Adeptus Mechanicus Alternate Refit Rules

[lastspartacus]

My friend has admech, but we are both somewhat unhappy with the randomness of the refit table.
Assuming that you paid graduating points for the upgrades from 1-6, what would be a reasonable cost set for these?

[fracas]

I like the idea of paying for admech upgrades as long as there are no duplicates within a fleet

[horizon]

Agreed
as it stands some upgrades are indeed much better then others.

[lastspartacus]

Right, and should be costed as so.  
I think the most important thing is to roughly figure out, out of say, for cruisers who pay 35 extra points base, what the refit roll is worth.
You have an extra turret and a 60cm dorsal lance in there as well, modified slightly by weakness to boarding actions.

I don't understand your multiples comment though.  There should only be 6 capital ships in the fleet?

[Silent Requiem]

Is there any chance that something like this will make it into the FAQ? I love the AM fleet, but I can't stand the idea of not knowing (ahead of time) what characteristics my fleet will actually have. If I wanted randomness, I would just play Orks.

-Silent Requiem

[lastspartacus]

And I'm a big advocate of that going away too, yucky clunky mechanic!

And hey, you never know

But we would have to come up with something first.  I havn't set down and calculated yet, but as I said, first thing is seperating turret and lance from the cost.

[lastspartacus]

This is where I'm at so far.  I've extracted the value of the lance and turret on the cruisers, wieghed against the weakness to boarding, at 15.
Thats the base increase every cruiser gets.  Now, its time to do a scaling value to the refits as it relates to the Admech fleet.  Not saying 3 will cost more than 2, for example, but will be at least equal, or greater.

Heres what I have so far, if things need rearranging, send input!

1. Emergency energy reserves
2. Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix
3. Advanced Engines
4. Fleet Defense Turrets
5. Repulsor Shielding
6. Augemented Weapon Relays

[Sigoroth]

GTM
FDT
AE
EER
RS

<space>

AWR

[Sigoroth]

You know what I think would be a fantastic refit? Auto-loaders. Allows ships that have successfully gone on RO to immediately attempt a second order (LO, AAF, whatever).

[lastspartacus]

@First post:
You think EER are pretty good?  I mean I know of course it has its uses, but its something that only benefits you once your ship is halfway dead, a 'makes you less f***ed when you are f***ed' kind of thing.

I had GTM in above it because it allows for competant firepower while manouvering, something of an IN weakness.  For example, a Lunar would only lose str2 batteries from it, and maintain str4 batteries and 2 lances per side, and the 60cm lance, while doing a special manouver.

I valued FDT higher because, combined with naturally higher turret values, it can render Admech ships incredibly resilient to Ordnance.

@Second post:
Thats a really powerful ability.  My first thought is that it would be the only ship-specific refit, with only the Dictator and Defiant being able to use it, and quite powerful.
On the other hand, I do realize that AC in the IN, and especially the Admech, comes at a very high premium, and so should be powerful.

Edit:  Forgot about torps, duh.  So in this case any ship could take it, but the AC carrying ships benefit more from it.  This requires some thought.

And while I'm at it, if anyone else has some characterful ideas, since 6 refits for a d6 is no longer required, be sure advocate your own thoughts.

[Sigoroth]

@First post:
You think EER are pretty good?  I mean I know of course it has its uses, but its something that only benefits you once your ship is halfway dead, a 'makes you less f***ed when you are f***ed' kind of thing.

I had GTM in above it because it allows for competant firepower while manouvering, something of an IN weakness.  For example, a Lunar would only lose str2 batteries from it, and maintain str4 batteries and 2 lances per side, and the 60cm lance, while doing a special manouver.

Ya, EER is good. Ships get crippled all the time. Reducing the effectiveness of your opponents offence is a great bonus. This is particularly useful when the ship with EER is placed in a squadron with another ship and used as the meatshield. GTM is far too situational and depends upon you being in a bad position in the first place. In which case, since you're pulling yourself out of that situation, the biggest boon comes from the manoeuvre, not the reduced penalty for doing so. If it removed the penalty altogether then it would be a good refit because it would allow you to more aggressively use these manoeuvres. As it is you still only use them when you're boned.

I valued FDT higher because, combined with naturally higher turret values, it can render Admech ships incredibly resilient to Ordnance.

FDT is simply 2 massed turrets to the target and 2 less massed turrets for the ship. Yay. If I want to mass turrets I'll just put some ships in base contact. Shared shield rule isn't much of a downside, and at least both ships will benefit from massing effect. This refit would be much better in a fleet that wasn't so strong against ordnance in the first place.

[lastspartacus]

I didn't realize that it didnt allow you to use your own turrets if used in a fleet defense role?  strange.  maybe that should change.

[Sigoroth]

Maybe it should. It has no effect on bombing runs, so the FDT ship and its target would both count as having normal level of turrets as far as number of attack runs are concerned. All this upgrade does is shift where the dice are rolled. Which isn't too bad if you can guarantee it was on a ship that was likely to hang back like a Mars (which the AM can't get strangely enough ...) or a Dictator refit to essentially function as a Mars (range upgrades and NC swap). But if you get this on one of your line cruisers then you could very well assign the FDT to defend one ship only to find that your opponent then redirects all remaining AC to the FDT ship and hammer its now very weak 1 turret defence.

Just as a side note: if you purchased a Dictator (255 pts) with upgraded range (10 pts) and a NC (20 pts) and happened to roll the AWR refit this ship would be very very close to a Mars class CB with targeting matrix. Both ships would have same hits, speed, armour, shields, AC, broadsides (including range and left shift) and cost and same range and fire arcs on the dorsal weaponry. The Dictator would lose one third of its dorsal firepower (1 lance which counts for 2 hits on a roll of a 6, meaning an average of 0.67 hits instead of 1 hit), but it would have 2 more turrets.

[Silent Requiem]

Well, we don't need to have exactly six refits, and we can tweak each of the refits available. I, for one, would advocate some kind of refit that allows a ship to trade some prow armour/weapon for upgraded sensors (like the emperor) giving +1 leadership.

Anyway, we would simply require at each one of the capital ships to purchase at least one refit at the stated cost. We could even add the standard cruiser refits to the list (nova cannon, upgraded weapons, etc). So there would be about a dozen refits to chose from.

We would have to drop the cost of a Magos Veneratus, though, as his "choose your refit" would no longer be relevant.

It's also worth doing away with the sub-plot table. It is neither fun (wait, you mean some of my ships could randomly explode at the start of the battle?) or fluffy (the IN has plenty of protracted campaigns, but none of them require you to start a one-off game with damage on your ships). Getting rid of that disadvantage would probably balance out the premium that the AM pays for their ships, allowing us to simply cost the refits appropriately.

-Silent Requiem

[horizon]

The refits should be a must though. So a ship must purchase one.

However, upgrades like turret +1, dorsal lance : standard or choice?


Subplot: we never ever use this.