Yikes! Leave you guys alone for a few minutes and you take my idea to bits and leave the chassis sitting on concrete blocks!
Well ok, admittedly I've been watching this thread like a hawk... I'm seeing some love for the old system, so I probably won't make too many friends by turning it upside down, and I'm also seeing a lot of fair comments and criticisms. So without further ado, let there be discussion!
check the 2010 FAQ. Reloading torps is different
You mean the lack of the running out rule as mentioned earlier in this thread?
escorts are not nearly as Underpowered as you believe. placing them in a squadron does wonders. I would be worried that your proposed change for a special order wind make ordnance obsolete and by doing so you would ruin several fleets
Obviously some ordnance changes would be included, and the short range would mean escorts have to stay very close to the ship they're protecting. The main reason for this thread is so that I don't ruin races outright. Certain fleet compositions might become inadequate, but that's expected.
as for the gunnery tables and what you perceive to be close range you must remember that on the combat is actually taking place over thousands of kilometers close range is a relative term
Noted. Mind you, I don't particularly buy any particular claim as to what the scale actually is, just that it is kinda
big.
as for your Gunnery table change, it seem s a little cumbersome. As well the idea of rolling "to hit" makes sense in 40k, but I imagine starship sensors to be highly accurate. But misses do happen. That is why the strength of the salvo changes based on aspect and range on the current table. Basically predetermined hit percentages. So the number of dice you roll are "hits" you just then need to penetrate armour. At least that is how I always perceived it
I'm aware that the table does a lot of these things, and I simply disagree with them. For example I disagree that ships abeam, moving in the same direction and at the same speed should really not be subject to the same penalties as those moving in opposite directions. Seeing as they're providing the largest target and the most stable one, why the hell do they miss so damn much?
Also to note is your perception of the tables being hits, and the rolls being for armour - why do the shields only take away from the penetrations then? If I accept that approach, and keep the table, shields will take from the dice pool, not from the penetrations.
I also don't think these spaceship sensors are all that advanced seeing as the Imperium of Man is
the least technologically advanced race in the known universe.Hey,
cool.
Dissection time. 
Woot woot! I like idea dissections, they're fun ^^
Torpedo Releading.
i. Torpedoes are only in limited quantities on a ship.
ii. Reloading is a hazardous task
(Background embedded).
This is true, and speaks to my lack of experience in BFG - because I've never seen a ship fire more than one salvo. The battle was over by the time a reload was made.
Failing a Special Order can happen, thus do them in the correct order. Do not waste torpedoes. Make a shot count. It are expensive things.
And do not forget re-rolls. 
I'm not sure I want to spend my one reload on a torpedo, when I really need it to make a burn retros to not fall off the table. I also do not feel that torpedoes (one of the most common weapons in the Imperium fleet) should fire less frequently than the big bad nova cannon that fires skyscrapers at the enemy fleet.
Your idea will lead to torpedo spam. Eldar will love this, Imperial as well. Tau will just have more fun.
There are balance points to tweak, of course. The length of time for the standard reload. It could be the 1 turn delay, it could be 2 or 3.
Also important to note is that the main purpose of this thread is to keep an eye on the effects any changes would have on the other races. Probably the only post that's done so is the first response xD No rule revamp would be complete without a complete examination of every ship - the ships are made for the system, not the other way around.
Escorts
You have to little experience.
I'll put my hands up to that one; you have me there ^^
Escorts are good.
5 Swords cost 175pts and bring 20 weapon batteries with 30cm on a mobile platform.
They have a strike range of 30+25 = 55cm. A Lunar or similar can only strike 30+20 = 50cm with less mobility.
Impressive... But a Slaughter class can strike to 60cm with firepower 14 weapons battery broadside (assuming it doesn't have a closer fwd target), plus a strength 2 lance. And it still gets 2 lance and 8 weapons in the other direction. It'll still stand up to the same amount of punishment as your entire squadron put together, and it your squadron will lose firepower for every two hits that land. The cruiser is a slightly bigger target, which will draw some fire, but then again it needs to take 3 hits per turn just to take damage. Your squadron loses a ship on every second it hit takes per turn (unless you're shooting from opposite sides).
Head to head, I think the cruiser wins out. It's cheaper too. You can manoeuvre to get into a blind spot, but I can outrun you. If you get in front of me, I still have weapons to bring to bear and if you sit there long enough I'll plough into the middle of your squadron and there will be nothing left when I am done. More importantly, with the faster ship I have a better chance of choosing my engagement, and if I fire first, your strength 20 weapons battery will drastically diminish at a rate of 4 per 2 shots landed.
I'm perfectly happy to put this theory to the test if you have some sort of online system we can use? If not, I'm sure one can be found.
Currently they can protect bigger ships (eg massing turrets), fly into large ordnance waves etc. Also, do not waste them. Use them wisely. They're cool.
They can mass turrets. And I guess you can fly into ordnance, if you're feeling lucky. A max squadron of swords, that's 6 turrets; a max squadron of infidels, that's a strength 12 salvo; a max squadron of vipers will give you 18. Are you feeling lucky?
All my fleets use escorts with great effect. Only fleet I would not field them is Craftworld Eldar because of the background to that fleet.
Even my Chaos fleet has 9 escorts in 1500pts. My IN has 9, AdMech ~5-7. Corsair Eldar everything escort next to Void Stalker/Flame/Aurora or Solaris (depends what I fly), Tau CPF between 6-12. DE 9, Novamarines ~ 9-12.
Rogue Trader varies a lot.
Fair; I'd like to play against you; it would be interesting.
Note: some escorts may have two hits because of their size (Hellebore, Tau Defender, the large Ork escorts). That's about it. Everything else is fine at 1.
I still believe escorts should be more durable on the whole.
Just do not waste escorts into the line of fire. At the back they are much more worthwhile. Engage when lines close.
Alas, another problem of my lack of experience. When lines closed, there was nothing left to engage.
ballistics
urgh,
The gunnery table is thing of genious in Battlefleet Gothic!!
Fangirl squee?
[/quote]
Have eye on perception: in BFG 1cm is 1000km. So a ship with 15cm in between is 15000km distance, shooting at fast travelling ships being around 3-5km in size. And with 15cm you get a left shift on the table already.
The gunnery table is awesomesauce as one dice roll incorporates both to hit and to damage. On a table that factors in heading and distance! It also takes care of bigger and smaller ships.
Whoa
I reserve the right to question both methods and results of this table =P
The fact that to hit and to penetrate rolls are done before shields is a personal pet peeve of mine.
Similarly, two ships travelling at the same speed in the same direction with a net relative velocity of 0 are subject to the same penalty as the same ships heading in opposite directions with a a relative velocity of stupid.
Now, one small thing that you should work with:
use the blastmarker rules from v1.0 and not from the 1.5 rulebook/FAQ2010.
Basically:
i. Blastmarkers are placed in line of fire (fanning out left/right if more are place). A player cannot select where he wants to place a blastmarker.
ii. Blastmarkers only intervene in line of fire. So if a Lunar has blastmarkers on port side, it has no intervening blastmarkers on starboard. So if I nip another vessel to the other side I can fire at that vessel (with shields down) but without a blastmarker causing a columns shift.
Now see, escorts benefit a lot from this as they are suited to nip around enemy ships and do this trick. 
This is useful...
(have to go, perhaps later more)
Looking forward to it!
What game are you playing? 
It's this strange thing with all these space ships and flying cathedrals and speedboats made of stupid!
Torp RO
Torpedos reloading automatically would upset the ordnance balance (IN, Tau, Eldar - lord they would be OP) and simply create spamming, instead of the current situation where they require the player to decide when to use them most effectively for tactical reasons - like the valuable missile ordnance they are.
I don't want to play with one-shot weapons, thanks.
While the spamming is a serious potential issue, there are balance points to tweak. Such as the length of time the auto-reload takes; a potential requirement for a leadership roll to be made after a certain number of shots (this would simulate the limited stores of torpedoes on hand in the torpedo "room", and having to fetch them from the cargo bays, or requiring a resupply drop).
Torpedoes could also get changes in the way they operate. If their overall strength is kept the same as their amount increases, each individual torpedo would be less powerful. An extra point cost could be used to bring along the good stuff, using the original torpedo rules.
Also remember that any major core rule change is also going to cause changes in the ships that use it. It's possible that the auto-reload could have a points cost attached to it, or a points cost attached to a faster reload speed.
However, more torpedoes will be put into play, that is an undeniable fact.
Escorts will gain some extra bonuses against torpedoes, as mentioned above. Plenty of balance points in there too.
Escorts
Escorts are very useful as is. Of course they fall to bits if you get them in the close crossfire of big ships. But what are they doing there!? And if they were so pointless as you say, why are the bigger ships firing at them? Because they are cheap for the raw firepower they can lever on the table, and the flexibility in positioning they have.
The bigger ships were shooting at them because the bigger ships have offside cannons. Or they're the closer target and leadership tests have proven difficult. Or because they're all that's left. Occasionally they can be threatening, but it's usually a suicide run. Which is hilarious when their ideal attack position is also the ideal place to drop a metric fuckton of blast markers.
You don't just throw them into the melee along with the gunline - flank or keep them back, out of range or firing arc - then dart in from an awkward/uncovered angle of the enemy formation when the main fleets lock horns (usually from the rear). 30cm movement and tight turning are what keep them alive, by minimising enemy fire wherever possible. Its up to your skill in positioning to keep them alive, not their ability to soak damage. And for their cost, whenever the enemy is shooting at them, they are keeping your cruisers safer. You get less bang for your buck when you shoot at escorts - against them you roll the least on the battery table, and lances are valuable and usually too few in number.
Again, big ships have offside weapons; and with forward-only firing weapons on one squadron, it'll take a really bad split to keep an angle open for your attack. Even worse is that they have to stick around after they've fired. It's really unlikely that a firing arc will be blank on consecutive turns, especially when there's targets in it. And the harder you hit, the bigger priority you get.
Admittedly, this starts to come down to effective usage of ships, and higher level tactics.
Which is why escorts are also the best hunters of other escorts Nimble enough to get close to offset column shifts for their small size on the gunnery table (if attacking with batteries) and packing enough firepower to demolish the other squadron, while being cheap. Escorts are also effective to intercept ordnance with their massed turrets, speed and low cost (you can force an entire multi-bomber wave to waste itself on a single escort).
Fair points there. However, I'm not taking escorts just to hunt other escorts when I can put a lot of hurt on the main fighting ships for the same cost. Escorts are easy to hunt when everything's dead.
Gunnery
Part of what I like about Gothic is that it streamlines the most boring statistics and dice rolling, focussing on the player's skill and finesse of positioning, timing and orienting his forces to bring weapons to bear most effectively. I can't see how your changes to the gunnery mechanic would do anything to actually deepen the tactical considerations in gameplay - instead adding complication and time for mostly intellectual immersion. 
Streamlines it yes, but it means it can't do everything. And I want to do the things it won't.
I also use the rules regarding blastmarkers as Horizon said above. Works well.
Certainly sounds interesting. Will put those to the test before bringing other changes into play.
Do you play Firestorm Armada? Your changes sound really similar to how it plays. Torpedoes are basically standard weapons that get targeted by turrets and are auto loaded and smalls have two hits each in that.
Interesting. Will have to find the rules for that. I do know some of my changes were taken from (or inspired by) the Rogue Trader rules; do they share a ruleset?
Escorts take some time to use effectivly. I see alot of people do away with them all together tho. They are significantly weaker than the cruisers and despite their cost/ firepower they still dont stand up very well. Of course theyre not designed to go head on with cruisers either .
That's kinda my problem. All they're really good for is sacrificial armour against a torp/bomber wave, distracting other ships by requiring a leadership roll to not hit them, and adding turrets. Their firepower is reasonable, but I can field that firepower in a cruiser package and I'm better off for it. I think that's not right.
A number of escorts should either contribute very significantly to another ship's performance, or be able to take on a ship of equal point cost (isn't that the point of the point costs?).
For example as mentioned above; the five swords against one slaughter. Can tell you now they swords would make a fine mess of it with an extra hitpoint. As it is I can wipe out a squadron of swords with a single good salvo; with 2 hp it becomes near impossible.
