Streamlining BFG

[horizon]

Basically we differ in two respects.  I'm assuming that a helmsman will obey a captain's order without question while you believe that 3 in ten times the helmsman will ignore him. 

A Helmsman obeying a captain? Why do you think the IN has trigger happy Commissars running around on ships? A crew underway for several months in deep space isn't a happy Star Trek Bunch in the 40k universe.

I think a good read to get a view on 40k naval live would be the Rogue Trader RPG book and the supplement Koronus Expanse.

The variant Ld's is really a good thing to the game. Realistic too.


BFG is a space opera game by the way. Big ships, big explosions. Like Star Wars.

MMS was tested through theory first and then through playing games. It worked out in the end.

[Phthisis]

@ Vaaish

If the torpedoes are already on the way and magically angle to hit a target that's not along their flight line, then yes, that is cheating and you should call the player on it. If torpedoes have just been placed on the base to note they have been launched as per the rules it's not cheating or rule lawyering to move them toward a better target so long as those torpedoes stay within their firing arc and move in a straight line in the ordnance phase. I twas ruled a while back that placing the marker on the base in the shooting phase was just a placeholder to note that the ordnance had been fired. It doesn't become active until the ordnance phase.

Where was this done?  I hope it isn't true because it's a massive boost to the power and strategic importance of ordnance.  Now a force using combined ordnance can select targets, brace them and move on, or make them shoot turrets with a single bomber squadron and swamp them with torpedoes. 

Incidentally, have you run numbers for what firing turrets at every ordnance contact would do to the game?  Three Dictators hitting a 5+ armor shipwith everything they had would average only one less point of damage done if turrets could shoot at all 3 bomber waves and all 3 torpedo salvos.  So, how effective is this tactic really (assuming you can't aim your torpedoes AFTER you shoot them)?  I definitely don't see this as a game breaking nerf.  Your Tau fleet should do just fine.

I gave you that in my first post. Skeptical, yes, but valid critical analysis of your ideas. I told you to scrap the rules because they are ill conceived and don't enhance the tactical aspects of the game. I gave you alternatives with the H&R rolls because it was the only salvageable idea there.

I hope you're not offended, but I'm not going to go to my gaming group and tell them that the project is going into the round-file because Vaash doesn't like it.  I'm not scrapping it based on your advice. 
Your first post had some skeptical analysis.  But I've addressed it.  The LD table isn't the complex monstrosity you claimed it had to be.  My SO system isn't the same as torching SO all together.  You haven't swayed me that Ld tests are a good representation of the chain of command.  Your H&R idea is good and I've adopted it.  Your criticism of our boarding rules wasn't borne out by play testing.

I don't want to argue about our argument any more.  Let's talk about the proposed rule set.

@Thinking Stone
You're a breath of fresh air!  I'm not even sure I want to get you to agree with me because I've never been disagreed with so politely on this forum!  No need to apologize.  The more in-depth you go, the better.

I am curious about your dismissal of the similarities between navigational SOs and navigation through treacherous space, too. They both rely upon the leadership of the ship in question representing the manoeuvring capabilities of the crew, the only difference being that one can use a re-roll and the other can't. I suggest that they might be more similar in difficulty than not.

Awesome question. I see the orders as 3 seperate categories.
The first category are common orders.  These are things like turn left, turn right, shoot at the closest enemy ship, put out that fire... All of the things that your ships do in BFG automatically. 
The second category are difficult orders.  These are situations that test the discipline and coordination of the crew as a whole like steering the ship into a ramming trajectory, piloting a path through an asteroid field, bring an at ease crew to battle readiness, ignoring immediate threats in order to target a specific ship or one in the distance, or shutting down systems so that the ship can drift off unnoticed.  The bigger the ship, the larger the crew, the harder to pull it off.  Leadership tests are good representations of the crew's ability to pull together and successfully perform a task.
The third category are emergency orders or Special Orders.  These are orders given by the fleet commander to coordinate the fleet.  They are exaggerations of things the crew is trained to do and they are trained to perform them with the same precision.  Every Special Order is an exaggeration of something the ship can do without a Ld test.  However, carrying out these orders have drawbacks to the fighting capability of the ship, and if every captain were authorized to use them at will it would destroy the order of battle and make coordinating a fleet impossible.  Therefore, captains and crews are capable of performing them anytime they are called upon to do so, but will not do so unless they are ordered to. 
Captains issue orders and difficult orders.  Fleet commanders issue Special Orders in order to coordinate fleet-wide strategy.
The difference between my paradigm and that of those who disagree with me is that they believe that turning left is effortless but turning *more* left requires heroic effort, while I think that the special order is required because they normally refrain from performing it because it's unnecessary and has drawbacks.  It's just like a modern naval vessel.  A battleship can pull off a 90* turn with the same ease it does a 45* turn, but why push it when it's not necessary?  If they need to turn fast they do so to the detriment of their shooting ability, but nobody's getting any medals for 'heroically' turning a hard left.  It's expected that the crew can do it whenever it's required.

Although I now understand your system for boarding (whew! I was worried by the Cobras of death!) I prefer the current system which simulates a similar kind of thing but doesn't require the large number of dice.

Here's an example from the current boarding system:
A single Iconoclast destroyer wants to board an Emperor BB with full health.  The Emperor had RO during his opponent's previous turn.  The Iconoclast's player shoots a couple of lances off Murders at the Emperor and puts a single blast marker in contact with it by knocking down a shield.
The Iconoclast's boarding value, since it's attacking, is only 1.  The Emperor's boarding value is 12 hits + 5 turrets, so 17.
So, let's figure out the modifiers.  The Emperor is 4 or more times the boarding value of the Iconoclast, so it gets +4. 
The Iconoclast is a Chaos vessel, so it gets +1.  The Emperor had RO during it's turn, so the Iconoclast gets another +1.  Also, the Emperor has a single blast marker in contact due to losing a shield to lance fire, so the Iconoclast gets another +1.
The Emperor gets +4, the lone Iconoclast gets +3.  Then they roll dice.  The Emperor rolls a 1, the Iconoclast rolls a 6.  The Iconoclast scores a 9 and beats the Emperor's 5.  The lone Iconoclast escort inflicts 4 points of damage on the Emperor battleship.  As the Iconoclast 'stormed' the Emperor on the Result Table, the Emperor takes a critical hit on a 2+ while the Iconoclast only gets one on a 6+.
The Iconoclast player COULD board with the whole squadron, but the dice roll is exactly the same unless there are 6 Iconoclasts boarding simultaneously. And, if only 1 escort is in b2b with the Emperor and the Emperor scores multiple hits against the lone Iconoclast, only the one Iconoclast is lost.

About Engine Explosions: I do think that it is reasonable that such large ships have titanic explosions regarding their destruction: afterall, as hulks the ship skeleton survives pretty much intact except for criticals, allowing their 'rehabilitation'. Out of curiousity (again, not trying to be offensive) have you tried specific strategies to limit drive explosion damage (e.g. not putting ships so close together)? I would be interested in seeing what effect that has on your fleets' performances overall. I agree that it should be against armour, though (except maybe Warp Implosion, as this is a very armour-ripping type of thing and it only occurs 1 in 36 times). Also, I presume you have been playing that you are only in range of the explosion if your ship's stem is in range? Of course, this would make a great difference....

We have been playing it right.  I agree with the titanic explosions too.  It's cool and cinematic and a ship with a huge fusion reactor can potentially die a violent death.  I question the Warp Drive Implosion fluff wise because they are so difficult to activate normally (requiring a navigator to coax the transition) but they can go off automatically when damaged?  Plus the amount of damage that can be done by a WDI is very high.
We measure blast radius from stem to stem.  3d6 blast radius averages 10-11cm.  Maximum squadron distance is 15cm.  Generally if you're squadroning cap ships you can't place them exactly 15cm apart because you can lose coherency through maneuvering or going on SO.  If you're squadroning, it's not hard for a squadron mate to be in the blast radius.

Lots of fleets have to close to be effective.  Burning or drifting hulks move in a straight line an average of 14cm per turn.  That's not too much slower than the living ships are moving.  It's pretty common for ships that die on the way in to drift into an engagement.  One ship blows up and hits a hulk, then the hulk blows up as well.  We had a chain explosion of 4 ships in one game, 2 of which were crippled cruisers that were finished off by the previous explosion.

Players on this forum tend to avoid squadroning.  They also turn their broadsides at one another despite the fact that  their ships are a lot deadlier head-on.  I'm not surprised they don't have the same experience, because they play in what we consider to be a very strange way. 

For me, at least with moderately to small sized games, a lot of the fun in BFG is having characterful ships and escort squadrons having a major influence in a battle themselves. For example:
'The Sareveth has a crack crew of Ld 9, having fought in numerous campaigns over the Segmentum. In their last fleet engagement, they used their experties with lances and torpedo strikes to cripple the enemy battleship, Monstrous (renowned for destroying escort squadrons with long range lances), allowing the cruisers Isto and Porsorous to hulk the battleship before it could disengage. The Sacraficial, however, with its inexperienced crew (Ld 6), was plagued by bad luck and poor commands and was crippled by a squadron of Cobras which had no torpedoes remaining. Fortunately, it was saved by the heroic actions of the Vistor Sword Frigate squadron, despite their lack of experience in large fleet engagements (Ld 6 Sword squadron).'

I love campaign play for that very reason.  Each ship and it's crew has a different story. 
But in one-off games you roll a new crew for every ship every game.  So your Sareveth has a crack crew in campaign, but if you roll a 1 for it at the beginning of a one-off game, it's crewed by a bunch of slack jawed troglodytes who don't know stem from stern.   
I don't see any reason why ships shouldn't have their Ld raised or lowered by the events in a campaign as a campaign naturally has a lot more roleplay involved.  But in one-off games, I don't see a reason for randomly generated leadership at any level as there's really no backstory. 

@Horizon

A Helmsman obeying a captain? Why do you think the IN has trigger happy Commissars running around on ships? A crew underway for several months in deep space isn't a happy Star Trek Bunch in the 40k universe.

Lol!  I can just see the Helmsmen turning to the captain and the officer of the watch and saying "I don't want to turn hard left because I'm unhappy with the conditions on this vessel." 
The conditions you describe are an inspiration for mutiny.  Considering their own skins are on the line in more ways than one, I'm sure that in a combat situation a Helmsman will temporarily forget the fact that he doesn't like the food and do what he's told.  Or he'll get a bolt in the head and his replacement will take the helm.

MMS was tested through theory first and then through playing games. It worked out in the end.

So I take it that there wasn't immediate consensus in the theory stage and you playtested extensively?  This project is following the same path.

[horizon]

Yah, well, IN ships are pretty dangerous places, let alone Ork ships.
Helmsmen can also collapse under the pressure. The noise on ship, communications going static, sending a message from bridge to machine room can be a ... kilometre long thing... with lots of wires to be melted in the heat of combat.

One off games: different Ld: see it as situation in where your fleet suddenly needs to be amassed.



On MMS,
theory was done with Sigoroth and me (Sig had the concept, iirc I only added the Craftworld fleet in the first draft). Took a lot of mails going through it all. Along it all testing happened.
Ray Bell chipped in at one point (why?... he 'worked' for WR back then). Some more back and forth.

Was released in Warp Rift 10.

Most common Feedback: to complicated, Eldar overpowered.
From then on we (at one point only me) streamlined it, toned some things (eg turn rate) and 1.9 is kind of very accepted.

[Vaaish]

Your first post had some skeptical analysis.  But I've addressed it.  The LD table isn't the complex monstrosity you claimed it had to be.  My SO system isn't the same as torching SO all together.  You haven't swayed me that Ld tests are a good representation of the chain of command.  Your H&R idea is good and I've adopted it.  Your criticism of our boarding rules wasn't borne out by play testing.

No, you haven't. You basically said it's fine as is; that's answering but it isn't addressing the concerns. In the case of boarding, I do not see how you can say your system is more efficient when you are rolling a bucket of dice vs one dice. There is far more room for mistakes and cheating when you roll 20 dice than when you roll two. Making a person roll more dice isn't good design. It's unnecessary complexity in this case which is contrary to your initial premise that the game needs simplified.

Where was this done?  I hope it isn't true because it's a massive boost to the power and strategic importance of ordnance.  Now a force using combined ordnance can select targets, brace them and move on, or make them shoot turrets with a single bomber squadron and swamp them with torpedoes. 

Now who's jumping onto the slippery slope. Bracing is still the choice of the owning player and I highly doubt anyone worth his salt would brace a ship because of a single squadron especially if he know his opponent has both bombers and torpedoes. Anyway, I'm surprised you have issue with giving an attacker the ability to select targets because he maneuvered his ships into an ideal position. Wouldn't that be rewarding his ability to think ahead and execute his strategy rather than just luck?

Anyway, I believe it's in the 2010 FAQ and there might be a thread floating around here on it as well.

Incidentally, have you run numbers for what firing turrets at every ordnance contact would do to the game?  Three Dictators hitting a 5+ armor shipwith everything they had would average only one less point of damage done if turrets could shoot at all 3 bomber waves and all 3 torpedo salvos.  So, how effective is this tactic really (assuming you can't aim your torpedoes AFTER you shoot them)?  I definitely don't see this as a game breaking nerf.  Your Tau fleet should do just fine.

Don't patronize me. It greatly depends on if you squadron. Three separate dictators can't send in a wave 12 bombers or 18 torpedoes which means turrets get to fire at each wave of 4 bombers and each salvo of 6 torpedoes. if they get to fire at everything a ship with two turrets gets to roll 12 dice total but if they have to choose you are only getting 6 rolls. If they are squadroned it's a lot less dramatic. Again more turrets or fewer turrets will change the result, but you are removing a valid tactic that rewards skillful playing by thinking ahead and positioning ships to gain an advantage. You are making the game less complex tactically which is a bad thing.

I don't want to argue about our argument any more.  Let's talk about the proposed rule set.

Fine, but until changes are more useful I won't be play testing any of these rules.

On LD. If you want to easily make SO less likely to fail double the number of rerolls an admiral gets or reduce the cost of the extra ones he can buy. Second, if you don't like random LD, go with a system like the campaigns. Everything having the same LD is boring. You're trying to make all the game pieces act like chess. Don't do that. There are quite a few more variables that determine how well a ship performs beyond just the hull. This is 40k, you can't assume that an IN cruiser works anywhere near the way our modern navies do.

Boarding I'll never agree to try in it's current state. Too awkward and too much dice rolling for what it is. Rework the modifiers and results tables.

Criticals is just plain unnecessary. The thing has at most an 18cm range. Unless your ships are going from full health to explosion in one turn of firing, you should have time to note a ship that is about dead and disengage or at the very least get 19 cm away from it. The results you've mentioned seem more a problem with your positioning than with the game rules. This should be something you can easily avoid and if you aren't noticing then it's on you alone when a battleship goes up and cripples half your fleet. You play risky and sometimes it bites you.

[Eldanesh]

Players on this forum tend to avoid squadroning.  They also turn their broadsides at one another despite the fact that  their ships are a lot deadlier head-on.  I'm not surprised they don't have the same experience, because they play in what we consider to be a very strange way

Despite which fact?
I'd say this depends on the fleet and ship. But if i should make a general statement, than there are a lot more ship that have the most firepower at a broadside than on the front (eldar and tau being the exception) and showing your broadsides reduces incoming fire a good bit. ...


oh, and btw.: it is one thing when you and your group don't like a specific rule and change it in a way ou want - no problem, do what you like.
But it is another point if you accuse players  of being unable to play, just because they able to use rules the as they are ....  x_0

[Phthisis]

@Vaash

I'm not partonizing you.  I just asked if you did the math.  
A 3 Dictator shotgun is pretty sizable amount of incoming ordnance.  3 salvoes of 6 torpedos and 3 waves of 4 bombers assuming there's no cap.  Its enough to overwhelm and kill a ship in one turn.  
If you can only fire turrets at one type of ordnance, then its an obvious choice.  You shoot the bombers.  
2 turrets average 1 bomber ahot down per wave.  Thats' 3 waves of 3, averaging 13.5 attacks.  Then 18 torpedos hit.  That's an average of 10.5 damage done.  If the turrets shoot at the torpedos too, then thats an average of 28.5 attacks and 9.5 hits.
The effect of the turret fire at all incoming ordnance is negligable.  The tactical choice for the defenderwas an obvious one when they had to choose.  The tactic for the attacker was effective because of the volume of fire, not because of the combination of ordnance types.  Really, its just a waste of time.  It adds a choice, but its an obvious one that has little to no effect on the game, and for such little reward for the attacker, why worry about combined ordy attacks anyway?  The REAL decisions in a shotgun situation are whether to brace or not and whether to send bombers after a ship that has already braced or pick a new target that hasn't braced yet.
Anybody can shotgun.  Its really easy to pull off.   What else are you going to do with your Dictators?  Broadside?

I can't find the rules you mentioned in the 2010 faq.  In fact I believe it says the opposite.

We had considered boosting Ld across the board or doing more rerolls to decrease the chance of failure.  Those option have their own drawbacks, and are considerably worse than what we came up with now.  We had 2 issues with those systems.  First, there was still a chance that a needed SO would fail and lose you the game due to bad luck.  Second, there was no limit to the number of SOs that could be issued.  That could get rediculous pretty quickly.  Our system replaces chance with a strategic decision both in fleet design and in game, and it keeps the number of orders per turn to a reasonable level.  And it adds a tactical element in attacking/defending leadership bases (talk about adding depth!)

Its too bad youre flat rejecting the new boarding rules at face. I timed myself performing a boarding action using both methods.  It took me 48 seconds to do the original method and 45 to do our new one.  Theyre about the same.  But our system isn't as insane as the existing ones.  Its a lot more REALISTIC, something everyone his concerned with here.  See the above Iconoclast vs Emperor scenario. That would never happen in our system.  
The objection to rolling a bunch of dice is noted.  I don't mind it so much.  If youre playing BFG, rolling dice just comes with the territory.  I used to run with a squadron of 3 Carnages and when I'd get close at broadsides I'd have to roll 24 dice.  And then if I had locked on I'd have to reroll all the ones that missed, so average 40 rolls all together.  In the above example of the torpedo shotgun, 48 dice would be rolled.   What's your threshold for 'too many dice'?
I'll bite that its not really less complicated.  But it is balanced, more predictable and has none of the rediculousness of the old system.  

Youre back to criticizing playstyle again?  I assure you its not playstyle.  Your reports are way below average for ship explosions and failed SO tests.  

@Eldsnesh

Accusing us of not knowing how to play is   what Vaash just did.  Its been a constant theme here.  I don't agree with everything someone says, and I'm not in the clique, so therefore I'm new and don't know what I'm talking about or I'm stupid. 

For example, IN cruisers have a greater average damage output with torpedos than with broadsides and their 6+ prow armor is as good protection as an abeam facing.  And yet a lot of IN players on these forums lose vs Chaos because they fire torpedos at long range and then turn broadsides to the Chaos fleet.   So they think Chaos is OP.   But if they tried bullying the Chaos fleet with prow armor and torpedos they'd have a lot better success.  But instead they want the Chaos fleet nerfed so that IN is better at everything.  But will anybody even consider it?

[horizon]

See the above Iconoclast vs Emperor scenario. That would never happen in our system. 

iirc you cannot board with a lower boarding value. The Emperor could board the Iconoclast, yes (kinda waste). It has so many plusses, and yes a heroic Iconoclast party could damage an Emperor.

Youre back to criticizing playstyle again?  I assure you its not playstyle.  Your reports are way below average for ship explosions and failed SO tests. 

So the averages are not what you expect so you dismiss the opinion?

Its been a constant theme here.  I don't agree with everything someone says, and I'm not in the clique, so therefore I'm new and don't know what I'm talking about or I'm stupid. 

This utter nonsense has to stop right now. In a weird kind of way you are falling into a victim role constantly. Perhaps it is a certain kind of wording you use in your posts but conversations with you always seem to go fast on an edge (from what I've seen on the forum).
There is no clique. Merely players who spend way to many years on all BFG forums through the years. (admiral d'artagnan, sigoroth being the most 'elderly'). We don't agree along as well. I recall the debates on the exterminatus weapon, more heated then what we seen these days. The 'clique' as you say doesn't agree on how BFG should look like, and neither would other players, new or old worldwide.
Yes, a local group can agee on all rules and ideas and that is just pretty cool. But getting an own idea pushed worldwide? Especially regarding core rules? Almost guaranteed failure.

MMS worked, because it was needed, a must.

For example, IN cruisers have a greater average damage output with torpedos than with broadsides and their 6+ prow armor is as good protection as an abeam facing.  And yet a lot of IN players on these forums lose vs Chaos because they fire torpedos at long range and then turn broadsides to the Chaos fleet.   So they think Chaos is OP.   But if they tried bullying the Chaos fleet with prow armor and torpedos they'd have a lot better success.  But instead they want the Chaos fleet nerfed so that IN is better at everything.  But will anybody even consider it?

Nobody plays with 3 Dictators. Since IN can do better for the overall game and because it is non-fluffy to have 3 Dictators in one fleet. I spend several pm's with you regarding IN shotguns. I gave various ideas, examples on how to avoid it, fight it etc..
Stop playing cruiser clash also. No really, start playing scenarios (fleet engagement etc), bye bye formations. Think tactics a new.

I also think you should not leave out other races.

The Devestation (that's what you refer to) needs a lowering because it is too good internally in the Chaos fleet and secondly compared to other ships from other fleets.
And you can ignore BFG:R, no one is forcing you. You can ignore FAQ2010 (I do parts of it).

[Vaaish]

Anybody can shotgun.  Its really easy to pull off.   What else are you going to do with your Dictators?  Broadside?

if it's that easy to pull off, then it should be obvious it's coming and easy to prepare for. If they are in a squadron, it's s18 batteries... I wouldn't discount a broadside with that. It's also highly unlikely you will have much else in the way of AC if you take three dictators. That means you'll be needing some of those counters to block enemy torpedoes or AC. Getting all three to shotgun the same target without opening your own fleet up to retaliation is a bit more difficult than AAF and fire.

We had considered boosting Ld across the board or doing more rerolls to decrease the chance of failure.  Those option have their own drawbacks, and are considerably worse than what we came up with now.  We had 2 issues with those systems.  First, there was still a chance that a needed SO would fail and lose you the game due to bad luck.  Second, there was no limit to the number of SOs that could be issued.  That could get rediculous pretty quickly.

You want to make a system where you can't fail your SO checks but you feel that no limit to SO is ridiculous? Why? It's not like SO are the end all of BFG. Each one is only useful at a particular point and most have drawbacks to using them. Most half your firepower in return for better turning, ignoring movement, or faster movement. YOu are talking about a severly reduced chance to fail and if you really think SO are overpowered then just tack a limit on how many you can do each turn outside of bracing.

Your system does nothing to add strategic or tactical depth to the game, in fact it does quite the opposite. So please get off your high horse about how awesome your system is and start looking at it a bit more objectively.

Youre back to criticizing playstyle again?  I assure you its not playstyle.  Your reports are way below average for ship explosions and failed SO tests.

If the shoe fits... It's really the only conclusion one can draw from your post. The max range the catastrophic warp event has is 18cm. If your fleets are getting gutted because of this and the plasma drive you are seriously packing your fleet too close together. There isn't anything else that can be said especially if you are insisting that your strategy is sound when it rather obviously didn't pan out from what you say.

[Phthisis]

@Horizon

I haven't been able to find a rule disallowing a ship with a lower boarding value from initiating a boarding action vs a ship with a higher boarding value.  Could you cite this for me?

I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing that people get hostile really quickly with me.  I don't think that it's because of how I write or my word choices.  First of all, I don't initiate the hostilities.  Second, I'm a regular on several forums and have never had this happen anywhere else.  Third, people who are in the process of being overtly hostile to me in posts the public can see will be simultaneously chatting politely and reasonably about the same exact topic in PM. 
From a social science perspective, it seems like a symptom of an outsider (me) challenging an established group's jointly held paradigm.  People get irrationally hostile when challenged like this.  Its like I'm standing in your elevator but facing towards you or not the door.

My goal isn't to force everyone to play these rules.  There are obvious problems with the BFG ruleset.  You, and many others, believe that Eldar were OP and created a rule change to fix it.  But you have no expectation that everyone will like it, do you?  Not everyone does.  The best you could hope for was a functional ruleset that provided an alternative to the original Eldar rules for people who want what it does.  The same is true for BFG:R.  I could thow mud and claim we have been playing with the original rules just fine and that your rule changes were made to cover your shortfalls in strategic acumen, but I'd have the same right and evidence as is being brought against me. 
This is an alternative ruleset for those who want a streamlined game. 

Every IN cruiser has greater damage output with their torpedos than their gunnery.  Dictator, Lunar, Gothic.  All of them.

Just because I mention 3 Dictators as an example doesn't mean that any player around here uses 3 Dictators.  Vaash made a claim that turrets firing at everything was a significant detriment to ordnance fleets like Tau & IN.  That was a test of extremes to demonstrate how little the effect really was.  I had to demonstrate it because he didn't do the math before he objected to it and then accused me of patronizing him when I questioned him on that point. 

We play all the missions.  Most fleets are represented in our group.

Shotguns get neutralized now.  I developed my own counter.

@Vaash

I don't think I'm on a high horse.  I think I'm defending my character against attacks from someone who knows literally nothing about me or my play style.

But fine.  I'm dismounting any high horse I was on and I'm going to look at my system objectively.  You do the same too.  Take a day, calm down, run some numbers, roll some dice and come back with thought out objective criticism of the proposed rules instead of blind pot-shots that are easy to disprove or attacking me personally.  If there really are problems with the rules, you'll have arguments against them and not the writers. 

Get your thoughts in order and repost them and we will have a serious discussion.

The only conclusion you can draw from my posts are that we have a stastically average number of explosions,  I don't abandon a working strategy just to keep my ships outside 18cm of every ship that could potentially blow up (mine, the enemy's and hulks), and that I'm good enough to get to a range where I have a positive shift to gunnery in order to kill enemy ships.  Anything other than that is pure conjecture.
I'd love to see you post a battle report.  Lets see how you fight if youre an expert.

[Vaaish]

Vaash made a claim that turrets firing at everything was a significant detriment to ordnance fleets like Tau & IN.

Lets take a look back at that shall we? My first post about removing the choice between firing at ordnance types I mention that it reduces the tactical options available and ends any reward a player can gain from careful positioning. My second post was in direct response to your question on how it would hurt Tau. The significant was your addition. Where does that leave us? Oh, right... the point where I didn't say anything about significant detriment to anyone; I'm against removing tactical complexity from BFG, that's what your change is doing here.

don't abandon a working strategy just to keep my ships outside 18cm of every ship that could potentially blow up (mine, the enemy's and hulks), and that I'm good enough to get to a range where I have a positive shift to gunnery in order to kill enemy ships.

I think it could be argued that if you lose because you kept your fleet too close and a ship blew up, the tactic of keeping your ships closely packed was not a working tactic and one that disrupted your strategy no matter how brilliant it was. I didn't say you should stay 18cm away from everything that could possibly blow up at all times. I said you should be able to identify which ships are more likely to explode and maneuver so as to minimize the damage should it happen. In other words, identifying threats to your strategy and dealing with them is a necessary skill. I'm not taking potshots at you either. I'm posting advice on how to deal with aspects of BFG your group seems to have problems with.

And, by the way, I have posted several battle reports but only a couple play by play ones. Some using marines vs chaos, some are IN vs Chaos, some are with Admech. I don't win all of them, but I've never lost one because I failed a SO. It could be argued that I lost one because I wasn't allowed to use BFI due to the subplot but even the pretty explosion didn't totally cripple my fleet.

[Phthisis]

@Vaash

Oh, that was all you were saying?  I thought you were saying that it made combined ordnance attacks ineffective.  If its just the loss of a choice, you and I are closer than I thought.

In streamlining the game, one of our goals was to strip out anything unnecessary, kind of like ripping seats out of a rally car to lose dead weight.  One of the 'dead weights' we identified was making turrets pick between AC and torpedos. 
First, the choice is a fairly obvious one.  Its not really a 'tactic' for the attacker, because they'll mob the target with ordnance any way.  The tactical decision is with the defender and the answer, for the most part is staring them in the face once their opponent places markers in the shooting phase.
Second, no matter what the defender decides, it doesn't make much of a difference in the amount of damage caused unless there is quite a lot of ordnance coming in.  Also, it doesn't make much difference in damage whether everything gets shot at or not.
Third, allowing turrets to fire at everything is a slight nerf to ordnance, and everyone seems to want to keep ordnance from being too powerful.
In our view, it was an obvious choice that had little to no in game effect and provided a bonus to ordnance.  Why keep it?

This is a minor point.  If putting turret target selection back in gets people to agree to the ruleset as a whole, then we'd probably ditch it.  But is it that big of an issue?  It it a deal breaker?

Regarding getting too close to exploding ships, hindsight is 20/20.  There's a big bonus for manouvering within 15cm to gunnery.  The point of manouvering is to get into a good position to fire your weaponry.  Within 15cm, youre in explosion range of your target.  So, if you get in a good firing position and kill an enemy ship, then you have a 1/36 chance of eating a WDI, which can easily kill your ship or hit nearby hulks, which can in turn explode themselves.  Some weapons only have a range of 15cm.  So you manouver into a great firing position, like youre supposed to, hand them their ass and they randomly explode and kill you instead. 
Besides, the rule change isn't removing explosions or even reducing their likelihood.  Its removing the Str 8 lance version and allowing armor to protect a ship.

[horizon]

@Horizon

I haven't been able to find a rule disallowing a ship with a lower boarding value from initiating a boarding action vs a ship with a higher boarding value.  Could you cite this for me?

I recalled wrong, it is explicit stated escorts can board.

Iconoclast boards emperor (blastmarker in contact):
Iconoclast = +1 (blastmarker on Emperor) +1 (Emperor on Reload) + 1 (being Chaos) = +3
Emperor = +4 (boarding value being four times higher).

Iconoclast rolls 6 +3 = 9
Emperor rolls 1 + 4 = 5
difference is 4

lol...

As I said before, the original boarding rules are crappy. But I am not fan of your bucket dice either.

I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing that people get hostile really quickly with me.  I don't think that it's because of how I write or my word choices.  First of all, I don't initiate the hostilities.  Second, I'm a regular on several forums and have never had this happen anywhere else.  Third, people who are in the process of being overtly hostile to me in posts the public can see will be simultaneously chatting politely and reasonably about the same exact topic in PM. 
From a social science perspective, it seems like a symptom of an outsider (me) challenging an established group's jointly held paradigm.  People get irrationally hostile when challenged like this.  Its like I'm standing in your elevator but facing towards you or not the door.

That was not what I was saying 100%, but here you go again in the victim role.

My goal isn't to force everyone to play these rules.  There are obvious problems with the BFG ruleset.  You, and many others, believe that Eldar were OP and created a rule change to fix it.  But you have no expectation that everyone will like it, do you?  Not everyone does.  The best you could hope for was a functional ruleset that provided an alternative to the original Eldar rules for people who want what it does.  The same is true for BFG:R.  I could thow mud and claim we have been playing with the original rules just fine and that your rule changes were made to cover your shortfalls in strategic acumen, but I'd have the same right and evidence as is being brought against me. 
This is an alternative ruleset for those who want a streamlined game. 

Then do not expect everyone to agree, right?

Every IN cruiser has greater damage output with their torpedos than their gunnery.  Dictator, Lunar, Gothic.  All of them.

A Lunar? 6 torps or 6 batteries + 2 lances? I say you are off, since torps need a reload ordnance (with your idea of SO this becomes easy, under official rules you might not reload). Torps need to bypass turrets and cap.
Torps are good but now you overestimate them.

We play all the missions.  Most fleets are represented in our group.

Good, which will tell you formations are useless in escalating engagement.

Shotguns get neutralized now.  I developed my own counter.

Good.

The only conclusion you can draw from my posts are that we have a stastically average number of explosions,  I don't abandon a working strategy just to keep my ships outside 18cm of every ship that could potentially blow up (mine, the enemy's and hulks), and that I'm good enough to get to a range where I have a positive shift to gunnery in order to kill enemy ships.  Anything other than that is pure conjecture.

So do not change the rules! Keep the warp drive explosion! It is rare! It is part of the game! You made your choice to get into that range.
This change is like dropping a rule because it gives you a negative effect to your playstyle.

You see the oddness? This is like weapon batteries should ignore blastmarkers because my fleet has a lot of weapon batteries and no lances.

[Sigoroth]

Realism doesnt equal random chance.  Random chance is an abstract used to represent any combination of factors that can make an outcome unpredictable.  Random chance should be included where it's necessary to represent relatively unreliable circumstances.  I think it's reasonable to use random chance for gunnery, bomber attacks, critical hits and repairing critical hits, navigating asteroid fields or attempting to disengage.  Turning a hard left or firing retros isn't something that there is a question whether or not they will be obeyed.  If a captain on a warship of any era issued an order to CTNH, the ship comes to a new heading.  If they order the ship to Full Stop, the ship comes to a full stop.  There isn't a 30 - 40% chance that the crew will just ignore their captain!  Using Ld tests for these type of situations is not realism.  It's an element of chance where there is none in real life.

Turning about is no simple task for some of the larger modern day haulers. BFG ships are many times larger than these, depend upon an archaic system of operation (for the most part), and are far more complex. It isn't simply a matter of the helmsman yanking over on the wheel. Doing so without proper preparation will likely result in a ship torn in half, or at the very least a tremendous amount of casualties. Doing this while under fire would no doubt make the entire process more taxing.

In any wargame, I draw the line on 'realism' where it becomes a larger factor in the game than the player's strategy.  SO gives a player strategic options.  The Ld tests prevents those strategic option from being used.  The only purpose Ld tests serve for SO is to prevent a player from being able to execute their strategy.

Yes, it is. However, planning for the possibility of failure should be a part of your strategy. If you cannot stand the idea of a battle occasionally being decided by a freak occurrence rather than tactics then perhaps you should take up chess instead. You could do a BFG themed version, with escorts instead of pawns, light cruisers for knights, cruisers for castles, grand cruisers for bishops and a battleship for the queen. The king could be a super heavy transport. Lots of fun to be had.

So, realism aside, the SO system we came up with is a big departure from the original rules, but it's been functioning quite well as a game mechanic.  I think one think that people are failing to notice is that SO are now a resource to be used sparingly and that can be lost due to poor planning.  We aren't just allowing every ship to go on SO whenever they want.  You, as a player, have to make difficult strategic choice and prioritize placing squadrons on SO and reserving dice to potentially BFI.  The strategic depth of assigning SOs was increased tenfold!

Alright, let's run with this for now. Some issues. Why would a ship under fire wait for the nod from the admiral before bracing? This is surely a captain's prerogative. As such,I don't think this should be an automatic pass. Similarly, why should carriers or torp boats need the admiral to tell them to reload? Surely this would be the default attitude only deviated from under orders from the admiral. Also, how would a larger fleet be able to function? Lastly, this limit on the number of special orders seems to me to be just as much a limit on a player's ability to execute their strategy as rolling against leadership. It's just that the limit is known ahead of time and this doesn't seem all that great to me.

[Vaaish]

First, the choice is a fairly obvious one.  Its not really a 'tactic' for the attacker, because they'll mob the target with ordnance any way.  The tactical decision is with the defender and the answer, for the most part is staring them in the face once their opponent places markers in the shooting phase.
Second, no matter what the defender decides, it doesn't make much of a difference in the amount of damage caused unless there is quite a lot of ordnance coming in.  Also, it doesn't make much difference in damage whether everything gets shot at or not.
Third, allowing turrets to fire at everything is a slight nerf to ordnance, and everyone seems to want to keep ordnance from being too powerful.
In our view, it was an obvious choice that had little to no in game effect and provided a bonus to ordnance.  Why keep it?

It really depends on what ship. Against an Emperor you're probably not going to get them to brace since most of your attacks will be blocked, especially without turret suppression. Against a Lunar, the bombers might perform better or equal to the torpedoes so the choice is a little less cut and dry. Shoot the bombers which have the higher damage potential or shoot the torpedoes which have the most reliable damage output. Either way, the point is it presents the defender with an uncomfortable choice due to the skill of the attacking player. It's a nuance of the game that gives an attacker another tactical option that rewards skill in getting both types of ordnance to hit at the same time. It might not be much, but it does give a player some benefit for skillful play which is a good thing.

Regarding getting too close to exploding ships, hindsight is 20/20.  There's a big bonus for manouvering within 15cm to gunnery.  The point of manouvering is to get into a good position to fire your weaponry.  Within 15cm, youre in explosion range of your target.  So, if you get in a good firing position and kill an enemy ship, then you have a 1/36 chance of eating a WDI, which can easily kill your ship or hit nearby hulks, which can in turn explode themselves.  Some weapons only have a range of 15cm.  So you manouver into a great firing position, like youre supposed to, hand them their ass and they randomly explode and kill you instead. 
Besides, the rule change isn't removing explosions or even reducing their likelihood.  Its removing the Str 8 lance version and allowing armor to protect a ship.

We all know the benefit for being within 15cm, but the risk is that the enemy ship might explode in your face. If you want the benefit you have to take that risk. Of course, it might not explode or it might not have the range to catch you and you get away with it. As horizon said, you made the choice and you're trying to change the game because you don't like the consequences. Your changes haven't just let people use armor, it's made the explosion a joke in the process. What's a s4 battery going to do to you, scratch the paint? At worst maybe drop a shield? What's the point of having it at all then?

[Phthisis]

@Horizon
"Bucket of dice", I think, is not an apt nickname for our boarding system.   If undamaged BBs board each other, then you'll be rolling lots of dice, true, but thats an extremely unlikely situation.  Usually it will be damaged cruisers, light cruisers or escorts and the total dice rolled by both players will be around 15 or less.  You'll be comparing 6-8 pairs.  There's lots of instances where you'll roll more dice shooting at an opponent.  A 'bucket of dice'  is an Ork mob of 20-30 boyz charging into assault in 40k.  That's 80-120 dice for one side in one assault phase.  

On the other hand, our system doesn't have any strange quirks that the original system does.  Say what you will about rolling dice, but the system's results are excellent.  
Incidentally, here's our complete modifier table based on Plaxor's USR:
Aggressive - +2 dice (+1 for escorts)
Elite Cadre - +4 dice (+2 for escorts), roll 2 dice for every H&R attack, choose the result
Stalwart -  when boarded, tied 6s count as hits vs the attacking ship
Relentless - when initiating boarding, tied 6s count as hits vs the defending ship
Frenzied -  when initiating boarding, all tied scores count as hits vs the defending ship
Hostile Environment - when boarded, all tied scores count as hits to the attacking ship, also counters Elite Cadre for H&R
Note that both ships add turrets to their remaining hits to determine boarding value.  No modifiers for Blast Markers, having a larger boarding value, or being on SO.

Yes, I expect people to disagree.  

What I'm saying is that going for a shotgun gets you more damage output with any IN cruiser than turning to broadside.

That's not a fair comparison.  I'm changing a rule because it's unnecessary and robs victory from skilled players.  I seriously doubt that if this was never included in the ruleset you'd enjoy the game any less or would be clamoring for a more damaging explosion.

@Sigiroth
Intelligent questions.  I will respond tonight when I'm not at work and am on a computer and not a phone.

@Vaash
What can you do with selecting turret targets but go with the odds?  The odds are easily calculated by looking what ordnance they have on the board.  Its a no brainer decision.

I'm advocating that plasma drive explosions roll the same number of dice they do now (cruiser exploding = 4), but that they roll against armor instead of acting like lances.  Its not a joke and can cause damage and kill escorts. And since they count as WBs, Eldar don't get a holofield save vs a giant explosion because the expanding ball of fire cant see it clearly.  Also, its more deadly to ordnance now than before.