List of flawed ships

[Plaxor]

Writing about Bombers: (this sucks)

Note that all situations involve a wave of 6 bombers (or a mix of bombers and fighters)

So currently we have this as our best possible outcome of damage against a 5+ armoured vessel: (accounting for turret suppression)

Turrets	Damage
1	4.58
2	3.11
3	2
4	1.5
5	1.166
6	1

Knowing this let's look at possible revisions:

I proposed D3 attack runs and no more turret suppression/- from turrets, this looks like:

Turrets	Damage
1	3.667
2	3.33
3	3
4	2.667
5	2.33
6	2

So a sizeable gain 3+ turrets. Well... not that sizeable, but we'll see.

Let's look at if turrets hit on 3+ and we used this same system:

Turrets	Damage
1	3.555
2	3.11
3	2.66
4	2.22
5	1.77
6	1.33

I think that's the money shot. It fits all the goals that I wanted, making bombers worse against 1 turret items, better against 4,5&6 and about the same to 2,3 Any thoughts?

Lets see how this would hurt torps:

Each turret would kill 1/6 more torp... not such a big deal... but torps already got a little neutered. Hrmmmmm......

How about this; Turrets re-roll hits against waves of bombers:

Turrets	Damage
1	3.5
2	3
3	2.5
4	2
5	1.5
6	1

Interestingly almost identical to current rules..... however this is kinda a weird complication... less than current however.... so no big deal. You could even add in a 'Turret suppression rule' that would prevent the re-rolls. Only one fighter would be necessary to do this.

Of course this does make Bombers slightly more powerful, but I like RCs idea that fighters will remove D3 bombers in a wave unless the wave is escorted by Fighters, in which case it will simply remove the fighter.

Assault boats would not receive the 'turret re-rolls against' unless the ship had the 'fast-tracking turrets' special rule. Which would give ABs their substantial boost. Fluff behind this could say that bombers have to fly around the ship finding the best location to drop their payload. ABs land on the first spot that they see and cut into the hull.

Of course ABs would have to be escorted by fighters to not get murdered by enemy fighters just the same.


Thoughts?

[Plaxor]

Oh, and I'm thinking FDTs for Bakka and Admech change to 'Fast Tracking Turrets' quality. Which allows them to re-roll hits against ordnance.

[RCgothic]

I don't think you figures for D6-T work out.

Taking as an example vs T2:

There's a 1/4 chance of 4 bombers surviving to do 1.67 attacks each
There's a 1/2 chance of 5 bombers surviving etc
There's a 1/4 chance of 6 bombers surviving etc.

That adds up to a total of 8.35 attacks and therefore 2.78 hits total.

This is significantly less than any of the D3 options - If D3 was an easy solution it would have been the first one we spotted!

[Sigoroth]

I don't think you figures for D6-T work out.

Taking as an example vs T2:

There's a 1/4 chance of 4 bombers surviving to do 1.67 attacks each
There's a 1/2 chance of 5 bombers surviving etc
There's a 1/4 chance of 6 bombers surviving etc.

That adds up to a total of 8.35 attacks and therefore 2.78 hits total.

This is significantly less than any of the D3 options - If D3 was an easy solution it would have been the first one we spotted!

Well, with 1 fighter in the wave it comes to an average of 2.97 hits, but yeah, still not 3.11 He made the mistake of simply using an average of 1 turret hit to come up with 3.11 hits, which would be fine if the distribution was symmetrical (both in terms of probabilities, which it is, and consequence, which it isn't).

[Plaxor]

Yeah.... my mistake.

Had another idea though. How about 'pulsar bombers'?

They get 1 attack and if they hit then they may roll a second attack, then third.

Would look like this against T2:

would cause 2.4 hits against 2 turrets in our scenario.

[Plaxor]

Updated rules. Now includes advanced rules (other than Celestial Phenomena)

I need to do some rules revisions, so I'll print it out later and do this, but I would love anyone to do a commentary.

I'll do a foreword later. Then start building the PDF from page one.

[Plaxor]

So another thought on bombers.... Well we know that bombers would ideally need about 1.5 attack runs in order to be properly effective....

Well.... I imagine that you guys will shoot this one down.... but what if every ships launch capacity was increased to 1.5x the amount it has now?

Of course there are some oddities such as the Defiant, which would need to go to two per side, and the Styx which would go to 8 or 10.

Then bombers would simply have 1 attack run each. This would also make assault boats better by basically giving more of them.

[Taggerung]

I personally like how bombers are done prior to the stupid turret suppression rules. It seemed pretty simple. I also like the idea of losing D3 bombers unless you have fighters.

Normal bombers get d6-turrets, remove d3 bombers when attacked by fighters, unless escorted.

Fighta Bommaz, get d3 - turrets, but ignore up to 2 turrets, count as fighters so remove only 1 for each fighter attacking.

Seems pretty solid to me...what do you think?

[Plaxor]

Well the reason TS was added because of the exponential regression that D6-t causes. In fact so much that you will suffer about half as much damage from bombers for each turret you add on. Making the value of turrets exponential, screwing with low-turret entities, and making it pointless to have more than 6 turrets.

Most importantly, it makes a primary weapon useless against certain opponents.

Ideally we can come up with a system that will make bombers do about the same amount of damage on average as they currently do, but will eliminate the need for the extremely complicated TS/TR rules.

[Plaxor]

Although your system is decent.... and I'll likely do that if I can't think of anything else.... ugh....

So far things proposed:

D3: Too powerful
Single re-rolls hits: Decent, although kinda weird
Pulsar: Decent... but weird for the same reasons
Increasing LBs: Would likely have apocalyptic consequences!
Minimum of one attack: Boring, and still weird
Single +1 to hit: Very weird... and potential limiting.
D2: Perfect, but people don't like rolling D2s

Oh then RC's D6-2, but that just makes bombers better against most targets, and you might as well just go with D2's.

[horizon]

My idea:
Bombers : D6 - turret value.
Fighter Bombers : D3 - turret value.

Fighters vs Ordnance: (ditch the World War Naval background to make better rules, ammed Star Wars/Wing Commander!!)
All fighters gain resilience (new Eldar rule to be made...). 4+ to stay in play, per Sigoroth's rule.

Fighters in a bomber wave =

i. If fighters survive turret fire then: turret reduction goes down by 1 per surviving fighter.
or
ii. If fighters survive turret fire then: attack wave gains +1 attack run.

[Plaxor]

I am a fan of TTS. So I do like that idea. Thanks for speaking up Horizon

Maybe Eldar could re-roll their Resilience? or roll it any number of times during an ordnance phase?

[horizon]

Made an edit. I need to do the math for i and ii. Red vs Blue.

[Plaxor]

Oh one thought that came up. How do people feel about pre-measuring? I personally don't like it, feeling that it adds needless complications and reduces a certain skill aspect of the game. Any thoughts?

[horizon]

Pre measuring, played a few battles with it. It slows game play down.

I would not be against disallowing it.