BFG FAQ 2010 Ordnance Questions

[horizon]

Hi,
Admiral, you go by a ratio of 1:1 (per average). It is established a fighter marker represents 5 fighters and bomber markers 3 bombers. (Manta markers 1 Manta).

Thus 5:3 is already above 1:1.

Also consider this: if my 2 markers fighter wave hit 1 bomber marker it would be 2:1 on marker basis and 10:3 on ships basis.  Then 1:1 becomes 'hard-pressed.'

hmmm

Also, to consider:
are we playing a sci-fi game with WWI/II Naval influences or a WWI/II Naval game with sci-fi influences.
From that viewpoint: Reality Check Can be Ditched and go more the Star Wars - Wing Commander route.

[Sigoroth]

Ok, as far as the argument goes that fighters can't hurt ships so why even bother firing at fighters, it doesn't say that fighters can't obfuscate and confuse turrets. It just says that they can't hurt the ship and, if they wanted to, they could avoid the turrets. Since they can't hurt the ship and they can avoid the turrets when there's just fighters, we see no effect. When accompanied by bombers, which can hurt the ship, then there might actually be a reason for the fighter to engage the enemy turrets, therefore an effect.

As for ordnance being too powerful, I don't really see this. It used to be too powerful when you could mass as many as you wanted. Now, not so much. What I really dislike is bombers being unable to hurt ships like the Emperor, or worse, a deactivated BSF. That's the real reason why turret suppression came in.

Now, I like the idea of turret suppression. This would represent them shooting the turrets to create explosions and hence blind spots on sensors, or just to make the turret shoot at them to avoid just such a thing, etc. On the other hand, I don't know why turrets get to fire normally at bombers (precision stuff) as well as get to distract them (flak). It should be one or the other. However, d'Artagnan's idea of allowing fighters to suppress turrets while giving a fixed amount of attack runs to bombers (regardless of turrets) isn't all that fantastic. If the "distraction" were removed and bombers had a fixed number of attacks then there'd be no need for turret suppression at all. Why send a fighter to possibly "suppress" a turret (ie, stop it from shooting bombers) if you could just send another bomber. At least if the turret missed you'd get some extra attacks

So for turret suppression rules to be viable you need to have the bombers attacks reduced by the targets unsuppressed turrets. Otherwise you could just ditch all these special rules and say bombers make a fixed number of attacks. This however would make them far more attractive to turrets than torpedoes and make their damage linear against various turret amounts, like torpedoes.

Again, I don't think that ordnance is currently too strong. I think that Eldar ordnance in particular is quite weak at the moment. Often overwhelmed in terms of sheer numbers the only real use for it is to remove enemy fighters from cap so you can hit with torpedoes. Even then their resilient fighters are a joke. Prior to the ordnance launch limits AC was overpowered. I don't think they are now. They're not "must haves". You can have a Chaos gunfleet without them. Necron don't use them. Eldar need only a few to clear CAP for their torpedoes I feel, but otherwise get no real benefit for trying to mass them. Same for Dark Eldar and not too far wrong with IN too. Also, making a carrier brace usually stops production for a turn too. Either they can't reload - no AC, or are reloaded and decide to launch - half AC or are reloaded and decide to wait so they don't have to reload next turn- no AC.

I'm in favour of AC getting a touch more powerful. Besides, who wouldn't want to see a 2 Emperor squadron putting out 16 AC into some hapless foe? 

[Vaaish]

Ok, as far as the argument goes that fighters can't hurt ships so why even bother firing at fighters, it doesn't say that fighters can't obfuscate and confuse turrets. It just says that they can't hurt the ship and, if they wanted to, they could avoid the turrets. Since they can't hurt the ship and they can avoid the turrets when there's just fighters, we see no effect. When accompanied by bombers, which can hurt the ship, then there might actually be a reason for the fighter to engage the enemy turrets, therefore an effect.

It doesn't say they CAN confuse turrets or effectively engage a turret either. That statement is just as much conjecture as my own that turrets can discern between bombers and fighters. It would seem to me that if they were capable of effectively engaging turrets there would be some form of permanent change to the turret strength as turrets were knocked out by the fighters. Even if we consider that turrets are simply abstracted values, the fact that fighters currently provide a temporary reduction in effectiveness seems evident that they aren't capable of engaging the turret defenses with hopes of doing any real damage to them.

The entire focus of what happens seems to rest on the turrets themselves either being incapable of discerning target types or simply being indiscriminate in their fire against AC. The current suppression rules seem to point to the turrets being incapable of discriminating targets, but that seems unlikely since one can choose to fire on either torpedoes or AC rather than simply firing on whatever comes in range. You can pretty much make it however you want to support either perspective.

I just dislike the idea that it's better to send 5 fighters and a single bomber against an Empy than sending 5 bombers and single fighter. The current suppression rules make weird situations like this the norm which seem counter intuitive to what you would expect. I would expect for the fighters to provide escort to ensure the bombers make it to the target through enemy "airspace" not provide extra attacks on the target while doing nothing to escort the bombers on the way in.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

However, d'Artagnan's idea of allowing fighters to suppress turrets while giving a fixed amount of attack runs to bombers (regardless of turrets) isn't all that fantastic. If the "distraction" were removed and bombers had a fixed number of attacks then there'd be no need for turret suppression at all. Why send a fighter to possibly "suppress" a turret (ie, stop it from shooting bombers) if you could just send another bomber. At least if the turret missed you'd get some extra attacks

Yup, not really ideal rules but it was more how to make the fighters take a more active role. Since there is a question of why turrets double dip against bombers, I was trying to find a way to eliminate the double dip and at the same time make the fighters be proactive.

It's why in my second situation, only the remaining turrets would shoot at bombers. So say a wave of 5 fighters and 3 bombers vs an Emperor. If fighters manage to suppress 2 turrets out of 5 on an Emperor battleship, then the Emperor can only roll 3 dice hitting at 4+ against the bombers. In the case of bombers having a fixed attack, I was just concerned about not making them too powerful. We could give them D3 attacks if only to show the uncertainty (fighta bommas and the like could just make a hard 1 attack each marker). So turrets shoot and say 2 out of the remaining bombers manage to attack then it would be a minimum of 2 and max of 6 attacks rolling vs 5+.

Against a cruiser, a wave of 4 fighters and 4 bombers can take out the 2 or 3 turrets and then the remaining 4 bombers can attack unmolested for a min of 4 and max of 12 attacks vs lowest armor.

[Sigoroth]

It doesn't say they CAN confuse turrets or effectively engage a turret either. That statement is just as much conjecture as my own that turrets can discern between bombers and fighters. It would seem to me that if they were capable of effectively engaging turrets there would be some form of permanent change to the turret strength as turrets were knocked out by the fighters. Even if we consider that turrets are simply abstracted values, the fact that fighters currently provide a temporary reduction in effectiveness seems evident that they aren't capable of engaging the turret defenses with hopes of doing any real damage to them.

Nope, it doesn't say that they can. Of course you're trying to argue that they can't, and since it doesn't say that they can't then it's a valid argument. Your basic question is "how can fighters that can't hurt a ship suppress turrets?" to which I provided an answer. It isn't necessarily correct, it just allows for the possibility. As for permanent damage, I think that I allowed for that in my hypothesis by saying that they were blinding the turrets with explosions, not destroying the turrets. EM sensor interference. In other words, transient. Not permanent.

The entire focus of what happens seems to rest on the turrets themselves either being incapable of discerning target types or simply being indiscriminate in their fire against AC. The current suppression rules seem to point to the turrets being incapable of discriminating targets, but that seems unlikely since one can choose to fire on either torpedoes or AC rather than simply firing on whatever comes in range. You can pretty much make it however you want to support either perspective.

Not necessarily. As I have explained, it could be that the fighters are able to temporarily blind the turrets. Normally there'd be no reason to expend all their fuel and ammo doing so as they could just avoid them, but since they're escorting some slower ships that would benefit from the turrets being out of commission and could actually damage the ship it would be worth doing.

I just dislike the idea that it's better to send 5 fighters and a single bomber against an Empy than sending 5 bombers and single fighter. The current suppression rules make weird situations like this the norm which seem counter intuitive to what you would expect. I would expect for the fighters to provide escort to ensure the bombers make it to the target through enemy "airspace" not provide extra attacks on the target while doing nothing to escort the bombers on the way in.

Agreed. In the proposed turret suppression rules where the surviving fighters actually do fully suppress the turret they would be helping the bombers do their damage, even though you'd see an increase in the proportion of fighters in the wave (they're still making the bombers attacks more efficient).

[RCgothic]

If you take Star Wars as the inspiration for fighter/bomber combat, fighters CAN hurt the turrets. The turrets are forced into defending themselves, and only taking shots at the bombers when they're unmolested.

I still think the simplest fix is to allow surviving fighters to negate a -1 modifier each. Yes, this does make attack craft a bit more powerful, but only slightly. particularly waves of more than 4 attack craft, but that's not necessarily such a bad thing. A full wave of 8 will still not cripple a braced cruiser on average. Even the 16 attack craft emperor squadron, which gains the best possible benefit from the change, wouldn't destroy a braced cruiser on average, and wouldn't cripple a braced 4 turret battleship.  A wave of 8 assault boats currently take a ship out of the game far more effectively than 8 bombers/fighters will do, even under the proposed rules.

And if people are really that worried about bombers becoming more powerful, the massing turrets rule can be changed to (+1 turret per ship in contact) rather than (+1 turret per ship in contact for the purposes of damaging the incoming wave only). Fighters could also remove bombers/assault boats on a 2:1 ratio, which would make them worth escorting and therefore damage their impact.

[Sigoroth]

Yup, not really ideal rules but it was more how to make the fighters take a more active role. Since there is a question of why turrets double dip against bombers, I was trying to find a way to eliminate the double dip and at the same time make the fighters be proactive.

It's why in my second situation, only the remaining turrets would shoot at bombers. So say a wave of 5 fighters and 3 bombers vs an Emperor. If fighters manage to suppress 2 turrets out of 5 on an Emperor battleship, then the Emperor can only roll 3 dice hitting at 4+ against the bombers. In the case of bombers having a fixed attack, I was just concerned about not making them too powerful. We could give them D3 attacks if only to show the uncertainty (fighta bommas and the like could just make a hard 1 attack each marker). So turrets shoot and say 2 out of the remaining bombers manage to attack then it would be a minimum of 2 and max of 6 attacks rolling vs 5+.

Against a cruiser, a wave of 4 fighters and 4 bombers can take out the 2 or 3 turrets and then the remaining 4 bombers can attack unmolested for a min of 4 and max of 12 attacks vs lowest armor.

Yeah, but why not instead just attack with 8 bombers and let the Emperor take its 5 shots? So you lose 3 bombers, that leaves 5d3 attacks, average of 10. Much better than the average of 4 in your example. Again, against the cruiser why not just use 8 bombers? Losing 1 bomber to turrets will give you 14 attacks on average.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

True. Points to ponder.

[Don Gusto]

Having each bomber make 2 attacks or d3 is basically the same thing. d3 adds some variance but average stays the same.
As for the concern that turrets would then always shoot at bombers because a hit eliminates more attack dice, well that depends on the situation.
In all fleets torpedoes can be fielded cheaper than ac and torpedoes can get multiple attack rolls.
2 dice per bomber would just seem about right to me.

[Sigoroth]

Having each bomber make 2 attacks or d3 is basically the same thing. d3 adds some variance but average stays the same.
As for the concern that turrets would then always shoot at bombers because a hit eliminates more attack dice, well that depends on the situation.
In all fleets torpedoes can be fielded cheaper than ac and torpedoes can get multiple attack rolls.
2 dice per bomber would just seem about right to me.

Well, consider your 3 turret ship is being attacked by 6 torpedoes and 2 bombers. Which would you shoot at? If you shoot at the torpedoes and score 3 hits you'll get 3 attacks from the torpedoes against facing armour and 4 attacks from bombers against lowest armour. That's with 3 turret hits. If you shoot at the bombers and score only 2 hits you'll receive only 6 attacks against facing armour. Less incoming attacks and you didn't even need 3 hits.

The only time you'd choose to shoot at torpedoes is when you have at least two times as many incoming salvoes as bomber waves. If those bomber waves all equal or exceed the number of turrets and you have some torpedoes against a higher armour value you'd still be better off shooting at the bombers even when there's twice the number of torpedo salvoes.

[lastspartacus]

Im against the torp or bomber rule, for the record.  Ordnance is both powerful enough without it, and it doesnt make sense.  Holdover from older rules flow, id imagine.

[fracas]

An easier way to allow turrets to double dip against bombers is to allow tuurets to reroll misses against bombers. Then eliminate the fighter suppression rule and allow each surviving bomber a straight up d6 attacks

[Vaaish]

That won't work fracas. You'd have to limit the size of a wave to make it balanced. Even with rerolls there is a limit to how many bombers a ship can shoot down. Say a mechanicus Oberon, for ease of example, with 6 turrets would only kill 4.5 bombers. Every bomber above eight is pretty well home free, greatly increasing the effectiveness of larger bomber waves with no real counter to them. Subtracting the turrets from the number of runs helps to reign that in and makes for a more interesting game where these higher turret ships require different tactics to successfully engage than less well protected ships.

[horizon]

Overwhelmed
When a wave with pure fighters encounters a smaller wave count the difference. If the difference is double one less fighter marker is removed.

Example:
2 fighter markers vs 1 marker = 1 enemy marker removed
3 fighter markers vs 2 markers =   2 fighter marker removed, 2 enemy markers removed.
3 fighter markers vs 1 marker =  1 enemy markers removed.
4 fighter markers vs 2 marker =  1 fighter marker removed, 2 enemy markers removed.


Well, that's fiddly haha.

[RCgothic]

There's nothing wrong with the way bombers work. The problem is with the turret suppression rule, which has the following things wrong with it:

#1. Easily misinterpreted and unintuitive.
#2. Written so the fighters do damage, rather than clear space for the bombers.
#3. Makes high turret targets nearly invulnerable against bombers without a similar handicap to assault boats.
#4. Makes sending more than a token bomber against T3+ pointless, as fighters do more damage than bombers, even when shot down.
#5. Removes any point in shooting turrets, because fighters get the extra attacks anyway.
#6. Completely gimps fighter bombers, because they only roll a D3, which is easily negated by turrets.

The proposed rule is:
When bombers roll for number of attacks against a ship, surviving Fighters in a wave negate one -1 modifier from turrets each, allowing bombers to proceed with their attack runs more easily.

This eliminates all 6 of the above points, at the cost of a slight increase in power of bombers. (which would put them more on a par with assault boats). This isn't complicated, it doesn't mess with the fundamental way bombers work, and is the way many people play it anyway due to misinterpretation of the current rule.