Special Torpedoes 2.0

[Lotus]

I thought it may be time for some special torpedoes related houserules.

Why?

Because there are two variants wich are just useless, but because the point value of the choosen ship is increased, this is not a "you didn't get anything" situation - its a "you got a punishement" situation. 2 of 6 means 33% chance for being punished for taking the special torpedoes option.

My intention is not to create a perfect balanced option. I am aware that special torpedoes are a "fun" option, i don't think that you have to get something thats 100% worth your point-investment after your roll - but i think you should get something, and at least not an aditional disatvantage.

I would not change anything regarding short burn, guided, or vortex torpedoes. These variants have their uses .
The two "main offenders" are the barrage bombs and the melta torpedo.

Why?

The barrage bomb offers nothing when you are in a game with doesn't involve a planetary assault. The melta torpedo is even worse - its average damage is lower than the average damage of a normal torpedo - and it makes your ship more vulnerable until you use them, so you should get rid of them on your first turn. Even if you don't have a target for them.

To change that, i would change these variants:

melta torpedo:

The sentence "Hits from melta torpedoes inflict no damage
points, instead each hit causes an automatic Fire
critical." (Armada, p. 157) should be replaced by "Hits inflicted by melta torpedoes will
cause automatic fire critical damage."

This would mean that every melta torpedo hit will result in 1 damage and 1 fire critical.

barrage bombs:

I would not change the effect of the barrage bomb itself (because it has its use in the intended scenario), but i would prevent ships from getting this weapon if it doesnt make sense for the scenario that is about to be played.

In the "Special Torpedoes" section (Armada, p. 156), i would add the following sentence: "if you rolled barrage bombs for a scenario wich doesn't involve assault points, or in a campaign which doesn't involve scenarios with assault points (or wich doesn't allow these scenarios for your race), you are allowed to re-roll your roll on the special torpedoes table until you get a different result."

This would mean that the barrage bombs doesn't change - but you will only get them if you have a use for them.

seeking torpedoes:

I would just add "*" behind "seeker torpedo" in the "special torpedoes table" (Armada, p. 157), to change them from "one use" to "unlimited use".

the special rules for the seeking torpedo are only usefull in long range combat - and can still be countered easy (similar to the guided torpedoes).






Any thoughts on these 3 houserules?

My only concern is the increased chance for getting certain torpedoes outside of planetary assault (the chance is increased from 16,66% to 20%), but i don't think that 3,33% will make  a noticeable difference here.

[Bozeman]

These fixes are pretty good, here are some thoughts off the top of my head while I have sleep deprivation.  Obviously, they might not be the most coherent criticisms, but it's what I got right now:

1. Melta torpedoes go from kinda bad to ball-crushingly awesome.  Hit enemies in gas/dust clouds for extra damage, as they roll 1/2 as many dice if touching a BM or cloud.  Combine with assault boats for critical effect overload.

2. Melta torpedoes need to specify that if BFI saves the damage, that the target does not get a Fire effect.  Without this, it auto-kills any escort, even if they save.

3. Barrage bombs become useful because you can only get them when you can use them, but this makes it either impossible to get them during a campaign (because you won't play Planetary Assault for every mission) or it has the same problem as before (useless for most missions).  Instead, I offer this solution:

Addendum to Barrage Bombs: Barrage Bombs have a high-yield setting that causes mass destruction on the surface of a planet, but can also be configured to a low yield directed charge.  This low yield setting causes a massive blast of superheated gas that can cause significant acceleration in space.  This has no effect on ships or defences, as they have thrusters to compensate.  However, it is incredibly useful against asteroids.  A ship equipped with Barrage Bombs that has their torpedoes loaded (i.e. have not fired yet or have passed a Reload Ordnance order) may choose to fire these torpedoes during the movement phase as the ship enters an asteroid field.  No torpedo marker is placed.  Instead, the ship counts as having passed their leadership check to navigate the asteroid field.  This holds for the entire duration that the ship is inside the field, so long as the ship does not use Burn Retros or All Ahead Full special orders while moving through the field.  The ship's torpedoes count as spent, and of course must be reloaded as normal.

4. Yeah, seeking torpedoes suck as one use.  Perhaps go to the old "out of ordnance" rules.  If you reload ordnance and get a double (whether you succeed or not) the Seekers have run out.  You can still use regular torpedoes though.

[Lotus]

Thanks for the feedback! You have an eye for detecting rule-oversights.

1. Yes, they would be "almost vortex-torpedo-like-awesome". At first i thought this should not be - but then i thought "its one use and has almost the same weakness as the vortex torpedo". I did not thought about gas clouds however.

2. Yes, BFI should safe against the critical, the wording needs to be clear about this.

3. In a campaign, you roll independent from the next scenario (you roll for refits after the battle). I thought about different effects barrage bombs could have on ships, but i scraped them because i wanted to keep the rules as simple and close to the original as possible.

But your idea sounds interesting, logical and easy to use (rulewise). And it seems like every faction with acces to special torpedoes could have a use for this.

4. Great idea!



So... "1." could be an issue. Maybe some slight additional disatvantage should be there. What about reduced range? Maybe the Melta Torpedo Warheads overheat quickly after activation and will detonate after 20cm of flight?

Reduced speed to 20cm - and every melta torpedo that doesn't hit anything during the first ordnance phase after being launched will be removed and replaced by a blast marker.

Then they would be some kind of "deadly, but only in close range weapon" - similar to Melta Weapons in "other games of the same universe".



Any thoughts on this?