Specialist Arms Forum
Battlefleet Gothic => [BFG] Discussion => Topic started by: Phthisis on July 13, 2011, 08:39:21 PM
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My gaming group and I have 2 main issues with the BFG ruleset. First and foremost is the emphasis on luck over strategy. We have witnessed several games where an obvious win was reversed into an obvious loss not by player strategy but by luck of the dice alone. Its disheartening to us that the system can rob victory with a single bad LD or crit roll. Second is unnecessary complication of the ruleset. Too much shifting on the gunnery charts, calculations galore and a lot of recordkeeping is involved that could be avoided if desired.
As fans of the 'gameplay over realism' principle and 'strategy over luck' we have devised the following changes to the core rules of BFG to those ends.
Special Orders
LD tests are not made for SO. Players buy a number of orders to use each turn along with their fleet commanders and leiutenants. They may use up to this number of orders per turn. Orders always go off. Losing a commander or leiutenant due to ship destruction or a 'bridge smashed' crit loses the orders associated with that leader permanently.
LD is still used for everything it was used for but SO and is a fixed value bassd on race and vessel size. Ld is not randomly generated.
BFI is still used in enemy turn but an order must be available to use it. The order frees up the following turn but the ship or squadron may not go on BFI in their following turn.
BFI ships on BFI get a -4 modifier on the crit table.
Ordnance
Turrets may fire at all ordnance that attacks it. No need to decide between torpedos and AC.
Bombers do D3 attacks. Fightabombers do D2. Turrets are subtracted once after attacks are totalled. D3+D3-T not (D6-T)+(D6-T).
No turret suppression.
Elite Cadre allows rerolls to H&R attacks, no longer +1.
Boarding
Ships roll dice equal to their boarding value + modifiers. Ships match dice starting highest moving to lowest. Dice which beat it's pair's score subtract 1 hit point from enemy ship. Ties do nothing. Left over dice are discarded. Ships are locked until one dies. Victorious ship can scuttle enemy ship or let it drift.
General
Warp Rift is eliminated from the Catastrophic table. Plasma Overload covers the Warp Rift as well and work like WBs with no column shift and kill ordnance automatically.
These are the basics. There are specific fleet revisions on the way.
Looking for constructive criticism.
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LD tests are not made for SO. Players buy a number of orders to use each turn along with their fleet commanders and leiutenants. They may use up to this number of orders per turn. Orders always go off. Losing a commander or leiutenant due to ship destruction or a 'bridge smashed' crit loses the orders associated with that leader permanently.
Would be far easier to simply remove SO completly then. A SO that works every time you want it is just a buffed up profile and nothing more.
The real idea behind Special orders, an the reason why they are in the game, is the "chain of command"-flair: you always have to give priorites to some ships (based on their LD value and/or the importance of the SO).
If this feature is out, there is no real need for SOs. Instead you can simply write "a ship can always reroll its to hit rolls unless xyz happend"
Turrets may fire at all ordnance that attacks it. No need to decide between torpedos and AC.
While I understand that someone finds the current rules illogical, I like the concept of "combined arms". Especially ships like the Dictator simply need this rule to justify their costs. At all the current rule is a slight advantage for intelligent players and bad for the no brainers, so I like it as it is. (That's a general point about all this rules: they simplify things - something that is never good for a tactical/wargame..)
No turret suppression.
So mixed waves of fighters and Bombers have no value -> bad...
Bombers do D3 attacks. Fightabombers do D2. Turrets are subtracted once after attacks are totalled. D3+D3-T not (D6-T)+(D6-T).
Makes Battleships to vulnerable to Bombers. Combined with that fact that every Carrier reloads ordonance without any LD checks it simply means that carriers become way to dominant.
To be honest I would play only carriers with these rule changes.
Generally spoken: a good rule is one which forces a player to think, analyse a situation and make a decision (may it right or wrong) based on this analysis.
If there is only one "right" decision, regardless of the situation the rule should be changed.
Example: under the current rules it is unwise to empty your torpedo tubes every turn from turn one, simply because it is possible that I could not reload next turn or have to waste a precious reroll. Instead you "save" your torpedos until you have a good opportunity (e.g. target under 30cm) or you gain a tactical advantage by doing so (e.g. split up a tight formation) that is worth this risk.
Under your proposed changes I'd do nothing but spam torpedos every round - simply because I have no disadvantage by doing so and I can always hope for a "lucky hit". Not a positive impact on the tactical or stratecical aspect of the game if you ask me.
Don't get me wrong: I also dislike it if games a decided by pure (bad) luck, but the mechanics of the game allow you to compensate for that: yes you are fu**ed if you roll a lots of LD6 and 7 at the beginning - but exactly for this situation the squadron rules are made for.
Yes, I hate it if I fail a SO in a critical situation of the game - but for this case the expensive rerolls are made, the squadron rules are made and players which use SOs economical (following the simple logic that you fail only a few LD tests if you are forced to take only a few of them) are rewarded over players who use them in abundance.
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Thanks for the comments Eldanesh.
I completely disagree with you about simplification of rules being bad for tactical/wargames. All the best strategy games have simple rulesets that don't require micromanagement or decision making for decision making's sake. Strategy is best when it's mind vs mind and overcomplex rulesets and random chance interfere with that dynamic. Chess, Space Hulk, Game of Thrones, Settlers of Catan are good examples of strategy games where the ruleset doesn't get in the way of the battle of minds, and all are widely acclaimed with multiple awards for design.
Complex rulesets rewards rule memorization only and facilitates cheating and errors in play. We eliminated turret target selection specifically because weve seen it abused and it has such a small effect on the game, especially now with CAP.
Not everyone enjoys complexity. None of my gaming buddies enjoy looking up obscure rules or bad dice ruining our plans. Sigiroth is working with Plaxor on revisions to the rules in their BFGR project that make the game many times more complex, so that option is available for those who want it. This is a revision for those who want to focus on gameplay and not game.
One thing to note about the SOs is that they are a limited resource to be expended AND can now be attacked and destroyed by your enemy. Before you could potentially put every ship and squadron on SO every turn with good dice. With these rules, we have found our sweet spot at buying 3 SOs for our fleets at 1500, but we squadron heavily. That means only 3 SO can be used, fewer if I want the option to BFI. This plays out EXTREMELY differently than just giving everyone infinite automatic SO. In fact, it forces me to use fewer SOs per turn now than I used to average with my CSM fleet previously. Its just now I won't fail the one SO I absolutely need.
Alternatively, if I lose one of my commanders, now I have even fewer SO to use. It limits the use of orders, forcing players to use them with forethought, but removes the element of chance.
I was initially concerned with ordinance being overpowered as well, but after playtesting we have seen ordnance fleets get pounded vs all gunnery and mixed fleets very reliably. The reasons is that orders are a limited resource. For an all-carrier fleet, you must form large squadrons otherwise you wont have enough orders to reload them all. Large squadrons mean that if you BFI, youre losing lots of ordy. But enemy gunships can target and LO the ships with the leaders out of the squadron. So they brace and lose the ability to fight, or they lose their ability to go on SO and so lose their ability to fight. All carriers are a very weak build in this system. Much better to go balanced or all guns. Thats after 10 weeks of playtesting.
Why do bombers need a benefit for fighter escort beyond protection?
Would you be willing to playtest? I need people I can rely on to actually try it instead of fabricating results to fit their opinions. Our working model has leaders at the following costs:
3 SO commander - 100pts
2 SO commander - 75pts
1 SO commander - 50pts
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Hey,
Well, from our off the forum talks, you know my thoughts on many of these... from the ones you have posted, here are the ones I really like...
Bombers do D3 attacks. Fightabombers do D2. Turrets are subtracted once after attacks are totalled. D3+D3-T not (D6-T)+(D6-T).
Boarding
Ships roll dice equal to their boarding value + modifiers. Ships match dice starting highest moving to lowest. Dice which beat it's pair's score subtract 1 hit point from enemy ship. Ties do nothing. Left over dice are discarded. Ships are locked until one dies. Victorious ship can scuttle enemy ship or let it drift.
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can now be attacked and destroyed by your enemy.
How? You only mentioned a "bridge smashed" critical, which is only the result of pure luck.
And it doesn't solve the core problem: If i have 3/4/5 SOs the round I use them - no sense in not using them. It also weakens escorts: you surly don't "waste" leaders/SOs on chepa 90 Points squadrons of cobras.
How do you solve this?
But enemy gunships can target and LO the ships with the leaders out of the squadron.
You didn't mention this one: under current rules you can'T target a specific ship in a squadron and fire only on the closest ship
Complex rulesets rewards rule memorization
Complex-to-use rule != rule memorization
Example are mixed fighter waves: under current rules there is always a different "ideal mix" of the wave, depending on the number of turrets of the ship: sometimes 3 Bombers and 1 fighter are the best ideal, sometimes a 50/50 mis is better etc...
Under your change you only need Bombers.
-> More simple rules, meaning people that can calculate or have a good experience lose their advantage...
Why do bombers need a benefit for fighter escort beyond protection?
They don't even do that: there is no difference if a pure Bomber or a mixed wave is attacked
Settlers of Catan
This could be the main point: I don't consider this game a good strategy game: you win if you control the 6 and 8 ressources ;)
I'm with you when we talk about Chess, Go or Draughts (or Dame), but these games give you room to make mistakes (especially Go...)
Would you be willing to playtest?
Nope, sorry. Not because of a lack of interest (even if I think that this system needs a complete overhaul in almost all areas: races like Eldar or SM pay for their "premium" LD which is under your ideas close to useless, while other (orcs) have a discount because of their lack of LD and so on...), more because a lack of time....real life and such things...^^
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I honestly don't believe that Eldar or Marines pay a premium for their Leadership boost. Theyre paying more because their ships have special rules or are just plain better. Same goes for Orks. Theyre getting a point reduction because their weapon systems are random and unreliable.
Nevertheless, in our system Ld still plays a role. Its used for manouvering through celestial phenomenon, going on alert, disengaging and for ignoring target priority. Eldar and marines will be naturally better while Orks will be worse, just as it is now. Only that the Ld will not be generated randomly and will not be used for Special Orders.
Note that our working points cost for the leaders with respective orders can be modified from our working point values to fit differnt races. These figures work the best for Chaos & IN. Also, I'm planning on limiting squadron sizes for Orks. 2 for cap ships and 4 for escorts. This will cut down on the quantity of ships on SO each turn.
Its not in your best interest to burn all your orders every turn. First, orders have special conditions that mean they can't be used or have drawbacks. Second, orders are only useful when you need them. You wouldn't Burn Retros or CTNH just because you felt you had orders to burn. Thats stupid play that would lose you games. Third, you can't BFI unless you have orders left over to use.
All orders are used throughout the fleet as you wish. A captain on a BB can order an escort squad to go on SO. That same captain can use that order on another squadron the next turn. Youre never 'wasting' an order on an escort squadron. With Cobras you'll probably be putting them on RO.
I disagree that this system makes escorts worthless. In the current rules, you have a significant chance of failure when testing to go on SO. Escorts can't mitigate a bad Ld roll by squadroning like cruisers do. Lets,say you rolled a 6 or 7 for Ld on the Cobras. Good luck reloading your torpedos reliably! Sure, you can use rerolls, but those have a good chance of failure too. Or you can spend 25pts on another order in my system in order to reload them in every turn. Escorts are more valuable if you choose to use them as anything but points fill.
Before we wrote these new rules we were playtesting BFGR, which also allows targeting cap ships out of squadrons. I forgot it wasn't in the standard rules.
I had said you lose orders through 'bridge smashed' criticals or the destruction of the ship the officer is embarked on.
Targeting officer ships is an element of balance and targeting/protecting them makes for great strategy.
Fighters mixed in bomber squadrons is a fetish and is unnecessary. Its based on people's flawed idea of WWII air combat tactics. I use seperate squadrons of fighters to sweep enemy fighters before my bombers or assault boats come through constantly and it works. Fighters destroy enemy ordnance and clear CAP. Theyre pretty powerful already. If I could see it add some value to the game as a whole I've got several systems in my pocket for it. But I think the reasoning behind including turret suppression are flawed. With everyone terrified that ordnance surpassing gunnery and my stated goal of removing complicated and unnecessary rules, it seems best to me to leave bonuses for close escorts out.
I disagree on your opinion of Catan. The bandit and player strategy can easily turn having the 6s & 8s into a disadvantage. Ive never seen a player in that situation win.
I also disagree about artificially building an advantage into a game for players who can memorize (or argue) complex rules or do rapid math in their brain. Things like this can be exploited and used to cheat and detracr from the strategy, which should be the focus. If we can make games of BFG faster to play, with fewer times where we are forced to look up obscure rules and fewer cases where random chance can ruin good strategy or save terrible strategy and fewer oppotunities to cheat or abuse opponents, while keeping the spirit and experience and basic gameplay... Then some people will have more fun. If people want BFG more complicated, BFGR should be coming out soon or they have the FAQed version. :'(
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Although it seems you primarily want a stamp of approval on your changes, I'll go ahead and post my thoughts since you are looking to fundamentally change how the game behaves.
My gaming group and I have 2 main issues with the BFG ruleset. First and foremost is the emphasis on luck over strategy.
This is life. The HMS Hood was destroyed with "lucky" hit regardless of strategy. In return the Bismark herself was crippled with a lucky hit to the rudder enabling her destruction. I'm sure that in both cases the crews of these ships were more than a little disheartened by the result. Why seek to eliminate SO checks because of their effect on the game when you apparently have no issue keeping crits the same despite your view that both make the game rely too much on luck?
LD tests are not made for SO. Players buy a number of orders to use each turn along with their fleet commanders and leiutenants. They may use up to this number of orders per turn. Orders always go off. Losing a commander or leiutenant due to ship destruction or a 'bridge smashed' crit loses the orders associated with that leader permanently.
LD is still used for everything it was used for but SO and is a fixed value bassd on race and vessel size. Ld is not randomly generated.
BFI is still used in enemy turn but an order must be available to use it. The order frees up the following turn but the ship or squadron may not go on BFI in their following turn.
BFI ships on BFI get a -4 modifier on the crit table.
Why shouldn't LD be used for SO? It represents the admiral attempting to send orders during a battle and the possibility that communications can be interrupted or misunderstood. You say you want to make the game less complicated, but you are generating a complicated table for all the races and vessels. How is that less complicated that rolling a d6 and looking on a table or rolling 2d6 and comparing to a number?
Why should BFI be limited? It's an exception to the normal SO's anyway. It's awkward because it needs to be a SO to prevent other SO from being used (can only be on one at a time) yet it's not linked to the LD check in the same manner as other SO. All you are doing is making it far less likely this will be used as other SO would take priority leaving few orders available for bracing. You're also taking away any downside from using the SO by clearing it up on the ships next turn. So what if it can't brace again, typically the enemy will have passed leaving you in a prime location to LO.
Of course now that you've changed BFI so that it only comes into play 1/6 of the time you are hit why would you even bother with using it? -4 on the crit table is frankly one of the least useful and most convoluted things you could do. What happens when you roll a 4 or lower? Does it count as no crit?
Turrets may fire at all ordnance that attacks it. No need to decide between torpedos and AC.
This reduces the tactical options available and ends any benefit Tau or IN or any race with both torpedoes and AC could gain by careful preparation. All you are doing is making the game less interesting tactically.
Bombers do D3 attacks. Fightabombers do D2. Turrets are subtracted once after attacks are totalled. D3+D3-T not (D6-T)+(D6-T).
No turret suppression.
No turret suppression is fine, it's not actually found in any of the rulebooks right now even though it is technically official. It really doesn't add or take away from the game except to allow bombers a little better odds of damaging high turret non crippled targets.
On bombers, there is a very good reason why people don't like seeing them more powerful. Back when the game came out there wasn't the ordnance limitations so carriers became king as they sat back launching wave after wave of bombers until a critical mass was reached and the massive number of bombers hit and crippled the enemy fleet. Basically it because a war of who could RO with the most carriers and not get doubles. Things have changed since then but the point remains that the focus of BFG was supposed to be on WWI style gunnery battles regardless of how it's actually played out. These rules actually create a far more random scenario when attacking capital ships. Against high turret ships you could get far more attacks than currently or none at all while you have a better probability of getting more attacks against low turret ships across the board.
What you are proposing isn't any simpler than what is currently there and has the potential to be far more up to the luck of the dice which you begin this by saying you dislike. Without any support for why you want to change this it really doesn't make any sense. I would leave Ordnance as it is currently.
Elite Cadre allows rerolls to H&R attacks, no longer +1.
I prefer the +1, but what you are proposing again make the game far more random. Unless you roll a 1, which might happen 16% of the time, the reroll is useless so why bother? Why not just have them roll 2d6 and pick which one they like best. That would show the elite function of hitting with more precision.
Ships roll dice equal to their boarding value + modifiers. Ships match dice starting highest moving to lowest. Dice which beat it's pair's score subtract 1 hit point from enemy ship. Ties do nothing. Left over dice are discarded. Ships are locked until one dies. Victorious ship can scuttle enemy ship or let it drift.
How does this simplify things? This is far more complicated than the simple roll off +modifiers. It's a lot of dice rolling which takes a lot of time for a very minor element of the game.
Warp Rift is eliminated from the Catastrophic table. Plasma Overload covers the Warp Rift as well and work like WBs with no column shift and kill ordnance automatically.
Why this change? I could maybe see just having up to plasma overload, but why make it hit like WB? It's a massive release of raw energy, why wouldn't that hit like a lance? What strength would you assign it? If you say half the starting hits like it is now you might as well just remove the explosion all together and leave it as a burning hulk for all the effect it will have. I really don't see what "simplification" is gained here either this is a very rare event it's not like every ship that rolls on the table pops off like a roman candle.
Basically, you claim you want to reduce the random factor and the complexity, but so far I see nothing but increased complexity and randomness in your suggestions. Beyond that several serve to reduce the tactical depth of the game which is something you want to increase. Complexity in a game system isn't bad if it serves a purpose and adds depth to the game. Complexity is bad if it's just there for the sake of being complex.
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Although it seems you primarily want a stamp of approval on your changes, I'll go ahead and post my thoughts since you are looking to fundamentally change how the game behaves.
That's not fair Vaash. If I wanted a simple rubber stamp, this would be the absolute last place I would put it. I'm putting it here for fireproofing.
I'm asking for constructive criticism. I want people here to show me if there are any cracks in the system and suggest ways of making it work better. Why won't you give me the benefit of the doubt and take me at face value? I've never been disingenuous before.
Why shouldn't LD be used for SO?
Because Ld tests rely on chance for success or failure. BFG is a strategy game based on manouvering and capitalizing on successful manouvering. SO's are the primary mechanism by which ships manouver or capitalize on their position. Failing a random die roll disallows successful manouvering or capitalization. The only function that it serves is to prevent a player's strategy from working. Having to rely on chance for your SO to go off hurts players using good strategy and saves players who have inferior strategy. Passing a SO test can't snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but failing a critical SO can easily steal the win from a player who has clearly defeated their opponent.
You say you want to make the game less complicated, but you are generating a complicated table for all the races and vessels. How is that less complicated that rolling a d6 and looking on a table or rolling 2d6 and comparing to a number?
You won't have to look at a table. You'll be able to tell what the ship's Ld is just by looking at it because the table is easily memorized. It saves several minutes of watching each other roll dice and comparing it to a table before the game, and it keeps players from getting confused about which ships in their fleet have which Ld value because they're always the same. Its an Imperial cruiser? Ld 7. It's an Ork Kroozer? Ld 6...
Why should BFI be limited?
Here's how BFI works. In order to use BFI you have to have saved orders from your pool to use in the enemy turn. You don't roll on Ld for BFI, you just place the order marker like you do with all other SO. If you don't have any orders left over you don't get to go on BFI.
BFI gives you a 4+ save against hits as usual. Hits can crit as normal, but they subtract 4 from their score on 2d6. If they roll 4 or less the crit doesn't go off. This gives the ship a small save against criticals when braced and also makes sure that they don't take any severe irreparable damage.
The following player turn, the ship or squadron that went on BFI can't be put on SO, just like the normal rules. However, the order that was used to put them on SO can be used to put another ship or squadron on another order, it's not tied up with the BFI any longer.
Regarding turrets, CAP has largely done away with combined ordnance attacks. AC has to sweep CAP before torpedos can it. The number of bombers coming through are limited anyway. I don't believe the fleets you mention are crippled by turrets getting to fire at anything coming in they want. The tactical decision for the defender for which to fire turrets at is a no-brainer, and there is plenty of room for abuse and cheating by the attacker. It adds nothing to the game and has a negligible effect on the outcome.
Regarding bombers:
What you are proposing isn't any simpler than what is currently there and has the potential to be far more up to the luck of the dice which you begin this by saying you dislike.
I think it is much simpler than the turret suppression rules, but this system has the similar effect of making BBs vulnerable to bomber waves comparable in size to what was needed in turret suppression. Its really fast to calculate (add the dice total together, subtract turrets, done) and is at least no worse than the original ordnance rules. We can easily do this drunk. Also, this system has the added benefit of being a bit more predictable. There is less of a chance of getting zero attacks and there are aren't instances of getting a ridiculously high number of attacks. In the original rules, with 4 bombers vs T-2, you could get 0-16 attacks averaging 6. Now you can get 2-10, averaging 6. Against a T4 ship, originally you'd get 0-8, averaging 0. With this system you get 0-8, average 4. I think this is more what people want out of bombers, the possibility of attacking bombers without overwhelming escorts or cruisers (which turret suppression does to some extent).
Regarding Elite Cadre H&R attacks:
Why not just have them roll 2d6 and pick which one they like best.
Good idea. I like it. Shows precision much better than a reroll.
Regarding Boarding:
How does this simplify things? This is far more complicated than the simple roll off +modifiers. It's a lot of dice rolling which takes a lot of time for a very minor element of the game.
I've been told by playtesters it runs faster and is more intuitive than the rolloff with modifiers and have found the same to be true for myself. Its a lot of dice to roll, but no more than we're used to rolling for gunnery or for basic attacks in 40k. This also avoids some weird scenarios where smaller ships beat bigger ships because of modifiers. Also, it makes boarding more decisive and a bit more predictable as to who the winner is. Another thing I like about this system is that the winner of the boarding action can take damage, which isn't possible in the original system.
I could maybe see just having up to plasma overload, but why make it hit like WB?
Because some of the batteries in the game shoot plasma. And I figure armor should protect them from an exploding ship. And because it's slightly less likely to cause damage on most ships.
I really don't see what "simplification" is gained here either this is a very rare event it's not like every ship that rolls on the table pops off like a roman candle.
You need to watch some of our games. It's like those action movies where cars blow up left and right.
The Warp Rift was ridiculously powerful and we've seen it tear chunks out of fleets just because of bad luck. Victors turn into big losers instantly. We eliminated it because it was another way a person could lose the game due to just plain bad luck. That's another reason we nerfed Plasma Overload.
This is life. The HMS Hood was destroyed with "lucky" hit regardless of strategy. In return the Bismark herself was crippled with a lucky hit to the rudder enabling her destruction.
I'm not messing with shooting and am leaving criticals largely alone. You can still have a bulkhead collapse or lose shields. Its exactly the same as in the normal rules. I'm limiting chance in the game, not eliminating it.
The purpose of this is to strip away what detracts from strategy and unnecessary elements. I suppose it depends on what you think gives a game depth. For me, it's not micromanagement or myriad minor tactical decisions to make constantly through the game. The game depth comes in the fact that there are so many ways to win and so many overall strategies to use. I'd rather focus on fleet manouvering and gunnery than worrying about odds, rerolls and who to shoot turrets at, wouldn't you?
Vaash, would you be willing to playtest?
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That's not fair Vaash. If I wanted a simple rubber stamp, this would be the absolute last place I would put it. I'm putting it here for fireproofing.
Just basing it from your responses to the things already posted in the thread.
Because Ld tests rely on chance for success or failure. BFG is a strategy game based on manouvering and capitalizing on successful manouvering.
The problem here is that the possibility of failing that roll reflects life. History is rife with commanders who lost battles or were severely hampered because of green troops or failed communications. The LD rolls for SO reflect the captains ability to comprehend and implement your orders as you want. Outside of failing a brace order, I can't think of any SO that can't be compensated for if the roll is failed. I believe the famous line is no plan survives contact. You need to be able to think on your feet and compensate for failed rolls. Plans have to change as your opponent maneuvers and checks are made.
You won't have to look at a table. You'll be able to tell what the ship's Ld is just by looking at it because the table is easily memorized. It saves several minutes of watching each other roll dice and comparing it to a table before the game, and it keeps players from getting confused about which ships in their fleet have which Ld value because they're always the same. Its an Imperial cruiser? Ld 7. It's an Ork Kroozer? Ld 6...
No dice. You WILL be looking at a table that is far longer to memorize under your idea than the LD table so please don't pretend otherwise. The LD table is probably the easiest thing in the world to use; it's only got four entries. If you name your ships, there shouldn't be any issues figuring out which ship has what LD. In a typical 1500 point game it should only take a minute to get the LD values for your ships.
I'm not messing with shooting and am leaving criticals largely alone. You can still have a bulkhead collapse or lose shields. Its exactly the same as in the normal rules. I'm limiting chance in the game, not eliminating it.
Don't be obtuse, I was referencing how the luck you seem to hate in BFG can be easily seen at work in the Hood and Bismark not how shooting works in BFG. Anyway, there's really not much use and responding to your other points. The fact that you just said your don't want to make a lot of tactical decisions throughout the game shows you'd rather just have a flatter game. Those small decision are what give the game depth. Take them away and you're just dumping dice. You might as well just strip out all SO, get rid of the entire catastropic table and the critical hits.
No, I won't be playtesting these rules. They are half baked and reduce the tactical depth of the game for little return. I don't want to be dumping and comparing loads of dice for boarding when I can just roll a single d6, I don't want to see changes to turrets that destroy legitimate tactics or bombers with the potential to paste an undamaged battleship. I prefer a little spice in my game. If I could predict exactly how the game would play why bother playing it at all?
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Quick:
Don't like the ideas at first glance.
I see other things that could be better in BFG.
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I'm not being obtuse. You gave two examples of how lucky shots happen in real life. I pointed out that I haven't removed lucky shots from BFG nor decreased their likelihood. Neither were examples of a captain's orders failing to be correctly interpreted or crews failing to carry orders out. I doubt you'll find such examples. Generally, what are considered SO in BFG are things modern ship crews are trained to do and constantly drilled on. It makes little sense that a cruiser crew should have a 40% chance of failure to execute a heading or speed correction.
That may not be what you meant, but that was the argument you presented.
After playtesting this, I don't miss the Ld tests. My strategy still must be changed and I still must adapt. But now I can change strategy instead of botching critical SO tests and getting screwed just because of one bad roll. Before it was strategy dependent heavily on luck. Now its pure strategy and I win or lose based on the merits of my plan. And I'm still thinking on my feet. Actually now I'm forced to think a little further ahead.
As far as the Ld table goes, I still think its a lot simpler than the current method. At least its no worse. See if you can remember this:
Battleships & Grand Cruisers - Ld6
Cruisers - Ld7
Light Cruisers - Ld8
Escorts - Ld9
Orks -1 from Ld
Eldar, SMs & Tyranids, +1 to Ld.
I think this is easier and faster than randomly generating Ld and having to look it up on your roster constantly.
Im not stripping out criticals, catastrophic damage or SOs. Thats a slippery slope argument. Youre arguing against a different system, not the one presented.
I'm not against making tactical decisions. I love tactical games like Spach Hulk. Tactical decisions is why I play games like this. What I don't like is random chance preventing me from making a tactical decision and 'tactical decisions' that make no difference to the game and waste my time.
For example, imagine having to take a leadership test to move chess pieces further than one square. It would definately add an element to the game, but would it make the game better, deeper or more fun? I think it would just be frustrating and would not enjoy it. Just because its there doesn't mean kt adds anything valuable to the game. In fact, it could be a detriment.
Vaash, you seem to think that not forcing turrets to select between torpedos and AC is a big problem. We eliminated it primarily because it made cheating pay and didn't see how it added much to the game now that the ordnance rules are what they are. Can you show me how this change hurts Tau and IN in any significant way?
How are bombers able to paste an undamaged BB in this system any better than they can under the turret suppression rules? My calculations show that they are about the same if not fewer. Can you run the numbers yourself?
You really should test these rules out. I know you don't like the principles I'm making my modifications on, or maybe you don't like me personally for some reason, but if I'm really wrong on this its the best way to prove it or come up with ideas to make it so you do like it.
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You still aren't getting the point. It was a LUCKY hit that caused the damage. Luck not skill. You say you are against lucky dice rolls when it comes to SO yet have no problems with lucky weapon hits (criticals). Luck will always play some part in warfare. Look through the accounts during WWII or even modern times and see how many time you can find reports of communications gear failing at critical points in a battle. I'm sure you will find plenty.
Ok, you posted a table. It's completely nonsensical. Why are bigger ships lower LD? Why do nids get +1? Typically greener commanders are given smaller commands not larger ones.
We eliminated it primarily because it made cheating pay and didn't see how it added much to the game now that the ordnance rules are what they are. Can you show me how this change hurts Tau and IN in any significant way?
How on EARTH do you figure on this making cheating pay? This hurts tau because they rely on combining their variable speed torpedoes and their bombers to strike a target simultaneously at long range. You take away that choice and suddenly things get worse for them since both targets can now be intercepted negating the benefit from skillful positioning. IN to a lesser extent with the Dictator.
How are bombers able to paste an undamaged BB in this system any better than they can under the turret suppression rules? My calculations show that they are about the same if not fewer. Can you run the numbers yourself?
Uncrippled, not undamaged. Uncrippled BB have 4+ turrets. Lets take the Emperor as an example. 5 turrets and, for simplicity, no bombers are shot down. Enemy bombers have to roll a 6 to even attack it. Best case scenario, maybe 1 hit. Under your system 4 bombers just have to roll better than a 5 on 4d6 to attack. Which one is more likely to cause damage? Your system is boosting bombers when they don't need the change.
You really should test these rules out. I know you don't like the principles I'm making my modifications on, or maybe you don't like me personally for some reason, but if I'm really wrong on this its the best way to prove it or come up with ideas to make it so you do like it.
By the same token, you should really familiarize yourself far better with how the game works before you go off and gut things on a poorly conceived notion that you are simplifying the game or making it more tactical. I've played this game for years and I can tell from reading through your proposal it's not making the game better. Why should I spend time playtesting something that's obviously flawed?
In all those years I've never had ship blow up with any regularity on the catastrophic table and when they have it's not that common for large amounts of damage to happen. Sometimes it has happened, but you roll with it and keep going. Keep your fleet a little more spread out and you won't run the risk of the catastrophic damage table gutting your fleet. Brace if you think it's going do a lot of damage or you are too close to the exploding ship. Take a few extra rerolls to combat failed checks. As IN most of my ships end up with LD 8, add the +1 for enemies on SO and passing checks really isn't a problem. If I have a ship with lower LD I can always squadron it if I think it'll be an issue. In the course of a 1500 point game I rarely need more than two rerolls to combat failed checks. From what you've posted it sounds like your are fairly new to BFG and you are having a knee jerk reaction to either misreading the rules or anomalies on the table.
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Ok, longer,
My gaming group and I have 2 main issues with the BFG ruleset. First and foremost is the emphasis on luck over strategy. We have witnessed several games where an obvious win was reversed into an obvious loss not by player strategy but by luck of the dice alone. Its disheartening to us that the system can rob victory with a single bad LD or crit roll. Second is unnecessary complication of the ruleset. Too much shifting on the gunnery charts, calculations galore and a lot of recordkeeping is involved that could be avoided if desired.
As fans of the 'gameplay over realism' principle and 'strategy over luck' we have devised the following changes to the core rules of BFG to those ends.
Ah well. Personal opinion. BFG is really low on bookkeeping. Gunnery Chart is awesome. Single roll deciding game? Hardly happening with me.
Special Orders
LD tests are not made for SO. Players buy a number of orders to use each turn along with their fleet commanders and leiutenants. They may use up to this number of orders per turn. Orders always go off. Losing a commander or leiutenant due to ship destruction or a 'bridge smashed' crit loses the orders associated with that leader permanently.
Nah, Ld is key to a good SO.
Actually one should roll the SO dice if the Ld test is failed... heh heh
LD is still used for everything it was used for but SO and is a fixed value bassd on race and vessel size. Ld is not randomly generated.
Random generated Ld is kinda cool. For one off games I like it. In campaigns it is more fixed-ish.
BFI is still used in enemy turn but an order must be available to use it. The order frees up the following turn but the ship or squadron may not go on BFI in their following turn.
What? That is adding bookkeeping tbh.
BFI ships on BFI get a -4 modifier on the crit table.
Dunno, too much. critical hits are scarce anyway.
Ordnance
Turrets may fire at all ordnance that attacks it. No need to decide between torpedos and AC.
I like the decision between torps/ac.
Bombers do D3 attacks. Fightabombers do D2. Turrets are subtracted once after attacks are totalled. D3+D3-T not (D6-T)+(D6-T).
Your example would be (D3+D3)-T.
4 bombers vs cruiser 2 turrets max end:
(d3+d3+d3+d3)-2 = (3+3+3+3)-2 = 10 attacks.
minimal= 2 attacks. Thus always 2 attacks at least,,,, meh
old had minimal of zero and max of 12 attacks (which needs 4 sixes, your idea needs 4 fives / sixes)
You make AC more powerful. Ask RcGothic what I think about that. :)
No turret suppression.
what do fighters do in your game?
Elite Cadre allows rerolls to H&R attacks, no longer +1.
more re-rolls = more luck.
You wanted less luck, so why this?
Boarding
Ships roll dice equal to their boarding value + modifiers. Ships match dice starting highest moving to lowest. Dice which beat it's pair's score subtract 1 hit point from enemy ship. Ties do nothing. Left over dice are discarded. Ships are locked until one dies. Victorious ship can scuttle enemy ship or let it drift.
whoa, lotsa dice. Not keen on your mechanic. (Not that the official mechanic is good).
General
Warp Rift is eliminated from the Catastrophic table. Plasma Overload covers the Warp Rift as well and work like WBs with no column shift and kill ordnance automatically.
two sixes.... by all keep it.
These are the basics. There are specific fleet revisions on the way.
still curious. ;)
Looking for constructive criticism.
Don't feel attacked if someone dislikes your ideas.
cheers!!
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@Vaash
You still aren't getting the point. It was a LUCKY hit that caused the damage. Luck not skill. You say you are against lucky dice rolls when it comes to SO yet have no problems with lucky weapon hits (criticals). Luck will always play some part in warfare.
Yes, lucky hits can win a game. Just like what is represented by rolling dice and critical hits. Lucky hits are still represented in the game and you can get a wide range of results from abysmal failure to statistically average to astounding success. Over the long run, these dice rolls even out. You don't fault me for allowing for luck in gunnery, do you?
On the other hand, all that Ld checks for SO do is screw your strategy. They make it so a brilliant strategic player can still lose due to bad luck. It's like having to roll dice to move pieces in chess. It's the main strategic element of the game and it's overridden by pure chance. Our change makes the strategic part of this strategy game based solely on strategy. I can argue 'realism' in a fictional universe with you forever, and GW changes it's universe to fit its games all the time. What specific problem do you have with the order pool system we have created? Let's talk gameplay and balance.
Ok, you posted a table. It's completely nonsensical. Why are bigger ships lower LD? Why do nids get +1? Typically greener commanders are given smaller commands not larger ones.
In our system, Ld tests are utilized for navigating celestial phenomenon, picking targets out of squadrons, disengaging, and going on alert. Different sized vessels have different sized crews. It's harder to get 80,000 people to work together than 20,000. It's harder to squeeze a BB between asteroids than it is an escort. The Ld values are based on the difficulty in coordinating the effort to successfully navigate between rocks, get everyone to battle stations, ignore threats and shut off all systems so you can float away based on the size and crew compliment of the ship. The commander's actual ability at command are represented by the number of orders they bring to the fleet.
Orks get -1 because they are much worse at coordinating and aren't natural spacefarers. Eldar get +1 due to their skill and technology. Marines get +1 due to discipline. Tyranids get +1 because they are space creatures and are naturally adapted to their environment (and have the hivemind).
But that table isn't far harder to memorize than the table you use to roll Ld, is it? In fact, it's nearly identical just without the need to roll dice. So who's pretending? And it's much easier to look at the board and know that an Imperial cruiser is Ld 7 because of what it is than to have to go to your roster and check to see if the Lord Daaros is Ld 7 or Ld 8.
With regard to turrets, if you wish to cheat, this is the easiest place to do it in the game. Its the 'tracking torpedo' situation where a player throws bombers at a ship, turrets fire, and magically all the torpedos launched happen to be targeting that ship as well. This can be done through rules lawyering or slight of hand. It's cheating, to be sure, but it's a weak spot I've seen exploited by known cheaters repeatedly.
Tau ordnance wins through VOLUME, ordnance speed and the ability to redirect torpedo salvoes. The extra attack or two lost per turn isn't going to amount to crushing the Tau's hopes of victory. They are still a very viable fleet. Even more so that they can RO reliably. This is especially true since fighter screens and CAP really cuts down on how much this can happen, especially at long range.
From what you've posted it sounds like your are fairly new to BFG and you are having a knee jerk reaction to either misreading the rules or anomalies on the table.
This is fairly insulting. Obvious troll is obvious. I purchased the BFG starter set the week it was released and have been playing it whenever I've had a gaming group that was willing ever since. I still have a copy of the original rule book. You don't know anything about me. Perhaps I have more games under my belt than you and so I have seen the things that I'm concerned about quite a bit more. If you care about what I'm doing, stop flaming. If you don't, go away. So far the only argument that you've got left standing is that you like having your strategy dominated by luck because you believe it's more realistic. As I've said, you have other options. Play BFG:R instead when it comes out.
But I'm keeping the Elite Cadre H&R idea.
@Horizon
I don't feel attacked when people don't like my ideas. Seriously, after the abuse I received in the BFG:R forum for not swallowing the kool-aid, I know what I'm in for here. And if I prove that someone who disagrees with me that I'm right, it's because I'm too stupid to understand their brilliant argument, right? ::) Besides, I'm not the one losing my cool.
Regarding AC:
I don't want AC to be more powerful. That's why these rules nerf them a little bit.
Your math is off. In the original rules, 4 bombers have 16 attacks max (not 12), while in my rules they have 10 max.
But these are extreme examples, aren't they? Vaash has an Emperor with 5 turrets and not one shoots down a bomber? Lets talk averages.
Average attacks 4 bombers vs T1
Original Rules: 8.75
Our Rules: 6 attacks
Turret Suppression: 8.75 (0 fighters)
My rules average fewer attacks.
Average attacks 4 bombers vs T2
Original rules: 5 attacks
Our rules: 4 attacks
Turret Suppression: 6 attacks
My rules average fewer attacks.
Average attacks 4 bombers vs T3
Original rules: 2.5
Our rules: 2
Turret Suppression: 4
Average attacks 4 bombers vs T4
Original Rules: 1
Our rules: 0
Turret Suppression: 3
So, just by average number of attacks, do you still think that these new rules are a big boost to bomber strength?
The beauty of these rules:
Fewer average attacks. Ordnance gets a slight overall nerf so that gunnery is not overshadowed.
Greater possibility of damaging high turret targets. BBs are still vulnerable to bombers, but they will only take a few attacks. No more threat to BBs than Turret Suppression.
Ships with fewer Turrets have a better chance of survival.
Everybody get's what they wanted out of bombers. Ordnance isn't overpowered but BBs can still be damaged by bomber waves.
what do fighters do in your game?
Kill enemy ordnance.
more re-rolls = more luck. You wanted less luck, so why this?
Re-rolls can alleviate bad luck. But I like Vaash's idea better. Roll 2D6, pick what you want. This gives players some control over what systems they shut down and therefore a layer of strategy to H&R attacks that are normally completely random.
regarding boarding
whoa, lotsa dice. Not keen on your mechanic. (Not that the official mechanic is good).
The official mechanic is ridiculously abstract and allows for ships that realistically should be at a disadvantage to be at an advantage. I also really don't like victors always coming away with no damage. This system fixes both problems, the number of dice needed can be quickly calculated, and usually you're only comparing 5-10 pairs. The rest of the dice are ignored. It works faster than I had originally thought it would.
But, it can be a lot of dice. I boarded an undamaged Emperor once with 3 damaged Chaos cruisers, and that was a lot of dice. However, the majority of boarding actions we've had are between damaged ships and so that limits the number of dice involved. Usually there are under 20 dice being rolled total. You can roll more than that firing a Carnage squadron off. We also play 40k, so we aren't shy at rolling large numbers of dice. These boarding actions require nothing anywhere near the number of dice rolled in even an average sized assault in 40k.
There's no point going into the specific fleet rules until some sort of consensus is formed on the main system changes. If you don't agree that our order system is a good idea, then you'll throw out what we did with Tyranids and Eldar at first glance.
Seriously, to all 3 of you. What do you think that using SO as a resource as proposed will remove from the game? How does removing random chance in this particular section make it a bad game? You have all expressed that you don't like it, but there haven't been any concrete reasons as to how it makes for a bad game.
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With regard to turrets, if you wish to cheat, this is the easiest place to do it in the game. Its the 'tracking torpedo' situation where a player throws bombers at a ship, turrets fire, and magically all the torpedos launched happen to be targeting that ship as well. This can be done through rules lawyering or slight of hand. It's cheating, to be sure, but it's a weak spot I've seen exploited by known cheaters repeatedly.
Tau ordnance wins through VOLUME, ordnance speed and the ability to redirect torpedo salvoes. The extra attack or two lost per turn isn't going to amount to crushing the Tau's hopes of victory. They are still a very viable fleet. Even more so that they can RO reliably. This is especially true since fighter screens and CAP really cuts down on how much this can happen, especially at long range.
Calling a game mechanic bad because people cheat? That's not correct.
In the shooting phase the torps are placed in the direction they are shot at. Heck, if you have issues with your opponent talk to him about what exact route that torps will have.
So far our games never had such cheat things. Woo on people who cheat I say.
Tau are called back on other items already.
In the original boarding rules the attacker can be hurt. So... huh?
You need lots of different coloured dice as well. To avoid your cheating opponents swapping dice. Right? ;)
AH, math, holiday still in my brainz I guess. Anywhoo, wee on me. :)
What did I not like about SO?? I just said the dice should be rolled in case of a failed Ld test. iirc some Ork fan rules at Port Maw had this. funny.
later more.
ps in a thread with a few people getting consesus on the core game mechanics... is like almost impossible. ;)
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Note: SO = Special Order. AC = attack craft. BFI = Brace For Impact special orders. BFG = Battlefleet Gothic. Sorry about length, bold bits are most important.
@Phthisis:
Here are my ideas. I like your efforts to make BFG more 'elegant' but I think that there may be better ways to do it than some of yours—your stimulation of discussion is good! I've just read the whole thread, so I'm going to neglect quoting because it will take too long.... I understand if you think that's unacceptably lazy, please tell me.
Realsim versus Gameplay: I believe that wargame gameplay should be derived from realism! This is a model of a real-life system, afterall: would it make sense to remove key elements of realism and leave an abstract game behind? Sometimes, yes. But many of the BFG rules are already abstracted a great deal and many of the elements of realism are key to represent (admittedly not-so-life-like) space opera battles in space. So, if it is likely that a lucky event can change the winner of a battle in real life, doesn't that add to your tactical acumen if you can overcome it? Or did you perhaps 'waste' your ships early on and not leave enough reserves for that critical roll? In my experience with Warhammer based games, it is rare that a single roll changes an obvious win into an obvious loss; it is usually a series of poor decisions or rolls. I do agree, however, that it should be possible for the player's tactical acumen to overcome bad luck in all but the most fargone situations. In my opinion, the War of the Ring is a game system where this is far more possible than in Warhammer Fantasy or 40K. A key example in BFG seems to be the 'first-turn-shot' problem, where the turn order is the main factor in who gets off a devastating first salvo. This 'honour' should go to the fleet with the longest range, so perhaps some modification to the resolution of shooting should be done.
The problem with just having manouevring and no luck is that every game would end up the same. E.g. Eldar versus Chaos. Eldar (for sake of the example) move around the back and shoot. Chaos keep together and shoot their batteries at the Eldar at range. Eldar can change which way they move around the back: excitement ensures! While I'm sure your group do not want to make it this ridiculous, I hope to have illustrated the dangers of removing the luck. Chess works very well in its limited environment, but BFG offers much more in the way of allowing different results to influence the game, so that the game is not the same every time.
I like the store of SOs idea, but the command chain is one of those characteristics that makes BFG special. Perhaps some modifications? Interesting BFI idea, also (although I think they are better now. If critical damage and hit damage were swapped, yours would be better. I started a thread on this). Are SOs really so necessary, though? Should the game depend on them, so that you need them to play: it seems from your experiences that we need SOs to 'snatch victory regardless of the situation'. If so, then perhaps every ship should have SOs but with different restrictions and limitations, following the Epic model. This solves the problem of modern crews being able to do special orders (a question I've pondered also). But, in light of this, why should they be limited? Overall, I think SOs are a test of the crew in the heat of battle that this represents. What if, after suffering damage, a crewman causes a torpedo to be dropped and explode?
Is there a way to combine the store of SOs with the current Ld. based system? Perhaps there are some that are automatic and some that are not? I think this is a really nice way to represent command ability.
Turret Suppression: The World War tactics theme does come up quite often, but in BFG the situation is quite different: firstly, we are in space; secondly, the distances are much greater; and thirdly, the weapons are much more deadly. These points already make a close comparison with aircraft battles tenuous except when used as inspiration; I think it is better that we stick with the abstract version that exists today, where fighters can confuse and overwhelm the widespread turrets on a larger ship. If you take a look at the Escorts in BFG topic, you'll see my thoughts on escorts being changed to a more anti-AC role, in addition to their current role; turret suppression reinforces the vulnerability of large ships to small vehicles without ridiculously large numbers of point defence turrets, but my suggestion for escorts allows them to counteract this weakness. horizon, to save us here, what are your (concise) feelings about AC? I've forgotten... Uni....
Boarding: if a ship is so supremely better at boarding that it has an excess of dice from boarding values, why should they fight as if they are the same strength as the ship they are fighting against? E.g Emperor battleship against Cobra destroyer: Emperor rolls a 1 and Cobra rolls a 6. 5 hits damage to Emperor. If you had 2 Cobras, you could cause 10 damage! Do I misunderstand the system? Discarding the excess dice would only work if the modifiers were changed to allow ships to show their superior boarding modifiers. Victors can suffer criticals. I think we should redo the whole system, perhaps differently to your idea though.
Hit and run: I think that you should roll 2D6 and choose the one you want all of the time. This does add some nice tactical decision to the game.
It seems that many of your group's ideas are interesting but do not necessarily make the game any better than the current rules: they are more of an alternative, rather than an improvement. Of course, if your group prefers it, then it's an improvement for you! I agree that simpler rules are better but I have this concept of 'elegance': where a rule can be optimally simple but still convey the perhaps complex situation trying to be emulated.
Engine Explosion: Admittedly, for me and my bunch there are few situations where a great number of ships are in range of the explosion, and few more where ordnance are in range, so I don't think changing this would make a great difference. If not rolling a 4+, you need 1 die per strength otherwise this would be too complex. I understand your sentiments on using the armour value, though. This is sensible, unless we assume that spaceship engines are so massive that armour does not protect them.
I think we should keep the rubber stamp out of it. If Pthisis is lucky enough to have friends that support his revolutionary ideas, I think that is approval enough. Not everyone is so lucky.... Let's keep it civil, please. I like this forum because of its niceties and manners and we're not around to make people feel bad, especially about a game. Besides, it makes you look better if you're nice and use good grammar. :)
@horizon
I think that elegance will win people over. Good (= simple, = nice or whichever applies) rule, realistic effect. I have been pondering this, but I think that this is the essence of 'elegance'. Though not stated elegantly... :) I like the roll a die for SOs idea, he he he. But I think that some officers might notice that going on BFI when 90 cm (however far that is in real life) away is a little, er, silly. There would be disciplining....
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I prefer gunnery over ac a lot. And I think AC is too strong/dominant already in a lot of fleets.
I'll add some ideas later regarding AC. :) (new thread)
good call on boarding there TS. 2 Cobra's could damage an Emperor in this case.
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@TS
Thanks for such a thoughtful and polite post.
I still think these rules give everyone what they want, so I will continue to defend them.
I failed to mention this earlier, but in our boarding rules escorts make boarding attacks vs cap ships in the form of H&R attacks equal to their boarding value. A cobra boarding an Emperor would do 3 H&R attacks. However they defend against boarding normally and board other escorts normally.
It is possible for a cobra to damage an emperor but not to the degree you say or in the manner you describe.
Lets say an Emperor is boarding a Cobra. First they need to total their boarding values. The Cobra has 1 hit and 2 turrets, so it rolls 3 dice. Assuming the Emperor is undamaged it has 12 hits and 5 turrets, so 17 dice. Both players roll all their dice.
Lets say the Cobra player rolls 6,4,2. For demonstration, lets say the Emperor rolls all 4s.
Now we pair up dice from highest to lowest.
Cobra 6 - Emperor 4 = Emperor loses 1 damage
Cobra 4 - Emperor 4 = Tie, no damage to either ship
Cobra 2 - Emperor 4 = Cobra loses 1 damage.
The Emperor has 14 dice remaining, which are ignored. Only the 3 highest are used in this situation.
The Emperor takes a hit, the Cobra is destroyed. The Cobra player rolls for crit against the Emperor just like gunnery (ie, a crit on a roll of 6).
As you can see, the Emperor has a massive statistical advantage. More dice = more chance for higher rolls. The most a cobra could do damagewise is 3 hits ever, but vs an Emperor your odds of winning the lottery are better.
We have been playtesting for a while and even wuth the same fleets, no two games have been alike. Think of chess: no chance anywhere in the game, same rules, same board, same setup, same pieces, same side goes first. Every game has an identical setup and there is no chance involved to force players to account for. So by your reasoning, every game of chess played would be identical. There's no variation for players to account for, so each player will make the same moves every game?
Of course that doesn't happen. It doesn't even happen when people play against computers.
BFG has quite a bit of variation. Different fleets, different ships to choose, different battle sizes, different setups, different victory conditions and different terrain all mean that even if there was no chance in the game, every game would be different.
Mind you, our goal is to strip the game of chance where we see it being unnecessarily powerful to the point of overriding a player's strategic decisions. Ld tests for SO is one of these instances. In fact, the ONLY purpose of Ld tests for SO is to allow chance to override a player's strategy. Im surprised that a group of players who play strategic wargames are defending a system that does this.
Without trying to represent some level of realism, a wargame isn't a wargame any longer. I agree it has to be based on realism, and were only eliminating chance where it overrides the player's ability to win through strategy or where they can be robbed of victory due to bad luck. Making strategy dependent on chance is risky for a dame designer, especially in the name of realism. What % of orders can realistically be expected to be obeyed? Vaash says he averages Ld8, (better than I average). So 3 out of 10 orders aren't going to be obeyed? I have some experience with command and that's shameful, even for people with zero training and no discipline. And one order not being obeyed means the rest of the fleet is incapable of obeying orders as well. They will all stand around doing nothing because their commander didn't tell them what to do good enough.
Doing SO our way is a very good representation of how skilled a fleet commander is at coordinating his fleet and doesn't detract from a player's strategic abilities. Most SO only cover actions that require a few buttons to be pushed by a few people anyway, whereas the things we've left for Ld are tests of a captain's skill or leadership ability.
We get hit by lots of explosions here. Ships seem to be blowing up constantly. We get maybe 2-4 Plasma Drive overloads each game and a Warp Implosion every other game. The Plasmas aren't so bad to cruisers but it reaps havoc on escorts. Warp Implosions tear chunks out of fleets. Ive lost 2 games that I had in the bag in the past 6 months due to a WDI. Same has happened to an IN player in our group. An untouched squadron of escorts dissapears along with a crippled ship and a healthy ship gets crippled.. Thats a lot of VPs. Or one ship gets hit hard out of a squadron, has a,WDI and wipes out the 2 crippled ships in its squadron and cripples the healthy one. 4 Lunars down the drain at 1500 pts. Nothing due to strategy. Just bad luck. But you lose just the same.
What I neant with Plasma drive is a cruiser blowing up would do 4 attacks flat but the rolls are against armor.
Our AC rules nerf bombers without need for the strange turret suppression mechanic. With escorts, they can protect vs AC now by running b2b with a cap ship. What I'm interested in is a way for escorts to become valuable defending cap ships vs gunnery & torpedos. Our rules have gone some of the way in doing that already, but I have some ideas. Better shooting vs ordy would be one option.
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Jeez, what dice! All those plasma's!
9 out of 10 destroyed ships end up as a drifting hulk at our place.
Weird. :)
I lost once due a warp drive on an Ork vessel, killed a Defiant in one go (hit down), destroyed some escorts, crippled a Lunar. But I see that as the following: to greedy to get close. If I stayed further away I would not have been hit.
So it is tactics. You get close you get the chance to be in the blast. That's cool. And it is still two sixes. So a risk worth taking but if it happens: it can be so much fun! Hey, I had a big laugh after that game.
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That is really freaking weird.
At 1500 pts we have 12-14 ships on the table. A 9 or higher on 2d6 result in a dead ship exploding in some way. Thats 10/36, or just under 30% blowing up on the first roll, excluding burning hulks that blow up later or hulks blown up do to shooting. Depending on how long our game goes, 2-4 ships blowing up per game is statistically average. 9/10 is very low!
What's wrong with people's dice on this forum? In Horizon's games ships blow up 66% less than normal. Vaash rolls above average Ld consistently and passes SO tests with apparent consistency. Sigiroth hammers 6+ armor at long range with WBs like a champ for the win. No wonder you guys think Ld isn't a problem. Your dice completely ignore probability in your favor! ???
Here where I live, our dice aren't so kind! Here, where the laws of averages still apply, we can expect over the long run that our dice will even out to their statistical average. Ships blow up, we fail our SO tests all of the time and roll shit for Ld every couple of games. This is our inspiration for limiting the amount of chance over our ability to control our own fleets. Its been great playtesting this system. Nobody has been able to say that the dice screwed them. No more fleet wrecking explosions turn 3 that end the game. No more Dark Eldar fleets failing to reload ordnance for 4 straight turns despite Ld 10. We have been winning or losing on the merits of our strategy, not luck.
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lol, Yes I can fail SO tests as well. But you need to live up to it.
In one battle with my Tau vs Orks I could reload one ship and that was it. So I started losing the ordnance war vs the Ork at turn 3. Couple this with an Ork fleet which made the turn to head my way.
But due the right gunnery approach and staying out of boarding problems I won that game. My Wardens and Castellans having a key role at the moment gunnery started.
With BFG only rolling high (shooting) isn't good, you need to roll low as well (Ld).
A lot of times ships at the brink of destruction are disengaged.
And 30% is less then 70%. So there is a lot more chance on no explosion.
And usually I do no waste guns on enemy hulks, unless they are really close to the core of the opponents fleet.
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As burning hulk is just a postponement of drifting or blowing up, you need to exclude it from the calculation. Then you get 40% of ships exploding, not accounting for people shooting them repeatedly until they explode.
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Complexity & Chance vs Simplicity & Reliability
Complexity is often necessary in order to approach realism. While we want simplicity we want realism too. Best results are found when a rule is simple in itself but complex due to interaction with other rules, situations, races, etc. Some things are too complex, such as modelling a full set of movement rules that account for 3 dimensions and inertia. On the other hand, over simplifying in some areas is unwanted, such as only allowing a set number of special orders and then guaranteeing their success (why would a captain brace or not depending on how good his admiral is?).
Similarly chance is also used to simulate reality. When in a pitched battle things do not always go according to plan. What would normally be a matter of routine might become a much more difficult task when under fire (such as reloading). Also, variant leadership is meant to reflect that some ships will simply have a better crew than others, due to idiosyncrasies of the officers, their training methods and aptitudes and of the crew themselves.
Eliminating chance and complexity from the game may give a better indication of who 'deserved' the victory but still will result in reduced satisfaction due to poor realism. Complexity should really border on the intolerable. That is, the highest level of tolerable complexity should be used, assuming that it directly contributes to realism.
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Its the 'tracking torpedo' situation where a player throws bombers at a ship, turrets fire, and magically all the torpedos launched happen to be targeting that ship as well. This can be done through rules lawyering or slight of hand. It's cheating, to be sure, but it's a weak spot I've seen exploited by known cheaters repeatedly.
A person sends bombers in first and gets turrets to fire and then uses the single turn allowed by the rules for tracking torpedoes to target the same ship? That sounds like effectively using your fleet rather than cheating. You are allowed to move your ordnance in any order you wish and all ordnance attacks have to be resolved on contact. How is this even remotely cheating or rules lawyering?
This is fairly insulting. Obvious troll is obvious. I purchased the BFG starter set the week it was released and have been playing it whenever I've had a gaming group that was willing ever since. I still have a copy of the original rule book. You don't know anything about me. Perhaps I have more games under my belt than you and so I have seen the things that I'm concerned about quite a bit more. If you care about what I'm doing, stop flaming. If you don't, go away. So far the only argument that you've got left standing is that you like having your strategy dominated by luck because you believe it's more realistic. As I've said, you have other options. Play BFG:R instead when it comes out.
It was not a trolling comment. I've seen new players go on about aspects they didn't like after only a couple of game to later find out they had completely misread rules or hadn't played their fleet well because they didn't yet understand how it worked together. Your desire to gut so much of the game based on your concept that lucky rolls were a game breaking problem (a premise that you have yet to support) and your presentation of solutions that aren't well founded or contradictory to you position smacks of being a new player who is upset he lost and is trying to "fix" the game. Furthermore, you post one of the most overused memes as an attempt to discredit me while at the same time saying the same thing about me you found insulting about yourself? Nice.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt and pointed out why your proposal was flawed despite my belief you want a rubber stamp post. I've tried to explain aspects that I might not have communicated well and looked over your further explanations but you really don't want thoughtful input that disagrees with your proposal. If your group wants to play by those rules, fine, but don't say you are playing BFG because you are changing the core of the game and doing so in a bad way.
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ugg...this is what happens when you start a post the night before and then finish it up in the morning.... anyway, some relevant points.
Vaash says he averages Ld8, (better than I average). So 3 out of 10 orders aren't going to be obeyed? I have some experience with command and that's shameful, even for people with zero training and no discipline. And one order not being obeyed means the rest of the fleet is incapable of obeying orders as well. They will all stand around doing nothing because their commander didn't tell them what to do good enough.
To get ld8, you just need a 4+ that means at least 50% of my ships will end up with ld 8 or better. Now factor in my admiral is also LD8 which accounts for another ship that might have had a 6 or 7. I usually run an emperor which gives an automatic +1 as well. With 7 ships on the table, that gives me around 5 with at least LD8. I also make pretty extensive use of squadrons (2x Vengeance, 2x Lunar, 2x Dauntless) so the likelihood that I'll have low LD is slim. Factor in the +1 for enemies being on SO and you can see that most games I'll have effectively LD9 or better. Usually that means one or two re-rolls is plenty. Working from highest LD and most important SO down, there's rarely any issue getting ships to do what I want when I want it. There are times I've failed an order and it hurt, but it was never a game winning issue.
9 out of 10 destroyed ships end up as a drifting hulk at our place.
This is about what we average as well.
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Yaaish, I assume you mean 4 ships with ld8 or better. 50% of your 6 regular ships would get it (3 of them) and your Emperor which will get it; so 4 ships out of 7. Either way, squadrons will help you get the best out of your lower ld ships.
We get plasma and warp implosions on occasion and we love it. It makes the game more "cinematic," if that makes any sense.
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lol, Yes I can fail SO tests as well. But you need to live up to it.
Sometimes you can live up to it, sometimes you can't. In a fairly usual game of BFG you have to 'live up to it' constantly. But there are lots of times where the dice just completely screw you. Like an explosion gutting half your fleet at first contact with the enemy or one gutting your fleet just as you're about to win. Or your whole fleet falling into an obvious trap because you fail your first SO test and fail your re-roll.
You'll still have critical hits, gunnery and all the Ld test stuff to 'live up to'. It's just your overall strategy that won't be completely wrecked by a moderately unlucky dice roll.
@Sigiroth
Seems like you and I agree on the basic principle, but differ greatly on where to draw the line. You and I also disagree with what 'realism' is regarding naval tactics.
Realism doesnt equal random chance. Random chance is an abstract used to represent any combination of factors that can make an outcome unpredictable. Random chance should be included where it's necessary to represent relatively unreliable circumstances. I think it's reasonable to use random chance for gunnery, bomber attacks, critical hits and repairing critical hits, navigating asteroid fields or attempting to disengage. Turning a hard left or firing retros isn't something that there is a question whether or not they will be obeyed. If a captain on a warship of any era issued an order to CTNH, the ship comes to a new heading. If they order the ship to Full Stop, the ship comes to a full stop. There isn't a 30 - 40% chance that the crew will just ignore their captain! Using Ld tests for these type of situations is not realism. It's an element of chance where there is none in real life.
In any wargame, I draw the line on 'realism' where it becomes a larger factor in the game than the player's strategy. SO gives a player strategic options. The Ld tests prevents those strategic option from being used. The only purpose Ld tests serve for SO is to prevent a player from being able to execute their strategy.
Eliminating chance and complexity from the game may give a better indication of who 'deserved' the victory but still will result in reduced satisfaction due to poor realism.
We have been experiencing reduced satisfaction due to the fact that we win or lose games by the luck of the dice, not on our strategy.
On the other hand, over simplifying in some areas is unwanted, such as only allowing a set number of special orders and then guaranteeing their success (why would a captain brace or not depending on how good his admiral is?).
My gaming group doesn't see this as over simplifying, obvioiusly. We see Ld tests for SO being an unnecessary overcomplication and an unrealistic representation that interferes with gameplay.
Assuming that a captain will be obeyed on his own ship by his own helmsman or gunnery crew, the limited number of SO is a realistic representation of the fleet commander's skill. The fleet commander is in charge of issuing orders to the fleet and coordinating battle, while a separate captain commands the vessel he comes to battle on. I've got some command experience in wargames where I've commanded real people in simulated combat. One of the big challenges is not becoming myopic despite the fact that there are threats to your survival in the vicinity. If you get scared, you lose focus and start commanding only our retinue while ignoring the other elements of the battle. A less experienced/skilled commander can't keep track of the whole force reliably, while a more experienced commander can coordinate his forces regardless of his personal situation. The number of orders a fleet officer brings to the battle represent their ability to coordinate the fleet in the midst of battle.
Ld in the original system was a complex of the ability of the fleet commander, the captain and the crew. I'm changing this to a check vs the difficulty of coordinating the actions of large numbers of people or performing an action with a ship of a particular size. I think it's a better representation. The old one was nonsensical.
Basically we differ in two respects. I'm assuming that a helmsman will obey a captain's order without question while you believe that 3 in ten times the helmsman will ignore him. Also, you have more fun if the game represents your concept of a realistic naval battle. You want BFG to be a 40k naval warfare simulator. Although I also disagree with your understanding of what a real naval battle is like, we would favor a game where players win on their strategy rather than chance and are willing to sacrifice some realism to allow for strategy not to be overridden by random chance. Not that we think we are sacrificing realism.
So, realism aside, the SO system we came up with is a big departure from the original rules, but it's been functioning quite well as a game mechanic. I think one think that people are failing to notice is that SO are now a resource to be used sparingly and that can be lost due to poor planning. We aren't just allowing every ship to go on SO whenever they want. You, as a player, have to make difficult strategic choice and prioritize placing squadrons on SO and reserving dice to potentially BFI. The strategic depth of assigning SOs was increased tenfold!
How's BFG:R coming? I haven't seen anything posted for a long time and haven't heard anything from Plaxor. We playtested the rules changes a bit just to give them a chance, but that lead to us coming up with this rule set. I know that you and Admiral and Horizon would never think our rule changes are good based on the fact that you guys have a very different paradigm when it comes to games design than we do, but I'm interested in knowing how you guys have found your own rules in play testing.
@Vaaish
By 'tracking torpedo' cheat, I mean that players attack a ship with bombers and then bog standard torpedos that can't track magically turn and target that ship. This happens as part of a torpedo shotgun. Tracking torpedos don't get a turn when they are fired. It's a slight of hand trick, kind of like pushing troops forward in 40k while placing them in a disembark move. Or it's a player rules lawyering.
It was not a trolling comment.
Well, now you know that you were wrong. I'm not a new player and this isn't a reaction to losing games.
I've asked for constructive criticism. You've told me to scrap the whole project because you don't agree with my fundamental assertions. You've refused to consider how the rules chances I've proposed will play out and you've refused to test them to see how they work. I don't really see where you expect this to go? You refuse to consider my changes based on the fact you don't think anything needs to be changed. Noted. Vaash says 'no'.
Now, if you want to talk about what these changes actually do to the game, that would be awesome. You posted some issues with the function of the rules. I rebutted. You dropped the arguments. Do you agree with me now on the game play for everything but the SO rules?
What I'm looking for is something like "you're making bombers too powerful", or "your SO rules break the game by doing this...". Regardless of whether you agree with my fundamental assertions about the original BFG rules, this rule set may be a better game just on the sake of mechanics. You'll never prove to me that our rule set is bad by saying you like the old rules or don't think there was a problem to begin with. You'll only be able to prove these rules shouldn't be used by showing me how they don't work.
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By 'tracking torpedo' cheat, I mean that players attack a ship with bombers and then bog standard torpedos that can't track magically turn and target that ship. This happens as part of a torpedo shotgun. Tracking torpedos don't get a turn when they are fired. It's a slight of hand trick, kind of like pushing troops forward in 40k while placing them in a disembark move. Or it's a player rules lawyering.
If the torpedoes are already on the way and magically angle to hit a target that's not along their flight line, then yes, that is cheating and you should call the player on it. If torpedoes have just been placed on the base to note they have been launched as per the rules it's not cheating or rule lawyering to move them toward a better target so long as those torpedoes stay within their firing arc and move in a straight line in the ordnance phase. I twas ruled a while back that placing the marker on the base in the shooting phase was just a placeholder to note that the ordnance had been fired. It doesn't become active until the ordnance phase.
I've asked for constructive criticism. You've told me to scrap the whole project because you don't agree with my fundamental assertions. You've refused to consider how the rules chances I've proposed will play out and you've refused to test them to see how they work.p/quote]
I gave you that in my first post. Skeptical, yes, but valid critical analysis of your ideas. I told you to scrap the rules because they are ill conceived and don't enhance the tactical aspects of the game. I gave you alternatives with the H&R rolls because it was the only salvageable idea there.
You don't always have to playtest an idea to prove it's bad. Stuff like your LD table or the SO changes change the core of the game which in turn affect the balance by shifting the value of ships and keeping the current point cost. Other parts like the boarding rules are plain awkward and time consuming to play using. It will take you far longer to roll a bucket of dice to compare than to roll one dice and compare especially since you're still using the same boarding modifier table all you've done is unnecessarily increased the dice rolled. Adding more dice rolling doesn't focus the game on tactics and strategy, it focuses it on rolling dice.
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@Phthisis
At length (originally it was going to be 'Just quickly' but I devolved into a complete response...), I suggest that most of the posters in this thread have a different view of what special orders represent. Of course it is ludicrous (to me, at least) that a ship's crew will fail to come to a new heading or fire their guns upon order of the captain (unless there is some psychology at play: perhaps an idea for BFG Advanced...). However, the standard rules represent this already. Your ship actually does change heading when you turn it (stay with me: not trying to be insulting, just illustrate clearly) in normal movement. Similarly, your ship actually does target and 'lock on' with its weapon systems when firing normally (otherwise your massively powerful weapons would be useless because they would be firing only in the general direction of an enemy. You wouldn't hit much considering the distances in BFG... :)).
We also must remember that BFG is not a sea naval simulation but a space naval simulation in the ridiculously advanced and different far future. We assume that it is genuinely hard for a ship to take a really hard left (i.e. Come to a New Heading SOs, two turns to the left) in BFG, so hard that it requires special 'heroism' from the crew. Similarly, 'Lock On' SOs could probably be renamed to 'All Power to Weapons' SOs without losing background credibility. I take the view that 'Lock On' isn't simple targetting but a rerouting of all power to main weapons systems at the loss of power for the rest of the ship. Especially on an ancient and poorly understood space city (as BFG ships would appear to us), this is assumed to be a difficult thing to do. Burning Retros and All Ahead Full SOs are a bit different since they involve assumptions about movement that might not be so realistic (e.g. there is no momentum in space...) but similar cases can be made for these actions being 'above and beyond the (usual) call of duty'. The random aspect represents the chance that a captain will not be fast enough or competent enough to enact the order within an appropriate timeframe (and the resulting communication chaos is assumed to make further fleet coordination of orders impossible, so the Admiral says "Don't do anything out of the ordinary, AT ALL, you incompetent wretches!").
I am curious about your dismissal of the similarities between navigational SOs and navigation through treacherous space, too. They both rely upon the leadership of the ship in question representing the manoeuvring capabilities of the crew, the only difference being that one can use a re-roll and the other can't. I suggest that they might be more similar in difficulty than not.
Despite all of this, I feel your SO system does have a certain 'elegance'. I would like to find a way to combine it with the exisiting SO rules, so that the command test and 'chain of command' (which I feel are integral to the original vision of BFG and its individual challenges when compared with other, similarly themed games) can be incorporated too. That way, two rules alternatives can be offered, allowing players to see both and choose.
Although I now understand your system for boarding (whew! I was worried by the Cobras of death!) I prefer the current system which simulates a similar kind of thing but doesn't require the large number of dice. I think that if a ship overwhelms the enemy by such a degree that the enemy has no chance to score damage it is not such a bad thing. Your 'Risk-esque' system has its merits though, because a heroic, lowly Cobra destroyer can still damage the mightiest ships of the enemy. It also means that the results of boarding actions between two similar ships are much less certain (a Lunar can actually challenge a Chaos cruiser now!). If only boarding actions happened more often! I did have an idea of there being a certain range where close actions happened (e.g. 10 cm) and that once performing close actions ('grappling') you could close in to a boarding action.
To clarify my earlier statements regarding the similarites of BFG to Chess, I merely wished to point out that Warhammer table-top game types fundamentally depend on various random actions and that it can be limiting if the wrong random actions are removed. I doubt you would come across problems in your games for a while (especially with large fleets so that you can get a different fleet for each game) but from my experience with 40K the games, while not identical, become very similar. My example was to suggest that (although there will be important differences from shooting) the Eldar versus Chaos game will tend towards the same general action, with the gun damage averaging out to be the same over the long run. That is, unless the players change their plans! But sometimes, certain fleets require certain strategies to be viably competetive with other fleets. This has been said of the Move-Shoot-Move Eldar rules originally presented with BFG. While not every game was the same, most games (according to the guys who invented MMS rules) ended up being the same due to the constraints of survival tactics. So, to sum up (:)), my concern is that your group may experience some of this 'sameness' after some time playing with the modified rules. You would then have a good reason to make new rules though, which is always fun! But tricky to do right. The right new rules are always difficult to get, so well done on your group's analysis.
About Engine Explosions: I do think that it is reasonable that such large ships have titanic explosions regarding their destruction: afterall, as hulks the ship skeleton survives pretty much intact except for criticals, allowing their 'rehabilitation'. Out of curiousity (again, not trying to be offensive) have you tried specific strategies to limit drive explosion damage (e.g. not putting ships so close together)? I would be interested in seeing what effect that has on your fleets' performances overall. I agree that it should be against armour, though (except maybe Warp Implosion, as this is a very armour-ripping type of thing and it only occurs 1 in 36 times). Also, I presume you have been playing that you are only in range of the explosion if your ship's stem is in range? Of course, this would make a great difference....
About your escort roles ideas: I would rather escorts become more valuable against AC (and perhaps torpedoes, you can see the Escorts in BFG thread for more) which, to me, is more sensible in terms of the background and theme. I envisage that capital ships are more vulnerable to AC because of their size, rather than the other way around. But I would like to discuss this! Have you seen horizon's ideas?
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@Phthisis
Sorry, I had a mental blank about this before posting! About your fixed leadership ideas, I think that they are very sensible but I think that they would work better for a large fleets version of BFG (a bit like War of the Ring (WoTR) compared with Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game (LoTR:SBG) or WH40K compared with Epic). For me, at least with moderately to small sized games, a lot of the fun in BFG is having characterful ships and escort squadrons having a major influence in a battle themselves. For example:
'The Sareveth has a crack crew of Ld 9, having fought in numerous campaigns over the Segmentum. In their last fleet engagement, they used their experties with lances and torpedo strikes to cripple the enemy battleship, Monstrous (renowned for destroying escort squadrons with long range lances), allowing the cruisers Isto and Porsorous to hulk the battleship before it could disengage. The Sacraficial, however, with its inexperienced crew (Ld 6), was plagued by bad luck and poor commands and was crippled by a squadron of Cobras which had no torpedoes remaining. Fortunately, it was saved by the heroic actions of the Vistor Sword Frigate squadron, despite their lack of experience in large fleet engagements (Ld 6 Sword squadron).'
For me, anyway, the individual leaderships of ships adds a great deal to the playing of the game at the usual points level (1,500ish and lower, maybe higher depending) . Now that I think of it, I think it would be cool to design a BFG for very large scale battles, where squadrons of ships are the key players...
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Basically we differ in two respects. I'm assuming that a helmsman will obey a captain's order without question while you believe that 3 in ten times the helmsman will ignore him.
A Helmsman obeying a captain? Why do you think the IN has trigger happy Commissars running around on ships? A crew underway for several months in deep space isn't a happy Star Trek Bunch in the 40k universe.
I think a good read to get a view on 40k naval live would be the Rogue Trader RPG book and the supplement Koronus Expanse.
The variant Ld's is really a good thing to the game. Realistic too.
BFG is a space opera game by the way. Big ships, big explosions. Like Star Wars. ;)
MMS was tested through theory first and then through playing games. It worked out in the end.
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@ Vaaish
If the torpedoes are already on the way and magically angle to hit a target that's not along their flight line, then yes, that is cheating and you should call the player on it. If torpedoes have just been placed on the base to note they have been launched as per the rules it's not cheating or rule lawyering to move them toward a better target so long as those torpedoes stay within their firing arc and move in a straight line in the ordnance phase. I twas ruled a while back that placing the marker on the base in the shooting phase was just a placeholder to note that the ordnance had been fired. It doesn't become active until the ordnance phase.
Where was this done? I hope it isn't true because it's a massive boost to the power and strategic importance of ordnance. Now a force using combined ordnance can select targets, brace them and move on, or make them shoot turrets with a single bomber squadron and swamp them with torpedoes.
Incidentally, have you run numbers for what firing turrets at every ordnance contact would do to the game? Three Dictators hitting a 5+ armor shipwith everything they had would average only one less point of damage done if turrets could shoot at all 3 bomber waves and all 3 torpedo salvos. So, how effective is this tactic really (assuming you can't aim your torpedoes AFTER you shoot them)? I definitely don't see this as a game breaking nerf. Your Tau fleet should do just fine.
I gave you that in my first post. Skeptical, yes, but valid critical analysis of your ideas. I told you to scrap the rules because they are ill conceived and don't enhance the tactical aspects of the game. I gave you alternatives with the H&R rolls because it was the only salvageable idea there.
I hope you're not offended, but I'm not going to go to my gaming group and tell them that the project is going into the round-file because Vaash doesn't like it. I'm not scrapping it based on your advice.
Your first post had some skeptical analysis. But I've addressed it. The LD table isn't the complex monstrosity you claimed it had to be. My SO system isn't the same as torching SO all together. You haven't swayed me that Ld tests are a good representation of the chain of command. Your H&R idea is good and I've adopted it. Your criticism of our boarding rules wasn't borne out by play testing.
I don't want to argue about our argument any more. Let's talk about the proposed rule set.
@Thinking Stone
You're a breath of fresh air! I'm not even sure I want to get you to agree with me because I've never been disagreed with so politely on this forum! No need to apologize. The more in-depth you go, the better.
I am curious about your dismissal of the similarities between navigational SOs and navigation through treacherous space, too. They both rely upon the leadership of the ship in question representing the manoeuvring capabilities of the crew, the only difference being that one can use a re-roll and the other can't. I suggest that they might be more similar in difficulty than not.
Awesome question. I see the orders as 3 seperate categories.
The first category are common orders. These are things like turn left, turn right, shoot at the closest enemy ship, put out that fire... All of the things that your ships do in BFG automatically.
The second category are difficult orders. These are situations that test the discipline and coordination of the crew as a whole like steering the ship into a ramming trajectory, piloting a path through an asteroid field, bring an at ease crew to battle readiness, ignoring immediate threats in order to target a specific ship or one in the distance, or shutting down systems so that the ship can drift off unnoticed. The bigger the ship, the larger the crew, the harder to pull it off. Leadership tests are good representations of the crew's ability to pull together and successfully perform a task.
The third category are emergency orders or Special Orders. These are orders given by the fleet commander to coordinate the fleet. They are exaggerations of things the crew is trained to do and they are trained to perform them with the same precision. Every Special Order is an exaggeration of something the ship can do without a Ld test. However, carrying out these orders have drawbacks to the fighting capability of the ship, and if every captain were authorized to use them at will it would destroy the order of battle and make coordinating a fleet impossible. Therefore, captains and crews are capable of performing them anytime they are called upon to do so, but will not do so unless they are ordered to.
Captains issue orders and difficult orders. Fleet commanders issue Special Orders in order to coordinate fleet-wide strategy.
The difference between my paradigm and that of those who disagree with me is that they believe that turning left is effortless but turning *more* left requires heroic effort, while I think that the special order is required because they normally refrain from performing it because it's unnecessary and has drawbacks. It's just like a modern naval vessel. A battleship can pull off a 90* turn with the same ease it does a 45* turn, but why push it when it's not necessary? If they need to turn fast they do so to the detriment of their shooting ability, but nobody's getting any medals for 'heroically' turning a hard left. It's expected that the crew can do it whenever it's required.
Although I now understand your system for boarding (whew! I was worried by the Cobras of death!) I prefer the current system which simulates a similar kind of thing but doesn't require the large number of dice.
Here's an example from the current boarding system:
A single Iconoclast destroyer wants to board an Emperor BB with full health. The Emperor had RO during his opponent's previous turn. The Iconoclast's player shoots a couple of lances off Murders at the Emperor and puts a single blast marker in contact with it by knocking down a shield.
The Iconoclast's boarding value, since it's attacking, is only 1. The Emperor's boarding value is 12 hits + 5 turrets, so 17.
So, let's figure out the modifiers. The Emperor is 4 or more times the boarding value of the Iconoclast, so it gets +4.
The Iconoclast is a Chaos vessel, so it gets +1. The Emperor had RO during it's turn, so the Iconoclast gets another +1. Also, the Emperor has a single blast marker in contact due to losing a shield to lance fire, so the Iconoclast gets another +1.
The Emperor gets +4, the lone Iconoclast gets +3. Then they roll dice. The Emperor rolls a 1, the Iconoclast rolls a 6. The Iconoclast scores a 9 and beats the Emperor's 5. The lone Iconoclast escort inflicts 4 points of damage on the Emperor battleship. As the Iconoclast 'stormed' the Emperor on the Result Table, the Emperor takes a critical hit on a 2+ while the Iconoclast only gets one on a 6+.
The Iconoclast player COULD board with the whole squadron, but the dice roll is exactly the same unless there are 6 Iconoclasts boarding simultaneously. And, if only 1 escort is in b2b with the Emperor and the Emperor scores multiple hits against the lone Iconoclast, only the one Iconoclast is lost.
About Engine Explosions: I do think that it is reasonable that such large ships have titanic explosions regarding their destruction: afterall, as hulks the ship skeleton survives pretty much intact except for criticals, allowing their 'rehabilitation'. Out of curiousity (again, not trying to be offensive) have you tried specific strategies to limit drive explosion damage (e.g. not putting ships so close together)? I would be interested in seeing what effect that has on your fleets' performances overall. I agree that it should be against armour, though (except maybe Warp Implosion, as this is a very armour-ripping type of thing and it only occurs 1 in 36 times). Also, I presume you have been playing that you are only in range of the explosion if your ship's stem is in range? Of course, this would make a great difference....
We have been playing it right. I agree with the titanic explosions too. It's cool and cinematic and a ship with a huge fusion reactor can potentially die a violent death. I question the Warp Drive Implosion fluff wise because they are so difficult to activate normally (requiring a navigator to coax the transition) but they can go off automatically when damaged? Plus the amount of damage that can be done by a WDI is very high.
We measure blast radius from stem to stem. 3d6 blast radius averages 10-11cm. Maximum squadron distance is 15cm. Generally if you're squadroning cap ships you can't place them exactly 15cm apart because you can lose coherency through maneuvering or going on SO. If you're squadroning, it's not hard for a squadron mate to be in the blast radius.
Lots of fleets have to close to be effective. Burning or drifting hulks move in a straight line an average of 14cm per turn. That's not too much slower than the living ships are moving. It's pretty common for ships that die on the way in to drift into an engagement. One ship blows up and hits a hulk, then the hulk blows up as well. We had a chain explosion of 4 ships in one game, 2 of which were crippled cruisers that were finished off by the previous explosion.
Players on this forum tend to avoid squadroning. They also turn their broadsides at one another despite the fact that their ships are a lot deadlier head-on. I'm not surprised they don't have the same experience, because they play in what we consider to be a very strange way.
For me, at least with moderately to small sized games, a lot of the fun in BFG is having characterful ships and escort squadrons having a major influence in a battle themselves. For example:
'The Sareveth has a crack crew of Ld 9, having fought in numerous campaigns over the Segmentum. In their last fleet engagement, they used their experties with lances and torpedo strikes to cripple the enemy battleship, Monstrous (renowned for destroying escort squadrons with long range lances), allowing the cruisers Isto and Porsorous to hulk the battleship before it could disengage. The Sacraficial, however, with its inexperienced crew (Ld 6), was plagued by bad luck and poor commands and was crippled by a squadron of Cobras which had no torpedoes remaining. Fortunately, it was saved by the heroic actions of the Vistor Sword Frigate squadron, despite their lack of experience in large fleet engagements (Ld 6 Sword squadron).'
I love campaign play for that very reason. Each ship and it's crew has a different story.
But in one-off games you roll a new crew for every ship every game. So your Sareveth has a crack crew in campaign, but if you roll a 1 for it at the beginning of a one-off game, it's crewed by a bunch of slack jawed troglodytes who don't know stem from stern.
I don't see any reason why ships shouldn't have their Ld raised or lowered by the events in a campaign as a campaign naturally has a lot more roleplay involved. But in one-off games, I don't see a reason for randomly generated leadership at any level as there's really no backstory.
@Horizon
A Helmsman obeying a captain? Why do you think the IN has trigger happy Commissars running around on ships? A crew underway for several months in deep space isn't a happy Star Trek Bunch in the 40k universe.
Lol! I can just see the Helmsmen turning to the captain and the officer of the watch and saying "I don't want to turn hard left because I'm unhappy with the conditions on this vessel."
The conditions you describe are an inspiration for mutiny. Considering their own skins are on the line in more ways than one, I'm sure that in a combat situation a Helmsman will temporarily forget the fact that he doesn't like the food and do what he's told. Or he'll get a bolt in the head and his replacement will take the helm.
MMS was tested through theory first and then through playing games. It worked out in the end.
So I take it that there wasn't immediate consensus in the theory stage and you playtested extensively? This project is following the same path.
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Yah, well, IN ships are pretty dangerous places, let alone Ork ships. ;)
Helmsmen can also collapse under the pressure. The noise on ship, communications going static, sending a message from bridge to machine room can be a ... kilometre long thing... with lots of wires to be melted in the heat of combat.
One off games: different Ld: see it as situation in where your fleet suddenly needs to be amassed.
On MMS,
theory was done with Sigoroth and me (Sig had the concept, iirc I only added the Craftworld fleet in the first draft). Took a lot of mails going through it all. Along it all testing happened.
Ray Bell chipped in at one point (why?... :) he 'worked' for WR back then). Some more back and forth.
Was released in Warp Rift 10.
Most common Feedback: to complicated, Eldar overpowered.
From then on we (at one point only me) streamlined it, toned some things (eg turn rate) and 1.9 is kind of very accepted.
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Your first post had some skeptical analysis. But I've addressed it. The LD table isn't the complex monstrosity you claimed it had to be. My SO system isn't the same as torching SO all together. You haven't swayed me that Ld tests are a good representation of the chain of command. Your H&R idea is good and I've adopted it. Your criticism of our boarding rules wasn't borne out by play testing.
No, you haven't. You basically said it's fine as is; that's answering but it isn't addressing the concerns. In the case of boarding, I do not see how you can say your system is more efficient when you are rolling a bucket of dice vs one dice. There is far more room for mistakes and cheating when you roll 20 dice than when you roll two. Making a person roll more dice isn't good design. It's unnecessary complexity in this case which is contrary to your initial premise that the game needs simplified.
Where was this done? I hope it isn't true because it's a massive boost to the power and strategic importance of ordnance. Now a force using combined ordnance can select targets, brace them and move on, or make them shoot turrets with a single bomber squadron and swamp them with torpedoes.
Now who's jumping onto the slippery slope. Bracing is still the choice of the owning player and I highly doubt anyone worth his salt would brace a ship because of a single squadron especially if he know his opponent has both bombers and torpedoes. Anyway, I'm surprised you have issue with giving an attacker the ability to select targets because he maneuvered his ships into an ideal position. Wouldn't that be rewarding his ability to think ahead and execute his strategy rather than just luck?
Anyway, I believe it's in the 2010 FAQ and there might be a thread floating around here on it as well.
Incidentally, have you run numbers for what firing turrets at every ordnance contact would do to the game? Three Dictators hitting a 5+ armor shipwith everything they had would average only one less point of damage done if turrets could shoot at all 3 bomber waves and all 3 torpedo salvos. So, how effective is this tactic really (assuming you can't aim your torpedoes AFTER you shoot them)? I definitely don't see this as a game breaking nerf. Your Tau fleet should do just fine.
Don't patronize me. It greatly depends on if you squadron. Three separate dictators can't send in a wave 12 bombers or 18 torpedoes which means turrets get to fire at each wave of 4 bombers and each salvo of 6 torpedoes. if they get to fire at everything a ship with two turrets gets to roll 12 dice total but if they have to choose you are only getting 6 rolls. If they are squadroned it's a lot less dramatic. Again more turrets or fewer turrets will change the result, but you are removing a valid tactic that rewards skillful playing by thinking ahead and positioning ships to gain an advantage. You are making the game less complex tactically which is a bad thing.
I don't want to argue about our argument any more. Let's talk about the proposed rule set.
Fine, but until changes are more useful I won't be play testing any of these rules.
On LD. If you want to easily make SO less likely to fail double the number of rerolls an admiral gets or reduce the cost of the extra ones he can buy. Second, if you don't like random LD, go with a system like the campaigns. Everything having the same LD is boring. You're trying to make all the game pieces act like chess. Don't do that. There are quite a few more variables that determine how well a ship performs beyond just the hull. This is 40k, you can't assume that an IN cruiser works anywhere near the way our modern navies do.
Boarding I'll never agree to try in it's current state. Too awkward and too much dice rolling for what it is. Rework the modifiers and results tables.
Criticals is just plain unnecessary. The thing has at most an 18cm range. Unless your ships are going from full health to explosion in one turn of firing, you should have time to note a ship that is about dead and disengage or at the very least get 19 cm away from it. The results you've mentioned seem more a problem with your positioning than with the game rules. This should be something you can easily avoid and if you aren't noticing then it's on you alone when a battleship goes up and cripples half your fleet. You play risky and sometimes it bites you.
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Players on this forum tend to avoid squadroning. They also turn their broadsides at one another despite the fact that their ships are a lot deadlier head-on. I'm not surprised they don't have the same experience, because they play in what we consider to be a very strange way
Despite which fact?
I'd say this depends on the fleet and ship. But if i should make a general statement, than there are a lot more ship that have the most firepower at a broadside than on the front (eldar and tau being the exception) and showing your broadsides reduces incoming fire a good bit. ...
oh, and btw.: it is one thing when you and your group don't like a specific rule and change it in a way ou want - no problem, do what you like.
But it is another point if you accuse players of being unable to play, just because they able to use rules the as they are .... ::) x_0
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@Vaash
I'm not partonizing you. I just asked if you did the math.
A 3 Dictator shotgun is pretty sizable amount of incoming ordnance. 3 salvoes of 6 torpedos and 3 waves of 4 bombers assuming there's no cap. Its enough to overwhelm and kill a ship in one turn.
If you can only fire turrets at one type of ordnance, then its an obvious choice. You shoot the bombers.
2 turrets average 1 bomber ahot down per wave. Thats' 3 waves of 3, averaging 13.5 attacks. Then 18 torpedos hit. That's an average of 10.5 damage done. If the turrets shoot at the torpedos too, then thats an average of 28.5 attacks and 9.5 hits.
The effect of the turret fire at all incoming ordnance is negligable. The tactical choice for the defenderwas an obvious one when they had to choose. The tactic for the attacker was effective because of the volume of fire, not because of the combination of ordnance types. Really, its just a waste of time. It adds a choice, but its an obvious one that has little to no effect on the game, and for such little reward for the attacker, why worry about combined ordy attacks anyway? The REAL decisions in a shotgun situation are whether to brace or not and whether to send bombers after a ship that has already braced or pick a new target that hasn't braced yet.
Anybody can shotgun. Its really easy to pull off. What else are you going to do with your Dictators? Broadside?
I can't find the rules you mentioned in the 2010 faq. In fact I believe it says the opposite.
We had considered boosting Ld across the board or doing more rerolls to decrease the chance of failure. Those option have their own drawbacks, and are considerably worse than what we came up with now. We had 2 issues with those systems. First, there was still a chance that a needed SO would fail and lose you the game due to bad luck. Second, there was no limit to the number of SOs that could be issued. That could get rediculous pretty quickly. Our system replaces chance with a strategic decision both in fleet design and in game, and it keeps the number of orders per turn to a reasonable level. And it adds a tactical element in attacking/defending leadership bases (talk about adding depth!)
Its too bad youre flat rejecting the new boarding rules at face. I timed myself performing a boarding action using both methods. It took me 48 seconds to do the original method and 45 to do our new one. Theyre about the same. But our system isn't as insane as the existing ones. Its a lot more REALISTIC, something everyone his concerned with here. See the above Iconoclast vs Emperor scenario. That would never happen in our system.
The objection to rolling a bunch of dice is noted. I don't mind it so much. If youre playing BFG, rolling dice just comes with the territory. I used to run with a squadron of 3 Carnages and when I'd get close at broadsides I'd have to roll 24 dice. And then if I had locked on I'd have to reroll all the ones that missed, so average 40 rolls all together. In the above example of the torpedo shotgun, 48 dice would be rolled. What's your threshold for 'too many dice'?
I'll bite that its not really less complicated. But it is balanced, more predictable and has none of the rediculousness of the old system.
Youre back to criticizing playstyle again? I assure you its not playstyle. Your reports are way below average for ship explosions and failed SO tests.
@Eldsnesh
Accusing us of not knowing how to play is what Vaash just did. Its been a constant theme here. I don't agree with everything someone says, and I'm not in the clique, so therefore I'm new and don't know what I'm talking about or I'm stupid.
For example, IN cruisers have a greater average damage output with torpedos than with broadsides and their 6+ prow armor is as good protection as an abeam facing. And yet a lot of IN players on these forums lose vs Chaos because they fire torpedos at long range and then turn broadsides to the Chaos fleet. So they think Chaos is OP. But if they tried bullying the Chaos fleet with prow armor and torpedos they'd have a lot better success. But instead they want the Chaos fleet nerfed so that IN is better at everything. But will anybody even consider it?
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See the above Iconoclast vs Emperor scenario. That would never happen in our system.
iirc you cannot board with a lower boarding value. The Emperor could board the Iconoclast, yes (kinda waste). It has so many plusses, and yes a heroic Iconoclast party could damage an Emperor. :)
Youre back to criticizing playstyle again? I assure you its not playstyle. Your reports are way below average for ship explosions and failed SO tests.
So the averages are not what you expect so you dismiss the opinion?
Its been a constant theme here. I don't agree with everything someone says, and I'm not in the clique, so therefore I'm new and don't know what I'm talking about or I'm stupid.
This utter nonsense has to stop right now. In a weird kind of way you are falling into a victim role constantly. Perhaps it is a certain kind of wording you use in your posts but conversations with you always seem to go fast on an edge (from what I've seen on the forum).
There is no clique. Merely players who spend way to many years on all BFG forums through the years. (admiral d'artagnan, sigoroth being the most 'elderly'). We don't agree along as well. I recall the debates on the exterminatus weapon, more heated then what we seen these days. The 'clique' as you say doesn't agree on how BFG should look like, and neither would other players, new or old worldwide.
Yes, a local group can agee on all rules and ideas and that is just pretty cool. But getting an own idea pushed worldwide? Especially regarding core rules? Almost guaranteed failure.
MMS worked, because it was needed, a must. :)
For example, IN cruisers have a greater average damage output with torpedos than with broadsides and their 6+ prow armor is as good protection as an abeam facing. And yet a lot of IN players on these forums lose vs Chaos because they fire torpedos at long range and then turn broadsides to the Chaos fleet. So they think Chaos is OP. But if they tried bullying the Chaos fleet with prow armor and torpedos they'd have a lot better success. But instead they want the Chaos fleet nerfed so that IN is better at everything. But will anybody even consider it?
Nobody plays with 3 Dictators. Since IN can do better for the overall game and because it is non-fluffy to have 3 Dictators in one fleet. I spend several pm's with you regarding IN shotguns. I gave various ideas, examples on how to avoid it, fight it etc..
Stop playing cruiser clash also. No really, start playing scenarios (fleet engagement etc), bye bye formations. Think tactics a new.
I also think you should not leave out other races.
The Devestation (that's what you refer to) needs a lowering because it is too good internally in the Chaos fleet and secondly compared to other ships from other fleets.
And you can ignore BFG:R, no one is forcing you. You can ignore FAQ2010 (I do parts of it).
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Anybody can shotgun. Its really easy to pull off. What else are you going to do with your Dictators? Broadside?
if it's that easy to pull off, then it should be obvious it's coming and easy to prepare for. If they are in a squadron, it's s18 batteries... I wouldn't discount a broadside with that. It's also highly unlikely you will have much else in the way of AC if you take three dictators. That means you'll be needing some of those counters to block enemy torpedoes or AC. Getting all three to shotgun the same target without opening your own fleet up to retaliation is a bit more difficult than AAF and fire.
We had considered boosting Ld across the board or doing more rerolls to decrease the chance of failure. Those option have their own drawbacks, and are considerably worse than what we came up with now. We had 2 issues with those systems. First, there was still a chance that a needed SO would fail and lose you the game due to bad luck. Second, there was no limit to the number of SOs that could be issued. That could get rediculous pretty quickly.
You want to make a system where you can't fail your SO checks but you feel that no limit to SO is ridiculous? Why? It's not like SO are the end all of BFG. Each one is only useful at a particular point and most have drawbacks to using them. Most half your firepower in return for better turning, ignoring movement, or faster movement. YOu are talking about a severly reduced chance to fail and if you really think SO are overpowered then just tack a limit on how many you can do each turn outside of bracing.
Your system does nothing to add strategic or tactical depth to the game, in fact it does quite the opposite. So please get off your high horse about how awesome your system is and start looking at it a bit more objectively.
Youre back to criticizing playstyle again? I assure you its not playstyle. Your reports are way below average for ship explosions and failed SO tests.
If the shoe fits... It's really the only conclusion one can draw from your post. The max range the catastrophic warp event has is 18cm. If your fleets are getting gutted because of this and the plasma drive you are seriously packing your fleet too close together. There isn't anything else that can be said especially if you are insisting that your strategy is sound when it rather obviously didn't pan out from what you say.
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@Horizon
I haven't been able to find a rule disallowing a ship with a lower boarding value from initiating a boarding action vs a ship with a higher boarding value. Could you cite this for me?
I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing that people get hostile really quickly with me. I don't think that it's because of how I write or my word choices. First of all, I don't initiate the hostilities. Second, I'm a regular on several forums and have never had this happen anywhere else. Third, people who are in the process of being overtly hostile to me in posts the public can see will be simultaneously chatting politely and reasonably about the same exact topic in PM.
From a social science perspective, it seems like a symptom of an outsider (me) challenging an established group's jointly held paradigm. People get irrationally hostile when challenged like this. Its like I'm standing in your elevator but facing towards you or not the door.
My goal isn't to force everyone to play these rules. There are obvious problems with the BFG ruleset. You, and many others, believe that Eldar were OP and created a rule change to fix it. But you have no expectation that everyone will like it, do you? Not everyone does. The best you could hope for was a functional ruleset that provided an alternative to the original Eldar rules for people who want what it does. The same is true for BFG:R. I could thow mud and claim we have been playing with the original rules just fine and that your rule changes were made to cover your shortfalls in strategic acumen, but I'd have the same right and evidence as is being brought against me.
This is an alternative ruleset for those who want a streamlined game.
Every IN cruiser has greater damage output with their torpedos than their gunnery. Dictator, Lunar, Gothic. All of them.
Just because I mention 3 Dictators as an example doesn't mean that any player around here uses 3 Dictators. Vaash made a claim that turrets firing at everything was a significant detriment to ordnance fleets like Tau & IN. That was a test of extremes to demonstrate how little the effect really was. I had to demonstrate it because he didn't do the math before he objected to it and then accused me of patronizing him when I questioned him on that point.
We play all the missions. Most fleets are represented in our group.
Shotguns get neutralized now. I developed my own counter.
@Vaash
I don't think I'm on a high horse. I think I'm defending my character against attacks from someone who knows literally nothing about me or my play style.
But fine. I'm dismounting any high horse I was on and I'm going to look at my system objectively. You do the same too. Take a day, calm down, run some numbers, roll some dice and come back with thought out objective criticism of the proposed rules instead of blind pot-shots that are easy to disprove or attacking me personally. If there really are problems with the rules, you'll have arguments against them and not the writers.
Get your thoughts in order and repost them and we will have a serious discussion.
The only conclusion you can draw from my posts are that we have a stastically average number of explosions, I don't abandon a working strategy just to keep my ships outside 18cm of every ship that could potentially blow up (mine, the enemy's and hulks), and that I'm good enough to get to a range where I have a positive shift to gunnery in order to kill enemy ships. Anything other than that is pure conjecture.
I'd love to see you post a battle report. Lets see how you fight if youre an expert.
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Vaash made a claim that turrets firing at everything was a significant detriment to ordnance fleets like Tau & IN.
Lets take a look back at that shall we? My first post about removing the choice between firing at ordnance types I mention that it reduces the tactical options available and ends any reward a player can gain from careful positioning. My second post was in direct response to your question on how it would hurt Tau. The significant was your addition. Where does that leave us? Oh, right... the point where I didn't say anything about significant detriment to anyone; I'm against removing tactical complexity from BFG, that's what your change is doing here.
don't abandon a working strategy just to keep my ships outside 18cm of every ship that could potentially blow up (mine, the enemy's and hulks), and that I'm good enough to get to a range where I have a positive shift to gunnery in order to kill enemy ships.
I think it could be argued that if you lose because you kept your fleet too close and a ship blew up, the tactic of keeping your ships closely packed was not a working tactic and one that disrupted your strategy no matter how brilliant it was. I didn't say you should stay 18cm away from everything that could possibly blow up at all times. I said you should be able to identify which ships are more likely to explode and maneuver so as to minimize the damage should it happen. In other words, identifying threats to your strategy and dealing with them is a necessary skill. I'm not taking potshots at you either. I'm posting advice on how to deal with aspects of BFG your group seems to have problems with.
And, by the way, I have posted several battle reports but only a couple play by play ones. Some using marines vs chaos, some are IN vs Chaos, some are with Admech. I don't win all of them, but I've never lost one because I failed a SO. It could be argued that I lost one because I wasn't allowed to use BFI due to the subplot but even the pretty explosion didn't totally cripple my fleet.
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@Vaash
Oh, that was all you were saying? I thought you were saying that it made combined ordnance attacks ineffective. If its just the loss of a choice, you and I are closer than I thought.
In streamlining the game, one of our goals was to strip out anything unnecessary, kind of like ripping seats out of a rally car to lose dead weight. One of the 'dead weights' we identified was making turrets pick between AC and torpedos.
First, the choice is a fairly obvious one. Its not really a 'tactic' for the attacker, because they'll mob the target with ordnance any way. The tactical decision is with the defender and the answer, for the most part is staring them in the face once their opponent places markers in the shooting phase.
Second, no matter what the defender decides, it doesn't make much of a difference in the amount of damage caused unless there is quite a lot of ordnance coming in. Also, it doesn't make much difference in damage whether everything gets shot at or not.
Third, allowing turrets to fire at everything is a slight nerf to ordnance, and everyone seems to want to keep ordnance from being too powerful.
In our view, it was an obvious choice that had little to no in game effect and provided a bonus to ordnance. Why keep it?
This is a minor point. If putting turret target selection back in gets people to agree to the ruleset as a whole, then we'd probably ditch it. But is it that big of an issue? It it a deal breaker?
Regarding getting too close to exploding ships, hindsight is 20/20. There's a big bonus for manouvering within 15cm to gunnery. The point of manouvering is to get into a good position to fire your weaponry. Within 15cm, youre in explosion range of your target. So, if you get in a good firing position and kill an enemy ship, then you have a 1/36 chance of eating a WDI, which can easily kill your ship or hit nearby hulks, which can in turn explode themselves. Some weapons only have a range of 15cm. So you manouver into a great firing position, like youre supposed to, hand them their ass and they randomly explode and kill you instead.
Besides, the rule change isn't removing explosions or even reducing their likelihood. Its removing the Str 8 lance version and allowing armor to protect a ship.
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@Horizon
I haven't been able to find a rule disallowing a ship with a lower boarding value from initiating a boarding action vs a ship with a higher boarding value. Could you cite this for me?
I recalled wrong, it is explicit stated escorts can board.
Iconoclast boards emperor (blastmarker in contact):
Iconoclast = +1 (blastmarker on Emperor) +1 (Emperor on Reload) + 1 (being Chaos) = +3
Emperor = +4 (boarding value being four times higher).
Iconoclast rolls 6 +3 = 9
Emperor rolls 1 + 4 = 5
difference is 4
lol...
As I said before, the original boarding rules are crappy. But I am not fan of your bucket dice either.
I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing that people get hostile really quickly with me. I don't think that it's because of how I write or my word choices. First of all, I don't initiate the hostilities. Second, I'm a regular on several forums and have never had this happen anywhere else. Third, people who are in the process of being overtly hostile to me in posts the public can see will be simultaneously chatting politely and reasonably about the same exact topic in PM.
From a social science perspective, it seems like a symptom of an outsider (me) challenging an established group's jointly held paradigm. People get irrationally hostile when challenged like this. Its like I'm standing in your elevator but facing towards you or not the door.
That was not what I was saying 100%, but here you go again in the victim role.
My goal isn't to force everyone to play these rules. There are obvious problems with the BFG ruleset. You, and many others, believe that Eldar were OP and created a rule change to fix it. But you have no expectation that everyone will like it, do you? Not everyone does. The best you could hope for was a functional ruleset that provided an alternative to the original Eldar rules for people who want what it does. The same is true for BFG:R. I could thow mud and claim we have been playing with the original rules just fine and that your rule changes were made to cover your shortfalls in strategic acumen, but I'd have the same right and evidence as is being brought against me.
This is an alternative ruleset for those who want a streamlined game.
Then do not expect everyone to agree, right?
Every IN cruiser has greater damage output with their torpedos than their gunnery. Dictator, Lunar, Gothic. All of them.
A Lunar? 6 torps or 6 batteries + 2 lances? I say you are off, since torps need a reload ordnance (with your idea of SO this becomes easy, under official rules you might not reload). Torps need to bypass turrets and cap.
Torps are good but now you overestimate them.
We play all the missions. Most fleets are represented in our group.
Good, which will tell you formations are useless in escalating engagement. ;)
Shotguns get neutralized now. I developed my own counter.
Good.
The only conclusion you can draw from my posts are that we have a stastically average number of explosions, I don't abandon a working strategy just to keep my ships outside 18cm of every ship that could potentially blow up (mine, the enemy's and hulks), and that I'm good enough to get to a range where I have a positive shift to gunnery in order to kill enemy ships. Anything other than that is pure conjecture.
So do not change the rules! Keep the warp drive explosion! It is rare! It is part of the game! You made your choice to get into that range.
This change is like dropping a rule because it gives you a negative effect to your playstyle.
You see the oddness? This is like weapon batteries should ignore blastmarkers because my fleet has a lot of weapon batteries and no lances.
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Realism doesnt equal random chance. Random chance is an abstract used to represent any combination of factors that can make an outcome unpredictable. Random chance should be included where it's necessary to represent relatively unreliable circumstances. I think it's reasonable to use random chance for gunnery, bomber attacks, critical hits and repairing critical hits, navigating asteroid fields or attempting to disengage. Turning a hard left or firing retros isn't something that there is a question whether or not they will be obeyed. If a captain on a warship of any era issued an order to CTNH, the ship comes to a new heading. If they order the ship to Full Stop, the ship comes to a full stop. There isn't a 30 - 40% chance that the crew will just ignore their captain! Using Ld tests for these type of situations is not realism. It's an element of chance where there is none in real life.
Turning about is no simple task for some of the larger modern day haulers. BFG ships are many times larger than these, depend upon an archaic system of operation (for the most part), and are far more complex. It isn't simply a matter of the helmsman yanking over on the wheel. Doing so without proper preparation will likely result in a ship torn in half, or at the very least a tremendous amount of casualties. Doing this while under fire would no doubt make the entire process more taxing.
In any wargame, I draw the line on 'realism' where it becomes a larger factor in the game than the player's strategy. SO gives a player strategic options. The Ld tests prevents those strategic option from being used. The only purpose Ld tests serve for SO is to prevent a player from being able to execute their strategy.
Yes, it is. However, planning for the possibility of failure should be a part of your strategy. If you cannot stand the idea of a battle occasionally being decided by a freak occurrence rather than tactics then perhaps you should take up chess instead. You could do a BFG themed version, with escorts instead of pawns, light cruisers for knights, cruisers for castles, grand cruisers for bishops and a battleship for the queen. The king could be a super heavy transport. Lots of fun to be had.
So, realism aside, the SO system we came up with is a big departure from the original rules, but it's been functioning quite well as a game mechanic. I think one think that people are failing to notice is that SO are now a resource to be used sparingly and that can be lost due to poor planning. We aren't just allowing every ship to go on SO whenever they want. You, as a player, have to make difficult strategic choice and prioritize placing squadrons on SO and reserving dice to potentially BFI. The strategic depth of assigning SOs was increased tenfold!
Alright, let's run with this for now. Some issues. Why would a ship under fire wait for the nod from the admiral before bracing? This is surely a captain's prerogative. As such,I don't think this should be an automatic pass. Similarly, why should carriers or torp boats need the admiral to tell them to reload? Surely this would be the default attitude only deviated from under orders from the admiral. Also, how would a larger fleet be able to function? Lastly, this limit on the number of special orders seems to me to be just as much a limit on a player's ability to execute their strategy as rolling against leadership. It's just that the limit is known ahead of time and this doesn't seem all that great to me.
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First, the choice is a fairly obvious one. Its not really a 'tactic' for the attacker, because they'll mob the target with ordnance any way. The tactical decision is with the defender and the answer, for the most part is staring them in the face once their opponent places markers in the shooting phase.
Second, no matter what the defender decides, it doesn't make much of a difference in the amount of damage caused unless there is quite a lot of ordnance coming in. Also, it doesn't make much difference in damage whether everything gets shot at or not.
Third, allowing turrets to fire at everything is a slight nerf to ordnance, and everyone seems to want to keep ordnance from being too powerful.
In our view, it was an obvious choice that had little to no in game effect and provided a bonus to ordnance. Why keep it?
It really depends on what ship. Against an Emperor you're probably not going to get them to brace since most of your attacks will be blocked, especially without turret suppression. Against a Lunar, the bombers might perform better or equal to the torpedoes so the choice is a little less cut and dry. Shoot the bombers which have the higher damage potential or shoot the torpedoes which have the most reliable damage output. Either way, the point is it presents the defender with an uncomfortable choice due to the skill of the attacking player. It's a nuance of the game that gives an attacker another tactical option that rewards skill in getting both types of ordnance to hit at the same time. It might not be much, but it does give a player some benefit for skillful play which is a good thing.
Regarding getting too close to exploding ships, hindsight is 20/20. There's a big bonus for manouvering within 15cm to gunnery. The point of manouvering is to get into a good position to fire your weaponry. Within 15cm, youre in explosion range of your target. So, if you get in a good firing position and kill an enemy ship, then you have a 1/36 chance of eating a WDI, which can easily kill your ship or hit nearby hulks, which can in turn explode themselves. Some weapons only have a range of 15cm. So you manouver into a great firing position, like youre supposed to, hand them their ass and they randomly explode and kill you instead.
Besides, the rule change isn't removing explosions or even reducing their likelihood. Its removing the Str 8 lance version and allowing armor to protect a ship.
We all know the benefit for being within 15cm, but the risk is that the enemy ship might explode in your face. If you want the benefit you have to take that risk. Of course, it might not explode or it might not have the range to catch you and you get away with it. As horizon said, you made the choice and you're trying to change the game because you don't like the consequences. Your changes haven't just let people use armor, it's made the explosion a joke in the process. What's a s4 battery going to do to you, scratch the paint? At worst maybe drop a shield? What's the point of having it at all then?
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@Horizon
"Bucket of dice", I think, is not an apt nickname for our boarding system. If undamaged BBs board each other, then you'll be rolling lots of dice, true, but thats an extremely unlikely situation. Usually it will be damaged cruisers, light cruisers or escorts and the total dice rolled by both players will be around 15 or less. You'll be comparing 6-8 pairs. There's lots of instances where you'll roll more dice shooting at an opponent. A 'bucket of dice' is an Ork mob of 20-30 boyz charging into assault in 40k. That's 80-120 dice for one side in one assault phase.
On the other hand, our system doesn't have any strange quirks that the original system does. Say what you will about rolling dice, but the system's results are excellent.
Incidentally, here's our complete modifier table based on Plaxor's USR:
Aggressive - +2 dice (+1 for escorts)
Elite Cadre - +4 dice (+2 for escorts), roll 2 dice for every H&R attack, choose the result
Stalwart - when boarded, tied 6s count as hits vs the attacking ship
Relentless - when initiating boarding, tied 6s count as hits vs the defending ship
Frenzied - when initiating boarding, all tied scores count as hits vs the defending ship
Hostile Environment - when boarded, all tied scores count as hits to the attacking ship, also counters Elite Cadre for H&R
Note that both ships add turrets to their remaining hits to determine boarding value. No modifiers for Blast Markers, having a larger boarding value, or being on SO.
Yes, I expect people to disagree.
What I'm saying is that going for a shotgun gets you more damage output with any IN cruiser than turning to broadside.
That's not a fair comparison. I'm changing a rule because it's unnecessary and robs victory from skilled players. I seriously doubt that if this was never included in the ruleset you'd enjoy the game any less or would be clamoring for a more damaging explosion.
@Sigiroth
Intelligent questions. I will respond tonight when I'm not at work and am on a computer and not a phone.
@Vaash
What can you do with selecting turret targets but go with the odds? The odds are easily calculated by looking what ordnance they have on the board. Its a no brainer decision.
I'm advocating that plasma drive explosions roll the same number of dice they do now (cruiser exploding = 4), but that they roll against armor instead of acting like lances. Its not a joke and can cause damage and kill escorts. And since they count as WBs, Eldar don't get a holofield save vs a giant explosion because the expanding ball of fire cant see it clearly. Also, its more deadly to ordnance now than before.
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I'm advocating that plasma drive explosions roll the same number of dice they do now (cruiser exploding = 4), but that they roll against armor instead of acting like lances. Its not a joke and can cause damage and kill escorts. And since they count as WBs, Eldar don't get a holofield save for no reason at all.
I'd prefer lance shots. Warp Rifts are deadly sh*t.
Eldar MMS have shields. (BFG: thus as well). But, yeah, no holo save under mms as well. ;)
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What can you do with selecting turret targets but go with the odds? The odds are easily calculated by looking what ordnance they have on the board. Its a no brainer decision.
That's a rather simplistic approach. By the same token, what can you do when shooting except go with the odds. Those are easy to calculate too just by looking at range and armor value. The entire game is based around understanding the odds and picking the target or action that best enhances your odds or limiting the odds your opponent has.
I'm advocating that plasma drive explosions roll the same number of dice they do now (cruiser exploding = 4), but that they roll against armor instead of acting like lances. Its not a joke and can cause damage and kill escorts. And since they count as WBs, Eldar don't get a holofield save vs a giant explosion because the expanding ball of fire cant see it clearly. Also, its more deadly to ordnance now than before.
You are making it a joke. 4 lances from a cruiser as per the original plasma explosion might drop the shields on a nearby ship. 4 dice that hit on 5+ or 6+ is even less of a threat and might drop one shield. Not even enough to kill an escort. Saying the Warp Implosion is that weak is laughable. So what if it's more deadly to ordnance? That's about all it can touch now.
You should also check your facts, this one IS in the 2010 FAQ. Eldar can't claim holofields against the catastrophic damage from exploding ships. They get hit all the same:
"Exploding ships count as an area effect and cannot be saved against by holofields, though shields still work normally. See p.5 for more on area effects."
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What I'm saying is that going for a shotgun gets you more damage output with any IN cruiser than turning to broadside.
This is wrong esp in the case of the Dictator because a Dictator turning its broadsides to a target ship and angling it correctly actually means the target ship is facing FP6WBs followed up by Str 4 AC and Str 6 torps. That is the correct shotgun. Similarly, the other IN cruisers can also benefit similarly from such tactics.
In short, turn the ship.
Next all this worry about WDI. It requires the correct set of circumstances which will not come up often. I really don't understand why your group is afraid of it.
As for bucket of dice, numbers of dice that high for BFG is effectively buckets of dice because it's rare one gets to that number with shooting and I would rather just have that number for shooting rather than boarding which is not the main aspect of the game.
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@Vaash
That's very simplistic view of shooting. Target selection is more than pure odds and composes a significant part of the game. You'll fire at a ship that's harder to kill if its more valuable a target. There's complex value judgement and cost benefit analysis based decisions involved, and the same situation can have multiple valid answers.
If youre comparing it to shooting, the closest analog is deciding whether to fire batteries or lances first out of a particular squadron. The proper answer to this option is a no-brainer as well.
I'm glad they fixed that holofield save in the FAQ. Its one of many glitches Andy Chambers left in the ruleset.
I'm eliminating warp drive implosion. 9-12 on the Catastrphic table is Plasma Drive Explosion. Plasma Drive is 3d6. You roll the same number of dice as you do now, but you roll vs armor instead of a lance hit. Any ordnance caught in the blast is destroyed.
There is still a 41% chance that an escort with 5+ armor will die. Currently it's 68%.
I wouldn't call 4 dice a joke. It takes some pretty big WBs to result in rolling 4 dice a lot of the time. Gunnery isn't a joke, is it?
Crazy idea! Warp Drive Implosion results in a Warp Rift being placed on the table permanently. Size is 3d6 radius.
@Admiral
I don't think that's legal. Read the first paragraph of the 'Torpedoes' section of the 2010 FAQ.
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I don't see anything which can override the torps basic rules about attacking a ship when it hits its base. That first paragraph is a very quirky rule at best. You will not be able to prevent the situation everytime where a torp marker will hit a ship base, esp in ranges of 30 cm and below.
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It says that it prevents torpedos from hitting 'vessels' out of the torpedos fire arc. If the vessel is out of the arc, but the base is overlapping into the fire arc, the vessel is still out of arc. By the wording, saying 'vessel' instead of 'base', I think it says the torpedos don't hit the ship. I also think the rule at the top of pg 7 reinforces my interpretation. This rule doesn't seem to have any purpose but stopping the tactic youre describing.
Otherwise the ruling isn't saying anything the rulebook doesn't already say.
But yeah, it could be written clearer. As this is the final draft, they'll need to FAQ this FAQ.
But this is really OT.
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Well if they really changed it, that sucks. I don't see why they need to change it.
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I don't read it that way.
The base is the radius of the ship. The rule is that ordnance impacts when it hits the base. Thus if the base overlaps into the fire arc (this rule is good in fact) the ship is hit.
(I'll mail Ray).
Pity you are so insisting on keeping the warp drive explosion out of it. Skilled players think about the blast radius of such a possible explosion.
Doing a warp rift as a result may be more harmful then the explosion to your fleet.
boarding
What is really wrong with the current system?
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@Sigiroth
Turning about is no simple task for some of the larger modern day haulers. BFG ships are many times larger than these, depend upon an archaic system of operation (for the most part), and are far more complex. It isn't simply a matter of the helmsman yanking over on the wheel. Doing so without proper preparation will likely result in a ship torn in half, or at the very least a tremendous amount of casualties. Doing this while under fire would no doubt make the entire process more taxing.
While it's widely believed that it takes a long time for a large ship to turn, especially an enormous aircraft carrier, everything I can find on the subject suggests that they are surprisingly nimble. Nimitz Class carriers are supposed to be able to do a 180* turn in 3 minutes. They don't turn like that normally because it throws everyone and everything off balance. But they can do it just in case they have to. To me, this is a perfectly reasonable explanation of the negatives to a CTNH, BR or AAF. The g-forces due to rapid velocity change are bound to throw things awry.
But, of course, we are talking about massive ships in space. Obviously, they are built to be able to withstand the forces associated with the maneuvers they perform in special orders. I've heard the 'turning could break the ship in two' argument somewhere before, but I've looked around and can't find it again. It's not in the BFG rulebook that I can see. What kind of preparation does the crew need to make a 90* turn that keep the ship from breaking in half? If this were the intent of the games designers, a much better representation would be that the ship made the turn per the SO automatically, but if you failed the Ld check the ship would take damage or have a critical hit or something. I don't think the ship's spine is in danger, especially when there is no fluid resistance to any sort of maneuver. It's just a major inconvenience to the crew and that's why there's no damage for turning and why there are penalties for velocity change SOs.
Yes, it is. However, planning for the possibility of failure should be a part of your strategy. If you cannot stand the idea of a battle occasionally being decided by a freak occurrence rather than tactics then perhaps you should take up chess instead. You could do a BFG themed version, with escorts instead of pawns, light cruisers for knights, cruisers for castles, grand cruisers for bishops and a battleship for the queen. The king could be a super heavy transport. Lots of fun to be had.
There's a very wide chasm between the inert nature of chess and our relatively minor modifications to the core rules of BFG. Our rules changes could be inserted into the BFG book with the change of a few paragraphs only. Large swathes of the game exist completely intact. There's plenty of room for chance and the possibility of failure and 'living up to it' as Horizon calls it.
The difference is that we turned the volume down on the randomness so the strategy could be heard more clearly. We've replaced a SO system that rewards lucky dice rolling with one that rewards forethought, planning and good resource management. We've instituted a boarding system that doesn't create scenarios like the Iconoclast vs. the Emperor and seems to be a fairly accurate representation of how powerful individual ships should be in boarding against one another and how they'd really fair in such an action while being a shade more predictable. We've given ordnance a slight nerf to put the focus back on gunnery (something everyone seems to want done) and we have allowed bombers to pose a little bit of a threat to BBs while removing the widely disliked Turret Suppression rules. And we've eliminated a mechanic that does little but gut somebody's fleet randomly when it happens while leaving in the cinematic explosions everyone loves.
Despite these changes, the maneuvering, tactics and gunnery that everyone is used to using still works the same. You can still completely whiff a shooting phase or have fantastic success. You can still lose a crippled ship to an exploding hulk. You can still have your shields collapse or your bridge smashed or your bulkheads collapse. You can still have a hard time loading ordnance even! But now it relies just a little bit more on you and your decision making than whether you roll good or bad.
Now to the good stuff!!!
Alright, let's run with this for now. Some issues. Why would a ship under fire wait for the nod from the admiral before bracing? This is surely a captain's prerogative. As such,I don't think this should be an automatic pass.
Ok, first let's' look at the rules as they are now. Ships can go on SO, but if they're in a squadron, the whole squadron has to go on a SO too. A ship captain could put his own ship on SO, but he couldn't force it on other ships in his squadron. Since all ships have to go on SO in a squadron, this appears to be a top-down command. Someone with authority over the whole squadron is telling them all to go on SO simultaneously. To support this, fleet re-rolls, which represent theability of the fleet commander to command, can be used on SO tests. Why would the ability of the fleet commander effect a captain's ability to have his ship go on SO? Because the fleet commander, in this case the player, is the one issuing the order for the SO.
More evidence on the top-down nature of SO is in the rules regarding failing a SO check. In the current rules, if one ship or squadron fails an SO check, no other ships in the fleet can go on SO. Why would an individual captain's failure to get his crew to successfully Lock On prevent another ship captain thousands of kilometers away in space from getting his crew to successfully CTNH? The rulebook itself says that you can imagine that the confusion in getting the orders obeyed stops any more orders from being issued. This also suggests that SO commands are given from from the top-down. The fleet commander, the player, is the one issuing SOs.
BFI in the current rules is a special exception. A ship can go on BFI in the enemy shooting phase even if there was a failed SO test in the player's previous turn. This appears like it's the captain issuing the command himself. Except that you can't put a single ship on BFI if it's in a squadron. The entire squadron goes on BFI together, just like other SO. Rather than saying that this is just a stupid rule, I see this as evidence that BFI is still issued by the Admiral.
Why would a ship wait for an Admiral to give a command before bracing? Why did men stand in straight lines while other men shot at them for almost 100 years of warfare? Discipline and the value of a cohesive line of battle. And, in this case, a Commissar on every command deck with a bolt gun and the authority and will to use it. Why would an Admiral not want a ship under heavy fire to brace? Same reason you as a player wouldn't. They have bigger plans for the ship under fire than taking a couple of pot-shots while unstuffing themselves.
Also, since I think game>realism, forcing players to reserve SO out of their pool for BFI adds a great resource management dimension and forces an important strategic choice. If you get greedy and blow all your SO in your turn without avoiding enemy fire in some way, you can expect to get your can kicked in the enemy's turn.
Similarly, why should carriers or torp boats need the admiral to tell them to reload? Surely this would be the default attitude only deviated from under orders from the admiral.
Yeah, that's weird. There's no in-game penalty for having to RO other than not being able to go on other SO. It even seems strange that a captain should have to remind his crew to put torpedoes in the tubes or refuel and rearm attack craft.
I don't have an answer to this one. But allowing any ship with ordnance to RO automatically reload makes ordnance overwhelmingly powerful and breaks the game. And game>realism again, you have to make a choice between RO ordnance or doing something else that could be equally important.
Also, how would a larger fleet be able to function?
This is actually one area where our SO system shines and something we specifically considered. In the current system, no matter how big your fleet is, you have the same statistical chances of passing SO checks. Right now, unless you roll crap for Ld, you have a good chance of getting one SO off, a little better than 50/50 of getting 2 SO passed, and a slim chance of a third. Any more beyond that is just excellent luck. Rerolls help, but if you have a very big fleet that needs to go on SO, you'll eat them up really fast.
In our system, you purchase the number of SOs you want in your fleet. They're expensive enough that you won't want to buy more than you need. That way you can build a large enough SO pool so that it's proportional to the size of the game you're playing. Our sweet spot for 1500pts seems to be 3 SOs. For 3000pts we would probably buy 6 SOs. For 15000pts, we could buy 30 SOs if we wanted. This adds another strategic element to fleet design and allows you to scale the game to any size you like.
Lastly, this limit on the number of special orders seems to me to be just as much a limit on a player's ability to execute their strategy as rolling against leadership. It's just that the limit is known ahead of time and this doesn't seem all that great to me.
First, the player sets their own limit on the number of SO they want to play with based on their strategy and how many points they are willing to sink into it. If you don't have enough SO to get what you want done, then you can't blame anyone but yourself. No bad luck here.
Second, knowing how many SO you have allows you to coordinate your fleet reliably, but having limits to the number of SO makes you think ahead.
For example:You have 3 SO in your fleet. You've got a pair of carriers in a squadron that need reloading. But another pair of your ships are likely to be under serious threat from an enemy squadron unless you can AAF past them, and one of those two ships has one of your lieutenants on it. You've also got a good opportunity to cripple one of their carriers and gain local ordnance superiority but you'll have to LO to do it and you'll definitely miss the opportunity if you don't capitalize on your good position this turn. But, you see two places where they could LO and cause some serious damage unless you BFI. There are 5 places where SO could do you some good, but you only have 3 orders to burn. What do you do?
In 1500 pt games, there are plenty of places where we wanted more SOs than we had. But spending another 50-100pts on more orders would have made us cut back on the number of ships and put us at a disadvantage.
Those were some awesome questions Sigiroth. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to spell out some of the reasoning behind these changes.
@Horizon
conducting ordnance interactions as appropriate to prevent targeting vessels out of fire arc due to proximit.
That's the part in question right there. The base isn't the ship, it's just near space. If they meant that you can't target a ship whose base is completely out of the fire arc, then that section is redundant as I don't think there was any question whether that was legal or not before the FAQ came out. If you're preventing targeting vessels out of the fire arc, then the base doesn't matter as the vessel can't be hit. This doesn't seem weird to me. Other fleets can't turn slantwise and get a ship in 2 firing arcs simultaneously. Torpedoes shouldn't be any different.
I think about the blast radius for a WDI too. It's not your own ships that get you, its drifting hulks and enemy ships. You may not experience lots of explosions, but other players have the same chance of experiencing more explosions than is statistically average that you do of having fewer explosions than is statistically average. You're just lucky, so its a bit easier for you to blow it off as a threat.
Besides, it doesn't add anything to the game system. It's a pity that you're insisting that another gaming group use it and write off their mathematical concerns as a lack of skill when you've been just lucky.
Doing a Warp Rift as a WDI would be more realistic than a bunch of lance hits considering what a WDI is. It's the same blast radius as the current WDI, and you already take that into consideration when you play. It's only a 1/36 chance of happening anyway, right? Shouldn't be a problem for any of you since you can account for it in your strategy. :D
Sorry, that was really inflammatory. I'm just tired of my mathematical arguments being countered with accusations that me and anyone who agrees with me is just not up to snuff.
Were WDIs not a part of the original game set, nobody would be asking for them or would even notice their absence. It's just a random die roll that adds nothing to the game but an extra opportunity for someone to lose the game based on dice alone.
What's wrong with the current boarding system?
It's so abstract that it allows absurd results and boarding actions rely more on luck than strategy. A boarding action, unless you really have them screwed over, is a shot in the dark. Even Space Marine players don't consider it a viable strategy as they have a decent chance of losing and the payoff isn't there.
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That's very simplistic view of shooting. Target selection is more than pure odds and composes a significant part of the game.
Your're missing the point. The game is about the odds and you'll do what has the best odds of success. Faulting the choice of turrets targeting ordnance for simply falling on the odds while the odds are what dictates what you shoot at as well seems a bit shortsighted.
There is still a 41% chance that an escort with 5+ armor will die. Currently it's 68%.
How do you figure that. Most escorts have 5+ armor. That means you need approximately three dice per point of damage done. With four dice being thrown, you average slightly more than one hit. In any event, this just smacks of you not wanting to change your strategy to include the possibility the ship could blow up in your face.
I wouldn't call 4 dice a joke. It takes some pretty big WBs to result in rolling 4 dice a lot of the time. Gunnery isn't a joke, is it?
Depends on what's shooting. I would definitely call 4 dice that hit on 5+ or 6+ a joke when you are shooting at a cruiser, grand cruiser, or a battleship. You're almost guaranteed to do no real damage. Depending on facing, a s6 battery can get you 4 dice. Worst case a s10 battery. Comparatively, that's not a whole lot. Of course you can say looking at the ordnance column it takes s20, but we're talking within 30cm if we are comparing the strength of the catastrophic damage shots and that takes considerably less firepower to pull off.
Crazy idea! Warp Drive Implosion results in a Warp Rift being placed on the table permanently. Size is 3d6 radius.
That you are even suggesting this in combination with your LD changes is mind boggling. Looking up your table, it would seem that the ld6 and 7 you want most things on the table to have would instantly cause the loss of whatever ship is touched by it since it will take a passed LD test on a 3d6 to prevent having your ship exit the battle.
Again, why with the boarding? As with Horizon and the Admiral, I don't want to chuck that many dice for something as minor as boarding. Shooting is fine since it makes up a large portion of the game. Boarding, not so much.
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I've heard the 'turning could break the ship in two' argument somewhere before, but I've looked around and can't find it again. It's not in the BFG rulebook that I can see.
It doesn't reference it under turning in the rulebook but the section talking about the minimum move distance does lay out that structural damage can happen if a ship isn't properly prepared to slow down.
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@Vaaish
Your're missing the point. The game is about the odds and you'll do what has the best odds of success.
The game is about strategy and manipulating odds. Target selection is a complex of target value and chance of success. If all you do is select targets that die the easiest, you'll not be winning the game. I doubt you play this way. Choosing between torpedos and AC with turrets is so obvious its not even really a choice. And it's a bonus to ordnance.
How do you figure that. Most escorts have 5+ armor. That means you need approximately three dice per point of damage done. With four dice being thrown, you average slightly more than one hit. In any event, this just smacks of you not wanting to change your strategy to include the possibility the ship could blow up in your face.
I figured that by calculating the binomial distribution. The probability that you'll roll 2 or more 5+ results on 4 dice is about 41%. Calculating 'average hits' when dealing exclusively with whole numbers and an uneven distribution, such as a distribution caused by an event that doesn't have a 50/50 chance, can be misleading.
You're attacking me instead of the rule again. If I was just raging about losing ships to explosions, why would I leave a possibility of losing a ship to an explosion?
Depends on what's shooting. I would definitely call 4 dice that hit on 5+ or 6+ a joke when you are shooting at a cruiser, grand cruiser, or a battleship.
8 lance shots vs a BB isn't going to do much either. But vs a crippled cruiser or a squadron of escorts....
The context of these blasts is that they generally happen in the shooting phase. Knocking down a couple of shields can be a HUGE deal here. For either player, it's knocking down shields that won't go back up before that ship gets shot at again. Even a Plasma Drive Overload can mean the death of a healthy cruiser in the ensuing shooting phase. And it's all up to the luck of the dice.
Again, why with the boarding? As with Horizon and the Admiral, I don't want to chuck that many dice for something as minor as boarding. Shooting is fine since it makes up a large portion of the game. Boarding, not so much.
If your only qualm is 'I don't feel like rolling 6 dice in this specific instance', then I'm doing pretty good here. There's nothing that I can do about how you feel about doing something.
Actually, all these rules are standing up to fire very well so far. I knew you lot wouldn't like them because this is going in the exact opposite direction of BFG:R, which you all helped write. But there haven't been any criticisms that game balance is disrupted or that the mechanics we've created are broken beyond ones based on simple misunderstandings.
It doesn't reference it under turning in the rulebook but the section talking about the minimum move distance does lay out that structural damage can happen if a ship isn't properly prepared to slow down.
Ah, there it is! I knew I'd heard it before.
This is a pretty good reason to use retro thrusters when slowing down.
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@Sigiroth
Turning about is no simple task for some of the larger modern day haulers. BFG ships are many times larger than these, depend upon an archaic system of operation (for the most part), and are far more complex. It isn't simply a matter of the helmsman yanking over on the wheel. Doing so without proper preparation will likely result in a ship torn in half, or at the very least a tremendous amount of casualties. Doing this while under fire would no doubt make the entire process more taxing.
While it's widely believed that it takes a long time for a large ship to turn, especially an enormous aircraft carrier, everything I can find on the subject suggests that they are surprisingly nimble. Nimitz Class carriers are supposed to be able to do a 180* turn in 3 minutes. They don't turn like that normally because it throws everyone and everything off balance. But they can do it just in case they have to. To me, this is a perfectly reasonable explanation of the negatives to a CTNH, BR or AAF. The g-forces due to rapid velocity change are bound to throw things awry.
But, of course, we are talking about massive ships in space. Obviously, they are built to be able to withstand the forces associated with the maneuvers they perform in special orders. I've heard the 'turning could break the ship in two' argument somewhere before, but I've looked around and can't find it again. It's not in the BFG rulebook that I can see. What kind of preparation does the crew need to make a 90* turn that keep the ship from breaking in half? If this were the intent of the games designers, a much better representation would be that the ship made the turn per the SO automatically, but if you failed the Ld check the ship would take damage or have a critical hit or something. I don't think the ship's spine is in danger, especially when there is no fluid resistance to any sort of maneuver. It's just a major inconvenience to the crew and that's why there's no damage for turning and why there are penalties for velocity change SOs.
In BFG ships have a minimum distance before it can turn (10000km). Considering a BFG turn is about 10minutes everything you say is already accounted for. A Lunar can do ctnh and all.
I also still think you need to read more into 40k/Rogue Trader and how it runs on Imperial ships (this is what you refer to most).
Yes, it is. However, planning for the possibility of failure should be a part of your strategy. If you cannot stand the idea of a battle occasionally being decided by a freak occurrence rather than tactics then perhaps you should take up chess instead. You could do a BFG themed version, with escorts instead of pawns, light cruisers for knights, cruisers for castles, grand cruisers for bishops and a battleship for the queen. The king could be a super heavy transport. Lots of fun to be had.
There's a very wide chasm between the inert nature of chess and our relatively minor modifications to the core rules of BFG. Our rules changes could be inserted into the BFG book with the change of a few paragraphs only. Large swathes of the game exist completely intact. There's plenty of room for chance and the possibility of failure and 'living up to it' as Horizon calls it.
The difference is that we turned the volume down on the randomness so the strategy could be heard more clearly. We've replaced a SO system that rewards lucky dice rolling with one that rewards forethought, planning and good resource management.
Special Orders should be part of it.
And we've eliminated a mechanic that does little but gut somebody's fleet randomly when it happens while leaving in the cinematic explosions everyone loves.
I never ever heard someone complain about that mechanic, you and your group are the first.
Despite these changes, the maneuvering, tactics and gunnery that everyone is used to using still works the same. You can still completely whiff a shooting phase or have fantastic success. You can still lose a crippled ship to an exploding hulk. You can still have your shields collapse or your bridge smashed or your bulkheads collapse. You can still have a hard time loading ordnance even! But now it relies just a little bit more on you and your decision making than whether you roll good or bad.
The only core thing I'd change is the IgoUgo system in BFG. Replacing it with a more simultanous movement/shooting system or a system like LotR SBG has.
Alright, let's run with this for now. Some issues. Why would a ship under fire wait for the nod from the admiral before bracing? This is surely a captain's prerogative. As such,I don't think this should be an automatic pass.
Ok, first let's' look at the rules as they are now. Ships can go on SO, but if they're in a squadron, the whole squadron has to go on a SO too. A ship captain could put his own ship on SO, but he couldn't force it on other ships in his squadron. Since all ships have to go on SO in a squadron, this appears to be a top-down command. Someone with authority over the whole squadron is telling them all to go on SO simultaneously. To support this, fleet re-rolls, which represent theability of the fleet commander to command, can be used on SO tests. Why would the ability of the fleet commander effect a captain's ability to have his ship go on SO? Because the fleet commander, in this case the player, is the one issuing the order for the SO.
Sigoroth (and a lot others including me and sjizzles) advocate that individual BFI should be possible in a squadron. Sig made a good thread on squadroning. Read it I say.
More evidence on the top-down nature of SO is in the rules regarding failing a SO check. In the current rules, if one ship or squadron fails an SO check, no other ships in the fleet can go on SO. Why would an individual captain's failure to get his crew to successfully Lock On prevent another ship captain thousands of kilometers away in space from getting his crew to successfully CTNH? The rulebook itself says that you can imagine that the confusion in getting the orders obeyed stops any more orders from being issued. This also suggests that SO commands are given from from the top-down. The fleet commander, the player, is the one issuing SOs.
Per thread I referred to.
BFI in the current rules is a special exception. A ship can go on BFI in the enemy shooting phase even if there was a failed SO test in the player's previous turn. This appears like it's the captain issuing the command himself. Except that you can't put a single ship on BFI if it's in a squadron. The entire squadron goes on BFI together, just like other SO. Rather than saying that this is just a stupid rule, I see this as evidence that BFI is still issued by the Admiral.
Wrong conclusion per BFI, see thread. ;)
Why would a ship wait for an Admiral to give a command before bracing? Why did men stand in straight lines while other men shot at them for almost 100 years of warfare? Discipline and the value of a cohesive line of battle. And, in this case, a Commissar on every command deck with a bolt gun and the authority and will to use it. Why would an Admiral not want a ship under heavy fire to brace? Same reason you as a player wouldn't. They have bigger plans for the ship under fire than taking a couple of pot-shots while unstuffing themselves.
Weird. You say the helmsman does as the captain says (no disobeying orders and all) but now you say the captain is overruled by the admiral in the case of a captain protecting his ship.
If I was admiral and a captain did not brace I'd sent in a commissar. Imperial ships are rather precious you know.
Also, since I think game>realism, forcing players to reserve SO out of their pool for BFI adds a great resource management dimension and forces an important strategic choice. If you get greedy and blow all your SO in your turn without avoiding enemy fire in some way, you can expect to get your can kicked in the enemy's turn.
Now it game>realism? iirc you started out with more realism...
Similarly, why should carriers or torp boats need the admiral to tell them to reload? Surely this would be the default attitude only deviated from under orders from the admiral.
Yeah, that's weird. There's no in-game penalty for having to RO other than not being able to go on other SO. It even seems strange that a captain should have to remind his crew to put torpedoes in the tubes or refuel and rearm attack craft.
I don't have an answer to this one. But allowing any ship with ordnance to RO automatically reload makes ordnance overwhelmingly powerful and breaks the game. And game>realism again, you have to make a choice between RO ordnance or doing something else that could be equally important.
Reload Ordnance is a tedious and careful process. It is a real special order.
<zip>
In essence you want special orders to (keep on) succeeding and do not like failure to dice. You created a pool system to do special orders.
Matter of preference I think. I prefer the dice.
A pooling system is kind of unrealistic as well if you look closely. As if an admiral has limited recources in ideas in his head.
@Horizon
conducting ordnance interactions as appropriate to prevent targeting vessels out of fire arc due to proximit.
That's the part in question right there. The base isn't the ship, it's just near space. If they meant that you can't target a ship whose base is completely out of the fire arc, then that section is redundant as I don't think there was any question whether that was legal or not before the FAQ came out. If you're preventing targeting vessels out of the fire arc, then the base doesn't matter as the vessel can't be hit. This doesn't seem weird to me. Other fleets can't turn slantwise and get a ship in 2 firing arcs simultaneously. Torpedoes shouldn't be any different.
I can fire a torpedo any route I want. You too. I keep my torps in my front arc. On the edge, allowed. It runs it path and hits a base that gets in my arc. So it is hit. That is the base rule -> ordnance hits base -> resolve attack.
Gunnery needs stem.
I think about the blast radius for a WDI too. It's not your own ships that get you, its drifting hulks and enemy ships. You may not experience lots of explosions, but other players have the same chance of experiencing more explosions than is statistically average that you do of having fewer explosions than is statistically average. You're just lucky, so its a bit easier for you to blow it off as a threat.
Besides, it doesn't add anything to the game system. It's a pity that you're insisting that another gaming group use it and write off their mathematical concerns as a lack of skill when you've been just lucky.
So I place my ships well away and I am lucky? No it is tactical skill. Maybe I disengage before the enemy can blow up my ships. So many tactical options.
You face a threat and change the rules. An approach I do not like.
Doing a Warp Rift as a WDI would be more realistic than a bunch of lance hits considering what a WDI is. It's the same blast radius as the current WDI, and you already take that into consideration when you play. It's only a 1/36 chance of happening anyway, right? Shouldn't be a problem for any of you since you can account for it in your strategy. :D
Exactly.
Sorry, that was really inflammatory. I'm just tired of my mathematical arguments being countered with accusations that me and anyone who agrees with me is just not up to snuff.
Again, you make the argument that we (I?) look down. You are again going in the role of a victim.
I did not accuse anybody. I just said it is a tactical thing. Get close and more dice and be in a blast. Stay further away get less dice and avoid the blast.
Were WDIs not a part of the original game set, nobody would be asking for them or would even notice their absence. It's just a random die roll that adds nothing to the game but an extra opportunity for someone to lose the game based on dice alone.
No. Ships have warp drives. Players would wonder what happens if the warp drive blows up.
Same as ordnance, leave it out and wing commander/star wars fans would add it.
What's wrong with the current boarding system?
It's so abstract that it allows absurd results and boarding actions rely more on luck than strategy. A boarding action, unless you really have them screwed over, is a shot in the dark. Even Space Marine players don't consider it a viable strategy as they have a decent chance of losing and the payoff isn't there.
What is less abstract about yours?
Current system:
is the blastmarker modifier needed?
should boarding value be just remaining hits?
no turrets?
eg Iconoclas vs Emperor (on SO):
Iconoclast +1 chaos +1 special order = +2. Roll d6 + 1 hit value + 2 from mods
Emperor roll d6 + 12 hits.
Iconoclast rolls 6, Emperor 1.
result:
Iconoclast : 6 + 1 (hits) + 2 (mod) = 9
Emperor : 1 + 12 (hits) = 13
Emperor win by 4.
warning...
I target to shut down enemy options or biggets threats. At long range lances target escorts. Varies. No defined tactic for me.
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While it's widely believed that it takes a long time for a large ship to turn, especially an enormous aircraft carrier, everything I can find on the subject suggests that they are surprisingly nimble. Nimitz Class carriers are supposed to be able to do a 180* turn in 3 minutes. They don't turn like that normally because it throws everyone and everything off balance. But they can do it just in case they have to. To me, this is a perfectly reasonable explanation of the negatives to a CTNH, BR or AAF. The g-forces due to rapid velocity change are bound to throw things awry.
Well the Nimitz class ships are quite small. Let's look at something a little bigger, such as the Knock Nevis (Seawise Giant). Its turning circle is 2 miles on a good day and it takes 5.5 miles to go from top speed (of a whopping 16 knots :P) to a full stop.
But, of course, we are talking about massive ships in space. Obviously, they are built to be able to withstand the forces associated with the maneuvers they perform in special orders. I've heard the 'turning could break the ship in two' argument somewhere before, but I've looked around and can't find it again. It's not in the BFG rulebook that I can see. What kind of preparation does the crew need to make a 90* turn that keep the ship from breaking in half? If this were the intent of the games designers, a much better representation would be that the ship made the turn per the SO automatically, but if you failed the Ld check the ship would take damage or have a critical hit or something. I don't think the ship's spine is in danger, especially when there is no fluid resistance to any sort of maneuver. It's just a major inconvenience to the crew and that's why there's no damage for turning and why there are penalties for velocity change SOs.
There would be enormous strain placed on ships to just execute a normal turn. I think that the basic movement range (from half to full) and turning range (from 0° to 45°) already represents the limits of normal operation. Ie, this is where the helmsman is simply obeying the captain's orders. However, it is possible to exceed these limits using extreme measures. So it isn't simply an action, but a sequence of actions, a process. This process is not easy and so could result in failure to comply with the admiral's order. This seems to me to be the most likely rationale behind the requirement for a leadership test.
I think that this is the going interpretation, and so most people don't really accept the "30% of the time the helmsman ignores the captain" premise and thus see no reason for the change. This is not to say that it couldn't be the other way around, with limited but automatic orders, but that there's no convincing reason why it should be this way.
There's a very wide chasm between the inert nature of chess and our relatively minor modifications to the core rules of BFG.
Yes, a chasm in effect, but not in principle. Your stated reason for posting these revisions was that you wished to eliminate games being decided by, essentially, dice rolls. Taking this to the Nth degree, eliminating chance and even asymmetrical forces, leads to chess or some similar game. Obviously you're not looking to go this far, but the rationale for the change leads inexorably to this conclusion. BFG is a game of strategy and chance, meaning that some games will be won by strategy and some by luck. To say that the latter is an undesirable outcome means that you're essentially saying that you don't like BFG.
Now, given that BFG is a blend of strategy and luck it does come down to adjusting the blend to an acceptable level. This is what you're really talking about. However, I think your approach ('helmsman vs captain' & 'luck = bad') has been poor and served only to put people offside. Really what you're saying is that in your opinion:
"This sort of thing seems to happen too much and should be toned down a little. Furthermore, I think that orders should be automatic for X reasons and what do you all think of this idea ...."
BFI in the current rules is a special exception. A ship can go on BFI in the enemy shooting phase even if there was a failed SO test in the player's previous turn. This appears like it's the captain issuing the command himself. Except that you can't put a single ship on BFI if it's in a squadron. The entire squadron goes on BFI together, just like other SO. Rather than saying that this is just a stupid rule, I see this as evidence that BFI is still issued by the Admiral.
I agree that the system of special orders is essentially a top down arrangement. However, your example of one ship bracing forcing the entire squadron to brace is a bad one I think. That is, I think that the decision to brace is inimitably a captain's and cannot be superseded by someone thousands of kms away. So in this case the decision to brace or not is made by you, the player as the captain, taking into account his orders. What you've pointed out about the current BFI affecting the whole squadron is therefore a flaw in the current system which should be fixed in any proposed change, not used to justify another flaw.
For example:You have 3 SO in your fleet. You've got a pair of carriers in a squadron that need reloading. But another pair of your ships are likely to be under serious threat from an enemy squadron unless you can AAF past them, and one of those two ships has one of your lieutenants on it. You've also got a good opportunity to cripple one of their carriers and gain local ordnance superiority but you'll have to LO to do it and you'll definitely miss the opportunity if you don't capitalize on your good position this turn. But, you see two places where they could LO and cause some serious damage unless you BFI. There are 5 places where SO could do you some good, but you only have 3 orders to burn. What do you do?
Switch to a better system. No, really, I'd rather tell all my ships what I want them to do and then see if they're capable of pulling it off than only picking and choosing some ships to execute orders. You may prefer it otherwise, but that's your prerogative.
Note: The reason why there are 6 special orders I think has a little to do with convenience (6 sided dice) but also as a recognition that these are difficult tasks and so require a leadership test and are mutually exclusive. However, I think that only 4 of these orders are tactical decisions belonging to an admiral. They are CTNH, AAF, BR & LO. Reloading should be automatically attempted unless specified otherwise by the admiral (ie, unless you specifically want no orders or a different order) or unless the ship can't (due to being on BFI). This means that RO should probably be taken off the Chain of Command. BFI should be taken on a ship by ship basis, against its own leadership and affect only that ship (escorts excepted).
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A note about the Iconoclast vs Emperor (BM/orders) scenario. While I haven't actually read the proposed boarding rules (too much to read after being away for a while) it seems to me that an easy fix would simply be to extend the BV bonus linearly. So +5 for being 5 times BV, +6 for 6 times, etc. So an untouched Emp defending against a single Iconclast would get 1d6+17 (BV 17 times greater) and the Iconoclast would get 1d6+3 (Chaos, BM, orders).
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@Sigiroth
From the very beginning it has been game>realism and strategy>luck.
The argumentation so far has been mostly about realism because that's what people are upset about. That and rolling dice.
With all respect, arguments about realism based on a fictional universe are shaky, especially with very little to go on in terms of cannonical fluff. You think executing a SO is difficult and failure has consequences, I think it's relatively easy but has drawbacks. You think that orders are the pergative of the captain, I think SO represents the Admiral calling for unusual actions. The only thing we seem to agree is that the existing rules are a bad representation of any system of command.
My primary concern is how the rules function. I feel that the fluff about command checks can be changed to fit the rules, just like you did for SO with BFG:R.
Really what you're saying is that in your opinion: "This sort of thing seems to happen too much and should be toned down a little. Furthermore, I think that orders should be automatic for X reasons and what do you all think of this idea ...."
You're interpretation on my argument is nose on. I'd love to discuss this with someone. We'd get a lot further than arguing fluff ideals and my ability as a player.
On your boarding fix:
It keeps escorts from being able to rape BBs because of dice (or do anything at all for that matter), but this solution now makes escort vs escort boarding absurd. It also doesn't fix the wierdness for capital ships boarding larger vessels (dauntless vs cruiser, cruiser vs bb).
Our system fixes it all. And a reminder, escorts boarding capital ships do so in the form of H&R attacks in our system, where a 1 results in their death.
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Which proposal on boarding? Mine or Sigoroth's?
So escorts use other rules for boarding vs capital ships = adding rules = opposed of streamlining.
Special Orders
I think most opinions have been said on the system. x people prefer the current SO system, y people prefer your system, z people prefer something else.
Now a lot has been said why the Ld people like it that way. You do not agree it seems. Which is fine. Discussion can be closed to be honest.
Warp Drive implosion
leaving aside being caught as the consequens of a tactical choice you and your group dislike this thing. So far no one has been persuaded/convinced and prefer the warp drive implosion as is.
You can bring your arguments back and forth as you did, had a discussion bla bla. Closed.
Boarding
room for discussion
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I think youre right about WDI. Were not going to get anywhere on that one. Same goes for forcing turrets to pick between targets. Those are really small issues anyway.
The SO system I'm not ready to close the door on yet. Despite having differing opinions on what the fluff is, we may have just broken through to a point where we can discuss what we want in terms of a game mechanic. I think that there may be groundwork laid with Sigiroth and Thinking Stone for, at the very least, a decent discussion about how to rework the SO system, and possibly do so in a way people will agree to.
Boarding would be great to talk about more.
I was responding to Sigiroth's boarding suggestion. Im sorry, but I don't remember yours, Horizon.
Also, bomber rules got dropped somewhere along the way.
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You're interpretation on my argument is nose on. I'd love to discuss this with someone. We'd get a lot further than arguing fluff ideals and my ability as a player.
The thing about why people are questioning your ability as a player is that the reasons for your wanting to instigate the changes are related to ability.
1. You want SOs to be automatic. While removing the luck factor is fine, it dumbs down the game too much. You're ability to adapt to sudden game changing events will not be tested. Therefore it is related to ability. As they say in the other game I play and would be applicable to other games as well: Suck it up and play!
2. You want to remove turrets vs AC or torps. Why? Again, it is related to ability to survive what you don't focus on with your turrets. Take this rule away and you have to make AC and even torps stronger to balance things out because as it is, things are more or less balanced at the moment.
3. And as related to Boarding:
Our system fixes it all. And a reminder, escorts boarding capital ships do so in the form of H&R attacks in our system, where a 1 results in their death.
I don't even get up to now why you want to change boarding from a 1 dice mechanic to a multi-dice mechanic. How does this fix things? As it is, the current rule is a hard rule to understand but I think it is more how they presented the rule. As a comparison, your rules don't make it simpler and as they say adds more luck into it by rolling multiple dice, something you wished to avoid in the first place as had been pointed out.
How is this related to ability? Well, are you having a hard time understanding the existing boarding rule? Because broken down it is:
1. Get Boarding Value.
2. Total the BV and other applicable modifiers.
3. Roll a D6.
Not really so hard. Now the modifer table can be adjusted to make it easier to get the modifiers but even then, it's not that different from your system where you claim it comes out shorter because it's not like the game was built around lots of boarding. What was it? Savings of 3 seconds? Over a span of a game? Is it really that big a savings? Sure it may (or may not) encourage people to board but it still won't be the deciding factor in the game overall.
Lastly, Warp Drive Implosion. I don't get why one is so afraid of this. It rarely happens and when it does, it is big. It is awesome. It does deal a lot of damage. So what's the problem? That it can kill your ships and win the opponent the game? Well, them's the breaks. But I don't think it happens in every game that it needs changing. You feel bad that you might lose a game due to a fluke. Well, hell, lots of things happen in real life that is a fluke. The thing is what you want taken out is something that needs a 6 rolled first followed by a 12 rolled. It shouldn't be happening every game.
And even then, here where I play, both players actually anticipate getting a 12 on the crit table with glee!
If you really want to make changes, make a change because it is a bad rule and not just because it is luck based or you don't like a result.
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The SO system I'm not ready to close the door on yet. Despite having differing opinions on what the fluff is, we may have just broken through to a point where we can discuss what we want in terms of a game mechanic. I think that there may be groundwork laid with Sigiroth and Thinking Stone for, at the very least, a decent discussion about how to rework the SO system, and possibly do so in a way people will agree to.
But the core is people like the Ld roll, most of them do. ;)
Boarding would be great to talk about more.
I was responding to Sigiroth's boarding suggestion. Im sorry, but I don't remember yours, Horizon.
Last post of my on the previous page.
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The thing about why people are questioning your ability as a player is that the reasons for your wanting to instigate the changes are related to ability.
I'll assume that it's not an attempt to discredit me and avoid the issues at hand. Nevertheless, you'll never prove a rule is bad by questioning my motives. Even if I were a slack-jawed dimwit who was raging against a couple losses and had decided to change the game for his own benefit, these rules would perform the same function and have an existence of their own apart from me, and function the exact same as if I were the most brilliant game designer in history.
Your argument as that these rules, compared to the existing rules, make it too easy to play. By eliminating the random element, a player of lesser skill is on equal footing with a player of greater prowess. My argument is that by leaving the random factor in, a player of greater prowess is dragged down to a player of lesser skill's level. I think my argument is a bit simpler than yours.
BFG is a strategy wargame. There are two factors that influence the outcome of the game: the player's decision making and chance (dice). You make the decision to shoot but the dice will determine the level of success you achieve. Canny players pay careful attention to probability and use their knowledge of probability to inform their decisions. With most actions in the game, there are varying levels of success. When shooting you can completely whiff it, get about average or you can give them a good pounding. While on BFI you can save against every single hit, save only some of them or take every hit just like you hadn't braced. Over the length of a game, you will roll enough dice that they will likely start to even out a bit (but not always).
I don't think that anyone will argue that movement isn't the most important decision that a player makes in the game. Movement effects firing position, and firing position can positively or negatively effect damage. The measure of a player's skill is whether they can outmaneuver their opponent to get the best firing position and then exploit it. After all, that's how you win games.
Ship movement, for the most part, is very predictable. There are very restrictive rules regarding how a ship moves. There are minimums or maximums for movement distance, they have to move straight ahead for a period of time and can make fairly narrow turns (4 turns to rotate 180*).
How SO fit into this is that they are the very basis of strategy for the majority of the fleets in the game. They give a player options so that their battle plans can be somewhat unpredictable for the opponent. Normally they only turn 45*, but all of the sudden they turn 90*. Normally they only move 20cm, but those ships just moved 36! They have to move at least 10cm, but it just stopped completely. These SO add an element of freedom to the overall strategy of the game beyond the usually restrictive movement framework.
So, as a player, you can utilize SO to enact a plan. The problem is that SO use Ld tests. Ld tests are pass/fail and at most Ld values has a significant chance of failure. What's worse is that once you fail one, your whole fleet loses the ability for the rest of the turn. You've made the decision on what you want to do, for better or worse, before you've cast the dice. If you're a skilled player and have created a good strategy that will work, the only thing that the Ld mechanic can do is remove your ability to enact your strategy. This saves your opponent's butt. Of course if youre a bad player and have a terrible plan that will get you killed, failing a Ld for a SO that was a bad idea saves your butt and keeps you from losing. The only function of the Ld check for SO is to prevent a players strategy from functioning as intended. This rewards bad players and punishes good players.
This is why I'm against using random chance to limit the use of SO.
I can see your point that if you fail a Ld check, a good player will come up with a new plan. I have some issues with that idea. Failing a SO check means that you have no more options. There's no difference between failing an SO check and not having a plan to begin with. You'll have to sit on your hands through your turn and your opponents and hope that the consequences of doing nothing smart don't ruin your hopes for victory. But often they do.
I've seen very good players fall for obvious ploys not because they didn't see the ploy or know they needed to avoid it, but rather because they failed their first or second SO check and their fleet was torn to bits before they had another opportunity to react.
If anything your ability to adapt will be tested MORE if players could perform a couple of SO automatically per turn. First, you'd still have all the randomness in shooting that can make you change your plans. But now you have an opponent that can successfully perform a strategy that you need to react to!
The old adage that battle plans never survive contact with the enemy is about having to change your strategy to count theirs, not your army turning retarded and not doing what it's told.
You want to remove turrets vs AC or torps. Why?
Because it's an antiquated rule that should have gone away with the limits they placed on how much AC you could have on the board at one time. It takes A LOT of ordnance poured onto a single ship before the decision on what to fire at makes a difference. In fact, the amount of ordnance you need to dump on a ship before the defender's decision matters is potentially enough to destroy the ship. And even in those situations, the decision is a no-brainer based solely on what you see on the board at the time you make the decision. The boost that combined ordnance gets is so ridiculously small that it's not worth considering. Losing it isn't going to change a player's decision to hit a target with torpedoes and AC simultaneously one bit.
I don't think that it hurts the game being in it. I just think that it's so insignificant that it's pointless and can be deleted without changing anything about the game.
I don't even get up to now why you want to change boarding from a 1 dice mechanic to a multi-dice mechanic. How does this fix things? As it is, the current rule is a hard rule to understand but I think it is more how they presented the rule. As a comparison, your rules don't make it simpler and as they say adds more luck into it by rolling multiple dice, something you wished to avoid in the first place as had been pointed out.
I want to change it to a multi-dice mechanic specifically to limit the amount of random chance in boarding. There's nothing more random than a single die roll. The more dice, the more predictable the result. It drastically cuts down on the randomness in boarding.
Also, psychologically, its easier for the human brain to count than add. And this system is intuitive. And it doesn't have any strange situations where weaker ships have a marked advantage over stronger ships. And after lots and lots of trials everyone who has used it or even tested dice is MUCH happier with the results than with the previous system.
Lastly, Warp Drive Implosion. I don't get why one is so afraid of this.
It's not fear. It's because it's an element that only serves to screw a player hard. Its dice screwing a player at that, not their opponent's decision. It can cost good players the game or hand it to a bad player.
The thing is what you want taken out is something that needs a 6 rolled first followed by a 12 rolled. It shouldn't be happening every game.
There's no first 6 to be rolled. Every time a ship dies or a hulk takes damage, you roll 2d6. If it's 12 its a WDI.
Lets say that 8 ships die during the course of a game (ignoring hits to hulks). There is a 20% chance that there will be at least one WDI. It's not as unlikely as it seems. We see one every 3-4 games here, which looks to be about average.
And even then, here where I play, both players actually anticipate getting a 12 on the crit table with glee!
Cinematic explosions are cool. Maybe this can be done another way.
If you really want to make changes, make a change because it is a bad rule and not just because it is luck based or you don't like a result.
We changed Ld for SO and the WDI because they are bad rules. We left gunnery unchanged because it's a good rule even though it has a lot of luck involved and we may not like the results.
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From the very beginning it has been game>realism and strategy>luck.
The argumentation so far has been mostly about realism because that's what people are upset about. That and rolling dice.
With all respect, arguments about realism based on a fictional universe are shaky, especially with very little to go on in terms of cannonical fluff.
There are two different types of realism. There's objective physical realism, which describes how physical objects should interact. For the most part, we can safely hand waive a lot of this. Then there's behavioural realism; which describes how people and factions should interact. This is the important one. For example, we can be fairly safe in saying that the Eldar would not invite Slaanesh over for a tea party.
As for the strategy/luck blend, I think that I'm, for the most part, happy with the balance we have in this regard. At least insofar as ship explosions are concerned.
You think executing a SO is difficult and failure has consequences, I think it's relatively easy but has drawbacks.
Yarp. The difference being that I'm right. ;) No seriously, it is really a matter of preference, and which argument people personally find more convincing.
You think that orders are the pergative of the captain, I think SO represents the Admiral calling for unusual actions. The only thing we seem to agree is that the existing rules are a bad representation of any system of command.
I find it quite plausible that 4 of the orders are the prerogative of the admiral. I can't see why the admiral would even need to issue the order to RO. The fact that it is a special order seems to suggest that it is a difficult process, since it can't be a tactical decision. Hence some notional support for the idea of the difficult processes concept of special orders. However, where you really lose me is on the BFI issue. I don't think that it's reasonable to suggest that the admiral passes down those sorts of orders. Hell, he probably doesn't even do it on his own ship, leaving it to the captain instead.
It keeps escorts from being able to rape BBs because of dice (or do anything at all for that matter), but this solution now makes escort vs escort boarding absurd. It also doesn't fix the wierdness for capital ships boarding larger vessels (dauntless vs cruiser, cruiser vs bb).
Er, well it wouldn't change how escort vs escort boarding actions work. How is it absurd? I don't think that it's wise, foregoing your fire to attempt a risky tactic that may backfire. Mind you, if you've got a bunch of cheap chaos iconoclasts to waste and you want a way to take down some expensive escorts like defence monitors or Tau Castellans then it'd probably be worth the attempt.
Also, what cap ship boarding weirdness? A Dauntless is at a distinct disadvantage in boarding a cruiser, particularly if it's a Chaos cruiser. The Imperial player will lose the opportunity to shoot with the Dauntless and to have any hope of winning he'll need to put a BM in contact from another source (therefore it's a Dauntless + support vessel against the cruiser) and to have the best chance he'll have to try to cherry pick a target that's on special orders. This would all just serve to make it an even break and if the Dauntless has taken even 1 point of damage then it'll probably still be behind. To me this is too risky. I'd prefer just to fire the 3 lances.
Our system fixes it all. And a reminder, escorts boarding capital ships do so in the form of H&R attacks in our system, where a 1 results in their death.
Eh, seems pointless to me. Think I'd rather have the firepower of the escort to be honest.
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How SO fit into this is that they are the very basis of strategy for the majority of the fleets in the game. They give a player options so that their battle plans can be somewhat unpredictable for the opponent. Normally they only turn 45*, but all of the sudden they turn 90*. Normally they only move 20cm, but those ships just moved 36! They have to move at least 10cm, but it just stopped completely. These SO add an element of freedom to the overall strategy of the game beyond the usually restrictive movement framework.
Nope. Special Orders are never part of my strategy. They can help me (reload, lock on, aaf) but they will never be part of the plan.
So, as a player, you can utilize SO to enact a plan. The problem is that SO use Ld tests. Ld tests are pass/fail and at most Ld values has a significant chance of failure. What's worse is that once you fail one, your whole fleet loses the ability for the rest of the turn. You've made the decision on what you want to do, for better or worse, before you've cast the dice. If you're a skilled player and have created a good strategy that will work, the only thing that the Ld mechanic can do is remove your ability to enact your strategy. This saves your opponent's butt. Of course if youre a bad player and have a terrible plan that will get you killed, failing a Ld for a SO that was a bad idea saves your butt and keeps you from losing. The only function of the Ld check for SO is to prevent a players strategy from functioning as intended. This rewards bad players and punishes good players.
As you see, this would never happen to me as SO's are not part of the plan.
Also, a pool is a restriction. At a sudden all orders are gone. That's weird, illogical. To me.
I can see your point that if you fail a Ld check, a good player will come up with a new plan. I have some issues with that idea. Failing a SO check means that you have no more options. There's no difference between failing an SO check and not having a plan to begin with. You'll have to sit on your hands through your turn and your opponents and hope that the consequences of doing nothing smart don't ruin your hopes for victory. But often they do.
I've seen very good players fall for obvious ploys not because they didn't see the ploy or know they needed to avoid it, but rather because they failed their first or second SO check and their fleet was torn to bits before they had another opportunity to react.
Start planning without special orders.
Lastly, Warp Drive Implosion. I don't get why one is so afraid of this.
It's not fear. It's because it's an element that only serves to screw a player hard. Its dice screwing a player at that, not their opponent's decision. It can cost good players the game or hand it to a bad player.
Choice of tactics. The good player will now a warp drive implosion can happen, he will position his ships to deal with it/avoid it. That is what a good player does.
The thing is what you want taken out is something that needs a 6 rolled first followed by a 12 rolled. It shouldn't be happening every game.
There's no first 6 to be rolled. Every time a ship dies or a hulk takes damage, you roll 2d6. If it's 12 its a WDI.
First you need to destroy the ship. ;) Still two sixes needed.
Lets say that 8 ships die during the course of a game (ignoring hits to hulks). There is a 20% chance that there will be at least one WDI. It's not as unlikely as it seems. We see one every 3-4 games here, which looks to be about average.
Impressive all those explosions. I wish I could get to the average of 1-2 per game. ;)
Perhaps I should dissallow disengaging then. ;)
If you really want to make changes, make a change because it is a bad rule and not just because it is luck based or you don't like a result.
We changed Ld for SO and the WDI because they are bad rules.
All in your own opinion of course. As of course I will disagree. ;)
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On the issue of WDI, they're somewhat rare and don't really do that much. Sure you might get hit by one, but those (usually) 8 lances aren't on LO, so you'll average 4 hits. Which is typically 2 damage past shields, maybe a bit more, maybe less. Bracing helps. Sure, this sucks balls if you've got your entire fleet packed in tight around the exploding ship, but who does that?
Also, we're not talking an 18cm radius here. We're talking a potential of 18cm. Not terribly likely to exceed 14cm at the outside. So if you've got a bunch of ships within 14cm of the ship that you're focussing all your fire into, well, you deserve it. If you're in the 15-18cm range band and you still get hit then that's just bad luck. If you get a lot of ships hit then it's simply how the chips fall. If you go all in with pocket aces against 7/2 off suit then you've done the best you could. If the flop turns up 772 then that's just the way it goes.
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Oh hell no.
*Slowly backs out*
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Not discrediting you in any way but I feel that's how your argument is coming out.
"I'm playing great but because of a failed SO, I now cannot continue to play as effectively therefore I will lose the game, regardless of any plans I can think of to alleviate the failed SO so we must change it to auto pass."
"I'm playing great but because I grouped my models together, the WDI which happens very rarely came up which either damaged or wiped out my models so now I can't win anymore with my remaining ships so we must get rid of it."
"I want Boarding to be more predictable so I will let the players roll tons (yes, tons in BFG terms) of dice in what is essentially an accessory to the game, not its core."
Let's face it, a player with greater prowess will always have the upper hand even if the fates are unkindly to him because his prowess gives him the will to overcome the odds whereas a player with lesser prowess will most likely pack it up.
And your logic on testing ability is backwards. SO failures can and will screw things up but its how you adapt to it that will truly test a player especially on how to handle the ploy. If SOs are autopassed, the solution is simple since you see the ploy already. So what's hard about that? Where's the adaptation in that? It's adversity that breeds adaptation.
To your point about adding dice to Boarding, again, why make something complicated when its not really essential to the game? If you want to get more reliable results: fix the modifier chart. A lone Escort should not be able to board and win even half the time going up against a full hit battleship. Rolling a 6 vs the Emperor's 1 (maybe 2) should be the best case for it to win Boarding unless you have special rules like Nids or Chaos (where the Emperor rolling a 2 comes in) or are tag teaming the battleship.
The turrets vs ordnance thing has been brought up before. Frankly, in spite of all the comments, I think it is fine at the moment. If it is removed, then I would want to see ordnance tweaked to be better.
As for the WDI, I thought you meant while the battle is taking place. Now that I know you meant a hulk burning, wouldn't it be kinda obvious to avoid the burning thing in the first place? I don't think you still keep your ships around it right? And as pointed out 18 cm is the max. Chances are you will get lower area. Really, WDIs are not really anything to plan for or against. Heck it could happen in the game rolling a 6 and then 12 on a crit table. But do you really say, "I gotta watch out for those 18cm WDIs!"?
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@Admiral
I've never presented our changes as a way to alter the game to favor a particular play style. That's an accusation someone made against me. I don't have to live up to it. Actually I prefer to shoot from long range, which is why I play chaos. These changes to WDI and ordnance nerfs and changes in Ld rules actually nerf the Chaos fleet a bit and benefit the IN and Orks more. Were I changing the game to suit myself I'd not be nerfing ordnance and making the game safer for fleets that have to fight close up. These changes are purely about game design.
Andy Chambers screwed up. Everyone agrees on that point. There have been many attempts to correct the issues with this system. A lot of these fixes point back to the same core problem. Look at this from a game theory perspective. Using Ld tests to turn the decision making process into a mixed strategy system isn't necessary. There isn't a Nash Equilibrium to disrupt here. Its a non cooperative zero-sum game. And it has stochastic resluts. Combining mixed strategy and stochastic outcomes is just plain bad design, especially for a strategy game. It creates a system where a player's decision making is overridden by chance. Its so bad a combination that its not even found in gambling games.
Sigiroth addressed the most apparent symptom of the problem with MMS. It dragged Eldar down a bit closer to everyone else's level. However good a bandage that was, it doesn't heal the wound. Our system removes the mixed strategy element all together, bringing BFG back in line with other strategy games and putting Eldar on equal footing with the rest of the fleets.
Your assertion that a better player will overcome odds is obviously false. What if you fail every roll to hit in the game? Can you cause damage without rolling dice? Can you win without causing damage? There is a threshold in every game with stochastic outcomes that no skill can overcome. But youre in luck! Our system gives the player more control over their strategy and a lower threshold for overcoming bad dice. I think this is the effect that you're saying 'dumbs down' the game. But as it shifts the balance away from luck towards strategy, I think its smartening the game up.
Regarding adaptation, you opponent provides the adversity that leads to the need to adapt. SO are a means of adaptation. Dice just keep you from adapting. We remove the obstacle to adaptation.
I like boarding. I want to see it more prevalent. It never factored into the game before because the rules were so bad. Now that theyre decent, boarding can add an additional valid tactic. I know you guys like gunnery, but adding more working strategies makes the game more complex. IMO, the modifier chart system is unfixable because you only roll a single die.
I agree that WDIs arent really anything to plan around. Horizon confuses me by telling me ships only have any kind of explosion 1/10 times when he plays but he also spreads out, loosing shooting bonuses, specifically to avoid it. I'm just opposed to the extreme damage potential attached to the WDI regardless of its likelihood.
@Horizon
It must be nice to play Eldar! You get the effect of the manouvering SO (or better) without a test, the ability to run for celestial phenomena at any time and high Ld for disengaging.
Since you lose a lot of VPs when you allow opposing ships to disengage, we like to make it very difficult here. Fighters tend to follow crippled ships. Try disengaging by passing a Ld test modified down to a 4 or 5.
But youve got charmed dice, right?
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@Sigiroth
Part of the rationale behind streamlining BFG has been to make large and small scale games more playable (think BFG Apocalypse). The existing leadership system puts a damper on playing bigger games. It also punishes escort squadrons unfairly. This is a big reason that almost every gaming group plays at 1500pts. Its the sweet spot where the Ld rules arent burdensome. We want to open that up a bit.
Another thing about larger games is there are more ships, and usually in the same space. Its easier for ships to get crowded when fighting. More crowding means less disengaging, more dying ships and hulks, more exploding ships, and more WDIs. The chances of WDIs, or explosions in general increases very quickly as the game size increases. Chain reactions can (and have) happened and although its cool the first couple of times it gets real old real fast.
I think we are approaching a functioning chain-of-command and leadership model for BFG. You agree that movement SOs are the perogative of the admiral. I agree that LO and BFI can be the perogative of the captain. They appear to be different
The idea regarding the movement SO is that the check represents whether the crew properly prepares the ship for the manouver or not. I think the helmsman is turning anyway.
I propose a hybrid ruleset.
Movement SO are now Fleet Orders and a number of them are purchased along with the admiralty for the fleet. They are drawn from a pool just like my earlier proposal and the function works automatically. Each ship performing a FO must take a ld test all at once (like your proposed rules in BFG:R) If they fail, the ship still performs the manouver but they suffer a critical hit as the forces involved wreak havoc. A normal crit may be too much. Perhaps roll d6+1 on the crit table?
LO & BFI are now Captain Orders. The Ld test is taken per ship. If the test passes they get the effect. If it doesn't they dont. Other ships can attempt to test even if another ship fails. No penalty for failure.
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Bricks...
I play:
AdMech
Chaos (two fleets)
Tau
Craftworld Eldar
Corsair Eldar
Imperial Navy
I play against:
Chaos
Imperial Navy
Tau
Orks
Space Marines
Corsair Eldar.
Talking about false aquisations mr P. ;)
Everyone can disengage.
Andy Chambers screwed up. Everyone agrees on that point.
What? I don't agree. Andy Chambers only messed up with allowing Gav's Eldar rules into the game. He created a really good game. And considering the number of FAQ's which are really low it was a grand start. Mind you, he had things better in v1.0 then they do now in FAQ2010.
So keep that opinion to yourselves and not everyone. 'kay? ;)
Sigiroth addressed the most apparent symptom of the problem with MMS. It dragged Eldar down a bit closer to everyone else's level. However good a bandage that was, it doesn't heal the wound. Our system removes the mixed strategy element all together, bringing BFG back in line with other strategy games and putting Eldar on equal footing with the rest of the fleets.
I think you misunderstood something. Which MMS problem did Sigoroth mention?
Your assertion that a better player will overcome odds is obviously false. What if you fail every roll to hit in the game? Can you cause damage without rolling dice? Can you win without causing damage? There is a threshold in every game with stochastic outcomes that no skill can overcome. But youre in luck! Our system gives the player more control over their strategy and a lower threshold for overcoming bad dice. I think this is the effect that you're saying 'dumbs down' the game. But as it shifts the balance away from luck towards strategy, I think its smartening the game up.
Seriously, play chess.
This isn't meant to be offensive. But BFG clearly is not the game for you. I think you should look into other space battle systems and transfer the 40kfluff/modes into that system. It is possible and no problem at all.
You can change BFG rules as well. No problem. But you keep on mentioning on how you are right (from the start, which caused some too harsh comments, but it was triggered).
I am not convinced on the special order pool. It is more unrealistic then the Ld test!!
Pool: admiral has no more ideas. I'd let a commissar shoot him...
Ld: admiral has ideas but due battle heat/mocking crew/etc etc it fails.
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@Horizon
More bickering and splitting hairs.
I merely accused you of playing Eldar. Eldar have an easier time manouvering and disengaging. Was I right?
I said everyone agrees Andy Chambers screwed up. I didn't give a specific screw up because we dont all agree how he did, but everyone can point to a major error. My theory is all these errors lead back to the same cause.
If I remember correctly, the issue Sigiroth was correcting with the Eldar was that a careful player couldn't be meaningully engaged by another fleet. I think that issue was a symptom of the bad orders system. Namely that Eldar didn't suffer from it the way all other fleets do. If you fix the orders system, MMS may not be necessary. I'm saying MMS patches the system, but to fix it you have to address SO.
Go play another system? No thanks. You didn't like the Eldar rules. Youve changed the game FAR more than I am trying to now. Why didn't you just go play something else?
With regards to the order pool, in ny experience its very realistic. Have you ever commanded men in any kind of combat situation? I have a bit of experience in this regard, with mock combat. As a commander, you have to simultaneously monitor the whole battle while keeping an eye on what is going on around you. Its not easy. Green commanders get tunnel vision and command those in their immediate area and ignore everyone else. The stress/fear puts blinders on them. A veteran can keep their head and coordinate the whole despite their immediate situation. The dice pool is a representation of how well they can coordinate the fleet. This translates into how many orders they can issue per turn.
Its not that they 'run out of ideas', anymore that a failed ld test means they run out of ideas.
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@Horizon
More bickering and splitting hairs.
.
:)
I merely accused you of playing Eldar. Eldar have an easier time manouvering and disengaging. Was I right?
As easy as Necrons. Yes, Eldar can fly some further away if they have the sun at the right side. Other races can also easy disengage using Ld test and celectial phenomena to improve the roll.
I can disengage with every fleet, there was no need to isolate Eldar .
I said everyone agrees Andy Chambers screwed up. I didn't give a specific screw up because we dont all agree how he did, but everyone can point to a major error. My theory is all these errors lead back to the same cause.
What cause?
Different statement this time.
If I remember correctly, the issue Sigiroth was correcting with the Eldar was that a careful player couldn't be meaningully engaged by another fleet. I think that issue was a symptom of the bad orders system. Namely that Eldar didn't suffer from it the way all other fleets do. If you fix the orders system, MMS may not be necessary. I'm saying MMS patches the system, but to fix it you have to address SO.
Official Eldar MSM rules do not work because it allows Eldar to move in the ordnance phase. Has nothing to do with leadership.
Go play another system? No thanks. You didn't like the Eldar rules. Youve changed the game FAR more than I am trying to now. Why didn't you just go play something else?
No. We changed one fleet. You change the gaming system. The core rules.
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Bump
@Sigiroth
Part of the rationale behind streamlining BFG has been to make large and small scale games more playable (think BFG Apocalypse). The existing leadership system puts a damper on playing bigger games. It also punishes escort squadrons unfairly. This is a big reason that almost every gaming group plays at 1500pts. Its the sweet spot where the Ld rules arent burdensome. We want to open that up a bit.
Another thing about larger games is there are more ships, and usually in the same space. Its easier for ships to get crowded when fighting. More crowding means less disengaging, more dying ships and hulks, more exploding ships, and more WDIs. The chances of WDIs, or explosions in general increases very quickly as the game size increases. Chain reactions can (and have) happened and although its cool the first couple of times it gets real old real fast.
I think we are approaching a functioning chain-of-command and leadership model for BFG. You agree that movement SOs are the perogative of the admiral. I agree that LO and BFI can be the perogative of the captain. They appear to be different
The idea regarding the movement SO is that the check represents whether the crew properly prepares the ship for the manouver or not. I think the helmsman is turning anyway.
I propose a hybrid ruleset.
Movement SO are now Fleet Orders and a number of them are purchased along with the admiralty for the fleet. They are drawn from a pool just like my earlier proposal and the function works automatically. Each ship performing a FO must take a ld test all at once (like your proposed rules in BFG:R) If they fail, the ship still performs the manouver but they suffer a critical hit as the forces involved wreak havoc. A normal crit may be too much. Perhaps roll d6+1 on the crit table?
LO & BFI are now Captain Orders. The Ld test is taken per ship. If the test passes they get the effect. If it doesn't they dont. Other ships can attempt to test even if another ship fails. No penalty for failure.
@Horizon
As easy as Necrons. Yes, Eldar can fly some further away if they have the sun at the right side. Other races can also easy disengage using Ld test and celectial phenomena to improve the roll.
I can disengage with every fleet, there was no need to isolate Eldar .
Necrons are another fleet people complain about. I know several people who quit BFG alltogether because of the Necron fleet list. But that's a somewhat different issue. Necrons don't have anywhere near the manouverability and leadership that Eldar do. Do I really have to point out to you that Eldar both fly faster and are more manouverable than Necron ships? Just go read the fleet lists.
The point is that Eldar can cut and run for cover at any moment in any direction and can hide in celestial phenomena. Other fleets can't find it so easily, nor can they navigate it so safely nor do they often have the high leadership to make disengaging a foregone conclusion.
As I've said, we dispatch AC markers to stalk crippled ships to prevent them from disengaging. Each marker gives a -1 to the roll. If they haven't been able to cut and run for a gas cloud or something, that's a pretty steep negative modifier. Most of our tests to disengage are made in the 4-6 range. Odds aren't good.
Official Eldar MSM rules do not work because it allows Eldar to move in the ordnance phase. Has nothing to do with leadership.
Comparitvely, Eldar have infinite free manouvering SO without any tests. Actually, their rules are even better than this. From one perspective that's a movement problem. From another, it's a problem with the SO system. It just depends on whether you feel like rolling dice for LD makes sense and want to completely rewrite a couple of fleet lists, or if you want to tweak the SO mechanic. I think with the pool SO system and a simple rule change for the Eldar fleet we've been able to correct the issue with the Eldar without rewriting the list.
MMS addressed this issue by stranding Eldar ships inside the gunnery range of their targets. But that was such a detriment to the Eldar ships that they needed the addition of shields to be playable at all. In our system, Eldar need to burn an order to get their 2nd move in the Ordnance phase. This means the Eldar player has to plan their attacks. If they dive in and out they can't LO. They can't do it with their whole fleet every turn. And since their opponents have orders to burn as well, it means that they will be fighting a much more manouverable enemy. We bring the Eldar down but bring everyone else up to meet them as well.
No. We changed one fleet. You change the gaming system. The core rules.
Technically you changed three fleets: Corsair, Craftworld and Dark Eldar.
But you've gone farther. You were involved with the BFG:R project which changed points values, added ships to fleet lists and altered ship profiles across the board. Then at the very end BFG:R began to change core rule mechanics despite Plaxor stating that it was out of the projects purview.
Just a couple of weeks ago you posted a radical change to how AC works that goes far beyond our suggestions on the matter. And you've been discussing changing the way the hit point system works with Thinking Stone. Actually, you've been involved in quite a few attempts to radically change core rules.
This actually makes sense since you are the editor of an e-zine that publishes, among other things, changes to the core rules. Our boarding rules are inspired by an article we read in your magazine regarding changing boarding, but we toned it down quite a bit. I'm surprised you don't recognize the similarities.
Our rule changes scratch the surface of the game, for the most part. Actually, in many ways our rule set is closer to v1.0 than anything the HA or BFG:R has come up with since we can freely omit MMS if we like and plan on omitting many of the ships added to the fleet lists. Our changes can be implimented with a one page reference sheet as an addendum to the standard rulebook as printed on GWs website, and is compatible with any FAQ version you like to play with.
If anything, the core rule that we change the most is adding the order pool in place of rerolls. But that's where the secret to the sauce is.
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Necrons are another fleet people complain about. I know several people who quit BFG alltogether because of the Necron fleet list. But that's a somewhat different issue.
I see nothing wrong with Necrons tbh.
An Eldar cruiser into the sun flies 20cm. Is that slower or faster then a Chaos Cruiser?
An Eldar cruiser into the sun/abeam flies 35cm (or so). No AAF, can Necrons match that?
The point is that Eldar can cut and run for cover at any moment in any direction and can hide in celestial phenomena. Other fleets can't find it so easily, nor can they navigate it so safely nor do they often have the high leadership to make disengaging a foregone conclusion.
Eldar MMS capital ships have a turn rate of 2 times 45 degree per turn. That is not any direction.
In our system, Eldar need to burn an order to get their 2nd move in the Ordnance phase. This means the Eldar player has to plan their attacks. If they dive in and out they can't LO. They can't do it with their whole fleet every turn. And since their opponents have orders to burn as well, it means that they will be fighting a much more manouverable enemy. We bring the Eldar down but bring everyone else up to meet them as well.
This is what I call a wrong approach. So you add special orders (the 2nd move). Nah, don't like it.
I'd even would take time to approach the FFG system for Eldar and see what it does for BFG.
Just a couple of weeks ago you posted a radical change to how AC works that goes far beyond our suggestions on the matter. And you've been discussing changing the way the hit point system works with Thinking Stone. Actually, you've been involved in quite a few attempts to radically change core rules.
Hit point system? Could be, I talk a lot..
The AC thing. Well since everyone has some sort of complaint about AC I am allowed to think along? Right?
This actually makes sense since you are the editor of an e-zine that publishes, among other things, changes to the core rules. Our boarding rules are inspired by an article we read in your magazine regarding changing boarding, but we toned it down quite a bit. I'm surprised you don't recognize the similarities.
Vaaish is the editor, I was. I am on the team though. But an editor has nothing to do on what he thinks is good for the game. Really, I have added articles I didn't agree with, but that is no problem. It was not my task to judge as an editor.
And indeed I can't remember every article from the head. lol
Our rule changes scratch the surface of the game, for the most part.
The Special Order system & Leadership Rolls is quite integral to the game.
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@Sigiroth
It's Sigoroth, not Sigiroth.
Part of the rationale behind streamlining BFG has been to make large and small scale games more playable (think BFG Apocalypse). The existing leadership system puts a damper on playing bigger games. It also punishes escort squadrons unfairly. This is a big reason that almost every gaming group plays at 1500pts. Its the sweet spot where the Ld rules arent burdensome. We want to open that up a bit.
Eh, this change is not the only way of dealing with larger games. The randomness and Chain of Command can be kept through the addition of officers which can issue orders outside the chain of command. Presumably this is an act of delegation. A fleet admiral trusting to his commodores and rear-admirals to lead their squadrons. In effect this would work in a similar mechanic to purchasing more orders. The upshot is that this problem can be fixed without resorting to auto-passed orders.
Another thing about larger games is there are more ships, and usually in the same space. Its easier for ships to get crowded when fighting. More crowding means less disengaging, more dying ships and hulks, more exploding ships, and more WDIs. The chances of WDIs, or explosions in general increases very quickly as the game size increases. Chain reactions can (and have) happened and although its cool the first couple of times it gets real old real fast.
I don't think it "gets real old real fast". I'm quite happy with the amount and in fact argue for a modifier to the catastrophic damage table proportional to the amount of damage in excess of the minimum necessary to force a roll on the table.
I think we are approaching a functioning chain-of-command and leadership model for BFG. You agree that movement SOs are the perogative of the admiral. I agree that LO and BFI can be the perogative of the captain. They appear to be different
The idea regarding the movement SO is that the check represents whether the crew properly prepares the ship for the manouver or not. I think the helmsman is turning anyway.
I do not. The CTNH order does not allow you to turn at double your turn rate. It allows you to execute an extra turn. This turn is subject to all the restrictions of the 1st turn, including minimum move distance. So a cruiser would have to move 10cm, turn, then move another 10cm before being allowed to turn again. If the order is not properly executed then you simply don't turn the required amount.
I propose a hybrid ruleset.
Movement SO are now Fleet Orders and a number of them are purchased along with the admiralty for the fleet. They are drawn from a pool just like my earlier proposal and the function works automatically. Each ship performing a FO must take a ld test all at once (like your proposed rules in BFG:R) If they fail, the ship still performs the manouver but they suffer a critical hit as the forces involved wreak havoc. A normal crit may be too much. Perhaps roll d6+1 on the crit table?
LO & BFI are now Captain Orders. The Ld test is taken per ship. If the test passes they get the effect. If it doesn't they dont. Other ships can attempt to test even if another ship fails. No penalty for failure.
I take it you mean RO and BFI, not LO and BFI.
Anyway, I have thought about this idea before. The only thing I like about your pool of orders idea is that it better shows an admirals worth than the current system. Ld bonuses and re-rolls don't really give a good representation of admiral ability. But that's all I like. I don't like auto-passed orders and I don't like limited orders.
Using Ld tests to turn the decision making process into a mixed strategy system isn't necessary. There isn't a Nash Equilibrium to disrupt here. Its a non cooperative zero-sum game. And it has stochastic resluts. Combining mixed strategy and stochastic outcomes is just plain bad design, especially for a strategy game. It creates a system where a player's decision making is overridden by chance. Its so bad a combination that its not even found in gambling games.
Well, given that mixed strategy involves a probability distribution over possible actions then it seems that by definition there's stochastic results. As for no gambling games with decisions being overridden by chance, you must not play Texas Hold'em. If you have pocket aces and manage to get all-in against a single opponent then you've made the best possible set of decisions. In this case you've defeated your opponent but your good tactics, decisions and choices can be overruled by chance. Similarly splitting a pair of 8s in blackjack may give you the best chance of winning but then end up worse than if you had not.
Also, the Ld test is not to disrupt a Nash equilibrium (which would apply just as easily to a non-cooperative zero-sum game anyway). Instead it's to represent that not everything goes according to the whims of the admiral. This is a representation of reality, not a mechanic from game theory designed to augment player vs player interaction. The special orders in BFG represent things that are not guaranteed. You can control down to the centimetre how far you will move your ship within the normal minimums and maximums of a given ship. It is sometimes possible to go beyond these, but it's not a given. If you want to have a guaranteed response from your ships, simply don't put them on special orders. Now you will know exactly what they're capable of.
Consider the case of wanting to put your entire fleet onto AAF. With limited orders this will likely result in a guaranteed split fleet, as you have not enough orders for all ships but those that do have orders will go on them. On the other hand, with a Ld based test it's possible to get your entire fleet on orders. It's also possible to have a catastrophic breakdown as some captains await others to move and seeing that they're not (ie, first failed) thinking perhaps the order had been countermanded or being unable to AAF due to formational reasons, etc (so breakdown of Chain of Command).
So while you could get around the RO & BFI peculiarities via a mixed system (LO & movement orders from order pool, BFI & RO rolled against Ld as and when necessary) I still prefer the leadership based system, for its potential for success, representation of potential failure, and for the forced adaptation to unexpected situations. Your system I like only for its clearer representation of admiral ability.
As for the MMS situation, the problem there is a breaking of the abstraction of the game. BFG is a turn based game and the ability to move after firing allowed for the possibility of avoiding return fire. This made no sense since presumably the enemy would not wait their turn to fire. Even with some sort of limitation that reduced the incidence of this there would still be the potential, which should not be. In practice the Eldar were too strong and too weak. Too strong because they couldn't be targeted and too weak whenever they were. They should've had shields from the outset.
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Just read this whole thread in a day. I'll admit to only skimming some of the more "heated" posts. Here's what I think of your ideas Phthisis:
Special Orders
Buying a number of SO per turn is novel and interesting. I agree with you that in bigger games it becomes more likely that you'll fail a SO check in the normal rules, and I can see your rules overcoming that. I like the concept of buying your command structure. I'd say it's no less or more valid than the normal rules. It's just a matter of preference.
I'm not too keen on the fixed Ld though. Where a bigger ship should suffer (such as navigating Asteroid fields) there is already a mechanic to represent that. Bigger ships tend to be more important and so would have better command staff. If you're worried about random leadership in one-off games (which can be a real game-breaker in small games), why don't you allow players to buy leadership rather than rolling? (e.g. roll Ld for free, Ld 7 for X points, Ld 8 for Y points, if you want Ld 9 you must risk the roll).
I'd say BFI should still use the old system though, in that a ship must pass a Ld check to brace and it wouldn't use up a SO from your pool.
I see no reason for BFI to affect the critical table. I know how irritating it can be when a lucky shot does a hull breach, but it's as likely to happen to your opponent as you, and shouldn't happen that often to warrant a rule. If you really don't like the worst criticals why not say all critical can be repaired, except bulkhead collapse which does 1 point of damage, and hull breach which does d3 (did I get those the right way around)?
Turrets and AC
Sometimes (rarely) deciding whether to shoot torpedoes or bombers isn't a no-brainer. If your change isn't going to make a big difference, why make the change? If the problem is your opponent cheating then no amount of rules changes will help you - you need to play against other people.
I can see your bomber rules are simpler and I can appreciate that. Teaching bomber and turret suppression rules to a beginner can be one of the most confusing parts of the rules. But I still like being able to use my fighter to suppress turrets. Your idea of just using fighters in their own waves flying ahead doesn't sound like it will work (though it may do, I've not tried it). How do you stop your opponent bypassing your fighters by just flying round them?
Boarding
I too wish boarding was more viable. Your method is easy to remember and doesn't require looking up a table. But boarding happens so infrequently that taking the time to find the table once in every few games is hardly a big deal. A simpler approach would be to modify the boarding table so that the extreme dice roll (attacker rolls 1 and defender rolls 6 so that defender wins) doesn't produce such an extreme result.
Warp Drive Implosion
It should be rare that these hurt you because the average range is only ~10cm and even a battleship should do on average 6 hits (but most things will do less). The worst case is bad, but usually it wont be that bad, especially if you brace. If the problem is people deliberately triggering explosions by shooting hulks you should be able to avoid that easily by maneuvering away. If people are using it as a tactic against you, then use it as a tactic against them. Again, this comes up relatively rarely so its not worth the rules change.
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Shouldn't this thread be in the experimental rules section?
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@Sigoroth
Well, if it all comes down to liking our rules or not, we've done a pretty good job. I submitted these rules here for fire-proofing, well knowing a certain group would find any fault they could and would never approve. So far, there are zero issues on the table regarding mechanics or game balance after weeks of attack.
I haven't played Texas-Hold'em. I don't like to gamble. Probably because I can work out the math and theory.
Mixed Strategy in game theory is randomization in the decision making process, like dice telling you whether you can go on SO or not. It doesn't apply to drawing cards in poker. Stochastic results reffers specifically to randomization in the effect of decision making, like deciding to shoot and rolling dice to see how many cause damage. The draw is referred to as the 'state'. Adding mixed strategy to Texas Hold-Em woul be something along the lines of randomizing the betting process. For example, if instead of deciding to bet, call or fold, each player had to roll 2d6 and compared the score to a chart to see how they would act. 2-5 fold, 6&7 bet $5, 8&9 bet $10, 10-12 call. Alternately it could be another party that can't see your cards making your decision for you. Sound like fun?
Combining mixed strategy with stochastic results means youre randomizing the decision and the result of thr decision. Chaos reigns. I cant think of any other strategy game that randomizes decision making, or even a board game beyond those made for kids under 10. Mixed strategy is only intended as a theoretical place holder, not an actual game component.
Zero-sum and non-cooperative does not mean there isn't a Nash Equillibrium. The fact that BFG isn't a finite game means there isn't a NE. But being zero-sum competative does make the addition of a 3rd party decision maker (chance) completely absurd from a theory perspective.
@Dan
Thanks for reading & commenting!
My fixed Ld values are not a representation of the ability of the command staff. Its an abstraction kf the difficulty in coordinating large numbers of crew and the difficulties inherent in that particular tonnage of vessel. Even a crack command crew will find it difficult to manouver a battleship into ramming position or through an asteroid field, not because they aren't highly skilled, but because battleships turn slowly and cant squeeze through the same gap a cruiser or escort can. Likewise, getting 20k crew to turn off the lights is inherently easier than getting 100k people to do the same, regardless of captain skill.
Nevertheless, the current system doesn't bear out bigger ships getting better Ld due to better commanders. A cruiser, BB and escort all have the same chance of getting Ld6. I'm just assuming all captains are competent. Although I consider Ld changes fair game in campaign. The static Ld is devised for one-off games.
There is a mechanic for modifying difficulty based on ship size, like for ramming, but it's half-assed and allows for guaranteed success (Roll 1d6 vs Ld6) or makes a mockery of even decent Ld values ( 81/216 = 37.5% success). Although some may like that modification system, its too wild for my taste.
I can see BFI existing outside the SO structure, but it removes a layer of strategy from the purchased order system. Still, I'm willing to make this change.
Bulkhead collapse is D6 hull breach is D3. Theyre pretty severe but rare enough to happen only once per game, so it won't likely balance out. For me, this could get cut as well, but I didn't write these rules alone. The argument here was the same as behind eliminating WDI and as bracing involved closing bulkheads and blast doors to limit damage, a hull breach or bulkhead collapse wouldn't be a serious event. Its easy enough to change the rationale for the damage though. Hull breach becomes a Magazine Explosion and Bulkhead Collapse becomes Plasma Reactor breached....
My feeling on the turret target selection was if the roll doesn't matter, why roll it? It mattered in v1.0 when you could get swamped by massive waves, but now nobody can put out that kind of ordnance simultaneously. My personal preference is to leave it out. Even if it isn't a no-brainer in certain rare situations, the choice will have no significant effect on the game. That and everyone seemed to be clamoring for a nerf to ordnance. This is a small issue I'd cave on if it was a deal breaker.
Boarding doesn't happen often in game now because the rules make it a terrible tactic, even for fleets meant to excell at it. I want Orks & Nids attempting to board like you'd expect. Boarding happens a lot more when one side is actually trying to. Weve been getting 2 or 3 boarding actions per game using ships of all sizes.
Changing the modifiers was the first option on the table to fix boarding. Thing is, the modifiers werent the problem. The problem is the one die mechanic. Nothing is more random than a single die cast. In order to control that one die to make a reasonable result, you have to make modifiers so severe that you guarantee success or failure a lot of the time. Adding multiple dice gives you a nice probability distribution that can be tweaked with modifiers.
Removing WDI isnt worth it around 1500pts. Around 3000pts it makes a bit more sense. At 5000 it makes even more.
Anyway, that's our rationale behind the rules. I am open to suggestions. You'll not find me as intractable as some.
Anyways, thats my thinking on the issue
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Well, if it all comes down to liking our rules or not, we've done a pretty good job. I submitted these rules here for fire-proofing, well knowing a certain group would find any fault they could and would never approve. So far, there are zero issues on the table regarding mechanics or game balance after weeks of attack.
Eh what. ;) weeks of attack.... nice way to put it. lol
Mixed Strategy in game theory is randomization in the decision making process, like dice telling you whether you can go on SO or not.
Like running out of a pool tells you on to order or not. ;)
edit: autopassing special orders is not realistic either.
Nevertheless, the current system doesn't bear out bigger ships getting better Ld due to better commanders. A cruiser, BB and escort all have the same chance of getting Ld6. I'm just assuming all captains are competent. Although I consider Ld changes fair game in campaign. The static Ld is devised for one-off games.
That is where different views apply.
There is a mechanic for modifying difficulty based on ship size, like for ramming, but it's half-assed and allows for guaranteed success (Roll 1d6 vs Ld6) or makes a mockery of even decent Ld values ( 81/216 = 37.5% success). Although some may like that modification system, its too wild for my taste.
Ld should never be determined upon ship size.
Removing WDI isnt worth it around 1500pts. Around 3000pts it makes a bit more sense. At 5000 it makes even more.
Weird logic. I'd say. Or do people cram 5000pts vs 5000pts on a 120x120 table?
Anyway, that's our rationale behind the rules. I am open to suggestions. You'll not find me as intractable as some.
lol at the last remark. Please.... ;)
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@Sigoroth
Well, if it all comes down to liking our rules or not, we've done a pretty good job. I submitted these rules here for fire-proofing, well knowing a certain group would find any fault they could and would never approve. So far, there are zero issues on the table regarding mechanics or game balance after weeks of attack.
Yeah, it can work as a system, it has some merit. I just don't think it's preferable.
I haven't played Texas-Hold'em. I don't like to gamble. Probably because I can work out the math and theory.
Mixed Strategy in game theory is randomization in the decision making process, like dice telling you whether you can go on SO or not. It doesn't apply to drawing cards in poker. Stochastic results reffers specifically to randomization in the effect of decision making, like deciding to shoot and rolling dice to see how many cause damage. The draw is referred to as the 'state'. Adding mixed strategy to Texas Hold-Em woul be something along the lines of randomizing the betting process. For example, if instead of deciding to bet, call or fold, each player had to roll 2d6 and compared the score to a chart to see how they would act. 2-5 fold, 6&7 bet $5, 8&9 bet $10, 10-12 call. Alternately it could be another party that can't see your cards making your decision for you. Sound like fun?
The process of applying a leadership test to the special order in effect turns the pure strategy into a mixed strategy and provides a pretty good reasoning for doing so. That is, you wanted to do something but failed. Most mixed strategies have no good reasoning. However, it is not truly a mixed strategy. It only has the effect of one. Really it is a pure strategy. Just like deciding to blow up a specific target ship is a pure strategy. And just like in that example, you could fail. A true example of a mixed strategy scenario for special orders might simply be to roll the special order dice to see what the ship does. In this case it's a randomisation. In the game it's really a decision with dichotomous results. So it is much more like going all-in with pocket aces and being beaten on the flop than it is having the decision of how to bet being randomised or decided by others.
It is also not the only aspect of strategy. There are the choices of positioning and targeting, as well as sequence of fire, from both within a ship and within the fleet. So a failure in the special order decision making process does impact on your other choices, but it is not catastrophic and adaptation to the vagaries of fate is the lot of any admiral.
Zero-sum and non-cooperative does not mean there isn't a Nash Equillibrium. The fact that BFG isn't a finite game means there isn't a NE. But being zero-sum competative does make the addition of a 3rd party decision maker (chance) completely absurd from a theory perspective.
Presumably game theory focuses on the player vs player interaction whereas what we have here is more of a simulation.
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Most people associate Ld with command staff skill rather than hull size, and you'll have a hard time working against that ingrained idea. I don't agree with you that the ability of a commander to control his ship will depend on the size of the ship. It makes sense to a certain extent (I do follow your logic) but I also think that bigger ships would just have more command staff to compensate. Ultimately how well the captain has drilled his crew and how much discipline he has instilled will be far more important than the ship size.
The current system for accounting for hull size in ramming etc. can lead to some certainties, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I also thought that was one of the main motivations for these rules anyway (more certainty).
Having to reserve SO for BFI does add another element of strategy. You've play tested it so I'll take your word on it. I just think being unable to brace because your pool is empty is much worse than not being able to go on any other SO. You decide when your ships need to use all other SO's, but it's your enemies shooting which determines when you need to brace.
I can see how bracing would reduce the severity of criticals, but that's already accounted for in the brace save anyway. You can imagine that the hit you just braced against did actually go critical and cause a hull breach, but because you were braced the affect on the ship is negligible.
The turrets issue is just a matter of personal rules "aesthetics" really. You think if a rule is insignificant it shouldn't be there, I think if a rule is insignificant there's no need to change it. It doesn't really matter either way because it's insignificant!
1d6 roll is very random, but remember both players are making a roll, so it's more like a 2d6 roll. The most extreme results only have a 1/36 chance. If you really want to make it less random you could re-write the table so that each player rolls 2d6, then the most extreme results would be 1/(36^2).
As for removing WDI, bigger point games should be on bigger tables, making the WDI effect game-size independent. Also, last time I played a 4000 point game it took over 12 hours. How often do you play 3000 or 5000 point games?
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@Sigoroth
Yeah, it can work as a system, it has some merit.
Thanks!
Presumably game theory focuses on the player vs player interaction whereas what we have here is more of a simulation.
Well, game theory is intended to focus on decision making, but youre basically right. I can respect your desire to make BFG a simulation. I hope you can respect my desire to make BFG a better game. We can't reconcile the two only because your realistic quirks are my design glitches.
@Dan
Most people associate Ld with command staff skill rather than hull size, and you'll have a hard time working against that ingrained idea.
I know, although the rulebook says the Ld values are a representation of crew skill, not command ability. A lot of people also argue that better command staff gets assigned to bigger ships. This is not borne out in the rules system either as all ships have the same random chance of rolling bad on the leadership table.
Ultimately how well the captain has drilled his crew and how much discipline he has instilled will be far more important than the ship size.
I see your point. Purchasing Ld values, as you suggested, would be the way to go then. And use modifiers as appropriate (BB navigating asteroids) as +/- to the roll.
I also thought that was one of the main motivations for these rules anyway (more certainty).
Certainty isn't a goal. More control for the player, ease of play and a system that works equally at all points levels. Increasing predictability is a factor in a couple of rule changes, but never to the point of certainty.
Having to reserve SO for BFI does add another element of strategy. You've play tested it so I'll take your word on it. I just think being unable to brace because your pool is empty is much worse than not being able to go on any other SO. You decide when your ships need to use all other SO's, but it's your enemies shooting which determines when you need to brace.
We also disallow the ship/squadron from going on SO the following turn.
That way you can't just buy an automatic save.
I can see the point about captains ordering the brace, not admirals. But having to save SO die to do it is a great mechanic! I wish there were another way to create the same effect.
As for removing WDI, bigger point games should be on bigger tables, making the WDI effect game-size independent. Also, last time I played a 4000 point game it took over 12 hours. How often do you play 3000 or 5000 point games?
What size table for each size game? If I play a smaller game, should I use a smaller table? Where will I find tables to fit the size game we want to play?
Ships have the same effective range regardless of game size. A bigger table just means more turns of movement before you can finally engage. Even on a larger table, strategy winds up pushing all those ships close together anyway. Also, some mission's deployment rules don't allow spreading your fleet out. The ships have to converge and so larger games lead to greater ship density. Greater density means more ships within explosion range. No way around it.
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"Certainty" was a bad word to choose on my part. I know you meant "less random". My mistake.
The traditional 6' by 4' table seems to work for games up to 2000 a side. Ones games are getting bigger than that it helps if the table scales up too. I find you want more space to manoeuvre. Finding bigger tables can be an issue though, so usually you just have to make do. I can see what you mean about larger games leading to larger ship densities as ships eventually converge. I think my original comment about WDI being game size independent was over-simplified (i.e. wrong). I still don't think WDI needs changing though. It's still relatively rare, and only the worst WDI's will do lots of damage.
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Explain how changing SO disrupts game balance, but do it in my thread. I don't think you have a leg to stand on here. It better be good.
I was responding to your claim that it IMPROVES balance between fleets here:
You may find them more fun and you'll definately find the game more balanced.
Your rules affect all fleets equally which does nothing to change balance between fleets. For example, if you have two glasses of milk, one full and the other at half. They aren't balanced because both have different amounts of milk in them. If you take the same amount of milk from each, you haven't addressed the balance at all. To do that you need to take milk from the glass that has more milk in it. When you change the core rules as you have in your proposal, it affects all the fleets (outside of eldar) the same and leaves the relative balance between fleets unchanged.
Im offering an alternative for players who want a game based more on strategy than luck. Who are you to tell people they have to.play BFG how you want them to play?
I will agree with the statement that you are offering an alternative. I do not agree that your changes change the game to be more strategic. It requires a more flexible and resilient strategic solution to account for the luck variable and remain successful. Your rules simply attempt to allow rigid strategy to be more successful. To answer your question, GW is the one telling people how they have to play BFG through the rules they created. In order to provide relevant advice, the assumption is made that people follow those rules. Further, most players find the rule well constructed. I don't think it's too much to ask that advice be given in relation to what the official rules dictate rather than suggesting that the game itself be changed to give, in your case a rather dubious, advantage.
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@Vaaish
Thanks for posting!
So this is what you meant. BFG as written is not a balanced game. The basis for my argument that our SO system makes the game more balanced rests on the fact that Leadership effects every fleet differently. Ld9 means something different for IN than it does for Chaos, than it does for Eldar. I think that Tricksticks problem vs Chaos is a good example of what I mean. The IN fleet has some great advantages over Chaos, and those can be leveraged by the IN player to achieve victory. The issue is that all of these advantages require the use of SO. Torpedos and AC need to RO constantly through the battle. Ramming can be very effective but that requires both an AAF test and a Ld test to hit the target ship. Chaos, on the other hand, isn't as dependent on SO as the IN fleet is. They can rely on long range gunnery, which doesn't require special tests. A good example of this is the Dictator vs the Devestation. The Dictator is a more expensive ship and can cause a lot of damage, but if it fails to RO it's only 6WBs. The Devestation on the other hand can still contribute effective fire even if it can't RO, but it's less expensive. The points values obviously don't take into account the effect of not being able to RO because of an unlucky Ld roll.
Our SO system allows a player to RO as needed, so these ships live up to their potential as reflected in the point value. As the IN fleet relies quite a bit on ordnance and maneuvering to be effective, the ability to use SOs as needed is a much greater value to the IN fleet than it is to the Chaos fleet. It may not be perfectly balanced, but I hope you can see how it brings the two fleets closer in balance.
This SO system can also fix the issues with Eldar. We require Eldar ships to burn a SO in order to use their 2nd move (using the original MSM rules). In the original rules they could dart all over the board, staying out of gunnery range and RO their ordnance very reliably. Now they have to choose between their movement and reloading. They also can't dart in and out with their whole fleet, so they need to plan their attacks better than before.
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BFG as written is not a balanced game.
I disagree. You state it as fact where it should be in your opinion. ;)
This SO system can also fix the issues with Eldar. We require Eldar ships to burn a SO in order to use their 2nd move (using the original MSM rules). In the original rules they could dart all over the board, staying out of gunnery range and RO their ordnance very reliably. Now they have to choose between their movement and reloading. They also can't dart in and out with their whole fleet, so they need to plan their attacks better than before.
I disagree. I do not like that aproach for Eldar.