Quicksilver said:

This sounds better. Allow combining of battery fire so three STR 3 batteries firing at STR 1 each on a single salvo get +60 for a single hit. Assuming a 2 Shield cruiser is the target and a PC at the guns you'd get the equivalent of about three macro hits into armor on a single hit...3d10+1 vs armor (average about 19.5 damage).

Quicksilver said:

I like the basic idea of this, but a whole +10 per point of strength reduced seems a bit overpowered to me, swinging the pendulum to the opposite end, making a high Strength supremely powerful. The Mars Broadside in question could, for example, get a whopping +30 to hit and still have a strength of 3 left for damage. That'd be, with a typical cruiser of skill 30 and the bridge giving +10 to hit, a roll against 70 to hit, and making use of up to two degrees of success. Or, a roll against 60 to hit, with a potential 3 degrees of success for 4 hits on a roll of 30 or less.

I'd revise the action as either only giving +5 to hit per point of Strength given up, or halving Strength (round down) for +10 to hit. It'd make Strength always be of use, but not insanely powerful.

Wouldn't the max +60 rule still apply? That would mitigate combining 'too powerful' batteries for ungodly bonuses.

That's the maximum modifier to a roll, not the maximum final target number to roll against. With a crew skill of 30, you'd roll against 30 + 60 = 90 with maximum modifiers.

It's worth remembering that cruisers are designed to fight cruisers. Indeed that's kinda the whole point of this thread, that cruiser wern't effective enough. A Str 3 weapons battery isn't all that useful when fighting someone with 2 void shields, the most you'll ever do is scratch the paint, or maybe create an opening for a lance strike. But against frigates it can quickly become deadly. And it does all this without haveing to majorly change the ship rules.

Except that a cruiser wouldn't be firing a single Strength 3 (or any strength) weapon component against another cruiser in the first place. It would combine its both weapon points on either side with its prow weapon point to fire a volley of three weapons. As the rules are written, there is very little reason not to combine fire into volleys. With your suggestion, the hypothetical cruiser would fire two broadsides with Strength 3 each with +30 to hit, plus +10 for the shipmaster's bridge. That'd be two rolls to hit at 70, hitting decently with both wouldn't be improbable at all for enough hits to rip through both shields and armour. Plus, the prow weapon will be able to take part in the volley too...

Well, first point, All Imperial Navy Cruisers use prow torpedos or Nova Cannon.

Secondly, Lets say that a double-weapons battery fired exactly like you said at another Navy Cruiser. Let us also say that they get lucky and roll below 40 both times, thats 6 Macrocannon hits.

2 go to shields, that's 4 macrocannon hits.

We roll 2 5s and 2 6s for damage, or 30 damage. Assume we got lucky and hit our targets broadside, and they're not packing extra armor. That results in a final killer 10 damage to Hull Integraty. Now to do that 7 more times to cripple the ship.

Even if your a custom Cruiser with prow Mars Cannons, you couldn't even get the +30, but if you went with the +20 and hit, your still only looking at another 7-8 average damage.

Okay, so the über-broadside wouldn't rip an enemy cruiser to shreds that quickly. Granted. However, other weapons would do so even slower, dealing much less damage per turn. The broadside would still be utterly overpowered compared to anything else.

Well, that was kind of my point. Looking at the title of this thread, people were having a problem with cruisers not doing enough damage. Cruisers should be using broadsides, not escort style weapons batteries. Broadside should be more powerful then escort style weapons batteries, using BFG as a base, they should be between 50% and 100% more effective. My idea is, rather then give cruisers more implacements, just make Broadsides better.

Clearly, if you are not of the opinion cruisers are undergunned, then this wouldn't be advantagous. I, for one, am not really sure its a problem, but if it is, this is my sugested solution.

Oh, I certainly think cruisers are undergunned, I just didn't think of the solution of deliberately making broadsides overpowered relative to other weapons.

Fair enough, what would you propose?

Well, as I said in the OP, I'd add one more weapon slot per side to both the cruiser and the light cruiser. That is, the light cruiser has two port and two starboard weapon slots, and the cruiser three port and three starboard weapon slots. I'd revise the Mars Broadside by giving it a flat +10 to hit in addition to what it does by the core rules.

In that way, cruisers would have the capacity to pack an appropriate amount of firepower, and in addition, there would be several viable and competitive ways of arming a cruiser. For the ultimate in point-blank firepower, Mars Broadsides. For long-range firepower to counter skirmishing enemy escort ships, stick a sunsear laser battery into every slot.

That works, and your right that it has the benefit of allowing greater varity, particularly without creaing new types of House-Rule Broadsides. I have Three conserns with it, however. First, it doesn't address any difficulties posed by a drastic skill difference between the cruiser and a frigate. Even with 3 mountings and +10 to hit, They will still get only a few hits in, ones a PC run frigate with a 50-70 target range could easily match.

My second point is that is costs the cruiser much more power then increaseing the effectiveness of broadsides does. 6 Sunsears rack up at 36 power by themselves. Not to mention more space.

Lastly, increaseing the number of weapon points also increase the effectiveness of Lances. You now have the (at least theoretical) ability to mount 3 str 2 lances per side. I, for one, am not the opinion that Lances are under-effective.

My group and i have had the same ideas on the cruisers and such and came up with a simple idea that doesnt change any weapons stats at all but alters the ship generation setup/outfitting....by allowing you to add or subtract the hardpoint slots on your ship at a cost of space ( based on the ships size class)..

What we did was looked at the biggest ( in terms of space requirement) weapon the ship class could mount and set it thusly....for example...the biggest space weapon a light cruiser can mount in terms of space is a Heavy Titanforge Lance Battery at cost of 8 space...so if you remove the weapons from the sides ( if you want a tradership with more space for cargo and better profit ) you can get more space for cargobays that way but in the reverse if your trader is more of a gunbunny type...you can take the sacrifice of the space and add slots..you still have to pay the cost of the weapons and the work mind you plus availability for whatever your looking for for your traders ship....then make sure your plasma drive can handle the power drain for the extra weapons....so its not the easiest thing to do...but we have made it possible....with minimal alterations to the rules as it were....

In the ships of the Imperial Navy file from Dark Reign site in the back of the file you can find new and bigger engine types and extra weapons and descriptions and rules on all the things that RT refused to cover in the mainbook.....thats one of the files we used to create the rules alteration we created...

Hope you like it as an alternative as it is a simple fix without having to really alter any actual rules per se...