BFG:R Book I The Core Rules: Updates, Feedback & Comments Thread

[TheDaR]

Excellent.

Notes as I'm reading:

p18, Col3, Types: Normally a colon ":" is used to introduce lists, not a semi-colon ";".

p20, Holofield Breakout:  Lock-On only applies to Scatter weapons?  The way it's phrased right after rerolling Scatter makes it seem like that's the only thing it affects.  Is that intentional, or does Lock-On also cancel the Lance Penalty and/or Battery penalty?  I know that lock on used to cancel the reroll for lances, but that was before the change over to penalties for range.

p21, Multiple Criticals: Probably needs to clarify if criticals roll over when a weapon system exists but is already damaged?  e.g. If an Eldar Wraithship's keel weapons are already damaged by a critical, and another keel damage is rolled, does this simply mean both must be repaired to access keel weapons, or does the crit roll over to the next thing on the chart as if there were no keel weapon?

p21, Col 3, Effects of Hulks on battlefield:  I've always found the rule that you cannot fire on friendly hulks strange.  This is the grimdark of the 41st millenium.  Shooting your (now ex-) comrades to destroy your enemies is the new hotness.  Their heroic sacrifice to destroy the infidels/traitors/xenoscum will be honored by their gods/masters/demon/ancestors/descendants.  Imperial Commissars encourage this sort of thinking all the time, Eldar forsaw the need, Tau accept it for the greater good, Orks and Chaos think its funny, Nids and Necrons probably don't even notice.   I'd almost be inclined to make the inability to do this the exception, rather than the rule.  Is there a compelling game balance reason that you should not be able to shoot at friendly hulks?

p23, Col 1, Fleet Ordnance Limits: Augmented Launch Facilities should be in bold for consistency.

p24, Hardy:  Interesting, I like it.

p25, Col 2, Torpedo effects: suggest "on the facing hit" rather than "on the side hit".  Side is a bit ambiguous, and facing is the technical term introduced elsewhere in the document.

p26, Col 2, CAP: Missing an E on Enemy.

p26, Col 2, Fighters vs Torpedoes et al:  Interesting.  I like the 2d3 mechanic, rather than simply wiping out the wave. 

p26, Col 2, Fighters vs Bombers et al:  Not sure I like this change as much; I can see how it would increase the attractiveness of mixed waves, but d3+1 and d3 seems pretty harsh.  A single fighter on cap could potentially neuter an entire bomber wave of 4, even before turrets, which makes it seem to me that you now almost have to devote fighters to CAP, especially with the changes to bombers that get through.  My gut reaction is that these values should probably be d3 bombers and d2 for fighter-hybrid types, especially given how many resilient fighter types there are out there.

p26, Col 3, Bombers vs Ships:  The change to increase bomber damage is interesting.  Likewise, I can see how this is trying to balance out the increased efficiency of fighter types vs the bombers.  Not sure if the exact balance is right; has there been any significant playtesting with these values?

p27, Col 2, Fighter Boats:  Fighter boats function as Fighter boats?  I think is supposed to be 'behave as Fighters against'.

p27, Col 2-3, Torpedeo craft:  Might be worth a note describing how waves work.  I imagine you simply combine the strengths of each squadron in the wave, rather than producing individual salvoes of 2/1 for each point of strength in the wave.  I do like the Torpedeo Fighter concept, though I'm not entirely sure which races would use such craft.  The "Evil" trifecta of Orks, Chaos, and Dark Eldar seem most likely.

p27, Col 3, Mines:  These seem really powerful, especially in fleets like most Eldar and Ork variants, where getting to within mine range is par for the course (either via armor or speed).  I'm just imagining a Torture or Eclipse class dashing up behind an Emperor from over 40cm away and dumping a load of 4 mines out.  Even with average rolling for both turrets and hits per wave, that's going to end up doing 3-4 direct hits, and if the 'halves' go for you instead of against you, that's around 7 hits (because a second mine sneaks through the turrets adding 3.5 more hits on average).  And against a cruiser with only 2 turrets, instead of 5, that's going to be an average of 10 hits.  Complete destruction of a Lunar or Murder in one attack, from an effective range beyond their weapons?  Seems too good.  Again, gut reaction without any play testing, but I'd be inclined to make these work like as to Lances as normal Torpedo and Bomber's are to Weapon Batteries.  d6 attacks per remaining Strength, each of which inflicts a hit on a flat 4+, rather than using the armor value the way bombers and torpedoes do.  That roughly halves the damage, meaning a typical line cruiser with 2 turrets is only going to take 5 hits from a wave of 4.  Still enough to cripple (at the cost of having to get to within 10cm), but not outright destroy.

Random related thought:  I can totally see some races, especially Orks and Nids, making Mine-Bombers (aka Kamikaze Bombas), loaded up with mines the same way a Torpedo Bomber drops torpedoes.  Cram as much explosives onto their frame as you can and fly 'em straight into the enemy one way for "precision" delivery of huge booms.

p29, Col 1, Hit and Run: "Essentially causing a critical hit on the lower end of the table."  This clause needs to be a sentence.   "This will essentially cause a critical hit result from the lower half of the table", perhaps.

p30, Col 2, Numerical Superiority:   This is awkwardly phrased.  How about:  "Larger squadrons are more likely to contain a veteran commander, whose experience can bolster the efficiency and morale of the entire squadron.  Any squadron of Escorts or Orbitals which contains 5 or more members may re-roll the die when randomly determining Leadership for that squadron."

p30, Col 3, Ordained Duty: "Capital Ships, which expense" should be "whose expense", and in the following sentence, "Despite this" should probably be "Because of this" or "Due to this".

p32, Col 3, Shooting By Squadrons:  When you say "identical" does this mean identical by type, or exactly identical?   Could a squadron of a Dictator and Overlord combine their weapon batteries, even though they have different strengths?

p33, Col 3, Launching Ordnance:  I don't like the change of mandating that only those ships in contact-chain with the Lead ship can benefit from this.  Especially since the Numerical Superiority rule encourages larger squadrons.   I should be able to form up into, say, a group of 3 and a group of 4 and have both groups benefit.

p36, Col 2, Placing Celestial Phenomena:  It seems slightly counter-intuitive to me that fleets with aggressive attack ratings are more likely to be able to force conflicts in the further out regions.  The math makes sense when you dissect it, but it just feels a little backwards.

p42, Col 1, Fighting in Low Orbit: This column cuts off mid sentence.

From the Section on Leadership on, the page numbers are clearly not fixed yet, as you mentioned, so I'll switch to referring to things by section/subsection.

Leadership, Starting Leadership, Col 2:  Instead of "each race uses a different column to determine their resultant leadership score", I recommend "each race uses a particular column".  Different implies no two races can use the same column, which is clearly not the case.  I also recommend swapping columns 1 and 2 on the table, so that roughly speaking, the columns get better from left to right, just as the scores get better from top to bottom.  I understand why they're set up the way they are (I being the "standard" table, while II is "bad" and III and IV are better than average), but since we're already divorcing the table from the fleet entries, you might as well make the table more consistent and adjust the numbers accordingly in the fleet entries.

Fleets of the 41st Millenium: Lots of this is replicated from Ship Types, The Fleet, Characters and other sections.   The information here that I don't see in a newer section are the base sizes (which should probably go into Ship Types) and the rules for allies (Not sure where to put this, probably under The Fleet, but maybe not).  Also, just as a general note, large flight bases are 60mm, not 50mm, as mentioned under Battleship and Grand Cruisers.

Armaments, Pulsar Lances:  The wording on how this works feels cumbersome to me.  Perhaps: "If a Pulsar Lance successfully hits, immediately roll a second attack.  If the second attack successfully hits, roll a third and final attack.  If the firing ship is on Lock On orders, only the first attack with each Pulsar Lance may be re-rolled".

Armaments, Crystal Lances:  Streamline final sentence to "Crystal Lances have a hit rating of 5+ and the Rending quality".

Armaments, Zzap Guns:  Either two separate sentences ("Zzap Guns have a hit rating of 4+.  After firing a ZZap gun put a Blast Marker in base contact with the firing ship's rear arc") or streamline the single sentence ("Zzap Guns have a hit rating of 4+ and whenever a ship fires a Zzap gun, place a Blast Marker in contact with its base in the rear arc").

Armaments, Cutting Beam:  the May at the top of the second column should not be capitalized.  This whole entry is also unclear to me, especially without the context of the Fleet List to see how the strength is rated and how Demiurg ships collect Blast markers.  I'll suggest something like "A Cutting Beam functions as a Lance weapon with one shot, no matter the Firepower Rating listed for the weapon entry, and may fire an additional 1 shot for each Blast Markers collected by the firing ship, up to the maximum Firepower Rating listed.  For each extra shot generated, remove 1 Blast Marker from the pool held by that ship after firing."  That should make it clear that the strength is dependant on a particular mechanic in the fleet list.

Armaments, Gravatic Hook:  Hook Dependant looks like it should be a Special Quality, but is not (yet).

Special Qualities:  Presumably the early qualities page (before the Armaments Section) is now out of date and should go.

Special Qualities, Transport:  I'm loathe to tie the Inefficient Engines to Transport directly.  Instead, I'd rather just have all transports get both if necessary.  Mostly because I can forsee certain races who do not, in fact, have Inefficient Engines on their transports, either due to superior technology or the simple expedient of custom designing classes of ships with both warship class thrusters and transport capacity.  And while I like the idea of tying Transport's capacity to the ship's remaining hull points, I again can imagine scenarios where a ship might have fewer initial transport points than hull points.   Q-ships, for instance, might have the Transport quality at lower than regular levels, in order to account for their warship quality targeting systems and weapons.  Such a ship might have 6 hull points, appearing like a typical largish transport, but only have 2 actually available transport slots (to further its guise as a merchant ship), with the other 4 being take up by damage control systems, launch bays, and lance batteries for killing daring pirate raiders.  Likewise a ship meant for rapid insertion of ground troops might have 4 hull points, but only 1 or 2 points of transport, in order to mount the armor, shields, and engines of a capital ship, to protect it.

Special Qualities, Improved Auspex Array:  Suggest renaming this to 'Improved Sensor Arrays'.  Not all races will necessarily have Auspex as their sensor technologies.

Solar Sails:  I like having this in the main book and in its own section.   As a suggestion, when describing how they turn, I'd use the following phrasing:  "If a vessel with Solar Sails wishes to turn, it may only do so at the beginning of either, or both, movements, but not during each movement as with normal engines."    Also, as on the bottom of the first column where you summarise the movement rules, standard practice is to use colon to introduce a list, not a semi-colon.

As a somewhat random aside, it occurs to me that by making Solar Sails a quality, there's no reason a ship might not have both Solar Sails and normal engines, though no current ships do, obviously.

Overall, with the exception of the stuff that you haven't gotten to yet, things are looking pretty good.  The only two things which leap out at me for game balance are Mines and the changes to Bombers/Fighters.   I'm not opposed to the bomber change in principle (in fact, I like it and think that adding a reason for fighters is good), I just think the exact values need a little tweaking.   Mines, OTOH, I think are just too good right now, especially for certain fleets.

[Plaxor]

p18, Col3, Types: Normally a colon ":" is used to introduce lists, not a semi-colon ";".

Good Catch.

p20, Holofield Breakout:  Lock-On only applies to Scatter weapons?  The way it's phrased right after rerolling Scatter makes it seem like that's the only thing it affects.  Is that intentional, or does Lock-On also cancel the Lance Penalty and/or Battery penalty?  I know that lock on used to cancel the reroll for lances, but that was before the change over to penalties for range.

The re-roll cancelling thing with lances was before this style of Holofields. Since scatter weapons use Scatter die to hit, it is somewhat difficult to make them less accurate, as adding additional D6s of scatter changes the hit ratio by only a small amount. Re-rolling the scatter is the most reasonably effective method, as a Nova Cannon fleet would devastate the Eldar without such hit modifiers. Since LO allows you to re-roll hits, this would mean that there would be a re-roll in favor of both sides, so for simplicities sake they just cancel.

p21, Multiple Criticals: Probably needs to clarify if criticals roll over when a weapon system exists but is already damaged?  e.g. If an Eldar Wraithship's keel weapons are already damaged by a critical, and another keel damage is rolled, does this simply mean both must be repaired to access keel weapons, or does the crit roll over to the next thing on the chart as if there were no keel weapon?

I thought that was clarified, perhaps it could use extra wording. Critical Effects do not roll over, and simply one must repair the weapon multiple times.

p21, Col 3, Effects of Hulks on battlefield:  I've always found the rule that you cannot fire on friendly hulks strange.  This is the grimdark of the 41st millenium.  Shooting your (now ex-) comrades to destroy your enemies is the new hotness.  Their heroic sacrifice to destroy the infidels/traitors/xenoscum will be honored by their gods/masters/demon/ancestors/descendants.  Imperial Commissars encourage this sort of thinking all the time, Eldar forsaw the need, Tau accept it for the greater good, Orks and Chaos think its funny, Nids and Necrons probably don't even notice.   I'd almost be inclined to make the inability to do this the exception, rather than the rule.  Is there a compelling game balance reason that you should not be able to shoot at friendly hulks?

Yes and no. For one thing it is a bit irrational for a fleet to fire upon its hulks instead of directly at the enemy, though it could potentially cause more harm. For balance reasons, it prevents certain 'suicide tactics' such as rushing in your Avenger GC to ensure that it explodes catastrophically as a bomb, as this strategy would assuredly cause problems against fleets with fewer hits (Eldar) or ones that are normally difficult to damage (Necrons), and Escorts would explode by the thousands. Another reason is for victory points when holding the field. Simply, only two races are permitted to fire upon their own vessels, the Necrons and the Adeptus Mechanicus.

p23, Col 1, Fleet Ordnance Limits: Augmented Launch Facilities should be in bold for consistency.

Another good catch.

p24, Hardy:  Interesting, I like it.

Had to come up with something so that Impalers wouldn't be so easily destroyed.

p25, Col 2, Torpedo effects: suggest "on the facing hit" rather than "on the side hit".  Side is a bit ambiguous, and facing is the technical term introduced elsewhere in the document.

Makes sense. Consistency is always good, another one I noticed and I'm trying to fix is changing all instances of 'the player whose current turn it is' to the Current Player, as well as all references regarding whose turn it is.

p26, Col 2, Fighters vs Torpedoes et al:  Interesting.  I like the 2d3 mechanic, rather than simply wiping out the wave. 

RC repeatedly complained about torpedo weakness. 1 Fighter=Infinite Torpedoes but only one Bomber? This was for some consistency.

p26, Col 2, Fighters vs Bombers et al:  Not sure I like this change as much; I can see how it would increase the attractiveness of mixed waves, but d3+1 and d3 seems pretty harsh.  A single fighter on cap could potentially neuter an entire bomber wave of 4, even before turrets, which makes it seem to me that you now almost have to devote fighters to CAP, especially with the changes to bombers that get through.  My gut reaction is that these values should probably be d3 bombers and d2 for fighter-hybrid types, especially given how many resilient fighter types there are out there.

Hmmmm... unfortunately people deteste D2s for some reason. I am actually curious how this plays out. With these rules turrets are a bit less effective at stopping bombers, and experience with CAP generally means that the vessel without a CAP gets attacked. Additionally the person attacking would be able to account for this, and send a number of fighters alongside the bombers as necessary. Furthermore, when your opponent is using his AC for CAP, he isn't using them against you. This will need playtesting of course, and I initially intended it to be a D3, but with this system there is a boost to bombers and none to Assault Boats, so it was a little compromise. Who knows, perhaps a D2/D3 system is the correct answer. Additionally the Mixed-Type loss was to compensate for the bonus that Space Marines get against Bombers, whose relative damage potential is reduced slightly.

p26, Col 3, Bombers vs Ships:  The change to increase bomber damage is interesting.  Likewise, I can see how this is trying to balance out the increased efficiency of fighter types vs the bombers.  Not sure if the exact balance is right; has there been any significant playtesting with these values?

Mathematics in the general section shows them as slightly more effective against 'normal' turreted vessels and more against 'higher-turret' vessels. I have played 4 games using these rules, with traditional ac fleets. The first; IN vs Demiurg, the game went like you said, ordnance seemed to be played much more defensively as opposed to offensively. However the comparative Torpedo boost likely played an effect. The Second was Tau vs. IN, which seemed about average, the third Chaos vs. Tau, of which the Chaos player was defensive (fairly normal), but still picking and choosing worked fine for the Tau and they won. The last was Dark Eldar vs. IN, of which the Dark Eldar lost badly, but I think this was due to the player being newish.

p27, Col 2, Fighter Boats:  Fighter boats function as Fighter boats?  I think is supposed to be 'behave as Fighters against'.

Should say fighter-bombers.

p27, Col 2-3, Torpedeo craft:  Might be worth a note describing how waves work.  I imagine you simply combine the strengths of each squadron in the wave, rather than producing individual salvoes of 2/1 for each point of strength in the wave.  I do like the Torpedeo Fighter concept, though I'm not entirely sure which races would use such craft.  The "Evil" trifecta of Orks, Chaos, and Dark Eldar seem most likely.

I was thinking an Ork upgrade instead of giving them full torpedo bombers (which proves problematic).

p27, Col 3, Mines:  These seem really powerful, especially in fleets like most Eldar and Ork variants, where getting to within mine range is par for the course (either via armor or speed).  I'm just imagining a Torture or Eclipse class dashing up behind an Emperor from over 40cm away and dumping a load of 4 mines out.  Even with average rolling for both turrets and hits per wave, that's going to end up doing 3-4 direct hits, and if the 'halves' go for you instead of against you, that's around 7 hits (because a second mine sneaks through the turrets adding 3.5 more hits on average).  And against a cruiser with only 2 turrets, instead of 5, that's going to be an average of 10 hits.  Complete destruction of a Lunar or Murder in one attack, from an effective range beyond their weapons?  Seems too good.  Again, gut reaction without any play testing, but I'd be inclined to make these work like as to Lances as normal Torpedo and Bomber's are to Weapon Batteries.  d6 attacks per remaining Strength, each of which inflicts a hit on a flat 4+, rather than using the armor value the way bombers and torpedoes do.  That roughly halves the damage, meaning a typical line cruiser with 2 turrets is only going to take 5 hits from a wave of 4.  Still enough to cripple (at the cost of having to get to within 10cm), but not outright destroy.

It's a pretty gutsy move I do agree, but remember, vessels which become minelayers lose their other ordnance types, and Mines are quite slow/easily destroyed by fighters.

Random related thought:  I can totally see some races, especially Orks and Nids, making Mine-Bombers (aka Kamikaze Bombas), loaded up with mines the same way a Torpedo Bomber drops torpedoes.  Cram as much explosives onto their frame as you can and fly 'em straight into the enemy one way for "precision" delivery of huge booms.

Problematic I think with how powerful mines are.

p29, Col 1, Hit and Run: "Essentially causing a critical hit on the lower end of the table."  This clause needs to be a sentence.   "This will essentially cause a critical hit result from the lower half of the table", perhaps.

Agreed, I thought that sounded funny.

p30, Col 2, Numerical Superiority:   This is awkwardly phrased.  How about:  "Larger squadrons are more likely to contain a veteran commander, whose experience can bolster the efficiency and morale of the entire squadron.  Any squadron of Escorts or Orbitals which contains 5 or more members may re-roll the die when randomly determining Leadership for that squadron."

Agreed

.

p30, Col 3, Ordained Duty: "Capital Ships, which expense" should be "whose expense", and in the following sentence, "Despite this" should probably be "Because of this" or "Due to this".

Thanks, this type of stuff is quite helpful, I've spent a lot of time staring at the same words, and since I wrote them I know what I was trying to say.... so these tend to pop up more often than I think.

p32, Col 3, Shooting By Squadrons:  When you say "identical" does this mean identical by type, or exactly identical?   Could a squadron of a Dictator and Overlord combine their weapon batteries, even though they have different strengths?

Another thought error. I meant to say that they may combine identical weapon systems.

p33, Col 3, Launching Ordnance:  I don't like the change of mandating that only those ships in contact-chain with the Lead ship can benefit from this.  Especially since the Numerical Superiority rule encourages larger squadrons.   I should be able to form up into, say, a group of 3 and a group of 4 and have both groups benefit.

I'm a bit confused here, squadrons cap out at 6, and most players use either groups of 3 or 5 due to victory point rules. There is some merit to a group of say 3 and 3 combining ordnance, however this is quite complex to explain, and very situational. This method works simpler, and should still allow you to fire your ordnance in multiple waves/salvoes, but I know I need to add more wording there.

p36, Col 2, Placing Celestial Phenomena:  It seems slightly counter-intuitive to me that fleets with aggressive attack ratings are more likely to be able to force conflicts in the further out regions.  The math makes sense when you dissect it, but it just feels a little backwards.

I know.... I actually don't like this rule all that much and may change it to something else, like how missions work (pick 2 and a definite no, overlapping etc.)

p42, Col 1, Fighting in Low Orbit: This column cuts off mid sentence.

Cut and paste error.... whoops.

From the Section on Leadership on, the page numbers are clearly not fixed yet, as you mentioned, so I'll switch to referring to things by section/subsection.

Leadership, Starting Leadership, Col 2:  Instead of "each race uses a different column to determine their resultant leadership score", I recommend "each race uses a particular column".  Different implies no two races can use the same column, which is clearly not the case.  I also recommend swapping columns 1 and 2 on the table, so that roughly speaking, the columns get better from left to right, just as the scores get better from top to bottom.  I understand why they're set up the way they are (I being the "standard" table, while II is "bad" and III and IV are better than average), but since we're already divorcing the table from the fleet entries, you might as well make the table more consistent and adjust the numbers accordingly in the fleet entries.

Fleets of the 41st Millenium: Lots of this is replicated from Ship Types, The Fleet, Characters and other sections.   The information here that I don't see in a newer section are the base sizes (which should probably go into Ship Types) and the rules for allies (Not sure where to put this, probably under The Fleet, but maybe not).  Also, just as a general note, large flight bases are 60mm, not 50mm, as mentioned under Battleship and Grand Cruisers.

All the pages listed after the 'Celestial Phenomena' section are works in progress or older pages that I have not dissected completely. The Allies/reserve rules will be moved to The Fleet section and some I was planning on putting elsewhere but ended up changing my mind.

Armaments, Pulsar Lances:  The wording on how this works feels cumbersome to me.  Perhaps: "If a Pulsar Lance successfully hits, immediately roll a second attack.  If the second attack successfully hits, roll a third and final attack.  If the firing ship is on Lock On orders, only the first attack with each Pulsar Lance may be re-rolled".

Nice I needed a better way to word this, it is actually a C&P from MMS 1.9B

@Transports, I'm actually not sure about this one, Transports are made in respect to the IN transport, which is rather slow, and I will almost assuredly remove the tie in with Inefficient Engines and simply have slower transports be dirt cheap. Hits=transport capacity is the most efficient way to balance large transports vs smaller ones. Furthermore the point system was added to correct for the dumb need for half-transports, in this case the player simply chooses to pay for more transports, or more weapons. Q-ships will prove to be interesting, but they will have a normal transport capacity for their size, simply being equipped with more weaponry that could prove surprising to his opponent when revealed.

@Qualities, a number need to be added, and 'Hook Dependant' is one of them.

@Mines, as a reminder of how mines work officially, they roll 8D6 against the target's armour if they survive turret fire and 4D6 if they die. So they always caused damage, however D6 hits may be a bit large in retrospect. Mines were rarely used outside of minefields and singular mines before, and these were always terribly annoying. This does warrant considerable thought.

Please tell me if you find any other errors or confusing sections, at least up to the Celestial Phenomena pages. After your commentary I think that there will be a Beta prelim, and then a Beta final spaced by a few weeks for us to better gauge how many of these elements work. Obviously the Beta rules will be up for a few months after that, while I work on other things, after that I'll return to Book I and hammer in the final nails.

[Plaxor]

So after a few hours of thought, and the consideration of biased games that were not 'controlled' to assert ordnance efficacy, I will change things from the preview for ordnance. Also the D2 concept I do like, and is in reality a necessity for the game in some form, despite RC's complaint (and he hasn't been around in a while...) Particularly these;

Fighters remove D3 Bombers/Torp Bombers and D2 Assault Boats.
Cross Fighters remove D2 Bombers/Torp Bombers and 1 Assault Boat.

This should suitably serve the purpose I intended, pressuring a defensive advantage so that a fleet can not be so easily overwhelmed, but not so far that it prevents AC fleets from working. To test the system I will run a little controlled experiment titled 'the duel', that me and my roommate will go through over a few hours.

8 500 point fleets, 2 each of Tau, Orks, IN and Chaos. One fleet from each race contains 8 launch bays, and the other 4 with a 'gun'-cruiser. Each of the 4LB/Gun Cruiser fleets will be played against each 8LB fleet on a 4x4 board with identical terrain deployed as normal in the 'Primary Biosphere' at least twice. Leadership will be removed as a factor an only the lower average result will be used for each vessel.

I'll let you know the results tomorrow.

[TheDaR]

Yes and no. For one thing it is a bit irrational for a fleet to fire upon its hulks instead of directly at the enemy, though it could potentially cause more harm. For balance reasons, it prevents certain 'suicide tactics' such as rushing in your Avenger GC to ensure that it explodes catastrophically as a bomb, as this strategy would assuredly cause problems against fleets with fewer hits (Eldar) or ones that are normally difficult to damage (Necrons), and Escorts would explode by the thousands. Another reason is for victory points when holding the field. Simply, only two races are permitted to fire upon their own vessels, the Necrons and the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Okay, that's a sufficient rationale for game perspective for me.  I think if I were designing a game from scratch I'd allow it (only against hulked ships, as most races wouldn't shoot at still functional ships, though a few races would, like Orks and Chaos).

RC repeatedly complained about torpedo weakness. 1 Fighter=Infinite Torpedoes but only one Bomber? This was for some consistency.

Yeah, that goes a long way torwards making those big torpedo salvoes more effective.  2d3 is a nice compromise between letting torpedoes still work and not being able to stop them at all (since fleet launch bays are usually half or less the total number of torpedoes the same fleet can put down).

Hmmmm... unfortunately people deteste D2s for some reason. I am actually curious how this plays out. With these rules turrets are a bit less effective at stopping bombers, and experience with CAP generally means that the vessel without a CAP gets attacked. Additionally the person attacking would be able to account for this, and send a number of fighters alongside the bombers as necessary. Furthermore, when your opponent is using his AC for CAP, he isn't using them against you. This will need playtesting of course, and I initially intended it to be a D3, but with this system there is a boost to bombers and none to Assault Boats, so it was a little compromise. Who knows, perhaps a D2/D3 system is the correct answer. Additionally the Mixed-Type loss was to compensate for the bonus that Space Marines get against Bombers, whose relative damage potential is reduced slightly.

My initial stance for this would be that I'd want to have enough fleet ordnance to be able to put cap on about half to 2/3rds of my capital ships, and a few left over to make assaults with (especially assault boats vs Escorts, as that's one of the most efficient ways to kill them).  If my opponent of the day didn't have a lot of ordnance, or wasn't launching bombers, only then would I swap over to a more offensive posture with my ordnance (probably waves of 1 fighter for every 3 or 4 bombers).

Mathematics in the general section shows them as slightly more effective against 'normal' turreted vessels and more against 'higher-turret' vessels. I have played 4 games using these rules, with traditional ac fleets. The first; IN vs Demiurg, the game went like you said, ordnance seemed to be played much more defensively as opposed to offensively. However the comparative Torpedo boost likely played an effect. The Second was Tau vs. IN, which seemed about average, the third Chaos vs. Tau, of which the Chaos player was defensive (fairly normal), but still picking and choosing worked fine for the Tau and they won. The last was Dark Eldar vs. IN, of which the Dark Eldar lost badly, but I think this was due to the player being newish.

Hrm.  Yeah, I can see that.  Before with the turrets subtracting from number of hits, the boost from 2 to 3 to more becomes very significant vs even very large waves of bombers.  Old style, a wave of 5 against  2 turrets gives 5x (d6-2) for an average of about 7, while against 5 turrets 5x (d6-5) is lucky to get 1 (2.5 boats survive, maybe 1 rolls a 6 on number of attacks to get an actual attack).   New style, you'd go from about 13 attacks after 2 turrets to about 8 after 5 turrets.  So for a big wave, roughly double the effectiveness against standard turret levels and ridiculously more against very high turret targets like Emperors or Hulks.

I was thinking an Ork upgrade instead of giving them full torpedo bombers (which proves problematic).

That would be pretty solid.  And fits quite well with the Ork-y feel.

It's a pretty gutsy move I do agree, but remember, vessels which become minelayers lose their other ordnance types, and Mines are quite slow/easily destroyed by fighters.

That's what makes it particularly effective for Eldar and Dark Eldar.  They can fairly reliably get to within the 10cm or so necessary to guarantee that there's no flight time during which anything except CAP fighters could intervene.  Orks, assuming they get minelayers as an option during their Alpha/Beta documents, could do the same, via their armored prows and sheer quantity of hull points, plus fair amount of Fighta-bombas.   Just soak up hits on the way in, use a flight or two of FB (with the new rules) to drive off CAP, and then let the mines float on home for massive damage in one go.

If you consider that a bomber is going to average 1 hit (3.5 average attacks, against 5+ average armor) on a successful run, mines should be only moderately more powerful per "squadron". 

What about reducing Mines to either d3 automatic hits, or d6 attacks with a Hit Rating of 4+?   Either alternative would end up giving an average of about 2 hits per successful attack, rather than the current 3.5.

I could even see going to just 1 automatic hit, with a Bombardment-like quality for criticaling on a 4+, but with the caveat that Mines are not subject to the Fleet Ordnance Limit much like torpedoes (which makes sense, since you may launch from modified bays, but it's not like Mines are called back to base for refueling).  That would mean you're only slightly more powerful per attack than a bomber, but does let you at least lay down enough to make up for their relative lack of mobility compared to a bomber.

p33, Col 3, Launching Ordnance:  I don't like the change of mandating that only those ships in contact-chain with the Lead ship can benefit from this.  Especially since the Numerical Superiority rule encourages larger squadrons.   I should be able to form up into, say, a group of 3 and a group of 4 and have both groups benefit.

I'm a bit confused here, squadrons cap out at 6, and most players use either groups of 3 or 5 due to victory point rules. There is some merit to a group of say 3 and 3 combining ordnance, however this is quite complex to explain, and very situational. This method works simpler, and should still allow you to fire your ordnance in multiple waves/salvoes, but I know I need to add more wording there.

Yeah, should have made my example 3/2 or 3/3.  More to the point, I'm looking for something like having a squadron of 6 cobras or Subjugations put down two 6 strong salvoes on slightly different trajectories, to force my opponent into a specific corridor to avoid them.  If I can only combine salvoes on the Lead Ship, I have to split the squadron into two separate squadrons, and thus can't use Numerical Superiority to get good leadership, or I have to accept the second "salvo" actually be 3 salvoes of 2, which is much easier to fly through with turrets active.

p36, Col 2, Placing Celestial Phenomena:  It seems slightly counter-intuitive to me that fleets with aggressive attack ratings are more likely to be able to force conflicts in the further out regions.  The math makes sense when you dissect it, but it just feels a little backwards.

I know.... I actually don't like this rule all that much and may change it to something else, like how missions work (pick 2 and a definite no, overlapping etc.)

Oddly, the math on it actually works exactly right.  The likely defenders (those with lower attack rating) are likely to want to engage as far out as possible away from their planets.  The attackers will want to engage the planets to get the most for their attack, giving a nice balanced roll.   If the attackers don't want to venture in-system, they can sit in the outer reaches or beyond until the defenders are forced to come to them (represented by the high combination of zone number and attack rating, guaranteeing them where they engage).

@Transports, I'm actually not sure about this one, Transports are made in respect to the IN transport, which is rather slow, and I will almost assuredly remove the tie in with Inefficient Engines and simply have slower transports be dirt cheap. Hits=transport capacity is the most efficient way to balance large transports vs smaller ones. Furthermore the point system was added to correct for the dumb need for half-transports, in this case the player simply chooses to pay for more transports, or more weapons. Q-ships will prove to be interesting, but they will have a normal transport capacity for their size, simply being equipped with more weaponry that could prove surprising to his opponent when revealed.

For first pass, that's probably okay.   I was just trying to forsee scenarios where there were vessels with transport capacity with more or less than typical.  I can easily see wanting to have different transport classes eventually, especially in a campaign setting.  A "fast courier" would have different characteristics than a "bulk ore transport" and both are different from a "assault regiment lander".

How about "A vessel can carry an amount of materials equal to its Transport quality for scenarios which require it.   If no quantity is specified for Transport, it is equal to the ship's starting Hull Points.  No vessel may have a Transport quality larger than its current remaining Hull Points."?  That way, every existing transport can carry the same, but you still have open the possibility of ships with less than their full hit capacity of transport.

Even better, I can see refits for campaigns where you replace <x> strength worth of batteries or lances or launch bays to carry cargo for particular needs.   "Replace the port and starboard weapon batteries for Transport Capacity 4" or the like.

[RCgothic]

I'm sorry I haven't been able to keep up with this. I just haven't had as much time available as I'd like.

On the plus side, starting a new job tomorrow!

[TheDaR]

Got in another trial game last night.

We used the 1.6 beta core rules and I gave the 1.5 DE Alpha a run.   I ran a pair of lance Succubi, a squadron of 5 torpedo Subjugation and 4 Lance Corsairs.  My opponent had 2 Strike Cruisers, 2 Vanguard Strike Cruisers, and a squadron of 4 Hunter Destroyers.

Rules Issues

Torpedoes versus squadrons.  With the change from the original rules where the markers got wider with strength, shooting high strength torpedo salvos at escorts is almost fruitless, especially with boarding torpedoes.   10 points of strength in the original rules would have made a nice 10-ish cm wide swath that could easily hit 3 or 4 escorts clustered up.  With most escorts having only 1 turret, and hit by 2 or 3 torpedoes, you could easily wipe out all of those 3 to 4 ships if the angles were right.   Now, with the addition of massed turrets and the need to cluster up salvo strength, shooting 10 strength of torpedoes is only 4cm wide, and if you're lucky you can hit two ships, each of which gets to shoot 5 or 6 turrets.  So with good dice rolls, you might still kill both you hit, for a max of 2.   I'm not sure if there's a good solution to this without completely reverting lots of changes.   

Really though, there are two issues here.  The first one is the massed turrets.  There probably needs to be a cap on this; a squadron of 6 Cobras should not exceed the effective turret capacity of an Emperor Battleship.   Perhaps the same +3 cap that the 2010 FAQ used?  Or limiting it to one use per squadron per turn so that you can at least be overwhelmed by multiple attacks.

The second is how to deal with ordnance versus squadrons.  The concept of firing a "spread" of torpedoes to make them much harder to avoid and hit multiple targets in a convoy is well rooted in history, so consolidating them into fewer markers drops their utility fairly considerably.  Shooting hits all roll over from squadron member to squadron member, should torpedoes follow this rule to offset the fact that torpedoes salvos do not gain width any more?  This could be too powerful, but I'm not sure how else to help offset the effective loss of utility in torpedoes. 


Thoughts on the DE revisions

Mostly fine.  The 2 hit Corsairs worked out okay, though due to some dice luck, it didn't really come up too much (lots of instances of rolling exactly 3 hits against that squadron in a turn, just enough to wipe out a full 2 hit frigate, and had they been one hit, still would have killed one and hit another shield but not killed a second).   

The Subjugation felt a little worthless, but part of that was being up against SM, so torpedoes and weapon batteries are both bad weapon systems to take against them, and I haven't really run torpedo destroyers a lot before, so I need to learn to use them a little better. 

The new mimic engine rule seemed okay.   The only downside I could see would be in games with limited turns.

I still feel constrained by the separation of Light Cruiser and Cruisers limits in the Fleet List and the fact that Light Cruisers are now subject to the same 1:3 escort ratio as Cruisers.   Especially true for 750 point games where the light cruisers are more attractive.  While the original Armada fleet had the 1:3 ratio, it also didn't have Light Cruisers.  Needing to take 3 escorts per 150 point Light Cruiser is a much bigger percentage than 3 per 230-250 point Cruiser.   How about 'You must have more Escorts than Light Cruisers', and 'You must have 1 Light Cruisers or Escorts squadron per Cruiser'?


Now the big elephant in the room: 

The new Holofield rule as of 1.6 beta.

After playtesting, I immensely dislike it.  It's awful, and I think it makes every Eldar variant almost unplayably bad.

All 3 Eldar variants are have almost no non-ordnance weapons with greater than 30cm range, so with the removal of MSM, they are forced to close to 30cm or less to bring the majority of their weapons to bear.  Further, almost every weapon is front mounted, so they do not even get the advantage of being able to shoot in passing to present an abeam aspect, they must instead present themselves on a closing aspect to fire.

In practice, not only are you going to be within 30cm, I found I had to spend a very large percentage of my time within 15cm.  Due to the combination of front facing weapons and wanting to end up abeam to my opponent's batteries once he maneuvered, I often had to get right nose to nose with my opponent's ships, so that his minimum move distance would carry him past me and force him to turn just to get me in sights.  I had to choice to either get the Holofield bonus or instead, maneuver in tight to get the bonus for being abeam instead of closing.  They end up adding up to the same thing.

So for the majority of the game (probably 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the times I was being fired on), most of my ships got absolutely no benefit from Holofields at all. 

The only other alternative to being so close all the time that I can see would have been to spend 3-4 turns maneuvering for every turn of firing, just so that I could get to a position where I could fire from 30cm and still have the opponent's ships moving in a way that I could avoid him getting back into 15cm range.  That would have made for an incredibly long and boring game, assuming my opponent was even bad enough to let me consistently get those shots lined up.

I can't even imagine how horrid this would have been in a bigger game, where my opponent would have enough ships so that he actually started to get overlapping fields of fire, and I couldn't force my way into being abeam most of the time.

I suppose I could just give up, ignore the weapon batteries and lances, and run nothing but torpedoes and ordnance and make use of the lack of minimum move to stay on the other side of the table and just shell my opponent from 60-90 cm so that I never get shot at and when I do I actually have my Holofield bonus.  But I'm pretty sure that's exactly the sort of game plan we're trying avoid being attractive.

Having had this experience, I had to go back and figure out exactly how bad the difference really was, mathematically.

This table shows, roughly how likely an eldar ship is to avoid damage from hits from various sources.

vs	Classic BFG	BFG:R Pre 1.6	BFG:R 1.6
Batteries	Right Shift	Right Shift + Shields	Right Shift over 15cm + Shields
Lance	83% (+BM on move)	50% + Shields	0%/33%/66% (0-15/15-30/30+) + Shields
Bombers	83% (+BM on move)	75% upto ~turret max	75% upto ~turret max
Torpedoes	83% (+BM on move)	50% upto turret max	50% upto turret max
Hit & Runs	83% (+BM on move)	50% upto turret max	50% upto turret max
Teleport Attack	83% (+BM on move)	0% (have shields)	0% (have shields)
Boarding Attack	83% (+BM on move)	~33% (Enemy Ld Based)	~33% (Enemy Ld Based)

Some notes:  All of these are calculated with the idea that Lances hit on 4+, the Eldar ship has 5+ armor, the BFG:R ships have Fast Tracking Turrets against non-Eldar ordnance, that no fighters exist to suppress turrets, and Bombers are doing 1d6 attacks (ie, are not hybrids).  Torpedoes and H&R attack saves are done after hits for Classic, but before hits when using turrets for BFG:R.  So some of the "hits" turrets would save would not have been actual hits once rolled.  In practice, it works out to a 50% actual save rate against those for ships with 5+ armor for smaller waves and even worse against waves substantially bigger than the number of turrets.  Ditto bombers, who lose an average of 3.5 attacks (and thus 1 hit) for every successful turret attack upto the number of turrets and none after that.  Likewise, most the Classic entries also have the +BM proviso, noting the 1/6 chance that the blast markers left will cause another hit when the Eldar ship next moves (no matter how many hits were saved, 1 or 100, it's the same 1/6 chance for a single extra hit).

Obviously the table doesn't even account for everything (like the Classic CE and CWE being able to MSM).  But overall it's pretty easy to see that BFG:R has rather drastically reduced Eldar's ability to avoid damage against everything except Weapon Batteries and very small numbers of Lance shots.   Shields and turrets help against 'plinking' damage, but if you can put more than 4 or so hits from lances or get launch waves of more than 4 ordnance in a turn, the protection goes from slightly better or slightly worse to much worse.  The 1.6 Holofield rule additionally eliminates all the gain from shields by neutering its protection from lances and batteries in the ranges MMS Eldar have to operate at.

This change already comes on top of  the fact that the all three Eldar fleets in BFG are already incredibly fragile.   They are, across the board, 20-30% more expensive for capital ships with 2 less hits than comparable ships in other fleets (Compare the CE Shadow or a DE Bloodied Claw Torture at 230 with an Imperial Dominator for 190).   For CWE and CE, it's even worse.   Having lost MSM and not gained any offsetting weapon range hurt pretty bad, as they now have stay in most fleet's best range band to even make attacks when they're easier to crit, as well.   BFG:R helps a little by making  CE and CWE at least Fragile on 5+ rather than on 4+, but even with that, it effectively doubles the number of crits (instead of tripling it).  Given the Eldar crit tables, that averages out to an average of .5 hits per crit, and thus means that over the course of a game an Eldar cruiser has yet another .5 less hits than their starting value suggests.   And, of course, with fewer hits, ships from all three fleets are both easier to cripple and have a harder time repairing any critical effects, due to fewer dice for damage control.

All I can really say about this is: Wow.  Until I just sat here and calculated all this, I hadn't realized exactly how much Eldar have gotten boned.  I now almost want to go back to the original Holofield/Shadowfield rule, with no turrets and no shields.  I know the original BFG Eldar rules were hard to beat for new players, and somewhat frustrating to play against due to the MSM thing, but they've really taken an absolutely huge reduction in their staying power with no corresponding increases anywhere else, even without accounting for the loss of MSM.

[Plaxor]

@RC

Congrats! Don't worry, I'm doing OK with it, fortunately I at least have some critical commentary. Unfortunately the process takes longer than I had hoped, and I don't think I will be finished with 'Beta' versions of Books I+II until around April (I was hoping for February) but patience is always key!

Regarding Transports:
Partially filled Transports are more of a Campaign thing, and will be addressed there, as well as those with refits for more/less than normal capacity. In most games the Transports will either be considered full, or 'capable of carrying so much' which from a game standpoint can be understood by this example:

The Dark Eldar transports may not be transporting anything in a scenario (like a planetary assault), and may instead be brought so they can transport things away from the planet. As a damaged transport would be less able to move goods, it would still have a lower transport capacity. Similarly if a transport carrying goods suffered damage, it would likely unpower or destroy a portion of the cargo holds (which consume most of the space on the ship), resulting in fewer cargo.

The AC Analysis:

After performing the "Duel" test, the results proved that CAP had little effect on AC, and that the attacker always benefited from AC interactions. Simply because when attacking a ship with a CAP the attacker could choose how the AC interacted... here is an example to better express the issues:

A Tau Hero Class has a CAP of 2 Fighters. His opponent (an imperial player) has a wave of 4 bombers that he wishes to attack the ship with. Since the Fighters will destroy D3 bombers each, it is nearly assured that the CAP will stop all the bombers as they would destroy an average of 4. The Imperial player instead of sending in the whole wave at once, divides it into 2 single bombers and a wave of 2 bombers, the 2 single bombers attack the ship individually and remove the CAP, then the 2 remaining are free to attack it without the CAP defending it.

The results otherwise did not show any significant difference between AC heavy fleets and those with an average amount, though the AC heavy fleets proved to have an overall higher efficacy. Between the 12 games played the AC heavy fleets had 247 more victory points than the ACnormal fleets, but they still had a comparable win ratio at 6-1-5. Note: this did not account for holding the field.

Bombers had expected efficacy, slightly better than official, but otherwise unchanged, and Torpedoes did not seem to cause significant issues. In fact the need to devote more fighters to torpedo control seemed to balance quite well with the reduced need for Bomber control.

As with Book I, I will be adding a number of pages (around 3-4) to the rules sections, simply for further explanations of concepts like multiple critical hits, and to break up the text a bit.

Another Note: I will be adding a class of 'vessels' called Citadels, which are large Ground defences such as Fortress Monasteries and Hives. These will be multi-hit and have shields, and will be able to fire into space, and be fired upon from space. How this will work is that one will need two models for Citadels, one will be placed in base contact with a planetary template and the other as normal on the low orbit table. I think I already brought up the Air-to-Space quality, which allows them to do this. Honestly I'm considering doing this for all Ground Defences, just to reduce problems associated with them.

[Plaxor]

@TheDaR Wow you replied while I was typing....

Ordnance and squadroning is going to be changed to a different version. Now there will be a 'primary' firer, instead of the Lead ship, so a group of 6 cobras could combine their fire into 3 groups of 2 they just need to declare one ship from each group to be the primary firer.

Regarding Torpedo Sizes;
I guess that you weren't around for the whole thing about it in FAQ 2010. This has been argued quite a bit, and in fact according to that system any number of torpedoes would only ever be represented by 1 marker! That system made combining torpedoes somewhat of a waste. The main reason this was done by the HA was due to the fact of Torpedoes significant exponential performance increase when they increase in size. For example; a group of 18 torpedoes was much more than 3x as powerful as 6, as their size meant they could hit ships in an 18cm width, with ALL the torpedoes.

Since the D6 and single size marker caused problems with markers larger than 6, we've allowed these to spill over into new ones, and curbed rationale a bit.

Regarding Mass Turrets:
Conceptually here this was something to add reason to take larger squadrons of escorts. Most escorts have 2 turrets, so the increase is likely small. Additionally, once a vessel was destroyed, the remaining vessels would reduce their turrets accordingly. Also, mass turrets don't work when the squadron is under orders, so unless the Cobra squadron was not using Reload Ordnance it would perform normally. Perhaps you did not take this into account? Generally squadrons would be under orders reducing the power of their turrets, and with bombers not being so related to turret strength this seemed OK regarding them. However this rule may be removed or changed to a limit (maybe 4), I would like to see how it plays out a bit first.

Regarding DE and fleet selections:
I may be mistaken in how this works.... but didn't I just put up the 3 escorts per capital ship rule? Perhaps a change is necessary, but remember, a fleet with only CLs could have more capital ships than one with only Cruisers.


Regarding Holofields:
Hmmm... Eldar rules really aren't my work, this is all the work of Horizon... and has been used by many for quite some time (3-5 years) so I hope he has something better to say but I can say this;

The need to be Closing does cause issues, but I imagine the concept is based on the Eldar's speed and manoverability like you said. In my opinion weapons batteries should always see a left shift, for simplicity but I understand the need to balance WBs vs Lances. I think that it may take some getting use to, as it is radically different than before. Remember with Eldar shields they can absorb more damage overall... so this is a factor.

I'm surprised you didn't see protection from Lances at all, as it is difficult to get within 15cm of an Eldar ship. Personally I would prefer a -1 (perhaps a -2) to hit from lances regardless of range, but again.... this is Horizon's thing so I don't have that much influence over it.

Yes, Eldar are less defended, as they do have to always close.... which makes them easier comparable targets to IN/Chaos, and unfortunately I have very little experience with Eldar. I do have quite a bit with Dark Eldar, which do not suffer from the Fragile quality so their weakness isn't so pronounced. Eldar are glass cannons, so they have to choose their battles and their damage output should force less retribution from remaining vessels.

Fast Tracking turrets work against all ordnance, so they all should be 75% unless I'm missing something.

I hope that I have not made some grave error, and that MSM is balanced, but again Horizon will really have to be the one to comment further on it. I will look into it further mathematically, and I hope that you try a few more games with it because you might find that it simply takes some getting use to and careful manipulation of movement/attack. Again in my opinion Holofields would look slightly different, and Eldar would have an overall better defence against Lances/WBs.

I wonder if I missed something with WBs in particular..... It seems like they should have 2 right shifts but only 1 when within 15cm. As a ~20% reduction in efficacy for distances more than 15cm doesnt seem right..... Hmmmm.... Nope. Weird. I will definitely look into this before publishing Book I, from a purely mathematical standpoint. I'm actually curious why there isn't 2 shifts. 1 shift causes a reduction of firepower to 74% from Closing. Two causes a reduction to 50%. So 25% reduction according to these rules for most instances. Lances reduced at 15cm to 67% or 33%, I understand it is supposed to be comparable.... If -1 from lances and just 1 right shift were adopted, Direct fire weapons would have an average 30% loss of efficacy.

Now since Eldar vessels have the same number of shields as IN/Chaos vessels, they wont be compared. They do have fewer hits (75% for a Cruiser) so I think the concept is that 30% loss of firepower vs 25% loss of hits is supposed to be a wash. However you do bring up the most important factor; ELDAR SHIPS ALWAYS CLOSE! So compared to IN vessels which have increased armour to compensate for closing, and Chaos who are always Abeam, weapons batteries have a 25% bonus compared to each of those fleets. This would be OK if the Eldar ships were of similar cost, as their other abilities would balance out, but they are not! In fact they generally are more expensive. Note: AC/Torpedoes should be fine due to Fast Tracking Turrets.

So I will look into this more, and would like to see some insight from Horizon, but right now I am feeling like a change to:
2 Right shifts for Holofields (only 1 when within 15cm), and -1 to hit from Lances.

[horizon]

Plaxor, what the ..... lollerz are you talking about? Is this the first time you played with Eldar MMS?


Holofield is an ecm. So a distortion.

At long range it works better (thus an additional right shift on range in addition to shifts for range, thus totalling:
under 15cm left shift for opponent
15-30 : 1 right shift
30+ : 2 right shifts

for lances it is a better save at long range (or in bfg:r a worse chance to hit)

Why? because Eldar up close should be punishable and almost impossible to hit at long range.

2 right shifts = ridiculous.

Under msm they had 1 right shift with no shields at all ranges.
In MMS 1 right shift (except under 15) with shields.

With msM the second M was the main save. But also depending on enemy, celestial phenomena. Without phenomena against opponents with range the second M was futile as 1 measly weapon battery could destroy a ship at 60cm. That is plain wrong. Under MMS this has been solved.

Plus they have shields now. And all have 5+ armour.

Many tests  & responses showed that the current mms workings make them pretty hard to beat.

You need to time your attacks. It is still no fleet of attrition. Greatly so! So if you strike you must do well. If you give the opponent a chance to strike back at close range be ready to brace.

MMS has also showed a great balance against weapon batteries/lances. No longer the unbalanced wb first mentailty in fleet selection. So good.




ehm wait.

The Dar, you used them in the Dark Eldar?

Under official rules Dark Eldar end up closing as always. Under official rules Dark Eldar never got the second move.

Now fill me in: do Dark Eldar have shields under bfg:r?

If not, still:

Official DE: no shields // no second movement // end up within 30cm // Holofield: 2+ vs lances / right shift vs batteries.
Holofield BFG: R: // no second movement // end up within 30cm // Holofield: right shift vs batteries except under 15cm / lances 4/5/6 to hit.

hmm. DE have shields in bfg:r right?

Otherwise I understand the Dar's problem. It is about the DE not CE or CWE. And MMS1.9 is CWE/CE

[AndrewChristlieb]

I thought mms less than 15 was a wash no shift either way... obviously not now that you mention it, but it really should be. Other than that mms is solid if not a bit more boring. Horizion is defiantly right about the MMS Eldar being all about the setup, its an all or nothing game now as you cant just back off immediately if you screw up.

The DE problem your facing is due to the above, movement for them has not changed what your experiencing is the lack of save your used to seeing from shadowfields.

As far as torpedoes go yes it is a common tactic to saturate an area with ordnance in an effort to hit multiple ships, you can still do it also. Do not combine your salvos or combine them into smaller salvos. If you want to saturate an area you cannot expect to also focus all your hits. The 2cm width standard is a good rule as this shows a ship (or ships) firing their torpedoes in a very close proximity so as to ensure that a larger portion will hit. The problem with this is that of course it becomes easier to avoid the salvo or destroy it. Alternatively with 5 escorts for example you could saturate a 10 cm area with 5 salvos of 2 torpedoes each and hit multiple ships but do limited damage, 4 salvos over 8 cm of 2 2 2 and 4 torpedoes covering a large area but with lower chances of damaging ships, 3 salvos over 6 cm of 4 4 and 2 torpedoes still covering a large area and having a middling chance of damaging ships, or 2 salvos over 4 cm of 4 and 6 torpedoes less likely to hit ships but more likely to damage if they do hit

*edit yes they have shields, 5+ armor on capitols and 4+ on escorts also.

[TheDaR]

@TheDaR Wow you replied while I was typing....

Ordnance and squadroning is going to be changed to a different version. Now there will be a 'primary' firer, instead of the Lead ship, so a group of 6 cobras could combine their fire into 3 groups of 2 they just need to declare one ship from each group to be the primary firer.

Perfect.

Regarding Torpedo Sizes;
I guess that you weren't around for the whole thing about it in FAQ 2010. This has been argued quite a bit, and in fact according to that system any number of torpedoes would only ever be represented by 1 marker! That system made combining torpedoes somewhat of a waste. The main reason this was done by the HA was due to the fact of Torpedoes significant exponential performance increase when they increase in size. For example; a group of 18 torpedoes was much more than 3x as powerful as 6, as their size meant they could hit ships in an 18cm width, with ALL the torpedoes.

I played (mostly IN and CWE) in the 2005-2007 era, then my group fell apart.  Recently, a new crowd in a new store have gotten in to it, so I built myself some DE to go with my 40k army just as you started putting out the latest round of BFG:R.  So, yes, I missed the 2010 FAQ discussions, and only really even am aware of them for having read them once a while back.

The real answer, of course, is probably too complicated for practical use: you can only be attacked by the strength of torpedoes that cross your base, and the firer has the option to either spread out all the tokens to maximize frontage or collapse them in order to get strong barrages on single ships.

Regarding Mass Turrets:
Conceptually here this was something to add reason to take larger squadrons of escorts. Most escorts have 2 turrets, so the increase is likely small. Additionally, once a vessel was destroyed, the remaining vessels would reduce their turrets accordingly. Also, mass turrets don't work when the squadron is under orders, so unless the Cobra squadron was not using Reload Ordnance it would perform normally. Perhaps you did not take this into account? Generally squadrons would be under orders reducing the power of their turrets, and with bombers not being so related to turret strength this seemed OK regarding them. However this rule may be removed or changed to a limit (maybe 4), I would like to see how it plays out a bit first.

We did overlook that.  However, the particular case where it was most notable, there were no special orders involved.  I was coming off mimic engines, so I had a full 10 strength salvo from 5 Subjugation escorts, hitting home against a squadron of 4 Hunters who were not on Special Orders.  In the end, I could only hit two with the barrage (6 into one, 4 in to the other).  With 4 turrets each, even with Eldar ordnance, I only just barely got the necessary hits on each one.  Had there been one or two more to add to that, I might not have even killed two.

I do like the concept of massed turrets, I just think there probably needs to be a cap on how much benefit you can get.   Fleets with cheap sub 40 point escorts (especially Tau and Orks with 25/30 pointers) can effectively afford to give their valuable ships upto 6 turrets worth of screen, above and beyond the physical barrier of having those extra shields and hulls in the way.

Regarding DE and fleet selections:
I may be mistaken in how this works.... but didn't I just put up the 3 escorts per capital ship rule? Perhaps a change is necessary, but remember, a fleet with only CLs could have more capital ships than one with only Cruisers.

The original Armada fleet list had the 3:1 escorts to capital ship rule, when there were only 50 point Corsairs and 210 point Tortures.   When the BFG:R 1.4 Eldar combined list went out, the Succubi was added in at 130 base.  There is a 0-12 overall cruiser limit, and the same 3 escorts to every Torture.  However, there was no limit on the number or ratios for the Succubi, other than the overall fleet limit of 12 cruisers.  So you could, in theory, have fielded 10 Succubi at 1500 points, with no escorts at all.

The new 1.5 Alpha doc split the limit to 0-6 on both Tortures and Succubi, and made the ratio 3 escorts required per any capital ship (now including Succubi).

I most notice the problem with Succubi ratios in low points games.  I play a lot at 750 due to time constraints (we often don't get started until 7:30 or 8 pm, which means that a 1500 game takes too long).   Even with the subjugation at 45 points, I can't possibly get a third Succubi into 750, because I'd need 9 escorts to be able to field the third one (totaling 405 points of the 750).   Meanwhile, my Space Marine opponent is fielding some combination of 4 Strike and Vanguard Cruisers with only 4 escorts.

I'd personally like the Succubi to go back to completely unlimited (bar the overall 12 cruiser limit), but if people think that being able to field that purely capital ships (even if they're all light cruisers) for DE is too much, I'd be willing to accept a lesser limit.   Thus my suggestion of no more light cruisers than escorts combined with the original 3 escorts per Torture (rather than 3 escorts per any capital).

 

I'm surprised you didn't see protection from Lances at all, as it is difficult to get within 15cm of an Eldar ship. Personally I would prefer a -1 (perhaps a -2) to hit from lances regardless of range, but again.... this is Horizon's thing so I don't have that much influence over it.

It's not hard at all to get within 15cm, when they have to come to within 30 just to shoot.  That means they only have to close 15cm to get that bonus.   It's a little hard if you  have a pure one on one scenario, but the instant you start putting other ships down that can spread out a little bit, you can easily push any of the Eldar fleets into spaces where if they want to shoot you at all, they have to accept that one or more ships are going to be within 15cm to return fire.

As I said, since my opponent had nothing but Strike cruiser variants and Hunters, I didn't actually see lances, but based on the number of times I didn't get the holofield bonus for being outside of 15cm, had there been Novas, they would have been shooting without any penalty at least half the time.

Fast Tracking turrets work against all ordnance, so they all should be 75% unless I'm missing something.

I explained this a little in the note.  Yes, Fast Tracking means you hit 75% of the things you aim at.  However, the problem is that you *also* hit things that were actually going to be misses as well as hits.    Shadowfield/Holofield in the original rules worked after all hit rolls were made, while turrets go before the hit rolls.

For example, if you are a Mortalis, about to eat a wave of 6 standard torpedoes.   You have a very respectable 4 turrets.   You roll, and get a perfectly average 3 hits after rerolls, killing 3 torpedoes from the salvo.   Now, we roll hits.   Of the three that were not shot down, a perfectly average 1 goes through (3 attacks versus 5+ armor).   Of the ones that were shot down, we can expect that 1 of those would have hit as well (again, 3 more attacks versus 5+ armor).   So the turrets actually shot down 2 torpedoes that were going to miss anyhow.   So if we hadn't had any defenses at all, that wave of 6 torpedoes would have caused 2 hits.   With 4 fast tracking turrets, we took 1 hit.   So, on average, due to shooting down ordnance that already was going to miss, we actually only get 50% benefit, instead of the full 75%.

Looking at a larger salvo.  Next turn, a huge swarm of Cobras join up and fire off a 12 torpedo salvo.   Still only have 4 turrets.  We roll again on average, and stop 3.  9 torpedoes get through turrets and do an average of 3 hits.   From that salvo, we actually only stop 25% of the hits, because we max out on turrets at a 4 strong wave/salvo.

By comparison, let's consider the same Mortalis, about to get hit with 6 torpedoes.  It has an original issue Shadowfield and but no turrets.   The torpedoes, happy about their lack of turrets, roll to hit 5+ armor.  2 of them do so.   Shadowfield now kicks in and we get two 2+ saves against those attacks.  We never roll against the 4 that already missed, so we get the "full" 2+ save value on each one that didn't miss.   We've got about a 30% chance that one of those two hits will roll a 1, so on average we're taking about 1/3rd of a hit a turn, plus another 1/6 chance the blast marker from any saved shots will wound us when we move.  That totals up to about .5 hits per turn from a 6 torpedo salvo.

If our huge Cobra salvo of 12 hits an original Issue Shadowfield, all 12 roll to hit, netting an average of 4 hits.  Shadowfield, not caring how many were in the original salvo, only cares about the actual hits.  If you do the binomial distribution, it works out that you're about 50% likely to get a hit through the shadowfield with 4 attempts.  Add in the blastmarker wound chance, and you're looking at about 2/3rds of a hit a turn on average.

Edit:
Other notes about the general use of shifts in another post.  I'm working up a spreadsheet right now under various rule sets to get a better feel for how things work out.

[AndrewChristlieb]

Perhaps a 1 to 1 ratio for light cruisers to escorts on DE?

Also I was flipping through the main rules and noticed that the sections detailing the special orders were removed from each of the movement/ shooting sections. Not a big deal but they did address a few issues the brief descriptions @ the beginning of the book does not. Notably the BFI section does not mention anything about the order being made before to hits are rolled or that you cannot brace for taking damage from boarding attacks (unless this was intentional). Also the wording on the description leads one to believe that you can make a save against critical hits, Im assuming that means you can make a save against damage resulting from a critical hit, but not the critical damage itself (engine room damaged the hit can be saved, but you still cannot make any turns until the damage has been repaired etc).

[Plaxor]

@Horizon

Nope, never actually played against MMS or seen it. The groups I have played with either avoided Eldar (due to the shitty MSM rules) or just had no reason to pick it up. I did play against a Corsair player a few times when I started, but saw no problems then, and it was only recently when a Craftworld player joined our group (who doesn't like MMS) convinced me that MSM was so bad.

Otherwise of the three dozen or so players I have played against we have a fairly even distribution among all other races, with at least 2 players of each. DE was quite popular with the codex release, and I own a fleet, so I have had quite a bit of experience with them.

Your description is as I thought. Time, patience and maneuvering are key.

Dark Eldar have shields in BFG:R, we discussed this at some point. I believe theDaR's issue was with CE, and DE function similarly to Eldar in that to be most effective they must present their prow to their enemy. I did not mean that they are always considered closing, just that a player would generally be taking hits from a closing standpoint. Like how Chaos players generally take hits from the abeam.

@TheDaR

Your experience may be heavily influenced on the fact that you were fighting Space Marines. Unfortunately fleets will have varying performance depending upon opponent. Space Marines are quite maneuverable/fast, and have a number of other benefits which would hinder the 'Dark Eldar' strategy of getting behind their enemy/reducing their speed so they can not turn. In my experience DE vs IN, Ork, Demiurg and Tau fleets have a higher than average win ratio, simply because they Leech the Capital ships, reducing their speed and ability to turn (with a Blast Marker they would be unable), and then can easily get behind the ships to destroy them.

However they have a lower than average win ratio vs. Chaos (but not too badly) Necrons, and Space Marines, all due to their advantage in speed and maneuverability. Tyranids are untested (due to no BFG:R rules).

Another comparison could be for Orks, who have a much harder time against Tau (with heavy AC) Necrons (High Armour), and Space Marines (High Armour and Boarding Resistance). However they have an easier time vs. IN (Slow and predictable movements), and about average with all other fleets.

Preferably results would vary between opponents as little as possible, but this is....tough.

Hmmmmm.... I will probably cap out the mass turret thing.

I think that the 'new' Eldar rules are better compared to other Fleets than the old MSM. The old system was very.... inconsistent and unbalanced. With their new rules they function much like the other races, and it is better to compare them directly, as they are who they compete against!

About the DE list selection, I do think I mentioned something about having to make sample lists before I was sure. I think that maybe a 2 Escort per Capital Ship may do the trick. Max 12 was always a funny limit, and doesn't make sense for a pirate fleet, instead a split seemed sensible, besides most fleets would have to spend 2000 points on just cruisers to get to 12 so it isn't a real limit. With 6 you are given a true limitation, and one could spend 2000 points just getting Cruisers and the neccessary escorts/characters before they hit their limit.

@Andrew

This was something removed even in the first version of the rules. We tried to move everything to that single page, but I guess that little portion of BFI may have been lost. Also I was removing the critical hit notation and apparently missed a part, as it was odd and confusing/unnecessary.

[TheDaR]

ehm wait.

The Dar, you used them in the Dark Eldar?

Under official rules Dark Eldar end up closing as always. Under official rules Dark Eldar never got the second move.

Now fill me in: do Dark Eldar have shields under bfg:r?

If not, still:

Official DE: no shields // no second movement // end up within 30cm // Holofield: 2+ vs lances / right shift vs batteries.
Holofield BFG: R: // no second movement // end up within 30cm // Holofield: right shift vs batteries except under 15cm / lances 4/5/6 to hit.

hmm. DE have shields in bfg:r right?

Otherwise I understand the Dar's problem. It is about the DE not CE or CWE. And MMS1.9 is CWE/CE

As of the 1.5 Corsair and 1.5 Dark Eldar documents (which go with the new 1.6 Core rule document preview), both CE and DE are operating in the world where cruisers have 2 shields, 5+ armor, and  a holofield that gives a right shift to batteries over 15cm and a -1/-2 to lances at 15/30cm.

In BFG:R prior to these releases (1.6 was posted 12/27, which contained this version of the Holofield rule), the Eldar Fleet 1.4 document was "current".  In that document, Holofield worked as a flat right shift for Batteries, and forced a reroll of lances and other direct fire weapons (cancelled out by Lock On).

And yes, I understand that DE never got the second move.   But both DE and CE/CWE under the MMS rules are going to end up always closing aspect, and though the CE/CWE extra move does at least allow them a little more latitude in terms of not having to end up within 15cm, they will still often have to.   But for DE especially you're going to be within 15cm a lot unless you spend many turns breaking off with your high speed then coming back for another pass with some combination of AAF/CTNH.

For what it's worth, I just finished whipping up that spreadsheet that shows the rough effectiveness of each weapon type against typical CE, DE, and IN cruisers for various rule set/fleet list combinations.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Apqs5-oxdPArdF9mclBNTmYzVGptLXJRa01MMDN5blE

I present it without initial editorial.

[horizon]

Hi Plaxor,
my comment there was at the Dar, not you. Mixed it up, sorry.

So your CWE player says msm is bad and convinced your group? Cool dude.


theDar,

if you attack wisely 'the opponent will be outside 15cm in an unfavourite angle. DE have mimics to assist.