Will P&P address PL?

[animus]

Arghhhh.....

The initiative problem (if there is one) isn't the problem this thread is looking at. It's how to make big ships as good as their lesser counterparts. I don't care if I lose initiative to a swarm - that I'll give them. I just want my War ship to be able to have a chance against 2 Battle or 4 Raid ships (let alone Skirmish and Patrol clouds). Simple as that.

 

[Silvereye]

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.

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.

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.

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?

I like the look of this one. Adding an armour threshold into the damage (and crew?) track adds in some very short term survivability against the randomly destructive crit in the opening salvoes. And you would not even need to extend the damage tracks to incorporate it. The exact number of boxes can easily be varied depending on race and their ship building philosophies, or indeed the particular ship.

I like the idea of the precise by-pass on the roll of 7, I'd also consider the idea that quad (and Triple) damage weapons would just ignore it too, although they will likely burn through armour pretty fast anyway.

Masters of Destruction would still do double/triple damage on the roll of 6 (Critical Hit). So will potentially rip through the armour faster.

CBD / Pak Redundancy: I'd make armour not able to be 'saved' by these.

 

[l33tpenguin]

The problem I see is when a salvo of AD goes past the 'crit immune' section.

Lets say I hit your ship with a random grouping of weapons, with a total of 7 AD scoring hits, 3 of those AD being crits. Your ship has 6 points of damage left in its 'crit immune' section. Of the 3 non-critting AD, 2 were double damage weapons. 1 of the critting AD was a triple damage weapon and another was a double damage weapon. The rest were all regular. The total, before crit, damage is 12. At which point did the damage track drop below 'non-crittable'? Did none of the hits crit since before the salvo the ship was non-crittable? Do they all crit? Do only some crit?

 

[animus]

Easy. You score all the hits from the entire attack, noting how many critical hits were achieved. If the damage exceeds the threshold, roll for the crits as normal. If they don't then all the critical hits are just ignored. The normal "solid hit damage" would still count, just no table stuff.

This works since each ship fires all its weapons at once.

 

[l33tpenguin]

Easy. You score all the hits from the entire attack, noting how many critical hits were achieved. If the damage exceeds the threshold, roll for the crits as normal. If they don't then all the critical hits are just ignored. The normal "solid hit damage" would still count, just no table stuff.

This works since each ship fires all its weapons at once.

Still don't like how this works.

So, if a ship hits with 18 damage, (including 3 quad damage crits), and 17 points are in the 'non-crit' area, with 1 point going over, all the crits carry through?

 

[animus]

Yes, why not? Got to draw the line somewhere. Think of it as representing a hellish volley of nastiness that just breaks the ship into pieces. It would then be the same as if the rule weren't implemented, but there would be the chance - AND big ships would shrug off the first far reaching Demos torpedoes a bit better.

 

[l33tpenguin]

Because if that was my Armageddon level ship that just sucked on 3 quad crits because of 1 damage point difference I would extreamly pissed off.

At that rule.

I think there are far better ways to impliment crit midigation on larger ships. There is too much room for 'getting pissed at the rules' in a 'crit-free' threshhold. Either you are going to be pissed that all your crits were ignored when you scored a dozen crits but they were ignored because the target had 1 point of threshhold left or you are going to be pissed because even though you had 20 points of threshhold left you still sucked on a half dozen crits just because it went 1 point over.

 

[katadder]

do your weapons one at a time, its what most people do anyway as you cant roll damage rolls altogether like that anyway as you wont know what damage belongs to each weapon.

then if a target has 5 armour left and you do 6 damage with the 1st weapon that weapon cannot crit as the target had armour left.
if it had 1 armour left and you do 8 damage with a quad weapon you cant crit as the target had armour left.
just have to balance your weapons to take down the armour with the least amount of waste.

 

[Scipio]

Well you know what, I have a great solution that I put forward some weeks ago. Anyone with a comment? Feel free to shoot it down.

For each attack roll on the attack table and calculate damage normally and check the damage off from the ship but don't check for crits until after writing off the damage from the attack.

If the ship after the damage calculation has more than half of its damage left none of the hits will crit but precise weapons crits if any of the attack table rolls were a 6.

If the ship has equal or less than half the damage left normal weapons crits if any of the attack table rolls were a 6 and precise weapons if any of the attack table rolls were a 5+.

That would make it much harder for low priority ships to "crit out" a big ship before the big ship at least gets to show how big and cool it is.
It would also show that ships are much more at risk for catastrophic failures after they have taken a pounding.

A possible variant could be that if the ship has more than half damage left it gets _one_ crit if more than one 6 is rolled on the attack table.
That would show that more powerful weapons have bigger chance to score crits than less powerful ones.

 

[animus]

These ideas are good but will slow down the game too much. The solution has to be easy and quick.

So I propose either:

A: all attacks for a ship are rolled, taking note of potential crits (precise crit on 6+ regardless), all damage is calculated and if it crosses the threshold, crit away.

OR

B: If a ship is not in the threshold when the attack is launch, it is immune from crits from that attack. If it is across the threshold before the attack then everything can crit as usual. However, this is a terrible solution since small ships are now basically bullet-proof from the start.

Rolling for each weapon system slogs the game down too much. GEG everywhere.... yech. KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid)

 

[Silvereye]

However, this is a terrible solution since small ships are now basically bullet-proof from the start.

So don't give them any armour.

 

[katadder]

or very little amount. say a hyperion could have 4 or 5.

 

[Scipio]

A: all attacks for a ship are rolled, taking note of potential crits (precise crit on 6+ regardless), all damage is calculated and if it crosses the threshold, crit away.

Well finally someone who likes my suggestion.

I'm curios however, why would it take longer to do the attacks individually as in the suggestion? Do you roll them all together? We roll each attack individually as you often have to take into account that DD, Precise and so forth often differs between the weapons?

 

[l33tpenguin]

A: all attacks for a ship are rolled, taking note of potential crits (precise crit on 6+ regardless), all damage is calculated and if it crosses the threshold, crit away.

Well finally someone who likes my suggestion.

I'm curios however, why would it take longer to do the attacks individually as in the suggestion? Do you roll them all together? We roll each attack individually as you often have to take into account that DD, Precise and so forth often differs between the weapons?

He means (i believe) per weapon system. If you have a 12AD, DD, precise weapon, you roll all 12 dice at the same time and find your hits and crits and go from there.

I don't like a threshold system as there would be instances when someone goes clear through it with a salvo, scoring that 1 extra point of damage needed to bypass it and suddenly the ship sucks on a half dozen crits that would have been absorbed otherwise.

I'm really playing devil's advocate and looking at how such a game mechanic would piss off a player.

Back to dice rolling, if you chalked up each AD at a time, it takes forever... same 12 AD weapon as before is "Roll, mark off damage, roll, mark off damage, roll...." 12 times. Not "Dump 12 dice, check for hits and crits, mark damage"

The *best* solution is still a redundancy. Then it becomes "Drop 12 dice, check for hits and crits, roll crits against redundancy, mark damage and crits" Yes, a little bit longer, but not that much.

Anyway, like I've said, you are going to end up with games where a ship gets trashed because a volley of hits got some crits past the threshold because of a difference of 1 damage. Thats going to really piss off the receiving player.

 

[katadder]

well for my suggestion I said that if theres any armour at all, even one point that weapon cannot score crits.
this would make you think more about which order you fire your weapons in.

 

[Scipio]

A: all attacks for a ship are rolled, taking note of potential crits (precise crit on 6+ regardless), all damage is calculated and if it crosses the threshold, crit away.

Well finally someone who likes my suggestion.

I'm curios however, why would it take longer to do the attacks individually as in the suggestion? Do you roll them all together? We roll each attack individually as you often have to take into account that DD, Precise and so forth often differs between the weapons?

He means (i believe) per weapon system. If you have a 12AD, DD, precise weapon, you roll all 12 dice at the same time and find your hits and crits and go from there.

I don't like a threshold system as there would be instances when someone goes clear through it with a salvo, scoring that 1 extra point of damage needed to bypass it and suddenly the ship sucks on a half dozen crits that would have been absorbed otherwise.

I'm really playing devil's advocate and looking at how such a game mechanic would piss off a player.

Back to dice rolling, if you chalked up each AD at a time, it takes forever... same 12 AD weapon as before is "Roll, mark off damage, roll, mark off damage, roll...." 12 times. Not "Dump 12 dice, check for hits and crits, mark damage"

Ok.
My suggestion were not per attack die. It were that you roll once per attack then check the treshold. That is: Attack = All dice from one weapon.

In the case of resolving it in that manner I think that it won't be any more burdensome and have any more rolling than today.

It is probably going to happen that you just miss the treshold with a weapon sometime but I think that all in all it will be far less often and very much less annoying than when you ave a war level ship effectivly getting knocked out the first shot from a patrol level ship.

 

[CZuschlag]

Only issues I have with this are the ships with Shield, particularly those with low Regeneration rates. Effectively, the benefit they get is some of their hits are uncritable. Now, unfortunately, other ships get it, too.

To give these ships their cool trick back, you'll need to boost the values of the Regens, particularly in the case of the Abbai.

The bad Narn hulls (G'Quan and its crappy variants, Rongoth, Rothan, T'Loth, T'Rann, G'Sten) should get proportionally more, as well as just plain more because of size, armor. This would also make them more compelling choices.

Also note: how bad does the White Star and Blue Star get with these updates? Armor on these should be VERY limited, and not available to self-repair. Crits are the things that slow these down, and crit-protection will make them just that much more vile.

Also: Adira, Dra'Vash, Amu, Ma'cu -- GEG has to be rewritten to make sure that while armour may take effect, the damage point will still pierce the GEG. A rebalance may be necessary as well (Adira most likely).

Also: Armoured heavy Vree will need a downtune, as their current downfall is the 4-6 or 6-4 crit. Without these to fear, there's no problem with the T arc, and they're dangerous enough as it is.

Clarification needed: Armor does not apply to criticals caused by boarding party combat.

Light ships should have VERY little armor. Patrols, none at all.

Workable, but this is enough work to deem it a full-scale project. Not an easy fix. Maybe the right one, though.

 

[Triggy]

Agreed with CZuchlag (and Mongoose Steel) - I'm really not happy with ships being invulnerable to crits as this is one of the core elements of the game (and as such Matt probably won't go for it either). Foxmeister and myself have made similar suggestions that don't radically slow the game down and simply improve the odds for larger ships against smaller ships.

Foxmeister - if things were to go as you suggest them then you still end up with swarms of ships of 1 PL below the level of the game, as nothing has been done to tone them down. I still like the principle of the system though. That's why I suggest continuing the "modifier" across the board of PLs, leaving fighters/Patrol PL ships needing to beat a 2+ save to crit an Armageddon PL ship but if a fighter fires at a Patrol PL ship then there is no save at all (both the same PL). If you have a Skirmish PL ship firing at a Raid PL ship then the 6+ save (not forgetting any crit damage still goes through, just not the effects) may just be enough to encourage people into selecting Raid PL ships in 5 FAP Raid games...

Either way, big ships become more survivable but you still have to be tactically aware and cautious of the enemy as they aren't invulnerable (which would see some weird tactics of large ships doing stupid manoeuvres because they can't take crit effects).

 

[katadder]

sounds good apart from a major flaw - everyone uses the same weapons for a race no matter the ship size.
the extra heaviness of firepower from large ships is represented by the fact they have more AD. this in turn already means more likelyhood of crits due to having more dice to roll.

the weapons of a big ship are no more likely to cause a crit than the weapons of a small one if its the same weapon.

therefore this idea really wouldnt fit in, much better to do redundancy.

only way this could work is if all ships had the same AD for the same weapon - so a pulse cannon on a hyperion has the same AD as a pulse cannon on a warlock. however the save between the 2 ships is then changed to represent the differance in firepower weight.
the same would also apply to damage/crew totals. bigger ships have more damage crew currently as they can take more damage. however if you changed to the save representing damage taken then damage/crew should be the same across the board.

 

[Triggy]

sounds good apart from a major flaw - everyone uses the same weapons for a race no matter the ship size.
the extra heaviness of firepower from large ships is represented by the fact they have more AD. this in turn already means more likelyhood of crits due to having more dice to roll.

the weapons of a big ship are no more likely to cause a crit than the weapons of a small one if its the same weapon.

therefore this idea really wouldnt fit in, much better to do redundancy.

only way this could work is if all ships had the same AD for the same weapon - so a pulse cannon on a hyperion has the same AD as a pulse cannon on a warlock. however the save between the 2 ships is then changed to represent the differance in firepower weight.
the same would also apply to damage/crew totals. bigger ships have more damage crew currently as they can take more damage. however if you changed to the save representing damage taken then damage/crew should be the same across the board.

You could of course see this "save" as the likelihood of redundant systems kicking in, also it has the benefit of not requiring any calculations to balance.

However, Redundancy is the alternative that I'm more enamoured with as again it's simple and easier to apply than "Armour" (they both end up having a similar outcome). More importantly, people seem to like the idea and I'm at least willing to test it out. Something simple like Raid and Battle ships getting Redundancy 1, War getting 2 and Armageddon 3 at first and seeing how much this helps before going on to changing the values around...

Both ideas have merit and both are effectively interpretations of having redundant systems and the likelihood that they will be taken out. Either way I'm definitely being sold on the conept at least for a test