BFG FAQ 2010 Ordnance Questions

[Xyon]

Small waves are still viable, just not as bombers,   you can launch fighters from those ships you mentioned, some of them can even take assault boats.  Maybe bombers shouldn't be effective in small waves?, except against escorts or things with 1 turret or less, like MSM eldar,  or orks. There is still the potential for small waves to do damage,  its just the averages would nullify them out.

There are two possible fixes to this, one is to escort the carriers together and launch a combined wave.  Or the other is an overhaul of the turret system where it gains a table similar to the WB table.

I guess what I'm saying is,  if we're looking to fix how bombers work (if you think they need fixing, some people dont),  why look for a simple solution. Why not look for something that might be complex, but would fix bombers and turrets and maybe how the other ordinance interacts with ships and turrets as well.

[Xyon]

Thought of a modified version of the Nd6 - Td6.    Keep the turrets shooting down bombers as now.   And instead of rolling 1d6 for each turret to reduce bomber attacks, roll 1d3+1 for each bomber that is attacking.


The final result would look something like this,  Nd6 for bomber attacks minus Nd3+1 for turrets reducing incoming attacks.     This is just assuming any ship with turrets has equal turret density as bombers get ready to attack, but bigger ships with more total turrets will have an advantage in shooting down potential threats from range.   This also gives bombers a slight advantage over now against battleships without being too overpowering vs smaller turret ships.

[Plaxor]

I've actually changed my thinking a little. It always seemed weird to me that turrets affected bombers in multiple ways, meaning that they both shoot down bombers, and subtract from the number of attacks that they get. This is different from torpedoes, and assault boats which makes it weird.


Due to this fact the number of turrets that you have becomes exponentially good the more that you have. Lets look at a wave of 6 bombers going against every turret value 1-6 on a ship with 5+ armor:

Turret number	(theoretical) Damage caused
1	4.58
2	2.778
3	1.5
4	.667
5	.19

This table shows it about halving every time one turret increase is gained.

However I think that the turrets shouldn't affect bombers this way. They should be a consistent gain between turret ratings. So therefore I pose that Turrets only affect bombers by blowing them up on the way in. Then each bomber gets only D3  attack runs rather than d6.


This would make the damage caused look like this instead

Turret number	(theoretical) Damage caused
1	3.667
2	3.333
3	3
4	2.667
5	2.333
6	2

This would fix the 'immune to bomber' problem, and keep turret values similar. It does make things with less turrets a little more resistant to bombers, and things with more turrets a little less resistant. (well a lot in the case of 5&6).

but to me it never made sense that battleships were just immune to bombers, and perhaps this value could be altered to something like a set D6-3 for bombers rather than d3. However it never really made sense to me how bombers functioned originally.

This would probably mean a reduction in the cost of the turret upgrades on ships that have that option, such as the cypra probattii

[Xyon]

I like that idea,  would ork fighta-bombers need to be weakened or changed?  If they stayed the same they'd be better than every other race's bombers.

[lastspartacus]

What value would fighters have?  Same as current?

If there was a way to have a good ordnance system without the extra d6 rolling, thatd be great.

[skatingtortoise]

id say limit FBs to 1 damage each, or d3-1 or something.

to make fighter escorts better how about fighters being resilient on CAP vs bombers? ie. 4+ to take down 2 bomber, unless bombers have fighter support in which case the fighters remove each other normally.

[Plaxor]

Fighter bombers would have d2 attack runs. We could do something on fighter escorting but this would be difficult.

[Plaxor]

There is one possibility:

When enemy fighters engage a squadron of bombers escorted by fighters, the opposing fighters will prefer to attack the bombers rather than the fighters. However the bombers are defended by the friendly fighters. Therefore for every fighter in the squadron, you receive a save for your bombers accordingly. This save is 6+ for 1 fighter in the squadron, 5+ for two, and 4+ for three or more. If this save is failed you must remove a bomber.

This would probably result in fighter bombers receiving a 5+ or 6+ save when defending against fighters. This would function exactly the same as a resilient ordinance save, and things that are already resilient of course are unnaffected by this rule.

It also would work for fighters escorting assault boats, giving them the same benefit. In the case of Orks it would give the ABs the same benefit as normal. Reverting to normal FB rules after all the ABs are dead.

[Valhallan]

interesting thought on bombers.
ever played x-wing alliance? it takes frakkin forever to take out a star destroyer with a wing of bombers.

similarly, bombers tend to suck against high turrets enemies. albeit quite annoying, once your target is crippled, bombers sweep. i think the system works fine as is - though it is quite convoluted. your proposition is nice and simple, but may make bombers too strong [no judgement, just observation, i'll test out a few dozen rolls later]. also eldar bombers get even better as those turrets never hit them anyway and they'd have >50% chance to roll a 3 (per bomber).

[Plaxor]

Why would eldar bombers have a >50% chance of rolling 3?

The statistic is similar.

Eldar bombers would look like this:

Turrets	number of hits
1	3.88
2	3.77
3	3.66
4	3.55
5	3.44

Making them quite consistent. However this is not different enough from normal bombers to really be significant. For one thing no eldar ship can have 6 bombers (like this experiment shows).

Eldar bombers don't really show so much benefit in the scope of eldar either. Most eldar players have a lower number of launch bays than their opponent (in fact nearly all) due to the fact that their ships are more expensive (which was the reason for eldar ordinance being better overall).

As far as bombers becoming more dangerous. Well, they actually kind of become a bit worse in this system. Against most opponents their effective damage is reduced (against anything with 3 or less turrets). Meaning that against most fleets they only become better against 1 vessel (the battleship) and all other vessels (cruisers, cls, escorts, battlecruisers, grand cruisers) they become worse.

In this system they are more consistent. Certain abilities such as the tau messengers' ability become more worthwhile. Which will make messengers become taken more often (as they aren't) also massed turrets and FDTs become more valuable as well.

[Plaxor]

As far as the Eldar becoming more resistant to turrets, well... if you were around when Horizon, RayB, and Sigoroth were developing MMS they noted that eldar are actually relatively weak against bombers.

This is due to the fact that they have fewer hits than normal, and are more expensive than normal. So in actuality, an eldar cruiser with 6 hits and at 250 points makes each hit worth about the equivalent of 1.85 hits. Also with the way criticals work for them, that could be considered higher.

Not only that but Eldar can't fire at ordinance the same as other fleets, because the thing to do against 'normal' fleets is to form your ordinance up into waves, whereas what you do against eldar is have a bunch of singles. Meaning that if eldar shot at the bombers, they would only kill 1 rather than a whole wave.

The same analogy can be applied to orks. Since orks are cheaper, but have more hits, each one of their hits is equivalent to 2/3 of an IN hit. Meaning that it makes sense that it would be 1/3 easier to do a point of damage to them than IN with bombers. (also with 4+ rear armor, it makes it slightly easier to do damage to them with direct fire, and the lower shields.)

This in a sense is good balance.

'Flawed Ships' will eventually be going MMS for eldar and DE (well modifying how they work), but for now successful Holofield saves will have to be re-rolled against Attack Craft.

[lastspartacus]

interesting thought on bombers.
ever played x-wing alliance? it takes frakkin forever to take out a star destroyer with a wing of bombers.

similarly, bombers tend to suck against high turrets enemies. albeit quite annoying, once your target is crippled, bombers sweep. i think the system works fine as is - though it is quite convoluted. your proposition is nice and simple, but may make bombers too strong [no judgement, just observation, i'll test out a few dozen rolls later]. also eldar bombers get even better as those turrets never hit them anyway and they'd have >50% chance to roll a 3 (per bomber).

Tie Fighter was sooooo much cooler

[horizon]

But also much easier and less hardcore.

[lastspartacus]

I WAS IN THE SECRET ORDER OF THE EMPEROR!  YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

[Valhallan]

exactly LS... we were ALL in the secret order, cuz it wasn't that hard.

okay. so i give. it doesn't change eldar bombers that much... (no time myself to run stats... just more and more HW. i was just thinking: chance to roll a 3 = 1/3. w/ reroll that is 1-(2/3)^2 = 5/9).

still i really like the idea that bombers prey on crippled/low turret ships. the immunity is annoying. overall the current system is too complicated: ie too much dice rolling for a 'single' attack. though imho your system linearizes bomber damage which implies marginalizing turrets to some degree (though an IN CL based fleet would get a hellava lot better... ultima!)