I've only played through space combat once, so I'm still getting to grips with the system, but so far Macrobatteries seem wholly ineffective against everything.

Take for example a Ryza Pattern Plasma Battery firing at a basic, non-Void Shielded Jerico-class pilgrim vessel. The maximum damage the Batteries can deal to the Jerico with a single hit is just 2 points of damage (scaling to 8 if the Batteries hit all four times, no so bad, but still highly unlikely). However against any other ship it can effectively do nothing more than possibly scratch some paintwork.

And combining the fire of multiple Batteries is useless if your playing anything that has a weapons capacity of 2 (So basically anything that isn't a Cruiser or Light Cruiser) as, if your opponent has a Void Shield the most you'll be able to do is just burn through that, and then have nothing else left to fire with... Rather disappointing really. Especially if you're playing as a Frigate, whose only option is to take Macrobatteries, leaving their most viable attack option an order of "Raammming Speeeed!!!"

This doesn't seem right to me, is there something massive I'm missing, or is that pretty much how everything works?

I think you may have missed the rules on extra hits from degrees of success and salvo fire. Page 220 first three paragraphs

Macrobatteries are incredibly dangerous - particularly when fired by someone with high ballistic skill and in a salvo.

a basic success with a battery is a hit, each degree of success is an additional hit up to the Strength of the battery. When the number of hits is known subtract any void shields and then roll the damage dice - one per degree of success. So for example if the Ryza nets 4 hits and has one cancelled by void shields you would roll damage for three hits - 3d10+12 points. This is reduced by armour and then applied to hull integrity.

The real danger is in Salvo fire as this allows you to link multiple batteries together and effectively overpower the defenders armour.

Has anyone else found this to be too effective?

I've had to consider rules to dial back the effectiveness of battery fire in my own campaign as cruisers can be one-shotted by a good gunner with three batteries (2 mars broadsides and a prow sunsear can generate 16 hits vs the cruisers 2 voids and 20 armour. That amounts to 14d10+28-20 damage to hull integrity. Bye bye Lunar cruiser. Ouch!

Cromwell Bootstrap said:

Oh My ****! You're beautiful thanks!!

No, I did see that you got multiple hits from DoS, but I though each was applied to Armour separately. This makes hella more sense! Thanks!

I've had to consider rules to dial back the effectiveness of battery fire in my own campaign as cruisers can be one-shotted by a good gunner with three batteries (2 mars broadsides and a prow sunsear can generate 16 hits vs the cruisers 2 voids and 20 armour. That amounts to 14d10+28-20 damage to hull integrity. Bye bye Lunar cruiser. Ouch!

Um... you're neglecting the fact that the only ship that can pull this off is another Lunar Cruiser, which other warships are often capable of outmaneuvering. If, at the start of their turn, you're directly behind the cruiser, it can't bring its broadsides to bear.

Of course, that kind of precision does require a masterful helmsman, but if you're deciding to go up against a Cruiser, you probably should have an ace up your sleeve. Or three.

Other than that, yes, Macrocannons are quite powerful, especially in salvoes and with a few DoS which can be bought by the extended actions Lock On Target and Put Your Backs Into It!

No worries. There is a worked example on page 221 but it could be a little clearer I think.

In general the rules are fine but at the top-end things get a bit too nasty for my liking

When the Void-Master has BS 73, void tactician, an MIU interface, a ship-masters bridge, the RT egging him on, three target locks and four put your backs into it at short range he can even afford to get the helmsman to 'come to a new heading' and still have a reasonable chance of scragging the cruiser.

We have found that battles between elite cruiser+ sized ships with badass bridge crew come down to initiative rolls too often. Our last big engagement saw three cruisers crippled in two rounds and left the PCs in a very tense situation but I was conscious of the fact that future similar epic space battles will be very unpredictable and tough to balance.

One problem is that the downside of opting for the salvo is very small - you can only crit once. Batteries don't crit an awful lot anyway so it's a no-brainer.

Does anyone feel the same or am I just a victim of Admiral 'Long-Drop' Fletchers (the Void-master in question) shoooty awesomeness which has unduly coloured my view of things?

So... high-end vessels manned by high-end personnel are pretty deadly when engaging in the situation they're designed for? Yup, that's probably a fair statement to make. Still not impossible to defeat - a Raider with two Sunsear batteries in the dorsal slots would probably have a chance, as would a ship designed for hit&run attacks.

Of course, you'd probably have the same result in personal combat if one of your party was in the habit of lugging around a meltagun.

Absolutely. My concern is not that they are super good at their job and blowing suff up but just that it's over too soon. I'd prefer a system where cruisers dogged each other for long periods and damage went to specific systems or parts of the ship generating story points and potential plot hooks

With 30 minute turns maybe the amount of fire is right but the system doesn't build tension or drama.

The salvo option even cuts down on drama by limiting crits which are always exciting - players havde to lead damage control teams, put out fires, do evas etc.

In personal combat enemies tend to have active defences or power fields which mitigate Elite awesomeness and drag out the fight. There is no active defence roll in ship combat and the evasive maneuvers option is either useless or completely broken depending on your situation.

Cifer said:

Doesn't work as well as you might think. In our Campaign we took our Sword Frigate against a Dauntless. I decided I'd make a close-range head-on pass, trading a nasty blow to the chin in exchange for getting behind the light cruiser, where I could avoid further fire.

Unfortuantely due to the nature of the "I move, I shoot, You Move, You Shoot" system, while I was able to successfully move into its blind arc, only for it to immediately move me back into arc and blast me, this wen on for a few rounds. The only reasons we even survived was because the ship's lance had been disabled after the head-on pass and we were smart enough to realize we were losing and went dark. This left me almost as angry and frustrated as my character, the Rogue Trader, an Old Battlefleet officer who was forced to choose between "Duty to my New Dynasty" and "Honorable Death in Battle as a Proud Battlefleet Officer should".

Teleportarium + Murder servitors = no worries from guns. Disable thier engines, and exicute manuver 'lance battery enema'.

I must admit that I am puzzled by the salvo rules. As I read it, you fire both batteries at the same time. Rolling just one time. Now if you have two str 4 batteries you would need 8 margins of success to hit for an effective str of 8. Is this correct?

BaronIveagh said:

Not everyone has those two. And nor does that make for a very exciting age-of-sail-esque gunnery duel, a clash of broadsides, etc.

IIRC the two weapons roll to-hit separately and then successful hits are piled together.

GalagaGalaxian said:

Yeah, I've occasionally had players whine about targets that were not on the same plane as them, and having to manuver along all three axis rather then just across a flat surface, too.

If you can't tell, I tend to chuck the 'Age of Sail' line of battle tactics out the airlock with the 'all male' space marines.

@Galaga

Doesn't work as well as you might think. In our Campaign we took our Sword Frigate against a Dauntless. I decided I'd make a close-range head-on pass, trading a nasty blow to the chin in exchange for getting behind the light cruiser, where I could avoid further fire.

Oh, it does - but (assuming a battle grid) you need to get exactly behind the cruiser. Take a look at the diagrams on page 219: As the cruiser can turn only 45°, the field that was in the centre of its rear arc becomes the far end of its rear arc, not the port- or starboard arc. The cruiser moving before turning only makes that worse.

The only ways the cruiser can get out of that one would be anticipating your movement in the next round and assuring you can't stay behind it, using the Come To New Heading! action (though that will worsen his shooting phase) or using the Hit&Run action against you.

@Sister Callidia

I must admit that I am puzzled by the salvo rules. As I read it, you fire both batteries at the same time. Rolling just one time. Now if you have two str 4 batteries you would need 8 margins of success to hit for an effective str of 8. Is this correct?

No - you simply roll once and appliy the successes to all batteries involved, a little like an auto-fire-capable Dual Shot.

Cifer said:

You roll once?

Or

do you roll for each battery?

I think you roll separately for each battery and combine the results into one damage total.

Page 220 3rd paragraph (on salvos) says 'before rolling to hit and determining the damage total for each macrobattery....'

Cifer said:

Even if its possible to meanuever like that it has to be done basically flawlessly, and the other cruiser pretty much has to let you do it, or they'll shake you within a round or so and smash you again. In general I just don't like the "I Move+Shoot, then you Move+shoot' turn structure for naval combat, makes it harder to rely on maneuvering.

As far as Salvo Fire, I don't think you are correct Cifer.

"If a ship fires multiple macrobatteries at a single target' date=' before rolling to hit and determining the damage total for each macrobattery, the character directing the firing has the option of adding the totals together and applying the new larger total to the target ship once, rather than applying each damage result separately. This represents a ship combining its weapon fire into a single, devastating salvo. If he chooses to do this, however, he can only inflict a maximum of one Critical Hit (see below).[/quote']

It only really mentions combining the damage together, so I feel the hits should be rolled seperately then the damage totalled together. You declare your intent to salvo fire before rollign to hit not to combine you weapons into a single to-hit roll, but to prevent someone from saying "Oh I rolled mediocre on the first roll, that was a salvo, add it all together, it'll still do decent damage." or "Oh I rolled well across the board, those were separate shots, multiple criticals hurray."

Sister Callidia said:

I believe you roll for each battery separately, calculate the damage for each battery, and then add them together and apply the damage all at once.

Cruiser vs frigate/raider is only really possible vs 3 methods.

1)Hit and run specialist. This can be nasty if you can quickly disable the shields, and their prow mount. The downside is if the target has something that doesn't let you crit what you want this fails.

2) End your turn in the cruiser's rear arc 2-3 VU behind. To do this you need to be able to perform the come to new heading, and the various speed/turn actions every round.* The cruiser can do a coming to new heading, but he risks damaging his engines....

3)Speed runs. Basically you close to right in front of the cruiser, hit him, then run your next turn to realign. The major risk is that the cruiser manages to come to a dead stop or does hit and runs on you.

*My players have a skilled voidmaster PC, and a raider with gravic sails (thrusters work just as well). With all their various bonus they are 80-120 for most rolls with a free reroll. (They managed to out manuver an Eldars frigate last game.) This relies on the fact that cruisers turn 45 while frigates turn 90. With come to new heading you can do a 180. A cruiser at best can do a 90 turn.

Thanks for answering. This will make encounters a lot more dangerous for my players.

Especially since their ship just happened to have gained a Rebellious Machine Spirit

Our group is on the different end of this scale, we got a fully loaded Lunar-class cruiser with 4 Mars-pattern macrocannon batteries and a lance as our dynasty's ship (and a profit factor of 22... ). The hardest battles we've had are against a group of small and fast vessels. Although we can deal insane amounts of damage on pretty much anyone coming into our firing arc, just getting our guns to bear is a task in its own.

Our basic tactic - The Sebastion Maneuver, named after our Void Master - consists of a half or full move forward and a 45 degree turn right, followed by firing against one of the enemy ships in the 270 degree arc in front of the ship. A salvo from the batteries usually takes cares of the void shield(s) and does some hull damage. After that the lance does the actual work.

A group of small ships can easily maneuver themselves behind us or far enough outside of macrocannon range and take pot-shots at us, winning by attrition and morale loss.

BaronIveagh said:

Wow.