BFG FAQ 2010 Ordnance Questions

[Vaaish]

well Vaaish, what is the bonus for Eldar fighters doing a support run? Smiley

Eldar are so proud in their technology and advanced nature that they do not deign to spare fighters to perform escort duty as their bombers are already more than capable. This allows them to use fighters to intercept enemy ordnance without sacrificing the efficiency of their bomber attacks.

[Trasvi]

Whats wrong with the current turret suppression rules? My club doesn't use them, but they seem fine to me.
Perhaps add additional caps to it:
If fighters attack with a bomber wave, turrets must target the fighters first (?). For any surviving (?) fighters, add +1 attack to the total inflicted by the run. Additional attacks from fighters cannot exceed the number of surviving bombers or the number of turrets(?).

-Doesn't have the cumulative effect of increasing the attacks of EACH bomber (where 5 bombers + 1 fighter effectively gives 5 extra attacks)
-Encourages a maximum on the number of fighters sent in a wave to be approximately equal to the bombers
-Doesn't do disproportionately large damage to ships with low or high turret values.
-Perhaps remove the clause on surviving or that turrets must attack fighters.


I think that people are trying to make these turret suppression rules into more than they really should be. As someone said before: Carrier fleets should be smart enough to determine where their ordnance will do the most damage, and not attack highly defended targets with bombers. Defenders should be smart enough not to get hit with a wave of 16 AC. Regardless of strategy, I don't think we're ever really going to end up with a situation where all AC waves are balanced. Large waves of AC should annihilate ships with low turret values. Large waves of AC against a high turret ship should feel like running into a brick wall.

[Sigoroth]

@Vaaish

You are unbelievably wrong. I cannot fathom how you can think the way you do given how much effort I have gone to to point out all the options.

Firstly, you suggest that this will allow the opponent to just "spam" large waves from afar. Wrong. If he does this then you can annihilate his entire wave with direct fire or an escort. You can remove his fighter screen with torps or fighters of your own (you'd only need to drop 2 or 3 to drastically reduce the effectiveness of his entire  wave). All of this requires far less commitment of resources for you than for your opponent, so if you do not do it then it is your fault.

Secondly, you imply that it will not be difficult to get a slow, ponderous BB squadron into shotgun range. Firstly, you're flat out wrong here, these carriers have 5+ prow armour. They will get cooked on the way in. At the very least they'll be braced before they get there, unless your opponent is a bonehead, in which case he deserves what he gets. Target priority tests are just that, tests. They don't prevent you from firing unless you fail them. You're going to fail them with so many ships so many times? I doubt it.

If you're thinking about cruiser based carriers, yes, they're faster and more agile. However, to avoid having to brace they're going to take a pounding on the way in, since they only have 2 shields, and Chaos ships (the cheapest option) only have 5+ armour. I'm certain that there'd be at least 2 crippled carriers out of that lot, most likely 1 destroyed and 1 crippled. A high price to pay.

Thirdly, you ask "why should we get to ignore their defences?" Well the answer to that is because they're actively being suppressed! They are not being "ignored"! Let's compare 5 turrets under the proposed rules to a 0 turret target, using 16 AC. If it didn't have any turrets at all the attacking player could send in 16 bombers and they'd all roll 1d6 attack runs. With the 5 turret target I'm forced to send in half the wave as fighters. So, assuming I do fully suppress all 5 turrets their mere existence has reduced my maximum potential by 50%! But that's not all. There's a chance that he'll hit with 4 or all 5 of those turrets, reducing their potential even further! So that is more than a 50% reduction! The "purpose" of high turrets isn't to make the ship immune to AC, but to increase defences against AC. So they get to shoot more down and it takes more effort to suppress them. Both of these combine against bombers!

What YOU have failed to do is show why any target, no matter how many turrets it has, should ever be completely immune to bombers. Hell, let's have a look at how those damn turrets work. Against 1 bomber a single turret will prevents 1 attack to the ship. Against a wave of 1 million bombers a single turret will prevent ONE MILLION attacks! You ask why 1 fighter should improve the performance of so many bombers, well why the hell do turrets get so good the more bombers you send in!?

As for "the right AC for the right job" I agree! However you're the one trying to limit the right jobs! In the true turret suppression proposal bombers won't cut it against a high turret target in smaller waves. So an Emperor won't just be able to send in a wave of 1b/5f/2ab to get a guaranteed 5 attacks and 2 crits, regardless of the enemy's turret rolls or his own bomber attack run rolls. Only in larger waves, where the defences of the ship can be overwhelmed would bombers come into their own.

On your re-roll idea, well it is way too weak, extraordinarily abstract, useless for some races and scales to neither the turrets on the target nor the number of fighters that survive. In short, it sucks.

[Sigoroth]

My main worry is not the battleship under attack, but the regular cruiser.
I also disagree with RcGothic's reason and his assault boats comparision.
I also think Tau Armada will love it.

Well, against the regular 2 turret cruiser I stipulated a tiny tiny increase in performance of 0.047 hits per marker in an 8 strong wave. However, that figure was arrived at off the cuff assuming an even distribution in the sample space of both rulesets, however there was only an even distribution in the proposed one. Since the current ruleset has a floor effect the distribution is right skewed, meaning the average lays to the left of centre. So the actual difference is +0.15 hits per marker in an 8 strong wave on average (going from 1.5 hits to 2.7 hits on a braced cruiser).

EDIT: Gah, must have been overloaded when I came up with this. There is a floor effect but it's not all that skewed when only talking 2 turrets. The problem was one of assumption. While I took a lot of effort to double check my maths for the proposed turret suppression rules I was just working off an assumed value of 1.167 attack runs per bomber against a 2 turret target under the current rules. As you all know it's actually 1.667 attack runs each. It's 0.167 against 5 turrets. Must've got this mixed up. This actually makes it better to use 7b/1f against a 2 turret target under current rules. This wave would get 12.25 attack runs on average, equals 4.08 hits, equals 2.04 hits after brace. Under proposed rules 5b/3f would get 75% chance at 17.5 attack runs (2.9 hits after brace) and 25% chance at 12.5 attack runs (2.1 hits after brace), making a total average of 2.71 hits after brace. This is an improvement of 0.67 hits total, or 0.08 hits per marker.

While you may not like the increase I believe it mearly brings AC on par with direct fire. Against an abeam cap ship (5+ armour) at close range (1 left shift only) on LO, 24 WBs will average 2.33 hits past shields on a braced cruiser. So equivalent firepower in equivalent circumstances does equivalent damage. Advantages of AC is its versatility. Disadvantages is that it would be harder to achieve this unimpeded 8 AC wave than it would to get the equivalent firepower into position. Advantage of the firepower route is it puts a BM in contact for movement/repair concerns and drops shields for further fire. Oh, and it's also possible to get much much better damage from the WBs. You can cross the T for another left shift (at 4+ armour against Orks and Explorers). You can get a double shift for range. Some fleets have 5+ prows (Explorers, Emperors, Chaos) in which case the WBs do better again. The above calculation only comes from the middle of the the gunnery table.

Against a 3 turret target the current ruleset delievers 8 attack runs from 8 AC. Proposed one delivers an average of 11.33 attack runs (41.67% increase). When only using 4 AC against a 3 turret ship the attack runs drop from 4 to 2.5 (decrease of 37.5%). No difference using 4AC against a 2 turret ship (by far the most common occurence).

If someone can send in a larger wave against the same target then we will see a much greater increase. Smaller waves will be punished more than under current turret suppression rules. I don't see the problem with this. Small waves are easy to produce. Large waves are much harder to produce, suffer greater chance of prematurely blowing up (moving through BM, getting shot, caught in an explosion) and come with risks to the parent ships (have to form squadrons meaning brace saves affect all and have to make base contact meaning shared shields).

As for Tau loving it, I don't think so. Even a squadron of 4 Heroes could only produce a wave of 8 AC, which is not all that much better than under current suppression rules for 2 and 3 turret targets (and who'd waste a wave of 8 on a 1 turret target?). That leaves only the Explorers. Explorers are great and cheap. However they are BBs, making their turning circle quite huge. They have only 15cm speed, making them not only very slow, but easy to deny turn ability. They have 5+ front armour making the prospect of closing to shotgun range an extremely daunting one. On top of this they have only 1 shield.

A couple of Carnages in a Chaos fleet would utterly destroy such a squadron if it tried to get close. No two ways about it. Forming a squadron in base contact would be extremely unwise against a NC toting IN fleet. A Nid fleet would be able to compete directly in terms of AC. An SM fleet would have several options from resilient fighters, sacrificial escorts, 4+ hitting BC targeting the wave, and even just relying on 6+ armour. Against Eldar there is absolutely zero difference. Necrons have no ordnance, but with SPGs, direct fire and either 6+ armour & 5+ save or 4+ armour and 2+ save they're in pretty good position. Of course, other Tau fleets with their incidental AC, directable torps and possibility of re-rollable turrets would also be in good stead. So we have both Tau fleets, all 3 Eldar fleets, Nid, Necron, Chaos and IN quite capable of dealing with this.

That leaves, what, Orks? Seems appropriate to me that the Tau would try to mass AC against Orks, their biggest enemies. Still, Orks have a lot of problems, and I don't see that they should be the reason why this doesn't go through, particularly as these rules brings FBs easily into the fold, meaning they need no special rules other than their lowered number of attack runs. Hell, even Orks might be able to successfully defend themselves. Remember, you don't have to destroy the entire wave. You just gotta strip away a bit of the fighter screen to drastically reduce the effectiveness of the wave.

In fact, the more I think about Orks the more I think that their points should just come down. Give them more ships, hits, guns, torps and fighta-bommas on the field. Fix up chain of command problems with each character able to attempt special orders for his ship/squadron regardless of whether there were earlier failures.

Chaos will see an increase of the ever popular Devestation.

I don't think so. I think that people use the Dev as much as they are ever likely to do. We have reached saturation point with them. They're already such a good ship that this change won't alter their usage at all.

Hmm, as an oddball the Despoiler may become worthwhile...har har

Yeah, this occured to me too. Might actually reduce the number of Devs used.

Say Sigoroth and others, this 'true turret' thing:

1) adds more random results to the game since low end and high end are further apart.

2) makes ordnance-bombers stronger

3) makes cruisers victims of the rule

4) empowers high end Tau fleet even more

Do you agree with that?

As pointed out above, I don't agree with point 4. I don't think that Tau would be made stronger.

I also don't agree with point 3, except as it relates to waves above 8, and then I think that the downsides make up for the upsides. Or rather, I should say, under the proposed rule the upsides finally make up for the downsides.

On point 2, I would say that it makes bombers more valuable in large waves, but does not make the bombers in smaller waves any better.

Lastly, on to the notion of more randomness. Let's have a look at a couple of bombers against a 1 turret escort. The turret may hit. It may not. If it does, there will be only 1d6-1 attacks, which might result in 0 attacks. If it results in 1 or 2 attacks they may miss. Of course, there could be 3 or 4 attacks, which would more likely result in a hit, so maybe he should brace. But if he does so he sacrifices a lot of firepower (half entire squad) to only get a save, which may fail anyway. On the other hand maybe the turret will miss and the 2 bombers will make 7 or 8 or even 10(!) attacks, getting 2, 3 or even 4 hits in, which makes it extremely unlikely a brace save will help. Should he brace? Uncertain.

So we already have uncertainty with bombers. However, this uncertainty drops drastically with high turret targets for some reason. This actually isn't a good thing. Do players launching the 1b/5f against an Emperor go "yay, I get 5 attacks at least"? No, they go, "eh, well that's 5 attacks". Do the defending players go "yay, I only have 5 attacks coming at me"? No, they go "why the hell would I even bother firing!?".

People want their turret fire to count. People want to be able to put enough bombers into the target for it to count. In the current situation, even if you do get into the position where you could overwhelm your opponent with an enormous wave of bombers, you just break it down into 1b/5f anyway. Yay. The defending player is not forced to think about his defences, because his turrets take care of it, without even firing. The attacking player is not rewarded for bringing overwhelming forces to bear in one attack, so doesn't even think about doing it. No thought, no reward. On top of all this the rule as it stands is counter-intuitive.

Besides, I have demonstrated that the equivalent firepower does just as much damage against a BB as ordnance, and it is easier to achieve. So what's the big deal?

[Vaaish]

You are unbelievably wrong. I cannot fathom how you can think the way you do given how much effort I have gone to to point out all the options.

You are entitled to that opinion, though it doesn't make you correct. I've gone through equally as much effort to show how that your chosen idea is bad for the game as a whole. I don't understand why you are so doggedly determined to see bombers become more powerful.

Firstly, you suggest that this will allow the opponent to just "spam" large waves from afar. Wrong. If he does this then you can annihilate his entire wave with direct fire or an escort. You can remove his fighter screen with torps or fighters of your own (you'd only need to drop 2 or 3 to drastically reduce the effectiveness of his entire  wave). All of this requires far less commitment of resources for you than for your opponent, so if you do not do it then it is your fault.

This doesn't make any impact on his desire or ability to do this. The problem lies in the potential benefit from spamming large waves over and over. Sure you can shoot at it, sacrifice an escort or snipe the fighters, but that's not anything you couldn't already do. All you have done is increase the potential payoff if you roll badly and miss the wave or don't have escorts. If you lose the wave, so what? RO and launch them all over again. He's weaker for it and you've lost nothing.

Secondly, you imply that it will not be difficult to get a slow, ponderous BB squadron into shotgun range. Firstly, you're flat out wrong here, these carriers have 5+ prow armour. They will get cooked on the way in. At the very least they'll be braced before they get there, unless your opponent is a bonehead, in which case he deserves what he gets. Target priority tests are just that, tests. They don't prevent you from firing unless you fail them. You're going to fail them with so many ships so many times? I doubt it.

Right... I see this happen EVERY game I play. At some point the fleets close and that ponderous BB is in shotgun range. These 5+ armor carriers also have 12 hits and 4 shields. 90% of the time they don't get targeted first because there are other things in position to cause more damage and are more efficient to shoot at.

Thirdly, you ask "why should we get to ignore their defences?" Well the answer to that is because they're actively being suppressed! They are not being "ignored"! Let's compare 5 turrets under the proposed rules to a 0 turret target, using 16 AC. If it didn't have any turrets at all the attacking player could send in 16 bombers and they'd all roll 1d6 attack runs. With the 5 turret target I'm forced to send in half the wave as fighters. So, assuming I do fully suppress all 5 turrets their mere existence has reduced my maximum potential by 50%! But that's not all. There's a chance that he'll hit with 4 or all 5 of those turrets, reducing their potential even further! So that is more than a 50% reduction! The "purpose" of high turrets isn't to make the ship immune to AC, but to increase defences against AC. So they get to shoot more down and it takes more effort to suppress them. Both of these combine against bombers!

Yes, but you still fail to answer WHY ordnance deserves to get a boost! It doesn't matter that it takes a few fighters to drop a ship to 0 turrets, you can't assume that you should be allowed to roll d6-0 to attack a target and therefore are losing firepower by including fighters. The fact remains that doing so greatly increases the power of fleets that can exploit this by dropping larger waves like Tau.

What YOU have failed to do is show why any target, no matter how many turrets it has, should ever be completely immune to bombers. Hell, let's have a look at how those damn turrets work. Against 1 bomber a single turret will prevents 1 attack to the ship. Against a wave of 1 million bombers a single turret will prevent ONE MILLION attacks! You ask why 1 fighter should improve the performance of so many bombers, well why the hell do turrets get so good the more bombers you send in!?

You don't get to pull this. The burden of proof lies with you to point out why bombers should get a boost against heavily defended targets. You have either refused to do this or attempted to deflect onto other issues every time this comes up. Turrets work how they do because that is how the rulebook says they do. It's not on me to prove to you why the rules allow that function. Talk to Andy Chambers if you want someone to explain that.

As for "the right AC for the right job" I agree!

I'm glad we agree on at least the overall goal here.

However you're the one trying to limit the right jobs! In the true turret suppression proposal bombers won't cut it against a high turret target in smaller waves. So an Emperor won't just be able to send in a wave of 1b/5f/2ab to get a guaranteed 5 attacks and 2 crits, regardless of the enemy's turret rolls or his own bomber attack run rolls. Only in larger waves, where the defences of the ship can be overwhelmed would bombers come into their own.

To be fair, smaller waves don't cut it in any proposal. They only work in the current suppression rules because 90% of the wave isn't bombers. We aren't talking about those smaller waves for the most part here. We are discussing the high end and how the benefits of reaching that high end make it preferable to take more carriers to access those benefits.

On your re-roll idea, well it is way too weak, extraordinarily abstract, useless for some races and scales to neither the turrets on the target nor the number of fighters that survive. In short, it sucks.

Tell that to the eldar! You are right, it is weaker, but it only tones down bombers against high turret targets where the effects of the reroll diminish. Against less well shielded targets there is much greater benefit.

Please explain which part of the game ISN"T extraordinarily abstract? The whole concept of battery strength and turret strength is quite abstract. While some races don't benefit, why should the have to? We have all manner of variety of rules here and some races don't even HAVE turrets to give any benefit to including fighters.

Scales to the turrets as in has a means of bypassing their effectiveness? It does scale in that you get better benefit out of attacking low turret ships than you do high turret ships. It just doesn't have a way to boost the effectiveness of the bombers beyond reason.

I've mentioned this before, but it can quite easily be dependent on the number of fighters that survive, but I see doing that unnecessarily complicating the flow and making the effect so minimal as to have no justification for the mechanic's inclusion.

[RCgothic]

Bombers deserve to get a boost because you pay 10pts per AC to replace your WBs with them.

But for a wave of 4, we've shown conclusively that there is no boost. In fact, waves of 4 get worse against battleships. For a wave of 8, battleships are only as vulnerable as they are now. For a wave of more than 8, you require a squadron in base contact, sharing shields, and close enough to get ordnance into contact without chance of intercept. As has been mentioned, this has massive, massive drawbacks.

In addition, your 'bombers shouldn't be good at everything' argument would hold a lot more water if assault boats didn't cripple cruisers just as well as battleships, and utterly obliterate escorts.

[Sigoroth]

You are entitled to that opinion, though it doesn't make you correct. I've gone through equally as much effort to show how that your chosen idea is bad for the game as a whole. I don't understand why you are so doggedly determined to see bombers become more powerful.

The difference being that my points made sense.

The point is this rule is much much simpler. Much more intuitive. And it gives large waves the possibility of overcoming high turret defences, which they should have. Any increase in total power is only comparable to what a fleet may get if it took other weaponry instead of AC anyway. Further, this makes fewer larger waves more powerful than multiple smaller waves which makes sense in both terms of pure logic (if you darken the skies over your enemy's city with a 1000 bombers it's more overwhelming than sending 1 bomber 1000 times!) and also in terms of game balance. It's harder to pull off larger waves, they're more fragile, and there're downsides to the parent ships.

This doesn't make any impact on his desire or ability to do this. The problem lies in the potential benefit from spamming large waves over and over. Sure you can shoot at it, sacrifice an escort or snipe the fighters, but that's not anything you couldn't already do. All you have done is increase the potential payoff if you roll badly and miss the wave or don't have escorts. If you lose the wave, so what? RO and launch them all over again. He's weaker for it and you've lost nothing.

God, why don't people think before they opine!? So, he spams large waves of AC, instead of many smaller waves. Good! So if he has 32 AC in his fleet you think that it would be easier to get rid of 8 waves of 4 than 2 waves of 16? If you were to use sacrificial escorts to remove 8 waves of 4 bombers you'd lose 8 escorts. If you did it to remove 2 waves of 16 you'd lose 2! That's only 25% of the casualties.

If you think that wasting firepower means you "lose nothing" then you don't know how to play the game. Go to school and get yourself some learning. Let me make it real simple. Pretend that he had taken pure gunships instead of carriers, netting him some extra 48 weapon batteries worth of firepower. Now pretend that he went on LO and fired all those guns at your ships. Now pretend that you lost only 1 escort and didn't even have to brace the squadron. If that happened you'd have a massive grin on your face. If you did it to him over and over again?

Right... I see this happen EVERY game I play. At some point the fleets close and that ponderous BB is in shotgun range. These 5+ armor carriers also have 12 hits and 4 shields. 90% of the time they don't get targeted first because there are other things in position to cause more damage and are more efficient to shoot at.

Then you need to learn to play. Perhaps this change would make you learn?

Yes, but you still fail to answer WHY ordnance deserves to get a boost! It doesn't matter that it takes a few fighters to drop a ship to 0 turrets, you can't assume that you should be allowed to roll d6-0 to attack a target and therefore are losing firepower by including fighters. The fact remains that doing so greatly increases the power of fleets that can exploit this by dropping larger waves like Tau.

I have shown time and again why they should. It promotes tactical thinking. Rewards optimum positioning. Redeems defensive turret fire from redundancy. Is simpler than current rules and makes more intuitive sense. Removes the conceptual stupidity that a billion bombers are useless against a 6 turret target. Scales value of bombers to the size of the wave, matching the difficulty and penalties of forming large waves. Small wave = easy = weak. Large wave = hard = strong.

You still don't get it after all this?

You don't get to pull this. The burden of proof lies with you to point out why bombers should get a boost against heavily defended targets. You have either refused to do this or attempted to deflect onto other issues every time this comes up. Turrets work how they do because that is how the rulebook says they do. It's not on me to prove to you why the rules allow that function. Talk to Andy Chambers if you want someone to explain that.

You're really starting to get on my nerves. Ok, here's a reason, BECAUSE 1 MILLION BOMBERS ARE USELESS AGAINST A 6 TURRET TARGET! There ya go, PROOF that bombers should get a boost against high turret targets. Tool.

To be fair, smaller waves don't cut it in any proposal. They only work in the current suppression rules because 90% of the wave isn't bombers. We aren't talking about those smaller waves for the most part here. We are discussing the high end and how the benefits of reaching that high end make it preferable to take more carriers to access those benefits.

Sooo, smaller waves do work currently. This is the damn point. Currently large waves suck, small waves rule.

Tell that to the eldar! You are right, it is weaker, but it only tones down bombers against high turret targets where the effects of the reroll diminish. Against less well shielded targets there is much greater benefit.

Please explain which part of the game ISN"T extraordinarily abstract? The whole concept of battery strength and turret strength is quite abstract. While some races don't benefit, why should the have to? We have all manner of variety of rules here and some races don't even HAVE turrets to give any benefit to including fighters.

Scales to the turrets as in has a means of bypassing their effectiveness? It does scale in that you get better benefit out of attacking low turret ships than you do high turret ships. It just doesn't have a way to boost the effectiveness of the bombers beyond reason.

I've mentioned this before, but it can quite easily be dependent on the number of fighters that survive, but I see doing that unnecessarily complicating the flow and making the effect so minimal as to have no justification for the mechanic's inclusion.

Right, so you're advocating a greater abstractions that doesn't effect all races equally and scales extremely poorly and nerfs AC into the ground because ... the game already has abstractions? Mind you, your abstraction is worse than any of those you mentioned.

So, why the hell would anyone go with this rule over the current ruleset? It has no advantages whatsoever over the current one, conceptually or practically.

And when you say "It just doesn't have a way to boost the effectiveness of the bombers beyond reason" what the hell do you base that thought on? A bomber against a defenceless target gets 1d6 attacks. Turrets are supposed to interfere with this process by basically distracting the bomber. Flak explosions throw off their runs, etc. Now, the more turrets there are the more difficult it is for bombers to get their runs in. Makes sense. However, the more bombers there are the more difficult it would be for the defences to disrupt them. At a certain critical mass some bombers would just slip through the net. That makes sense. It is implausible to believe that the turrets would be equally effective at disrupting any number of bombers. After a certain point the defences should be overwhelmed. This is what the turret suppression rules represent. Bringing reason back to fix an unreasonable situation. This is why they were introduced in the first place. Yes, that's right, the designers realised their rule was wrong. Everyone realised it in fact. So, turret suppression rules. Again, this rule was wrong, which again everyone realised, but made AC usable so not so much call to have it changed. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't be changed, and since this is the time and place to discuss it, it having come up, then obviously you'll see it proposed.

It could be done another way. You could have the turrets only able to reduce the total number of attacks by 1 each, rather than reducing each bomber. So 4 surviving bombers against an Emperor would make 4D6-5 attacks. Or you could use a square function, where you could suppress X bombers by X attacks each, where X is the ships number of turrets. So a dictator could reduce the first 3 bombers attack runs by 3 each, an Emperor could reduce the first 5 bombers by 5 attacks each, etc.

The point is that they should not be able to just keep on working at peak efficiency no matter how many bombers are coming in.

[fracas]

Sigoroth is making alot of sense. Ofcourse it might be because i agree with him from the get go regarding turret suppression to begin with. The current interpretation doesn't make sense regarding turrets supressing bombers or fighters suppressing turrets.

The rule should be simplified to:
1 fighter removes 6 torpedo wave, 2 bombers or assault boats in a wave, but only one fighter, fighter-bomber or thunderhawks
Bomber runs as total of (D6 per bomber) - (D6 per turrets)

[RCgothic]

Sigoroth, much as I appreciate your championing the change I'd like to see, you may want to dial back a bit on the frustration and ad hominems a bit.

You're making a very convincing case, but you're unlikely to pusuade people by calling them an idiot and telling them to go back to school.

[Sigoroth]

Sigoroth, much as I appreciate your championing the change I'd like to see, you may want to dial back a bit on the frustration and ad hominems a bit.

You're making a very convincing case, but you're unlikely to pusuade people by calling them an idiot and telling them to go back to school.

The man quite obviously has no idea of how to play the game if he's of the opinion that hitting with a 16 AC wave would be easy. I resent a good deal of calculation and consideration being dismissed by someone just championing the cause of "nuh uh". If he cannot come up with a good counter argument or point out something that hasn't been considered then he should just shut up rather than try. Alternatively he could simply state his opinion and leave it at that. 

[RCgothic]

I appreciate that; I'm going to work on a full spreadsheet of results myself this weekend, and I know it's a considerable investment of effort.

But you will be listened to even less when you intersperse your valid and substantial arguments with attacks on the people you need to convince, particularly with the HAs are likely to take a dim view if this descends into a slagging match.

[Vaaish]

Seriously sigoroth, chill out. I disagree completely with the point you made and attacking me personally is uncalled for. Screaming I don't know how to play the game because my experience doesn't match what you believe it should be isn't a valid point or even one that makes sense.

I have shown time and again why they should. It promotes tactical thinking. Rewards optimum positioning. Redeems defensive turret fire from redundancy. Is simpler than current rules and makes more intuitive sense. Removes the conceptual stupidity that a billion bombers are useless against a 6 turret target. Scales value of bombers to the size of the wave, matching the difficulty and penalties of forming large waves. Small wave = easy = weak. Large wave = hard = strong.

No, You haven't shown this. you have repeatedly said all the things people currently do as evidence of promoting tactical thinking. The game is abstract, you should know this. Despite that, sometimes there you just can't hurt a target for whatever reason. It mught be that the defenses are so strong you will be shot down or just that there is so much fire incoming you can't accurately target anything important. There is no reason gameplay or otherwise that bombers absolutely must be useful against all targets.

Right, so you're advocating a greater abstractions that doesn't effect all races equally and scales extremely poorly and nerfs AC into the ground because ... the game already has abstractions? Mind you, your abstraction is worse than any of those you mentioned.

You are wrong. Please stop grouping all AC when you mean bombers. All my version does is dial back the effectiveness of bombers against high defense targets. AB will still have the same effect, torpedoes will have the same effect. What this does is focus the game on gunnery more than AC as was the original intent. It creates situations where the attacking player must think more about how he deals with a target than launch bombers every time.


@RCGothic:

Bombers deserve to get a boost because you pay 10pts per AC to replace your WBs with them.

Then I pay +15 points for AB, shouldn't they get a boost too because I have to replace WB with them? If bombers were all you got I could see where you need them to be on par with what they replace, but you have a whole lot more tactical flexibility than just bombers for that cost.

In addition, your 'bombers shouldn't be good at everything' argument would hold a lot more water if assault boats didn't cripple cruisers just as well as battleships, and utterly obliterate escorts.

I agree with you on the escorts, but here's to hoping that the 2010 FAQ changes help considerably on that front. I thought that the difference that made AB better was that they simply tried to ram into the ship and latch to the hull rather than flying around it giving the turrets more time to track them or that some of the smaller turrets were dedicated to shooting down enemy "bombs" which reduced the effectiveness of bombers.

[Sigoroth]

See, this is the sort of crap I have to deal with. Tard.

[lastspartacus]

So much dialogue 0.o

Anyone care to summarize the various proposals being thrown around?

[horizon]

C'mon Sigoroth. Your able enough. RcG is right on his comment.

Well I think there is so many text the essence got lost somewhere in the middle or end. I dunno. I only picked up the fact that Sigoroth said the Tau w in ould not increase. I disagree.

If I look at the last Adepticon Winners (Orks, Tau & Dark Eldar) it where all launch bay VERY heavy fleets. Orks with Terror Kroozers maxed out at 1500, perhaps Deathdeala, see the article WR29, the Tau went by 3xExplorer,2xHero,9xOrca,3xDefender. Don't know DE exact but that should be launch bays as we all know on Tortures.
So with true turret suppression I cannot see a change in the launch bay trend anytime soon.

Plus my Max ends haven't been adressed.

I'm still thinking, somehow.

Going to read other threads.