Necron Dynasties

[Plaxor]

Leaderships: To make campaigns interesting you shouldn't have static leadership values. Damned Demiurg!

This has proven to be a big problem with Tyranids in campaigns, who have a significant advantage over traditional fleets. Demiurg is a much easier fix for campaigns however;

The campaign starts with each Demiurg vessel's leadership reduced by 1 or 2 (would need some consideration), even though they are static this is really all that is necessary. Then have them increase like normal. Not a huge problem, but it does essentially contradict their fluff. Say that the vessel's have not seen much combat and the Automated system need to recalibrate to their normal functionality over the course of the campaign. Certain things invariably are a bit warped when used in a Campaign. Consider Tau being able to move just as fast as other fleets, and now we have the Dolmen gates that would have to go everywhere within a system. For gameplay to work, some thing are invariably....bent, some things even broken, but hopefully some rationale can be applied.

[commander]

Hi Commander and all,

Shields: Necrons should have 'special' shields. Increasing armour is my preference. I wouldn't care for the rear to be different as this would allow bombers to ignore it.
Having shields protect against everything is a little rules risky, how this works against crits, H&R's, boarding and probably a few other rules that haven't occuredto me yet would haveto be expanded on. As Necrons will most likely be special rule heavy, keeping them simple is gouing to be important.

Quantum shielding = more armour, excists only when a hit is made; does not equal defence shields. If defence shields would only augment armour, the ships are flying 'naked'. IMO, NO WAY 

Criticals: I hate it when another crit table is used needlessly. Now Necrons have shields and we can more evenly distribute weaponary there is no need for one. 
I'm definately in favour of not suffering additional damage from crits, it makesthem feel more reliable and durable.
Being able to repair more easily would be nice aswell but I'd like to leave that as an upgrade for the Shroud.

Most crits don't cause extra damage, only in case of very few occurences. An upgrade to the shroud could be that you roll one extra die for repairs.

Movement: The Inertialess drive is a cool concept but we can't just 'steal' the Eldar character of incredible manueverability. -5cm to the minimum distance to turn is still really good without stepping on their toes.
Tombship at 25cm speed, with 10cm before turning and being able to CTNH is only beaten by the Voidstalker! 40cm escorts are only beaten by Eldar again, but keep in mind that they have armour and shields!

No stealing, just giving them their due. No gravity and momentum to refrain them, most other forces that could slow them down, largely negated. I don't see the problem. The Eldar just needed/need to be that fast to even be able to catch the necrons.

Pocket dimensions, wraith flight and other magic: I can't accept that a full blown warship could go 'out of phase'. It just sounds way too bloody powerful!  . The pocket dimension stuff also should stay small scale. In BFG I can't see these having too much of an effect.
Having said that, it could still work for ordnance! Hmm...

Army book states that even entire fleets can be held in pocket dimensions, so again I don't see the problem. The Eldar are not the only ones with advanced tricks 

Direct weaponary: Given that there aren't any obvious weapons on the models I suppose you could say they have what ever guns you want.

Lightning arcs feel more natural to come out of nowhere, not really needing turrets on the models. I hate the use of the name 'Tesla', it's terrible to use for ancient alien robots! Having extra hit rules for them makes no sense in BFG, the lightning isn't arcing to another ship near by! Direct weapons shouldn't ignore holofields, unless they're rare.

There is a massive difference between the monolith's particle whip and the masively upscaled version on ships. Less blast more 'swiping' lance.
In terms of upscaling you can do it to most energy weapons in BFG in any manner you want. A Lascannon/lasgun could be upscaled to a lance or a laser weapons battery!

Gauss weapons don't seem to have a place in BFG as their bonus allows them to possibly harm anything. Which is great when you need to take out an infantry squad or tank. When it comes to space battles you'll have the capability to have something much nastier.
However if I were to make a gauss weapon for BFG it's be a weapons battery that ignores armour but only damages on a 6.

Again, why?? They have the tech and it's efficient. It is powerfull but hey, they somehow blew the C'tan out of the skies.

Entropic weaponary doesn't belong in BFG, its too large scale. If they have a weapon that can reduce armour values of such a large area they should be able to just rip the hull off! This would/should completely destroy all weaponary! Also armour values don't always represent the outside hull. Stealth and internal shielding are common in BFG.
 
Portals and Eternity Gates: Okay 'portals' now only exist in the current BFG rules (they used to be what is now eternity gates in 40K). Pushing them as straight out teleporters is just 'inventing' a weapon for Necrons (as it was when the came out in BFG). I'm all for Necrons being great at teleporter attacks but that should just be the case, there shouldn't be a weapon for it. How about double(2) teleporter attacks against ships with less health, just normal (1) attack against ships with the same or more health.
I would like a launch bay that is a large Eternity Gate, however, I hate that name and would love to keep 'Portal' in the glossary. 

Call it a launchbay 

Leaderships: To make campaigns interesting you shouldn't have static leadership values. Damned Demiurg!

Cheers,

RayB HA

[AndrewChristlieb]

Hum pocket dimensions and ordnance? Reminds me of the missile from the wing commander movie. Could be cool to have something similar, maybe instead of moving in the traditional sense all ordnance can "phase out" and back in anywhere within their movement distance. Not much different from standard except this would allow them to avoid all blast markers, maybe even ones in base contact. This does bring around ideas for a necron torp also... Something stronger than normal maybe rolling 1D6 for damage but avoiding turrets, only a fighter can take them out, with a resilient save, and it can phase as above.

[commander]

I simply reject the fact that the Eldar are the only ones with advanced tech; they are amongst the happy few and Necrons are also in this place, even older as a race and more advanced in tech of the material universe.
So, why curtailing the necrons and let have only the Eldar all of the toys?
OR just pimp down the Eldar, to be more inline with all other fleets.
That said, and knowing that Eldar players would be unhappy if these where toned down, just give to the necrons what they deserve as the most advanced race in the 'materia'l tech.
That's why I always will insist in some better 'representation' of the necron fleet.
It's not an easy job, but the necrons deserve the effort.
IMO that is.

[AndrewChristlieb]

Eldar should never have been able to not move or turn without moving. This is clearly something only the necrons should be able to do, as the necrons are the only race that have a reason to be able to avoid the laws of physics, that is unless the eldar have inertialess drives of some sort also .

[commander]

Eldar should never have been able to not move or turn without moving. This is clearly something only the necrons should be able to do, as the necrons are the only race that have a reason to be able to avoid the laws of physics, that is unless the eldar have inertialess drives of some sort also .

Agreed.

[commander]

Necron weaponry (as per codex):
- particle weaponry are anti-matter casters. I don't see them 'working' as lances but as (powerful)  weapon batteries.
- Gauss weaponry are beam weapons which can be 'used' as lances.
- Lightning arcs shoot 'living lightning bolts'. Weapon battery or lances? Do they saturate an area with lightning or is it more focussed as is stated in Codex, entry of the tomb blade?
- Star pulse: all round weapon or the front only 'C'tan shattering weapon'?

[AndrewChristlieb]

Lightning arc should be cooler... Weapons batteries but more like chain lightning. They cannot be fired at anything but the closest target, electricity takes the shortest path to ground, they are blocked by shields as normal and they count all targets as closing. In addition to this the lightning arc will jump from the closest ship to the next closest ship until either there are no ships in range or it has traveled to the extent of its range, each time the arc jumps its power is cut in half rounded up. The lightning arc, after firing may jump in any direction so long as it travels to the next closest ship, including ships out side of fire arc normally. The lightning arc will always receive left or right column shifts against the closest target only. For example a shroud class cruiser (fp 10 lightning arc with 30cm range) is facing off against a dauntless and 3 cobras the dauntless is 15cm away the closest cobra is 5cm from the dauntless then 8cm for the next closest and an additional 5cm for the last cobra. The dauntless and 2 of the cobras will be hit, the dauntless is hit by 10 batteries then this first cobra is hit by 5 batteries finally the 2nd cobra is hit by 3 batteries. The 3rd cobra is outside of the range of the lightning arc and takes no hits even if it was within 30cm of the shroud it is still 33cm away following the path that the lighting took. This of course means that the escort squad takes hits from 8 batteries spread over the 2 ships in range. In the example above the necron player would receive a left shift when firing at the dauntless, but not at any of the other ships.

[commander]

Nice idea but a bit complicated to excecute on the table IMO.

[AndrewChristlieb]

Could be simplified to 3 jumps max and each one has a 30cm range. In theory you could hit a ship up to 90cm away with this setup but it would be significantly weakened (a tomb ships 20 closest/10 next closest/5 last ship). Could go with 30cm/20cm/10cm for range also.

[horizon]

Eldar should never have been able to not move or turn without moving. This is clearly something only the necrons should be able to do, as the necrons are the only race that have a reason to be able to avoid the laws of physics, that is unless the eldar have inertialess drives of some sort also .

Disagree.

[commander]

Eldar should never have been able to not move or turn without moving. This is clearly something only the necrons should be able to do, as the necrons are the only race that have a reason to be able to avoid the laws of physics, that is unless the eldar have inertialess drives of some sort also .

Disagree.

I'm not surprised 
IMO, they should be toned down a 'little'. More in line with the other fleets (no MSM or MMS) but fast, more so than marines, with reduced min movement (half?) both for moving and turning and able to turn in their own speed segment of AAF.
But discussing all that here, is a bit off topic.

[horizon]

Discussing it is appropriate to finetune Necrons.

mms Eldar are not very far from regular races regarding movement and turning.

They don't have a 360 on the spot.
And they may make two turns per movement phase. Speed depending on sun.

Creating things with halved minimum movement is just obscuring things.

Aside of that: being restricted to turning at the start is actually more limiting in attack play then first moving forward!

[AndrewChristlieb]

Discussing it is appropriate to finetune Necrons.

agreed

mms Eldar are not very far from regular races regarding movement and turning.

They don't have a 360 on the spot.
And they may make two turns per movement phase. Speed depending on sun.

Creating things with halved minimum movement is just obscuring things.

MMS is a huge step forward, but honestly I think it would have been much better to make all races escorts MSM and leave the Eldar fleet alone. This would have toned down the severity of the Eldars movement and put escorts much more in line with their intended purpose. Adjusting the min movement is a bit off, 5/10/15cm min move for escorts/cruisers/bb wouldn't be too terrible tho.

Aside of that: being restricted to turning at the start is actually more limiting in attack play then first moving forward!

Only for escorts really as all other races can turn whenever, capitols not so much your still restricted one way or the other and once you get the hang of playing Eldar its no big deal at all just like its no big deal for everyone else to move 10cm before they can turn their cruisers, you take that into account and plan ahead.

Aside form all of this what reason do Eldar have to be able to avoid standard turning and movement rules? If anything their delicate ships (with sails for goodness sake ) should be more likely to have to "go with the flow." In other words they should have a min movement and cannot use ctnh or burn retros They also should never be effected by blast markers or gas clouds, their ships being designed to shunt small debris, junk, etc away from the ship.

[horizon]

The last part of your post seems neat. Directly against the official msm Eldar. haha.


But, alas, msm is a bad mechanic in BFG.

I mean, a 20cm moving escort:
you move 20000 kilometres, then shoot, then fly away 20000 kilometres.
opponents sits and does nothing.
= dumb.

msm in surprise attack:
turn one:
Eldar move
Eldar shoot ship to oblivion
Eldar ordnance destroy another ship
Eldar second move = turn around = fly from table
= end game
eldar victory.

So, I'd never want to hear such blasphemy from you again Andrew!