Swarm fleets

[Target]

If you get to pick what crits you stop then you have to amount of redundancy used to stop the crit.
We have our redundancy based off the crew scores ( we don't have a crew score anymore). Differing crits take different amounts to stop. If not enough can't stop the crit. When reduced to zero you are skelton crewed.
I haven't been pushing our system as people seem to like their crew scores although the game speeding quite some but it our way stoping swarm fleets kicking a fleet of big ships.

 

[ShopKeepJon]

If you get to pick what crits you stop then you have to amount of redundancy used to stop the crit.
We have our redundancy based off the crew scores ( we don't have a crew score anymore). Differing crits take different amounts to stop. If not enough can't stop the crit. When reduced to zero you are skelton crewed.
I haven't been pushing our system as people seem to like their crew scores although the game speeding quite some but it our way stoping swarm fleets kicking a fleet of big ships.

I'm curious. What are the details of your system?

ShopKeepJon

 

[Target]

Basically
Well since we have different crit chat
Locations
1- Minor annoying crits
2- Engines
3 Weapons
4 Reactors
5 Crew
6 Pretty bad stuff ending up with exploding death in a 5" range

The crew score becomes our redundancy but in a reduucd way
18 crew would become 2 ( first number +1 )
32 crew becomes 4
6 crew becomes 1 "Not 7"
140 becomes 15

Most crits are worth 1, generally anything ending with x-6 is worth more
The 5-x damage the crew no way to avoid.
6 crits are take more with 4 to avoid exposion of doom.
We the score is reduced to zero you are skelton crewed.
You don't have to use them to stop crits, as being skelton crewed sucks.
We also can sacrifice a crew to make a roll or give +1 to a opposed roll.
We find it works well for us + we have a few more house rules.
Best of all no crew score to keep track off which keeps in more simple & less likely mess up record keeping.

 

[Ripple]

Here's a stray thought, give a ship a number of DC rolls equal to the level of the ship?

so patrol 1, skirmish 2, raid 3, battle 4, war 5, arm 6

Or maybe half that round up?

Gives the effect of that some of the playtesters talked about with all hands to deck. Crits being less important because you can try to fix more often, without the no SA crits crippling your chance to repair over and above the DC crits.

Ripple

 

[mollari_uk]

I still think the best way to address swarm fleets was to go back to the Armegeddon point breakdowns when if you broke a point down 2 levels (without spliting it at theat first level) you only got 3 ships instead of 4.

I think this one went under the radar a bit, but I think it's a really good point.

I've posted about changing initiative to fix swarms, here people are taking about redundancy etc but all of these will significantly change the game mechanics and have a knock on effect. Would changing the FAP breakdown?

I realise that it would effect the Drazi most as they need lots of ships for initiative sinks for boresights, but you can still get a lot of ships just not as many.

Any one got any specific ideas on how this could work?

 

[Johnny D]

I still really like the idea of making a ships basic number of repair rolls based on its crew. ie every 25 crew (rounding up) is an repair roll you can make at the end of the turn as standard. so a ship with 70 crew can make 3 repair rolls in the end phase.
You'd probably do it as only 1 roll allowed per critical hit, but I personally like the idea of being able to prioritise your repairs and put as many of the crew repair rolls as you want to fixing a particualr critical.
Thus a big ship with lots of crew can therefore repair hits easier to represent having more people to do it.
The mechanic is pretty simple as you have to keep track of crew anyway.
It makes big ships less vulnerable to criticals and makes the crew stat have a bit more of a role.

 

[Da Boss]

Basically
Well since we have different crit chat
Locations
1- Minor annoying crits
2- Engines
3 Weapons
4 Reactors
5 Crew
6 Pretty bad stuff ending up with exploding death in a 5" range

The crew score becomes our redundancy but in a reduucd way
18 crew would become 2 ( first number +1 )
32 crew becomes 4
6 crew becomes 1 "Not 7"
140 becomes 15

Most crits are worth 1, generally anything ending with x-6 is worth more
The 5-x damage the crew no way to avoid.
6 crits are take more with 4 to avoid exposion of doom.
We the score is reduced to zero you are skelton crewed.
You don't have to use them to stop crits, as being skelton crewed sucks.
We also can sacrifice a crew to make a roll or give +1 to a opposed roll.
We find it works well for us + we have a few more house rules.
Best of all no crew score to keep track off which keeps in more simple & less likely mess up record keeping.

How does this work with AA ISA ships - the only usual way to kill them is by killing the crew? I like the crew score personally but interested in how your system works

 

[Target]

They can't stop many crits & can't stop the big crits, is their weakness. While your ships are still firing at full effect, they are having some problems with turning, shooting & the 5-x crits if you have 0 crew do damage instead.

 

[Da Boss]

Even the Victory?

 

[Karhedron]

but they you could also argue that the bigger the ship the more back up and additional facilities are available

Conversely, any hit that actually causes a critical to a big ship has probably caused a lot more damage. By the time you have got through the higher Hull, Interceptors, Stealth and whatever traits you big ship has, any hit that causes a crit has probably taken a big chunk out of the structure of the ship.

On a Hermes, a crit may represent a short on the weapons panel. Two techs and a bit of bailing wire manage to patch it up. On a Warlock, a hit that has had the same effect has probably knocked entire weapons batteries out. Teams of techs working with the best equipment will probably take just as long to fix such major damage as the smaller repair team on the Hermes.

Remember that the damage is proportional to the size of the ship.

 

[Target]

Even the Victory?

Victory has equivalent of 12 crew, Ka Bin Tak 20 & Adira 14 under our system.
They will lose crew quick enough but then this rule makes the Bigger ships better. Thats the point.
The Victory isn't a Whitestar with self repair so it's not so much a problem.It's just the best armagedon ship cause it has the most hits eg 100 hits basically turn in 200 cause of AA. It's no worse under our system, it's still the same stats & everybody has redundancy so it evens out.
We don't play with Shadows or Vorlons so haven't a clue how they would play but since it's house rules we find something to give to balance it out.

 

[victor romeo]

The game already has a mechanic that would make a good redundancy system. Basically the GEG rule. When I play Drakh I never take raiders unless they are the 'free' ones in the huge hangars, I favour big ships all the way.

If Raid level ships had GEG1, Battle GEG2, War 3 and Armagedon 4 it would do a lot to restrict the impact of swarm fleets. The big ships would still be vulnerable to lucky criticals but players would be forced to take some ships with bigger guns.

Of course the Drakh would need a new rule for their shields but as they use shadow tech I can't see why they don't get normal shields anyway.