Will P&P address PL?

[CZuschlag]

katadder and I don't agree on much (I'm still dead certain I'm right about the Xonn, but that's another thread), but here, we do. It's precisely the properties of the ship that is targetted that should prevent or mitigate the critical effect, not the firer, or any relationship between the two. Firing weapon, perhaps (Precise, Emine!), firing ship, no.

This is the kind of thing that should be the core of the next product (P&P II --- never too early to start thinking about next year's big release project!)

 

[katadder]

agreed!!
which is why the only crit thing I would support is bigger ships having 2-3 redundancy where they can ignore the 1st couple of crits.

 

[CZuschlag]

Redundancy (as a ship property) can even be used to create more of a unique feel for certain races that lack such uniqueness --- Narn, Pak'ma'ra, and slow Dilgar might be good candidates for this --- and allow the Vorlons and Shadows to be more like Ancients they are, and less susceptible to the magic beebee effect that makes them a little .... underwhelming .... given their billing.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

except the save is modified by what size ship is shooting at you.
whereas the redundancy makes up for the fact that bigger ships have more redundant systems, but allows any size ship with the same weapon to cause the crit in the 1st place.

Except the save doesn't have to be modified by the size of ship doing the firing. In fact, my suggestion completely ignores the size of the ship doing the firing in the same way that a ship's hull doesn't change depending on the size of the ship doing the firing. Both are fixed stats.

the wrestler shot in the leg is more likely to live and not die from shock than the kid but if they survive then both is as likely to walk.
the same can be said of crits, the big ship is more likely to survive a crits damage, but if either ship survives they can both carry on.
yes the chance of resisting crits is not taken into effect, as the crit is the same to either ship, however the big ship is more likely to survive and repair that crit.

I disagree. The kid will have less chance of being able to walk after being shot in the leg. The kid is more likely to have to wait until he's healed (or been repaired in ACTA terms).

the save really doesnt work unless every ship using the same weapon has the same AD for that weapon.
currently the kid has a rifle set on single shot whilst the wrestler is firing bursts. which is how ACTA works, the smaller ships have less AD.

a) Currently, two ships with the same weapon should have the same AD for that weapon. If you take a pulse cannon turret off of an Olympus, and strap it on to an Omega, what makes you think that the turret suddenly throws out more AD?
b) Where on earth are you getting the idea that a save system would suddenly break in such conditions anyway?

 

[l33tpenguin]

except the save is modified by what size ship is shooting at you.
whereas the redundancy makes up for the fact that bigger ships have more redundant systems, but allows any size ship with the same weapon to cause the crit in the 1st place.

the wrestler shot in the leg is more likely to live and not die from shock than the kid but if they survive then both is as likely to walk.
the same can be said of crits, the big ship is more likely to survive a crits damage, but if either ship survives they can both carry on.
yes the chance of resisting crits is not taken into effect, as the crit is the same to either ship, however the big ship is more likely to survive and repair that crit.

the save really doesnt work unless every ship using the same weapon has the same AD for that weapon.
currently the kid has a rifle set on single shot whilst the wrestler is firing bursts. which is how ACTA works, the smaller ships have less AD.

Thats not exactly true.
A Warlock has a total of 56 AD to throw in various directions. 1 War point worth of Chronos frigates gets to throw 128 points around. More AD = More Crits. The chronos also have the advantage of movement, not worrying about bore sighting, and more damage/crew (75/85 on the warlock vs 128/144 on the frigates). The Chronos frigates will also weather the crits better as a single crit against them will be 1/8 as effect as it is against the warlock. The warlock also is more likely to overkill one of them when it does kill one, resulting in lost AD.

It gets ever worse at Armageddon. A Ka'Bin'Tak can throw out 114 AD (not including its E-mine), vs the 256 AD of the Chronos. the 16 frigates are even less vulnerable against the KBT than they are against the Warlock. To make matters worse, they can out range the KBT secondary batteries, where the majority of its AD come from.

Yes, this is VERY straight basic numbers, not counting in damage or weapon type, however, as I said, crits come from AD. 4AD is 4 times more likely to produce a crit than 1AD Quad damage is, even if all of those AD crit, the 4 AD will be FAR more deadly, as it will produce 4 crits + crit damage

 

[Target]

If the system works & balances the swarm vs single issue why care about smaller ships not bein able to crit as easily. It's not a simulation. There's plenty in this game which doesn't quite make sense, just add to the list.

 

[l33tpenguin]

While I was... away... I remembered an even better example of this:

White star vs White star gunship.

almost to a t, the WSG is 2 WS in one.

twice the weapons, almost twice the damage and crew, twice the self repair.

Of course, the WSG is twice as vulnerable to crits.

hrm...

The white stars also have the advantage of being able to sink one another.

If the WSG wins initiative, one of the WS can move to a position that makes it difficult for the WSG to engage while the other WS can react to the WSG movement.

 

[CZuschlag]

While I was... away... I remembered an even better example of this:

White star vs White star gunship.

almost to a t, the WSG is 2 WS in one.

twice the weapons, almost twice the damage and crew, twice the self repair.

Of course, the WSG is twice as vulnerable to crits.

hrm...

Maybe this has good deal to do with the White Star needing a fix (as has been previously noted....)

... but that's dodging the point. Some crits cause the same vulnerability. The -1 AD crit works linearly no matter to whom it is applied. Both fleets will be down a pulsar die and a beam die. These crits are linear. This principally relates to the 3:1-3 crits (-2 speed isn't usually a heartbreaker unless you're in a battle hog like a Wahant or a Primus), or 4-1:4-3. The same applies to the 5-1-4+6 crits. The same for the 6-2. On others, of course, it's precisely the point; these are the "All" results -- no weapons fire, no special actions, adrift, no damage control, et. al.

So it's not all the crits. Just the really bad ones. Like that makes it feel any better.

Part of this is the mechanic of the breakdown chart. I simply don't think it has ever been priced right; we are only just now realizing how we can really work the system with the current generation of ships. I am currently estimating that a generic skirmish ship is worth approximately 0.63 raid ships. Triggy's estimate is 0.55; somewhere in there is probably pretty good (I don't think he has a value for a sink with zero ship factored in). In large part, this assymmetry in value is also due to the extra initiative sink, which is how this thread initially began before it turned down Crit Chart Road. This even means the 2-for-1 split doesn't really work; it's only obscured to the naked eye by the heavy randomness that ACtA has in it (and the effects of the hotly-debated criticals chart .... that's why this stuff gets so personal.)

These discrepancies can be handled precisely as balance issues. It's the only viable way. But in no way should we choose the fast way for this trick. The right way is the same way it has always been; slow, careful, rebalancing.

As to why worry about small ships not being to crit as easily? When we institute things such as this, we are enhancing Emine ships (whose vulnerability is not being able to crit, so nothing lost there .... the Gaim swarm actually gets better!) and reducing those ships that depend on crits for firepower (Drakh Raiders .... even at Battle-level, they use Skirmish ships, Dilgar rely on crits for access to MoD, a special rule that in and of itself is reponsible for 20% of their firepower .... Abbai need crits from Quad Arrays to function as designed at all .... Saggis without access to crits will require total redesigns) for not much profit.

Baby steps. Before we go off forcing a result and debating how to handle redundancy, let's await Powers & Principalities. We know Redundancy or Crit-Saves won't make it in time for this one, even if all of Mongoose wanted it to. We're running out of playtest time. Let's see what they can do to fix this from the basic root of the problem -- the FAP breakdown scale itself.

If we can debate anything, it's what the breakdown tables should be like. In my case, help me, I liked the SFoS breakdowns as best of the bunch. Complicated, sure, but better balanced. Well, there was one breakdown that was a loophole trick in the book that needed to be closed, but I forget what it was again.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Let's not kid ourselves, the FAP breakdown isn't anywhere near being the root of the problem. The FAP breakdown is just the easiest part of the system to try and slap the band aid on...

 

[l33tpenguin]

Let's not kid ourselves, the FAP breakdown isn't anywhere near being the root of the problem. The FAP breakdown is just the easiest part of the system to try and slap the band aid on...

Fixing FAP would be far more than a bandaid. it would be like cardiovascular surgery to correct a major blockage.

That said, there are a lot of issues with fixing JUST FAP.

First the rest of the system needs fixed. Ships with balance issues need adjusted. IF a crit effecting trait is added to large ships, this needs to be handled BEFORE FAP is adjusted, as it affects the balance of FAP.

 

[CZuschlag]

l33tpenguin, given the sequence of products to be released, I'm not sure that last bit is an option.

 

[l33tpenguin]

l33tpenguin, given the sequence of products to be released, I'm not sure that last bit is an option.

And I'll live. I'll go through the rules as they come out, take them in and, with the help of those I game with, decide what we like and don't like, and come up with house rules where we feel it is appropriate

 

[Foxmeister]

AD on its own is a blunt instrument because within the scale of the ships involved in the game, a Ka'Bin'Taks primary weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than the Sho'Kovs, but it is abstracted down to make it a reasonable number of dice to roll.

As it currently stands, a given single hit from a fighter (without Weak/Precise) has exactly the same probability of knocking out the engines (1/6 crit) on a Sho'Kov as it does on a Ka'Bin'Tak, and that makes sense does it? Personally I think not.

This is why I think essentially making critical effects modifiable by the PL level of the firer makes sense - certainly no worse sense anyway than the status quo.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Foxmeister]

except it doesnt work.
how can a pulse cannon from a hyperion have less chance of doing a crit than a pulse cannon from a warlock?
its the same weapon, its just on a differant ship.

You keep saying that it's the same weapon, but is it really?

It may have got the same name, it may share mostly the same properties (traits etc), and only differ in AD.

Of course though, in real life, the pulse cannon on a Hyperion might be made by ABC Corp and the one on the Omega made by XYZ Corp. Both weapon systems might be based on the same principles but ultimately have different properties.

Just because AcTA *currently* only distinguishes between the two in the AD stat line, doesn't mean that is necessarily correct.

If I give you the stats of top speed and acceleration of two cars, and that's all the information you have, do you believe that both are the *same* car? Under general conditions, they might perform the same but perhaps one can perform much better with 3 kids in the back and towing a caravan.

IMHO, just looking at the generic names and *abstracted* weapon stats and then making the statement that they are the same weapon is trying to apply too much "real world" logic to what is essentially a game.

Let's just say that AcTA had my proposed critical system from day 1, would anyone be saying that the Hyperion and the Omegas Pulse Cannon were the same weapon system? They might, but it's unlikely, because they'd have always worked on the assumption that the particular model on the Omega was more powerful than the one on a Hyperion. Alternatively, a whole new set of traits could have been created which produced the same effects and were added individually to each weapon system on each ship (e.g. Raid Pulse Cannon and Battle Pulse Cannon). The effect would've been identical, but you'd be happier because you'd have "different weapon systems"


Regards,

Dave

 

[locarno24]

AD on its own is a blunt instrument because within the scale of the ships involved in the game, a Ka'Bin'Taks primary weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than the Sho'Kovs, but it is abstracted down to make it a reasonable number of dice to roll.

As it currently stands, a given single hit from a fighter (without Weak/Precise) has exactly the same probability of knocking out the engines (1/6 crit) on a Sho'Kov as it does on a Ka'Bin'Tak, and that makes sense does it? Personally I think not.

This is why I think essentially making critical effects modifiable by the PL level of the firer makes sense - certainly no worse sense anyway than the status quo.

Primary weapon, maybe (if we're talking heavy laser, for example). But not necessarily for other weapons.

When talking about pulse weapons, for instance, the light ion cannons mounted on a Ka'Bin'Tak-class Superdreadnought aren't necessarily substantially more potent than the ones on a Thentus-class Frigate.

It's just that the superdreadnought carries a hell of a lot more of them.

There's no reason why a single ion cannon turret of pretty much the same design should be harder to destroy on one ship than another - the difference is that on the capital ship blowing off one turret should only take out 10% of the firepower.

Critical hits of the -1 attack dice variety reflect this well - with each battery on the Dreadnought being 10 attack dice it could take a lot of AD penalties before being rendered unable to fire.

The trouble is, as said, the 'All' criticals - 4+ roll on all weapon, one arc taken out entirely, etc, etc - do scale up.


In terms of raw damage, a damage multiplier weapon is better than lots of AD (since a double damage weapon loses 1/12th of its firepower to bulkhead hits, not 1/6th), and since critical hits get damage multiplied as well, there's nothing lost there.

The problem is not in the damage, though, it's in the critical hit effect - what's been pointed at several times is that a single damage critical will blow out a ship's engines just as fast as a quad damage one. Admittedly, the quad damage critical will blow away a much bigger chunk of the ship at the same time, but on a reasonably tough ship, you're still more screwed by multiple weaker criticals because the odds are you've lost more systems.





The problem is threefold:

1) you might well need a fairly significant redesign to include anything like this. Which is not going to be forthcoming in the near future.

2) it becomes quite record-keeping heavy - games like Full Thrust and B5 wars divide up the broadside weapons into an appropriate number of boxes which are lost bit-by-bit but do require a proper ship control sheet and quite a lot of note-taking. Since A Call To Arms is meant to be a fast system to play, that can be a problem.

3) More than once various Mongoose Publishing Staff have said that they like the idea of being able to get the 'magic bullet' critical. Which means that even if they get reduced in occurance in some redo, they're not going to go away.

 

[Foxmeister]

There's no reason why a single ion cannon turret of pretty much the same design should be harder to destroy on one ship than another - the difference is that on the capital ship blowing off one turret should only take out 10% of the firepower.

You misunderstand the point.

Let's look at the Hyperion/Omega Example

Hyperion (Raid)
Medium Pulse Cannon Range 10, Arc F, AD 4

Omega (Battle)
Medium Pulse Cannon Range 10, Arc F, AD 4, Twin Linked

Now let's just modify this a bit:

Hyperion (Raid)
Raid Medium Pulse Cannon Range 10, Arc F, AD 4, Raid Weapon System

Omega (Battle)
Battle Medium Pulse Cannon Range 10, Arc F, AD 4, Twin Linked, Battle Weapon System

Here, i've changed the names of the weapons, and added a new trait to each - a "<PL> Weapon System" trait. Now if I was to describe these traits, it might say something like:

Raid Weapon System
Raid Weapon Systems are not as capable of critically damaging War or Armaggedon level ships as they are those of other priorities. For each critical success on the damage table, roll an additional D6. A 4+ is required to convert this into a real critical against a War PL target, and a 5+ is required against an Armaggedon PL target

Battle Weapon System
Battle Weapon Systems are not as capable of critically damaging Armaggedon level ships as they are those of other priorities. For each critical success on the damage table, roll an additional D6. A 4+ is required to convert this into a real critical against an Armaggedon PL target

Note that I've not attempted to add any explanatory fluff here, nor are these meant to be watertight rules - they are merely illustrations!

Now, so long as every weapon system on a Raid level ship has the "Raid Weapon System" trait, and every Battle level ship has the "Battle Weapon System" trait, within the game this system will perform in exactly the same way as my PL-based proposal and without exactly the same results. They are essentially identical, except that this version requires new traits on every weapon system which would be needless if every weapon system on a given PL ship had the same trait. Notionally all I've done is to make it a function of the weapon rather than the target hull.

However, what I've now done is create completely different weapon systems (so my the pulse cannon on the Hyperion is now not the same weapon as the pulse cannon on the Omega), so that whole argument now goes away l. This has be done though at the expense of having to categorically state it against every weapon system rather than applying it as a generality.

Regards,

Dave

Howeve

 

[katadder]

but then you have thrown out the balance of both those weapons.
thats a significant change in the weapon and game system. obviously to make up for it now being weaker than before the hyperions weapon would need more AD.

 

[Burger]

but then you have thrown out the balance of both those weapons.
thats a significant change in the weapon and game system. obviously to make up for it now being weaker than before the hyperions weapon would need more AD.

Isn't the whole point of the exercise and this thread, to make swarm fleets less effective? ie. to weaken smaller ships weapons when used against larger targets?

 

[Foxmeister]

but then you have thrown out the balance of both those weapons.
thats a significant change in the weapon and game system. obviously to make up for it now being weaker than before the hyperions weapon would need more AD.

The general consensus is that the big ship suffer far more greatly from critical effects than an equivalent FAP of smaller ships. The intent here is therefore to make the bigger ships more survivable by making them less susceptible to crits from swarms of smaller ships but just as fragile to hits from its peers and larger (which I personally believe they should be).

The Hyperion weapons don't need any more dice since would still be just as effective against all ships Battle PL or below. Against War and above, it can still cause crits - it is just not as likely to do so, and therefore IMHO it achieves the aforementioned goal without requiring the whole shebang to be restated.

Regards,

Dave

 

[nekomata fuyu]

As it currently stands, a given single hit from a fighter (without Weak/Precise) has exactly the same probability of knocking out the engines (1/6 crit) on a Sho'Kov as it does on a Ka'Bin'Tak, and that makes sense does it? Personally I think not.

This is why I think essentially making critical effects modifiable by the PL level of the firer makes sense - certainly no worse sense anyway than the status quo.

Your example says that a larger ship should be less susceptible to suffering crits. It says nothing about sizes of ships causing crits. Your conclusion has just been thrown in there out of nowhere.