Had some weird ideas, but they worked pretty well, if you use them all.
1. turrets shot down Ordnance on a 2+
- +2 for fighters
- +2 for torpedos
- +2 for resilent aircraft
So e.g. a fighter or resilent bomber is shot down on 4+, a resilent fighter on 6+ etc.
Roll never gets better than 2+ or worse than 6+.
(you can later include more modificators for races, quality, elite-pilots etc. if you want)
2. Escort batteries can shot at Ordnance like they were turrets. The downside is that these guns can't inflict critical hits.
(If you want a background explanation: escorts lack the power/calibre to do heavy damage, but their smaller guns have better targetting arrays/can be readjusted faster)
3. Escorts don't need to be in base contact to protect a capital ship with “massed turretsâ€, instead they can do this if they are up to 5cm away.
4. fighters remove other fighters on a 1:1 ratio, but up to 2 markers of any other ordnance. But if they remove any enemy marker, they are also removed
E.g 2 fighters attack 2 Bombers - 1 Fighter and both bombers are removed.
If these 2 fighters attack a wave of 3 or 4 Bombers (or two Bombers and 1 fighter) all markers are removed.
5. Bombers do D6 attacks each. The number of turrets is only subtracted once. So if 4 bombers attack a cruiser with 2 turrets the wave does 4D6-2 attacks.
6. If a mixed wave of of ordnance (means: different result to hit them needed) turrets are rolled one by one. You have to beat the best value before you move on to the next one.
E.g. a wave of 1 fighter (hit on 4+) and 3 Bombers (hit on 2+) attacks a Battleship with 4 turrets.
You roll for the first turret. If it shows a 4+ the fighter is removed and the remaining 3 turrets shot down a bomber on 2+. If you don't roll a 4+ the fighter is still alive and you roll for the second turret.
There is no turret suppresion and suriving fighters don't cause any damage.
These rules are also used if a escort shots with its batteries at a mixed wave.
SO what do these 6 rules do?
Basically they give escorts a dedicated role: they protect capital ships from Bomber raids: activly by shooting them down and passivly by ading turrets to the ship they protect.
The enemy really wants to get rid of them before he can send in his Bomberwaves.
Unprotected captial ships can now take heavy damage from Ordnance if not protected by escorts and/or own fighters on CAP
On the other hand waves of Aboats/Bombers are very vulnerable if not protected
→ works well on regular sizes, but I admit that it gets impractical if wavesizes get higher than 8 (combined wave of two emperors andsuch things) or if you max out launchbays, because the infliced damage can be very high. So probably you'll need a wavesize and/or launchbay limit (8 or 10 wavesize 4 lanchbays per 500 points or something like this...). But I haven't tried it in such sizes always used “regular†fleets.
But in regular 1500P games it works fine: you'll really want to have some escorts now, even as Chaos.
