Orkz - gib uz a brik

[Zelnik]

I came up with another fun idea the other day.. allow orks to shoot and blow up their own hulks!

[lastspartacus]

Redd, I agree with you about ork escorts.  And the assault kroozer is an interesting idea.  Maybe 6+ armor all around, ramming gear, very little real weaponry, and such.

Zelnik, I don't like it.  What would be the fluff purpose?

[Zhukov]

Assault Kroozer . . . . . . . . 175 pts
Hits/10  Shields/1  Turrets/1  Speed/25cm  Turns/45* Armor/ 6+, 5+ Rear

Armament: Range/Speed: Firepower/Strength: Fire Arc:
Prow Torpedoes: 30cm: D6+2: Front
Prow Weapons Batteries: 45cm: D6+2: Front
Port Launch Bays: Assault Boats-30cm: 2: -
Starboard Launch Bays: Assault Boats-30cm: 2: -

Notes:
-Equipped with Boarding Torpedoes
-Equipped with Power Ram
-May conduct up to 2 teleport attacks per turn.
-Boarding Value is doubled. If carrying a Warlord, it gives +10 Boarding points to the Assault Kroozer's value instead of doubling it again.

I think this achieves what you all say an Assault Kroozer should be right? And if it's designed to board Space Stations, then a Boarding Value of 30 pts on a fresh one with a Warlord gives you a 2-1 boarding value against a Space Station. Alternatively you could arm this type of ship with W.S. Boyd's "Shokk Attack Lance Gublins" weapon?

As for the Escorts, don't give them all 90* turns. That wouldn't be very Orky. Give the Onslaught and Ravager 90* turns and reduce the turn radius of the Brute to 45*. This way, the Ork player has the option of taking slower but more maneuverable escorts or faster but harder to turn escorts. Seems like an Orky thing to me. Just my initial thoughts though so don't cruicfy me please.

-Zhukov

[lilith]

in my opinion ork have to be more shooty (maybe have also more turrets because of the shootines) The assault cruiser is a good idea , but i don't know what are the effect of a power ram? The ork escort at the moment suks , is really more easy to play an horde of fighta bomber (with the 2010 faq the do very little damage and are used more for defense that is against all the ork fluff )or assault boat to defend or damage the weapon system of the enemy. The brute is cheap and can virtually do some damage to enemy cruiser but the are also very easily destroyed by their own attack , sometimes i lost more point in destroyed /crippled brute squadron because of the ram than the effective damage done to the enemy target. The other escort are inhmo useless , because of poor speed , lack of manovrability and randomness of weapons , the heavy guns are too short range to be used by some fragile escort , the torpedo can't sum the firepower and have to recharge with the orky low ld , the batteries one is a little better but suffer from the same speed/range/manovrabily of the other. Escort are a really  victory point mine for a smart opponent , he can focus on fire them or swarm them with assault boat to make easy vp (he can ignore the fb because now they do very little damage and must be used to protect the soft 4+ rear of our cruiser )

[GrogDaTyrant]

I fondly remember seeing Serenity and thinking the Reaver fleet should be more like how the Orks perform. 

I'm personally of the viewpoint that some serious overhauls are needed to their fleet.  If they stay with a design geared towards sluggish fleet speed and poor-manuverability, then IMO they need to be 'tougher' with some longer range options.  If the goal is to make them a ramming-menace with low shielding... then speeding them up so they can actually do that wouldn't be a bad idea either.

[flybywire-E2C]

I fondly remember seeing Serenity and thinking the Reaver fleet should be more like how the Orks perform. 

I'm personally of the viewpoint that some serious overhauls are needed to their fleet.  If they stay with a design geared towards sluggish fleet speed and poor-manuverability, then IMO they need to be 'tougher' with some longer range options.  If the goal is to make them a ramming-menace with low shielding... then speeding them up so they can actually do that wouldn't be a bad idea either.

They are big on ramming and boarding. That's why it's the only fleet that can AAF for free. They also have the only 10HP cruisers in the whole game, the only "normal" escorts with armor-6 prows (shut UP Necrons!), cheap Brutes that count 4D6 to ram, good boarding value as a race, etc. Play Orks like Imperials in a ranged shooting fight, you lose all day long. Play Orks like Orks, and they are FUN!!!

- Nate

[flybywire-E2C]

Assault Kroozer . . . . . . . . 175 pts
Hits/10  Shields/1  Turrets/1  Speed/25cm  Turns/45* Armor/ 6+, 5+ Rear

Armament: Range/Speed: Firepower/Strength: Fire Arc:
Prow Torpedoes: 30cm: D6+2: Front
Prow Weapons Batteries: 45cm: D6+2: Front
Port Launch Bays: Assault Boats-30cm: 2: -
Starboard Launch Bays: Assault Boats-30cm: 2: -

Notes:
-Equipped with Boarding Torpedoes
-Equipped with Power Ram
-May conduct up to 2 teleport attacks per turn.
-Boarding Value is doubled. If carrying a Warlord, it gives +10 Boarding points to the Assault Kroozer's value instead of doubling it again.

I think this achieves what you all say an Assault Kroozer should be right? And if it's designed to board Space Stations, then a Boarding Value of 30 pts on a fresh one with a Warlord gives you a 2-1 boarding value against a Space Station. Alternatively you could arm this type of ship with W.S. Boyd's "Shokk Attack Lance Gublins" weapon?

As for the Escorts, don't give them all 90* turns. That wouldn't be very Orky. Give the Onslaught and Ravager 90* turns and reduce the turn radius of the Brute to 45*. This way, the Ork player has the option of taking slower but more maneuverable escorts or faster but harder to turn escorts. Seems like an Orky thing to me. Just my initial thoughts though so don't cruicfy me please.

-Zhukov

Admittedly something like this is quite themeful, and the timing is right because a few new ship ideas are being examined. this however is quite a bit different from anything else the Orks have. this will require quite a bit of discussion with the HA's, along with careful playtesting.

[Plaxor]

Does reducing costs on cruisers count as a change?

In all honesty it feels like Ork cruisers should cost about 10 pts less than they currently do.  With the Smotherman formula this equates out a Kill Kroozer to be 145 points, and terrors costing 175. Although I could still see a Kill-kroozer still costing less than that, maybe as low as 135. Orks are supposed to be a horde right? I would like to see a game where I outnumbered my opponent by a little.

I would love to see the Kroozers turrets upped to two points, (as this would negate a lot of the fear of not having enough fighta-bommaz) I know this wont happen. Although I feel it is rather fluffy.

Mathematically 6 bombers attacking an ork cruiser results:
.5 killed from turret
19.25 attacks
13.75 after turret reduction
6.875 hits Ouch, especially when compared to an imperial or chaos cruiser, which only 2.5 hits are caused. At two orks would only suffer 3.75 hits. A much more reasonable amount.  At three they would suffer 1.125 which is way too small.

Raising firepower on Ork vessels I like the idea of a little, but meh. I would like to see an Ork cruiser be able to at least get to Imperial or chaos firepower standards at reasonable range. It would be nice to see D6+4 fp on the front, and D6+2 on the sides. Then 10 is possible, still accounting for the possible close-ranged heavy gunz super fire and fulfilling the orky fluff of overarming their ships.

I want a reason to use a Kill-Kroozer and not feel like I'm wasting precious opportunities to buy another Terror ship.

As well I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to eliminate entirely two of the Orks crutches, the 2d6 on AAF, and the non-column shift for heavy guns. In my local game group, we don't use the column shift thing, as the one time that you will be using it it doesn't matter so much. The real issue with heavy guns on cruisers is that if I can get close enough to use them (especially the side mounted ones) then I'm close enough to board or ram, both more lucrative ideas than shooting.

AAF really doesn't seem like it needs to be limited, I don't think that ork ships need a speed increase, or even that they deserve one. In my mind orks ships are worse than everyone elses. And the special rule that they have allowing free AAF is supposed to balance this, but I think it wouldn't hurt to get rid of it. As far as the 2 battleships that already ignore it, I'd add 1d6 to their AAF beyond that.

Getting rid of these two rules would very much help out the Savage Gunship. The poor little unused big escort. Otherwise it could see a points decrease to 35 or even 30 points.

Then there's the Onslaught, from a shooty standpoint I'd like to compare it to the Brute, 5 onslaughts vs 8 brutes both the same cost
From the onslaughts you get averaged 17.5 firepower, 1.5 more than 8 brutes. For those 1.5 extra points of firepower the brutes have +5 cm speed, a better turn radius, 3 more hits, and pow4 ramming capacity. Sure you could roll higher, but math proves otherwise. This is the case for onslaughts getting D6+1 firepower, as with 22.5 firepower, the 6.5 difference seems a lot more worthy of the disadvantages.

The Ravager is fine and a beautiful escort.

As far as the lists goes, I've always thought that the hammer should be listed as a separate category than the battleships, much like the chaos lists being able to take 1 grand cruiser and one battleship for every three cruisers, I could easily see the orks being able to take one BB and one Hammer BC

All right, rant off. I'll post again later with thoughts more in-line with what you're requesting.

[lastspartacus]

I'd like to say that as much as I understand it for its fluff reasons, I think random weapon strengths need to go.  Frees up a clunky extra mechanic and lets you balance ork innacuracy in other ways, like column shifts.
Its something I see that is holding the Orks back.

[Plaxor]

As far as Klanz go, I've never liked the idea of widely customizable lists outside of nids. It's... weird.. and I know it makes them more competitive, but it's just something I would rather leave in the past.

I do love the idea of an Ork light cruiser, and I never really understood the argument that 'the orks would just keep building on it until it was a full-blown krooza' idea. Why doesn't that apply for escorts? After playing a lot of rogue trader, and reading fluff, I've come to think of think of it more as the orks build on a vessel to as much as the components will allow (given power source, general ships 'frame', as well as supplementary components) Presumably orks could capture light cruisers and adapt them to orky ideals, still being unable to make them Uger.

I would like to see something like this:

Stompa Class Ligt Krooza: 125 pts
Cruiser/8 Turns:45 Shields:1 Turrets:1 SPD 25   armor 6/4
Prow Heavy Gunz: 6 front
Port/Starboard Heavy Gunz: 4L/R
Prow Gunz str: D6 30cm range
Soopa Engines

This ship would be much like the feel of current savage gunships, and I like to see redundancy in lists. Honestly I could see removing the prow gunz altogether and making it str8, but I don't think it's orky to not have mixed weaponry, and it's about the same effect this way

Hmm... as far as escorts go, the limited points alotment limits what you can do as far as mixed weaponry and still keeping it useful. Most fleets have about their limits of what is imaginable, but I'll give it a shot:

Pillager class escort carrier: 40 pts

The pillager is captained by ork freebootaz of the highest order, and as such they are mostly interested in loot in all its forms, as such they perform raids on other ships, often crippling them in the process.

Escort/1 turns 45, shields 1 turrets 1 6/4
Launch Bays 1 with fighta-bommaz/assault boats
Prow gunz str 2 30 cm

Special: the freebootaz of these pirate ships are interested in loot, and if any successful hit and run attacks were performed in the last turn (by the orks of course) then this vessel gets +1 on it's reload ordinance check as the orks return with much teef and new shiny bitz.

[flybywire-E2C]

As far as Klanz go, I've never liked the idea of widely customizable lists outside of nids. It's... weird.. and I know it makes them more competitive, but it's just something I would rather leave in the past.

I do love the idea of an Ork light cruiser, and I never really understood the argument that 'the orks would just keep building on it until it was a full-blown krooza' idea. Why doesn't that apply for escorts? After playing a lot of rogue trader, and reading fluff, I've come to think of think of it more as the orks build on a vessel to as much as the components will allow (given power source, general ships 'frame', as well as supplementary components) Presumably orks could capture light cruisers and adapt them to orky ideals, still being unable to make them Uger.

I would like to see something like this:

Stompa Class Ligt Krooza: 125 pts
Cruiser/8 Turns:45 Shields:1 Turrets:1 SPD 25   armor 6/4
Prow Heavy Gunz: 6 front
Port/Starboard Heavy Gunz: 4L/R
Prow Gunz str: D6 30cm range
Soopa Engines

This ship would be much like the feel of current savage gunships, and I like to see redundancy in lists. Honestly I could see removing the prow gunz altogether and making it str8, but I don't think it's orky to not have mixed weaponry, and it's about the same effect this way

Hmm... as far as escorts go, the limited points alotment limits what you can do as far as mixed weaponry and still keeping it useful. Most fleets have about their limits of what is imaginable, but I'll give it a shot:

Pillager class escort carrier: 40 pts

The pillager is captained by ork freebootaz of the highest order, and as such they are mostly interested in loot in all its forms, as such they perform raids on other ships, often crippling them in the process.

Escort/1 turns 45, shields 1 turrets 1 6/4
Launch Bays 1 with fighta-bommaz/assault boats
Prow gunz str 2 30 cm

Special: the freebootaz of these pirate ships are interested in loot, and if any successful hit and run attacks were performed in the last turn (by the orks of course) then this vessel gets +1 on it's reload ordinance check as the orks return with much teef and new shiny bitz.

See, now this here is a useful post!! I'm going to need some time to digest this. Keep in mind that while Stompa is a cool name for a ship class, Orks don't really do capital ship classes per se. Kill Kroozers represent a range of capital ships that are all geared to be mainly shooty, whereas terror ships are capital ships geared as a springboard for the speed freekz to fly their shiny fighta-bommas. The 'Ammer represents a kill kroozer up-gunned to be even more shooty and carry some –bommas, with them simply being battle kroozers as a class named after and inspired by the most infamous one, the ‘Ammer. The named battleships are nothing more than larger, older and even more customized versions of battle kroozers, which is why they are all lumped together when deciding the ratio between how many kroozers you must have per battle kroozer. Essentially, you can have as many battle kroozers as you want restricted only by having one battle kroozer for every two kroozers in your fleet, but only one battle kroozer can be the Slamblasta, Dethdeala, etc.

This kind of variation was the intent with the Ork Klanz refits- to allow players to subtly alter the profiles between individual kill kroozers for set point costs. It was even recommended in the fanatic article that in campaigns, Ork players change the refits incorporated between battles!

Of course, how all this appears in the final product will be a bit different, but this is the direction I was looking for when I asked for input. Thanks!

Anyone else? Thoughts?

-   Nate

[Plaxor]

So here's a little walkthrough of the Orks and 'non-radical' shipbuilding (I.E. no new/weird additions to current rulesets, ships follow general theme of orks)

Weapons:
Guns, usually D6's in any circumstance above firepower two. Presuming we're staying on a standard 'evens' system this would produce 4 firepower. Additions of +2 are common as this would raise it to a 'fp6'. 2d6 not present, instead we have D6+4 to represent fp'8' and D6+6 to represent fp'10'. Guns are only ever longer ranged in the forward location, forcing players to face their enemy.
Heavy Guns, Common either firepower 4 or 6.
Torpedos: Either listed as D6 or slightly increased in strength as a D6+2.
Bombardment cannon/lances: Character only (thus I unallowed in this scenario, and unfluffy for orks save on the largest of ships)
Launch Bays: Either 2 per side or D3+1 dorsal.
Soopa Engines (listed here as they represent a hardpoint)
Weapons Always fire unidirectional, unless on a defense. Firepower will always be greater in the forward arc, as this fulfills the theme of orks.

Chassis:
Cruiser: 10 hits 1 shield, 1 turret, forward armor bonus compensated with negative rear armor
Above average hits, half shields and turrets compared to imp/chaos. Speed lower as well
Battleship: 12 hits, 2 shields, turrets 3?
Standard hits, Half average shields, near average turrets.

Noting that everything in an ork arsenal is lower quality than that of imperials or chaos in every way save for pure damage taking capacity. Other trends note that no vessel (other than escorts) will have a better turn radius than 45. Presumably an ork CL would be two less hits than that of a Krooza, but it is possible (as shown by their battleships) that they could have the same value. Presumably Ork ships are around 15% cheaper than ships of similar class from other fleets. This would mean that an ork CL should cost about 100 pts.

General trends in BFG show a system of hardpoints; in orks this is F:2,S:2,D:0 for cruisers, F:2,S:2,D:1 for battlecruisers, F:2,S:3,D1 on Battleships. Presumably from what we know about imperial light cruisers (the closest thing to potential ork variants) they have F:2,S:1,D:0

Now with these limitations we will set four threshold values, Minimal, Light, Medium and High. CLs take minimal weaponry for sides, Light for front. Cruisers take light for sides and Medium as front, Battlecruisers take medium for sides, and high for front. Battleships take medium for sides and high for front.

For guns we note: Mi:2 L:d6 M:D6+2 H:D6+6
Heavy Guns: L:4 H:6
Torps: L:D6 H:D6+2
Launch Bays: L:1 M:2 H:D3+1

Now assuming that BBs are already covered, and BCs are a lot less needed without list changes our three categories needed for larger development are: Cruiser (primary goal), Light Cruiser, and escort. Now the thing is to solve problems in the ork fleet without reducing viability of current designs (not stomping on a kill-krooza and making it useless by making a better, cheaper, faster version, looking more towards something different), and without breaking current established themes and weaponry options. Basically we have to bash two rocks together and somehow make something miraculous yet simple that falls within current orky theme.

anyways, for now I'll list off a few ideas in each category:

Cruisers:
Assault cruiser: This ship would be of course based off the kill-krooza stats, but would replace its heavy guns or side guns for soopa engines. To not make it cross with the kill krooza and keeping it unique I would lose it's long range weapons batteries, instead replacing them with torps and keeping the heavy guns. I saw a previous poster mention a 'ram' and I could see this as adding +4 to the ships 'hits' when it makes ramming attemps, but would likely count as a hardpoint. Possibly you could have mega armored orks free on the vessel, as well as boarding torps.

Torpedo Carrier, basically a vessel that has replaced it's heavy guns on all sides in favor of torpedos, (it would give a good opportunity to buy the looted torps upgrade) These torpedos would only fire in each of their respective directions.

Gunboat: Likely anything of this type would shroud the Kill-Krooza, so it's difficult to make designs for it, but certain ideas are possible.

Light Cruisers:
Naturally light cruisers would need to have similar disadvantages to impie and/or tau CL's where they are slightly too squishy to be used in replacement of the standard, rather better in conjunction with them. I which would warrant either 6/4 armor (similar to escorts) or only 6 hits or even possibly both. Or the other option is to keep their cost relatively high and increasing their side armament (whilst keeping them in the light/minimal variety) to two as shown by my previous example. This would effectively make them a slightly lighter Krooza (which feels a bit more orky than the agile ships of the imperium) and still deter people from buying 4 CLs to get to the restricted BB/BCs.

Assault Ship: Similar to that above, likely a larger verson of a savage.

Gunboat/Mixed: Like the Kill-Krooza

Carrier: A smallish Carrier

Escorts:

Escort Carrier: Yes... I'm putting this up there

[Plaxor]

More building theory:

According to general trends in how people build their fleets. Redundancy is key, a ship which is 'mixed' between ordinance and shooty is generally much less chosen than either variety. Such is the case of the Emperor vs. the Oberon, showing that a mixed vessel (although cheaper) is not as valued as there is a cost in that the ship can't both lock on and reload at the same time. Other cases would be the Falchion vs the cobra/sword, and to an extent the murder vs all other vessels. Which comes to show another argument, the usable weapons concept, that players will take vessels which have more of their weapons available in a single arc, as this makes them far more likely to use them.

Orks ignore both of these trends in ship design, and all intents and purposes should be counterintuitive to fulfill theme. In an ideal situation, an ork player would want to replace all his heavy batteries with standards on a kill-kroozer, or more torps on a Terror ship. Ork designs shouldn't make the customer happy in this way, they should have a mixture of at least two, but more likely three of the available weapons on every ship. Making them much more 'jack of all trades' feeling. With this scenario it maintains the philosophy of, ram/board or die, as more firepower, or more efficient ordinance production would make Orks happy far away.

That being said on to thoughts for Klans, I'm not positive how these used to work (actually I haven't read it in years) but I think I've got some Koncepts.

If you're doing something similar to the way CSMs work, in that you specify a legion and have to take all marks of that legion (save for other chaos lords ships) you could apply something similar to da orks.

Say you choose a klan or no klan when list building. Each clan has an upgradable advantage to non-character ships, such as soopa-engines, an extra shield, an extra turret (or two to balance things), lance replacements (likely 1 in place of d6 weapon batteries, 2 in D6+2, 3/4 in D6+6) but you would only of course be able to replace one weapon on each ship (left/right weapons counting as one).  Then you could also allow any ships owned by a different warboss having a different clan.

It's not a bad idea. I'm enjoying the thoughts of soopa-engines myself.

[Plaxor]

Torpedo Cruiser:

Basha Class: 170 Pts
Stats same as KK
D6+2 Torps F
D6+2 Gunz F 45cm
D6 Gunz L/R 30cm
D6 Torps L/R

Assault Cruiser idea:

Krusha Class: 165 pts
KK Stats
D6 torps F (equipped with assault torps)
8 Heavy Gunz F
6 L/R Heavy Gunz
Soopa Engines

Poss swap heavy gunz for 'Ram prow' Special +4 dice in rams. Also poss comes equipped with mega armored boarding parties.

[lastspartacus]

Surprised no comments at my statement