The redundancy idea
- Thread starter Target
- Start date
While true, it was an attempt at a compromise between the two camps. One side seems to want the first X criticals stopped, while the other wants to pick and choose wich criticals they take up to the redundancy number. Blocking the criticals outright leads to the legitimate complaint that you could be blocking one of the less important criticals while at the same time allowing people to select the criticals they want to block unneccesarily increases game time.
Chief Engineer
"Sir?..Errr..there appears to be a small cat inside the jump engines.....it's playing with the power cables feeding the governor...."
Captain
"Don't observe it! DO NOT observe it!"
Besides which, if you have reinforced power cabling and additional armour plating around vital systems and whatever, and backup sensors/secondary drive conduits it seems highly unlikely that the following would occur:
Ensign
'sir, our sensors have been damaged and are no longer functioning properly...Shall I power up the secondary sensors?'
Captain
'Nah...why bother? We might lose a completely different but more important system in a different part of the ship - maybe the engines - in a few minutes, and we'll need the backup sensors to restore manouvrability in taht system, despite it not being sensors."
Ensign
'No more drugs for that man......'
Which is what would happen if you let people choose what to use redundancy against....
People will still have XP rerolls on tap in a campaign, if they really want.
"Sir?..Errr..there appears to be a small cat inside the jump engines.....it's playing with the power cables feeding the governor...."
Captain
"Don't observe it! DO NOT observe it!"
Besides which, if you have reinforced power cabling and additional armour plating around vital systems and whatever, and backup sensors/secondary drive conduits it seems highly unlikely that the following would occur:
Ensign
'sir, our sensors have been damaged and are no longer functioning properly...Shall I power up the secondary sensors?'
Captain
'Nah...why bother? We might lose a completely different but more important system in a different part of the ship - maybe the engines - in a few minutes, and we'll need the backup sensors to restore manouvrability in taht system, despite it not being sensors."
Ensign
'No more drugs for that man......'
Which is what would happen if you let people choose what to use redundancy against....
People will still have XP rerolls on tap in a campaign, if they really want.
Attaching Bulk to PL made for a quick fix. No one would have to calculate new scores because the ships PL would determine what the score was.
The idea was always to encourage players to take higher level PL ships. The term "Bulk" or "Redundancy" was just a term to characterize whatever it was that made big ships more survivable.
However, all this is a tempest in a teapot:
1) The idea hasn't been tested.
2) The 2e crew has already stated that it WON'T be in the next edition.
The idea was always to encourage players to take higher level PL ships. The term "Bulk" or "Redundancy" was just a term to characterize whatever it was that made big ships more survivable.
However, all this is a tempest in a teapot:
1) The idea hasn't been tested.
2) The 2e crew has already stated that it WON'T be in the next edition.
1) The original thread was a call for testers. I don't remember more than a game or two that tried it. If there are more, hook me up. I'd like to see the results.
2) Okay, I'll go with it. And I think it should be called Bulk and I think it should be attached to PL levels and I think it should take crits down as soon is indicated on the damage roll - before the crit is actually rolled. No picking and choosing.
2) Okay, I'll go with it. And I think it should be called Bulk and I think it should be attached to PL levels and I think it should take crits down as soon is indicated on the damage roll - before the crit is actually rolled. No picking and choosing.
No. I'm saying that there are some criticals that have more impact than others. For every person that says "Block the critical outright", you wind up with another person who says "But what if it was a 1-1? I don't want to waste a point of redundancy on a measly 1 point speed reduction." Case in point Reaverman and Target in this very thread.
Blocking it outright seems fine to me, but I can certainly see the argument from the other side. They do have a point and if it weren't for the liklihood of it bogging the game down I wouldn't mind it.
They only have a point if you believe in the predeterminism of critical rolls.
"What if it was going to be a 1-1" is a stupid thing to say (aimed at the people who said it of course, I do realize you're only paraphrasing!). Well the fact that you just spent 2 seconds asking the question will affect the dynamics of the air flow in the room, therefore it might have changed your dice roll into a 4-6 crit.
"What if it was going to be a 1-1" is a stupid thing to say (aimed at the people who said it of course, I do realize you're only paraphrasing!). Well the fact that you just spent 2 seconds asking the question will affect the dynamics of the air flow in the room, therefore it might have changed your dice roll into a 4-6 crit.
Of course, the people saying they don't want to "waste" their point of Redundancy are the same people who don't have anything at the momentObsidian said:
Not only is ignoring criticals on a first come, first served basis faster in terms of gameplay but also means you can wear those points down rather than having a ship that is effectively immune to criticals (ones that count anyway).
The way we have been doing it, some crits take more to stop or can't be stopped ( the ones that damage redundancy or our case crew ). You can save up your points to stop the nasty weapons out or 6-6 (in our crit it's ship explodes) it may never happen or you killed outright. I will gather our house rules up & place in one place and post in a nice easily read format. We got rid of the crew scores as such which speeds up the game a heap. The new crew score is redundacy & does SA's. Maybe our way will take more time with players that dither but then games always take longer with those people.
It's actually to keep the crew in our game cause being skelton crewed just sucks which happens when you stop to many crits or force to many sucessful CQ rolls.
I'm sure if you have a game with our house rules (when i post them currently 120k from them) you will like what we have done. Got a 8pt battle game down in 3 and half hrs with 5 players (4 with 2 battle pts vs me with 8 centauri pts) drinking beer. We will call the game where the Sharlin that won't die. Spent 4 turns on 8 or less hits.
It's actually to keep the crew in our game cause being skelton crewed just sucks which happens when you stop to many crits or force to many sucessful CQ rolls.
I'm sure if you have a game with our house rules (when i post them currently 120k from them) you will like what we have done. Got a 8pt battle game down in 3 and half hrs with 5 players (4 with 2 battle pts vs me with 8 centauri pts) drinking beer. We will call the game where the Sharlin that won't die. Spent 4 turns on 8 or less hits.
I like this idea but i like ships getting worse as they take a beating not thde d and d 20th level fighter effect where he can swim through lava with no ill effects because he has loads of hit points, how about losing a trait when you use redundancy to represent power / parts being redistributed
