - which it ignores (1pt)
3, 4 becomes 1, 4 (2pts)
5,5 - as normal

or it could have instead

1, 5 ignores (1pt)
3, 4 - becomes 2, 4 (1pt)
5, 5 becomes 4, 5 (1pt)

probably should declare use before 2nd part of crit used?

just a thought..............
.......

 

[Foxmeister]

Of course, the other "answer" might be that the HPs on the Victory might be too high in the first place. If the Victory had 75 HPs, the formula would churn out a redundancy of 5 which sounds much more reasonable to me. Additionally, since it would have a decent amount of crit protection, it is going to be less likely to lose AA as a trait anyway.

However, I'm not trying to start a debate on the HPs of a Victory!

Regards,

Dave

 

[Methos5000]

wouldnt have thought the WS series would have alot of redundancy though due to size constraints.
size wise they are probably a PL below what their firepower and assests suggest so not including AA wouldnt be a bad thing.

But AA does nothing to stop Crit effects though just reduces the damage and AA can be lost through Crits. The only issue that has come up is the Victory (which would not have size constraints) and you could solve that by saying the Max Redundancy score is 6 (making the Victory even with the Ka'Bin'Tak)

 

[Foxmeister]

I image for calculating redundancy, interceptors can end up causing some commotion.

Interceptors are an issue. I don't consider them "strong" in the same way that Dodge and Stealth can be at higher levels, but if you have no beams/mini-beams they can be just as good.

However, most races can "simulate" interceptors using fighters, so perhaps they could be left as is.

Regards,

Dave

 

[CZuschlag]

If you're talking about a Redundancy statistic or Trait, you're going to have to do all the ships individually and think about what does and does not qualify for the trait. You'll have to think about the interaction with Shields for the Abbai. You're going to have to think about the interaction with Interceptors for EA. With Stealth for the Minbari. With GEG for the Drakh.

You're also going to have to think about the value of Precise and rebalance that just as accordingly. The value of Precise is not held constant if everyone gets the same amount of Redundancy; it is decreased in proportion to the amount of Redundancy given. This means the Minbari will need to be readdressed (again). The Drakh need yet another re-evaluation. Dilgar MoD will need to be recalibrated if damage prevention is in Redundancy.

This is why we had all the major debates on this subject before 2e --- once 2e, it couldn't possibly be included until a Third Edition.

Talk about it now if you like, but keep in mind that this won't materialize for at least 2 years.

 

[Foxmeister]

You'll have to think about the interaction with Shields for the Abbai. You're going to have to think about the interaction with Interceptors for EA. With Stealth for the Minbari. With GEG for the Drakh.

Already done! Except for GEG, but GEG doesn't prevent hits so has no impact on protection from crits. As for Interceptors - most races have decent enough fighters that they can use as Interceptors anyway.

You're also going to have to think about the value of Precise and rebalance that just as accordingly.

You could always have it that a "crit" from a Precise weapon reduces the Redundancy trait by 2 which would still give Precise a bonus.

The Drakh need yet another re-evaluation.

Not sure why here, unless the P&P "Critical Systems Defence" rule makes final print.

Dilgar MoD will need to be recalibrated if damage prevention is in Redundancy.

You would still allow the double/triple damage from the hit. Also, according to my formula, the Dilgar do above average themselves on Redundancy.

This is why we had all the major debates on this subject before 2e --- once 2e, it couldn't possibly be included until a Third Edition.

Talk about it now if you like, but keep in mind that this won't materialize for at least 2 years.

I don't really disagree that this won't see the light of day, but I don't believe it's the sacred cow you are making it out to be - the Drakh "Critical Systems Defence" rule as it currently stands is *absolute* proof of that.

Of course, it's what Matt thinks that matters!

Regards,

Dave

 

[Burger]

You could always have it that a "crit" from a Precise weapon reduces the Redundancy trait by 2 which would still give Precise a bonus.

Redundancy will already be removed twice as quickly from precise weapons, because Precise will get twice as many crits. So precise already has its bonus. Giving it double would overpower it even more.

 

[Foxmeister]

Redundancy will already be removed twice as quickly from precise weapons, because Precise will get twice as many crits. So precise already has its bonus. Giving it double would overpower it even more.

Hmmm! Quite right!

Regards,

Dave

 

[B_Steele]

I really like the OP's initial ideas concerning crits, personally. Good thinking on those.

Especially because they stay away from Redundancy.

-Bry

 

[Target]

I don't know why the redundancy is so bad.
We base ours off off the crew score. Hers's why we like ours
1) it lets not have a crew score, less paper work but still can get skeleton crewed when the score reduced to 0
2) Can make SA rolls succefuly or +1 to an opposed roll by sacrificing a point
3) Certain crits need more crew to stop, don't have it the crit goes through, we have worse crits in our table as we still ship explodes + we have given fighters precise back but don't let them do the full range of crits, they don't 6-6 max 3-6. You can choose to stop the crit or save it for the bigger crits, some crits effect the score directly.

This actually made our games far more balanced than the current ruleset.
Narn ships actually get a benefit from more crew, my Centauri have be far more careful on stopping crits.
Game probably is faster as most ships are operational longer & deal more damage. You can take a Big ship vs a swarm & win some of the time.
Redundancy truly does work in probably. It doesn't have to go the way we do it but the final result will very similar.
I really hope the powers that be take a closer look at redundancy.
It does work.

 

[Tolwyn]

At least there has to be some sort of defence for larger ships from crits from smaller ones. I just again saw how crits from small ships on a undamaged large one can kill a fun game. The entire crit system IMO is too unbalanced and punishes the player who takes large ships