Hey folks. From time to time, we see new ships pop up in this forum. Some of them are rather elegant and well thought out, while others make me want to perform cranial surgery with an axe.
to help refine our crazy ideas, I decided to make this guide to help refine the process in making a new ship.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN!
This is a GUIDE, which means it is an opinion. This means you can ignore it.
Okay, you have a ship in mind. Before you even go beyond that point, you need to ask yourself a few questions.
1. What purpose will this ship serve. (is it an escort? is it a carrier? is it a super-weapon?)
2. Is there something in the game that is similar to your idea? (try to avoid stepping on the toes of another ship or faction. If it steps on more then one ship in your fleet of choice, you may be going too far.)
3. Can you use already established rules to describe what your ship does? (creating new rules is difficult to balance, you can always take an established rule and give it a new name)
4. Is what you are creating contrary to the theme of your fleet (6+ armor chaos ships, Necron ships with carrier capacity, 60cm weapons on Tau or Tyranids, ork ships with good LD)
5. Is this a "fluffy" ship or a "beaty" ship (is it there because it is part of a story, or because it is meant to kill shit. the new Blackship is a great example of this)
6. How will you balance the ship? (If it is a super weapon, what is the cost of BEING a super weapon?)
7. Did I have my peers look at my idea? If they didn't like it, did they give a good reason? (there is nothing gained by being sensitive about this)
8. Does it fit in the genre? (Star trek does not belong in 40k!!)
9. are there any fleets that will have a particularly hard time destroying it.
10. What is my purpose in creating this ship.
If you can answer all of these questions in a reasonable manner, you may be on to something. Most importantly of all is balancing a craft. There are several ways to do this:
1. Negative consequences (larger explosions, fewer hits, shorter range, more victory points if hulked/destroyed)
2. Increased point costs
3. deployment restrictions (1000, 1500, 2000 point minimum)
4. forced disengagement
These are only examples which are simple and are already established in the game. You have the full right to mix, match and make your own.
Lets talk about size. Ship size means a lot because it restricts survivability and weapons load out. Typically, if you want a SUPAH GUNZ, you will need a battleship or defense. if you want quick and zippy, light cruisers or escorts are your best bet. Remember the size scale!
Ordnance
Escorts
Light Cruisers
Cruisers
Battle/Heavy Cruisers
Grand Cruisers
Battleships
Defenses
Generally, the larger you go, the lower the firepower to point ratio becomes. Escort squadrons (point per point) have more firepower then a battleship of equal value. what you are paying for is toughness and survivability. There are always exceptions to this rule.
next, you need to worry about usefulness. What is it meant to do? Is this ship designed to snap other ships over it's knee? or maybe have an advantage over escorts? maybe it is a super carrier. In the end, it should have a MISSION. If this mission can be handled by another ship of a similar class, there may not be a need for your new ship (I am looking at YOU Inferno!)
Next, think hard about HOW your ship will do what it will do, in relation to it's class. Here is an example.
I want to take a Repulsive grand cruiser and make it a carrier.
The Goal: Combine torpedo and strike craft on a chaos grand cruiser hull, so i don't have to spend the points on an upgraded Despoiler.
The means: Taking a repulsive grand cruiser and replacing one gun deck on both sides with carrier ports.
Does it step on any other ship?: Partially, there is already a grand cruiser carrier but it does not have torpedos. I would say between the Retaliator and the Despoiler, it will step on a total of one "theoretical" ship. Not bad at all really.
The rules: This is the tricky part. The Repulsive itself has a metric TON of rules involving upgrading it's chassis. Do you let this ship take the same upgrades? Will you give it it's third shield standard or let it upgrade to 3? What about it's dorsal lances? How weak will you make it's batteries? How strong will you make the launch capacity?
Launch capacity is easy. To avoid stepping on a third ship and breaking our rule, we will keep the Launch capacity at the standard 4.
Firepower is more difficult. The Repulsive has a TON of gun, and reducing it too far will render the ship utterly useless. Personally, I would reduce it to somewhere around FP 10, but this is still pretty damn substantial, so to balance i will increase the cost of the ship itself.
Upgrades? I personally would allow any upgrade the repulsive can get for this ship, solely because we are using it's chassis. there is no reason why we should be restricted in this manner. The costs will be the same too.
Now, the repulsive is 230 base. Carriers always are at a premium of points, and carriers with torpedos are even more expensive. We are also increasing the value of a 10 hit ship, so that will increase the points factor as well. The closest ship we have to this scale is the Retaliator at 265. Clearly this ship will have a far greater combat value then the Retaliator (which really does serve a different purpose) so it will clearly be more expensive.
Lets list our point "growth" factors from the base of 230 points.
+Carrier (LC4)
+Torpedo's
+Carrier on grand cruiser hull
+the luxury of upgrades (yes this does increase the cost)
+High firepower
Now the "loss" factors
-Limited deployment (3 ships minimum)
-Huge target
-Slow
-weak initial defenses
-(optional) Large base required
Limited deployment and slow movement will absorb a lot of the growth factors in the game, but it won't cover all of them. being a huge target and having weak initial defenses are rather marginal, but help a little on the whole.
Lets start at an even 290 points. This means your max point cost for this vessel is 315 points when fully upgraded. remember at this point you need a large base.
Now here is the hard part. Will this ship serve a purpose that is unique? That is a hard question to answer, only playtesting will tell.
And a call out to Lleman and his Liberator grand cruiser.. which I based my example off of, even if I designed this "version" for chaos, and not space marines (no thunderhawks!!!)
