VAS damage question.

[big-gazza]

Hi,
a bit of a basic question for ya.

IN the vas rules it states that after making a damage roll you do one point of damage. Is this just hull damage or is it crew as well?

Being a ACTA player I'd assume it was crew and hull.

As its stated in the book its hull only.

Any help would be great.

Gazza

 

[Poi]

It's hull only. Crew is only affected by critical hits.

 

[big-gazza]

Hi,
thanks.

Gazza

 

[Racegamer]

Can this answer be right???

Why, then, do the critical hit charts say "+x" under crew? The "+" implying IN ADDITION TO.

Also, with crew ratings 2 - 3 times what hull ratings are, you will NEVER cause enough crew hits to matter to a ship before it sinks! I can't imagine explosions from shells causing deck, hull, bulkhead, turret damage, etc. without causing extensive crew damage.

Try playing, JUST ONCE, where you take crew hits for every hull hit and you will see that this is how it should be.

Racegamer

 

[Poi]

The answer is correct, and has been confirmed by Mongoose in previous threads.

Whilst crew were often injured/killed in battle, numbers of casualties were seldom sufficient to impact on a ship's fighting ability.
This would not be true in a space battle, as every hull breach can suck numbers into the void.

 

[Burger]

Try playing, JUST ONCE, where you take crew hits for every hull hit and you will see that this is how it should be.

Try reading the rules, and you will see this is not how it should be.

VAS != ACTA

Yes, running out of crew is very rarely an issue in VAS!

 

[Racegamer]

Greetings...

I didn't mean to disparage the writer (Poi) of the original answer posted here. Sorry if it came out that way. And, yes, I have read the rules and it reads just as you say - it doesn't mention taking crew hits anywhere except by Critical Hits

I think that the entire product was rushed and sloppy (something I think Mongoose has a problem with on a regular basis)... and figured it was entirely possible that in final editing this was missed. hence my comment. If you've played Call to Arms, this assumption seemed an obvious conclusion to reach. We tried it both ways and it "felt" more correct to take crew hits in conjunction with regular damage. That's why my remark sounded "uppity". By the way, I tried to read all of the forum posts with rules questions before I posted that remark... but I didn't spot any with that particular question.

Statistically, with crew ratings averaging more than double the basic ship damage rating, if you only take crew hits on critical hits, the chance of crew hits having ANY effect on game play is so small that crew hits might as well have been left out of the game completly. Look at the numbers... If you hit, you roll damage dice. Only HALF of the 6's rolled become Critical Hits. Of those, the average crew damage is less than 3 (and this is just averaging ALL the crew hits from ALL the crit charts; the average is even lower when you actually consider the bell-curve chart that shows the crit type/location. Again, I repeat my original belief that the descriptor "+" in the crit effects implies ADDITIONAL damage, but, I accept that you say that Mongoose has stated otherwise.

Again, I apologise for the tone, it wasn't intended.

Racegamer

 

[juggler69uk]

Note 2 crew hits are taken at the end of every turn for each fire you have still burning

 

[weasel_fierce]

are there any historical examples where death of crew actually put an end to a capital ships fighting ability ?

 

[Shadow4ce]

Note 2 crew hits are taken at the end of every turn for each fire you have still burning

Which, if you have 5-6 fires going on, adds up rather quickly if your crew can't seem to put them out (Man I hate rolling 1s & 2s for Damage Control in the End Phase). :wink:

 

[DM]

are there any historical examples where death of crew actually put an end to a capital ships fighting ability ?

Not that I can think of. Loss of capability tends to be driven by more immediate concerns such as loss of buoyancy, loss of stability or structural collapse and system damage. Of course those events may well themselves have led to serious casualties amongst the crew.

Perhaps a better way of looking at the "crew" factor would be to consider it a measure of the effective manpower on board not only in terms of numbers of personnel on board but also fatigue, morale, experience etc. Think of losing crew points not so much as "25 sailors killed by fire" as the effort involved in the firefighting effort has fatigued a portion of the crew (believe me, damage contol and firefighting on board a damaged ship is extremely tiring), some of whom may have been injured.

 

[Behehe]

Current concepts in damage control

 

[TheMackster]

Note 2 crew hits are taken at the end of every turn for each fire you have still burning

Which, if you have 5-6 fires going on, adds up rather quickly if your crew can't seem to put them out (Man I hate rolling 1s & 2s for Damage Control in the End Phase). :wink:

When we played last night, one of the Kriesmarine player's 2 Scarnhorsts had over 38 crew dead and 10 fires burning after some Engine crits from the Queen Elizabeth BB's mighty guns. It reached crippled the following turn with 4 fires still burning but we thought it might actually get to skeleton crew first the way things were going.

This is the first time we'd ever seen that many crew kills though and we just generally ignore them. I love the idea of 1 crew killed per hull hit but we'll wait on trying that until more feedback comes out, but I agree that if it's never going to be relevant in the game why the heck include it?

I don't have my rulebook here but are crew casualties difficult to recover during campaign games and refits? Might only really apply there then, eh?

 

[juggler69uk]

IIRC with bonuses you get a maximum of 25 RR points to split for repair and reinforcement

 

[Swan]

In campaigns it depends on the number of ports that you control. For each port you get 10 Resource points, if it is a supply port you get 10 + d6, and just for being in the campaign you get 10 resource points per turn. At the moment the top player in our campaign is gring 60+d6 resource points a turn. There is no upper limit on resource points. As for crew casualties these are replaced on a 1 resource point per 10 crew, so crew replacement is not much of a hardship.

 

[Soulmage]

We've been playing with 1 crew and 1 hull per hit for a while now. . . it STILL doesn't generally result in any ships being de-crewed.

I think after Order of Battle comes out and I can see what the rules tweaks are, I'm going to make my own house rules sheet. Crew will be ignored altogether and fires will have a chance of causing additional criticals similar (or exactly the same as) DM's house rule on fires.

But I want to see the new rules before I go to the effort of making my own.

 

[juggler69uk]

Again crew may be important in the campaign game, where it may affect how much repair you can effect.

 

[Swan]

While crew does have an impact in the campaign that impact is very slight. On average the crew impacts less the 5% of the resources gained each turn.