So I've been thinking about Tves' suggestion regarding 40k's "Power From Pain" rules as a starting point for further developing DE in BFG (a reasonable place, considering DE barely existed when BFG was first brought about).
Of course, if a whole new block of rules gets added to the DE book, some things will probably need to be dialed back, such as mimic engines and slave-taking (which seemed to be the main points of contention in this thread). So that led me to this next iteration:
Mimic Engines:Until a DE ship attacks (incl. boarding, teleport H&Rs, etc.), launches ordnance, moves within 30cm of an enemy ship, or defends against enemy ordnance, any opposing ship attempting to attack it must pass a Ld test with a -2 penalty. If it fails, it must attack a non-mimicking target or not at all. Effect automatically goes away at the end of the 2nd game turn.
(There will also be some conditions to prevent using friendly-fire or indirect weapons to bypass the rule, and still no effect vs Tyranids or Necrons).
Slave-Taking:Score +10VPs per hit inflicted during a boarding action, and +100VPs if the Bridge Smashed critical is inflicted. (No effect for H&R or Impaler attacks).
Power from Pain (taking a cue from 40k 7E Dark Eldar):At the start of the DE player's turn, their capital ships gain the bonus below corresponding to the current turn number. This lasts for the rest of the game:
- None
- Re-roll attempts to repair critical damage.
- Repair critical damage on a roll of 5+ instead of 6.
- Immune to negative leadership penalties.
- In a boarding action, use the ship's starting hits to determine its boarding value.
- In a boarding action, the ship does not award a bonus to the attacker for being in contact with blast markers,
being on special orders, or being crippled.
+++++++++
The idea here is to work towards removing some of the DE's alpha strike potential without killing the strategy outright. In theory, with mimic engines offering much less protection, and no way to generate VPs with H&Rs, the DE player may benefit from alpha-striking, but should not be consistently able to disengage before turn 3. To keep them in the game afterwards, their ships become harder to disable and stronger at boarding the longer the game goes on.
So how does this look? Too much? Too little? Just right?