BFG FAQ 2010 Ordnance Questions

[Plaxor]

What is the logic behind the turret supression rules... I always thought this system was better:

N[D6-(T-F)]  so long as f is not greater than t.

Where N=number of surviving bombers
T=turrets
F=surviving fighters


As opposed to what it is now... which is confusing and... what the hell?

N[d6-T]+F so long as f is not greater than N

Where F=fighters that died and lived? doesn't make sense.

I don't know, I always played with the first listed method, but that might've been my reading the turret suppression rules wrong. My idea, when a turret is supressed, it doesn't reduce the number of attack runs a bomber gets anymore.

[horizon]

Hi Sig,

• It discriminates against bombers, but not against torps/ABs (which are both fine - the problem is defnitely with the bombers). There's no reason a battleship should be more than 3.5 times better defended against bombers, yet only shoot down one additional AB/Torp on average.

A-boats is more of a problem. Torps are good.

Eh? I agree that there's a problem with a-boats, namely that they're pretty weak. They were only useful against escorts but this rubbish FAQ has nerfed them further. So, given that they're weak, and the problem with high turret targets is that it's more worthwhile sending in a weak substitute (ie, a-boats instead of bombers) then how is it a problem with a-boats? Assuming that a-boats were "fixed" to be a worthwhile choice against capital ships then this would just make the decision to take a-boats even easier when attacking high-turret targets. Therefore the problem becomes exacerbated, not fixed. This is a problem with the turret rules. Like MSM it's a bad mechanic. It makes no sense.

Then why does RcG suggest that people always sent assault boats to battleships in stead of bombers? Against 6+ armour it is better to sent in assault boats. I've experienced this from facing a lot of Marines.

I HATED the (almost) auto kill from assault boats on escorts. It made no sense at all. It was a rubbish rule to begin with.

• It wouldn't be a serious harm to battleships to be more vulnerable to bombers - as is people just send ABs instead.

Assault boats is only available to half of the races.

Yes, and those that have them available send in a-boats against BBs instead of bombers. At least, they will once people start playing the new turret suppression rules.

The turret suppression rule in FAQ2010 is a neater written version of the previous FAQ versions. So nothing new here.
They actually made it weaker as in the fact that a single bomber must survive.

(Again: I say a fighter must survive to help).

[Plaxor]

Yes, the almost auto-kill that assault boats did to Escorts really made it hard for people to ever want to take them.

I mean... 2 abs would kill an ork onslaught   90.2% of the time?  when 6wbs would kill the same escort what? at best 15% of the time. And 2 lances 1/4 of the time. Way too absurd of a difference for the weapons effectiveness.

Some things can be more effective than others, but that much just made people who liked escorts run into any of the fleets with assault boats and explode.

It actually very much killed the idea of ever running any escort heavy list, as it would just get blown up if anyone had assault boats.

Now with the 4+ thing, it makes them just a little more effective than bombers at killing escorts.

Lets look at the Sword with the 4+ H&R rule, vs 2+:

2+  2 Assault boats: 66% chance of death
4+  2 Assault boats: 43.75% chance of death

Actually not all that different. Even though it seems like a lot.  Effectively 1/3 less effective. Now for the 2 bombers:

They have a 36% chance of killing the same sword. Still the assault boats are quite a bit better at murder, 1.2x as good in fact.

However there is a point where bombers become slightly better than abs at killing escorts, and that is against ones with low armor and low turret strength, like the ork onslaught, but iirc. this isn't that big of a difference still.

The advantages of assault boats are that they have a longer range than bombers, by a whole 10cm (in most fleets) and they can stop a ship from shooting back sooner than bombers. However they are quite unreliable, as you were hoping for anything but port, and that is what you got.

[Sigoroth]

Then why does RcG suggest that people always sent assault boats to battleships in stead of bombers? Against 6+ armour it is better to sent in assault boats. I've experienced this from facing a lot of Marines.

Because the bombers are too weak against high turret targets. Against capital ships a-boats are a joke. They're extremely weak. Would you send in 4 bombers or 4 a-boats against a cruiser? Of course, bombers. Would you prefer 4 a-boats or 12WB? Again, 12WB. A-boats are weak. This makes it a very telling indication of how overpowering high turrets are against bombers when their effectiveness, even having survived the actual turret fire, is dropped so low that it becomes preferable to send in a-boats instead of bombers. The argument goes:

P1 - A-boats are weak
P2 - against 4+ turrets, a-boats are preferable to bombers

C1 - bombers are too weak against 4+ turrets

The conclusion is inescapable assuming the premises are true. I can see some people arguing that a-boats aren't weak, but they are. They are not worth their weight in pure firepower. They used to be good against escorts, but now they're much of a muchness with bombers. You might also argue the 2nd premise, but even if not actually weaker, bombers are, again, much of a muchness which is enough to arrive at the same conclusion.

I HATED the (almost) auto kill from assault boats on escorts. It made no sense at all. It was a rubbish rule to begin with.

I very much liked this rule. It shouldn't take much to render an escort useless, and dumping around 100 armed men equipped with explosives into the equation should make life extraordinarily difficult for an escort. The chances of overwhelming the intruders quickly and efficiently enough such that they cannot disrupt operations would be quite low. We've all seen Stargate SG-1 right? Imagine 25 SG teams boarding your ship. 

Besides, this almost auto-kill gave a real reason to use a-boats. What is, in effect, happening here is pretty much a full scale boarding attempt. At the end of the battle you should do a roll off to see who comes away with the ship!  It also well represented the fragility of escorts. They shouldn't, after all, be anything but fleet support. Being easily destroyed or captured by AC is par for the course.

Balancing escorts should have been done by making them more worthwhile, not by making a-boats less worthwhile.

The turret suppression rule in FAQ2010 is a neater written version of the previous FAQ versions. So nothing new here.
They actually made it weaker as in the fact that a single bomber must survive.

(Again: I say a fighter must survive to help).

Um, no, it's not. The old turret suppression rules meant you needed only 1 bomber, and max fighter support was limited by the number of turrets. Therefore you could throw 1b/5f against an Emperor for 5 or possibly 6 attack runs. Now you need to have 1 bomber per fighter for the fighter to contribute. So if you sent in the same wave of 1b/5f you'd get 1 or possibly 2 attack runs. Instead you'd send in 3b/3f and get an average of 3.46 attack runs (not 3.5 because of the possibility of turrets shooting down some bombers). If you sent in 5f/5b then you'd get an average of 5.83 attack runs. So +4 AC to get +0.66 attacks (only +0.22 hits from 4 extra AC!).

This is not a "neater written version" it's a flat out nerf, which bombers certainly did not need against high turret targets. If you were to enforce that fighters had to survive on top of all this then there would be no point in even bothering. Your pitiful 3.46 attacks from 6AC would drop down to 1.64 attack runs using a 4f/2b wave.

[RCgothic]

Indeed. 8 ABs against a BB can expect 1 hit and 3 critical hit that survive past the end phase. That's a significant portion of the BBs firepower crippled, and some damage on top.

The Bombers would be lucky to get more than 1 hit.

[horizon]

I think we are on the line:
Group A: Attack Craft are too weak.
Group B: Attack craft are too good.


Tell me : why are tournaments so heavy dominated by carrier fleets? It is because aboats & bombers. Not fighters. It is because ordnance is strong.

Aboats are a b*tch to any capital ship.
Aboats should not overwhelm escorts on auto kill, that is impossibel giving the size of these vessels.


Ok, FAQ2010 nerved them (bombers+fighters) => AWESOME.

[Plaxor]

apparently I was describing, and had been playing with TTS for a long time.


The only issue with ordinance winning all the time is that you can attack from far away with little or no consequence. From any angle, and even in their turn. Nightshade list anyone? Ordinance works fine, it's only in the extent of douchebags that makes it problematic.

And honestly, most people are too desperate for opponents to regularly pull some ordinance spam list that never allows their enemy to shoot.

It's just that boring.

[Sigoroth]

I think we are on the line:
Group A: Attack Craft are too weak.
Group B: Attack craft are too good.

I don't think so. Even if you think that ordnance in general is too powerful it is quite obvious that against high turret targets it is far too weak. It also doesn't take a genius to realise that the current ordnance rules are completely fucked up. Desiring a fix to this situation has nothing to do with current balance. Balance is the easiest thing to get right. Throw more points on.

Tell me : why are tournaments so heavy dominated by carrier fleets? It is because aboats & bombers. Not fighters. It is because ordnance is strong.

Because tournament fleets are all tiny. Ever seen a 4000 pt tournament? Don't think so. I very much doubt there is even a 2000 pt tournament. In true battlefleets AC becomes really rather mediocre. You need to form squadrons to make sure they reload and the weight of incoming gunfire is enough to annihilate at least one carrier per turn. In small games you can run them solo and even run the risk not bracing.

Also because the types of fleets that are winning are unbalanced in favour of ordnance. Orks, for example, had FBs that were stronger than regular bombers and they were able to launch a heap of them (max on table = max possible). Apart from that there was the Tau. Now let's face it, if the Tau were ever going to win a tournament then that would automatically make it an ordnance fleet win. That's because Tau have no viable alternative. How many carrier IN fleets win tournaments? Or Eldar carrier fleets? The fact is that AC is not overpowered in itself, it's just that some fleets have an ordnance break. This doesn't make AC overpowered.

Aboats are a b*tch to any capital ship.

Rubbish.

Aboats should not overwhelm escorts on auto kill, that is impossibel giving the size of these vessels.

What? Why is it impossible? A strike force in a sensitive area could easily disable an escort. What would be difficult is for the escort to go on as if nothing had happened.

Ok, FAQ2010 nerved them (bombers+fighters) => AWESOME.

Not awesome, ridiculous. Why are you letting your fear of AC sway your judgement of what is a terrible terrible system? Let's say that we develop a system that works perfectly in abstraction and provides good tactical usage, but this happens to massively overpower AC. Oh noes, what would we do!? Well, presumably balance them. This is what points are for. Why were bombers nerfed against high turret targets when they were already weak as piss against high turret targets? If AC is too powerful then it's against cruisers, not BBs, and yet they were nerfed against BBs. Worse, the abstraction is made even more fail. Sending in 1 bomber and 5 fighters it could be argued that those fighters are escorting that one bomber squadron into the target and providing cover and support, therefore allowing it to maximise its potential. Now what? You can't have more fighters than bombers? What? How does that represent anything? If you send in 20 fighters and 1 bomber those 20 fighters can't suppress the 5 turrets? If you send in 10f/20b only the first 10 bombers get the "benefit", even though there are only 5 turrets? You can't ever overwhelm the turrets? Absolutely every thing about this change is stupid. It's unnecessary and illogical.

[RCgothic]

I think we are on the line:
Group A: Attack Craft are too weak.
Group B: Attack craft are too good.


Tell me : why are tournaments so heavy dominated by carrier fleets? It is because aboats & bombers. Not fighters. It is because ordnance is strong.

Aboats are a b*tch to any capital ship.
Aboats should not overwhelm escorts on auto kill, that is impossibel giving the size of these vessels.


Ok, FAQ2010 nerved them (bombers+fighters) => AWESOME.

I am definitely not of the opinion that Ordnance is too weak. Torpedoes and ABs are fine IMO, and I don't actually agree with Sigoroth that ABs should be made more powerful. Bombers are fine IMO EXCEPT against high turret targets, and this is because D6-T is a bad mechanic. Each additional turret grants far more than its fair share of protection, and they somehow gain effectiveness the more craft the ship is under attack from, as though the bombers are just lining up in succession to be shot.

That's not how it would work, it would be one great swirling melee, and against truly large waves even the most powerful turrets should be just a drop in the ocean.

So the general concensus is that each turret is worth 5pts? The first turret reduces incoming damage to 70% of what it would be otherwise. By the second turret, bombers are half as effective as without turrets. Is half as effective really worth only 5pts more than 70% as effective? By T4 we're at 14% effectiveness. Is that really only worth 15pts more than 1 turret? by T5 you're effectively bomberproof. I'd pay an extra 5pts for that on my BB any day!

D6-T is just a bad mechanic.

My ideal system:

• Bomber damage output against cruisers remains roughly the same as at present.
• Casualties due to turrets are linked linearly to turret number.
• Effectiveness of bombers inversly proportional to turret density (turrets^-0.5)
• Effectiveness of bombers somewhat proportional to the number of hits the target has. (bigger target and also reduced turret density)
• Defensive bonuses for close formations.
• Offensive bonuses for fighter escorts (for both bombers and ABs)

Some abstraction obviously required, but the current system is just apalling, both conceptually and in practice.

[Plaxor]

+1 on Sig.

In small battles whenever you spam anything it generally works better.

4000 points.... good luck on reloading.

One other interesting thing about playing 2000+ points is that the limits on cruisers actually matter.

Unless you're taking cls (or simply a lot of them) you can buy 2000 points of cruiser. 12 cruiser limit... dumb, that's not a limit at all. Hell if you did it out of all dauntlesses you would still get to 1330 points. Then with the cheapest admiral, you're still sitting with enough to add a modest cobra squadron.

The only times the cruiser limit has ever mattered was in the ork lists, where it is 6, and with the cheaper cap ships, you run out at 1110 pts. Then you fill with maxed warlords, 3x40 so 120, and then you have 270 points to mix with re-rolls/extra power fields.



Tell me sig, what would your Ordinance system look like?

[horizon]

Za well,

why don't we see 4000 pts tournaments? Because BFG isn't suited to such big battles due multiple factors (squadron rules, special orders). But it can be played.

If you ask around the average points people play will be 1500pts. Ranging between 1000-2000.
In small games under 1000pts spam is less ideal since you have less. eg a 1000pts gunnery fleet has a better chance to beat a carrier fleet then at 2000pts.
I'd wonder about 4000pts carrier fleet vs gunnery on what happens.

True Battlefleets?

Imperial Navy :
Well a sector has between 50-75 warships. This includes destroyers & frigates.

Lets go by Gothic:

12 Cruisers
6 Battle cruisers
6 Battleships
will be above 5000points.

That is 24 capital ships. Leaves room for 50 escorts.
Sensible numbers to me regarding all background of 40k.

So 50 escorts is, say about 1700points.

So our fleet is nearing 7000points for a complete sector.

Now I know a lot (?) of people like to play those big battles. But in background they are very rare and all.


Ah well, back to ac...

In a game of abstractions the turret suppression can be seen as an abstraction about what happens. The fighters do not attack, they make sure the bombers get at least 1 good go at bombing.

I am not against changing the turret reduction versus bombers to fixed values. (eg the battleships is d6-4, capitals d6-2 etc).

cheers!

[Eldanesh]

Because BFG isn't suited to such big battles due multiple factors (squadron rules, special orders). But it can be played.

Completly disagree. The balancing ~ 3000 to 4000 points is WAY better than in small 1500 games. Single aspects (be it dominant ships (Cairn, Voi Stalker) or spamming of a particular ship/feature) are less dominant in big games.

Also the whole "chain of command" rule and squadrons of capital ships as well as the overprized 3rd reroll makes only sense in large games: you'll almost never have a problem with special rules in small games, but if you have plenty of capital ships you'll have to squadron them or you are running out of rerolls quikly.

-> It is never "said" but I think BFG was designed with larger battles in mind. It simply makes sense with the original box in mind: 4 cruiser each is almost 800 points, add a commander and rerolls and you  hit 900 - why should you plan a tabletopgame when the customer only has to buy one or two Blisters to have a "finished" fleet? GW wants to sell boxes...

[RCgothic]

D6-4 is too high. It wipes out 86% of the value of attack runs. Even D6-3 is far, far better than D6-2.

This is why D6-X is a bad mechanic.

The possible rolls of a D6 are 6,5,4,3,2,1, and each -ve knocks one off the left hand side. That's never going to produce a scaling that will make sense, and it hard-caps at 6.

[horizon]

Hi Eldanesh,

BFG was intended to be around the size of 1500pts.
The 4 cruisers exactly do build up to that. Battleships where advertized as unique centerpieces to your fleet.
Thus 4 cruiser, 1 Battleship, 2-3 blisters of escorts.

All in my opinion.
As I like to collect multiple fleets instead of one big one.


Hi RcG,
then lets start from scratch with the complete concept. Bombers do not do D6 attack runs. But they do a fixed numbers of attack runs.
Then what do fighters & turrets do?

[Zelnik]

Personally, The game flows best in the 1500-2000 range.

Once you get above that, the mechanics of the game alone force the game down to those levels, simply due to the destructive power of the ships at hand.

Ships die a hell of a lot faster in large point games, due to higher concentrations of 'super' weapons (nova cannons, tau torpedo's, etc).  After the first few rounds of true weapon exchange, one side usually has crushed the other under it's boot by sheer force of overwhelming power.

I am not saying this happens every time, but it does happen a LOT.  This is not 40k where there are heavy restrictions on how much damage you can unleash in a round. big fleets usually result in a LOT of dead ships the moment they get close enough to shoot.