Then that would allow a re-roll on the check that added to the check on the attack that is governed by the Command skill.. My original point was that a dedicated carrier vessel wouldn't NEED a voidmaster and that's still true. The voidmaster would simply be icing on the cake.

Normally, going without a voidmaster PC in RT is a huge disadvantage.

This is true. I am, however, all about providing options to the players- making the voidmaster less vital is a plus, as far as I'm concerned.

Agreed.

How much carrier focus can you really get away with, though? Assume I'm asking this as an ignorant. Anything in my launch bay other than bombers can't likely harm a big void ship, so having some guns would be beneficial, and then the Void Master might sneak back around. Having a big carrier, armed with a prow nova cannon or torpedo tubes, probably a potent lance, though, to better keep your ship-to-ship profile smaller, and keep your ship from obscuring your enemy from half of your fighters seems cool, but I sort of see the carrier getting nuked, unless you have other ships, like real carriers might have. This may very well have been an inferred 9your RT and their carrier have escort ships with you) by everyone else, but I am checking. My favorite RT invention is the Lord-Captain of his dynasty's flagship, the Hammerfall (Dictator-class Cruiser), and I still never considered going all bays. Korvallus's ship has most of the makings of a fleet command vessel, where his attack craft can help support other ships in a fleet, while the other ships make up for its decreased ordnance output, and it has its own guns to assist, or to fight lone enemies, if it isn't escorted; Korvallus rarely goes out anymore, but has escorts for when it matters, the joys of infinite money

How much "carrier" can a carrier vessel really push, alone, before it becomes easy pickings for the other cruisers to beat up, while its AC swarms literally just piss them off, and scratch the paint. I have ItS and BFK, but never really saw bombers truly hurting similar class ships to their carrier, or fighters doing anything other than guarding said bombers, and shooting down torps. I can easily accept if I've been wrong, and loving carrier ships, would love some education in that field.

A pocket carrier running solo is risky, and works best with a squadron, yes. However, use that ship I used as an example earlier- a pure carrier Star Galleon complete with a Hold Landing bay. If your source of Command has a total modifier to command of 50- which is low- and you roll a 50 to hit you'll almost certainly deal more than 70 damage at a single strike. You'd only count armour once and you'd ignore void shields, so we're looking at a cruiser that is likely to one-shot anything frigate sized or smaller, and if you roll a 20 or better (or have a modified Command of 80) then you deal 12d10+48, for an average of 114 damage. That'll cripple an Exorcist class Grand Cruiser in a single attack run. If you have Repulsor voids, you can hide in nebulae and rings without much difficulty, and as a carrier you have first-strike capability- Starhawks have a range of 36 VU, unless you decide to invest in long-range fuel tanks or something.

This assumes alpha-strikes, of course, and also assumes the improved Pilots Chamber. You could just as easily break up your flights into penny-packets, distributing the pain across multiple targets.

Fighters deal no damage in this context, fighters are not helpful except as escorts and Combat Void Patrol- basically performing active auguries from a distance- it's not permissible RAW (as far as I recall) but many GMs will allow you to swap Fighter squadrons out in favor of bombers.

It's interesting to note that the Star Galleon makes a better pure carrier than a Dictator , because the Prow component on the Dictator can't (RAW) be a launch bay- they're supposed to be port/starboard mount only.

While the typical battlewagon will probably deal more damage in a sustained fight, the carrier has first strike capability, force projection, and much higher potential burst damage.

Now, let's consider your Dictator versus my Star Galleon. Assume comparable crews, and no usage of Ahead Flank. Your vessel is faster and significantly tougher. You want to close the distance, I want to keep it open. I run, you chase. You will close at a rate of 1VU per strategic turn- you will catch me if you desire. At a range of 22 hexes, I flush my hangar bays, and toss 10 squadrons of bombers with 10 squadrons of escorting fighters into your teeth- you're chasing me, so they close the distance quickly, while I'm outside the engagement range of your own bombers. I'm probably also outside of your engagement range with Macrocannon and lance, and you decide that I have sharper teeth than you want to deal with and choose to disengage. We both turn for one turn, and now are opening the range at one hex per turn. You launch your small craft defensively, but they are handily destroyed by my horde of interceptors, and my bombers come in to maul you. I might lose a squadron to turret fire, then make a poor attack roll- I only get 5 Degrees of success, dealing 5d10+20 damage, for around 25 damage after armour reduction and a 1d5 roll on the Crit table.

By the time you have opened the engagement range enough to get away, I will have probably gotten at least one more attack run on you, possibly crippling your ship. If I get lucky with that first crit, your day is ruined and you'd better strike the colours and ask for surrender.

Does that follow? Someone please point out any errors here. The biggest problem with small craft is their speed, but I have an active house rule that reduces their duration from six turns to three, but doubles their speed- this makes them more useful in chase scenarios, but a raider or frigate with a good ahead flank roll or two can still get away from bombers.

As an aside, torpedo bombers are even scarier, and the Pilot's chamber doesn't even affect them.

Cool. How much of this is RAW, and how much is Mathhammer, or some other house ruling? I'm good with many such things, but I don't want to read the book, and just sit there going "how did he do the **** he said he did to me?"

It sounds like Annamaarth just gave it to you RAW.

How do you see torpedo bombers as scarier Annamaarth? I see problems with them. Yes, the torpedos are wicked, yes your target doesn't get to shoot their turrets at your torpedo bombers, but still the squadrons are so small that even 2 hits effectively removes them as a fighting force. Now I don't think void combat patrol can intercept the torpedo bombers but fighters launched for interception can. Combat void patrol could, however, intercept the torpedos, and those in turn can't be escorted. All this supposes that the defenders have some sort of fighters launched, of course, but if they do have interceptors available the torpedo bombers seem quite nerfed, whereas the bombers are good in all situations, plus can lend some ground support.

I don't have my book with me, but don't fighters alone have an endurance of 6 turns, while bombers only 4?

And Annamaarth, our newest party is doing exactly what you just said. We have a galleon with 4 landing bays. I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works out. Replacements will be hard to acquire and we are a lone ship with no guns.

The other way around: fighters have 4, bombers have 6.

EDIT: never mind

Cool. How much of this is RAW, and how much is Mathhammer, or some other house ruling? I'm good with many such things, but I don't want to read the book, and just sit there going "how did he do the **** he said he did to me?"

Actually, I don't think Mathhammer affects small craft for most people. The only change I have in place here is the "double effect" pilot's chamber.

Errant Knight- Let me know how they do! I hope they have the profit factor to support, because it is a high-upkeep deployment. I also suggest adopting some houserule improving the Pilot's Chamber or allowing a small craft munitorium. I also suggest doubling speed and halving endurance, so that bombers can catch a Grand Cruiser with a techmarine doing Ahead Flank rolls! Speed six my hairy *grumble mumble*

I'm trying to picture how you're going about this attack Annamaarth. On Turn 1 you launch 10 bomber squadrons, that stick close to your carrier. You launched the bombers because they have greater endurance. On Turn 2 you ready your fighters. On Turn 3 you launch your fighters and they escort the bombers toward their target. At this point your bombers and fighters both have 3 more turns of endurance and 18 VUs at the bombers' speed. Is this correct?

After this, you have the ships turning for one turn. Does this assume they both performed Come to a New Heading successfully? Because that now puts them broadside to broadside and running parallel to each other (remember that they're both cruisers).

This does nothing to your math, but I see the battle developing differently. The Dictator should probably have not engaged your super-carrier. It won't be able to turn away in time. It's already toast.

I'm actually playing in this one, not GMing it. Our GM is experienced, but not in RT, and he wants to stick by RAW as much as possible. He's adopting mathhammer but I doubt we'll see any small craft munitorium any time soon, or improved pilot chambers, and we still need to get a small craft repair deck. We just couldn't swing it on the starting vessel at start. We have 1 squadron per landing bay strength point (and already acquired 2 more squadrons) and we don't have the cargo landing bay, so we are running with 4 fighter and 6 bomber squadrons...and no guns. It's likely to be nip and tuck in our first endeavor.

Assuming all bombers get through, which is likely since we have the fighters to soak up the hits, that will be 6 squadrons hitting at Command 70 + 25 (6 squadrons) + 5 (flight bridge) + 5 (first officer) + 10 (rt bonus) = 115. That gives us a range from 2-8 hits, depending on the dice roll, with an average roll generating 7 hits at 1d10 + 4. Since we are using mathhammer, each hit will have to test versus armor, and there's no way of knowing what that will be, other than it will be between 0 and 8, so the average hit should penetrate. If we were engaging that Dictator in the scenario we'd (on the average of course), score 6 hits, a crit, and deal 11 hits to hull integrity. On the plus side it's unlikely any attack craft would be damaged. While the Dictator has a turret rating of 3, it's dice roll is dependent on the Crew Rating for BS, not on its chief gunner, and that will be at -40 for the escorting squadrons. Of course, all this hasn't taken into account the Dictator's fighter squadrons, but if we run into something like that out of the starting gate we will certainly be in trouble.

Like I said, it will be interesting. I expect setbacks.

Oh, does the Mathhammer hack affect bombers as Macrocannon? I wouldn't have done that, but that's okay.

I was assuming PC-quality characters on each vessel, similar crews, so on and so forth, and assuming that the Conquest would be able to suck the Dictator in to well inside the cruiser's engagement range. And no, the idea was to flush all small craft simultaneously- the fighters would still have the range to cover the bombers all the way to the target, unless I miss my guess.

So, assuming both have similar ahead flanks and come to new headings, the Dictator is going to eat an awful lot of damage. If, however, you do adopt the Mathhammer-nerfs-Bombers stance (which cripples bombers just as much as Mathhammer cripples the full-macrocannon builds), then a full damage attack run would be likely to only deal 23-27 damage, but you would still get the 1d5 crit. I would personally want to find a way to improve the damage of bombers, since RAW they seem to be rather worse than Macrocannon, and nerfing them the same time you nerf those same macrocannon seems silly. To that end, I'd suggest +1 to damage and a minimum damage of 1 regardless of armour. In the case of that Dictator, that boosts damage from 23-27 to 35-38. Solid, but no longer one-shot crippling.

In the case of your ship, with 6 squadrons, dealing Mathhammered damage without modifications, well... 11 or 12 hull damage sounds about right, which is miserable when compared to Macrocannon+lance. Adding +1 damage and assuming a minumum of one damage, that goes up to 18 or 19 damage or so- which is still nothing great. Hm. Not really sure how to balance Mathhammered bomber damage.

And no, the idea was to flush all small craft simultaneously

And no, the idea was to flush all small craft simultaneously

Then your first problem is right there: you're launching 20 squadrons of small craft in a single round from 10 points of launch capaciy.

For some reason I thought you could launch 2 squadrons per point of Hanger Bay Str. Anyhooot, it's a moot point because whether he launches the bombers first and then the fighter escorts, he still has 4 rounds to get to the target (at a speed of the bombers, with the target coming to them), and attack. So say the bombers and escorts get there in three rounds because the target stops. Well, that is still a attack with 10 bombers and 10 escorts that can negate Turret Rating's.

If he happens to launch the fighter escorts first, then it's possibly 3 rounds to get to the target, with maybe a attack with fighter escorts as the turn ends and they have to return.

Note: I can't remember if the escorts can return on their own after their fuel/ammo runs out, while the bombers still stay and fight, or if they both have to return together. Can't remember if I made a GM call and allowed it, or if it wasn't specified in the books as not being allowed. So you might be able to add about 3 more attacks (to both above examples) with just the bombers.

This is where splitting up into multiple squadrons becomes better. Each Squadron can hit up to 3 times, plus one per bonus squadron. In squadrons of 3, you could get +10 to hit and be able to deal 5 x 1d10+4.

Even with Mathhammer, and resolving each of those hits as 1d10+16, you'll do a respectable amount of damage. And if you get 4 hits you will crit as well, which is nice.

Mathhammer really just incentivizes you to use more squadrons. Yes, you don't combine the damage but the first squadron can still make 3 hits.

Having reread the entirety of Mathhammer, I do think the idea was NOT to count each hit against armor separately, but to possibly decrease the damage done by each hit, it's not quite clear.

It's an interesting dilemma. Supposing that carrier battles are trying to recreate some Pacific conflict, circa '42-'43, then bombers should be taking considerable casualties, but a single well-placed hit can inflict catastrophic damage while every hit does significant damage.

See, you've both improved the situation from the Conquest 's perspective already. The Mathhammer damage change seems to turn the carrier concept into a crit-seeker which... can be useful. I still feel that the damage of bombers should be increased slightly, or that some other benefit should be given to them in order to ensure they aren't just still worse than macrocannon against battlewagons.

The problem is that bombers are speed 6, which means that they should be most effective against big ships. Mathhammer, conversely, incentivizes attacking relatively lightly armoured ships.

I suppose you could just turn your conquest into a commerce raider, but that just seems underwhelming.

I was addressing bomber squadrons specifically, Annamaarth. Sorry for not being clearer. The effects on macrocannon are well-detailed in that thread.

The problem with splitting the squadrons is that you'll take atrocious casualties in your bomber squadrons. Take that Dictator example. It has a very good turret rating of 3. With a competent crew each incoming attack will face 30 + 15 = 45% casualties before delivering their eggs. That casualty rate goes up with better crews. Sending a fighter along with each bomber will decrease those losses but also incur heavier casualties in your overall air arm.

I don't have a huge issue with heavy casualties, after all they aren't a total loss, but that means the remaining squadrons will have to be really effective, wreaking havoc with even capital ships, in a single attack run.

I certainly wish they'd put a little more effort into torpedo bombers, just for some flavor. What they did is obviously an afterthought. The differences of space torpedoes and terrestrial water-delivered torpedoes is doctrinal and I thought they did a decent job there. The advantage of 40k torpedo bombers is that they avoid combat void patrol. The disadvantages outweigh this. Their ammo can be shot down in its turn and they can still be intercepted. That problem is the sickly 3-plane squadrons. That simply doesn't make sense. And then they go on to say that you need extra space on your ship devoted to storing those torpedoes. Why? You've got plenty of space where those 7 other bombers currently are not.

All that brings up the question of magazines anyway. Whether it's macrocannon, torpedoes, or plasma bombs, 40k weaponry is still very kinetic-centered. Ammunition should take up a lot of space. Terrestrial ships carry a very limited amount of ammunition and can fire it up in a very short amount of time. 40k ships seem to carry unlimited amounts (which is fine since I don't care for that type of record-keeping) but it takes up no space. 40k ships, being somewhat primitive, should probably dedicate more space proportionately to armament and munitions than it does.

And now I'm going way off-topic, so I'll stop there.

Basic munitions storage is considered part of the basic hull design, along with basic provisions storage. Torpedoes are special, because they're each the size of office blocks. There is also some accomodation for crew quarters and other critical systems, which is why crew spaces take up so little room compared to the gundecks (at least on the big ships) for example.

The squadron size and ammunition limitation on Torpedo bombers is pretty much garbage, but the damage potentional of ten squadrons of torpedo bombers (that's thirty incoming torpedoes) is frightening to consider. It'll be reduced by turrets and could be reduced by interceptors, though I see no reason for a GM not to allow fighters to escort them just like bombers.

Edit: Re: Mathhammer bombers, if you're trying to reduce bomber damage without using the Mathhammer-macrocannon armour-per-hit rule, maybe just reduce all bomber damage from 1d10+4 per hit to 1d5+4. You still have good minimum damage, it's still likely to penetrate armour, but your max damage is reduced greatly. ~67% of attacks with 10 hits of the d10+4 will deal 86 to 104 damage before armour, while a similar percentage of the d5+4 hits will average 65.5 to 74.5 damage before armour- a fairly solid reduction. 1d5+3 would probably do just as well- it would mean that a Grand Cruiser would shrug off hits from one or two bombers, but that a pocket carrier Conquest sending in ten-squadron waves will still be a worrisome prospect.

Okay now, this is the kind of discussion I like.

Now while the ship-to-ship torpedoes are a couple hundred feet in length and thick enough to carry space marines in power armor by the dozen, those launched from bombers are smaller. It's mentioned in the text and follows terrestrial counterparts. U.S. torpedoes are probably a bad example because the USN didn't appreciably develop these in the pre-war era, but the IJN long lance was considerably different than the IJN aerial torpedo. Most significantly different in both navies was the warhead size, which was in all cases around 50% larger in the surface torpedo, and had a much longer range to boot.

So how does that transfer to 40k? The same principles apply. Bombers should deliver smaller torpedoes with shorter range (already accounted for RAW) and with less damage (not accounted for). And yes, the ammunition limitations in the rules are total garbage and need to be disregarded. We don't count macrocannon ammo and there should be no exception made for other types of ammo, short of nova cannon and the like.

You bring up up the point of sheer numbers, but I don't think this is accurate from an operational standpoint. Yes, 10 squadrons of a mere 3 bombers each can conceivably launch 30 torpedoes, but torpedoes launched from bombers are launched at the beginning of the turn, with no aim adjustment allowed. Probably a third of those will outright miss, and another third of them will probably not even launch their torpedoes because of bad alignment, hoping instead (if they have the endurance) to realign, set up again, and attempt another launch, leaving a third to actually even get as BS roll to hit. And by the way, I hate the geometry of miniature games, so that should all be a function of crew rating and NOT a function of bomber facing at the beginning of the turn. So it comes down to a percentage chance for each torpedo to hit.

So what is more important when it comes to eliminating the incoming torpedo threat? Is it weapons or crew skill? Should it be turret rating modified by crew rating or crew rating modified by turret rating? And what should be the baseline % of eliminated torpedoes?

And off the subject of attack craft-launched torpedoes and back onto the bombing runs, I have to say I don't like the idea of stacking damage any more than I ever liked it with macrocannon. It just feels wrong. Armor should count against each and every hit. It's not like every plasma bomb hits the exact same spot, each adding to the armor penetration of the previous bomb. RAW each bomber carries like 40 plasma bombs. That's a considerable bombing run.

I don't like that each escorting fighter squadron reduces turret firing -10, especially when using large combined groups. It results in turrets becoming completely ineffective. I like the idea that fighters reduce it, but even -5 becomes huge when waves of 10 of them are incoming. I think that those fighters being able to absorb the casualties, allowing the bombers to deliver their eggs, is a big enough advantage.

Okay, I'll check back tomorrow. I'm tired tonight.

40 plasma bombs. I freaking hate the idea of free-fall explosive weapons in microgravity combat. I just assume they've been swapped out for rockets or at least something that has some kind of propulsion.

If you don't like stacking bomber damage, assuming they aren't lining up to strike the same locations over and over, then I would recommend either having each one deal 1d5 damage ignoring armour entirely (this presupposes some kind of armour piercing ammunition, possibly one-shot lance-packs or something), or 1d10+18 if you're using damage-boost Mathhammer or 1d10+6 if you're using armour-reduction Mathhammer. With that damage profile against a Dictator , 66% of the time your damage with ten hits should be 27.4 to 44.6- good but not crippling. That damage profile gets slightly worse against, say, an Avenger grand cruiser. To illustrate why I dislike this pattern, 4 hits against an Iconoclast with this damage profile will usually to 32.3 to 43.7 points of hull damage- that's achievable with two or three squadrons, and they have a turret rating of 1 to defend with and only 28 hull integrity to begin with- you'll be sinking Iconoclasts left, right and center.

The reason to ignore armour and reduce attack damage across the board in the case of bombers is specifically to incentivize attacking the big ships. It's balance and function over simulationism. Also consider- how much did hull armour matter in the case of dive bombers attacking a carrier or cruiser in WWII? Not at all- the ship's upper surfaces aren't armoured in the same way the sides are. By the same token, the bombers of 40k can look for those unprotected crevices. Or just use armour piercing ammunition- whichever.

Anyway, that 1d5 armour piercing damage profile is stupid-easy to model. 10 hits on a Dictator? 25.5 to 34.5 damage on average. 4 hits on an Iconoclast? 9.2-14.8 damage on average. This makes carriers much less likely to rack up escort kills in job lots.

Edit: **** yeah, modelling with statistics.

That sounds good, but the whole point of Mathhammer is to make ship armour count and that turns each bomber squadron into a lance.

I don't like the fact that I have trouble damaging cruisers with my bomber squadrons under Mathhammer, but the damage still adds up. And I can leave escorts "rekt" as the kids say with just one or two bombers.

Yeah, we call them bombs, but they have some sort of propulsion, which technically makes them a rocket, maybe even a missile. And I suppose it isn't unreasonable that they strike close to the same spot. After all, they'd be launched in salvos. Each bird carries 40.

Carrier armor in WWII varied. Some ships had an armor belt for torpedo defense. Some had armored decks. Few had both. Offhand, I can think of 1 (Shinano) and it never saw action as an operational vessel. I like your idea now that you've explained its purpose. Yes, in a fleet action the attack craft should be ignoring the escorts in favor of targeting the capital ships, which the armor rules discourage. Escorts should be the vessels specialized at shooting down attack craft. I can't believe they never put "fleet defense turrets" in any of the supplements.