Squadron Rules BFG:R

[RCgothic]

The next eligible ship would become squadron command ship, and command checks could be taken at the most likely lesser leadership of that vessel instead. Any secondary commander attributes would be lost.

The difference is between seeing your commander's ship wink out on the tactical display and moving on to the next in command vs the uncertainty of whether he's alive or not, the difficulty of getting and interpreting signals from a ship wreathed in enemy fire whose comms officers may or may not still be at their posts and whose communications systems may not even be operational anymore, and the risk of court marshall for usurping command.

[Plaxor]

Not a fan of the 'command ship' definition. It adds an unnecessary complication to squadron rules. At least with Sec. Commanders, people have a good reason to target flagships (other than a small boost in VPs).

I think Horizon has it about right as far as rules go. He selected a nearly identical ruleset that I would. Admiral D is on board, although still has yet to swallow Sig's LD system, and I imagine Sig likes what is written.

Pthisis & Tag have quite a different metagame than the rest of us (from what I understand). Which isn't a bad thing, as it allows comparison. Here we trade the LD bonus, (loosely) for allowing individuals to brace for impact.

Like I said, I want a system where one option (lone wolf/squadroning) would not be better than the other, save on a minimal level.

Now our squadron advantages with Horizon's selection (compared to lone wolfing):

Fewer LD checks.
Small boost to LD if taking Sec/prime commanders in squadron.
Combined fire (to ignore BMs)
Combined Waves

Disadvantages:

Need to stay within 15cm of other squadmates
Small loss of firepower when combining.
REQUIREMENT to be on the same SO as squadmates, (save BFI)

Seems pretty close to me, and far more logical than current system.

[afterimagedan]

Love it! So, now the only reason for keeping ships base to base is turret massing?

[Plaxor]

Love it! So, now the only reason for keeping ships base to base is turret massing?

And combining waves of ordnance.

[afterimagedan]

Ah, ok.

[Phthisis]

Its broken.   Ships out of formation can't go on SO.   In a squadron's SO test, some may pass and perform the action while others fail.  Hence the following:

A squadron of 3 ships tests to go on SO.  One has Ld 8, one has Ld 7 and one has Ld 6.  The score rolled is a 7.  Two ships pass, one fails....

They tested to AAF.  The dice rolled for their extra movement will be average 14.  Unless the ship that failed was within 1cm of another ship in the squadron, they are now out of coherency.

They tested to CTNH.  Although they remain in coherency this turn, their minimum movement distance will bring them out of coherency unless the failed ship starts within 7cm of another squadron mate.  They would have to occupy the same point to allow one to move its full distance while the other moved half.  Likely the failed cruiser would fall out of coherency.

They tested to Burn Retros.  Perhaps you get the drift by now.  The ships that passed have to be careful not to break coherency.

Two pass and one fail.  You need these orders to go off, but you'd like other ships to go on orders too.  The one failed ship means no more orders.  Do you reroll when the odds are just as good that all will pass and all will fail?  Is that even chance of failure when youve already partially succeded worth 25pts?

You take a character to even the Ld of the squadron.  His ship can be singled out.  Nova Cannons, long range lances, attack craft.... Smashed bridge?  BFI?  

These squadroning rules won't do.  For us in our metagame, it makes squadroning utterly worthless anyhow.  

This is what happens when youre locked in groupthink and wont  listen to outsiders who see things differently.

[horizon]

Hi Phthsis,

How odd. Taggerung from your group (you as well iirc) went about on how these new rules would make squadroning standard. Stating there is no reason not to squadron. As there are no downsides as you state...  And now you go on about ranting the rules make squadrons worthless.


I.Am.Confused.

[Taggerung]

Horizon...

That has to do with using a weird leadership system in which certain ships can pass SO orders where others cannot (If you had read the post you would have realized that)

[horizon]

So...
it was all part of Sigoroths initial idea. Nothing new.

[Plaxor]

@pthisis,

Commander re-rolls are good for situations like that and such (secondary commander re-rolls matter, woot!)

Interestingly not a problem for Orks.

Also, I will add the clause; if one ship in the squadron fails the SO, all ships in the squadron can choose to have failed the SO.

Or

If though the results of a special order ships in the squadron would be required to fall out of formation, the order is cancelled and considered a failure.

The only real downside to your situation would be that the squadron could not make SO the next turn. The same thing could happen if someone killed the center of a chain of vessels (another comparative disadvantage of squadroning, although not as big).

[Taggerung]

I really have no issues with anything proposed, other than spill over NOT happening on escorts, and there not being a penalty for a ship going on BFI. Whether or not that is BFI affects the whole squad, or the rest of the squad doesn't get to go on SO after a ship goes on BFI.

[Plaxor]

I really have no issues with anything proposed, other than spill over NOT happening on escorts, and there not being a penalty for a ship going on BFI. Whether or not that is BFI affects the whole squad, or the rest of the squad doesn't get to go on SO after a ship goes on BFI.

Escort squadron rules are pretty much being left alone (other than the coherency revisions). Damage will still spill over.

[RCgothic]

I really don't like Sigoroth's proposal for command checks. Phthisis brings up some very good points about some special orders requiring them to go off in a predictable manner to be useful to squadrons. If you know the two braced ships likely won't be able to keep up, you can make that informed decision before putting the entire squadron on AAF. 

But if you don't know which ships are going to pass/fail because you don't know if you'll roll high enough leadership or not, that puts a real spanner in the works.

I had been on the fence, but I don't see myself coming round to the idea now.

[Sigoroth]

Its broken.   Ships out of formation can't go on SO.   In a squadron's SO test, some may pass and perform the action while others fail.  Hence the following:

A squadron of 3 ships tests to go on SO.  One has Ld 8, one has Ld 7 and one has Ld 6.  The score rolled is a 7.  Two ships pass, one fails....

They tested to AAF.  The dice rolled for their extra movement will be average 14.  Unless the ship that failed was within 1cm of another ship in the squadron, they are now out of coherency.

Well not quite, the ship that failed might have been up to 15cm in front of the other ships and still retain coherency after the failure so they don't really need to be that close. However, aside from that, your point is right and this is what I like about using a ships own Ld for the test. Yes, falling out of coherency will likely happen far more often than occurs at present. This is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, as coordinating the squadron should be the hard part (or "downside") of squadrons. This will also lead to people wondering whether they should try for equal Ld squadrons for greater ease of use or a mixed Ld squadron so that low Ld ships don't break the CoC or just squadron as per the admiral's own preference (cruiser type, etc).

Two pass and one fail.  You need these orders to go off, but you'd like other ships to go on orders too.  The one failed ship means no more orders.  Do you reroll when the odds are just as good that all will pass and all will fail?  Is that even chance of failure when youve already partially succeded worth 25pts?

Actually the rules that I proposed would consider the CoC satisfied if at least one ship in the squadron passed its test. This I felt to be an example of delegation. The fleet commander issues orders to his squadron commanders. The responsibility of the squadron's performance passes to its commander. Only if the commander reports catastrophic failure of orders does this muck up the FCs plans and bring things to a grinding halt. If at least one passes then the squadron is expected to perform as ordered and its efficacy is the squadron commander's problem. By following this reasoning we get delegation of responsibility, a somewhat more realistic CoC system and a Ld based upside to forming squadrons that doesn't negate the inherent value of a ships Ld (and thus differentially favour ordnance ships).

You take a character to even the Ld of the squadron.  His ship can be singled out.  Nova Cannons, long range lances, attack craft.... Smashed bridge?  BFI?  

Well we still meet this problem under the current rules. A character embarked ship can be targeted freely by bombers, a-boats and torpedoes. If it's the closest ship in the squadron it has to be the target of all directed fire at the squadron. Even if not the closest but very near one that is it can be targeted by a NC (has to touch the nearest ship). If it isn't in a squadron it can be targeted freely anyway. So smashed bridges and BFI are still factors that such ships have to deal with. In the system I proposed if the commander's ship is braced all that does is prevent his ship from going on SO next turn. This might have knock on effects. For example, if you've got a squadron with leaderships 6, 7 & 9 (commander) then when they attempt to RO the turn after the comm ship has been braced then a roll of an 8 or 9 would result in no ship passing the special order, thus breaking the CoC. If the comm ship wasn't braced then it would have gone on RO and therefore satisfied CoC requirements.

These squadroning rules won't do.  For us in our metagame, it makes squadroning utterly worthless anyhow.  

This is what happens when youre locked in groupthink and wont  listen to outsiders who see things differently.

I'm not sure why these rules would make squadrons utterly useless in your metagame. This hasn't been explained. How would it make squadrons utterly useless for your group? Also, I don't know what you mean by "this is what happens when ...". What is what happens when we get locked into "groupthink"?

Lastly, on the notion of "groupthink", I'm not entirely sold on this being a negative. When you think in a vacuum your brains get spread out all over the place. Wait, no, wrong kind of vacuum. I mean the metaphorical kind. Right, so when you think in a vacuum (metaphorical) then you can miss things easily that occur to others. By coming together in a group you get more points of view and thus a more rounded view of the game. Now, it's possible that a group can fall prey to the same kind of faults that a person alone can. This is less likely to occur but also harder to shift. This is presumably your point.

However, in coming to the established group and putting forward your experience, if the group finds it anathema and, after listening, conclude that your experience has been skewed, then perhaps it is you/your group that is locked into a way of thinking. This is the more likely scenario anyway. I know from our PMs that your group do things rather differently to the majority of players. Perhaps a free flowing interaction between groups would produce a paradigm shift in your group as other tactics are demonstrated. Perhaps a greater insight into your objection will produce such a shift in the BFG community. If you could supply answers to the questions I bolded above maybe we can get somewhere.

[Sigoroth]

I really don't like Sigoroth's proposal for command checks. Phthisis brings up some very good points about some special orders requiring them to go off in a predictable manner to be useful to squadrons. If you know the two braced ships likely won't be able to keep up, you can make that informed decision before putting the entire squadron on AAF. 

But if you don't know which ships are going to pass/fail because you don't know if you'll roll high enough leadership or not, that puts a real spanner in the works.

I had been on the fence, but I don't see myself coming round to the idea now.

Commanders want to avoid falling out of coherency. Fine. Does that mean we should make it so that they can't? Tag said that the coherency rules were a joke of a downside for squadrons. The implication being that it's sooooo easy to maintain coherency and soooo unlikely that you'll even want to move more than 15cm away from each other that it's not a downside at all.

Why is there objection to the removal of a tactical consideration in the form of a nonsensical arbitration but then objection still to the introduction of a tactical consideration which is characterful and sensible?