Nova Cannon -House Rules-

[Vaaish]

I don't get what you mean by +2/-2 for to hit. It seems there is a 16% increase between each band in the odds of missing completely on the scatter. Given the damage output I don't really see how that will ultimately affect the end result to a noticeable degree on long ranged shooting compared to two bands. It just seems unnecessary and conflicting despite the smoother statistical accuracy gradation with three bands.  if you would like to keep three bands, maybe something like this would keep the dynamics more consistent across the bands:

15cm-45cm: 2 D6 take the lowest
45cm-75cm: 2 D6 take the highest
75cm-150cm: 2 D6

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

My auto 'hit' on lock-on:

I don't mean a guaranteed D6 damage, just the effect of a hit on the scatter dice, so –D6cm to the scatter.
The chance of a direct hit on lock on is ‘roughly’ as follows:
3+ for 2d6 take the lowest, 4+ for d6 and 5+ for 2d6 take the highest. Lock-on does make the d3 damage almost certain however.

Cheers,

RayB HA

So many numbers. Heh, just re-roll the scatter dice. Simple.

[Vaaish]

Well, that doesn't seem very helpful to just reroll the scatter since even the hit side scatters now. Perhaps instead let lockon allow the reroll any one d6?

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

Not my rules. My rules, scatter die will hit. Only against Eldar and Necron would distance come in as an effect of Lock On.

[EasyPrey]

Personally I didn't like the nova cannon rules from the start. In short it's too few dice for too much potential damage IMHO.

Just some examples:
With the current rules you can lose a small game before you even moved your ships because of one lucky hit: Hit -> D6 roll comes up as a six -> cruiser flagship (like, a Mars or a Styx, so sth. about 350 points) is crippled with a whopping two dice thrown. If it's a 1k pts game you don't have many options besides retreat at that point. Now imagine you drove an hour to play that game. Or that it was part of a campaign ...

Alternatively a cruiser can take two full hits of this thing and not lose one point of damage.

In addition you can't really tell whether it'd make sense to BFI or not before the shot impacts; the overly cautious will always and the foolhardy will never BFI, of course, but what about the rest? It's not "psychologically interesting" as was mentioned earlier IIRC, it's just guess work. Experience, intelligence, a knack for tactics: Won't help at all. Just guess and hope you're right.


That's bollocks, IMHO. I hate the nova cannon rules. Well, not "hate" hate, but ... you know what I mean.


So I gave it some thought and brewed up the following. Note that most of the numbers are only placeholders, more or less what "felt right" at the moment and thus more than open for discussion. As is the rest, as a matter of fact.

Without further ado I give you
*drum roll*

Easy's new and shiny

Nova cannon rules

If you fire a nova cannon, just do the same as you do now, with the following exceptions:

• You need to nominate either a ship or a wave of ordnance as a target; you can't just fire at empty space.
• The shot always scatters D6 cm. Doesn't matter whether you rolled a "Hit!" or an arrow, doesn't matter if the shot travels 30 or 150 cm.
• Whether the template hits a ship full on or only slightly glances its base doesn't matter, as well. What is touched is hit.
• Damage depends on range. 30-45 cm: D3+1. 45-60 cm: D3. 60-150 cm: D3-1. A hit always does at least one point of damage, though.
• The "Lock on!" special order simply adds one point of damage, so it's D3+2, D3+1 and D3, respectively.
• Any ordnance marker that is at least partially touched by the template is destroyed; if there are ordnance markers in the same wave but not touched by the template they're simply luckier than their comrades under the template.
• If the template did not hit any ship at all place D3 blast markers anywhere you like; only rule is that all of them have to be completely covered by the template.
• Your opponent has the chance to announce BFI after the template is placed at its final point of impact, but before you roll for damage. A shell the size of a skyscraper travelling in a straight line at a constant speed is easy to keep track of, after all.

So, there you have it. Discuss!
Or, if you want to know my reasoning behind a specific change, just ask.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

Don't like the rules. you're neutering the NC's damage all the more. So I can only do damage in the shortest band? And that's just on a cruiser. On a Grand Cruiser or Battleship, I'm doing nothing.

D6 potential damage works. You need to be really rolling good to do that 5 or 6 point damage. First you need to roll a hit, then you need to roll a 5 or 6. That combination is not easy to get.

Next the BFI before the shot is just right. One does not decide to BFI when you know the shot will hit or not, especially from artillery type shots. You decide to brace when you know the enemy is about to fire. Notealso  that the "skyscraper" ammo you mention is moving at almost the speed of light. Not an easy thing to track since the ranges are so close that the shot will get to you in less than a second. Assuming the target is at 150 cm, the farthest range of the NC and the equivalent of 150,000 km at a 1:1000 scale, the NC will reach you at little more than half a second. How do you BFI against that unless it's before the shot is fired?

The NC rules for damage and when to BFI are fine. It's the way the process happens is the problem resulting in people bringing them en masse and so cry cheese. Make the NC more accurate and limit the number should be the way to go.

[RayB HA]

Hi Easy Prey,

Good to see more ideas hitting the topic.

I don't see the need to have to pick a ship or ordy. What is this for? To stay closer to normal weapon rules?

The always scatters mentality is good but with the entire template being the hole it will almost always hit large base targets. That is something i'm not keen on. Also it gives the impression of a moon sised explosion, which I really dislike.

The damage 'potential' should remain at a max of 5 or 6 IMO, as it is a heavy hitter that should rival the potential damage of 6 torps.

The variance of potential damage through the range bands is a mistake which i made, it make NC's having long range damn near pointless.

Cheers,

RayB

[RayB HA]

Hi All,

I've played with the following rules with great sucess for both thier 'feel' and overall effect. I haven't played with them in a spam enviroment however, so some sort of limit might be appropriate. Further playtesting required.

The Nova Cannon uses the Nova Cannon template on the other side of the Bearing Compass, note the hole in its centre.
A Scatter dice will also be used, note that the hit side also has an arrow on it.

When firing the Nova Cannon place it's template so that the entirety of the hole is within the Nova Cannons fire arc.
The Nova Cannon has a minimum range of 15cm: you must place the template so that the entirety of the hole is over 15cm away.  

Now roll the scatter dice and move the template the scatter distance in direction shown, including if a hit is rolled.  

There are 3 range bands which affect the scatter.
15cm-45cm: 2 D6 scatter take the lowest
45cm-75cm: D6 scatter
75cm-150cm: 2 D6 scatter take the lowest  

If a hit is rolled and/or you are on Lock-on special orders reduce the scatter distance by D6cm.

If the hole scatters over a stem it causes D6 damage.
If the hole scatters over a base it causes D3 damage.
If any part of the template excluding the hole is over a base or ordnance it causes a blast marker.
If the hole scatters over ordnance it destroys it entirely.

If the template hits nothing place a blast marker under the hole.

You may test to brace against a nova cannon shot after it has scattered but before the random damage has been determined.

Holofields offer no save or effect.

Cheers,

RayB

[EasyPrey]

you're neutering the NC's damage all the more. So I can only do damage in the shortest band? And that's just on a cruiser. On a Grand Cruiser or Battleship, I'm doing nothing.

You'd be "doing nothing" with a single NC, which will hardly be the only weapon in your fleet.
D3+1 means 2, 3 or 4 points of damage on a hit; that means potentially taking down all the shields on any ship but a 6-spore hive ship, or taking down the shields of a grand cruiser on average, with one shot from a cruiser. How you are able to see that as "nothing" is beyond me, honestly.
It's just below the average of the current NC-rules, and once you take LO into account (which does squat for the current NC, BTW) the average actually gets higher in the closest range band.

Besides you seem to be missing that my take on the NC-rules is making it far more accurate; basically I'm illustrating the higher accuracy of shorter ranged shots by increasing the potential damage (just imagine the explosion being closer to the target vertically), not by decreasing potential scatter.

D6 potential damage works. You need to be really rolling good to do that 5 or 6 point damage. First you need to roll a hit, then you need to roll a 5 or 6. That combination is not easy to get.

It's not about the potential damage, it's about reliability. See the examples (there are two for a reason ) in my post above.

Next the BFI before the shot is just right.

After giving it a bit of thought I agree.

One does not decide to BFI when you know the shot will hit or not, especially from artillery type shots.

"Artillery"? In space? That's ... well, I never imagined NCs to work that way.
More like depth charges, just that they are not dropped but fired in a straight line, exploding after they've traveled a pre-set distance.
So a captain can see the enemy ship lining up for the shot, and he'll probably be able to guess pretty accurately where the shot will go and where it will be set to explode.

This is the reason why I thought the damage of the NC should decrease with increasing range, as well: The longer the shell has to travel the harder it is to set the timer so the shell will explode close to the target; in addition the target has more time for being unpredictable the longer it takes for the shot to connect.
Direct hits are (very, very close to) impossible this way, so the shells probably won't even have impact fuzes; even if they had they'd probably explode thousands of kilometres away from the target, anyway.

Notealso  that the "skyscraper" ammo you mention is moving at almost the speed of light. Not an easy thing to track since the ranges are so close that the shot will get to you in less than a second. Assuming the target is at 150 cm, the farthest range of the NC and the equivalent of 150,000 km at a 1:1000 scale, the NC will reach you at little more than half a second.

That's far off topic, but my mind boggles trying to imagine accelerating a macroscopic mass (i.e. something you could touch) to relativistic speeds over just a few kilometres. I know it's 40k so it's probably just supposed to sound cool, but ... well.
I guess I should focus my mind elsewhere.

The NC rules for damage [...] are fine.

IMHO they're not. "Unreliable", yes. "Potentially griefing", just as well, at least if you (or your opponent) are unlucky. But "fine"? Not even close.

It's the way the process happens is the problem resulting in people bringing them en masse and so cry cheese. Make the NC more accurate and limit the number should be the way to go.

I made them more accurate and changed the process, yet you can't seem to get past how it's different. How's that supposed to make any sense?

I don't see the need to have to pick a ship or ordy. What is this for? To stay closer to normal weapon rules?

It's more for giving escort squadrons a slight edge, otherwise you'd be able to place the shot so it'd hit more than one from the start, at least if the scatter distance is short; with D3 damage against any ship touched by the template (LO shouldn't be much of a problem at higher ranges) this had the potential to go ugly pretty quickly for escorts.

Additionally I included it for the feeling that it's pretty much impossible to aim at "nothing". Space is black, empty and featureless, IMHO you shouldn't be able to just say "I want to hit that spot!" and your crew'd make it happen.

But, as with everything I posted, if it's generally disliked it's easy to throw overboard. I just thought I'd enter the brainstorming process by introducing something out of my head, as well.

The always scatters mentality is good but with the entire template being the hole it will almost always hit large base targets. That is something i'm not keen on.

It's the reason I somehow feel that the damage is still too high, but I don't want to neuter the weapon into uselessness, either.

Also it gives the impression of a moon sised explosion, which I really dislike.

If we want to talk realism we should forget the NC altogether. It just has too many problems in this area.

Let's just say that I can't really imagine what the explosion of an object traveling near the speed of light would look like (Crescent-shaped, maybe? ). I simply assumed that the template was a way to give the area of unpleasantness some tangibility in terms of game mechanics, not the depiction of a real event.

The damage 'potential' should remain at a max of 5 or 6 IMO, as it is a heavy hitter that should rival the potential damage of 6 torps.

The problem here still is reliability. If it is highly accurate you can't have it do this much damage per shot; if it's highly inaccurate it lacks the reliability it'd need to make the decision to brace an informed one.

See, if I have a 5+-armoured cruiser facing a wave of 6 torpedoes I can make a pretty good guess if I should brace or not: 2 damage is average, 1 and 3 have about the same, quite high probability, 0 and 4 less so, 5 and 6 are pretty improbable altogether. If the cruiser has already taken damage, if these torpedoes are not the only thing it'd be facing this ordnance phase or if the ship couldn't do anything useful next turn anyway I'd brace; if my (obviously pretty weak) plan depended on this cruiser being on LO next turn I'd take the chance and wouldn't brace.

If the same cruiser would be looking down the barrel of a NC I can't tell if I should brace or not. It could miss altogether, it could hit, but hardly scratch my shields, or it could cripple the cruiser.

To say it in mathematical terms: The bell curve of the NC's damage distribution is too flat and too wide to be any fun to play with or against IMHO.

Regarding the damage: With my proposal the NC would become more reliable, but as I said, it can't keep it's raw potential for damage per shot that way as this would make it too powerful, obviously.
"Damage potential" could mean anything, really; one type of weapon doing a single point of damage per turn over 10 turns, one doing 10 points of damage in one turn but taking 9 turns to get into position (or recharge, or missing 9 out of 10 times, or whatever), both would have done 10 points of damage in ten turns. So if we took away the damage potential of the NC but made it hit more reliably the weapon would stay a "heavy hitter" as it is now, wouldn't it?

The variance of potential damage through the range bands is a mistake which i made, it make NC's having long range damn near pointless.

It's not pointless, per se.
It could whack down a shield here, do a few points of damage there, generate blast markers, threatening tightly packed ships/making the enemy fleet spread out more, and of course you still had the option of concentrating fire if you had several NCs. Two or three hits, each doing D3 damage (LO shouldn't be a problem at that range), would mean trouble even for a battleship.

The closer you got the greater would the potential for mayhem become. It would be tougher to get the LO-bonus there, though, and especially the shortest band with the highest damage potential is easy to avoid; this would make the NC a bit harder to use, but more rewarding at the same time IMHO.

[RayB HA]

Easy Prey,

It looks like you'd like my rules at the start of this topic...

I realise you want a more predictable weapon, but you're going too far (as I did earlier). I've limited the scatter range, limited the damage when the hole is over the base, made the outer template count as a blastmarker mainly to avoid special rules for eldar and prevent escort squadron killing.

My rules are more predictable, still allow massive potential damage and for me at least feel more realistic.

Cheers,

RayB

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

You'd be "doing nothing" with a single NC, which will hardly be the only weapon in your fleet.
D3+1 means 2, 3 or 4 points of damage on a hit; that means potentially taking down all the shields on any ship but a 6-spore hive ship, or taking down the shields of a grand cruiser on average, with one shot from a cruiser. How you are able to see that as "nothing" is beyond me, honestly.
It's just below the average of the current NC-rules, and once you take LO into account (which does squat for the current NC, BTW) the average actually gets higher in the closest range band.

The point here being, people will then be taking it in numbers which is what I would prefer not to happen. The NC fires at far ranges beyond the typical weapon ranges. It can't shoot at anything within 30 cm. What support are you talking about unless it's another NC or long ranged lances or WBs which are few in number availability to IN? Therefore it IS nothing. When you design a weapon, you first figure out what it can do in isolation. Then you figure out what you can do with it in conjunction. There's no reason for me to want to take the NC except en masse and that is a major problem currently. the LO issue I addressed in my rules.

Besides you seem to be missing that my take on the NC-rules is making it far more accurate; basically I'm illustrating the higher accuracy of shorter ranged shots by increasing the potential damage (just imagine the explosion being closer to the target vertically), not by decreasing potential scatter.

Accuracy is pointless if it can't damage. if you want accuracy then might as well go back to the guess rules. Accuracy is much better there esp for some players. In my rules, it became more accurate but not as accurate as you or Ray's ruleset. I don't want it to be that accurate because the psychological aspect works for me. It forces my opponent to come close. It forces an opponent with lots of carriers to make a choice of whether to BFI or keep his carriers effective. Knowing the NC would hardly do damage would be to the advantage of my opponent.

It's not about the potential damage, it's about reliability. See the examples (there are two for a reason ) in my post above.

The NC was never about reliability. The NC was about forcing the opponent to come close to you instead of standing off and shooting the very short ranged IN fleet.

"Artillery"? In space? That's ... well, I never imagined NCs to work that way.
More like depth charges, just that they are not dropped but fired in a straight line, exploding after they've traveled a pre-set distance.
So a captain can see the enemy ship lining up for the shot, and he'll probably be able to guess pretty accurately where the shot will go and where it will be set to explode.

NC shots are not dropped in a straight line like depth charges. That would be mines. The NC is fired, much like artillery. There are still factors other than gravity which can make the NC shot miss. However, the opposing captain would still not know when the NC would be fired except seconds before it does. Split second later the NC explodes near his ship. You still can't BFI against that.

This is the reason why I thought the damage of the NC should decrease with increasing range, as well: The longer the shell has to travel the harder it is to set the timer so the shell will explode close to the target; in addition the target has more time for being unpredictable the longer it takes for the shot to connect.
Direct hits are (very, very close to) impossible this way, so the shells probably won't even have impact fuzes; even if they had they'd probably explode thousands of kilometres away from the target, anyway.

Why would it decrease? It's a shell. it explodes. It's not like a laser that would bleed off energy the farther it gets. Funny that you think the NC is not artillery but your description above basically describes artillery.

That's far off topic, but my mind boggles trying to imagine accelerating a macroscopic mass (i.e. something you could touch) to relativistic speeds over just a few kilometres. I know it's 40k so it's probably just supposed to sound cool, but ... well.
I guess I should focus my mind elsewhere.

It's not my description and it is on topic because the rules basically came from how the weapon is described. If by some reason they managed to make that powerful a railgun, it's not ours to reason why it exists or how. The important thing is it exists and the rules are derived by the designers from it.

IMHO they're not. "Unreliable", yes. "Potentially griefing", just as well, at least if you (or your opponent) are unlucky. But "fine"? Not even close.

You again miss the point of the NC which is it is a psychological weapon. The damage portion is fine. It's not broken. If you're lucky (or unlucky if on the receiving end) it can damage severely. If unlucky (or, again, vice versa if you're on the receiving end), it does nothing. Similar to the other weapon systems. They're just about unreliable as your the other weapon systems.

I made them more accurate and changed the process, yet you can't seem to get past how it's different. How's that supposed to make any sense?

You made the NC more accurate but you also made them less a threat damage wise. You just reversed the problem which was unreliability before but ok damage ruleset. It is now a accurate weapon at doing virtually nothing unlike before when it was inaccurate but when it hits, the damage can hurt. The idea is to make it accurate, make it retain it's damage potential but limit its availability so people won't be calling it cheese.

[horizon]

To name it in short: If I have a 100% hit guarantee which does 1 hit vs shields it is not worth it. Except to take multiple of them, which is not cool and non-background fitting.

[RayB HA]

Just gave my rules from 5 posts ago another trial in a 2000pt game. I really like them. The damage 'effect' feels more evenly random with a gradual increase the closer you get. Please give them ago!

Cheers,

RayB

[Valhallan]

Ray, I'll try them.

then what has been mentioned, but not compiled (along with FAQ2010 NC talks):

NC:
-min range 30cm, max range 150cm
-place the hole of the NC blast temp within range. LD test needed to not shoot at the stem of the closest enemy ship
-roll to scatter: 30-45cm = 1d6, 46-60=2d6, 61-90=3d6, 91-150=4d6. a HIT on the scatter is a direct hit.
-Under the lock on SO, you may reroll the scatter die. (chance of direct hit goes from 1/3 to 5/9)
-Any ship touching the NC temp takes 1 point of damage (no holofield save - stealth fighters still take flak)
-If the hole of the NC temp is touching a ship's base, it suffers an additional D3 damage (so a direct hit deals 2-4 damage), (you may take holofield saves against this D3 damage).
-If the NC temp misses completely, place a blast marker directly under the hole of the temp.


The idea is to keep everything as close to it is now, while making only simple modifications (range bands, Lock on, less random damage, with a similar average [~1.7 with LO]). It is true that the NC is a mental threat, attempting to force an enemy to close with the IN so they can use almost every other gun.

shortening the NC min to 15cm makes it way more likely to be an upgrade for lunars and tyrants. I believe the 30cm min forces you to choose: hang back and lob NC's or dive in a punch with torps.

[RayB HA]

Valhallan,

The FAQ won't change the NC rules to that degree. But my personal preferences are no more than 6cm scatter, D3 damage with the hole over the base and for the 'hit' to be a scatter reduction not a gaurenteed hit.

Cheers,

RayB