Will P&P address PL?

[Tolwyn]

Redundancy would be a good idea, but for balancing issues there is one different problem I see.

At least every War Level ship would not only need redundancy, it at least should have 2 times more Damage/Crew and firepower then a Battle level ship. As none of the ships by now follow this, I think that there would have been drastic changes to be made to all fleetss.

 

[JayRaider]

I'd like to see us reverting back to Arma points splitting and some form of redundancy added.
This swarm issue has been here since the start, its about time it was dealt with once and for all in P&P.

 

[Tolwyn]

Agreed. I hate the moments when my ships get critted to death from swarms of smaller ships.
Crits are ok, but not in the way that they become game breakers and end a game as they are now.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Isn't there something in VaS that stops light cruisers and destroyers getting criticals hits on battleships? Some characteristic of the weak trait, I seem to recall?

Why can't anyone writing ACtA see that the things they did for VaS (AD,DD and the above anti-crit trait) make sense for ACtA and follow the on-screen evidence more closely?

No one interested in using sensible, existing mechanics from a game based on ACtA instead of coming up with fanciful, complicated new ones to do the same job? Hasn't anyone here heard of Occham's Razor?

 

[Tolwyn]

No, please explain.

 

[Foxmeister]

Isn't there something in VaS that stops light cruisers and destroyers getting criticals hits on battleships? Some characteristic of the weak trait, I seem to recall?

Why can't anyone writing ACtA see that the things they did for VaS (AD,DD and the above anti-crit trait) make sense for ACtA and follow the on-screen evidence more closely?

No one interested in using sensible, existing mechanics from a game based on ACtA instead of coming up with fanciful, complicated new ones to do the same job? Hasn't anyone here heard of Occham's Razor?

No, but I've heard of Occams Razor!

Well, my proposal was based on a modified version the VaS crit system, where you need to roll a 6 on the damage dice, and then a 4+ to get a crit.

Weak as per VaS doesn't work for ACtA IMHO, as I see no reason why smaller ships can't crit ships of similar sizes, which VaS Weak would prevent.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Occham's Razor is the bedrock principle of modern science. The simplest solution/explanation is the best/most likely one.

VaS has the mechanics we need to make ACtA match the show much more closely, yet every man and his dog on here, including the people who wrote both games aren't interested in saving themselves the hassle of inventing new mechanics when existing ones will do exactly what they want.

We can alsu use VaS' mechanics to solve the stealth debate, make dodge less 40K-style and bloody annoying and generally clean up a lot of the crap that's left in ACtA. Does anyone care about that?

 

[Locutus9956]

Well having skimmed this thread since I last looked here I do think that Brugers 123 buying up system would really work but as noted it would need some.... adjustments to the drakh to stop them being the most broken thing in the history of... broken.... things.... it's early and I'm not awake yet!

But seriously would it really be that hard to just say, reduce the number of carried ships slightly or some such to bring it into parity?

Incidentally Im assuming were talking the old 1,2,3,6,12 style of thing anyway and that it would be the same up or down so if we assume a 5 point battle level game (at 5 point raid it will make no difference since were talking about skirmish level raiders and battle level carriers so the cost would be unchanged and at raid it would still cost 6 raid for that mothership)

The Drakh could buy under this system:

15 Raiders if they buy down.

or

Mothership + 6 Raiders ie 18 Raiders.

But to be quite honest thats still not hugely gamebreaking in my oppinion and if people feel it is then drop the mothership to huge hangars 8-10 and I reckon that should do nicely.

 

[Foxmeister]

Occham's Razor is the bedrock principle of modern science. The simplest solution/explanation is the best/most likely one.

Yes, I know, but it's called Occams (or Ockhams) Razor, hence my smiley!

However, in this case, I don't really see how it applies - just because VaS has a mechanism, doesn't necessarily make it the optimal mechanism for ACtA.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Lord David the Denied]

No, but I've heard of Occams Razor!

Well, my proposal was based on a modified version the VaS crit system, where you need to roll a 6 on the damage dice, and then a 4+ to get a crit.

Weak as per VaS doesn't work for ACtA IMHO, as I see no reason why smaller ships can't crit ships of similar sizes, which VaS Weak would prevent.

Regards,

Dave

So I can't spell. Bite me. :wink:

Doesn't weak in VaS only prevent crits against high hull targets? So low-PL ships with weak guns could crit each other because they have low armour values, but not huge dreadnoughts with high armour values. Seems to work fine and dandy to me, old son? :?

 

[Foxmeister]

So I can't spell. Bite me. :wink:

Doesn't weak in VaS only prevent crits against high hull targets? So low-PL ships with weak guns could crit each other because they have low armour values, but not huge dreadnoughts with high armour values. Seems to work fine and dandy to me, old son? :?

Not according to my VaS rulebook - the wording is almost identical between VaS and ACtA Weak traits. Of course, since I don't really play VaS it may well be that there's been an update I'm not aware of.

Regards,

Dave

 

[CZuschlag]

As to l33tpenguin:

That would only be true if there was no impact in having to deal with launching all those ships from the Huge Hangars first. However, there is a (nontrivial) difficulty in getting them all launched in time. Even I have had a few raiders blow up on me from inside a Ma'cu. After all, Huge Hangars, Carrier, etc. can be Critted away. So, it's not like Drakh raiders launched from a Huge Hangars ship have the same value as a Raiders that start deployed. I still have to find a way to balance for that.

Also, you have to still balance for the fact that there are more VPs exposed than your opponent. It's kind of like the 2-for-1 ship kluge for things like the Haven and Tethys; if I deploy the Battle-level Ma'cu, I have exposed 1 Battle and 4 Skirmish worth of VPs on the table, but I have only gotten 1 Battle worth of firepower. What do I balance to .... 1 Battle and 1 Skirmish? You'd likely have to redesign the Carrier and Macu themselves if you had to purchase the ships in the Hangars, and they'd be either very cheap (the Ma'cu on its own is MAYBE worth a Raid ... nah, the Targrath, Hyperion, Var'Nic, Urik'hal, Haltona, Teshlan! are much better), or they would be far more deadly.

As to Locutus9956:

The trick is only available when you can but up to buy down under Berger's system. When you can't do this -- say, the fight is War-level priority --the effect isn't as severe. This will make it very awkward to balance:

Buy up to buy down, 4 Battle Comparison:
1 Mothership costs 3 battle gets X raiders free. It then uses its last point buying two levels down to get 3 more raiders. Net, Mothership + 3 Raiders.

Buy up to buy down, 2 War Comparison:
1 Mothership costs 2 War points, and gets X raiders free.

The priorities used look the same, but for the same VP, you'll end up short 3 Skirmish hulls for nothing. It's because you go up and then down, which , under Burger's system, use different buy scales, that you end up with weird stuff like this.

In this case, I agree with other posters that the way to go about fixing this is small, certain steps -- the first of which is the Armageddon FP structure. In general, the War and Battle level hulls got big boosts in 2nd Edition. Let's restore the old FP breakdown and THEN see how far off we are.

Of course, fixes to help some of the more noteworthy misses on this low side for big ships wouldn't be bad, either, such as the G'Quan, Shadow Stalker, Octurion, Nightfalcon, Fireraptor, Lakara...

 

[greenboy]

Not really. The exact same 4AD weapon in your example would be more powerful when fired from a War level ship than when fired from a Skirmish level ship. With the redundancy save it doesn't matter what the weapon is bolted onto - it's the ship being hit that determines how effective the weapon is.

Its circular logic. Giving bigger ships a save verse giving smaller ships a penalty. It’s the difference of giving all War level ship 50% chance to ignore a crit compared to making a smaller ship 50% less likely to score a crit on a War ship.

The only reason I prefer a redundancy score to an to something associated with PL is that giving each ship a score gives greater finesse to ship design. 'Redundancy' scores can be used just like Stealth or interceptors are

Not quite though as the save would apply against war level ships as well

 

[Foxmeister]

Foxmeister - any reason for not having the rule apply to a lesser degree to ships only 1 PL below? Surely if the issue exists at all then it applies to a 1 PL gap just not as much as a 2 PL gap or greater!

No particular reason other than "feel" - it feels ok to me that a raid PL ship can crit a battle PL ship as easily as another battle level ship could since they should be relatively close in power. Similarly, I think a fighter shouldn't have any more difficultly crit'ing a patrol PL ship than it currently does (especially against twofers!) so the 2 PL gap just feels more appropriate to me.

In general, more than 1 PL apart and the difference in relative ability becomes more marked and therefore it's the point I'd choose to make criticals more difficult.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Da Boss]

We can alsu use VaS' mechanics to solve the stealth debate, make dodge less 40K-style and bloody annoying and generally clean up a lot of the crap that's left in ACtA. Does anyone care about that?

not sure whats wrong with dodge as a mechanism?

how does VaS deal with Stealth or similar (I have not got the game)

 

[animus]

I like the idea of Redundancy (Bulk) allowing the ship to ignore the first few Crits, but here's another idea stolen from D&D 4th.

Bloodied. The idea is that a ship - any ship - needs to be "softened" up before any real damage can be done (crits). To represent this, we look to the damage points of each ship and make a simple proportion: No crits until the ship has lost 1/4 of it's damage track.

 

[katadder]

I think this was suggested before as a kind of armour. so damage track has 2 thresholds - armour, which until thats gone you cant score crits, and crippled.
this is something that could work well i feel.

 

[Da Boss]

kinda means reworking / rebalancing every ship? more third edition than new supplement perhaps?


be an interesting thing for a new fleet to try out - say in a new League fleet listing :wink: then see how it works with them before transposing to the whole game?

 

[Foxmeister]

It depends - if it were a simple percentage applied across the board to all fleets (say 25%), balance shouldn't be affected since everyone gains to the same degree.

The "loser" though with this kind of approach is Precise weapons, unless they were allowed to crit as normal - perhaps whilst in the "armour track", crits are a 7+ roll, so normal weapons can't crit but Precise weapons could still crit on a 6.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Da Boss]

I would guess it would also affect the Dilgar and their Masters of Destruction / those races withour precise?

Some ships would be v hard with this and CBD?

Centauri would do well out of it - reasonable sized hulls and precise weapons but then thats why they ruled most of the galaxy.............

would you apply it to Shadows / Vorlons?