Using Dreadfleet Damage Cards in BFG

[Thinking Stone]

Hello everyone,
Seeing the Dreadfleet system, I am stricken of thoughs of how some of the Dreadfleet ideas are directly from the BFG-style system. In particular, I've noticed that many of the things that are lacking in BFG (ideas about which have come up at various times) are built into the Dreadfleet system: (more) interesting characters that have direct effects on the game, epic duels between said characters, a robust boarding system, and a damage system that realistically simulates damage effects from combat. Although not all of these things are neccessary for BFG, it might serve as some inspiration for putting these things into BFG. Characters, especially, I think could do with some more interesting stuff like this. The damage system I quite like, also; it has in-built crew, hull and speed regimes of damage, and I think this could be applied to BFG with good results (crew ~ hitpoints; hull ~ current critical damage (e.g. bridge, engines, weapons), since ships rarely actually lose all structural integrity, just mostly crew; speed ~ power output, could have interesting other effects, see below).

I also had an interesting idea about power/engine output powering the systems of a ship (originally from Star Fleet Battles, and many other computer games ). Essentially, each ship has a generator that provides a certain amount of energy points. Energy points are used to regenerate shields, perform special actions and move, repair damage etc.. Could provide some interesting mechanics for critical damage, and would simulate pushing power relays over standard range very well (could represent Imperial ships having poorer relays then they used to, so they can only provide a certain amount of energy to weapons). Food for thought, anyway (maybe food for BFG:Advanced).

Thinking Stone

[AndrewChristlieb]

In a revised version of BFG these options could work well, but the system thats in place now has no issues, special orders "moving" power from one area to another, shields auto regen, repair is also pretty "automatic" requiring only a die roll in the end phase. Seperate crew/hull is also something that is nicely handled in BFG, in pretty much the same way you mentioned. Hit points are taken away with each hit and hardpoints on the ships are represented by lucky shots to those areas (criticals), something that would be nice would be to see "lock on" get a bonus to criticals as they are actually targeting specific areas of the ship. A destroyed ship is also representive of this as 2/3 of the time a ship is "hulked", the crew is killed but the ship is salvagable.

I do really like the idea of more characters in the fleet I just think that the system now is... wrong. Its hard to justify spending points on characters that often have no effect on the game when you could get more or better ships. If there are some character rules made up I think it would be best to have the characters included for free and have them balanced against each other so as not to give one race an unfair advantage. It would also be nice to see multiple "types" of characters for each fleet ala star trek conquest where you have a defensive commander an offensive commander and a movement commander. They may not have to follow those types, but having a few different characters for each race that each has their own unique benifits could make for some very intersting ways to build a fleet.

The boarding system in BFG could use a complete overhaul, along with the ordnance system. Both of these have seen several attempts to correct and have a laundry list of rules that just keeps growing with each new faq. Maybe a look into the dreadfleet boarding actions could help make one of them at least a little easier to swallow.

[skippy01]

I have thought about using the damage cards from wings war plus the manuver cards as well this would be only to create a greatly simplified BFG. Really a different game but using the ships from BFG. I think the rules as it are a very good medium complexity set of rules without much need to modify the core rules.

[Jimmy Zimms]

In a revised version of BFG these options could work well, but the system thats in place now has no issues, special orders "moving" power from one area to another, shields auto regen, repair is also pretty "automatic" requiring only a die roll in the end phase. Seperate crew/hull is also something that is nicely handled in BFG, in pretty much the same way you mentioned. Hit points are taken away with each hit and hardpoints on the ships are represented by lucky shots to those areas (criticals), something that would be nice would be to see "lock on" get a bonus to criticals as they are actually targeting specific areas of the ship. A destroyed ship is also representive of this as 2/3 of the time a ship is "hulked", the crew is killed but the ship is salvagable.

Getting pretty close to the old Space Fleet concept there (if anyone is old enough to remember that game before GW revamped the system and produced BFG). It also sounds much like the Starfleet Battles (http://www.starfleetgames.com/starfleetbattles.shtml) game. It would be pretty sweet if someone ported the rules set over to the BFG universe just to give a different flavor to the game for kicks.