Alternative Proposal to Turret Suppression

[RCgothic]

I think there's no particular reason battleships should be near-invulnerable or for turrets to scale so non-linearly.

The rule you've proposed is actually the way most people misread the rule. I think it makes a lot of sense.

[Valhallan]

i believe it does too (perhaps more so though if bombers made D3 attack runs).


however HA wanted large waves of 1/2 fighters 1/2 bombers. not an styx launching 5 fighters 1 bomber, for example.

[Phthisis]

On what basis do they want mixed waves and why is it ok for assault boats to launch without fighter escort?

HA wants half and half instead of all fighters except a single bomber, but thats exactly what the current rule makes it easy to do against high turret targets. If I'm guaranteed an attack for every fighter but only get one by rolling 5 or 6 with a bomber.  Id be more inclined to do a more evenly mixed wave if each fighter took away a deduction from my bomber runs.

This rule seems to do exactly what everyone says they dont want it to do... Im confused here!

[Valhallan]

i was under the impression the rule was changed in faq2010 to: +1 total attack run for each fighter you have *up to the number of bombers*

[commander]

As FAQ says:
"TURRET SUPPRESSION: Each fighter in a wave of bombers actually attacking a ship will add +1 attack to the total attack runs of the wave, regardless of whether they are shot down by turrets or not. The maximum number of bonus attacks that can be added in this way cannot exceed the number of surviving bombers in the wave. There must be at least one surviving bomber in the wave after turret fire to gain these bonus attacks, and fighters are removed before any other type of ordnance. Fighters that never made it because they were intercepted by defending fighters (even those on CAP) don‟t add to this suppression bonus."
Pretty clear to me, don't know where all the misunderstanding comes from? 

[horizon]

True.

[Phthisis]

The confusion in my group stemmed from two things.  First the rule is called 'Turret Suppression' and yet the way turrets are used is completely unaffected by the rule.  You still get all your turret rolls and still deduct turrets from bomber run rolls.  The title lead us to believe we should be modifying how the turrets work somehow.  Semantics is a powerful force on the mind.  Even though it is written clearly, the title screws everyone up except those who have read the rule slowly and paid careful attention. 
Second is the wierd mechanic.  It appears as though fighters are doing damage, even after they are dead and even though it states in the rulebook that they cant.  Its an abstract, I understand that, but its a much higher level of abstraction than people are used to seeing in GW games for a very long time.  The rest of the BFG rule set is pretty straight forward. 

Also, dont the rules for ork figh eutabommers make them better at attacking high turret targets than everyone else?  Those rules are confusing too.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

Fighters aren't doing the attack. Fighters are allowing the bombers to get 1 more attack in because they managed to suppress some turrets to allow the bombers that extra attack.

[Phthisis]

Yes, I know.  But its abstract.  You add attacks for fighters even though the bombers are making them. 

[RCgothic]

I'm in complete agreement with you. It's a stupid rule, and it should have been changed. I kicked up a massive fuss about it a couple months back, but it didn't make any difference, and this is the rule we're being stuck with.

There is actually a chance of affecting the FS Ruleset - at the moment bombers get D3 attacks regardless of turrets and the Fighter Suppression rule seems to have been dropped, but it's all open to negotiation.

[Plaxor]

I'm in complete agreement with you. It's a stupid rule, and it should have been changed. I kicked up a massive fuss about it a couple months back, but it didn't make any difference, and this is the rule we're being stuck with.

There is actually a chance of affecting the FS Ruleset - at the moment bombers get D3 attacks regardless of turrets and the Fighter Suppression rule seems to have been dropped, but it's all open to negotiation.

Yes, and I've been trying to keep my ear to the ground to see what creative things people are coming up with.

The reason for the turret suppression drop is that the game designers didn't really intend for it to exist. It was added in so that bombers could potentially hurt high-turret targets. The value of turrets was exponential with each increase, making having 3 turrets twice as good as two, and 4 twice that!

It also made the game unreasonable to have more than 6 turrets, and made bombers too powerful against low turret enemies, and too weak versus high turrets enemies.

With D3, the idea is that it makes bombers slightly worse against most vessels, and by comparison making ABs better. Now with this system both ABs and Bombers can gain a benefit from fighter escort (a type of resilient ordinance).

The only representation of turret suppression however is that fighters are taken first against turrets. Presumably because they were distracting them... or whatnot.

This system is very simple from the extremely confusing system that turret suppression and ordinance has become, but I'll keep my eyes open for new ideas.

[Phthisis]

Years ago when BFG first came out, we just understood bombers were to be used for taking out crippled ships.  Battleships had to be crippled with gunnery and then coud be finished off with bombers.  The turrets number is an abstract rating that indicates the combined strength of defensive turrets on a ship, not the actual number of turrets, no the ecponential increase in strength increase per turret didn't seem like a mistake.  Also high turret ships arent very common.  It makes sense to me that a battleship would have near imenetrable defenses.  This is 40k.after all and everything is over-the-top deadly.

I'm not against working out some way for fighters to help out in bombing runs, but the inclusion of this mechanic is arbitrary and unnecessary for BFG to be a playable working game system.  Its sort of just a fetish.  Everyone agreed that tjey didn't want to make ordinance more powerful and then went right ahead and made ordinance more powerful.  Add that to the abstract nature of the rule and it sounds like nobody got what they want.  Is there any hope of reworkong this rule now? 

If we want bombers to be able to attack high turret targets, then we need to make ordinance more powerful.  Why dance around it?  Fighters removing turret deducts is a straight forward way of acheiving this effect and lots of people are playimg this rule that way anyway.  It also makes sure that ork fightabommers arent more effective than everyone else against high turret targets.

If we only want to allow bombers to attack high turret targets, then just say bombers get a minimum of 1 attack each after the roll and deducts.  Against low turret targets it wont make hardly any difference at all because they will lilely get more than one attack anyway.  This rule doesnt effect how bombers work on anything else in the game and so doesnt boost their ability to attack low turret targets and it is easy to understand and implement.

[lastspartacus]

I'm all for a new way of doing AC.  If there is any way to cause fighters in any way to benefit A-boats and bombers, as well as not having to have a count-keeping system, then I will love it like a father.

[RCgothic]

If we only want to allow bombers to attack high turret targets, then just say bombers get a minimum of 1 attack each after the roll and deducts.  Against low turret targets it wont make hardly any difference at all because they will lilely get more than one attack anyway. 

This was one of the first things we thought of, but actually it gives an extra 1/6th of an attack per turret, which equates to a 20% buff against T2.

[Phthisis]

True.  I didn't think that was a cause for concern considering the increase in effectiveness under the current rules for higher turret targets is much higher and currently taking fighter escort against t2 makes bombing runs less effective.