Critical Hits

[Thinking Stone]

Hello again,
I was wondering if other people out there have thought about what critical hits are and what they represent? I am of the opinion that hit points represent (mostly) the crew and critical systems represent the actual ship components. This idea is borne out in the original rules (i.e. the ones currently on the Games Workshop website), that spaceships in BFG are giant constructions built to withstand the dangers of space but crewed by very vulnerable personnel. As such, although I like the current 'random' critical hits system, I have often wished for some way to cause specific critical hits. For example, in space battle computer games I have played, I often disable the engines of a target enemy so that I can bring my slow capital ships to bear on them (for the discriminating reader: is this the correct bear? Need more sleep and lunch...). Similarly, if they have shield-bypassing torpedo systems attacking my home station and specifically targetting my valuable hangars and shield generators, I target the torpedo systems. This 'specific targetting' system allows the destruction of ships to occur much more quickly if my fleet lacks overwhelming force: particularly if I can get a bomber squadron to disable the shield generator or engines of a large ship, allowing me to use perhaps poorer fleets to destroy the superior enemy. This seems to be an arena that Eldar should excel in, using superior attack craft to isolate ships in the enemy battle line and make them more vulnerable to the blistering Eldar fusillade (while protecting the in-turn vulnerable Eldar ships from the enemy's main fleet guns...).

Anyway, these are my initial thoughts. Any others?

[Trickstick]

Well I think that it would be pretty hard to aim at anything in particular with ship to ship fire. At the ranges we are tallkingabout, it is usually a case of simply trying to hit the ship. However, I could see bombers being able to target systems, although it could be that they take any chance to hit that they can when they are being shot at by turrets.

P.S. Bring to bear is correct.

[Thinking Stone]

Hello Trickstick,
Thank you for your excellent grammar!
I agree with the range issue, and that weapons batteries are, I think, the epitome of such firepower.

I think that lances might plausibly be capable of targetting specific systems as (according to the background, anyway) they use a combination of extremely powerful weaponry as well as greater accuracy in targetting systems. Of course, the attacking ship is probably targetting energy sources (although whether or not targetting systems in the 41st millenium are ridiculously more capable than all the computers we have currently...) so they would primarily be 'seeing' the engines, warp drive systems and the communications array; perhaps weapons fire and attack craft launch bays would also be detected. This might allow the more missile based WB systems to lock on to energy sources when they get closer to the enemy ships, much in the same way as with torpedoes. An interesting idea, since it contradicts the accurate lance idea (of course, the WB must still be fired very close to the ship, and so would be generally inaccurate when compared with lances, as they are now—they would just be better at hitting critical systems).

If we take the safe option and say that ship-to-ship weapons cannot target specific components, it does seem likely that bombers and torpedoes target specific systems regardless of turret fire (since a typical cruiser is so large, the bombers would already have a target chosen before going on their attack run, and torpedoes could theoretically have such info programmed in). Of course, this would change the role of bombers and torpedoes from ship destroyers to ship cripplers, forcing a fleet to use its guns to destroy damaged ships.

What do you think of this in terms of gameplay? Would it be beneficial?

[RCgothic]

I like the idea of inverting the hit/critical mechanics, with the primary system of damage being via impairment of system functions.

[fracas]

I like the idea of inverting the hit/critical mechanics, with the primary system of damage being via impairment of system functions.

like hit and runs?

[Thinking Stone]

RCgothic,
I think that this is a very interesting idea. It would change the gameplay so that, rather than focusing on wearing down enemy ships, you focused on causing the critical systems damage and hit-point damage (while remaining the characteristic that defined whether your ship is 'alive' or not) was a secondary thing.

So you fire your guns at the enemy ship to take out the ship (e.g. destroy its guns, engines etc. ) but a ship is only 'destroyed' (i.e. taken out of the battle and hulked) when its crew is dead/hit points are taken to zero. This means that hulks could still be interesting features on the battlefield if you wanted to take or rescue crew members. Disengaging would also be a more difficult decision since sometimes you would be tempted to disengage but also tempted to stay behind and protect damaged ships with crew remaining. It would make campaigns a bit more sensible too, in terms of surviving ships. I envisage crippling still occurring with hit points, and critical damage just having that effect through damage.

On the other hand, I think that having close range attacks (bombers, perhaps torpedoes) being able to target key systems is a cool idea. This seems like a very Eldar-ish thing to do, with fast ships that release bombers to cause critical damage and then capitalise on the weakened enemy. Of course, assault boats do this to some degree already but they cannot cause specific damage.

It would also be interesting if weapons batteries could cause specific critical damage due to some weapons systems (e.g. missile batteries) locking on to critical systems when in close proximity...

[RCgothic]

Sort of what I was thinking, yes.

You'd fire at a ship system, and if you hit it that system would be degraded. Say, WBs, Torpedoes and LBs would lose a point of strength, lances would gain a +1 modifier to their dice rolls, thrusters would add 5cm to your turn distance, main engines lose 5cm of speed, with multiple damage to a system being cumulative.

The crew would repair this damage as they struggle to keep the ship in the fight.

'Critical Hits' could cause permanent systems damage, armour degradation, crew deaths, and (in extreme cases) loss of the ship itself.

In general, a ship would become 'crippled' by losing its ability to stay in the fight, rather than by being destroyed outright or losing an arbitrary number of hitpoints. As you mentioned, this makes more sense from a 'these ships are incredibly old and have survived innumerable battles' vibe.

[Thinking Stone]

Hey RCgothic,
Good ideas. For WBs, these could suffer an additional column shift? I think this system of damage would work really well with BFG and represents the battle better than the current system. So, how would you target certain systems? It might be easiest to have a system where each critical system has a certain damage capacity with certain, standardised (for simplicity) effects. Maybe something like (with real ships for context):

Lunar targets Chaos Murder's engines and scores 3 hits with WBs and 1 with lances. Thus, engines (Chaos engines have damage cap 4) have suffered crippling damage and no longer function. Murder must repair damage or move forwards at 5 cm per turn, no turning. Lunar also causes a critical hit and the resulting hull breach kills half of the crew (8 crew hits to 4 crew hits). The Chaos player can elect to keep an immobile weapons platform in play or to disengage and save the vulnerable hull.

I think that the new 'critical hits' might need to be a bit more common with these changes, and damaging of ship components would need to be pretty streamlined to allow easy remembring of damage ("Oh, how many engine hits have I had? So many!" says the concerned player). Do you think that this is a good way of targeting the ship systems? Or i it too easy? Or should there be a 'hull' system that is easiest to target (roughly equivalent to current hits but causing damage to crew hits and other systems instead? Is this along the lines of your thinking?

[Lex]

## popping up from stealthmode to fire a line ##

guys, this is more or less the mechanism of Man o War, 

[horizon]

Remember that in BFG 1cm = 1000km.

So, even if a Lunar is 5km long, it is pretty tricky to target specific parts on a ship at the following distances:

60cm - 60000km
45cm - 45000km
30cm - 30000km
15cm - 15000km

plus we are talking fast moving targets in most cases.

No, I do not think targetting specific areas is possible in BFG.

Attack Craft is another story.

[Lex]

all things are relative ..... 

it would possibly (or even probably) be no worse then making a broadside pass with a cutter on high seas with irreatic winds and aiming for the opponents masts/sail with chainshot.......

In BFG you could distinguish the areas and adjust accoordingly  , aiming to shoot at the supperstructure (where there are more vulnerable parts, and thus a greater chance for system issues) will be harder then shooting for the mass of the target, and shooting at propulsionsystems would be nearly impossible from behind

From my (limited)  knowledge of BGF, this could translate in a shift for WB and a to hit deduction for lances aiming at the superstructure, but rolling damage against a lower armourrating compared to shooting at the hull ? and maybe adjusting the crititacal results ??

[Thinking Stone]

Hello everyone,
It might be possible in the 41st millenium to perform such targetting but the great speed of ships is a good point. In fact, the great velocities involved could provide justification to the limited speeds of BFG: since ships are travelling at near-light speeds, their relativistic inertia makes it difficult to change directions. So, ships must limit their speeds to be able to turn and shoot properly. This makes the physics much more believable as well as providing interesting gameplay!   


At least, though, I am very interested in bombers being able to damage certain components by targetting them. Does anyone have ideas about that? If Assault boats could roll 2D6 and choose the result, that would be good too. I know that Dark Eldar have some key system-damaging weapons (e.g. leech torpedoes).

Lex, something like that (perhaps like the body part targetting system in Inquisitor) sounds quite good. It might make the critical system targeting less unreasonable since you are only targeting a general area (which would be the case anyway since you would be probably targeting emissions from key systems anyway). Could you tell me a bit about the Man-o'-War system, please? I am unfamiliar with it.

horizon, do you have estimates for the distances in the atmosphere (= low orbit table) in BFG?

Finally, gameplay-wise (if we assume that targetting computers are ridiculously awesome in the 41st millenium and would beat anyone at Chess and Go and that spaceship components emit enough radiation for weapons to target them from those distances) would the critcal hits system idea work?

[horizon]

If it works gameplay wise with high end targetting computers? Depens on how big the result table will be. It will add bookkeeping (how many sections) and all.

No idea on low orbit. But I could see it at 1cm = 10km?