Specialist Arms Forum
Battlefleet Gothic => [BFG] Experimental Rules Feedback => Topic started by: RayB HA on November 08, 2011, 12:14:45 AM
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Hi guys,
I just read through the new codex and it's many background changes.
In no particular order I'll throw forth the changes that effect BFG:
1. Necron ships have shields!
(I would suggest using the Quantum shielding they have on their vehicles by having better armour when the shields are up).
2. Necrons have slow interstellar travel, probably about as fast as Tau. They can still be fast in system however. (lower attack rating to 3?)
3. C'tan are no longer the guys in charge, infact they're closer to being slaves! (No C'tan themed upgrades)
4. There is a clear hiarchy, Phaerons, Overlords and Nemesors being good choices for captains and admirals, while Astromancers being good for extra rerolls.
5. Necrons use the webway! All though not as extensivley as the Eldar they do 'own' large portions of the Webway, some even large enough for fleets to travel through!
6. Necrons enslave worlds, they don't just raid them. (They could have a raiding fleet or a full battle fleet)
7. Necrons actively seek to destroy nids, and will even ally with the slave races, like humans to do so! (Necrons could ally with other fleets).
8. No Pariahs, no Dragon on Mars and no real reason why they went into stasis anymore. (okay, not too BFG relevant ;))
9. Necrons have fighters and troop transports, Scythes. (The inclusion of AC makes sense, although using ships portals to attack through the fighters might be interesting. i.e. Scythes act as fighters but may act as assualt boats if within 30cm(?) of a Necron ship with portals).
10. Necrons have 4 different types of world: Crownworld (Hive world eqiv), Coreworld (civ equiv), Fringeworld (penal or mining equiv) and Slaveworld (this is an alien world that is under Necron rule).
Anyone else got a couple of pence to throw in the melting pot before I write up a new Necron Fleet.
Cheers,
RayB
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Are the Scythes actually fighters with assault capability? If so they could be played exactly like thunderhawks in bfg, they would have to penetrate the enemy ships shields to make their "teleport" attack or some such and therefore require "attacking" ie: coming into base contact. Also how common are they? Is this a tomb ship exclusive or can any old cruiser take a dozen?
As for the shielding just adding it should be enough... They're already pretty tough.
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And then they ask why many people leave GW.... all this daft retconning...
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I haven't read the new codex (and I'm not going to as I don't play 40k), but from what I've seen on the GW website and in WD it seems they've completely changed the fluff and destroyed the Necron character.
1) Shields are fine, and quantum shields look nice in 40k. Not sure how to implement them in BFG without simply making Necrons have shields like everyone else and destroy one of their unique aspects. How would shields increase the armour on a ship that is already 6+?
2) Ok their ships can go faster-than-light but not as fast as warp travel. Meh. Necrons should still be more likely to be the attacker in my opinion.
3) The C'tan u-turn is plain silly and again is character destroying. Little affect on BFG though.
4) Again, introducing a hierarchy destroys one of the things that makes Necrons stand out in BFG. Fluff-wise, Necrons were soulless and MINDLESS machines. Now they've got personalities and are less unique (race-wise) as a result.
5) The whole point of Necrons using FTL was so that they didn't have anything to do with warp space or the webway (and therefore chaos).
6) Again a character destroying fluff change. Enslave then transform into Necron warriors perhaps. Enslave then rule, no way. Necrons want to purge all life. It was the central tenant of their existence!
7) They really hate nids for invading their galaxy. Ok fair enough. Still don't like the allying business though. They should be mindless and uncompromising.
8) They removed a unit form a codex? But that means they can't sell the models? Otherwise no affect on BFG.
9) Again, having no strike craft is what makes Necrons different in BFG. You can already use portal attacks from escorts. Would the necrons waste even a lowly warrior in a small vulnerable strike craft?
10) I can see them essentially having different sizes of tomb world. I get the impression though that these are almost like normal worlds, with Necron warriors wondering around re-building and almost leading normal lives. Again, a massive character change. Necrons should emerge from their tomb world, exterminate all life on the world, spread to other worlds and exterminate all life, etc, until stopped or every planet is dead. No negotiating. No change of plans, etc.
Perhaps all that sounds overly negative but for me the main appeal of the Necrons (their unique character) has been completely changed. Now its almost like they're just "Tomb Kings in space".
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My considered opinion is to ignore all retconning from current codex. Hell, it might be retconned out of existence come the next codex, so I see no reason to pay it any mind.
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^ I'd go with that.
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Yeah, lets do that.
So hi Ray,
foggetaboutit.
;)
Better to use fan ideas from the forum. The scarab swarm idea as an ordnance equivalent for example is much cooler then the dumb scythe idea.
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I agree, the Matt Ward isn't the smartest GW employee.
It does give some valuable ideas for a Necron fleet rewrite, however I think that keeping them shield/ordnance free is something of a theme in their fleet, making them unique compared to others. It is nice to have admirals/captains.
I think that Scarab swarms would make a nice defense, comparable to minefields. Also I think new fluff should be a little merged with the old, Necrons can be used as a 'raiding fleet' from a tomb world, or as a major fleet as per the new fluff.
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My considered opinion is to ignore all retconning from current codex. Hell, it might be retconned out of existence come the next codex, so I see no reason to pay it any mind.
For once, Siggy and I agree.
The Cronway thing alone warrants ignoring.
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I don't think that the changes in Necrons in 40k necessarily port over to BFG. Starship and tank technology is very different for every other race, so I don't see a need to match the Necron tank abilities with their starships.
That being said, the Necron fleet is a travesty and needs to be ammended.
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Necron's allying with other races...Matt Ward needs to be fired.
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^ that post needs a "like" button
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A necron fleet - rewrite could be fun to do, if only to use in mixed campaigns (BFG - 40K).
A few points however:
- if they would have to use their 'slow' stasis-ships again, they would be isolated. How have they then succeded in building/running a gallactic empire in the first place?
- webway use: the dolmen gates were/are used to create an entrance. If voyage was/is only possible between dolmen gates, how could they ever go and besiege the fortresses of their enemies? IMO Dolmen gates offer a portal but they can use the natural exits of the webway.
- Capturing necron ships: fluf says there are precautions to prevent necron technology falling in the wrong hands. The moment the necrons lose a boarding fight and are overrun, their ships would selfdestruct and take everybody/-one with it. (Byebye Marshal)
- Necron shielding: no ideas yet how to imply shields to necrons.
- Fighter craft: tomb blades are the planetside version of the original tomb blade that carried shipbusting weaponry. So, it's recommended that planetside craft are not used to represent AC.
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Necron weaponry:
- Particle weapons: WB, R30 cm
- Doomsday cannons: WB, R60 cm, crits on 4+ (Tomb ships only)
- Gauss weapons: Lances, R30 cm up to R45 cm.
not sure for Tesla weaponry but IMO R30cm.
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And no Psychic pulses from the Sepulcher. Necrons have no access to psychic powers.
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My considered opinion is to ignore all retconning from current codex. Hell, it might be retconned out of existence come the next codex, so I see no reason to pay it any mind.
+1 here. New nec fluff is crap. In any means.
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Tomb Kings in space is right on the money! I don't like that too much, but I'm forcing myself to at least accept it.
Most Necrons are still as they were, the 'new' units having a bit too much awareness for my liking, but they don't make the majority population just most of the pictures! ;)
The Phaeron Characters have taken the place of the C'tan, some are quite interesting. The C'tan are mediocre monsterous creatures and nothing more. >:(
Necron Shields on ships is in the codex. A 6+ hull with shields up and a 5+ hull with shields down could work. (armour is determined for an entire attack, don't roll one dice at a time).
Necron AC is a new notion, Tomb blades, Scythes (fighters, which can have portals) and to a lesser degree scarabs could be employed. Tomb blades are bombers (maybe fighter bombers), Scythes are fighters with the possibility of H&R's (as they'd have to drop troops onto the hull...) Maybe Fighters that can act as assault boats when an enemies shields are down.
Scarabs are just too slow to be anything but mines or CAP (or a refit).
The motives of the Necrons has dramatically diversified, some want to wipe all life out, some want to enslave, some want to fight other Necrons for political gain, others are just trying to wake everyone up, and some are trying to become flesh and blood again.....
There is also the Flayer Virus, this makes normal warriors into flayed ones. This could be represented in BFG as having +1 Boarding modifier when you have a normal leadership of 6 (or 7 if 7 is the lowest), you would lose this if you gained leadership in a campaign.
Cheers,
Ray
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Wow. Matt Ward is a troll with a paycheck. I certainly couldn't do as good a job making the worst possible changes to the fluff if you paid me.
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So you want to add attack craft and shields to necrons? Ok. Tomb blade? Straight bomber 20cm speed. Scythe? Fighter/assault boat 30cm speed, acts as a fighter in all regards except attacking ships, when attacking choose wither they will be supporting tomb blades (turret suppression) or utilizing their portals to drop a warrior squad on the enemy ship (hit and run). Shields have no effect on this attack (it can be assumed that having portals on both sides of the shields will allow them to punch through, it can also be assumed this would give them sufficient power or allow them to target at longer ranges or whatever... Its sci-fi ;). Drop the starpulse generators for 4 launch each, starpulse has odd rules anyway and doesn't make much sense as to why it effects everything (and passes holofields) but doesn't hit necron ships ::). Keep the sepulcher but change the psychic blast (that necrons don't have ::)) to doubles attack craft for equipped ship, or maybe add 2 launch? There's lots of options of course they could just be added and the points increased... But necs are alreay like seventymillion pts per escort :P.
As for shields why not keep it as is but explain the saves as advanced necron shielding. When crippled cut the saves down one (4+ tomb becomes 5+, scythe and shroud become 6+ and jackal and dirge lose their save. Add shields collapsed to result 9 on the critical hit table, ie the ship has no automatic saves until repaired (necrons being able to repair shields? sure! why not :P) and if its equiped with a sepulcher it may not be used.
Or not, whatever its all good really just some thoughts I've had rolling around and thought might help.
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Necron AC:
the original Tomb blades are descriped as fighters mounting shipbusting gauss /tesla weaponry. IMO that makes them fighter-bombers.
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Yes but apparently this new ship they have is a fighter with a portal to drop troops, I can't really see both being fighter/bomber fighter/assault boats. Altho I guess they are supposed to be super covered in awesome sauce...
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Yes, the Scythes are supersonic planetside craft with no indication that there are 'spacecapable' variants. As the original tomb blade was devellopped at the end of the war in the heavens, it would seem that their AC is limited to the Tomb Blades.
Scarab clouds as minefields or selfrepair mechanism seems an acceptable idea.
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Yes, the Scythes are supersonic planetside craft with no indication that there are 'spacecapable' variants. As the original tomb blade was devellopped at the end of the war in the heavens, it would seem that their AC is limited to the Tomb Blades.
Scarab clouds as minefields or selfrepair mechanism seems an acceptable idea.
The problem is they are not aerodynamic, and Necrons have no need for life support. Therefor it's entirely possible they are also spacecraft.
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IMO they lack the speed to be truly spacefighters, just as Imp Thunderbolt, Lightning and Marauder.
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Scarab clouds as minefields or selfrepair mechanism seems an acceptable idea.
Actually the original idea was to have them deployed like a minefield, but behaving like ordnance after activation.........
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Aerodynamics and life support aren't the only things that separate atmospheric craft from space craft. The most important aspects are the ability to escape a planets gravity (i.e. powerful engines) and the ability to survive re-entry (i.e. heat shielding/ energy shields, etc.).
Having said that, I guess you could have spacecraft that were incapable of entering the atmosphere and solely operated in space which wouldn't need the above. Most seem to be designed to operate in both theaters of battle though.
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Night Scythes are Necron variants of the Doom Scythe fighter, favoring troop transport capacity over heavy weaponry. Despite this, they are armed with twin-linked Tesla Destructors and are still formidable craft in their own right when compared to the fighters of lesser races. The favored tool of any Necron invasion, they are used as the first wave of a Necron attack and transport troops into battle with a captive wormhole linked to a distant Tomb World built into its hull. They are also used as scout ships and are capable of interplanetary travel.
seems they can move between planet and space no problem, and dont even require a carrier...
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Night Scythes are Necron variants of the Doom Scythe fighter, favoring troop transport capacity over heavy weaponry. Despite this, they are armed with twin-linked Tesla Destructors and are still formidable craft in their own right when compared to the fighters of lesser races. The favored tool of any Necron invasion, they are used as the first wave of a Necron attack and transport troops into battle with a captive wormhole linked to a distant Tomb World built into its hull. They are also used as scout ships and are capable of interplanetary travel.
seems they can move between planet and space no problem, and dont even require a carrier...
Missed that. Time to (again) re-read the dex.
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That brings up all kinds of options really. They could be independent of a ship altogether purchased as a separate vessel. Maybe something like 30pts/ strength deployed like any individual ship maybe formed in squadrons, 4+ save, 40 cm move fighter, owning player may choose to have it attack ships like an assault boat or fighter/bomber! where it follows all rules for both. If one is removed roll a D6, on a result of 1 it is disabled for the rest of the game and cannot be reloaded. Any not disabled can be reloaded (using the highest leadership value, or commanders if it is less). Reloaded craft are deployed at any point along the necron players starting table edge. May not be reloaded if there are no more necron ships in play.
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Necron AC changes the flavour of the fleet quite considerably. Also the slight problem of not having AC markers has to be overcome.
Portals imo should be Launch bays and teleporter attacks! Placed in the broadsides for crit purposes.
Tombblades should be fighter/bombers with a speed of 20cm. (The speed and effectiveness makes these AC kinda rubbish).
Scythes should be fighter/aboats with a speed of 30cm.
Spyders and Scarabs these are basically 'replicators' from stargate sg1 and are quite amusing in 40K. Almost tempted to say they should act like firecrits from orbital mines, that could form waves..... I'm almost at a point of saying they should be minefields that can move... Actually that would be really cool! ;D
SPG doesn't really fit in the new fluff anymore. Dumping it would a good idea. Especially if Necrons have AC.
Cheers,
Ray
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Ray, are you kidding me?
You have not been able to get the new rules up on the GW website, and now you are thinking about remaking the necron fleet?
Do you have ANY idea how stupid that sounds? Until GW actually puts the new rules up on the site, anything we do is raw fanwank, and will not be admissible in a tournament setting.
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Do you have ANY idea how stupid that sounds? Until GW actually puts the new rules up on the site, anything we do is raw fanwank, and will not be admissible in a tournament setting.
Sorry to budge in, but how many GW organized tournament for BFG are there ??
Warmaster puts up its own stuff, and most organizers are open to expanding into the fan-based lists.......
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Zelnik,
adepticon uses the Faq2010 with or without the GW approval.
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Maybe you're right, and I am just being grumpy.
But after the utter failure of the HA to get anything of substance done, combined with the Ham Sandwich Fiasco, I really lack faith in the HA right now. I don't mean to be a status-quo adhering conservative about this, but how necessary is it to change the current rules?
Remember. There will be -no- new miniatures, and we have two cruisers, one battleship and two escort classes to play with. to say that we are 'limited' is an understatement.
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Twofold. That's how I see this.
The FAQ is being used with or without GW. Tournament & friendly. Others use BFG:Revised. Others MMS only, others the original v1.0 etc etc.
As it stands many people dislike the Necron BFG rules. Changing them/adding them to compendium 2010 won't be bad.
GW doesn't care either way.
This also opens the way of adding new miniatures from outside GW. ;)
Plus, I don't see it as a HA failure. More a blindness of GW.
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Yes, I agree with horizon. Absolutely.
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No one can look at battlefleet Ham Sandwich and view it as a 'success'.
Also, Did you notice the key words in Ray's post? HE is working on it, not us. This means HE decides what goes into it, without any opinion of the community.
Also, like I said, You have three capital ships, and two escorts. Good luck making variety with that.
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Saying "he" is working on it doesn't imply he will ignore all community input. I read it as just meaning he will do the work of writing down the rules and editing them (someone has to). The fact that this thread exists at all proves the community has some input.
I see nothing wrong with people producing house rules, faq's, new fleet lists etc. At the end of the day we can choose whether to use them or not on a game by game basis if we want, irrelevant of GW's actions.
I may not like the new Necron fluff, but I'm not against new fleet lists in general.
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I am adhering to my previous statement. After the Ham Sandwich fiasco, I lost a lot of trust in the HA, and for good reason.
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Necrons with shields, attack crafts, and motives make them a very standard fleet
i guess for some this is a good thing
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yup lets fix them like eldar with mms ;-)
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Back on topic.
- Ethernity gates: larger than the gates of the monolith but same function. Would allow ships to phase out and reappear through the gate. Very fast, in the blink of an eye, limited however to the worlds they control; they cannot travel to other worlds through it (it's not a stargate).
- Dolmen gates: hacks into webway, but limited to the cut off part of it. Should be possible to hack into the eldar controlled part of it by building a dolmen gate on a suitable possitioned world. Very annoying for the Eldar (of either kind).
- FTL: 'doomed to isolation'. Topic also on Warseer.
BUT,
- how could they rule a galactic empire without FTL? All a province had to do to gain independance is cut out the Ethernity gate and they had enough time to organize themselves because it would take ages before a punitive fleet/army could reach them. Dolmen gates didn't excist yet.
- How could they be winning the 'War in the heavens', although aided by the C'tan, without FTL? It would take ages to get somewhere as Dolmen gates came late in the war and 'only' accelerated the end of that war.
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....just because they have limited webway access does not mean they do not have their inertialess drives.
Remember, we are not matt ward, we do not have to butcher the rules as much as he has butchered the fluff.
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Just trying to match 40K stuff with BFG for mixed campaigns.
Love to keep their inertialess drives.
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Why can the inertialess drives not work the same way they always have for bfg? I see no problem saying that it makes them accelerate very quickly, but doesnt have the power to traverse between systems. As for the webway and these gates just ignore their effects as far as game play goes. In a scetor with a large necron presence it would be pretty easy to assume they have such a large presence because they have active gates spread out enough that they can travel with ease. I would also say if they control large parts of the webway and the gates to it is it not possiable that now that they are "fully awakened" that several forgotten, lost, disabled gates (ones that they control) have been reactivated for their use. After all if they went into a slumber or whatever why would they leave the back door open? How did these gates get built anyway? Im assuming that since they were built in the first place the people that built them did not have a ftl drive either. From this we can assume that they must have some way to traverse long distances and construct gates... ala B5. Either they send sleeper ships out and build one in real space, or they traverse the warp and build a gate from the inside out. Both of these would be something im sure the necrons could accomplish, espically considering they have been fighting over/ using these for... ever as far far as humans are concerned. With the resurgance of the necrons as a viable threat it will be intersting to see where theyre going with them against the empire and if its possiable they may attempt to have imperial forces attempt to take control of a portion of the webway again... At any rate it seems that gw has created enough intrest off of this to keep the stories comming for quite some time.
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Zelnik,
I don't feel the HA has failed, I don't feel as though we've succeded as much as I'd like either. :( Without GW support it's difficult, afterall they have no pressing need to keep the specialist games alive!
One of their primary goals is to make as much 'profit' as is sensible/viable. Something that wasn't really at the core of GW a decade ago, as they were still running it like a privately owned company: just after as much money as healthily possible rather than abstract percential profits. ???
Anyways, I am writting this Necron list as a community project. So I'll edit it and try and come up with something everyone is happy with. I'm not afraid to bow to comunity sanity. ;)
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Hi all,
I've had a few ideas I want to throw out there:
Portals are the key to the new character of the fleet in my opinion. I want them to act as launch bays that are capable of redeploying AC instead of the AC moving normally, this is in either players ordnance phases. Each portal would only be able to redeploy one AC marker per phase, however you could use this redeployment to make new waves!
If portals aren't used in this manner they can perform teleport attacks in the ordnance phase. This can be done conventionally or through a Scythe marker, this does not expend the Scythe marker, however turrets may still shoot it down.
Ecorts with portals wouldn't add to the AC limit but would be able to get CAP from any where on the board!
Tombblades: instead of making these normal fighter bombers I think it would be better to give them the full D6 attack runs but can only cause damage on a 6+, this makes them more viable a choice. This fits better with how Necron Gauss tech acts in 40k as well.
Shrouds should be more prominent as we have so few models to work with. I like the idea of making them 'Crypteky', so special bonus to the fleet or just a squadron, or negatives to the enemy. This thing needs 6 hits! Perhaps portals that don't add to the AC limit.
Leadership should be 1 point higher than normal. The flayer virus giving capital ships with leadership 7 or lower a +1 boarding modifier. I feel as though Necrons shouldn't get the bonus for enemy contacts at all, sensing enemies at all times but not caring too much. This could be a shroud bonus.
Quantum shielding should effect ordy aswell. So Ordy will hit on a 6+ if the shields are up but on a 5+ if they are down. (obviously A-boats don't care)
Critical hits should come from the normal table, however due to the living metal special rule they do not take further damage due to crits, including fires. A Reroll to the repair dice would make sense as well.
Scythe Cruiser it would be good to rename this, even though it is a cool name its been stolen by the fighters.
Particle Whips Should go through shields when they beat armour. Roll for each ships particle whip seperately, taking damage and rolling to cause crits before allocating the rest of the hits to the shields if there are any. This will actually allow them to do something with their special rule especially against escorts. The Cruiser should have front only particle whips, giving the tombship the only LFR ones.
Lightning arcs I feel lightning arcs shouldn't be able to hit ordy unless there are no other viable targets. But perhaps get a reroll?
Cheers,
Ray
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On the point of FTL, they have to use FTL even if its not as fast as warp travel. Without it you could destroy the necrons one world at a time and they wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it! Basically a campaign, where the Necron player only gets one turn ever.
Inertialess drives are cool. Although I think they should involve CTNH. Perhaps something not too powerful, like the extra turn taking place at anytime.
Cheers,
Ray
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Inertialess drives are already represented by aaf. On the critical hit idea I would agree that the standard (or a variation of it) could work but if you take away the damage what will 7 10 11 and 12 do? Shrouds already add +1 to leadership tests for ships on special orders, maybe add one portal and let it count as a launch bay. Launch from portals, ok so they can recall and launch in the same turn without reload? I think that's about it for now...
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Okay, lets go point by point. I am ASSUMING Ray, that you will actually listen to our advice instead of railroading us like Battlefleet Bakka.
Portals: I -really- don't see a need to combine these two together. If you want to show the technological advancement of the Necrons, make their fighters move 35, their bombers go 25. Keep the ordnance numbers low (probably around 4 max for a battleship scale vessel)
Tombblades: Make them skilled bombers or move 25. There is NO reason to fuck around with new rules when we can work easily within the guidelines provided.
Shrouds: They already are pretty damn important, compensating for an unlucky leadership roll. and having one heck of a potent battery for a 4 hit cruiser. I would suggest increasing it's hits to 6 though.
Leadership: There is zero basis of this in the fluff, Especially now. Considering that the tomb ship can get a guaranteed LD 10 with a 50 point upgrade now, there is really no need to give an already amazing fleet even better LD.
Quantum Shielding: Simply replace "Living metal" with "Quantum Shielding" and keep the same rules, again, there is NO reason to change it.
Critical Hits: By bringing it down to the normal table, you are also bringing the most technologically advanced race down to the same scale as other young races. This is possibly the least inspired idea in the list, since the Necron table is already extremely punishing when it comes to LD values.
Scythe: I agree, a new name is in store. Hardly a difficult thing, just find something suitably impressive
Particle Whips: Why are you screwing with something that doesn't need to be meddled with??
Lightning Arc:This argument makes NO sense at all. It's LIGHTNING. IT FORKS.
I honestly don't see what you are trying to do here, Ray. Do you even have a goal for the remade fleet??
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Shrouds: They already are pretty damn important, compensating for an unlucky leadership roll. and having one heck of a potent battery for a 4 hit cruiser. I would suggest increasing it's hits to 6 though.
Currently the Shroud is weak, poor, give away.
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IMO:
Portals: i would keep them as they were: teleport attacks.
AC: no need of LB, AC simply 'detach' from the mothership or (re)deployment by Ethernity gate. Not in numbers as the younger races but faster.
Ethernity gate: deployment of AC drawn from (a) tombworld(s), redeployment of AC in play, evtually forming new waves. Depleted AC phase out (contact the tombworld's gate) to be rearmed.
Scythes (AC): can initiate hit and run, as AB. also possibility to deploy scarabs and family.
Particle whip: as WB.
Tesla: in place of lightning arcs; when beating the armour value they cause additional 'x' autohits through arcing.
Gauss: lance?
Still 'working' on other stuff.
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Here is an idea for the shrowd
Increase hits to 6 (make it a true 'light' cruiser)
Select one special ability
Scarab Factory: All enemy ships within 15 cm suffer an attack on the side facing the Shrowd, If it strikes, the armor value on that side is reduced by 1, to a minimum of 4. If the armor value is already 4 on the target ship, it takes a hit and roll for critical damage as normal. This effect ignores shields and can only be prevented by a successful brace for impact.
Cryptek Crew: The vessel gains +2 LD for enemy contacts
Canoptic Wraiths: Any ship within 15cm of the Shrowd at the end of it's movement suffers an immediate d3 hit and run attacks (this functions like a teleport attack and cannot be used if the target shields are up.)
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Hi all, there's a fair amount of feedback to wade through. Thank you.
I'm going to write this list from the ground up so there won't be any assumed pre-existing special rules.
Victory point special rules are definately gone! There is no place for these in any game system where victory points don't determine a winner in every scenario!
Inertialess drives should effect turning rather than speed, a normal AAF will be fine. Just having fast ships in general should give you the taste of the inertialess drive without it being too powerful. Unless sharper turning circles is what the drives should offer. Say -5cm to the minimum you need before you turn.
Disengagement special rules are themeful but to reduce cost of the base value of the ships this could be an upgrade for the Shroud: any ship within 30cm of a shroud may automatucally pass its leadership check to disengage, further more enemy do not gain a leadership bonus for any ship withinn 30cm of a Shroud.
Armour saves are a little weird especially when using 6's. In any case now that Necrons have shields, dumping the armour saves is a no brainer.
Critical hits should be different but there is no need to have another critical hit table. Not suffering 'damage' from critical hits isn't hard to understand or remember, and it fits well making them adequetly resilient without having extra book keeping. They will ignore fires, hull breaches and bulkhead collapse completely, the other crits will still have their effect but won't cause further damage.
Repairing criticals seems like it needs a special rule, like a reroll or repair on a 4+, but I don't think its completely necessary.
Leadership bonus from enemy contacts from the Shroud is quite interesting and I think it should stay as a purchasable upgrade. However I think, as I've said before that instead of having the normal EC +1 leadership for command checks, Necrons should get a straight +1 leadership at all times. This nicely represents their superior tech (they can navigate cellestial phenomenon more easily etc) and their almost disregard for the enemy.
Blast markers don't 'need' any special rules now as they have shields and no longer cater to star vampires!
The editing stage will be long and tormenting as we are all throwing a crazy number of ideas and rules down, even if they were all good we should only have as many as are necessary.
Gauss weaponary should only be included for the tombblades, they are usually short ranged weapons in 40k not having much larger versions than those carried by jump infantry!
Tesla/Lightning arc weaponary should stick as weapons batteries, keeping it simple and just leaving them as always closing seems safe. Extra rules for arcing damage etc seems a little crazy given the distances involved, except against ordy! Perhaps a leftshift when aiming at ordy would work.
Particle whips need to be improved or reverted to normal lances as the goes through shields on a 6+ so rarely comes into play it's not worth the hassle. I like them being special so ignoring shields when they equal or beat armour makes them happen just enough that its worth doing and isn't too powerful.
Portals/Eternity gates are massive teleporters and as such should be able to cause teleport hit and run attacks. However, they only really work to recall or to connect to other portals. Having them as launch bays makes the most sense, having them be able to redeploy AC makes sense too. Having nit picking rules about hit and runs through scythes, or teleport hit and runs at odd hours isn't worth the hassle. Scythes should just be able to cause hit and runs like normal assault boats, we can just assume its from a ships portal.
Cheers,
RayB
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Victory point special rules are definately gone! There is no place for these in any game system where victory points don't determine a winner in every scenario!
Ok
inertialess drives should effect turning rather than speed, a normal AAF will be fine. Just having fast ships in general should give you the taste of the inertialess drive without it being too powerful. Unless sharper turning circles is what the drives should offer. Say -5cm to the minimum you need before you turn.
How about having all ships have +1D6 on aaf; 20/30/40cm on bb/cruisers/escorts; bb can turn @10cm and MAY use ctnh, cruisers turn @ 5cm and both have 90* turns, and escorts have no minimum and can make up to 2 90*turns per movement phase or 3 with ctnh.
Disengagement special rules are themeful but to reduce cost of the base value of the ships this could be an upgrade for the Shroud: any ship within 30cm of a shroud may automatucally pass its leadership check to disengage, further more enemy do not gain a leadership bonus for any ship withinn 30cm of a Shroud.
How about shrouds count as celestial phenomena for disengaging, allied ships only. If you want to have them... shroud (hehe) allied ships make it a blanket effect for the whole battlefield, effect is disabled when crippled/ possibly with a critical also.
Armour saves are a little weird especially when using 6's. In any case now that Necrons have shields, dumping the armour saves is a no brainer.
Replace the armor save with overload shield capacitors, quick easy and its already well established.
critical hits should be different but there is no need to have another critical hit table. Not suffering 'damage' from critical hits isn't hard to understand or remember, and it fits well making them adequetly resilient without having extra book keeping. They will ignore fires, hull breaches and bulkhead collapse completely, the other crits will still have their effect but won't cause further damage.
Repairing criticals seems like it needs a special rule, like a reroll or repair on a 4+, but I don't think its completely necessary.
they do need their own, they should not ignore half of the results 2,5,7,11,12 have no effect?!? Keep it about the same as it is now(less the leadership -?) And make them repair on 4+ OR attempt to repair one hit point per turn they are not under fire on a 6+.
Leadership bonus from enemy contacts from the Shroud is quite interesting and I think it should stay as a purchasable upgrade. However I think, as I've said before that instead of having the normal EC +1 leadership for command checks, Necrons should get a straight +1 leadership at all times. This nicely represents their superior tech (they can navigate cellestial phenomenon more easily etc) and their almost disregard for the enemy.
They should have standard leadership advanced tech or no they have no passion or initiative. Shroud providing a +1 to checks for the fleet might be interesting, bundled with the previously stated special rule for disengaging for crippled/ possible crit.
Blast markers don't 'need' any special rules now as they have shields and no longer cater to star vampires!
See entry on armor saves.
Gauss weaponary should only be included for the tombblades, they are usually short ranged weapons in 40k not having much larger versions than those carried by jump infantry!
Tesla/Lightning arc weaponary should stick as weapons batteries, keeping it simple and just leaving them as always closing seems safe. Extra rules for arcing damage etc seems a little crazy given the distances involved, except against ordy! Perhaps a leftshift when aiming at ordy would work.
Particle whips need to be improved or reverted to normal lances as the goes through shields on a 6+ so rarely comes into play it's not worth the hassle. I like them being special so ignoring shields when they equal or beat armour makes them happen just enough that its worth doing and isn't too powerful.
Portals/Eternity gates are massive teleporters and as such should be able to cause teleport hit and run attacks. However, they only really work to recall or to connect to other portals. Having them as launch bays makes the most sense, having them be able to redeploy AC makes sense too. Having nit picking rules about hit and runs through scythes, or teleport hit and runs at odd hours isn't worth the hassle. Scythes should just be able to cause hit and runs like normal assault boats, we can just assume its from a ships portal.
Tomb blades should just be bombers no special stuff, if you want them to have gauss weapons fine they have gauss weapons... That act like bombers.
Lightning arc: per rule book except they may not target anything other than the closest ship, electricity takes the shortest route to ground, period. Targeting ordnance is as normal no special stuff here they're already pretty hard on ordnance.
Particle whip: keep the same hits of 6 is fine and not difficult to remember at all, I can't think of one time a necron player has forgotten against me ;). Take away the crap about holofields tho, lightning may not need to see but someone cracking a whip does!
Portals as launch bays works quite well, take away the silly extra hit and run attacks for them and make them lb. Scythes as per thunderhawk rules. Might be best to leave the portals as just lb tho, no recalling and relaunching in new waves, there's already too many ordnance special rules!
Starpulse generator is not mentioned can we assume that its gone :D
I'm still partial to my previous ideas about attack craft also tho, where they have no "mothership" and are just reloaded per highest leadership and launched from the necron players starting table edge.
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I may not like the new necron fluff but I do love designing game rules, so...
Victory points: I see your point about them not mattering in some scenarios. It all depends how hard to kill the new necropn list ends up. If they are still virtually un-killable then there needs to be a reward for hurting and killing them.
Inertialess drives: reduced distance needed for turns is a good idea. Allowing the tomb ship to use CTNH seems reasonable too. A subtle change to existing mechanics is better than a totally different rule in my opinion.
Disengagement special: what exactly do you mean by "further more enemy do not gain a leadership bonus for any ship withinn 30cm of a Shroud?" If that is some sort of 30cm Ld penalty bubble that's frankly ridiculous. Being able to auto-disengage was always too good: perhaps just allow necrons to ignore penalties to Ld when disengaging (i.e. enemies nearby).
Armour saves: armour saves combined with shields is very powerful, but armour saves a very defining part of the necron fleet. Maybe have armour saves being 6+ or 3+ when braced? Better than other fleets but not a great deal better.
Critical hits: if you're not allowing them to take extra damage from criticals you need a necron critical table - too many results depend on inflicting damage to be meaningful in the normal table. Race-specific table also add character.
Repairing criticals: I'd suggest necrons be allowed to repair criticals on 5+. You could also write a necron critical table where all criticals can potentially be repaired.
Leadership: is this +1 Ld using the regular leadership table to roll? That would be ok I guess, as they should have decent Ld.
Blast markers: I agree there is no need for a rule if they have shields.
Gauss weaponry: not that familiar with different weapons so no opinion here (yet).
Tesla/Lightning arc: WB's that count as closing is fine.
Particle whips: penetrating shields on a 6 is a fine rule, neither too complicated nor too simple. Negating shields when the armour is penetrated doesn't sit well with me. What about armour 4+ targets? Saying something that works on a 6 hardly happens (and should therefore be removed) is like saying space marine ships hardly ever get hit by WB's and should just be made invulnerable to them!
Portals/Eternity gates: can't this just be how necrons deliver their teleport attacks? No need for anything extra?
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Portals and Ethernity gates are NOT the same.
- Portals are teleporters.
- Ethernity gates draw their charges from another place altogether and (re)deploy them. Use as launch bays.
All Necron weaponry is short ranged in 40K. Only exception is the heavy gauss canon and the doomsday cannon.
I see Shipbusting versions mostly restricted to R30cm, Shipbusting version heavy gauss could be R45cm while the Shipbusting version doomsday cannon could be R60cm.
I can see the Gauss weaponry as lances and all the others as WB.
Tachyon arrow could be a very powerful long range artillery piece, needing RO special order before being able to shoot.
Inertialess drive: reduced distance before turning sounds fine but speed and AAF should be better also.
Targetting array should be advanced. Counting enemies always as closing is a good thing.
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Necron shields: 'hard' screens, protecting also against AC which have to wait with their attack(s) until the shields have been dawned.
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Necron armour: living metal. Armour 4; coupled with quantum shielding upped to 6 ('Quantum shielding damaged' should be on the critical hit table).
No armour save but living metal together with the crypteks, scarabs and wraiths result in a successful repair roll of 4+, including lost hitpoints.
Practically all criticals should be repairable.
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Ive been thinking about the shrouds and the idea on scarab swarms mentioned earlier. How about something like the cruiser on SINS that has a robotic cloud. maybe have it so friendly ships within 15cm gain 1 dice to repair and enemy ships suffer one hit against armor shields have no effect. *this would include ships like Tau, their 6+ front armor due to shields would be ignored*
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Wait, no one has actually given a good reason why the rules need to be changed so radically.
Nothing... (and I do mean nothing) in the new rules for 40k suggests that any of the rules need to be modified. The necrons are STILL the most advanced race in the galaxy, they still use living metal, and they still use inertia-less drives.
Just because they have access to atmospheric bombers and fighters does not mean they are efficient in space combat. If you look at their interceptor, it's just a crescent vessel with a necron bolted onto it.
Please, before people spout off more insane ideas, explain this to me.
Also, All of the rules proposed effectively turn the necrons into "imperial navy+" instead of a distinct fleet.
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All in the Codex Necrons:
Fluff of the Tomb Blades in the codex indicates/says they not only excisted but were also very efficient as spacefighters that even could damage ships.
Living metal has changed, is weakened somewhat.
Necron ships have shields now.
Apparently they lost FTL (doomed to isolation bit in the codex) but gained access to webway.
That's what I remember sofar.
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I have to almost agree with Zelnik, the Necrons don't need drastic chages to their space rules when the current ones and background are just fine.
Tomb Blades, yeah, Necrons now have space fighters but I don't see this as reason enough to give them the Ordnance system. Sure if someone wants to create a unique rule for them I would be all ears but I'm in no rush to have generic fighters/bombers/assault boats.
Living Metal has changed in game terms on the table top, but otherwise no, Living Metal is still the strongest known metal and the current rules serve them just fine. Its sad that Living Metal got the rules it did. Did Living Metal need to be toned down a bit for game purposes, yes of course it did. But too many armies have immune to shaken stunned vehicles already. We did not need another.
There was only one mention of the shields. The single half assed story in the codex about necron ships was sorry at best and isn't reason enough to concern ourselves about necron shielding. Sorry Ward, but the pathetic attempt to re-write Necron Space combat was just that, pathetic.
There is nothing to prove that Necrons do not have FTL. Without FTL they could not have built their Galactic Empire in the first place before they hacked the Webway with Dolmen gates. They could not have started a war with the Old Ones. Again, I blame this on Ward for not clearly thinking through his story telling before randomly putting in a line saying that Necrons have slow moving Stasis ships. No short life span Necrontyr could have survived space travel if it tooks hundreds of years to get anywhere. FTL for Necrons is there to stay
Now I do like some of the cool ideas everyone has thought of and they look well thought out. I just don't think we absolutly need them. Now if the community makes new rules with the new codex in mind. I am positive I would try out the rules myself at least once.
After all, it would be fun just to have anything new for BFG. And I think that's the issue more than anything. People want to try out new things with the Necron Fleet. And by that logic alone changing the rules up a bit is a good idea. I just don't think Ward deserves any credit for the utter crap he added with his version of BFG. No thanks Ward.....
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If one would want to play a mixed campaign, then some changes might be in order. ;)
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then those are campaign changes, not mechanics or rules changes.
Lets give the necrons the benefit of the doubt, give them some new ship options or special rules where needed, but aside from that, there is NOTHING that suggests changes on this scale need to be made.
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Zelnik,
I am on a fence here. Inherent I see nothing wrong with the current Necrons aside of:
i. clumst victory point table which makes them poor for scenarios.
ii. the tombship is considered overpowered by many and the cause of Necrons being banished at places.
Regarding ii. I have no troubles, it is 500pts, it should be good.
Overall wise I could see the additon of scarab swarms, not ac.
Regarding i. what could fix it?
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Great to hear from you horizon!
I agree, the point allocation issue is clumsy.
When it comes to all of these things, especially the tombship, the best way to forcibly balance it is actually, remarkably simple.
Do not let it disengage for free. In fact, with their new mentality, necrons should have issues with disengaging due to their innate superiority complex. Force the tombship, or all necron ships for that matter, to stay on the table, and you will watch a LOT of the problems leave.
The only ship that -needs- changes is the Shrowd, simply because it is in desperate need of it.
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Zelnik,
I am on a fence here. Inherent I see nothing wrong with the current Necrons aside of:
i. clumst victory point table which makes them poor for scenarios.
ii. the tombship is considered overpowered by many and the cause of Necrons being banished at places.
Regarding ii. I have no troubles, it is 500pts, it should be good.
Overall wise I could see the additon of scarab swarms, not ac.
Regarding i. what could fix it?
Tombships are not overpowered the rules are broken. When it comes to all of these things, especially the tombship, the best way to forcibly balance it is actually, remarkably simple.
Do not let it disengage for free. In fact, with their new mentality, necrons should have issues with disengaging due to their innate superiority complex. Force the tombship, or all necron ships for that matter, to stay on the table, and you will watch a LOT of the problems leave.
yup hits the nail on the head.
Remove the vp rules and the necrons ability to phase out, these were put in originally to force the necron player to prematurly disengage which is the problem that most people have with them. Their ships are tough but that should give players all the more reason to want to keep them around. Unfortunatly necron players have to keep a steady track of their vp gained vs possible vp lost when disengageing blah blah blah..
as for AC im all for them getting it, if not oh well no loss.
The shroud has a lot of potential ideas but really the best way to bring them up to par is to just add 2 hit points and make them somewhere in the neighborhood of 175pts, or add the option to increase the hitpoints but incure some penatly to weapons/speed/etc.
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Here is an idea for you, Since the shrowd is the core of the ships that needs updating... here is an idea for you all.
Shrowd 200pts.
Hits:6, Turn:90, speed:30, armor 6+, shields-, turrets 2
Armament:
ST 10 Lightning arc: FLR 30cm.
Select one
Scarab Factories
Doomscythe Bays
Canoptek Wraiths
Cryptek Crew
Special rules: Shrowds are a versatile and capable vessel, their massive pyramid structures designed for several tasks and easily modified for several possible needs on the field of battle. The player must select one of the following options.
Scarab Factories:(Shrowd must have a large base for this option) Scarabs float around this vessel in enormous swarms, attacking anything that draws near, chewing away at armor and shields alike. If the Shrowd comes in contact with an enemy vessel, place a blast marker on it's base. If it's shields are down, the enemy vessel takes a hit (no holofeilds allowed), and rolls for critical damage as normal.
Doomscythe Bays: Inside the vessel lay racks upon racks of dormant doomscythes, waiting to be teleported into space to strike at attack craft and vessel alike. This counts as a st4 launch bay. Doomscythes move 30 cm and count as fighter bombers.
Canoptek Wraith portal: This vessel is filled with the lethal and faceless monsters that protect the tomb worlds. Any vessel within 15 cm of the shrowd with shields down suffers an instant d3 hit and run attacks as wraiths are teleported onto the ship. (this effect may not be done if the shrowd is on special orders)
Cryptek Crew: Filled with the powerful minds and processors of the Crypteks, the vessel can interpret and predict the enemies movements with mathematical precision. All ships in the necron fleet gain +2 for enemy contacts, enemies do not gain enemy contacts for the shrowd when on special orders.
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Sweet! I want 2. Ok this really does sound quite nice. I would change it so that the scarab swarm bypasses shields and the D3 portal attacks is just 2 or 3 normal portals. Also keep it so that all shrouds do not give any bonus to leadership when on special orders. I'm not convinced on the extra turret either but meh.
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It's just an idea, but when you get into the 6 hit range for a super-advanced race, why not add a turret? the original had 1 measly turret.
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Hi Guys,
Nice to see constructive posts. Cheers muchly.
Why do Necrons need a new fleet? Well, with the numerous massive fluff changes it seems reasonable, but Necrons could do with a more competetive streamlined set of rules. (Massive fluff changes: Shields, slower FTL/webway, crypteks, AC, no C'tan leaders/star vampire reasoning. Small fluff changes: living metal is nowhere near as tough as it used to be (Monoliths are actually weaker than Landraiders), Necron 'social' structure has changed significantly, no pariahas (although null effects are still present due to Cryptek specials), I'm sure there's a few others that don't spring instantly to mind.
Overload shield generators, 6+ save: The problem with this mechanic is that you have to roll each dice one at a time which kinda slows the game down. I definately wouldn't want this across an entire fleet.
Replacing armour saves with Quantum shields: I'm not really a fan of an extra phase of dice rolls as the number of dice has been reduced making them feel a little random/important.
Keeping a sense of awesome durability is pretty important to the feel of Necrons so counting as armour 6+ with shields up is a nice special rule that doesn't make them too powerful.
Living metal for crits: coupling this with the quatum shielding the awesome durablity makes it to the table without need of extra special rules. Ignoring damage caused by crits only excludes the crits 7, 11 and 12. The weapon crits will just shift up if they are not applicable afterall. However there is no harm in actually having prow and dorsal weaponary.
Particle whips through shields: If its only on a 6+ its rather useless except in rare circumstances, as on average 1 in 3 hits will go through shields, 2 shields will be taken down for every hit through shields. So you'll have a minor effect against battleships and escorts. I just don't feel it's worth it.
Taking armour into account isn't too powerful and gives those that have 'paid' for extra armour a little extra defence. If you have 4+ armour, particle whips are the least of your problems.
Lightning arcs: given the prevailence of AC in this version of the necron fleet and quantum shielding there is no need for special rules to shoot ordy beyond not being able to at all wth Lightning Arcs! Always the closest ship in an arc of your choice seems very appealing.
Portals/Eternity Gates: They are roughly the same thing (the 40K ones were just renamed and given a vacum ability).
Redeploying AC through Portals: I really do think this should be one of the defining features of the fleet. Given the Necrons teleporter 'character' i feel this is better than having an endless amount of hard to use teleporter attacks (that also don't fit the fact the portal is an exit, not catapult ;)).
Star Pulse Generator: Yeah, I don't want to see this bad boy back in the rules, well maybe as a shroud upgrade....
Shroud Upgrades: Counting as cellestial phenomenon for disengagement is a really cool idea! (definately NO auto disengage)
The Shroud effect, cancels EC bonus to enemy leadership. It just being on the Shroud is kinda pointless!
Scarab swarms: I like the idea of them being an upgrade for the Shroud, but just as orbital mines.
Inertialess drive: +1 on AAF is a good idea. -5cm to minimum turning will work nicely. The Speed of the various ships shouldn't be as dramatic as it is, 25cm for the Tombship, 30cm for the Scythe Cruiser, 35cm for the Shroud and Dirge, 40cm for the Jackal.
That's all for now. I'm gonna write up a list and post it up later this week.
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Hi Guys,
Nice to see constructive posts. Cheers muchly.
Why do Necrons need a new fleet? Well, with the numerous massive fluff changes it seems reasonable, but Necrons could do with a more competetive streamlined set of rules. (Massive fluff changes: Shields, slower FTL/webway, crypteks, AC, no C'tan leaders/star vampire reasoning. Small fluff changes: living metal is nowhere near as tough as it used to be (Monoliths are actually weaker than Landraiders), Necron 'social' structure has changed significantly, no pariahas (although null effects are still present due to Cryptek specials), I'm sure there's a few others that don't spring instantly to mind.
I agree they need a 'new' fleet
Overload shield generators, 6+ save: The problem with this mechanic is that you have to roll each dice one at a time which kinda slows the game down. I definately wouldn't want this across an entire fleet.
Agreed
Replacing armour saves with Quantum shields: I'm not really a fan of an extra phase of dice rolls as the number of dice has been reduced making them feel a little random/important.
Keeping a sense of awesome durability is pretty important to the feel of Necrons so counting as armour 6+ with shields up is a nice special rule that doesn't make them too powerful.
As quantum shielding only affects front and sides, rear could be armour 4.
Living metal for crits: coupling this with the quatum shielding the awesome durablity makes it to the table without need of extra special rules. Ignoring damage caused by crits only excludes the crits 7, 11 and 12. The weapon crits will just shift up if they are not applicable afterall. However there is no harm in actually having prow and dorsal weaponary.
Living metal should work with repair rolls: on 4+ instead of on a 6.
Particle whips through shields: If its only on a 6+ its rather useless except in rare circumstances, as on average 1 in 3 hits will go through shields, 2 shields will be taken down for every hit through shields. So you'll have a minor effect against battleships and escorts. I just don't feel it's worth it.
Taking armour into account isn't too powerful and gives those that have 'paid' for extra armour a little extra defence. If you have 4+ armour, particle whips are the least of your problems.
Paticle whips should be weapon batteries (blast); Gauss weapons (beam) should be lances.
Lightning arcs: given the prevailence of AC in this version of the necron fleet and quantum shielding there is no need for special rules to shoot ordy beyond not being able to at all wth Lightning Arcs! Always the closest ship in an arc of your choice seems very appealing.
I would consider lightning arcs also as weapon batteries with a few special rules; short range only.
Portals/Eternity Gates: They are roughly the same thing (the 40K ones were just renamed and given a vacum ability).
Very different in their workings as 'explained'. Portals are teleporters. Eternity gates are 'one-way'; you are taken from somewhere and exit the gate. Looks like teleporters (= portals) and launchbays (= eternity gate) to me.
Redeploying AC through Portals: I really do think this should be one of the defining features of the fleet. Given the Necrons teleporter 'character' i feel this is better than having an endless amount of hard to use teleporter attacks (that also don't fit the fact the portal is an exit, not catapult ;)).
See above
Star Pulse Generator: Yeah, I don't want to see this bad boy back in the rules, well maybe as a shroud upgrade....
Could become the " C'tan sharding " weapon, front only.
Shroud Upgrades: Counting as cellestial phenomenon for disengagement is a really cool idea! (definately NO auto disengage)
The Shroud effect, cancels EC bonus to enemy leadership. It just being on the Shroud is kinda pointless!
Scarab swarms: I like the idea of them being an upgrade for the Shroud, but just as orbital mines.
Inertialess drive: +1 on AAF is a good idea. -5cm to minimum turning will work nicely. The Speed of the various ships shouldn't be as dramatic as it is, 25cm for the Tombship, 30cm for the Scythe Cruiser, 35cm for the Shroud and Dirge, 40cm for the Jackal.
Why would the Eldar be so much faster then??? They range from 40 to 60 cm for all of their vessels, battleships from 40 to 50.
Inertialess drive: ignores gravity, momentum and other celestial stuff (but not those that are warp-connected). They can turn, change course on the spot, no need for minimum distance as there is no momentum (Eldar can also do so, why not the necrons who have greater mastery of the material universe?). Their speed should also be higher with very few things left that can slow them down. The Eldar may be fast, but the Necron should also not be lacking in that field (as remark above).
That's all for now. I'm gonna write up a list and post it up later this week.
Cheers,
RayB HA
Put in 'feed back' in blue.
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Well, my thoughts sofar, all still WIP:
NECRON POWER CORES
The 'power cores' of the Necrons tap into and store some of the energies of the material universe and once activated they function until turned off or breached.
REACTIVE HULLS
Necron ships are made of a unique semi-sentient metal (Necrodermis). All Necron ships are Armour 4 all round, but their Quantum shielding, which can be damaged, augments this to 6 on front and sides. As the semi-sentient metal contributes to the efforts of the robotic repair teams of scarabs, spyders and wraiths, all Necron Critical Repair rolls are made on 4+.
INERTIALESS DRIVE
The Necron drive ensures that gravity, momentum and other forces have very little purchase upon the ships frame (ignoring gravity wells). Necron ships have no minimum distance of movement before being able to turn. It also allows any ship to use the special order CTNH and allows ships of any size to land on a planet (without falling towards its surface / crashing) and to take off again. All ships can attain unimaginable velocities, rivalling these of the Eldar.
AAF: speed + (1D6 x 10 cm). Able to turn after each 20 cm travelled.
FTL: Necrons do not have true FTL. However, when a tomb / stasis ship arrives, eternity gates, wormhole corridor tunnels and dolmen gates are quickly build, enabling further forces to be brought in in a blink of the eye.
NECRON STEALTH
Some ships, but not crippled ones, are capable of 'wraithflight', being out of phase, therefore any successful hits must be re-rolled, do not activate mines and never gives bonuses for being on special orders. While in wraithflight, the ship is unable to use its defensive shields, fire its weaponry, launch AC or initiate boarding actions. A ship may begin play in wraithflight or activate / deactivate it at the beginning of the movement phase. Wraithflight cannot be activated and deactivated in the same turn.
Another form of 'stealth', available to all Necron ships, is keeping the ship(s) in a pocket dimension, totally undetectable by / invulnerable to the inferior races, while themselves being able to survey the 'battlefield'. While in the pocket dimension, they cannot fire their weapons, launch AC or perform Portal attacks. They cannot phase into and out of the pocket dimension in the same turn. A ship may begin play in a pocket dimension (ONLY if the Necrons are the defenders) or activate (place marker) / deactivate it at the end of the movement phase. On deactivation, the ship must 'appear' within 10 cm of its marker.
NECRON WEAPONS
Necron vessels employ many unique weapon systems, unknown to other fleets. These follow the rules outlined below.
Tesla Lightning Arcs
Tesla Lightning arcs function as short range weapon batteries with some differences.
- they don’t suffer the normal column shift to the right when attacking vessels who have holofields or shadowfields
- all targets are treated as closing
- any rolls to hit of 6 count as 2 hits.
Tesla Lightning arcs with multiple fire arcs can divide their total Firepower. A Tesla lightning arc can be split between its fire arcs in any way the player desires.
Range: 30 cm.
Particle Obliterators
Very efficient anti-matter weaponry that require only a small amount of energy to operate. These are the 'normal' weapon batteries of the Necrons except
- all targets are treated as closing
- heavy
Range: 30 cm
Doomsday batteries
These are the long range weapons batteries (R 60 cm) of the Necrons except
- all targets are treated as closing
- causes criticals on a roll of 4+
Range: 60 cm
Gauss Anihilators
These are the Necron equivalent of lances. Unlike more 'conventional' energy weapons, a gauss projector does not deliver a cutting beam or bolt of force. Instead it emits a molecular disassembling beam reducing the enemies to constituent atoms. The focussed beams of the lance array are capable to cause horrendous damage to any enemy. Any rolls to hit of 6 bypass shields, holofields or shadowfields and affect the target ship directly.
Range: 45 cm
Star Pulse Generator
Still WIP
Portal
Portals are more precise than conventional teleporters and are able to flood enemy ships with a relentless host of Necron Warriors and swarms of Scarabs. Each portal confers a hit and run attack to the Necron vessel. These have a range of 10cm and, as normal, can only be made against ships whose shields are down. The usual restriction that teleport attacks can only be made against ships with less remaining Hull Points is waived, with the exception that Necron Raider class vessels do not carry enough Warriors to board anything with more than 6 Hull Points (remaining).
Each successful hit and run attack reduces the armour of the enemy ship by 1 on a roll of 4+ (Entropic strikes from the scarabs). If the armour is reduced to '0', the enemy ship is wrecked.
Eternity gates
The eternity gates act as launch bays. The 'carrier' has actually no assault craft on board. Tomb ships can even 'launch' small escort squadrons. The reload SO is needed to reactivate the gate.
Assault craft
Tomb Blades: fighter-bombers, speed 30 cm, resilient (3+?). Necron AC use dimensional phase shifting to 'pass through' the necron shields.
NECRON DEFENCE SHIELDS
Necron shields are multi-purpose 'hard' shields and protects against enemy fire, assault craft, torpedoes and all sorts of celestial phenomena (as navigational shields do), except the warp-based.
Enemy assault craft will have to stall their attacks until the shields are down or be squashed against them.
NECRON LEADERSHIP
Each ship is at least equipped with a Command Core, granting a Ld of 10. Critical hits can reduce the command core's Ld.
In the larger ships, the command Core can be replaced by a Sepulcher (actual bridge) for the commanding Lord/Overlord, Ld of 10.
DISENGAGING
Necrons are rather reluctant to disengage while fighting other, inferior, races. Disengaging is done by ‘fading out’, the vessel in question 'de-materialises' and drops out of normal space. At the end of its Movement phase any Necron ship may perform a 'fade out disengage' after a successful Ld-test (maybe a negative modifier if fighting 'inferiors').
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Hi Commander and all,
Shields: Necrons should have 'special' shields. Increasing armour is my preference. I wouldn't care for the rear to be different as this would allow bombers to ignore it.
Having shields protect against everything is a little rules risky, how this works against crits, H&R's, boarding and probably a few other rules that haven't occuredto me yet would haveto be expanded on. As Necrons will most likely be special rule heavy, keeping them simple is gouing to be important.
Criticals: I hate it when another crit table is used needlessly. Now Necrons have shields and we can more evenly distribute weaponary there is no need for one.
I'm definately in favour of not suffering additional damage from crits, it makesthem feel more reliable and durable.
Being able to repair more easily would be nice aswell but I'd like to leave that as an upgrade for the Shroud.
Movement: The Inertialess drive is a cool concept but we can't just 'steal' the Eldar character of incredible manueverability. -5cm to the minimum distance to turn is still really good without stepping on their toes.
Tombship at 25cm speed, with 10cm before turning and being able to CTNH is only beaten by the Voidstalker! 40cm escorts are only beaten by Eldar again, but keep in mind that they have armour and shields!
Pocket dimensions, wraith flight and other magic: I can't accept that a full blown warship could go 'out of phase'. It just sounds way too bloody powerful! :o. The pocket dimension stuff also should stay small scale. In BFG I can't see these having too much of an effect.
Having said that, it could still work for ordnance! Hmm...
Direct weaponary: Given that there aren't any obvious weapons on the models I suppose you could say they have what ever guns you want.
Lightning arcs feel more natural to come out of nowhere, not really needing turrets on the models. I hate the use of the name 'Tesla', it's terrible to use for ancient alien robots! Having extra hit rules for them makes no sense in BFG, the lightning isn't arcing to another ship near by! Direct weapons shouldn't ignore holofields, unless they're rare.
There is a massive difference between the monolith's particle whip and the masively upscaled version on ships. Less blast more 'swiping' lance.
In terms of upscaling you can do it to most energy weapons in BFG in any manner you want. A Lascannon/lasgun could be upscaled to a lance or a laser weapons battery!
Gauss weapons don't seem to have a place in BFG as their bonus allows them to possibly harm anything. Which is great when you need to take out an infantry squad or tank. When it comes to space battles you'll have the capability to have something much nastier.
However if I were to make a gauss weapon for BFG it's be a weapons battery that ignores armour but only damages on a 6.
Entropic weaponary doesn't belong in BFG, its too large scale. If they have a weapon that can reduce armour values of such a large area they should be able to just rip the hull off! This would/should completely destroy all weaponary! Also armour values don't always represent the outside hull. Stealth and internal shielding are common in BFG.
Portals and Eternity Gates: Okay 'portals' now only exist in the current BFG rules (they used to be what is now eternity gates in 40K). Pushing them as straight out teleporters is just 'inventing' a weapon for Necrons (as it was when the came out in BFG). I'm all for Necrons being great at teleporter attacks but that should just be the case, there shouldn't be a weapon for it. How about double(2) teleporter attacks against ships with less health, just normal (1) attack against ships with the same or more health.
I would like a launch bay that is a large Eternity Gate, however, I hate that name and would love to keep 'Portal' in the glossary. :)
Leaderships: To make campaigns interesting you shouldn't have static leadership values. Damned Demiurg! :P
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Leaderships: To make campaigns interesting you shouldn't have static leadership values. Damned Demiurg! :P
This has proven to be a big problem with Tyranids in campaigns, who have a significant advantage over traditional fleets. Demiurg is a much easier fix for campaigns however;
The campaign starts with each Demiurg vessel's leadership reduced by 1 or 2 (would need some consideration), even though they are static this is really all that is necessary. Then have them increase like normal. Not a huge problem, but it does essentially contradict their fluff. Say that the vessel's have not seen much combat and the Automated system need to recalibrate to their normal functionality over the course of the campaign. Certain things invariably are a bit warped when used in a Campaign. Consider Tau being able to move just as fast as other fleets, and now we have the Dolmen gates that would have to go everywhere within a system. For gameplay to work, some thing are invariably....bent, some things even broken, but hopefully some rationale can be applied.
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Hi Commander and all,
Shields: Necrons should have 'special' shields. Increasing armour is my preference. I wouldn't care for the rear to be different as this would allow bombers to ignore it.
Having shields protect against everything is a little rules risky, how this works against crits, H&R's, boarding and probably a few other rules that haven't occuredto me yet would haveto be expanded on. As Necrons will most likely be special rule heavy, keeping them simple is gouing to be important.
Quantum shielding = more armour, excists only when a hit is made; does not equal defence shields. If defence shields would only augment armour, the ships are flying 'naked'. IMO, NO WAY ;)
Criticals: I hate it when another crit table is used needlessly. Now Necrons have shields and we can more evenly distribute weaponary there is no need for one.
I'm definately in favour of not suffering additional damage from crits, it makesthem feel more reliable and durable.
Being able to repair more easily would be nice aswell but I'd like to leave that as an upgrade for the Shroud.
Most crits don't cause extra damage, only in case of very few occurences. An upgrade to the shroud could be that you roll one extra die for repairs.
Movement: The Inertialess drive is a cool concept but we can't just 'steal' the Eldar character of incredible manueverability. -5cm to the minimum distance to turn is still really good without stepping on their toes.
Tombship at 25cm speed, with 10cm before turning and being able to CTNH is only beaten by the Voidstalker! 40cm escorts are only beaten by Eldar again, but keep in mind that they have armour and shields!
No stealing, just giving them their due. No gravity and momentum to refrain them, most other forces that could slow them down, largely negated. I don't see the problem. The Eldar just needed/need to be that fast to even be able to catch the necrons.
Pocket dimensions, wraith flight and other magic: I can't accept that a full blown warship could go 'out of phase'. It just sounds way too bloody powerful! :o. The pocket dimension stuff also should stay small scale. In BFG I can't see these having too much of an effect.
Having said that, it could still work for ordnance! Hmm...
Army book states that even entire fleets can be held in pocket dimensions, so again I don't see the problem. The Eldar are not the only ones with advanced tricks ;)
Direct weaponary: Given that there aren't any obvious weapons on the models I suppose you could say they have what ever guns you want.
Lightning arcs feel more natural to come out of nowhere, not really needing turrets on the models. I hate the use of the name 'Tesla', it's terrible to use for ancient alien robots! Having extra hit rules for them makes no sense in BFG, the lightning isn't arcing to another ship near by! Direct weapons shouldn't ignore holofields, unless they're rare.
There is a massive difference between the monolith's particle whip and the masively upscaled version on ships. Less blast more 'swiping' lance.
In terms of upscaling you can do it to most energy weapons in BFG in any manner you want. A Lascannon/lasgun could be upscaled to a lance or a laser weapons battery!
Gauss weapons don't seem to have a place in BFG as their bonus allows them to possibly harm anything. Which is great when you need to take out an infantry squad or tank. When it comes to space battles you'll have the capability to have something much nastier.
However if I were to make a gauss weapon for BFG it's be a weapons battery that ignores armour but only damages on a 6.
Again, why?? They have the tech and it's efficient. It is powerfull but hey, they somehow blew the C'tan out of the skies.
Entropic weaponary doesn't belong in BFG, its too large scale. If they have a weapon that can reduce armour values of such a large area they should be able to just rip the hull off! This would/should completely destroy all weaponary! Also armour values don't always represent the outside hull. Stealth and internal shielding are common in BFG.
Portals and Eternity Gates: Okay 'portals' now only exist in the current BFG rules (they used to be what is now eternity gates in 40K). Pushing them as straight out teleporters is just 'inventing' a weapon for Necrons (as it was when the came out in BFG). I'm all for Necrons being great at teleporter attacks but that should just be the case, there shouldn't be a weapon for it. How about double(2) teleporter attacks against ships with less health, just normal (1) attack against ships with the same or more health.
I would like a launch bay that is a large Eternity Gate, however, I hate that name and would love to keep 'Portal' in the glossary. :)
Call it a launchbay ;D
Leaderships: To make campaigns interesting you shouldn't have static leadership values. Damned Demiurg! :P
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Hum pocket dimensions and ordnance? Reminds me of the missile from the wing commander movie. Could be cool to have something similar, maybe instead of moving in the traditional sense all ordnance can "phase out" and back in anywhere within their movement distance. Not much different from standard except this would allow them to avoid all blast markers, maybe even ones in base contact. This does bring around ideas for a necron torp also... Something stronger than normal maybe rolling 1D6 for damage but avoiding turrets, only a fighter can take them out, with a resilient save, and it can phase as above.
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I simply reject the fact that the Eldar are the only ones with advanced tech; they are amongst the happy few and Necrons are also in this place, even older as a race and more advanced in tech of the material universe.
So, why curtailing the necrons and let have only the Eldar all of the toys?
OR just pimp down the Eldar, to be more inline with all other fleets.
That said, and knowing that Eldar players would be unhappy if these where toned down, just give to the necrons what they deserve as the most advanced race in the 'materia'l tech.
That's why I always will insist in some better 'representation' of the necron fleet.
It's not an easy job, but the necrons deserve the effort.
IMO that is.
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Eldar should never have been able to not move or turn without moving. This is clearly something only the necrons should be able to do, as the necrons are the only race that have a reason to be able to avoid the laws of physics, that is unless the eldar have inertialess drives of some sort also ::).
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Eldar should never have been able to not move or turn without moving. This is clearly something only the necrons should be able to do, as the necrons are the only race that have a reason to be able to avoid the laws of physics, that is unless the eldar have inertialess drives of some sort also ::).
Agreed.
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Necron weaponry (as per codex):
- particle weaponry are anti-matter casters. I don't see them 'working' as lances but as (powerful) weapon batteries.
- Gauss weaponry are beam weapons which can be 'used' as lances.
- Lightning arcs shoot 'living lightning bolts'. Weapon battery or lances? Do they saturate an area with lightning or is it more focussed as is stated in Codex, entry of the tomb blade?
- Star pulse: all round weapon or the front only 'C'tan shattering weapon'?
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Lightning arc should be cooler... Weapons batteries but more like chain lightning. They cannot be fired at anything but the closest target, electricity takes the shortest path to ground, they are blocked by shields as normal and they count all targets as closing. In addition to this the lightning arc will jump from the closest ship to the next closest ship until either there are no ships in range or it has traveled to the extent of its range, each time the arc jumps its power is cut in half rounded up. The lightning arc, after firing may jump in any direction so long as it travels to the next closest ship, including ships out side of fire arc normally. The lightning arc will always receive left or right column shifts against the closest target only. For example a shroud class cruiser (fp 10 lightning arc with 30cm range) is facing off against a dauntless and 3 cobras the dauntless is 15cm away the closest cobra is 5cm from the dauntless then 8cm for the next closest and an additional 5cm for the last cobra. The dauntless and 2 of the cobras will be hit, the dauntless is hit by 10 batteries then this first cobra is hit by 5 batteries finally the 2nd cobra is hit by 3 batteries. The 3rd cobra is outside of the range of the lightning arc and takes no hits even if it was within 30cm of the shroud it is still 33cm away following the path that the lighting took. This of course means that the escort squad takes hits from 8 batteries spread over the 2 ships in range. In the example above the necron player would receive a left shift when firing at the dauntless, but not at any of the other ships.
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Nice idea but a bit complicated to excecute on the table IMO.
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Could be simplified to 3 jumps max and each one has a 30cm range. In theory you could hit a ship up to 90cm away with this setup but it would be significantly weakened (a tomb ships 20 closest/10 next closest/5 last ship). Could go with 30cm/20cm/10cm for range also.
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Eldar should never have been able to not move or turn without moving. This is clearly something only the necrons should be able to do, as the necrons are the only race that have a reason to be able to avoid the laws of physics, that is unless the eldar have inertialess drives of some sort also ::).
Disagree.
:)
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Eldar should never have been able to not move or turn without moving. This is clearly something only the necrons should be able to do, as the necrons are the only race that have a reason to be able to avoid the laws of physics, that is unless the eldar have inertialess drives of some sort also ::).
Disagree.
:)
I'm not surprised ;D
IMO, they should be toned down a 'little'. More in line with the other fleets (no MSM or MMS) but fast, more so than marines, with reduced min movement (half?) both for moving and turning and able to turn in their own speed segment of AAF.
But discussing all that here, is a bit off topic.
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Discussing it is appropriate to finetune Necrons.
mms Eldar are not very far from regular races regarding movement and turning.
They don't have a 360 on the spot.
And they may make two turns per movement phase. Speed depending on sun.
Creating things with halved minimum movement is just obscuring things.
Aside of that: being restricted to turning at the start is actually more limiting in attack play then first moving forward!
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Discussing it is appropriate to finetune Necrons.
agreed
mms Eldar are not very far from regular races regarding movement and turning.
They don't have a 360 on the spot.
And they may make two turns per movement phase. Speed depending on sun.
Creating things with halved minimum movement is just obscuring things.
MMS is a huge step forward, but honestly I think it would have been much better to make all races escorts MSM and leave the Eldar fleet alone. This would have toned down the severity of the Eldars movement and put escorts much more in line with their intended purpose. Adjusting the min movement is a bit off, 5/10/15cm min move for escorts/cruisers/bb wouldn't be too terrible tho.
Aside of that: being restricted to turning at the start is actually more limiting in attack play then first moving forward!
Only for escorts really as all other races can turn whenever, capitols not so much your still restricted one way or the other and once you get the hang of playing Eldar its no big deal at all just like its no big deal for everyone else to move 10cm before they can turn their cruisers, you take that into account and plan ahead.
Aside form all of this what reason do Eldar have to be able to avoid standard turning and movement rules? If anything their delicate ships (with sails for goodness sake ::)) should be more likely to have to "go with the flow." In other words they should have a min movement and cannot use ctnh or burn retros They also should never be effected by blast markers or gas clouds, their ships being designed to shunt small debris, junk, etc away from the ship.
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The last part of your post seems neat. Directly against the official msm Eldar. haha.
But, alas, msm is a bad mechanic in BFG.
I mean, a 20cm moving escort:
you move 20000 kilometres, then shoot, then fly away 20000 kilometres.
opponents sits and does nothing.
= dumb.
msm in surprise attack:
turn one:
Eldar move
Eldar shoot ship to oblivion
Eldar ordnance destroy another ship
Eldar second move = turn around = fly from table
= end game
eldar victory.
So, I'd never want to hear such blasphemy from you again Andrew!
;)
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Why a special system for the Eldar that goes against the core rules? The original rules were broken enough, a return to core rules would be better.
Make them fast, variable speeds, in one movement phase only. Except escorts, they must move before turning, cruisers min 5 cm, Battleships min 10 cm (-5 cm of standard rules). One turn per movement phase only.
They should also have a min distance that they must travel (half of their slowest speed?) unless 'Burning Retro's' SO.
If you give them a second turn in a normal movement phase, so would have the Necrons, being a bit more advanced in real space tech.
For the Necrons that would mean that they are fast too but at a 'constant' speed. Necrons have no min distance before turning / when moving. No burning retro's SO, Necrons can chose not to move at all, they have no problem with 'brutal' alterations to speed and direction because of inertialess drives (no gravity, momentum and stuff) and being, well, ... necrons and not Necrontyr.
Would that make the Eldar less 'unique'? Yes, they would conform to the core rules, just as any other fleet. But they can still have their other toys but has to share some of them with the necrons.
I really must look into the Eldar fleet(s) very soon.
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I really like playing eldar like that tho :/...
Back to the necrons tho, even if the eldar keep their no min move, the necrons by their fluff should have no min move. if there were any fleets I would be least concerned having no min it would probably be these 2 as the eldar have a stupid high pts/ac ratio and I can't see the necs being better by the time this is done.
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Still WIP.
NECRON POWER CORES
The 'power cores' of the Necrons tap into and store some of the energies of the material universe and once activated they function until turned off or breached.
REACTIVE HULLS
Necron ships are made of a unique semi-sentient metal (Necrodermis), Armour 4 all round. The metal reacts to and is able to negate the following:
- Gas & dust clouds: no blast marker is placed, speed is not reduced.
- Passing through / in contact with blast marker(s): blast marker is ignored, no reduction in speed, no damage.
What the armour cannot negate, the quantum shielding takes over.
QUANTUM SHIELDING
The shielding is somehow part of the hull, augmenting the armour to 6 all round and only exist at the moment of a hit / impact the Necrodermis cannot negate, such as weapon/lance/bombs/torpedo hits, assault boat/meteorite impacts or teleport attacks. This means that all teleporters and AC will have to stall their attacks until the shielding is down (assault boats/boarding torpedoes/teleported troops would be squashed against the shielding). The others can chose to attack the shielding first.
The capacity of the shielding to withstand hits/impact is given by a number.
INERTIALESS DRIVE
The Necron drive ensures that gravity, momentum and other forces have very little purchase upon the ships frame (ignoring gravity wells). Necron ships have no minimum distance of movement before being able to turn. It also allows any ship to use the special order CTNH and allows ships of any size to land on a planet (without falling towards its surface / crashing) and to take off again. All ships can attain unimaginable velocities, rivalling these of the Eldar or is it the opposite?.
AAF: speed + (1D6 x 10 cm). Able to turn at any point of the movement and from there after each 20 cm travelled.
FTL: Necrons do not have true FTL. However when a tomb / stasis ship arrives, eternity gates, wormhole corridor tunnels and dolmen gates are quickly build, enabling further forces to be brought in in a blink of the eye.
NECRON STEALTH
All necron ships, but not crippled ones, are capable of phasing. Being partially out of phase they do not activate mines, never gives bonuses for being on special orders, are difficult to 'spot' by targeter arrays and as a result, weapon batteries suffer a right shift on the gunnery table and any other successful hits must be re-rolled.
Another form of 'stealth', available to all Necron ships, but not crippled ones, is keeping the ship(s) in a pocket dimension, totally undetectable by / invulnerable to the inferior races, while themselves being able to survey the 'battlefield'. While in the pocket dimension, they cannot fire their weapons, launch AC or perform Portal attacks. They cannot phase into and out of the pocket dimension in the same turn. A ship may begin play in a pocket dimension (ONLY if the Necrons are the defenders; write down position) or activate it (place marker) at the end of the movement phase. On deactivation, at the beginning of the movement phase, the ship must 'appear' within 10 cm of its marker / secret position.
NECRON REPAIR
The teams of Canoptek spyders, scarabs & wraiths allow to roll an extra die in the end phase.
A more elaborate system (upgrade) allows to roll an extra die in the end phase and succeed repairs on a roll of 4+.
NECRON WEAPONS
Necron vessels employ many unique weapon systems, unknown to other fleets. These follow the rules outlined below.
Lightning Arcs
Lightning arcs function as short range weapon batteries with some differences.
- all targets are treated as closing
- Lightning arcs with multiple fire arcs can divide their total Fire power, splitting it between its fire arcs in any way the player desires.
- Can only be fired at the closest target (single ship or squadron of ships) in each of the firing arc, but not ordnance. If however the 'line of fire' to the closest ship passes through a single piece / wave of ordnance, they are affected by 'secondary' arcing. The single piece of ordnance / each single piece of ordnance in a wave, is hit on a roll of 6.
Range: 30 cm.
Gauss Anihilators
These are the Necron equivalent of lances. Unlike more 'conventional' energy weapons, a gauss projector does not deliver a cutting beam or bolt of force. Instead it emits a molecular disassembling beam reducing the enemies to constituent atoms. The focussed beams of the lance array are capable to cause horrendous damage to any enemy. Any rolls to hit of 6 that effectively causes damage to the hull, causes a critical hit on a 4+.
Range: 45 cm
Portal
Portals are more precise than conventional teleporters and are able to flood enemy ships with a relentless host of Necron Warriors and swarms of Scarabs. Each portal confers a hit and run attack to the Necron vessel. These have a range of 10cm and, as normal, can only be made against ships whose shields are down. The usual restriction that teleport attacks can only be made against ships with less remaining Hull Points is waived, with the exception that Necron Raider class vessels do not carry enough Warriors to board anything with more than 6 Hull Points (remaining).
Each successful hit and run attack allows the necron ship to attempt and 'repair' one hitpoint in the end phase of the turn (harvested energy by scarabs).
Eternity gates
act as launch bays. The 'carrier' has actually no assault craft on board. The reload SO is needed to launch the next 'wave'.
Launch limits?
Assault craft
Tomb Blades: fighter-bombers, speed 30 cm, resilient (3+?).
NECRON LEADERSHIP
Each ship is at least equipped with a Command Core, granting a Ld (7 + D2). Critical hits can reduce the command core's Ld.
In the larger ships, the command Core can be replaced by a Sepulcher (actual bridge) for the commanding Lord/Overlord, Ld (7 + D3).
DISENGAGING
Necrons are rather reluctant to disengage while fighting other, inferior, races. Disengaging is done by ‘fading out’, the vessel in question 'de-materialises' and drops out of normal space. At the end of its Movement phase any Necron ship may perform a 'fade out disengage' after a successful Ld-test (maybe a negative modifier if fighting 'inferiors'? But how severe?).
EDIT: removed the Star Pulse.
EDIT2: blue text.
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Okay, It has become clear that this is not a community effort, this is about people turning something that has been left alone and survived just fine on it's own into your own pet project.
Hey, I have no problem with pet projects, I had one of my very own. I do have a problem when you attack the rules of a game that have been in place for years for no other reason then "Hey they have a new codex!"
Allow me to go point by point
"Living metal isn't as strong!"
So you are making a judgement based upon a tabletop miniature, when according to scale, it is insignificant in BFG? Who knows how that changes when size and power reserves go up.
"They have new fluff!"
So what? that does not involve the rules except maybe the disengage rules.
"we should bring stuff back to the core rules!"
This one was the kicker. The core rules focus around only a few factions that are close together technologically speaking. The Eldar and the Necrons are literally MILLIONS of years more advanced then any other faction. This means they get to ignore certain unpleasant rules of physics that restrict them like other races.
This is a specialist game, which means 'dumbing it down' is not an option. If you want to play a game designed for a fourth grader, go play 40k, or Candyland.
"Their rules are unbalanced!"
This is trash, and a sign of someone who probably lost against a fifth grader and doesn't know why. Anyone who reads the necron rules can see their glaring flaws for what they are, and can function against them.
"Victory against them is unsatisfying!"
So what? Have you ever seen Babylon 5? Victory against a massively more advanced race has to be taken into proper context. This isn't "Hooray we won!" this is "Holy shit we survived and drove them off"
"bypassing shields on a 6+ rarely happens!"
Clearly you have not played against necrons or played with them. a 1/6 chance when you roll 4-6 dice comes up quite often and is remarkably effective. The game creators know this, and put it in for a reason.
"Lets give them armor 4!!"
Armor 4 is tissue paper, it means that any sort of attack can destroy it so long as it doesn't miss. The eldar bypass this weakness by being hard to hit, the necrons do the same (though through different means).
commander, it's time you actually read the necron and eldar rules. Then read their fluff. If neither of these things will help you realize just how wrong you are, then you are not suited to post in this board. You are trying to sound impressive and important, but all you are doing is annoying the crap out of old players who took their time to study who and what their fleets are. Something you clearly have not done.
tl;dr?
Stop trying to turn necrons into Imperial Navy++. take a step back from the keyboard and stop pissing us off.
One final point. When you said "why should eldar be outside the rules!?" was the moment you lost any sort of credit at least with me. The very point of the eldar is that they are SO advanced that they -break all the rules-. The designers of the game recognized this, and used it. They are not supposed to be easy to beat, they are supposed to challenge veteran players, not be par-and-parcel to everything else in the game.
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In this instance I agree with our overly conservative Zelnik (conservative is not a bad treat, it can be a good value!).
Moving Eldar further into the normal realm is just plain daft & boring. Taking them into mms is already to normal for some players.
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So ironic, since I am a screaming, tree hugging, bleeding heart liberal in person... I suppose we have the crazy insular nature in all of us.
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I actually only am seeing you as conservative within BFG, outside of it I just wouldn't know. ;)
heh
But I never depicted it you as a tree hugger. An ent perhaps, but a tree...
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It's not a community project, right about that.
It's my pet project, wrong; it are thoughts that I shared (see my first post).
Do you have to agree with them, no.
Impressive and important, nope, I don't have that drive.
All I know is that someone else, he started this topic, is writing rules for the Necron fleet, just offering thoughts.
And yes, I know nothing about BFG, playing it as it came out in its current form.
And yes, I play IN and sofar my winning score in the regular players group is quite good, even against Necrons and Eldar (MSM and MMS).
Vieuws differ, yes, but I don't hold that against anyone.
And certainly, I don't get pissed off because of it.
;)
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I've never had a problem facing any fleet in BFG, they are all fairly balanced so long as some one doesn't go over board on the power gamer cheese etc... In other words if everyone plays a fairly fluffy fleet they're all balanced well and if they dont the power gamer cheese etc fleets all have their weaknesses so blah. The problem is that BFG has no new blood so its nice to see people working on things like this and thats why I like to throw my $.02 in ;). Some new Necron rules are right up there with new DE ships so far as things that should be done. There's too much garbage with their crit chart and the non sense with their victory points. whats so wrong with adding a few new things along with trying to fix some old problems anyway?
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Because the problems you speak of don't exist.
Again, winning against necrons should not be measured in "wiping them out," it should be measured in "Holy crap we survived!"
The whole point of the necron fleet was something similar to ants attacking a human. Simply forcing them to leave is the true victory, even if your fleet is in rags and tatters by the end of combat. If you somehow wipe the board of the enemy fleet, then you should consider it a near-miracle, and be rewarded as such (since you get additional renown points for Victory points, imagine how fast you would rise through the ranks in a campaign!)
If you -really- want to change things for the better, attack the dark eldar fleet. It has two ships, and two ships ONLY.
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Believe what you want. If you want to believe that a powerful fleets only weakness should be that you can maybe drive them off play any of the scenarios where the necron player gets more points than you (in a campaing those will be the ones that your playing btw).
Why does almost every crit cause thew Necron to lose leadership? you really dont think thats just silly?
I like playing against necrons, its challenging and I find it very rewarding when I win so I dont understand what you were going for there? As an aside do you get beat by 5th graders a lot? You keep bringing them up.
The Necron rules are not unbalanced, until you take them into context. In a campaign The necron will always be playing raids, unless you play them as non pirates for some reason, and they're higher initiative means that most likely you will always be at the disadvantage against them (along with already being at a disadvantage against them... ::) ). In a straight fight then no its no big deal to play them, not that I have a problem playing them in a campaign either but most people do.
Everything else I agree with, I would like to see some new toys for them ;) but its no big deal really.
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Believe what you want. If you want to believe that a powerful fleets only weakness should be that you can maybe drive them off play any of the scenarios where the necron player gets more points than you (in a campaign those will be the ones that your playing btw).
Only a fool that has not read the list thoroughly thinks this is their only weakness. If you cannot identify the fundamental weakness (namely to boarding action and lance equivalent attacks) you need to stop talking now.
Why does almost every crit cause thew Necron to lose leadership? you really dont think thats just silly?
Strictly speaking, as a game mechanic, it is a balancing factor. For fluff's sake, for a massively automated and technologically advanced ship, damaging it will harm it's capacity to communicate across the ship. Command core damage and power surge damage harms valuable circuitry that the necrons rely on.
I like playing against necrons, its challenging and I find it very rewarding when I win so I dont understand what you were going for there? As an aside do you get beat by 5th graders a lot? You keep bringing them up.
I bring them up because certain individuals want to dumb down the game to 40k levels. Also, I am responsible for the Chicago BFG hobby community, If I am legitimately beaten by a youngster, more power to them, they have a great BFG future ahead of them.
The Necron rules are not unbalanced, until you take them into context. In a campaign The necron will always be playing raids, unless you play them as non pirates for some reason, and they're higher initiative means that most likely you will always be at the disadvantage against them (along with already being at a disadvantage against them... ::) ). In a straight fight then no its no big deal to play them, not that I have a problem playing them in a campaign either but most people do.
This is how it should be. They are the old masters of the galaxy, and they have no problems using their supremely advanced technology to win. There is only one faction that fights honorably against the lesser races.
Everything else I agree with, I would like to see some new toys for them ;) but its no big deal really.
I would think that the Dark Eldar, who have only two ship classes, would get more love when they got their new codex... why the passion now?
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Guy, guys, please, please.... continue. ;)
I'm not quite ready to write up a rule set til I've got a few things nailed down in my head.
Eldar/advanced tech: There is so much to say so I'll be as brief as possible.
They need 2 movements because of the sunward movement.
They turn imediately because of their minute mass (in comparison to other ships).
They are really advanced but have very different tech to most other races, and Necrons are the same, not only is is more advanced but it is different.
Themed scenarios/fairness: As this is a competetive game you can't just have a fleet that always wins because in the background it should. Otherwise you wouldn't bother with a points system at all. It's not perfectly fair, that would be imposible with such diverse fleets (unless you had seperate points against each fleet!!) but it is a starting point to play relatively competetive games. If you want themed scenarios that see Necrons winning most of the time there is nothing stopping you from doing that, just increase their points limit.
Shields: I think I made a mistake upscaling the quantum shielding in the manner I did. It is perhaps too abstract. The rules mechanic is a little foriegn to BFG's rules set. Any suggestions that don't include saves?
Lightning arcs: I'm definately not keen on the hits jumping to nearby ships, well maybe if they were in base contact. Nah, there is just too much of a ship to hit initially to want to jump so far away. I would definately be in support of kill AC on CAP!
New idea for Lighning arcs: I know this is a little abstract but I've become fond of the idea of lightning arcs being able to hit the weakest armour value of a ship. I just like the idea of lighning reaching across the hull looking for weak spots. Is this too powerful? It might be okay if there were gauss batteries as well, but I also have them ignoring armour only hitting on 6's.
Well they don't truely ignore armour, and we could also modify the gunnery modifier to moving away if hitting the aft. Actually that could work.
Cheers,
RayB
***Minimum movement before turning: all this talk of inertia reminded me of a house rule we used to play that had your minimum move before turning being equal to your starting damage converted into cm. So a 8 hit cruiser would have to move 8cm before turning and a 6 hit light cruiser only 6cm until its turn. This proved slightly annoying for escorts but on the whole it felt good even if everything else had a sharper turning circle.
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Pocket dimensions: I didn't realise they could put capital ships into pocket dimensions, maybe attack craft but capital ships just seems crazy. However this is such a massive ability it needs to be 'grounded', as in specific to an upgrade or ship. I'd attach it as a shroud upgrade. But I'm not sure in what manner.
The Shroud could pop into existence or could bring in a squadron in some manner. I prefer the later as you don't require counters or scatter dice.
*A Shroud with the Pocket Dimensions upgrade can bring in ships placed in reserve at the beginning (or end?) of its movement phase by placing them in base contact with the Shroud. Note: none of these ships may be placed on special orders. Other Shrouds with this upgrade can be brought into play in this manner but cannot then bring other reserves into play in the same turn.
(I can only really see this being worth while with multiple Shrouds to reinforce flanks and to keep your opponent guessing where they'll come from. Although I can imagine a Shroud speeding down a flank to then unleash a Tombship and a bunch of Cruisers!!!) This would also be a nice way to avoid your Tombships getting hit by NC's.
Shroud/Tombship upgrades: Given that these upgrades will be quite characterful I think the Tombship should have access to them as well. I'm going to call them Sepulchre upgrades. Shrouds and Tombships must pick one Sepulchre upgrade.
Pocket dimenshions: as above.
Stealth: All ships within 15cm don't offer a bonus to enemy command checks due to enemy constacts. In addition the Shroud counts as cellestial phenomenon for Necron ships when disengaging.
Sensors: Necrons within 15cm gain +1 Leadership for command checks if any enemy is on special orders. In addition any enemy wishing to disengage within 15cm of the Shroud suffers -3 to its leadership (including the normal -1 for being an enemy ship).
Canoptek Swarms: Necron ships in base contact may use the Shrouds hits to repair criticals as if they were its own. Enemy ships in base contact at the end of the movement phase suffer an automatic fire critical.
Portals(launchbays): The ship has an additional 2 portals in each broadside, but these do not add to the AC limit.
Any other ideas? The Star Pulse is tempting.....
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Zel ;) chill im messing with you and your taking it way to seriously :P! When I mentioned
Believe what you want. If you want to believe that a powerful fleets only weakness should be that you can maybe drive them off play any of the scenarios where the necron player gets more points than you (in a campaign those will be the ones that your playing btw).
I ment it in jest towards your previous comments about how people should be "lucky" to have driven off a necron player not as an actual break down of the weaknesses of the fleet.
Only a fool that has not read the list thoroughly thinks this is their only weakness. If you cannot identify the fundamental weakness (namely to boarding action and lance equivalent attacks) you need to stop talking now.
I would have went with their lack of ac and so-so turret values as a glaring flaw more so than a perceived venerability to lances? Boarding actions do favor the non necron player in that the necron cannot escape of course if the people you have running necron fleets are allowing you to board you as the person responsible for the Chicago BFG hobby community should be trying to teach them how to play ;).
Strictly speaking, as a game mechanic, it is a balancing factor. For fluff's sake, for a massively automated and technologically advanced ship, damaging it will harm it's capacity to communicate across the ship. Command core damage and power surge damage harms valuable circuitry that the necrons rely on.
Fluff wise I agree, I guess I just don't understand why its so important for them to have such drastically lowered leadership, take away automatic disengagement and ill agree that yes its a balancing factor for game play, but as it sits now its somewhere between overkill and just not needed. I'm sure your thinking that the lack of ability to take special orders is the biggest reason behind this but honestly a good player will be able to make due with out special orders anyway.
I bring them up because certain individuals want to dumb down the game to 40k levels.
Sorry did I miss something? Who was doing this?
This is how it should be. They are the old masters of the galaxy, and they have no problems using their supremely advanced technology to win. There is only one faction that fights honorably against the lesser races.
Wow... how does someone respond to such a blatantly foolish comment?
Themed scenarios/fairness: As this is a competetive game you can't just have a fleet that always wins because in the background it should. Otherwise you wouldn't bother with a points system at all. It's not perfectly fair, that would be imposible with such diverse fleets (unless you had seperate points against each fleet!!) but it is a starting point to play relatively competetive games. If you want themed scenarios that see Necrons winning most of the time there is nothing stopping you from doing that, just increase their points limit.
Thanks Ray, solved that question!
I would think that the Dark Eldar, who have only two ship classes, would get more love when they got their new codex... why the passion now?
I dunno? Like I said before I'm just throwing in my $.02 You want to fix the DE make a thread I'll throw down with as much passion as I put in everything else :-*
Guy, guys, please.... continue. ;)
I'm not quite ready to write up a rule set til I've got a few things nailed down in my head.
Eldar/advanced tech: There is so much to say so I'll be as brief as possible.
They need 2 movements because of the sunward movement.
They turn imediately because of their minute mass (in comparison to other ships).
They are really advanced but have very different tech to most other races, and Necrons are the same, not only is is more advanced but it is different.
Hey a good response that didn't call for blood!
Themed scenarios/fairness: As this is a competetive game you can't just have a fleet that always wins because in the background it should. Otherwise you wouldn't bother with a points system at all. It's not perfectly fair, that would be imposible with such diverse fleets (unless you had seperate points against each fleet!!) but it is a starting point to play relatively competetive games. If you want themed scenarios that see Necrons winning most of the time there is nothing stopping you from doing that, just increase their points limit.
If this ever gets around to being written some "historical" scenarios should defiantly be in order.
Shields: I think I made a mistake upscaling the quantum shielding in the manner I did. It is perhaps too abstract. The rules mechanic is a little foriegn to BFG's rules set. Any suggestions that don't include saves?
Why not just give them shields? Maybe tie their 6+ armor into it instead of being attached to the hull/BFI. That way they have 6+ until their shields are down then the native 4+ (which is what the sentient metal is already so please don't flame me for saying it lol) takes over, of course with a built in right shift due to blast markers ;).
Lightning arcs: I'm definately not keen on the hits jumping to nearby ships, well maybe if they were in base contact. Nah, there is just too much of a ship to hit initially to want to jump so far away. I would definately be in support of kill AC on CAP!
Eh it was a thought, i doubt the cap would be needed anyway they have no ordnance now and if they get some after this is written it probably wont be enough to warrant cap at any rate
New idea for Lighning arcs: I know this is a little abstract but I've become fond of the idea of lightning arcs being able to hit the weakest armour value of a ship. I just like the idea of lighning reaching across the hull looking for weak spots. Is this too powerful? It might be okay if there were gauss batteries as well, but I also have them ignoring armour only hitting on 6's.
Well they don't truely ignore armour, and we could also modify the gunnery modifier to moving away if hitting the aft. Actually that could work.
Is this some kind of living lightning? Or super advanced bending the laws of physics lightning? Or some other out of the ordinary lighting? Because Lighting, like all electricity wants to get to ground and it is going to take the absolute shortest path that it can every time. A good plausible boost to lighting arcs? 1D6 auto crit per damage suffered as minor systems are overloaded instead of rolling for critical.
You want to add a weapon that only hits on 6's? Why? Whats the catch? The gunnery chart already counts hitting the aft as moving away...
Cheers,
RayB
***Minimum movement before turning: all this talk of inertia reminded me of a house rule we used to play that had your minimum move before turning being equal to your starting damage converted into cm. So a 8 hit cruiser would have to move 8cm before turning and a 6 hit light cruiser only 6cm until its turn. This proved slightly annoying for escorts but on the whole it felt good even if everything else had a sharper turning circle.
I don't think this is so much of an issue that anything needs to be changed on the whole as it just makes sense for the necrons to have no min
Pocket dimensions: I didn't realise they could put capital ships into pocket dimensions, maybe attack craft but capital ships just seems crazy. However this is such a massive ability it needs to be 'grounded', as in specific to an upgrade or ship. I'd attach it as a shroud upgrade. But I'm not sure in what manner.
The Shroud could pop into existence or could bring in a squadron in some manner. I prefer the later as you don't require counters or scatter dice.
*A Shroud with the Pocket Dimensions upgrade can bring in ships placed in reserve at the beginning (or end?) of its movement phase by placing them in base contact with the Shroud. Note: none of these ships may be placed on special orders. Other Shrouds with this upgrade can be brought into play in this manner but cannot then bring other reserves into play in the same turn.
(I can only really see this being worth while with multiple Shrouds to reinforce flanks and to keep your opponent guessing where they'll come from. Although I can imagine a Shroud speeding down a flank to then unleash a Tombship and a bunch of Cruisers!!!) This would also be a nice way to avoid your Tombships getting hit by NC's.
Limit the shrouds to escort only, tombships to light cruiser and smaller. If the ship is destroyed before the other ships are released do they count as destroyed? Blizzard should sue btw can we start calling shrouds dragoons?
Shroud/Tombship upgrades: Given that these upgrades will be quite characterful I think the Tombship should have access to them as well. I'm going to call them Sepulchre upgrades. Shrouds and Tombships must pick one Sepulchre upgrade.
Pocket dimenshions: as above.
Stealth: All ships within 15cm don't offer a bonus to enemy command checks due to enemy constacts. In addition the Shroud counts as cellestial phenomenon for Necron ships when disengaging.
Hum I like it! ::)
Sensors: Necrons within 15cm gain +1 Leadership for command checks if any enemy is on special orders. In addition any enemy wishing to disengage within 15cm of the Shroud suffers -3 to its leadership (including the normal -1 for being an enemy ship).
ok
Canoptek Swarms: Necron ships in base contact may use the Shrouds hits to repair criticals as if they were its own. Enemy ships in base contact at the end of the movement phase suffer an automatic fire critical.
Only +1D6 to repair allow multiple ships to "dock" for lack of a better term. 1D6 against facing armor instead of fire crit, why would it be a fire anyway?
Portals(launchbays): The ship has an additional 2 portals in each broadside, but these do not add to the AC limit.
Eh kind of awkard maybe Tomb only and it does add to launch limits?
Any other ideas? The Star Pulse is tempting.....
How about some kind of directed energy blast using the nova template? Some thing that rewuires a reload order maybe? Or a teleported bomb? Because there just are not enough area effect weapons in BFG. ;D
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Guy, guys, please, please.... continue. ;)
Hey, so long as you are listening, it helps.
I'm not quite ready to write up a rule set til I've got a few things nailed down in my head.
Eldar/advanced tech: There is so much to say so I'll be as brief as possible.
They need 2 movements because of the sunward movement.
They turn imediately because of their minute mass (in comparison to other ships).
They are really advanced but have very different tech to most other races, and Necrons are the same, not only is is more advanced but it is different.
Glad you agree.
Themed scenarios/fairness: As this is a competetive game you can't just have a fleet that always wins because in the background it should. Otherwise you wouldn't bother with a points system at all. It's not perfectly fair, that would be imposible with such diverse fleets (unless you had seperate points against each fleet!!) but it is a starting point to play relatively competetive games. If you want themed scenarios that see Necrons winning most of the time there is nothing stopping you from doing that, just increase their points limit.
I am not saying they win all the time, but they still have an advantage. Being older and more advanced then anyone else gives you a significant boost. Think of the Shadows in Babylon 5. A gigantic fleet of younger races attacked a relatively small attack fleet of Shadows. While the shadows were forced to retreat, they still destroyed 3 for every 1 ship they lost. That was the feel the original devs were going for. (in my opinion at least).
Shields: I think I made a mistake upscaling the quantum shielding in the manner I did. It is perhaps too abstract. The rules mechanic is a little foriegn to BFG's rules set. Any suggestions that don't include saves?
What is wrong with saves? giving them normal shields puts them in the "imperial navy+" category and is the wrong way we should be taking this. The way things are now have both advantages and disadvantages unique to the necrons. I have yet to see a good reason to change the current mechanic aside from "i don't like rolling dice".
Lightning arcs: I'm definately not keen on the hits jumping to nearby ships, well maybe if they were in base contact. Nah, there is just too much of a ship to hit initially to want to jump so far away. I would definately be in support of kill AC on CAP!
I am not entirely -against- changing the rules on this, but what is the purpose of doing so? they are currently the best batteries in the game (ignoring holofields entirely). Attacking CAP is insignificant since the necrons have no attack craft (and will have very little overall if changes go through)
New idea for Lighning arcs: I know this is a little abstract but I've become fond of the idea of lightning arcs being able to hit the weakest armour value of a ship. I just like the idea of lighning reaching across the hull looking for weak spots. Is this too powerful? It might be okay if there were gauss batteries as well, but I also have them ignoring armour only hitting on 6's.
Well they don't truely ignore armour, and we could also modify the gunnery modifier to moving away if hitting the aft. Actually that could work.
The fluff supports this, but I would argue that the system does not. Most ships in the game have a universal armor (space marines, necrons, chaos, nids, all eldar,) or minor changes (Navy, Tau). Only the Orks suffer this the hardest because of the 4 up armor in the rear. Effectively turning the lightning arc into a 'bomber battery' is making them just a little TOO powerful, even if they are badass already.
Cheers,
RayB
***Minimum movement before turning: all this talk of inertia reminded me of a house rule we used to play that had your minimum move before turning being equal to your starting damage converted into cm. So a 8 hit cruiser would have to move 8cm before turning and a 6 hit light cruiser only 6cm until its turn. This proved slightly annoying for escorts but on the whole it felt good even if everything else had a sharper turning circle.
That would pretty much trash the 5 cm increment rule that the game is based on. A nifty idea, but it will make the game more complex. Again, I want to hear a good reason for changing the rules on the inertialess drive, aside from "I don't like it". I use it a great deal with the escorts to great effect, and even the other ships when I am in a poor tactical situation.
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Guy, guys, please, please.... continue. ;)
I'm not quite ready to write up a rule set til I've got a few things nailed down in my head.
Eldar/advanced tech: There is so much to say so I'll be as brief as possible.
They need 2 movements because of the sunward movement.
They turn imediately because of their minute mass (in comparison to other ships).
They are really advanced but have very different tech to most other races, and Necrons are the same, not only is is more advanced but it is different.
I never said that they may not be (very) advanced. Simply put, they can have 'nifty movement stuff' in the normal movement phase.
Minute mass (of light cruisers and up) is not the same as no momentum (IMO).
I 'scale' from the most advanced tech you can have in the game downwards to the tech of the 'younger races'.
But in the end, I'll go with whatever the community decides upon.
Themed scenarios/fairness: As this is a competetive game you can't just have a fleet that always wins because in the background it should. Otherwise you wouldn't bother with a points system at all. It's not perfectly fair, that would be imposible with such diverse fleets (unless you had seperate points against each fleet!!) but it is a starting point to play relatively competetive games. If you want themed scenarios that see Necrons winning most of the time there is nothing stopping you from doing that, just increase their points limit.
Agreed
Shields: I think I made a mistake upscaling the quantum shielding in the manner I did. It is perhaps too abstract. The rules mechanic is a little foriegn to BFG's rules set. Any suggestions that don't include saves?
At the present, the only things that come to mind are:
- (invulnerable) saves
- re-roll hits
- negative modifiers (column shifts and penalties to hit)
Lightning arcs: I'm definately not keen on the hits jumping to nearby ships, well maybe if they were in base contact. Nah, there is just too much of a ship to hit initially to want to jump so far away. I would definately be in support of kill AC on CAP!
If ships are in a squadron, do you mean that you can only target one ship or the whole squadron (as per normal WB)?
New idea for Lighning arcs: I know this is a little abstract but I've become fond of the idea of lightning arcs being able to hit the weakest armour value of a ship. I just like the idea of lighning reaching across the hull looking for weak spots. Is this too powerful? It might be okay if there were gauss batteries as well, but I also have them ignoring armour only hitting on 6's.
Well they don't truely ignore armour, and we could also modify the gunnery modifier to moving away if hitting the aft. Actually that could work.
Cheers,
RayB
***Minimum movement before turning: all this talk of inertia reminded me of a house rule we used to play that had your minimum move before turning being equal to your starting damage converted into cm. So a 8 hit cruiser would have to move 8cm before turning and a 6 hit light cruiser only 6cm until its turn. This proved slightly annoying for escorts but on the whole it felt good even if everything else had a sharper turning circle.
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I don't think anyone has actually tried to take away the necrons saving throws. The ideas put forward so far have either attempted to incorporate the save with the shields (current base save, 4+, 5+, 6+ on shields then no saves once shields are gone unless BFI which reverts to 2+) or incorporating an armor boost into the shields instead of the basic armor boost inferred by the sentient metal when not on BFI. The saves need to remain in place as one of their main differences from other fleets. Really adding shields is pretty unnecessary fluff wise, let's not forget the eldar were created to combat the necons and even they don't have shields in the traditional sense. In a round about fashion you could say that holofields are the eldars attempt to recreate the effects of living metal (free saving throw against most attacks like necrons and a hindrance to gunnery chart weps similar to the sentient metal being 6+ when not on BFI).
I am also pro keeping the AAF the same, its a solid mechanic. I do still believe that they should have 0 min movement, mainly due to the inertialess drives fluff and because their escorts min move distance is as fast as most escorts max and that's just uncalled for for such an advanced race.
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In the v1.6 by Plaxor, Eldar (MMS) have now armour 5 and shields IIRC.
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MMS is not supported by the whole community (in fact, it's even a little divisive in the community).
A better example is the craftworld eldar, who have 5+ normally, and the dark eldar, who have 5+ normally.
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Yes from what I gathered about mms the shields were an attempt to correct the issue with blast markers and gas/dust clouds etc along with boosting they're survival, which wasn't needed in msm due to the difficulty of hitting them at all. Really mms works well, but I rather liked the original as it made them much more interesting. They should still ignore movement/ damage effects of bm and clouds period imo.
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If saves have to go, the 'official' Eldar are 'involved' too.
It's for two races that a sollution has to be found.
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Why should they lose their saves tho?
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Then the saves are going nowhere. This is about necrons, not eldar.
Until someone gives me a good reason to not just change the name of the effect, the mechanic should stay in place.
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Problem with replacing the saves is that this mechanic is more versatile than re-rolls and/or modifiers.
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so... lets not replace it then.
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So the Necrons are going to be armor 4, super fast, no saves but have shields, right shift on weapons batteries... this sounds an awful lot like mms Eldar. And on that note I think Im a little sick :P.
Their save mechanic is just fine the way it is and taking it away takes away too much of their personality as a fleet. Adding shields is not necessary but can be done simply once again by combining their armor value with their shields. They currently have armor 6 and armor 4 when braced, so you can add shield and have armor 6 when shields are up and armor 4 when they are down (or 5 even and then keep the switch to 4 for when they are braced). Maybe give them a bonus against lances when their shields are up also? Lances only hit on a 5+ instead of 4+ when shields are up. Keep they're current saves (braced and not braced exactly the same). This allows the Necrons to keep their personality and it doesn't make them any less powerful.
The AC matter is still up in the air with portals some like the idea others do not. the simplest way to do this would be to remove portals entirely and just give all Necron vessels a single teleport attack that rolls 2D6 on the critical hits chart instead of a hit and run. Raiders can still only target 6 hp or less. Then add Eternity Gates to the Tomb and the Scythe 3 on the Tomb and 2 on the Scythe. Attack craft are a resilient fighter 35/40cm move and a resilient bomber 25/30cm move
Keep the Sepulcher but reword its fluff, maybe the Tomb ship attempts to hack the ships computer instead of a psychic attack. No ordnance is attacked in this way.
Remove the Starpulse or change it to only hit on a 6+ against everything.
Lightning arc are already pretty awesome. They should be unable to target anything other than the closest ship first, ignoring ordnance. As far as lightning arcs hitting ordnance tho you could go with something like the Armageddon gun on the pk. Draw a straight line between the Nercon ship and its target, follow this line with the nova template, any ordnance the template touches (enemy or friendly!) is destroyed on a D6 roll of 6 as it is struck by smaller arcs. In theory with this, if there are no ships in range of the fire arc you could fire out to 30cm through a mass of ordnance also.
Particle whip works great as is, penetrating shields when it beats armor may be a bit over kill.
Critical hits table I can live with, definitely can if they conform to standard disengagement rules.
reactive hulls, covered under shields, retains all saves as standard loses 6+armor (5+ standard 4+when on BFI) retains their ability to repair criticals on a 4+.
Inertialess Drive is another in contention. I still think there's nothing wrong with +1D6x10cm extra movement instead of +4D6 with a turn for every 20cm of movement. I do believe that this should also allow them to "park" and that they should have no minimum movement before they can turn. All ships can use CTNH special orders. Remove Burn Retors special orders.
Remove all references to Necrons giving away higher victory points. Instead of this give them a more definitive nerf, im thinking some thing like: After Deciding on a points level for the battle the Necron player must choose his fleet with a 10% handicap. For example in a 1500 point battle the necrons opponent can bring up to 1500 points, the necron player however can bring only 1350 points worth of ships. Eh never mind that sounds crappy already.
Maybe a percentage of the necron fleet will always be held in reserve: As the Necrons believe all races to be inferior they will not commit forces they deem unnecessary. After deciding on a points level for the battle the Necron player must choose at least 10% of their fleet to held in reserve. For example in a 1500 point battle the necrons opponent can bring up to 1500 points, the necron player however can bring only 1350 points worth of ships. The remaining 150 (or more) is held in reserve for D3 turns. The Reserves are represented by a contact marker which is place on a randomly rolled table edge on the necron players first turn within the following restrictions: The marker may not be placed within 60cm of any enemy ships. If there are friendly ships within 30cm of the table edge the marker must be placed within 30cm of them (unless that would put them within 60 of the enemy in which case the marker is placed as close to the friendly ship as possible while remaining at least 60cm away for the enemy ship). The contact marker may be moved along the table edge by up to the speed of the slowest ship in reserves. At the beginning of the turn rolled the reserves will come into play anywhere within 10cm of the contact marker, alternatively if there is a Tomb ship on the table they may come onto the table within 10 cm of the Tomb ship either way this counts as their move.
Could also go with something like the instinctive behavior chart instead of a point based penalty to represent their programming, but with each ship having its own leadership to override programming.
Adding fleet commanders shouldn't be too hard just make them somewhat similar to the other races. 50 pts for ld 8, 75 for ld9 let the Sepulcher remain the only way to buy ld 10.
For campaigns have standard bonuses for leadership/rerolls with maybe some cryptechy bonuses thrown in
How about seeing these guys finally able to field activated blackstones btw? Is there anyone out there that still doesnt think these are necron constructs? Maybe even having a couple different variants.
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So the Necrons are going to be armor 4, super fast, no saves but have shields, right shift on weapons batteries... this sounds an awful lot like mms Eldar. And on that note I think Im a little sick :P.
Was about to try and find an 'new' approach but this came first.
Why right shifts? Necrons don't mess with your targeter array, they simply phase out that part of the hull that is in risk of being damaged.
Their save mechanic is just fine the way it is and taking it away takes away too much of their personality as a fleet. Adding shields is not necessary but can be done simply once again by combining their armor value with their shields. They currently have armor 6 and armor 4 when braced, so you can add shield and have armor 6 when shields are up and armor 4 when they are down (or 5 even and then keep the switch to 4 for when they are braced). Maybe give them a bonus against lances when their shields are up also? Lances only hit on a 5+ instead of 4+ when shields are up. Keep they're current saves (braced and not braced exactly the same). This allows the Necrons to keep their personality and it doesn't make them any less powerful.
The AC matter is still up in the air with portals some like the idea others do not. the simplest way to do this would be to remove portals entirely and just give all Necron vessels a single teleport attack that rolls 2D6 on the critical hits chart instead of a hit and run. Raiders can still only target 6 hp or less. Then add Eternity Gates to the Tomb and the Scythe 3 on the Tomb and 2 on the Scythe. Attack craft are a resilient fighter 35/40cm move and a resilient bomber 25/30cm move
Keep the Sepulcher but reword its fluff, maybe the Tomb ship attempts to hack the ships computer instead of a psychic attack. No ordnance is attacked in this way.
Remove the Starpulse or change it to only hit on a 6+ against everything.
Lightning arc are already pretty awesome. They should be unable to target anything other than the closest ship first, ignoring ordnance. As far as lightning arcs hitting ordnance tho you could go with something like the Armageddon gun on the pk. Draw a straight line between the Nercon ship and its target, follow this line with the nova template, any ordnance the template touches (enemy or friendly!) is destroyed on a D6 roll of 6 as it is struck by smaller arcs. In theory with this, if there are no ships in range of the fire arc you could fire out to 30cm through a mass of ordnance also.
Particle whip works great as is, penetrating shields when it beats armor may be a bit over kill.
Critical hits table I can live with, definitely can if they conform to standard disengagement rules.
reactive hulls, covered under shields, retains all saves as standard loses 6+armor (5+ standard 4+when on BFI) retains their ability to repair criticals on a 4+.
Inertialess Drive is another in contention. I still think there's nothing wrong with +1D6x10cm extra movement instead of +4D6 with a turn for every 20cm of movement. I do believe that this should also allow them to "park" and that they should have no minimum movement before they can turn. All ships can use CTNH special orders. Remove Burn Retors special orders.
Remove all references to Necrons giving away higher victory points. Instead of this give them a more definitive nerf, im thinking some thing like: After Deciding on a points level for the battle the Necron player must choose his fleet with a 10% handicap. For example in a 1500 point battle the necrons opponent can bring up to 1500 points, the necron player however can bring only 1350 points worth of ships. Eh never mind that sounds crappy already.
Maybe a percentage of the necron fleet will always be held in reserve: As the Necrons believe all races to be inferior they will not commit forces they deem unnecessary. After deciding on a points level for the battle the Necron player must choose at least 10% of their fleet to held in reserve. For example in a 1500 point battle the necrons opponent can bring up to 1500 points, the necron player however can bring only 1350 points worth of ships. The remaining 150 (or more) is held in reserve for D3 turns. The Reserves are represented by a contact marker which is place on a randomly rolled table edge on the necron players first turn within the following restrictions: The marker may not be placed within 60cm of any enemy ships. If there are friendly ships within 30cm of the table edge the marker must be placed within 30cm of them (unless that would put them within 60 of the enemy in which case the marker is placed as close to the friendly ship as possible while remaining at least 60cm away for the enemy ship). The contact marker may be moved along the table edge by up to the speed of the slowest ship in reserves. At the beginning of the turn rolled the reserves will come into play anywhere within 10cm of the contact marker, alternatively if there is a Tomb ship on the table they may come onto the table within 10 cm of the Tomb ship either way this counts as their move.
Could also go with something like the instinctive behavior chart instead of a point based penalty to represent their programming, but with each ship having its own leadership to override programming.
Adding fleet commanders shouldn't be too hard just make them somewhat similar to the other races. 50 pts for ld 8, 75 for ld9 let the Sepulcher remain the only way to buy ld 10.
For campaigns have standard bonuses for leadership/rerolls with maybe some cryptechy bonuses thrown in
How about seeing these guys finally able to field activated blackstones btw? Is there anyone out there that still doesnt think these are necron constructs? Maybe even having a couple different variants.
Blackstones tap into the Warp. Necrons don't do that, they use real space technology to counter the warp.
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Hi Guys,
AndrewChristlieb, Blackstones are prefall Eldar! Due to the half thought necron retcon they mean alot less than they did before. As they were C'tan killers! Not so important now.
Anyways back to general points.
Saves: 'I' would prefer these not to exist for a multitude of reasons. I realise Eldar have holofield saves against everything but wb's and area weapons, and I can't say I'm happy with that either. (Holofields should be re-roll successful hits! ;D)
I'm not a keen on adding another 'stage' to shooting which slows it down and in some cases is ignored requiring FAQ.
Varing saves are also weird when you have a blanket increase of the save to 2+ from 4+/5+ or 6+.
6+ saves are too unpredictable for my tastes, and too crap.
Inertialess drive and armour reduction: As I really do want the Necrons to feel different, not DE on steroids or SMs.. on steroids.... :P I think the inertialess drive is the factor to key onto across the fleet (I think portals/ac should be a great character weapon/ability aswell).
Firstly I want to make it clear that Necrons will have 'naturally' fast ships and tighter turning circles.
*Righty, so what I'm suggesting is that when you go on special orders involving movement (AAF, CTNH, BR) your firepower doesn't get reduced but your armour is reduced from 6+ to 5+. If you BFI your armour would be restored as you lose the offending special order.
In addition the special orders have extra effects:
AAF, +5D6cm (instead of 4D6cm), you may move upto the distance travelled. (note: you can still declare a ram, then BFI to regain your 6+ armour.)
CTNH, you may make the extra turn at any point in your movement. (BB's can CTNH)
BR, You may reverse!
I HATE 1D6x10cm AAF because its so bloody random! Also too clunky, there's no smoothness to the increase its all in 10's rather than 1's.
Lightning arcs and Gauss Batteries: I like the idea of having 2 types of gunnery weapon. LArcs being the BC and Gauss Batteries being the weaker of the 2.
LArcs: As a 'bomber' weapons battery does only affect IN, Tau and Orks it might be a bit too specific, however so do bombers! :)
*Always hitting the closest target (ignoring ordy), you must choose to hit the weakest armour value counting it as the arc hit, so if hitting the prow it is closing, if the aft it is moving away and if the broadsides were the weakest abeam. Lightning Arcs are always LFR but never exceed 30cm range.
Gauss Batteries: Only hit on 6's always count enemy as closing. The batteries will have a relatively high number, may exceed 30cm range and are exclusive to one arc per battery. (As they only hit on 6's anyway they will be quite effective against high armoured targets and ordy, and will be brutal when on Lock-on). (I see these as being an alternative to the broadside portals to allow more classes).
Sepulchre Upgrades: I think it would be far less confusing to have the exact same upgrades for the Tombship and the Shroud.
Pocket dimensioning in a Tombship is most likely too powerful, perhaps a points limit for what can be in a pocket dimension, say 300pts or so. Also this should be specific to a ship.
Canoptic Swarms should cause a fire crit to represent the scarab swarms eating through the hull and replicating.
Criticals: Just to reaffirm where I stand.
Normal critical table.
No additional damage can be caused by critical results. (Immunity to fire, bulkhead and hullbreach, no effect takes place)
When repairing criticals you have a reroll. (A 6+ reroll isn't statistically as good as a 4+ but there is something about rerolls that just makes the dice feel reliable and working harder). ;D
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Interesting where is it that the black stones are eldar constructs? They have what I thought were obvious necron design cues along with the fact that there's no way I can see eldar just letting the humans hold on to them for so long and not just take them away. I can't see them just forgetting that they built some super powerful star killing weapons either. The fluff I remember about them had the eldar more scared of them than anything else, like it was something they had seen before and didn't want to see again.
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Ray, Would you like a ham sandwich? because it is clear you are not listening to anyone here.
Or more specifically, only to two people here.
Saves: Get over it? Just because YOU don't like it does not mean everyone else does not like it. Also, unpredictability is a natural part of the game because we use DICE. If you want predictability, play rock paper scissors. You are suggesting to take away a simple, different mechanic for something WAY more complex.
Inertialess Drive: You contradicted yourself there. You say you don't want DE or space marine+, yet your rules just suggested the same. AAF for necrons are supposed to get escorts to their attack points quickly, and to get cruiser vessels out of tight spots. Stop trying to use it like the navy!
Lightning arc and gauss batteries: Well, your desire to make something new is certainly interesting, however it's clear you don't believe the Orks exist. Strong work. Also, you have not given a good reason yet to replace the current weapons systems aside from 'I want it, so I am doing it'.
Sepulchre upgrade: I admit, giving the shrowd a sepuchre would increase it's usefulness, and let you use the terror field far more often.
Pocket dimension: Die in a fire, the tombship is SUPPOSED to be the most powerful ship in the game. It is the BATTLESHIP of the MOST ADVANCED RACE IN THE GAME. It is not supposed to be cheaper or weaker then a retribution battleship!
Scarab swarms: Not a bad idea, won't question it.
Crit table: Drop it. Taking away the crit table takes away part of necrons unique.
Ray. You need to stop, right now. This is becoming the same disaster that Bakka was when it was nothing but "My way or the highway". I have shown your suggested upgrades to my fellow players, and ALL of them think what you are doing is insane.
Quite simply, Ray... Drop it.
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Those 'two people' are offering ideas that might work within the given setup. The end product of this might be a better solution than the existing one / add some working ideas to the current fleet. ;)
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It does seem to be dragging on quite a bit there's a lot of good ideas coming around for weapons and such and a few things with what are commonly considered flaws in the race and that's good. There is no reason to revamp the entire race tho as it all works. Now I'll admit I don't know what's up with ham sandwiches or why orks don't exist ::), but this is definitely well into the realm of fan fiction instead of a fleet update. The problem with the faq2010 and ultimately that this will face is that your trying to change too much of the RULES instead of working within the rules (most of them anyway). This really should be more about new weapons/ ships/ etc and less about changing the entire race.
As an aside I'm interested in seeing what gets done with them in bfg-r as so far things are looking very good there, the new DE list looks pretty interesting.
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I am in the corner of keeping the Inertia and AAF rules as is. Because it is unique. Doesn't break the core mechanics.
The victory point table could see a change. Or some special rules for scenarios and getting win/loss against/with Necrons.
The metal save. Iffy. It is random.
I prefer scarab swarms over regular ordnance. I kinda shudder at the last bit. Ignoring 40k is best....
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I am in the corner of keeping the Inertia and AAF rules as is. Because it is unique. Doesn't break the core mechanics.
I would change inertia to NOT having to move before turning and NO minimum move/turn because of no momentum and stuff.
The victory point table could see a change. Or some special rules for scenarios and getting win/loss against/with Necrons.
The metal save. Iffy. It is random.
Agreed, but replace/correct this with what?
I prefer scarab swarms over regular ordnance. I kinda shudder at the last bit. Ignoring 40k is best....
Ah, ordnance ... ;D
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I'm dedicating this one to Zelnik, :)
Predictability: As Necrons are so far advanced of the lesser races it makes sense to have less unpredictability. There are so many ways to represent extra durability without having to resort to extra dice rolls. There is also no reason why the AAF has to be so random.
Navy+: How the hell is this Navy+? Because they have better shields*, hulls, movement, leadership, weapons*, AC? Necrons are better than everybody! (with the odd exception ;))
Seriously though, every race is Navy+ in some regard.
Murdering my darlings: Come now, I'm throwing loads of ideas down, I expect that most will get snipped before we get much further into this!
Terror fields: No way! They no longer make sense. The Shroud mechanic is far better anyway. Surely you agree...
Tombship: If I somehow implied I wanted it nerfed don't worry. I have always wanted this bad boy to rival the Planet Killer in awesomeness. Perhaps it was the point limit idea for pocket dimensions? I was merely stating that you could only bring in a squadron(s) of escorts or a cruiser(s).
Crit table: The current necron crit table is ugly as sin! Especially when it is completely unnecessary!
Cheers,
RayB
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I'd just like to say that I am reading everyones posts and I'm not disregarding any opinions. I haven't been posting specific replies as I'd rather see everyones opinions without having them as personal debate.
As a guide line I'd like to know if anyone disagrees with the following:
Necrons should have,
Shields,
Durability,
Normal hits to type (e.g. 8 hits for a cruiser),
Speed,
Manueverability,
Inertialess drives (enhancing movement special orders),
Special critical rules,
Special weapons,
Special teleporter rules,
Attack Craft (including scrab swarms),
Admirals,
Varying leaderships,
*and Crewskills/Refits in campaigns.
The last one is a little iffy.
Cheers,
RayB HA
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You are making them move, act, and play like IN, with better toys. Hence, IN+.
Again, I do not see how their saves are random, it is an expression of just how much tougher it is to destroy their vessels that gives them a save.
I'd just like to say that I am reading everyones posts and I'm not disregarding any opinions. I haven't been posting specific replies as I'd rather see everyones opinions without having them as personal debate.
As a guide line I'd like to know if anyone disagrees with the following:
Necrons should have,
Shields, They have something better, it's called a save.
Durability, They have this, every ship is already 6+ armor standard.
Normal hits to type (e.g. 8 hits for a cruiser), They have this. Escorts are 1 hit, Scythes are 8, shrowds are 4 (normal for light cruisers)
Speed,Obviously 30cm speed standard is not enough for you, along with the d6x10 mechanic.
Manueverability,
Inertialess drives (enhancing movement special orders), They HAVE THIS already!
Special critical rules,They already have this.
Special weapons,Should I stop talking now?
Special teleporter rules,See above.
Attack Craft (including scrab swarms),I am not convinced on attack craft, but I like the scarab swarm idea.
Admirals,If you insist, but i don't see how adding a "Phaeron" for 50 points and LD 10 with a re-roll changes how the mechanics already work.
Varying leaderships,...you ARE aware you still roll normal LD for necrons right?
*and Crewskills/Refits in campaigns.The average necron warrior does not have any sort of personality or self, and as such they do not learn, just as they are programmed to do. This is in the new codex.
The last one is a little iffy.
Cheers,
RayB HA
Ray, I appreciate what you are saying, but you may be blinded by your desire to change things... everything you want is already implemented.
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Idk about the terror field? Like I said before this could just be reworded to fit the fluff as the necrons attempting to hack to enemy computers.
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I am against the notion that the Necrons should be the most advanced race. They went to sleep for millions of years while the Eldar empire rose and fell before reawakening. Given that the Eldar had their measure before they went to sleep in the first place ...
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Hi Zelnik,
aside of agreeing, one tidbit:
Normal hits to type (e.g. 8 hits for a cruiser),
They have this. Escorts are 1 hit, Scythes are 8, shrowds are 4 (normal for light cruisers)
Light Cruisers have 6 hits or 4 hits.
In the IN the hits go like:
Battleship 12, Cruiser 8, Light cruiser 6
In the Eldar go like:
Battleship 10, Cruiser 6, Light Cruiser 4
Necrons go like:
Battleship 12, cruiser 8, light cruiser 4
Logical seen the Necron light cruiser should be 6.
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Well, new novels are under way and describe the Necrons according to the new fluff. Change is in the air, that's for sure.
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That's a good point, of course there is a lot of similarity between the two. They're both faster than everyone else (in their own ways). They're both more difficult to destroy (saves hard to target etc). They both have powerful special weapons. The list goes on, point being I don't think there's so much of a difference between them tech wise.
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Not too different, I agree.
Necrons should be very advanced in 'real space' tech. In certain areas, not all, the Eldar, in their prime, could be equal or even superior, in a different way. Here I'm mostly thinking of Eldar weaponry based upon the warp, which is something the Necrons cannot equal nor understand.
Only thing is how to best represent the 'new' necron fleet.
One could hold on to the current rules disregarding the changes made to the necrons or try to develop a new ruleset for them. Both are viable.
So I will try and keep thinking of 'new ways' (without disrespect for those that want to keep playing the current rules) unless RayB drops the 'project'.
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Inertaless drive. Again. :P. 0 min move, remove burn retros special order. Necron ships may make 1 turn at any point in their movement. Aaf, necrons on aaf special order may move from their maximum speed up to double their maximum speed. For every 20cm moved they may make an additional turn. Remove ctnh special order.
Not too bad, maybe better with a set limit instead of double the minimum tho, maybe move from their maximum up to +30cm.
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Hi Zelnik,
You are making them move, act, and play like IN, with better toys. Hence, IN+.
Absolutely not! Unless better toys means special rules.... How do they act like IN? Mostly LFR weaponary, nothing at massive long range (NC), no torps, No prow on movement 'requirement', much faster speed, much better turning. Orks are more similar to IN than Necrons!
Again, I do not see how their saves are random, it is an expression of just how much tougher it is to destroy their vessels that gives them a save.
The armour save is an additional stage of the dice rolling after all the other dice rolling so you roll very few dice making the result more random. (When I say after 'all' other rolling I'm partially refering to the honoured few that roll 'to hit' with gunnery weapons and am excluding critical rolls).
Also 6+'s and to a much lesser extent 5+'s are quite random in comparison to the 4+ BFI save.
As a guide line I'd like to know if anyone disagrees with the following:
Necrons should have,
Shields, They have something better, it's called a save.
A save is only better in big games and that depends on how many shields. Either way fluffwise Necrons now have shields that 'go down' like normal shields.
Durability, They have this, every ship is already 6+ armor standard.
They also have resilience to criticals and now have shields. (agreed..)
Normal hits to type (e.g. 8 hits for a cruiser), They have this. Escorts are 1 hit, Scythes are 8, shrowds are 4 (normal for light cruisers)
Other than the Shroud having 4 instead of a proper 6 hits you agree this should be the case. (agreed..)
Speed,Obviously 30cm speed standard is not enough for you, along with the d6x10 mechanic.
What are you talking about? When did I say they generally need faster speed? 30cm is fine for the cruiser (Reaper), Tombship is too slow at 20cm though, it should be 25cm, and the escorts are too different from one another that it makes mixed squadron movement difficult.
Manueverability,
Inertialess drives (enhancing movement special orders), They HAVE THIS already!
They do, but only for AAF, it should be for every movement special order.
Special critical rules,They already have this.
It is now unecessary to have a separate critical table though.
Special weapons,Should I stop talking now?
No but I'm not quite sure why you can't just say you agree, and then do/don't change it because...
Special teleporter rules,See above.
See above. ;)
Attack Craft (including scrab swarms),I am not convinced on attack craft, but I like the scarab swarm idea.
In what way are you not convinced? Because it chips away at their character?
Admirals,If you insist, but i don't see how adding a "Phaeron" for 50 points and LD 10 with a re-roll changes how the mechanics already work.
Well killing the ship with the admiral on would also forfit remaining rerolls. Also there can be a Ld9 and Ld10 option. A Campaign character table would also fit in nicely.
Varying leaderships, ...you ARE aware you still roll normal LD for necrons right?
Are you aware that static leadership has been suggested?
*and Crewskills/Refits in campaigns.The average necron warrior does not have any sort of personality or self, and as such they do not learn, just as they are programmed to do. This is in the new codex.
Indeed, however not everything to do with a ship's leadership is to do with basic necron warriors. This could represent a ship slowly being brought back to its original status, Cryptek support/upgrades, the lords and crypteks actually getting better, as they do. Crewskills is a bit of a stretch, this could be labelled Cryptek upgrades.
Ray, I appreciate what you are saying, but you may be blinded by your desire to change things... everything you want is already implemented.
Adding Shields, attack craft, admirals, and banishing starpulse generators, unnecessary special rules such as the critical chart and special victory point rules, are all worthy goals. In general streamlining the Necron rules so that they don't have a greater weight than any other fleet is also worth it. The rest is up for debate, well so is the above too. ;)
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Leadership 10 shouldn't even be an option for them. Static leadership tho now that sound about right! Leadership 7 across the board (fearlessness may give them all a 10 in 40k but this aint 40k and it takes more than steel OO's to operate a ship it takes cunning and passion. To off set this give them some "cheap" upgrades, maybe 25pts for +1ld limit 3. Make fleet commanders mandatory, ld8@50, 9@75 both with 1 reroll. No additional rerolls (even the "smart" ones are not very quick on their feet. Seph adds +1 instead of ld10 as it will be more common put a maximum on these tho maybe 3 max on them as well.
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Most of their strategies and tactics would be held in the automated command cores anyways. How good these are, is a reflection on how good they were in ancient 'fleshy' times. Some could be quite good you know.
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I'm sure they have a great many very good tactics, but I don't see them having very good on the spot initiative and creativity. The leadership rating in bfg takes in more than just their ability to maneuver a fleet its also representative of a races ability to react to challenges and come up with ways to defeat them. Basically what it boils down to is that a machine is only going to get out of it programming what was put in while an organic mind can come up with absolutely stupid ideas that some how work instead of killing everyone.
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Ok so here we go some ideas on Necron lords as commanders along with leadership values Crypteks and a possible additional fleet list. also an idea I've been thinking about on squadrons and attacking.
Mind of the Machine
Necron fleets, just like their armies, are composed of a horrifying array of unthinking machines intent only on fulfilling their plans of conquest.
Leadership
Necron Lords: All Necron ships are commanded by a group of Necron lords and fall under the Nodal Command system.
Line Formation Node Ld7 (all Necron ships are nominally led by a LFN)
1 Command Node
You must include a Command Node in your fleet, even if it totals 750pts or less. It must be assigned to the most expensive ship, unless there is a Sepulchre present in which case it will be assigned to the ship carrying the Sepulchre.
Reserve Command Node Ld8 50 pts
Priority Command Node Ld9 100pts
Command Nodes get one re-roll. In addition they may be accompanied by a Cryptek as shown below.
0-3 Sepulchre 50pts A Tombship or Shroud class light cruiser may be upgraded to carry a Sepulchre.
Sepulchre
A ship carrying a Sepulchre automatically gains +1 Leadership to a maximum of 10. The Sepulchre is used to attack one enemy ship that is within 20cm range per turn. When the Sepulchre is used make a Leadership test for the enemy vessel being attacked, as the Sepulchre attempts to override the computer control systems aboard the enemy vessel. The ships is paralyzed as its command core is probed for weaknesses, and if control is lost then the crew will have to complete a shutdown and restart of the command core to prevent the Sepulchre taking complete control of the ship. A ship attacked by the Sepulchre should take a Leadership test. If they pass, the command crew is able to counter the attack and restores order. If it is failed, then the ship’s Leadership is permanently reduced by 1, representing the loss of tactical data due to not following proper command core shutdown procedures. Also the ship may not use any special orders until after the end of their next turn. This includes Brace for Impact. If there are no enemy ships within 20cm range the Sepulchre can attempt to override the controls of any ordnance within 20cm. Any ordnance within 20cm of the Sepulchre are destroyed on a 4+. A Necron ship may only unleash its Sepulchre when the ship is not on any special orders or crippled. The Sepulchre has no effect on Tyranid vessels or ordnance.
Harbinger of Despair: Also known as psychomancers, they are masters of influencing the organic mind and psychological warfare.
Harbinger of Despair 25 pts Enemy ships within 15 cm of the Command Node's ship suffer -2 to their Leadership value.
Harbinger of Destruction: Also known as plasmancers, they are masters of raw energy and utilize a Solar Pulse that reproduces the effect of looking into a sun.
Harbinger of Destruction 25 pts Any firing conducted towards the Command Node's ship suffers one column shift right on the Gunnery table in addition to any other column shifts.
Harbinger of Eternity: Also known as chronomancers, they are masters of time and knowledge of the future flows through their every act.
Harbinger of Eternity 25 pts The Command Node gains a re-roll
Harbinger of Transmogrification: Practicing an art once known as alchemy, they specialize in the transmutation of matter from one form to another.
Harbinger of Transmogrification 35 pts Once per turn any single ship or escort squadron within 15cm will count their armor value as 4+.
Harbinger of The Storm: Also known as ethermancers, they are capable of manipulating the weather against their foes.
Harbinger of The Storm 35 pts The Command Nodes ship may re-roll any misses by their lightning arcs. This is in addition to any re-rolls granted by Lock On special orders.
Raider Force Group
Consisting of a smaller number of Necron vessels, a Raider Force has autonomy within the Nodal Command system (to the level allowed by its programming) and is designed to scout the area around the Tomb World to determine whether any other races are nearby. The destruction of a Raider Force either causes the Tomb World to begin the second phase of awakening, or the dispatch of a second Raider Force.
Raider Force Group 0-1500 pts (in a campaign this would be the choice for a pirate fleet)
Mind of the Machine
Necron fleets, just like their armies, are composed of a horrifying array of unthinking machines intent only on fulfilling their plans of conquest.
Leadership
Necron Lords: All Necron ships are commanded by a group of Necron lords and fall under the Nodal Command system.
Line Formation Node Ld7 (all Necron ships are nominally led by a LFN)
0-1 Command Node
You may include 1 Command Node in your fleet, which must be assigned to the most expensive ship, unless there is a Sepulchre present in which case it will be assigned to the ship carrying the Sepulchre. If the fleet is worth over 750 points a Command Node must be included to lead it.
Reserve Command Node Ld8 50 pts one
Command Nodes get one re-roll. In addition they may be accompanied by a Cryptek as shown below.
Harbinger of Despair 25 pts Enemy ships within 15 cm of the Command Node's ship suffer -2 to their Leadership value.
Harbinger of Destruction 25 pts Any firing conducted towards the Command Node's ship suffers one column shift right on the Gunnery table in addition to any other column shifts.
Harbinger of Eternity 25 pts The Command Node gains a re-roll
Harbinger of Transmogrification 35 pts Once per turn any single ship or escort squadron within 15cm will count their armor value as 4+.
Harbinger of The Storm 35 pts The Command Nodes ship may re-roll any misses by their lightning arcs. This is in addition to any re-rolls granted by Lock On special orders.
0-3 Sepulchre 50pts A Shroud class light cruiser may be upgraded to carry a Sepulchre.
CAPITAL SHIPS
Cruisers
Your fleet may include up to one Scythe class Harvest ship and up to three Shroud class light cruisers
0-1 Scythe class harvest ship . . . . . . . . 275 pts
0-3 Shroud class light cruiser . . . . . . . 155 pts
ESCORTS
Raiders
Your fleet may include up to twelve Jackal
class raiders, and up to twelve Dirge class
raiders.
0-12 Jackal class raiders . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 pts
0-12 Dirge class raiders . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 pts
We Are The Necron
All Necron vessels are nominally connected to one another and are therefore much better organized during an attack than other races, as such they do not take squadrons as other races do. Their capitol ships are always taken independently, and their escorts while bought and fielded as squadrons are much more independent than those of other races. To represent that Necron vessels are able to coordinate their attacks to hit at exactly the same time and location they will never suffer any negative column shifts for blastmarkers generated by another Necron vessel firing this turn (blast markers from previous turns and other sources affect shooting as normal). Additionally Necron escorts being connected by the Nodal Command system are not subject to any limitations for distance between ships in the "squadron".
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And you are sure you want to ditch the Tombship? ;)
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Just in raider fleets, should have been more specific I guess. The top section was just for the fleet commanders to add to the standard fleet list in Armada. The Raider Force Group is more like the Vanguard fleet list for the Tyranids, just with campaigns in mind more than anything else. When choosing a fleet for campaigns the RFG would represent a Tomb world in the first stages of awakening (played as a pirate fleet) where as the complete fleet list as presented in Armada would be used for players wanting to take a "Dynasty" fleet list representing a Tomb world that has already fully awakened (played as Imp or Chaos in a campaign). I don't see why there would be anything stopping a player from bringing in a Tomb ship as reserves in an RFG list during a campaign, representing a further step in the awakening process or as a response to increased resistance around the Tomb world.
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Hi AndrewChristlieb,
Leadership: That is alot of radical leaps in terms of leadership. I do have a few problems with static leadership as a mechanic, but given the scale of BFG the fluff wouldn't support it anyway.
A ship is more than a straight copy, it will have upgrades, damage, slight design differences, and most importantly a different crew from one ship to another. For Necrons this should be lessened, but not to the degree of static leadership. Lords, Crypteks and other non-chaff necrons have personalities and even creativity. The ratios of warriors and canoptik constructs will also vary changing leadership.
*Leadership such as 1,2= 7, 3,4= 8 and 5,6=9 would fit this nicely.In general though leadership isn't really about creativity, it's the ability to follow orders effectively. If you want to show low initiative reducing the number of rerolls and possibly increasing their cost would demonstraight this.
*Having no 'inbuilt' reroll for the admiral and only allowing the purchase of one reroll would work pretty well.
Having static leadership would also make campaigns boring, I'm not quite waht to do about the campaign admirals progression. I guess it makes sense to be quite conservative.
Sepulchre upgrades: You've got quite alot of options here but I don't think a drag and drop copy of crypteks from the codex is a seamless transition. Some of these effects are a little out of place when you magnify them to such a degree. Entropic damage is way too crazy in this scale, even if it is interesting. Lightning arc upgrades is such a vague stretch as well.
You've definately given me a fair bit to ponder.
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Limited re-rolls was definitely something I was looking at also, note the only way to get more than one in this version is by taking a Harbinger of Eternity and even then its only +1. The Crypteks were more along the idea of upgrades to the Commanders, a few are just carbon copies of Marks of Chaos actually. Really I get the feeling from reading the fluff that they would work in a very similar fashion to BBB v1.0 Chaos in terms of leadership and that's why I used a lot of the same values when writing this. The only reason I left out the option to purchase additional Nercon Lords (Command Nodes) was because of the Chaos fleets ability to do the same.
The fluff actually supports the leadership hierarchy to the T, I just copied this and inserted BFG values. That said I think random leadership would be just fine, keep it standard tho 1=6, 2-3=7, 4-5=8, 6=9. This would be an acceptable way to show that some ships' Command Nodes are more "all there" than others. as far as the crew tho, no on a necron vessel they're all going to be pretty much identical, think more Borg less human. I definitely think the only way they should be able to attain leadership 10 outside of a campaign is through the Sepulchre, but even then only by the Sepulchre being combined with a Ld9 ship or commander.
Harbinger of Transmogrification was the most difficult to determine an effect that wasn't too op and that fit their fluff, I was kind of thinking about a knock back effect tho also, similar to their Tremorstave. The real problem is that the fluff for this character focuses entirely on land based or sound based attacks, not something that's too easy to reproduce in space!
The Harbinger of The Storm on the other hand I thought was pretty spot on, utilizing their ability to manipulate lightning they can focus the lightning arcs energy to make it more effective ie: re-roll misses
Eternity and Despair were the easiest both are marks of chaos already and Destruction was the effect for fighting sunward, but with the ship itself being the "sun".
In regards to the campaign chart I don't see it being very difficult to come up with something, especially if the Crypteks as I presented them make into the update, I think I'll look into this next as it is one of their gaping holes.
NECRON PROMOTION TABLE
Renown Title Ld Notes (Necron Court)
1-5 Bronze-level Necron Lord 8 1 re-roll
6-10 Silver-level Necron Lord 8 1 re-roll, 1 Cryptek Lord
11-20 Gold-level Necron Lord 9 1 re-roll, 1 Cryptek Lord
21-30 Platinum-level Necron Lord 9 1 re-roll, 1 Cryptek Lord, 1 Reserve Command Node Ld8
31-50 Necron Overlord 10 1 re-roll, 1 Cryptek Lord, 1 Reserve Command Node Ld8
51+ Phaeron 10 2 re-rolls, 1 Cryptek Lord, 1 Priority Command Node Ld9
Reserve Command Nodes and Priority Command Nodes are additional Groups of Necron Lords in the court of your fleet commander. They may be placed on any ship in the fleet (other than the fleet commanders) and modifies the ships Ld to the value shown.
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Hi AndrewChristlieb,
I wouldn't really think 'borg' when thinking of Necrons. There are too many individuals at the top of the chain of command. The rank and file are kinda borgy, more like zombie slaves though.
I'd like to stay away from borgy type stuff. Let them be their own thing, even if they are kinda tomb kings in space. ;)
I really do like the more grounded leadership offerings as it does give the feel of less uniqueness.
Cheers,
RayB
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Hi AndrewChristlieb,
I wouldn't really think 'borg' when thinking of Necrons. There are too many individuals at the top of the chain of command. The rank and file are kinda borgy, more like zombie slaves though.
I'd like to stay away from borgy type stuff. Let them be their own thing, even if they are kinda tomb kings in space. ;)
True, I'm still liking "We are the Necron" tho
I really do like the more grounded leadership offerings as it does give the feel of less uniqueness.
Not sure what your getting at with this one? less options for random leadership? There's never been a reason for them to have above average leadership but I guess 7,8,9 isn't terrible maybe 1-2=7,3-5=8,6=9 still random, but much more static and only slightly above average of course this is getting away from them having less special tables :\
Cheers,
RayB
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Hi Guys,
I'm going to be playtesting the following rules over the next week. I'll let you know how it turns out.
The points haven't really been played about with too much, what do people reckon to their values?
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Necron Dynasties
Special Rules
Leadership
Necrons have the following Leadership table: 1,2=7, 3-4=8, 5-6=9.
Necrons do not gain a leadership bonus for enemy contacts.
Inertialess Drive
Minimum distance before turning is reduced by 5cm.
Come to New heading, All Ahead Full and Burn Retros special orders do not half firepower,
instead they reduce the ships armour value to 5+ until the special order is removed.
Living Metal
Critical Hits suffered do not cause extra damage.
Fire, Hull Breach and Bulkhead Collapse critical results are taken but have no effect.
When repairing critical hits you may reroll failed repair rolls.
Teleporter Attacks
Necron capital ships may make teleporter attacks against any target and have double the number of teleporter attacks against targets with lower remaining hits.
Weapons
Lightning Arcs
Gunnery Weapon that hits the weakest armour facing.
If hitting the Prow the target counts as closing, the aft counts as moving away and broadsides counts as abeam.
You may only target the closest enemy excluding ordnance in an arc of your choice.
Particle Whip
Lance that ignores shields when the targets armour is met or beaten.
Ordnance
Portals
These are Launch bays that offer only half to the attack craft limit (Per weapon entry rounding down).
Portals allow attack craft including Canoptik Swarms upto the number of portals to relaunch instead moving normally per ordnance phase.
Scythe
20cm speed Fighter/Assault Boats only when a targets shields are down.
Tomb Blades
20cm speed Fighter/Bomber ignores armour only hitting on 6's.
Canoptik Swarms
10cm speed Orbital mines causing fire criticals instead of damage.
Canoptik swarms don't use the attack craft limit, just like normal mines.
Tombship
Type: Battleship, Hits: 12, Speed: 25cm, Turns: 45*, Shields: 4, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 4
Dorsal Particle Whip, 6, 45cm, LFR
Prow Lightning Arc, 8, 30cm, LFR
In addition Choose one of the following sets of broadsides:
Starboard Lightning Arc, 6, 30cm, LFR
Port Lightning Arc, 6, 30cm, LFR
OR
Starboard Portals, 3
Port Portals, 3
Notes: +5D6cm on AAF, The Tombship also posses a Sepulchre.
Reaper
Type: Cruiser, Hits: 8, Speed: 30cm, Turns: 45*, Shields: 2, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 3
Dorsal Particle Whip, 3, 45cm, LFR
Prow Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
In addition Choose one of the following sets of broadsides:
Starboard Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Port Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
OR
Starboard Portals, 2
Port Portals, 2
Notes: +5D6cm on AAF.
Shroud
Type: Cruiser, Hits: 6, Speed: 35cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 2
Dorsal Portals, 2
Starboard Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Port Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Prow Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Notes: +6D6cm on AAF. May replace it's Dorsal Portals for a Sepulchre.
Dirge
Type: Escort, Hits: 1, Speed: 35cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 2
Lightning Arc, 3, 30cm, LFR
Portal, 1
Notes: +6D6cm on AAF
Jackal
Type: Escort, Hits: 1, Speed: 40cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 1
Lightning Arc, 3, 30cm, LFR
Notes: +6D6cm on AAF
Stasis Ship (Transport)
Type: Escort, Hits: 1, Speed: 25cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 1
Lightning Arc, 3, 15cm, LFR
Notes: +4D6cm on AAF, counts as 2 Transports, (-1 leadership as normal transports) may not be squadroned.
Fleet Commander
0-1 Fleet Commander
The most expensive capitalship in your fleet may be captained by a fleet commander.
You must include a fleet commander if your fleet is worth over 750pts.
Phaeron (Ld 9)....50pts
Nemesor (Ld 8 )....25pts
Your fleet commander does not come with a fleet reroll but may purchase up to two Astromancer rerolls that are allocated to specific squadrons during deployment.
One Astromancer reroll.....25pts
Two Astromancer rerolls.....50pts
Sepulchre Upgrades
Tombships and Shrouds may take a Sepulchre upgrade each as explained in their notes.
Stealth: All ships within 15cm don't offer a bonus to enemy command checks due to enemy constacts. In addition the Shroud counts as cellestial phenomenon for Necron ships when disengaging.
Sensors: Necrons within 15cm gain +1 Leadership for command checks if any enemy is on special orders. In addition any enemy wishing to disengage within 15cm of the Shroud suffers -3 to its leadership (including the normal -1 for being an enemy ship).
Canoptik Hives: One Canoptik Swarm maybe launched per turn as long as the ship is not braced or crippled. Instead of launching a swarm any ship within 10cm gains D6 repair dice.
Capitalships
Battleships
You may include one Battleship for every 2 Cruisers
Tombship........500pts
0-12 Cruisers
Reaper.......250pts
Shroud........175pts
Escorts
You may have any number of escorts in your fleet.
Jackal.........50pts
Dirge..........50pts
Campaign Rules
Necron Dynasties are a Battlefleet with an Attack Rating of 2
Necron Promotion Table
1-10 Renown: Overlord (Ld8) 0 rerolls
11-25 Renown: Nemesor (Ld8) 1 reroll
26-50 Renown: Phaeron (Ld9) 1 reroll
51+ Renown: (Ld9) 2 rerolls
Ship Experience
Necrons gain and lose experience like any normal fleet but cannot gain crewskills, instead they may gain Cryptek Augments in the same manner.
Cryptek Augmentation table
1: Psychomancy, (despair) Teleporter attacks may cause -1 leadership until repaired instead of a successful critical. Choose after you have rolled.
2: Plasmancers, (destruction) Roll 3D6 and discard the highest when attempting Lock-on special orders.
3: Chronomancers, (eternity) autopass leadership check, declare before rolling.
4: Ethermancers, (Storm) Lightning arcs maybe aimed at ordnance benefiting from a left shift on the gunnery table.
5: Geomancers, (transmogrification) Roll 3D6 and discard the highest when attempting BFI special orders.
6: Flayer Virus, +1 Boarding Value, +1 to teleporter Hit and run attacks, -1 Leadership.
Systems and Repair values
After setting up the Subsector map the Necron player only discovers the Necron presence in each system as he secures them.
Once any Necron player takes a system for the first time he must roll on the following table to determine its worth.
1-3: Huskworld. Counts as unihabitated.
4-5: Fringeworld. Counts as Mining.
6: Coreworld. Counts as Civilised.
Starting World: Crownworld. Counts as Forge or Hive.
The First world the Necron Player starts with is a CrownWorld, no matter what it counts as to the other players.
The only exception to this is when the Necron player is capturing a Civilised, Hive or Forge world, in which case it counts as a Slaveworld and only offers half the normal amount of repair points rounding up.
Refits
Necrons may use the normal refit table with the following changes:
Ship Refit 1, The ship has +1 Ld.
Weapons Refit 3, Lightning Arcs may target any ship in range after a successful leadership test.
Weapons Refit 6, The ship has an additional Sepulchre upgrade, this cannot be a duplicate of one already possed by this ship.
Cutting Room Floor:
Nightmare field.
Lightning Arcs being closing WBs that ignore holofields.
Star Pulse Generator.
Particle Whips ignoring shields on a 6+ to hit.
Portals being teleporter attacks.
Unique Critical table.
Repairing criticals on a 4+.
Immunity to Blastmarkers and related cellestial phenomenon.
Armour Saves.
BFI save 2+, reducing armour to 4+.
AAF D6x10cm, can turn every 20cm.
Automatic disengaging.
Special Victory Points.
Half Repair Points in camapigns.
No fleet Commander.
Leadership normal, or +1.
Leadership upgrade for the Tombship.
Unlocalised rerolls (no 'free' reroll).
Tombship limited by one Scythe(Reaper).
Name of the Scythe Cruiser changed to Reaper.
Quantum shields, shields that increase the armour value from 5+ to 6+ until knocked down.
No mimimum movement.
No mimimum movement before turning.
Inerialess drive also allowing extra AAF movement, free turn on CTNH, Reverse on Burn Retros.
Flayer Virus, A Necron ship with leadership 7 has the flayer virus having a +1 to Hit and Run attacks from its teleporter attacks.
Lightning arcs able to jump to other targets.
Gauss Batteries, Gunnery weapon that ignores armour only hitting on 6's. All targets count as closing.
Attack craft having fast speeds.
Launch bay Portals linked to teleporter attacks.
Scarab swarms/hives changed to Canoptik swarms/hives.
Moving Minefields (Scarab/Canoptik swarms).
Regenerating hits (when repairing criticals).
Speeds changed: Tombship 20cm to 25cm, Shroud 30cm to 35cm. Jackal 40cm to 35m, Dirge 50cm to 40cm.
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Hi,
1) I dislike the Leadership. Standard 7 with Sepulchure upgrades is much better.
2) I dslike the lightning arc mechanic
3) I dislike the living metal (repairing a hitpoint or a critical hit = easier faster better living metal)
4) I dislike the portal, what do you mean anyway?
5) I dislike inertia. Makes no sense.
6) I dislike teleports (if we do a change it should be teleports are allowed on special orders)
7) all things AC is to be disliked.
So well, yeah, I am not favouring this direction. The current Necrons are fine, perhaps a tweak here and there, but that's it.
Sorry Ray, can't make more of it. It all looks like crap to me. :)
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I'm with Horizon. I like the idea of shields, and a less 'leadership-killy' critical chart, as well as less harsh victory points and more expansion. The weapons work fine, the Necron lack of AC is something novel to their fleet despite fluff arguments. AAF can remain the same, just not usable in certain missions.
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Guess where I stand.
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Leadership
Necrons have the following Leadership table: 1,2=7, 3-4=8, 5-6=9.
Necrons do not gain a leadership bonus for enemy contacts.
I'm still thinking more of command cores and upgrades to Ld by the presence of necron lords / crypteks.
Inertialess Drive
Minimum distance before turning is reduced by 5cm.
Come to New heading, All Ahead Full and Burn Retros special orders do not half firepower,
instead they reduce the ships armour value to 5+ until the special order is removed.
Inertialess = no momentum. Just make it that. No min movement (for turning and move). Burn retro's = reverse
Living Metal
Critical Hits suffered do not cause extra damage.
Fire, Hull Breach and Bulkhead Collapse critical results are taken but have no effect.
When repairing critical hits you may reroll failed repair rolls.
Let it ignore what it is ignoring in current rules. Repair rolls are tied with scarabs, spyders and wraiths. Repair: roll one extra die. Upgrade to that: + rolls succeed on 4+
Teleporter Attacks
Necron capital ships may make teleporter attacks against any target and have double the number of teleporter attacks against targets with lower remaining hits.
Keep as is in current rules. Maybe small tweak but nothing major.
Weapons
Lightning Arcs
Gunnery Weapon that hits the weakest armour facing.
If hitting the Prow the target counts as closing, the aft counts as moving away and broadsides counts as abeam.
You may only target the closest enemy excluding ordnance in an arc of your choice.
Where is that advanced targeting system? hitting weakest armour is maybe a bit overpowered, certainly against orks.
Particle Whip
Lance that ignores shields when the targets armour is met or beaten.
Powerful. Maybe tone down a bit
Ordnance
Portals
These are Launch bays that offer only half to the attack craft limit (Per weapon entry rounding down).
Portals allow attack craft including Canoptik Swarms upto the number of portals to relaunch instead moving normally per ordnance phase.
? somewhat lost here.
Scythe
20cm speed Fighter/Assault Boats only when a targets shields are down.
Tomb blades are the only AC mentioned. As a late war development.
Tomb Blades
20cm speed Fighter/Bomber ignores armour only hitting on 6's.
Why 20 cm speed only??? Why only hitting anything on 6+??? Not logical IMO
Canoptik Swarms
10cm speed Orbital mines causing fire criticals instead of damage.
Canoptik swarms don't use the attack craft limit, just like normal mines.
Looks good
No comments on fleet yet. Some battles ahead to try them out.
But no necron would ever willingly introduce the flayer virus. Or the destroyer mentality.
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Leadership
Necrons have the following Leadership table: 1,2=7, 3-4=8, 5-6=9.
Necrons do not gain a leadership bonus for enemy contacts.
I'm still thinking more of command cores and upgrades to Ld by the presence of necron lords / crypteks.
I'm still not convinced on the leadership either. I can see the reasoning behind random leadership values, but why the change from standard? This is just another unnecessary chart.
Inertialess Drive
Minimum distance before turning is reduced by 5cm.
Come to New heading, All Ahead Full and Burn Retros special orders do not half firepower,
instead they reduce the ships armour value to 5+ until the special order is removed.
Inertialess = no momentum. Just make it that. No min movement (for turning and move). Burn retro's = reverse
I agree on the no min movement obviously but burn retros should just be removed all together. Why would you want them to not halve their firepower? AAF + full power weapons is a serious matter. Armor reduction is a good one tho.
Living Metal
Critical Hits suffered do not cause extra damage.
Fire, Hull Breach and Bulkhead Collapse critical results are taken but have no effect.
When repairing critical hits you may reroll failed repair rolls.
Let it ignore what it is ignoring in current rules. Repair rolls are tied with scarabs, spyders and wraiths. Repair: roll one extra die. Upgrade to that: + rolls succeed on 4+
If the critical hits do not cause any damage they need to have some effect! A fire on a Necron ship may not be a big deal, but a bulkhead collapse!?! #7 needs to fall under the rule stating that if a critical cannot be applied the next higher critical is applied instead. 11 and 12 maybe apply d3 and d6 hit and run attacks, respectively, with a single +1 modifier; racial or special modifiers to critical hits or hit and run attacks do not apply.
Teleporter Attacks
Necron capital ships may make teleporter attacks against any target and have double the number of teleporter attacks against targets with lower remaining hits.
Keep as is in current rules. Maybe small tweak but nothing major.
This isn't bad at all really.
Weapons
Lightning Arcs
Gunnery Weapon that hits the weakest armour facing.
If hitting the Prow the target counts as closing, the aft counts as moving away and broadsides counts as abeam.
You may only target the closest enemy excluding ordnance in an arc of your choice.
Where is that advanced targeting system? hitting weakest armour is maybe a bit overpowered, certainly against orks.
This only affects a small number of ships over all, but it is pretty fluffy and really just gives people a reason to keep their broadsides facing, ok ::).
Particle Whip
Lance that ignores shields when the targets armour is met or beaten.
Powerful. Maybe tone down a bit
I agree with commander, definitely more powerful than previously but by how much? Must be tested.
Ordnance
Portals
These are Launch bays that offer only half to the attack craft limit (Per weapon entry rounding down).
Portals allow attack craft including Canoptik Swarms upto the number of portals to relaunch instead moving normally per ordnance phase.
? somewhat lost here.
There is a reason everyone disliked this rule! Its really going to just be a mess with moving attack craft around and makes the mines way too powerful! I'm sorry but I launch what 3 mines a turn every turn as I close then poof! suck all the stragglers up to the front lines when I'm near an enemy!?! No bad idea. Portals=Launch bays that's it!
Scythe
20cm speed Fighter/Assault Boats only when a targets shields are down.
Tomb blades are the only AC mentioned. As a late war development.
A late war development 60k years ago give or take :P, Seriously tho fighter assault boats ok but if your going to put a nerf like the shield thing in there at least make their speed 30cm http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Night_Scythe#.Tw2dn6WJe5I (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Night_Scythe#.Tw2dn6WJe5I)
Tomb Blades
20cm speed Fighter/Bomber ignores armour only hitting on 6's.
Why 20 cm speed only??? Why only hitting anything on 6+??? Not logical IMO
Worthless as a fighter and a bomber.
ok Fighter Tomb Blade 30cm speed Resilient (they can out maneuver organic pilots) done. Assault Boat Night Scythe 30cm speed Resilient (better armed than most races fighters) done Bomber Doom Scythe 25cm speed Not Resilient but Fighter/Bomber (its fluff supports thishttp://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Doom_Scythe#.Tw2fzqWJe5I (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Doom_Scythe#.Tw2fzqWJe5I))
Canoptik Swarms
10cm speed Orbital mines causing fire criticals instead of damage.
Canoptik swarms don't use the attack craft limit, just like normal mines.
Looks good
Nice
No comments on fleet yet. Some battles ahead to try them out.
But no necron would ever willingly introduce the flayer virus. Or the destroyer mentality.
Tombship
Type: Battleship, Hits: 12, Speed: 25cm, Turns: 45*, Shields: 4, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 4
Dorsal Particle Whip, 6, 45cm, LFR
Prow Lightning Arc, 8, 30cm, LFR
In addition Choose one of the following sets of broadsides:
Starboard Lightning Arc, 6, 30cm, LFR
Port Lightning Arc, 6, 30cm, LFR
OR
Starboard Portals, 3
Port Portals, 3
Notes: +5D6cm on AAF, The Tombship also posses a Sepulchre.
Port and starboard LFR? maybe LF and FR like Tau? Free Sepulchre and special stuff! are we breaking into the 550 range then?
Reaper
Type: Cruiser, Hits: 8, Speed: 30cm, Turns: 45*, Shields: 2, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 3
Dorsal Particle Whip, 3, 45cm, LFR
Prow Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
In addition Choose one of the following sets of broadsides:
Starboard Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Port Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
OR
Starboard Portals, 2
Port Portals, 2
Notes: +5D6cm on AAF.
Once again I don't like the port starboard LFR LF or FR should be the option
Shroud
Type: Cruiser, Hits: 6, Speed: 35cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 2
Dorsal Portals, 2
Starboard Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Port Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Prow Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Notes: +6D6cm on AAF. May replace it's Dorsal Portals for a Sepulchre.
See above, I like what you have done with the portals/ Sepulchre, but if you do this then the Sepulchre should occupy the Dorsal slot on the Tombship also for critical purposes.
Dirge
Type: Escort, Hits: 1, Speed: 35cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 2
Lightning Arc, 3, 30cm, LFR
Portal, 1
Notes: +6D6cm on AAF
Jackal
Type: Escort, Hits: 1, Speed: 40cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 1
Lightning Arc, 3, 30cm, LFR
Notes: +6D6cm on AAF
The Escorts are too similar to each other now. you might as well make them both the same 40cm speed with 2 turrets and have one with a Particle whip, maybe with the option to swap the whip for a portal @+ 20-30 pts.
Stasis Ship (Transport)
Type: Escort, Hits: 1, Speed: 25cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 1
Lightning Arc, 3, 15cm, LFR
Notes: +4D6cm on AAF, counts as 2 Transports, (-1 leadership as normal transports) may not be squadroned.
May be very over powered with that speed, should not be able to AAF at all with 25 cm base, or lower AAF. With lightning arcs being much better than standard weapons batteries it might be a good idea to lower the strength, maybe one LA@30cm instead. Should definitely still have to pay to take these.
Fleet Commander
0-1 Fleet Commander
The most expensive capitalship in your fleet may be captained by a fleet commander.
You must include a fleet commander if your fleet is worth over 750pts.
I would recommend placing the restriction on them that they must have a fleet commander even @ under 750pts.
Phaeron (Ld 9)....50pts
Nemesor (Ld 8 )....25pts
These are extremely cheap for a race that has very limited numbers of people that can actually think, titles make no sense. Having a Phaeron command a fleet is something that should be reserved for very high level campaigns, and Nemesor is the name of a specific Necron Overlord. Besides all of this the Necrons have a very specific command structure that you can take advantage of already http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necron_Lord#.Tw2lmaWJe5I (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necron_Lord#.Tw2lmaWJe5I) this is the same structure I used above.
Your fleet commander does not come with a fleet reroll but may purchase up to two Astromancer rerolls that are allocated to specific squadrons during deployment.
One Astromancer reroll.....25pts
Two Astromancer rerolls.....50pts
No re-rolls is fine, but if your wanting them to have a limited number compared to the other races this is not the way to do it! You now have a commander with a re-roll at 50 and 75 pts with an additional @ +50 pts, that's not very rare. The limitation of a specific squadron is extremely harsh, this would be much better done with all ships having a base Ld and you having the ability to purchase up to 5 commanders of varying leaderships each with their own re-roll and having the overall commanders re-rolls only applicable to this own ship. Base ld 7, fleet commander 50pts ld 8 100pts ld 9 may purchase 1 re-roll for 25 or 2 for 75. Additionally they may be accompanied by up to 5 commanders ld8 w/one re-roll 50 pts or ld9 w/one re-roll 75 pts command re-rolls may only be applied to the vessel the commander is embarked upon.
Sepulchre Upgrades
Tombships and Shrouds may take a Sepulchre upgrade each as explained in their notes.
Stealth: All ships within 15cm don't offer a bonus to enemy command checks due to enemy constacts. In addition the Shroud counts as cellestial phenomenon for Necron ships when disengaging.
Sensors: Necrons within 15cm gain +1 Leadership for command checks if any enemy is on special orders. In addition any enemy wishing to disengage within 15cm of the Shroud suffers -3 to its leadership (including the normal -1 for being an enemy ship).
Canoptik Hives: One Canoptik Swarm maybe launched per turn as long as the ship is not braced or crippled. Instead of launching a swarm any ship within 10cm gains D6 repair dice.
All good, on the Canoptik Hives tho why not just make the "mines" able to move to friendly vessels to add repiar dice instead of having the extra rule, besides its kind of clunky.
Capitalships
Battleships
You may include one Battleship for every 2 Cruisers
Tombship........500pts
0-12 Cruisers
Reaper.......250pts
Shroud........175pts
Escorts
You may have any number of escorts in your fleet.
Jackal.........50pts
Dirge..........50pts
Campaign Rules
Necron Dynasties are a Battlefleet with an Attack Rating of 2
Some points values sound off, but they will just have to be tested.
Necron Promotion Table
1-10 Renown: Overlord (Ld8) 0 rerolls
11-25 Renown: Nemesor (Ld8) 1 reroll
26-50 Renown: Phaeron (Ld9) 1 reroll
51+ Renown: (Ld9) 2 rerolls
This is a very short chart when compared to the other races, and gives very limited bonuses. Players are going to have problems with this when they are not seeing very much change for the amount of Renown they gain.
Ship Experience
Necrons gain and lose experience like any normal fleet but cannot gain crewskills, instead they may gain Cryptek Augments in the same manner.
Cryptek Augmentation table
1: Psychomancy, (despair) Teleporter attacks may cause -1 leadership until repaired instead of a successful critical. Choose after you have rolled.
2: Plasmancers, (destruction) Roll 3D6 and discard the highest when attempting Lock-on special orders.
3: Chronomancers, (eternity) autopass leadership check, declare before rolling.
4: Ethermancers, (Storm) Lightning arcs maybe aimed at ordnance benefiting from a left shift on the gunnery table.
5: Geomancers, (transmogrification) Roll 3D6 and discard the highest when attempting BFI special orders.
6: Flayer Virus, +1 Boarding Value, +1 to teleporter Hit and run attacks, -1 Leadership.
result one would probably be better if hit and run attacks from this ship and boarding actions receive a +1 modifier. result 4 your rule is limited and unclear, do all attacks receive the left shift now? or just against ordnance. When firing you lightning arc you may take a leadership test to target the vessel of your choice, including ordnance. Additionally Lighting Arc attacks receive a left shift on the gunnery table. result 6 is really bad, just wrong. how about One with the ship! The crew have become so adept at controlling the ship and working within its limitations that they can bring it to the very edge in performance, On any movement related special order attempt, AAF, BR, CTNH the ship may roll 3D6 discarding the highest result. 2,3, and 5 are all good options.
Systems and Repair values
After setting up the Subsector map the Necron player only discovers the Necron presence in each system as he secures them.
Once any Necron player takes a system for the first time he must roll on the following table to determine its worth.
1-3: Huskworld. Counts as unihabitated.
4-5: Fringeworld. Counts as Mining.
6: Coreworld. Counts as Civilised.
Starting World: Crownworld. Counts as Forge or Hive.
The First world the Necron Player starts with is a CrownWorld, no matter what it counts as to the other players.
The only exception to this is when the Necron player is capturing a Civilised, Hive or Forge world, in which case it counts as a Slaveworld and only offers half the normal amount of repair points rounding up.
Good. Slave worlds should work like penal tho IMO. There should be an option for the necron player to convert slave worlds into a core or crown world, over a course of several campaign turns and with the expenditure of repair points. Something like turn one Penal if retaken reverts back to previous for other races,turn two Mining permanent change for civilized, hives and forges will revert back if retaken (put the slaves to work), turn three Core civilized becomes uninhabited for other races and hives/forges drop to civilized (begin to absorb the human population and convert production capability to Necron equipment, max limit for a previously civilized world.) turn four Crown counts as uninhabited for other races (complete absorption of the population and conversion of the production to Necron equipment).
Refits
Necrons may use the normal refit table with the following changes:
Ship Refit 1, The ship has +1 Ld.
Weapons Refit 3, Lightning Arcs may target any ship in range after a successful leadership test.
Weapons Refit 6, The ship has an additional Sepulchre upgrade, this cannot be a duplicate of one already possed by this ship.
Hum I think weapons refit 3 and 6 would be best left alone.
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Inertialess Drive
Minimum distance before turning is reduced by 5cm.
Come to New heading, All Ahead Full and Burn Retros special orders do not half firepower,
instead they reduce the ships armour value to 5+ until the special order is removed.
Inertialess = no momentum. Just make it that. No min movement (for turning and move). Burn retro's = reverse
I agree on the no min movement obviously but burn retros should just be removed all together. Why would you want them to not halve their firepower? AAF + full power weapons is a serious matter. Armor reduction is a good one tho.
I simply like the option of reverse speed. No turning and manoeuvring involved, just backing off and keeping those F weapons trained on the enemy. If I'm not mistaken, they would be the only ones that can do this
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Sorry Ray, can't make more of it. It all looks like crap to me. :)
I have to admit, I laughed out loud at this.
Hi Horizon,
Leadership, if this is static, which fluffwise it doesn't need to be, they'll be boring as hell in campaigns! They have to have random leadership in some manner!
My Lightning Arcs do have a strange mechanic, it maybe too strange. Only Orks get screwed over as INs 6+ prow basically causes a rightshift instead of offering heavier armour. However Orks are worth saving... :)
The reason I like the mechanic is that it is different (better and worse) than eldar 'closing' batteries. *(I'm definately against ignoring holofields!)
*Having Lightning Arcs as always LFR could fit the need to be better (having to shoot the closest target being the dissadvantage).
Living metal as a slight modification to the critical result and a reroll to repair is far easier than having a separate critical table and a 4+ to repair with the possibilty of repairing hits.
My Portals are launchbays that offer half the amount to the AC limit, in addition you can teleport AC to portals in the ordy phase instead of normal movement.
The Inertialess drive allows a ship to move faster, slower or allows it make sharper turns without being a massive drain to power systems as the overall relative mass has been reduced. The side effect of this is that the ship suffers impacts more violently as is has become more structually frail.
Why should Necron teleport attacks be different to anyone elses?
Introducing Necron AC is pretty jarring, it seems weird somehow. I suspect this is only because they haven't had any until now. In general though they should be predominantly fighters, filling the role of the SPG and NMF.
The Current Necrons aren't fine! NMF, SPG, Special victory points, have to go at the very least. Shields, AC and commanders, campaign rules have to be added at the very least.
Hi Plaxor,
Having no AC does add an element of interest to the fleets rules, however you can achieve the same by having very few AC. Necrons will cost over the norm to get as many AC on the table, so that aspect will always remain.
Hi Zelnik. :)
Hi Commander,
I'd rather not lose minimum movement, the inertialess drive shouldn't be considered active or fully activated all the time. This gives you a reason to actually want to use the inertialess drive for special orders.
Scarabs and wraiths don't/can't reapair, only spyders can that's why I didn't want it to be a 'heal mine'.
The Particle whip is just a lance with a special rule that barely ever comes into play. Only going through shields on a 6+ means that 1 in 3 hits goes through shields. Against a cruiser that's 2 shields down and a direct hit (the same as normal lances). Against a BB it's okay, but then you've struck it a hard blow and aren't going to follow up with anything else, unlikely... Against escorts this is good, basically counts as an extra hit, unless you're unlucky enough to hit an escort who already has it's shields down. So only noticeable against escorts really, kinda crap.
Also keep in mind that the number of particle whips would be reduced. Think of them as the Necrons lance and torp equivs.
The reason why the AC is so slow is because they can teleport to portals instaed of moving. The Necrons AC is basically only good for CAP and weak attacks, they're AC is primarily defensive, the escorts need it.
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Hi AndrewChristlieb,
Okay, I'm only gonna comment on things I haven't in the last post.
Ignoring damage only criticals isn't terrible, think of it as an automatic save. 11 and 12 happen rarely so that won't come into it so much (avg of 1 in every 72 hits, I think).
Racial H&R bonus shouldn't be ignored (the fire critical) but it's not so bad, I can live with it rather than adding a rule to cover it.
Teleporting mines isn't as bad as you're making out How is it different from a Devastation off loading 4 orbital mines right in your face?
You can only have a few of them, 1 per Sepulchre, and that's instead of a leadership bonus/shroud. Even if you went with a fleet of Shrouds and a Scythe I don't see it working just BFI the Scythe. You also have to be in base contact to get the mines to hit in the turn of teleport. This is not unbalanced IMO.
I visited the Lexicanum links you offered up, sadly alot of it is wrong (as in contridicts the new Necron Codex). Or in the case of Scythes is a bit of a leap of logic to say they're capable of intersteller travel (well at slower than light speed I suppose this would be true). They're quoting from publications predating the retcon and so a few things get a little weird when you have concepts from before and after side by side.
The Tomblades are fighter bombers, but can actually cause damage to targets with medium-high turret values like normal bombers. Only hitting on a 6 is to do with their armour ignoring weaponary, and them only being fighter bombers.
LFR is basically a special rule for lightning arcs. Having LFR weaponary seems more 'advanced' aswell (Ironclad vs wooden frigate).
Sepulchres ignore criticals as they are so vital a 'weapon', they are burried inside the ship.
I agree the escorts are quite similar, the Jackal should have an extra turret. The Jackal is basically an upgrade to ordnance defence. I wouldn't want to put a particle whip in there though, it seems like too power hungry a weapon for such a small ship.
Necron Transports should obviously be better than the norm. I have it set up so that you get 1 Necron transport instead of 2 for the other races. Destroying 1 counts as destroying 2 so having less than twice the firepower isn't a problem. The speed might be an issue. Maybe only speed 20cm. (keep in mind if they want to AAF their armour will drop to 5+).
Nemesor is a rank of leader.
I really don't want static leadership, and that's what you get when you have numerous captains with set leadership. Having multiple +1 Ld's would still be an issue as it would effectively increase the basic leadership value beyond what it should be.
Squadron specific rerolls further highlights the Necrons lack of initiative. Keep in mind that these are allocated during deployment and so can be there to bump up your low leadership squadrons (or ensure your highier leadership ones).
The Necron Promotion table is intentionally limited. This represents the little that the Necron Admiral can change in a campaign.
Cryptek augmentation table
The Flayer virus is a downgrade, a result 1. It might be a little weird to have a downgrade in the crewskills but I wanted the flayer virus to be present in the campaign rules somewhere.
If result 1 was changed to be just like result 6 they'd be no point. But result 1 does need improving. What if it were a 'hex' crewskill, so a single enemy ship/squadron within 15cm has to roll 3D6 discard the lowest for a command check.
System and repair rules
The penal colonly instead of civ/hive is a great idea!
You should never change what a world is beyond exterminatus, it just screws campaigns over!
Refits 3 and 6 need to be changed because they have no effect on Necron ships.
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Scarabs and wraiths don't/can't reapair, only spyders can that's why I didn't want it to be a 'heal mine'.
You should check the codex about that ;)
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I'd rather not lose minimum movement, the inertialess drive shouldn't be considered active or fully activated all the time. This gives you a reason to actually want to use the inertialess drive for special orders.
And let have the toy of no movement to the Eldar WITHOUT those having no momentum??? I don't think so. If one race should have zero movement, it's the necrons. Their drive IS the inertialess drive.
The reason why the AC is so slow is because they can teleport to portals instaed of moving. The Necrons AC is basically only good for CAP and weak attacks, they're AC is primarily defensive, the escorts need it.
Codex strongly indicates otherwise.
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Also, as already said, no necron would introduce the flayer virus because noone of them is immune to it. They don't want to degenerate, they aim for apotheosis.
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Hi AndrewChristlieb,
Okay, I'm only gonna comment on things I haven't in the last post.
Ignoring damage only criticals isn't terrible, think of it as an automatic save. 11 and 12 happen rarely so that won't come into it so much (avg of 1 in every 72 hits, I think).
Its not about how rare it is, its a matter of an 11 or 12 on 2 d6 SHOULD be awesome not the one thing you never want to roll. Criticals are hard enough to come by they dont need to be nerfed!
Racial H&R bonus shouldn't be ignored (the fire critical) but it's not so bad, I can live with it rather than adding a rule to cover it.
Teleporting mines isn't as bad as you're making out How is it different from a Devastation off loading 4 orbital mines right in your face?
You can only have a few of them, 1 per Sepulchre, and that's instead of a leadership bonus/shroud. Even if you went with a fleet of Shrouds and a Scythe I don't see it working just BFI the Scythe. You also have to be in base contact to get the mines to hit in the turn of teleport. This is not unbalanced IMO.
But its not a dev its a Tombship, you don't even need to bring the Shrouds off the table edge just have them min move in circles @ the table edge the whole game and let tougher ships portal in all the bombs its worse than nova spam :P
I visited the Lexicanum links you offered up, sadly alot of it is wrong (as in contridicts the new Necron Codex). Or in the case of Scythes is a bit of a leap of logic to say they're capable of intersteller travel (well at slower than light speed I suppose this would be true). They're quoting from publications predating the retcon and so a few things get a little weird when you have concepts from before and after side by side.
Maybe so, but then the new dex is crap too so :P
The Tomblades are fighter bombers, but can actually cause damage to targets with medium-high turret values like normal bombers. Only hitting on a 6 is to do with their armour ignoring weaponary, and them only being fighter bombers.
Only hits on a 6= crap, im sorry but why would I ever take this over assault boats? I do like that they get a "boost" over standard FB tho
LFR is basically a special rule for lightning arcs. Having LFR weaponary seems more 'advanced' aswell (Ironclad vs wooden frigate).
I agree but its still an awkward concept to shoot what? over? the center of the ship? maybe put all of them on prow/dorsal and put the whips on the broadside option with a LF and FR arc
Sepulchres ignore criticals as they are so vital a 'weapon', they are burried inside the ship.
But not on shrouds? They very clearly take the Dorsal slot on the Shroud Shroud
Type: Cruiser, Hits: 6, Speed: 35cm, Turns: 90*, Shields: 1, Armour: 6+, Turrets: 2
Dorsal Portals, 2
Starboard Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Port Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Prow Lightning Arc, 4, 30cm, LFR
Notes: +6D6cm on AAF. May replace it's Dorsal Portals for a Sepulchre.
[/color]
I agree the escorts are quite similar, the Jackal should have an extra turret. The Jackal is basically an upgrade to ordnance defence. I wouldn't want to put a particle whip in there though, it seems like too power hungry a weapon for such a small ship.
Add 1 portal back in then, just to one. Make Portals add ac @ a ratio of 1/2 rounded down. So escorts cannot add any, but can portal ordnance in.
Necron Transports should obviously be better than the norm. I have it set up so that you get 1 Necron transport instead of 2 for the other races. Destroying 1 counts as destroying 2 so having less than twice the firepower isn't a problem. The speed might be an issue. Maybe only speed 20cm. (keep in mind if they want to AAF their armour will drop to 5+).
The speed is the real issue here.
Nemesor is a rank of leader.
Its a very obscure reference, the only time it has been used in other than an off had fashion is in reference to a specific Overlord, that is unless there's something in the new dex to contradict this?
I really don't want static leadership, and that's what you get when you have numerous captains with set leadership. Having multiple +1 Ld's would still be an issue as it would effectively increase the basic leadership value beyond what it should be.
Then just give them the standard 6-9
Squadron specific rerolls further highlights the Necrons lack of initiative. Keep in mind that these are allocated during deployment and so can be there to bump up your low leadership squadrons (or ensure your highier leadership ones).
Thats fine
The Necron Promotion table is intentionally limited. This represents the little that the Necron Admiral can change in a campaign.
But why? its not like they're not going to be learning and expanding, at least give them some kind of boost @ each of the standard levels, even if it isn't a leadership or re-roll boost.
Cryptek augmentation table
The Flayer virus is a downgrade, a result 1. It might be a little weird to have a downgrade in the crewskills but I wanted the flayer virus to be present in the campaign rules somewhere.
If result 1 was changed to be just like result 6 they'd be no point. But result 1 does need improving. What if it were a 'hex' crewskill, so a single enemy ship/squadron within 15cm has to roll 3D6 discard the lowest for a command check.
why have it at all? if it must be there why not put it that ships that fall to 6 or less are subject to the virus.
you could do a really cool rule where the ship performs as normal unless it fails a leadership test, if a ld test is failed the ship cannot take any special orders other than movement or use any special weapons. Then have them double their boarding value. At the beginning of each subsequent Necron movement phase the ship may make a leadership test to regain control. (just an idea.)
System and repair rules
The penal colonly instead of civ/hive is a great idea!
You should never change what a world is beyond exterminatus, it just screws campaigns over!
Indeed special rules can be a pain, maybe have the Hive/Forge gain 2d6+ whatever instead of 1d6+ to represent the increased slave labor etc.
Refits 3 and 6 need to be changed because they have no effect on Necron ships.
Lightning arc doesn't benefit from column shifts? and their shields cannot benefit from being tougher?
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Hi Commander,
All Canoptek constructs can indeed repair or fabricate. Looks like the 'heal mine' really does have a place. :)
The Inertialess drive does give the movement you desire, but at a cost to armour (and having to be on special orders).
I don't get any sense from the codex that Scythes or tomblades are super fast. I wouldn't be against 'normalising' them to straight fighters and bombers respectively just too keep things simple and because alot depends on the 'size' of a squadron. The assualt boat abilty of the scythe is a little iffy, perhaps just having squadrons of Night scythes as assualt boats. (Back to the basics!)
The introduction of the flayer virus is supposed to be an 'accident'. The risk of getting a Cryptek upgrade.
I've done an extremely limited amount of playtesting but the following changes should be made:
Sepulchre shoud be both Shroud and Sensors but you pick at the start of each turn for each Sepulchre. It became quite clear that +1 Ld was more desireable except in specific circumstances.
The price of the Reaper should be aimed at 250pts. (Tweaks of strength will have to be done)
Portals are too weak to have the rules I've given them. Instead they should be launch bays that are not loaded to begin with, when you reload you must launch that turn. In addition you can reload AC on the field without having to use reload special orders, including canoptek swarms.
Canoptek Hives/Swarms need to be a weapon of their own, not a Sepulchre or upgrade for a Portal.
For those that want to go ahead and say 'I told you so'.
Cheers,
RayB HA
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A nemesor is the necron overall commander of a warzone; the number 1.
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Hi Commander,
All Canoptek constructs can indeed repair or fabricate. Looks like the 'heal mine' really does have a place. :)
Dual purpose; Mine or repair.
The Inertialess drive does give the movement you desire, but at a cost to armour (and having to be on special orders).
Eldar with NO inertia get move 0 FOR FREE; necron WITH inertia don't. Some contradiction here! Inacceptable.
I don't get any sense from the codex that Scythes or tomblades are super fast. I wouldn't be against 'normalising' them to straight fighters and bombers respectively just too keep things simple and because alot depends on the 'size' of a squadron. The assualt boat abilty of the scythe is a little iffy, perhaps just having squadrons of Night scythes as assualt boats. (Back to the basics!)
Tomb blades: If they swarm over their target, they must have enough speed to keep up with it. And with the speed of their prime enemies ...
The introduction of the flayer virus is supposed to be an 'accident'. The risk of getting a Cryptek upgrade.
No cryptek is going to accidentally introduce it. However, the virus can have spread to the fleet as it is contagious (reread the dex). IMO it must not be an upgrade but a special rule and a dice roll before deployment to acertain which ship(s) is(are) contaminated. OR simply a reduction in point cost.
I've done an extremely limited amount of playtesting but the following changes should be made:
Sepulchre shoud be both Shroud and Sensors but you pick at the start of each turn for each Sepulchre. It became quite clear that +1 Ld was more desireable except in specific circumstances.
The price of the Reaper should be aimed at 250pts. (Tweaks of strength will have to be done)
Portals are too weak to have the rules I've given them. Instead they should be launch bays that are not loaded to begin with, when you reload you must launch that turn. In addition you can reload AC on the field without having to use reload special orders, including canoptek swarms.
Canoptek Hives/Swarms need to be a weapon of their own, not a Sepulchre or upgrade for a Portal.
I've some battles next week against an inquisitor fleet. I'll try these out if my opponent allows me to.
However, I would keep the portals as teleport attacks and call the launchbays simply 'gates'. A small addition and not a change to an established 'weapon'
For those that want to go ahead and say 'I told you so'.
Cheers,
RayB HA
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Eldar with NO inertialess drive get move 0 FOR FREE; necron WITH inertialess drive don't. Some contradiction here! IUnacceptable.
Fixed.
Tomb blades: If they swarm over their target, they must have enough speed to keep up with it. And with the speed of their prime enemies ...
Is this a reference to the Eldar? If so, then you're wrong. Necron tech could not possibly be adapted towards defeating the Eldar. All they know of present day Eldar is what they've learned since awakening. In their pre-sleep encounters the Eldar were not technologically advanced. They fought the Necrons shoulder to shoulder with their gods, back when they were immortal. Any "technology" the Eldar had at the time was God wrought, or magic. Eldar technology has developed while the Necrons have been asleep. Therefore it is possible (likely) that Eldar tech is anti-Necron, but it couldn't be the other way around. It has always annoyed me that the ABSF ignore holofields, which they clearly shouldn't, but don't ignore the Necron 2+ brace save, which they clearly should. They were created by Vaul specifically to destroy the Necrons. Not much chance of that with a 2+ save. Holofields were specifically designed to spoof direct fire attacks, the more pinpoint the more effective. ABSFs basically fire lances.
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Along the same line of thought why does every necron weapon ignore holo fields? Some make sense as they are area effect weapons but what about the particle whip? That should not ignore holofields, and altho I agree that lightning doesn't need to "see" to hit it does require to be released in the right area or there would be increased dissipation of the energy as it arcs towards ground.
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I think that lightning arcs would most likely cover a smaller area than typical area saturation bombardment, so they should suffer more to holofields.
As for the topic of the inertialess drive, well it's pretty naff. I mean, if we're talking a true inertialess drive then the Necron ships should be slower, not faster. This is because it would take a good deal more power to keep them going. Without inertia to keep ships moving they'd stop dead. So you'd need a constant supply of thrust to maintain speed. Achieving near light speed for such massive ships without the aid of inertia would be impossible (well, more impossible :o). On the other hand, without inertia to keep them going in a straight line they'd be super manoeuvrable, able to manoeuvre like a fighter or bomber.
The Necron drive functions more like a mass reduction drive. This would allow higher speeds at lower thrust. Having lower mass would make it easier to manoeuvre, except that the distance covered would likely be great (due to moving so fast). This pretty much sums up the current ruleset of +1d6 x 10cm on AAF with a turn every 20cm. It would also make faster than light travel possible, assuming mass can be reduced to zero.
With such a drive one would not expect the Necrons to be able to halt their movement as they pleased (having a lower mass does make it easier to stop, but if you suddenly engage the drive to lower the mass to make it easier to stop you'll increase your speed due to the conservation of momentum, thus increasing the thrust needed to stop, therefore gaining no net benefit). As this also fits with their current ruleset and modus operandi (i.e., non-warp FTL capability) I submit that the Necron drive is not an inertialess drive but really a relative mass reduction drive. Therefore we should abandon any notion of allowing the Necrons to forego minimum movement requirements.
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I think that lightning arcs would most likely cover a smaller area than typical area saturation bombardment, so they should suffer more to holofields.
On the other hand, the 'charged' sails could act as a conduit/beacon for the lightning arcs?
But I would agree to not negating holofields.
As for the topic of the inertialess drive, well it's pretty naff. I mean, if we're talking a true inertialess drive then the Necron ships should be slower, not faster. This is because it would take a good deal more power to keep them going. Without inertia to keep ships moving they'd stop dead. So you'd need a constant supply of thrust to maintain speed. Achieving near light speed for such massive ships without the aid of inertia would be impossible (well, more impossible :o). On the other hand, without inertia to keep them going in a straight line they'd be super manoeuvrable, able to manoeuvre like a fighter or bomber.
This is also pointed out by a member of my regular player group. Al tough I think that the necrons have access to such 'impossible' power sources (after all, a complete world was destoyed when a powercore of a doomday cannon was breached and they shattered the C'tan). However I agree that their speed would be closer to the 'normal' speed.
The Necron drive functions more like a mass reduction drive. This would allow higher speeds at lower thrust. Having lower mass would make it easier to manoeuvre, except that the distance covered would likely be great (due to moving so fast). This pretty much sums up the current ruleset of +1d6 x 10cm on AAF with a turn every 20cm. It would also make faster than light travel possible, assuming mass can be reduced to zero.
With such a drive one would not expect the Necrons to be able to halt their movement as they pleased (having a lower mass does make it easier to stop, but if you suddenly engage the drive to lower the mass to make it easier to stop you'll increase your speed due to the conservation of momentum, thus increasing the thrust needed to stop, therefore gaining no net benefit). As this also fits with their current ruleset and modus operandi (i.e., non-warp FTL capability) I submit that the Necron drive is not an inertialess drive but really a relative mass reduction drive. Therefore we should abandon any notion of allowing the Necrons to forego minimum movement requirements.
Viable alternative
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Inertia and mass are directly related. A body with more mass will have a higher inertia and conversely one with less mass will have less inertia. The problem with your theroy about it taking more energy to move a ship with 0 inertia (0 mass) is that an object with a lower inertia is also easier to get moving. So easier to move = faster (push a cart then a car eventually they will both reach the same speed if nothing interferes but the cart will take much less time) and easier to move = easier to stop (compare rolling a marble to a bowling).
So call it what you will, but a ship that has 0 inertia must have 0 mass and there fore would be able to stop, turn, and accelerate impossibly fast. Now I don't see how its possible to have true 0 mass as there would be no way to exert energy against it, instead the "inertialess" drive must bring a ship down to near 0 mass, neither hear nor there in game terms tho.
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As I'm told by one of my gaming group is that you will need a huge amount of energy to get and keep your ship inertialess. The amount of power that remains may not be enough to reach incredible speeds but 'top speed' could be reached instantaneously. And highly manoeuvrable. Also zero speed would free energy to go to weapon systems, repairs and stuff.
I like that approach (but we're no scientists).
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Makes sense to me. So maybe a high top speed (such as what they have) but a limited aaf (more like +3D6 instead of +5D6) and unlimited turning w/ no min movement.
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Inertia and mass are directly related. A body with more mass will have a higher inertia and conversely one with less mass will have less inertia. The problem with your theroy about it taking more energy to move a ship with 0 inertia (0 mass) is that an object with a lower inertia is also easier to get moving. So easier to move = faster (push a cart then a car eventually they will both reach the same speed if nothing interferes but the cart will take much less time) and easier to move = easier to stop (compare rolling a marble to a bowling).
So call it what you will, but a ship that has 0 inertia must have 0 mass and there fore would be able to stop, turn, and accelerate impossibly fast. Now I don't see how its possible to have true 0 mass as there would be no way to exert energy against it, instead the "inertialess" drive must bring a ship down to near 0 mass, neither hear nor there in game terms tho.
Inertia = mass x speed. Having 0 inertia does not mean 0 mass. It means 0 speed. Think throwing an inertialess tennis ball. It has mass (it is a thing after all), but lacking inertia means that as soon as it has left your hand (ie, no more force being applied) it stops dead. There is no inertia so therefore no speed. I = MxS, I = 0, M = tennis ball, therefore S = 0. To move the object you would need to apply more force, and continuously. Apart from the energy requirement necessary to cancel all inertia, there is also a massive energy requirement to move the ship, since it has no inertia to aid it.
Now, a mass reduction drive will allow for great speed, as the conservation of momentum will work to increase speed as mass decreases. Apart from that, a reduced mass is, of course, easier to accelerate and decelerate. As for reducing inertia to 0 by reducing mass to 0, that doesn't make much sense due to conservation of momentum. As mass approaches 0, speed will approach infinite to compensate, maintaining inertia. However, presuming we get 0 mass and 0 resultant inertia (suppose it had 0 inertia before mass was reduced) and suppose we're able to exert thrust upon it, it's still a misnomer to call it an inertialess drive. I mean, this is the only circumstance under which the ship could be truly said to be inertialess. So the drive acts upon the mass of the ship to achieve this and only under the rarest of circumstances is it truly "inertialess". For example, when the drive has reduced the ships mass to 50% , say, then inertia would remain the same, not "inertialess". This interpretation is really a mass reduction drive.
In other words, for it to really be an inertialess drive then for all non-zero mass values there must be zero speed. Even for 0 mass it would have had to have started at 0 inertia to be called "inertialess". In this last instance we're really looking at a renamed relative mass reduction drive with a narrowed scope anyway.
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Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion.
The only problem (other than the unusual use of speed) is that inertia is equal to F, but not in the way you think. F=ma force = mass acceleration is the amount of force required to move an object. It shows that an object has inertia that must be over come by a force with a mass times acceleration greater than the inertia of the body. This of course means that an object must have inertia = to the force required to move it or to stop it if it is already moving, so yes something that is not moving does indeed have inertia.
I believe your confused because of gravity and friction, which being the strongest force we encounter forces all objects we encounter to stop regardless of their inertia. You will note that if you throw your ball in deep space where gravity and friction have little effect it will not stop moving unless it encounters a force that can cause it to stop.
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Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion.
The only problem (other than the unusual use of speed) is that inertia is equal to F, but not in the way you think. F=ma force = mass acceleration is the amount of force required to move an object. It shows that an object has inertia that must be over come by a force with a mass times acceleration greater than the inertia of the body. This of course means that an object must have inertia = to the force required to move it or to stop it if it is already moving, so yes something that is not moving does indeed have inertia.
I believe your confused because of gravity and friction, which being the strongest force we encounter forces all objects we encounter to stop regardless of their inertia. You will note that if you throw your ball in deep space where gravity and friction have little effect it will not stop moving unless it encounters a force that can cause it to stop.
I have not been confused by either gravity or friction. They have not been brought up at all. The tennis ball I described was inertialess. So, even when thrown in space, it would stop dead as soon as it left your hand. As it has no inertia it won't continue. As for the unusual use of speed, well you can read velocity there. Having a speed implies a direction innately. It never made sense to me to harp on about velocity if you don't know the particular direction or you're talking about just any one random direction. Yes, yes, I know, you can change direction without changing speed and this is a change in velocity, blah, blah.
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Sig your great and all, but your extremely frustrating some times. You really need too go read some about physics because this is elementary science and your just not getting it :/. EVERYTHING has inertia. The definition of inertia is: The resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest. It is proportionally equal to the objects inertial mass which is almost always the same as its gravitational mass. An object in motion will always remain in motion unless it encounters a force of equal or greater value. An object at rest will always remain at rest until a force of equal or greater value moves it.
Momentum P=mv is a form of inertia also, the difference being velocity instead of acceleration and what you actually come up with is the objects inertial mass.
Speed is a value used to determine velocity along with direction. Acceleration is a vector quantity using length and time along with velocity.
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As my knowledge is limited (me being very nice to myself here ;D), I pass on the discussion and propose that the necrons are able to negate inertia, gravity and stuff, with a good round of speed and highly manoeuvrable.
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Sig is right, if it 'only' affected inertia the ship would just stop until a constant force was applied.
But if something struck it with its own inertia it wouldn't bounce off shedding some of its momentum it would carry on with the inertialess object in front at the same speed because for all intents and purposes it would be massless.
However this would only be the case for physical interaction, its gravity would still remain (unless it's mass really was reduced). Mind you if it accelerated for whatever reason it would succumb to relativity affecting it's mass (relative to it's rate of time). So it could then reach (near) infinite mass but only experienced by the inertiless object, everything else would be moving through time at a near infinitly faster rate and would only be affected by the object as much as if it were stationary (excluding its actual movement).
The main problem here is that gravity is a constant force (kinda) so an inertialess object would get drawn towards anything with gravity. So you activate your inertialess drive and you'll fly into the nearest star at light speed! ;)
I think its best just to think of it as a magic movement drive. :)
Cheers,
RayB
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Sig your great and all, but your extremely frustrating some times. You really need too go read some about physics because this is elementary science and your just not getting it :/. EVERYTHING has inertia. The definition of inertia is: The resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest. It is proportionally equal to the objects inertial mass which is almost always the same as its gravitational mass. An object in motion will always remain in motion unless it encounters a force of equal or greater value. An object at rest will always remain at rest until a force of equal or greater value moves it.
Momentum P=mv is a form of inertia also, the difference being velocity instead of acceleration and what you actually come up with is the objects inertial mass.
Speed is a value used to determine velocity along with direction. Acceleration is a vector quantity using length and time along with velocity.
I think perhaps you're a little confused. We are talking about an inertialess drive here and pondering what effect would occur if you could reduce an objects' inertia to zero. So, in the case of the inertialess tennis ball (not a normal tennis ball) being thrown in space it would stop dead as soon as it left the throwers hand. Having no inertia it has no momentum. It will also not "remain" moving, since it has no inertia, i.e., the laws of physics no longer tell it to move at its previous velocity. In order to move it at all a force would need to be applied, and as soon as it stopped being applied the object would stop.
There are some issues with this of course. Without inertia I don't think it's theoretically possible to be moved at all, since inertia determines the force needed to move the object. Without inertia then it could mean that no force is capable of moving the object. Either that or it would move automatically at infinite speed in the net direction of the combined forces acting upon it, no matter how weak. Also, internal sublight drives wouldn't work, since they're a part of the object being effected by the inertialess drive and so would have their effects neutralised by the field.
Either way, an inertialess drive is a bit retarded. A mass reduction drive on the other hand seems to fit the bill both in terms of how they currently play and in what they're meant to be able to do.
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Your right I did misunderstand what you were saying, I'm sorry. That's why I said earlier that the "inertialess" drive would have to be a mass reduction drive and that it would have to bring the ship down to a fraction of its mass because of course as you stated something with no inertia (mass) would be unable to be affected by any force except by forces aboard the vessel which would be unable to actually move the ship because they would be unable to apply said force to anything (sort of like the ships in a bubble outside of our reality like in warp travel but its actually not in another reality... Twist your mind around that 10 times fast :P) In game terms tho something with a mass/inertia reducing drive would basically be able to stop instantly as you stated by simply removing the force moving them (engine thrust) which equates to free burn retros or no minmove, the ability to turn at incredible rates faster even than attack craft or for the sake of simplicity either free ctnh or just let them make as many turns as they want, the only iffy thing would be aaf, on one hand almost no energy would be required to move the ship due to its reduced mass so its conceivable that they could have a very fast aaf on the other hand we can assume that most of the ships power is being used to power the drive and the engines required to move it at all and therefore there would be very little left to go aaf (standard aaf rules would work fine for this: reduced power on everything else +4d6).
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Yep, I was basically saying that an inertialess drive doesn't make sense. Even if you confine the notion of inertia to merely momentum (so a momentum reduction drive), then the amount of force necessary to move the object would remain normal, but without momentum it would need to be applied constantly to make the ship move, hence a very low top speed. They would be able to accelerate to this top speed as well as come to a full stop instantaneously though. This is akin to an old sci fi movie that I can't remember the name of, in which some kids were inside an inertialess bubble and could stop and change direction instantaneously. They went to a space ship crewed by giant alien kids. Anyway.
However, if we're going to talk a mass reduction drive here then yes, the force needed to move, stop and turn are greatly reduced, allowing for high top speeds. However, I don't think the ships would be tremendously manoeuvrable. This is because they'd move such a great distance so quickly that reaction times alone would see a lot of straight line movement before executing turns. In this respect I think that the current AAF rules work to represent this quite well. I.e., 1 turn every 20cm. The distance is perhaps a touch too random though.
Of course, there is the possibility that the drive could be engaged part way. For example, mass reduced by 50% for normal fleet operations to increase combat speeds and manoeuvring. This could be used to give the Necrons superior speed and agility if so desired, either as a flat bonus or as a bonus to CTNH and BR. I'm inclined to think that this would come at the cost of hits though, but perhaps not, since it'd only be a relative reduction in mass, not an absolute one. Also, I wonder what the interaction effect would be when projectiles cross the fields' threshold. Perhaps they'd get a decrease in mass but an increase in velocity, changing the nature of their ballistic profile. Curious.
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Yep, I was basically saying that an inertialess drive doesn't make sense. Even if you confine the notion of inertia to merely momentum (so a momentum reduction drive), then the amount of force necessary to move the object would remain normal, but without momentum it would need to be applied constantly to make the ship move, hence a very low top speed. They would be able to accelerate to this top speed as well as come to a full stop instantaneously though. This is akin to an old sci fi movie that I can't remember the name of, in which some kids were inside an inertialess bubble and could stop and change direction instantaneously. They went to a space ship crewed by giant alien kids. Anyway.
However, if we're going to talk a mass reduction drive here then yes, the force needed to move, stop and turn are greatly reduced, allowing for high top speeds. However, I don't think the ships would be tremendously manoeuvrable. This is because they'd move such a great distance so quickly that reaction times alone would see a lot of straight line movement before executing turns. In this respect I think that the current AAF rules work to represent this quite well. I.e., 1 turn every 20cm. The distance is perhaps a touch too random though.
The thing about the maneuverability is that a lighter (less mass) ship would be able to turn much faster too, look at escorts vs cruisers for example the Escorts can "turn on the spot" because they have a smaller mass, they are also faster because of their greater power to weight ratio. Now would a Cruiser with a mass reduction drive that can lower its mass to that of an escort not then be able to move like an escort? Or if were going really nuts on the reduced mass (as I am :P) would it not be able to move like a fighter? Remember even with their advanced drives Necron ships still move less than a fighter when not on special orders (50cm max/turn on an escort vs 60cm for a fighter) of course on aaf orders If were saying that the mass is reduced that significantly you still looking the average cruiser moving about the same speed as a fighter (could be faster) and having the same (could be less) mass. I could see on aaf orders tho making it a strictly straight line as normal ships just to avoid any mishaps (hate to see the drive lose a fraction of power while making a 90* turn around some blastmarkers at a fraction of ls causing a portion of the ship to become "heavier" and therefor rip away.)
Of course, there is the possibility that the drive could be engaged part way. For example, mass reduced by 50% for normal fleet operations to increase combat speeds and manoeuvring. This could be used to give the Necrons superior speed and agility if so desired, either as a flat bonus or as a bonus to CTNH and BR. I'm inclined to think that this would come at the cost of hits though, but perhaps not, since it'd only be a relative reduction in mass, not an absolute one. Also, I wonder what the interaction effect would be when projectiles cross the fields' threshold. Perhaps they'd get a decrease in mass but an increase in velocity, changing the nature of their ballistic profile. Curious.
Indeed, of course there's nothing saying the fields limits could just be to the hull and super structure so something impacting it would have no change. The half power drive could work for Ctnh/ Br and would give a good excuse for the armor to drop to 5+ as Ray has it now, there is still no reason for weapon strength to not be lowered tho as the drive being activated is going to drain a lot of the energy reserves.