Orks... Flawed Ships

[Plaxor]

heavy guns were rated as the same value. 1.5 points is the value charged for 30cm guns. And yes, the smotherman is very flawed, but it was something to give a basis.

Heavy guns are worth about 1.85 guns. (after comparing the entire chart).

Oh and the % thing was for the torp version of the Kill-KRoozer, which in my listing is a 10 point upgrade.

[Plaxor]

There is a point when you get too much for too little however, and orks should maintain their weaknessess. They should just be reduced.

So with the d3 turret idea.

A wave of 6 bombers against a 4+ armor 1 turret ship will do 6.87 hits
Against a 4+ armor two turret ship they will do 4.16 hits
Against a 4+ armor three turret ship they will do 2.25 hits

Against a 5+ armor two turret ship they will do 2.78 hits.

2 turrets on a kroozer still maintains that the orks are worse at dealing with ordinance, but less so. Instead of increasing turrets to 2, there was an idea of making it d3, which is about the same thing. The d3 would be rolled every time a wave interacted with the vessel.

The ork weakness to bombers is a big deal, but it's really the large thing pushing our numbers down. So a standardization of d3 turrets is a good idea on kroozers.

However the weakness to direct fire is only presented if your enemy plans to ping your cruisers to death. where he only needs half the firepower to take the shields down and do a point of damage compared to an IN cruiser.

[Plaxor]

Interestingly enough a kroozer with d3 turrets is slightly worse in the bomber scenario than 2 turrets. Taking 4.42 hits rather than 4.16. (this is average number of hits taken for each value.)

Anyway, basically now that we know kroozers will pretty much for sure be having d3 turrets. We can calculate the relative vulnerability to ordinance. D3 turrets would put the KK's ordinance resistance at 73% of the Tyrant. Recalculated average 87.3% or 156.6 Pretty decent reason to keep the KK at the current points cost, give it D3 turrets and the upped firepower.

RC, although your profiles are decent, they remove a bit of character from the Orks, with your ship it doesn't make the player want to close. Orks have a disadvantage in that they can't win the swirl around each other fights, and it is doubtful that even your profile would stand a chance at those. What I want to do here is not try to fix the ork weaknesses, simply lessen them, without modifying the profiles too drastically.

Orks do have long range on their prows, but they don't do long range engagements as they are forced to close with their opponent when utilizing the weaponry. Unlike chaos who can turn abeam and still maintain a decent range. This is a disadvantage to be noted.

So what is every weakness of orks, lets go over them;

Speed: The Orks are slow compared to most fleets, especially high armor ones. The orks character methods of defeating enemies are hindered by this (boarding and ramming), as well as their ability to use their special weapon.

Low Firepower: The heavy guns are rarely used as when a ship is that close, usually it means that it was close enough to board, and this is usually chosen instead. The guns firepower are low compared to other ships, although presumably this was to be considered as including the heavy guns. The ships can't compete with IN and Chaos vessels at any reasonable range, this is fluffy on an individual ship by ship basis, but as the ships are cheaper, the orks should have about the same firepower overall.

Weakness to Ordinance: They are twice as vulnerable as IN or chaos to ordinance. This is too much, and forces a certain ork paranoia.

Low shields: This one is only kind of an issue, as most scenarios people don't shoot at a ship to do just 1 or two hits. They usually want to cripple the ship. This does hurt in 1vs1 cruiser scenarios, as likely each cruiser will do no more than 2-3 points on each other. Only taking down the shields on a IN cruiser, but damaging an Ork Kroozer.


Anyways we have solutions: for speed, soopa engines were added as a trade off for firepower (usually what they're worth anyway), for low firepower we increase this. For weakness to ordinance we increase the turrets on the basic kroozers.

[RCgothic]

RC, although your profiles are decent, they remove a bit of character from the Orks, with your ship it doesn't make the player want to close. Orks have a disadvantage in that they can't win the swirl around each other fights, and it is doubtful that even your profile would stand a chance at those. What I want to do here is not try to fix the ork weaknesses, simply lessen them, without modifying the profiles too drastically.

I disagree - Orks are natural brawlers, and I can't imagine anywhere they'd be happier than in the middle of a swirling Melee firing out all sides! Whilst they would want to close and start shooting as quickly as possible (hence 45cm prow gunz), I can't see any reason they'd neglect their broadsides. On escorts, I would completely agree! But Kroozas aren't fast or manouevrable enough to act like Supa-Dauntlesses. Yes, I can see mostly-prow weaponry on escorts or even lite-kroozas, but not on the proper kroozas.

I also don't see how my profiles would discourage the Ork Player from closing - they have 45cm on the prow to encourage them to point that at the enemy, and the broadsides are shorter range on average than a Dominator or Avenger - the archetypical line-breaking ships.

What the profiles do do is:

Restore some of the AC Defence balance, D3 Av4+ Being 30% more vulnerable than T2 AV5+, compared to the nearly 90% more vulnerable it was before.
Gives the Orks some teeth back after the first pass - their stronger side broadsides give them something to do whilst they turn round.
Rebalances the KK vs the Terror Ship - the KK is now much stronger in a Melee situation.
Gives greater tactical options - there are now occasions when it makes more sense to shoot than to automatically ram and board.

[Plaxor]

Rc, what you don't understand about heavy guns is that the Ork player will very rarely fire them. As well compared to a wb at the same range a single battery of heavy guns will hit 72.7% of the time (considering the lack of column shift), so with the guns being able to engage enemies at half the range X1/2, but doing twice the damage X2 you can assume that a heavy gun is worth about 3/4 the value of 30cm range.

Heavy guns on the side in particular are very rarely used, in that game I did against ncs I used them 3 times.

So I did a little calculation as to how much each weapon is worth at each range. If 30cm guns can engage enemies at 2/3 the range then 66%, but the extra 15cm range on 45cm guns isn't as valuable, as the weapon will do less damage at that range. So this actually comes out to be 74% (probably still a bit low, but close enough), and 60cm guns aren't affected by this column shift difference so a 45cm gun is worth about 75% of a 60cm gun.

This was mainly in preparation for my 'web' calculations, comparing the KK to an assortment of other races ships similarly how I did for the tyrant. The idea is to make a ship that costs 150-155.

The fact is that orks can't win a swirl of death fight, they shouldn't be able to either, but they shouldn't feel like it's an auto loss. With fixing the side weaponry to be reasonable on kroozers it will make an ork player not want to take escorts, which they don't do much of already.

Although I would like to keep the hulls the same, the thought I have is that there has to be something more than, oh you get a cheaper version easier to throw away to make the KK more desirable. Most people look at the KK/TS and think, well the TS is a KK with side weapons I'll actually use!

I did increase the side weaponry on the KK, as it needed it desperately, it's usually in the thick of the fight with nothing to fire. There was also the desire for more non-random stat.

[Plaxor]

Comparing a KK to a murder class cruiser:

So to deal with the arc theory; there will be primary then secondary and tertiary arcs.

For orks this will be first prow, then 1 side and the other, for IN/chaos, 1side than the other, than prow. for direct fire weapons.

So firepower in the primary arc vs murder class cruiser: 117%
Secondary arc   62.3%
Tertiary arc 48% (complex amalgam converting all weapons to 60cm, and lances equal 3.5wbs after personal calculation.)
Speed factor: 80%
WBs needed to cause 1 internal: 75.3%
WBs needed to destroy outright: 124%
Survive vs ordinance: 73%

So a KK should be worth about 82.8% of a murder or 140 points... hmmm.... this is probably due to my conversion factor valuing shorter ranged wbs at slightly less than they are actually worth.

If you re-do it with total weaponry then the value for 'weapons' comes out to 81%, slightly higher than the 'arc' average of 76%, and if we combine all the survival factors into one, we have a value of 90%, averaging at 86% for the two combined, making it 146 points.

Clearly chaos wins at this game.

[Plaxor]

So more thoughts on fleet lists:

Limitations suck, and I don't think anyone would agree to escort/BB requirement. So instead I have these revisions in mind:

The pirate fleet will have the Kroolboy incorporated, as it is the only BB known for being a pirate vessel. Besides, it makes a good 'large' kroozer. Hammers could be included as well.

Both fleets will have access to the special characters, but the pirate fleet must include 1 freeboota kapitan as it's leader if it's above the 750 minimum. All other characters will be 0-1, Waagh fleets must include 1 warboss as their leader above 750, but all other characters are 0-1.

Roks/hulks: Pirates may take roks. Does anyone think roks/hulks need revision? I think it's weird that orks can use roks in an attacking fleet as they are defenses and not warp-capable. However it does say that orks build them at a prodigious rate, and any system with orks in it would quickly have tons of roks.

Campaigns: It says that pirates can take a hulk for their pirate base, but it seems like they would have a big rok. I remember seeing in the FAQ that orks could take a Blackstone Fortress (de-activated of course), and just 'count as' a big rok pirate base, with the launch bays carrying appropriate ordinance.

[Sigoroth]

heavy guns were rated as the same value. 1.5 points is the value charged for 30cm guns. And yes, the smotherman is very flawed, but it was something to give a basis.

Heavy guns are worth about 1.85 guns. (after comparing the entire chart).

Oh and the % thing was for the torp version of the Kill-KRoozer, which in my listing is a 10 point upgrade.

Wait, are you talking 30cm HG?

[horizon]

I hope not.

[Plaxor]

No, I was just equating a heavy guns value compared to 30 cm guns

Basically heavy guns can attack a target 1/2 the distance away as 30cm guns, but they do 2x the damage so this cancels out. However they will get 72.7% the dice to hit as standard guns at 15cm, so ultimately 1 heavy gun=.73 guns at 30cm.

Good god... 30cm heavy guns would be absurd.

I decided to put some math behind the value of heavy guns that wasn't a 'guess'

@RC, orks are very good in 'melee' if they can stay within 15cm of an enemy they will effectively have 11.34 guns, outgunning most IN ships. This is how GW saw the orks, that they can only outgun at close range, and to show this the special heavy guns were added.

The point is to not make them better in this scenario as they don't need it, they need to be better from a slightly longer range more. With 6 heavy guns on the side this would go up to 14.3 eq firepower at close range, enough that it's a slap to the face of any IN/Chaos ship, especially considering they cost about 20% less than them.

The orks also have two hit's that they do. The first, being the initial close range hit of the prow guns, and then the second (if a good player sets it up right) when the pass the vessels their next turn and are able to turn and fire with their side guns and heavy guns.

[Plaxor]

Updated my first post to reflect recent thoughts. Would like some comments on the other ships/upgrades.

Warbosses/equivalents, should there be a biggest rule like in chaos? It makes about as much sense for orks as it does chaos.

As a note, I'm working with people on the-waagh as well, and they really pushed free d3 turrets.

[Sigoroth]

No, I was just equating a heavy guns value compared to 30 cm guns

Well at 15cm 1 HG is worth 1.25 WB. At 30cm range 1 HG is worth 0 WB. So if we say that 1 15 HG is worth 0.75 30cm WB then we're still rounding up. Heavy gunz are worth less than their weight of 30cm WBs.

[Plaxor]

Well at 15cm 1 HG is worth 1.25 WB. At 30cm range 1 HG is worth 0 WB. So if we say that 1 15 HG is worth 0.75 30cm WB then we're still rounding up. Heavy gunz are worth less than their weight of 30cm WBs.

You're right, and they are calculated at 72.7. 1 Hg is actually worth about 1.45 guns at 15cm, but at 30 this is zero, so average 72.7. This might be a bit high, but it's close enough. According to your assumption a heavy gun is worth 2/3 of a 30cm gun.

Heavy guns aren't that bad. They're bad certainly, but I don't think that bad. Hence my idea of reducing the prow ones so they don't skew the numbers too bad, and increase the main firepower. HG are just supposed to show that Orks are extra good at shooting at close range.

I know you want cheaper kroozers, but Orks already have the cheapest ones. I can buy 5 kroozers for every 4 IN cruisers, and if the IN buys a battleship, then the Orks can get a battleship and 6 kroozers for that much.

The orks ideally shouldn't outnumber their opponents by more than 1/3 their fleet, and reducing costs too much would make quite skewed ships. Better to toughen them up a bit, increase their firepower, and maybe reduce by a few points.

With escorts at their reduced cost of 30 for savages and onslaughts, the In will be outnumbered by 20% in just escorts.

Now there is the larger ship idea that you put forth in your 'upper limits' thread, and I said I'd rather increase the hits on the BBs/BC by 2. How would everyone feel about this? Although it could be detrimental to keeping the costs low for ork vessels.

[Sigoroth]

Well at 15cm 1 HG is worth 1.25 WB. At 30cm range 1 HG is worth 0 WB. So if we say that 1 15 HG is worth 0.75 30cm WB then we're still rounding up. Heavy gunz are worth less than their weight of 30cm WBs.

You're right, and they are calculated at 72.7. 1 Hg is actually worth about 1.45 guns at 15cm, but at 30 this is zero, so average 72.7. This might be a bit high, but it's close enough. According to your assumption a heavy gun is worth 2/3 of a 30cm gun.

How do you come up with 1.45? Best case scenario, closing cap ship, no BM. The BM placed by HG causes a shift to the WBs, reducing fire. Replacing HG with WBs would not cause this shift. So what those 4 HG contribute could be equalled by replacing it with 5 WBs. This makes HG worth 1.25 times as much as equivalent WB strength at 15cm. The further right on the table you go (ie, less than ideal circumstances) the worse the comparison.

As for interference this should remain. Both for flavour, and so as to not violate a core mechanic of the game (non-simultaneity of different weapon systems/squadrons/markers). This simply leaves the cases where a BM has already been placed. Let's look at a closing cap ship, 15cm range. 4 HG = 2 dice = 4WB dice = 5WBe (5WB vs closing cap ship at close range with BM = 4d6). So we get roughly the same anyway (there are situations and combinations where this can fluctuate a little). It might perhaps be closer to say that 4HG = 5.5 WB, so 1 HG = 1.375 WB. So if we average this value with the 1.25 we get when there is no previous BM we get 1 HG = 1.3125 WB. Average this with its value at 30cm (ie, halve it) and we get its overall value against 1 30cm WB (0.65625). So saying 1 HG is worth 0.75 WBs at 30cm is already overstating its value. We should never consider it to be even worth its weight in WBs when calculating costs from a formula.

I know you want cheaper kroozers, but Orks already have the cheapest ones. I can buy 5 kroozers for every 4 IN cruisers, and if the IN buys a battleship, then the Orks can get a battleship and 6 kroozers for that much.

The orks ideally shouldn't outnumber their opponents by more than 1/3 their fleet, and reducing costs too much would make quite skewed ships. Better to toughen them up a bit, increase their firepower, and maybe reduce by a few points.

I'm all for the Orks becoming more shooty. I just think this is easier achieved through more ships, since this fixes a lot of their other problems too. I'm not in favour of 1d3 turrets by the way. I think Ork ships should retain their current weaknesses.

I don't know why you feel that Orks shouldn't so heavily outnumber their opponents though. Orks have always had a horde mentality and feel. In 40k they usually double a quality type opponent (Eldar, Necron, SMs, etc) and have around 33-50% on some others. I don't see why they shouldn't remain that way here.

With escorts at their reduced cost of 30 for savages and onslaughts, the In will be outnumbered by 20% in just escorts.

Now there is the larger ship idea that you put forth in your 'upper limits' thread, and I said I'd rather increase the hits on the BBs/BC by 2. How would everyone feel about this? Although it could be detrimental to keeping the costs low for ork vessels.

I don't see the models bearing out this increase. However, I think that all official Ork models (cap ships at least) are too small and ... well, odd looking. If I ever did make an Ork fleet it would be kit-bashed. So I don't mind this disparity.

As for cost, well that can be kept quite low if we focus more on heavy gunz rather than longer ranged weaponry. Basically we would then have a cheap fleet with mediocre to above average speed (inefficient but automatic AAF), easy to chip away at but with good hits, and short range guns. So the opponent really wants to stop them from getting in. They'd be much like Reavers from Firefly (in fact, those ships would look much better for the Orks).

[Plaxor]

How do you come up with 1.45? Best case scenario, closing cap ship, no BM. The BM placed by HG causes a shift to the WBs, reducing fire. Replacing HG with WBs would not cause this shift. So what those 4 HG contribute could be equalled by replacing it with 5 WBs. This makes HG worth 1.25 times as much as equivalent WB strength at 15cm. The further right on the table you go (ie, less than ideal circumstances) the worse the comparison.

How I did it was I took a random number of dice to hit from the centerish of the firepower table. In this case it was three.
I took every possible aspect that a ship could be in at 15cm, so closing, abeam, moving away. Then we can find the firepower needed to get to 3 dice for each possible scenario. This includes the shift for BMs So two columns will be incorporated.

WBs:
Closing cap ship: 3fp, 4fp with bm
Moving away cap ship: 4fp, 5fp with bm
Abeam cap ship: 5fp, 8 with bm

Guns:
Closing: 4fp, 5fp
Moving away: 5fp, 8fp
Abeam: 8fp, 13fp

Now the averages are taken of all scenarios, giving the wbs about 4.83 firepower to get 3 dice average. For the heavy guns: 7.166 dividing them we get a percentage: 67.3%, slightly different than my assumption before, but I did it more complex.

So in this math, a heavy gun is worth 2/3 of a 30cm gun

As for interference this should remain. Both for flavour, and so as to not violate a core mechanic of the game (non-simultaneity of different weapon systems/squadrons/markers). This simply leaves the cases where a BM has already been placed. Let's look at a closing cap ship, 15cm range. 4 HG = 2 dice = 4WB dice = 5WBe (5WB vs closing cap ship at close range with BM = 4d6). So we get roughly the same anyway (there are situations and combinations where this can fluctuate a little). It might perhaps be closer to say that 4HG = 5.5 WB, so 1 HG = 1.375 WB. So if we average this value with the 1.25 we get when there is no previous BM we get 1 HG = 1.3125 WB. Average this with its value at 30cm (ie, halve it) and we get its overall value against 1 30cm WB (0.65625). So saying 1 HG is worth 0.75 WBs at 30cm is already overstating its value. We should never consider it to be even worth its weight in WBs when calculating costs from a formula.

I agree, the interference should remain. It is for flavor. All assumptions are on the interference remaining. Your math here is about the same as mine, .65 vs .67, so we can assume 2/3?

I'm all for the Orks becoming more shooty. I just think this is easier achieved through more ships, since this fixes a lot of their other problems too. I'm not in favour of 1d3 turrets by the way. I think Ork ships should retain their current weaknesses.

The D3 turrets leaves the ork weakness in tact, it just reduces the number of hits a kroozer takes from bombers. The numbers before indicated that the orks would take 6.87 hits from a wave of 6 bombers compared to the IN/Chaos value of 2.78, this is almost 2.5 times the number of hits! way too much for a weakness. By making the turrets d3 the number of hits they'll take from the same wave averages at 4.42, only 1.6 times the amount as IN/Chaos cruisers. This preserves the weakness, but keeps it from being absurd. Besides having a weakness so large like that skews the orks to losing drastically against LB heavy fleets, but would force balance to make them too strong against low launch bay fleets. This is for the sake of consistency against opponents, and to make the TS not in such high demand.

Also as a note, if one were to make a ship 2.5x as vulnerable to direct fire compared to a IN ship it would have armor 3! Way too far I say. Comparably making it 1.5x as vulnerable is the equivalent of having armor 4 compared to IN ships/direct fire.

I don't know why you feel that Orks shouldn't so heavily outnumber their opponents though. Orks have always had a horde mentality and feel. In 40k they usually double a quality type opponent (Eldar, Necron, SMs, etc) and have around 33-50% on some others. I don't see why they shouldn't remain that way here.

True. However they already outnumber Necrons 2:1 on a straight class ratio, and the Eldar with proposed changes they could outnumber their escorts 2:1. Space marines are a bit different as they have CLs.

I don't see the models bearing out this increase. However, I think that all official Ork models (cap ships at least) are too small and ... well, odd looking. If I ever did make an Ork fleet it would be kit-bashed. So I don't mind this disparity.

Yes, the orks are rather small for 10 hits. However their BBS are more than twice the size, and weigh more than an imperial BB in pewter. So it is justifiable.

As for cost, well that can be kept quite low if we focus more on heavy gunz rather than longer ranged weaponry. Basically we would then have a cheap fleet with mediocre to above average speed (inefficient but automatic AAF), easy to chip away at but with good hits, and short range guns. So the opponent really wants to stop them from getting in. They'd be much like Reavers from Firefly (in fact, those ships would look much better for the Orks).

Lol, come on, you don't like the spacefish look? I think it's funny, and a somewhat clever idea for a spaceship. I however don't want to focus on heavy guns. They need long (well medium?) range weaponry to better compete with the armada races/eldar. So it's my thought to leave them pretty much alone and just do our firepower additions to ranged attacks.