BFG:R Orks

[Nex]

I must admit I'm not well versed enough in the balance of the Ork ships to really comment on specific things like slight weapons changes so if you'd rather keep the thread to those I can take my posts elsewhere.

Till I'm told to do that though, other potential ideas for "randomness" or rather "Ork character showing through in the rules".

They already have the All Ahead Full rule, how about a Lock On rule too. Something like When an Ork ship gets within 15cm (?) or an enemy you must attempt Lock On unless you pass a Ld test to try and do something else.

This would represent nearly every Ork on board rushing to the gun decks wanting to cause the biggest explosion, or just opening a window and firing their pistol out into space because they have been told the enemy is "close", even though close is thousands of miles in space.

Hmm just had another thought kinda related but also related to the whole "random number of shots" thing as some people like them and some people dislike them.

Would Lock On also making your guns fire the maximum number of shots be overpowered? (if so then maximum -1 or -2 or whatever till it's balanced)
Then have them be random for less focused fire.

[Khar]

So, another test battle with Orks. Again, ordnance-heavy Tau as an opponent. [next tests will be against IN and SM, but at that moment, bomber hordes test orky defenses  best.]

I used proposed changes, as in:

Torpedoes -> Short Burn Torpedoes
Gunz now not random
Torpedoes -> half random (D3+3 sort of thing)
Launch Bays -> random still.
Turrets -> Random
Heavy Gunz -> "Ork Heavy Gunz roll to hit like ordinary weapons batteries but do not count gunnery modifiers for range. If fired over 15cm Ork Heavy Gunz will only hit on a d6 roll of 6. Each hit scored by heavy gunz causes double damage, ie, two hits instead of one.

Also, Kills had AndrewChristlieb's profile. Terrors I've done similarilly. Ravagers had d3+2 torpedos. [d3+3 looked too strong, and, in a hindsight, would be. These guys were crazy powerful as it is.] I didn't use any other class this time.

Conclusions:

I won. With Orks. Against Tau. We're on to something here.

non-random batteries aren't too reliable or powerful in any way. I've done minimal damage with battery fire during the course of battle.

heavy guns with 30 range - these things were good. Hitting on 6 isn't that much of a hindrance. On lock-on, they could be deadly. Haven't had a single chance to use lock-on during this battle.

So yeah, batteries look fine now. Not too strong and at least I knew what to expect when firing them. Positive on this one.

Holyhell, torpedo escorts. With 40 range and guaranteed reasonable strength they were a scary sight. I'm not even sure if 40cm speed should stay. More on it after next battles.

Next thing - turrets. +1 turret upgrade still seems mandatory. We might as well make them d3+1 costing 5 points more. No reason not to take it.

Also... random turrets don't really work. It varies, with a single roll, from 'oh god, oh god, ship's dead' 2 turrets, to 'I can shrug off 8 strong bomber waves without bracing' 4 turrets. Really, that's how that looked to me. Depending on that one solitary roll, ships were either falling into pieces or coming out with just minimal damage.

Other thing - I've bought  ram upgrade on every cruiser. I still think they should be mandatory to encourage ramming. And it was ramming and boarding that did the real damage. Just as orks should


Ok, so, what would i change... Turrets. They need greater strength, but on the other hand, not be completely deadly to small bomber waves. What would you guys think about making ork Kroozers 3 (or even 4) turrets standard, but hitting on 5+? Wall of fuire thing - they shoot so many shots bomber pilots need to dodge a lot and can't fire properly [less bomber attacks] but weak when it comes to hitting anything.

Also, I'd remove any turret number upgrades and just give them more turrets for higher cost. Orks need all the turrets they can gat, and there's no point in not taking them.

[afterimagedan]

Wait, Khar, they didn't All Is Lost you?!   

[Khar]

Well, there was one particularily deadly warp drive explosion involved...

[horizon]

I asked my Ork opponent for input.

[mottomo]

I played Tau on that battle. My notices are quite similar to Khar's but one thing - I'm not so sure about effectivity of Orc's batteries because they were most times used during brace or all ahead. Due to this it's harder to say clearly how they work now. I hope it will clarify after more tests. In general in comparison to old-rules orcs that was crushing.

[Duskland]

I've only played orks in battlefleet gothic a couple of times, but I feel that getting rid of their random firepower would be a mistake.  I think that their randomness really makes them different from all of the other races and sets them apart.  Otherwise they are just another imperial fleet clone (painted with go fasta stripes).

Maybe you could simply mess with the probabilities.  Instead of rolling a d6 for instance you could roll 2d3 or 2d6 divided by two (rounded up).  Either of those options would give a probability curve, where the average stays about the same, but the outliers become a rarer event.

I also see no problem with having random turrets, as again it feels very orky.  I can just see the ork boss yelling at his crew and asking why all of the guns are on the wrong side.

I'd like to see more instinctual special orders as orks seem like one race that would be easy to encourage to do what they want to do already.

I really like the different torpedos and heavy gun mods that were proposed.  They seem to add to the differences for the orks without being too unbalancing.

[afterimagedan]

So, should we vote on these changes?

Torpedoes -> Short Burn Torpedoes
Gunz now not random
Torpedoes -> half random (D3+3 sort of thing)
Launch Bays -> random still.
Turrets -> Random
Heavy Gunz -> "Ork Heavy Gunz roll to hit like ordinary weapons batteries but do not count gunnery modifiers for range. If fired over 15cm Ork Heavy Gunz will only hit on a d6 roll of 6. Each hit scored by heavy gunz causes double damage, ie, two hits instead of one.

Also, anyone interested in an Ork committee? Khar? Andrew? (in know you just finished with the Tyranid committee and are on the Bakka committee........  )

[Markconz]

I'd like to see the list tweaked the absolute minimum necessary to make it a bit more resilient vs enemy fleets which are bad matchups, but I dislike the "reliability" that is being built into it with many of these changes.  Unreliability should remain one of the defining characteristics of orks (as others have commented).

Torpedoes: No to change. It's a big tube with rocket fuel in one end and bang in other. Unreliability is already represented by the roll. I'd leave torpedoes as they are. Even if it runs out of fuel it's still going to keep going just as fast in the same direction because it is in space.  It's not like a Tau Torpedoes that needs fuel or energy to steer and do sophisticated targeting (and it shouldn't go as fast either). Rule is not broken, don't mess with it.

Gunz: Mostly no to change, I'd rather leave these as they are too, or add +1 or something to firepower if considered undergunned at present. 

Launch Bays:  Yes keep random.

Turrets: Yes to change. Need to weaken the bomber slaughter.

Heavy Gunz: Seems like a possibility, but what is the proposed range on these now then?? Is it 30cm? (Edit) just read Khars post above, seems like it is 30cm.


I've got a game vs Chaos on Sunday so will try some of these changes out.

[afterimagedan]

Markconz, one of the problems with keeping it unreliable is the amount of dice rolling that you have to do. While I think the Ork ships should still retain some unreliability, rolling an extra die every single time you fire your weapon batteries gets tedious.

[Khar]

So, had another battle with Orks, this time against SM to test them against differently playing fleet.

1: Heavy Gunz firing with range 30, hitting only at 6 are deadly against 6+ armour vessel. I'd change it to extra negative shift if firing over 15.

2: Random turrets keep being irritating. I'm still suggesting giving Ork cruisers 3 turrets hitting on 5+.

3: Random launch bays are fine, as long as we count ordnance limit in comparison to maximum value.

4: Short burn torpedos are crazy powerful and need to go. Speed 30 was fine. Half-random is reliable enough to be used and sometimes gives crazy amounts of dakka.

5: Shock prows as standard! They make player WANT to ram and it's so very orky!

6: Non-random Gunz are fine. Still far from reliable weapon, especialy considering how rarely Orks manage to Lock-on.

7: I have and idea when it comes to randomness: Let's keep Ork cruisers at 1 shield. And give them 10-15 point upgrade to d3 shields. Rolling 1 doesn't cripple their effectivenes [even though upgrade does nothing that turn], rolling 3 grants extra toughness. More orky than standard +1 shield.

8: Escort rules from 2010 are very helpful - option form +1 ld or free ship makes them either reliable or at least numerous (sometimes even both!]

Also, one conclusion of tactical nature - 2d6 all ahead full is actually an advantage in one case: it makes it easier to calculate where exactly you will stop when attempting to do ram-boarding. There's not a single more orky thing in game than ram-boarding

[Mallich]

I've only played orks in battlefleet gothic a couple of times, but I feel that getting rid of their random firepower would be a mistake [...]

Maybe you could simply mess with the probabilities.  Instead of rolling a d6 for instance you could roll 2d3 or 2d6 divided by two (rounded up).  Either of those options would give a probability curve, where the average stays about the same, but the outliers become a rarer event.

Randomness doesn't just come from the "D6" strength of the basic gunz. The "1 impact does 2 points of damage" for the heavy gunz creates a broader probability distribution in vanilla BFG than if there were twice the number of dice being rolled with each hit doing 1 damage.

That was my suggestion earlier on. Ordinary random-strength 30cm/45cm gunz could have their firepower set to a fixed low number, but each hit would do 2 points of damage. It does introduce a few new problems (gunnery chart).

[afterimagedan]

There is always a level of randomness in a game with dice, however, having the guns with random firepower makes the probabilities so much less predictable and takes more time.

[Khar]

Ok, guys, Ork rules are as of now dragged across several documents, making it hard to make one coherent whole, so it needs to be changed.

When we agree upon what exactly we even want from this fleet, I'll just make a brand new Ork document, because modifying exisiting ones is, at this point, likely more work. First, though, we have to decide which elements of original Orks, Armada ships, Ork Clanz and current BFG:R list we want to keep, and what needs doing from scratch.

So, how many fleet lists for Orks? Pirates, Waagh and Klanz? Is Ork pirate list even needed if Waagh allows to perfectly recreate it in addition to giving new options?

Klan Upgrades, not currently in BFG:R Document -in or out?

I say yes, why not, they need some reworking, though. They vary in power a bit too much for my liking... They'd also need some modifications if we decided to modify ork ship rules. Which we will.

Zukov's Klaw - In or out?

I'd say in, because why not. Always one more ship to chose from.


Gubbinz from Ork Klanz list - in or out?

I'd say in, with point costs and actual rules reworked, no longer fully tied to the characters. I'd say - you can always buy one, characters generate additional upgrade slots as of Klanz rules.
So each ship/escort squadron can buy one upgrade from the list, character on board allows you to buy as many additional upgrades as he has re-rolls. Gubbinz themselves need to be talked about in detail later.

Klanz escort rules:

yes from me. Free escort if you roll ld5, and +1 ld for lardge squadron both seem properly Orky.

List of rule changes I'd suggest:

Torpedoes -> Short Burn Torpedoes normal torpedos.
Gunz now not random
Torpedoes -> half random (D3+3 sort of thing)
Launch Bays -> random still. Ordnance limit counted based on highest value. d3+1 counts as 4 as far as limits go, and so on.
Turrets -> Random Not random, they hit on 5+. 4 base on Battleships, 3 base on Kroozers [including lite kroozers], 2 on escorts.
Heavy Gunz -> Heavy guns do not get the left column shift on the gunnery
table to close range but inflict 2 damage per hit. When at range over 15 cm, they get additional right shift on the gunnery table.

[AndrewChristlieb]

Unfortunately Orks have been rather unbalanced since BFG came out. I don't know if a complete ground up is required on it, but I do agree that a somewhat cleaner slate may be required. I think we have a really good mix of views going on here and would like to see us be able to create a well balanced list.

I like your train of thought Khar. I think we need to get a clear direction going with this. I believe in order to simplify things we should work towards creating at most two lists, the standard Pirate list and an expanded Waagh list.

Now with that in mind and working a bit from the new material we were presented with in 2010 I would recommend something along the lines of the Pirate list being focused more towards one klan while the Waagh list would be more towards a mixing of different klans. Both would have to have their own benefits and I would say the Pirate list should probably be tailored just a bit to fit better with the restrictions that sort of fleet is required to work within for a campaign.

So what do you guys think?