korjik said:

I disagree with the thrust of your post for the same reasons as Etheric does. Also, I am aware of the Star-flare Lance. However, first fix the underlying mechanical issues with the game and then solve the outliers - the existance of one poor exception to an otherwise potentially good fix is not a reason to discount the fix (if it's proven to work in all/most other cases) but an invitation to fix the outlier.

If math proves the Lances are underpowered, then simply use the same math to calculate a house rule that amends this balance. Since Lances ignore armour, then the obvious choice is to increase starship armour ratings across the board.

Personally, I always felt that given how many d10s get rolled for damage, the difference in armour ratings between Frigates, Light Cruisers and Cruisers was too small, and that armour-boosting components didn't give enough of a bonus given the cost and drawbacks.

What would the effects be on, say, doubling every armour point past 10 a ship has?

I ask because this is the houserule I've thought about implementing myself, and I'm curious about what the math would say. I suspect that the same calculations will hold true for lower armour ratings, but that the Lance will then pull ahead versus heavier vessels. Since this is, in both the fluff and the Battlefleet Gothic rules, how the two are supposed to compare I see that as the ideal to aim for.

So, what modifications of armour will give this? Is my modification to (armour+(armour-10)) right, or would some other formula do it? I say formula, because IMO any armour adjustment should drive home the difference between flying a Cruiser compared to a Raider, hence not a straight bonus to all ships.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I have to wonder...when will you fix this in the core rules?

Strength should be irrelevant for a lance as it is supposed to ignore armour. The difference should be multiple beams from a battery increasing the possibility of scoring more crits - lower the crit rating from 3 to 2. As it is lances cannot combine damage with -anything- not even other lances (page 220). So they're handicapped compared to macrobatteries if a void shield is still up and you can only get one hit off of a str 1 lance. They don't get to ignore void shields.

In the groups i've played in this has come up. We have used the rules as written ignoring the ridiculous contention that lances strength constrains their hits, instead using the rule on page 220 that allows for 1 hit plus another one per 3 successes while, at the same time, lowering the Lance Battery crit rating to 2.

Cannonball said:

And prior to that particular breakdown it states as well in the paragraphs above the following:

• "Although most weapon components are classified as macrobatteries or lances, this simply means they follow the same general rules. Specific weapons may have different rules or unique abilities.
  In Rogue Trader, each Weapon Component has the following statistics:"

Strength is then explained. If Strength was not intended to limit the maximum number of hits a Lance could score, then it would have been represented by a -- as opposed to a numeric value. The special rules concerning how a Lance strike deviates from a macrobattery are then explained. You are still limited by Strength in the number of hits. Anything else just seems to me to be a willful misinterpretation of the rules as they are presented.

That said, the fact that Lance strikes will ignore armor, where as macrobatteries still are reduced by same armor, seems to me the Lance is right up there with at least hurting Ships-of-the-Line.

EXAMPLE: A Firestorm- class Frigate brings all guns to bear against a renegade Lunar- class Cruiser. The Firestorm has a Mars- pattern battery in its Dorsal Mount, and a Titanforge lance weapon in its Prow Mount. The Lunar has a Void Shield Array (2) and 20 armor. For the sake of this example, the Firestorm generates enough DoS on each weapon component to scores hits equal to each ones Strength ; 4 for the Macrocannons and 1 for the Lance.

Resolving the Macrocannons first, two hits are absorbed and negated by the Lunar 's shields. This will leave two hits, combined for 2d10+4 to resolve against an armor of 20. The Lance hit benefits from the Macrocannon shots dropping the Cruiser's shields and plows on through to inflict 1d10+4 damage, which is unaffected by the Lunar' s armor of 20. On average the Macrocannon hits will inflict 17 damage, reduced to nothing by armor. The Lance will inflict from 5-14 damage to Hull Integrity, plus effects to crew population and morale. /EXAMPLE

So, can you go over once more why Lances seem worthless to you as a weapon choice again? They're still the ship killer weapons, even in Rogue Trader .

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

Firstly, this paragraph doesn't invalidate strength working differently for lances and macrobatteries and it doesn't refute the fact that strength only states it applies to macrobatteries. Secondly, the thread has already covered that this is most likely a RAW misprint that strength only applies to macrobatteries and the RAI is completely different, but that's what the rules say.

As to can I go over why lances seem worthless? Well...the math on the first page of this thread is why. That's the of the point of the entire thread. The calculations conclude that multiple macrobatteries actually do better damage than a combination of macrobatteries and lances - and this is against a heavily armoured and shielded target by game standards. This discrepancy only gets worse as you become more and more accurate according to Etheric's calculations and as targets get less and less armoured. This also extends to chances to score a critical - i.e. macrobatteries are better at scoring criticals than lances mathematically. This example is also using Sunsear lasers as the macrobatteries to show that macrobatteries do more damage than a roughly equal space/power macrobattery/lance combination. This means that the macrobattery/macrobattery counter example has a far greater range than the macrobattery/lance example and yet still does more damage for a roughly equivalent power/space cost (with a slight advantage to macrobattery/macrobattery). If you wanted to completely blow the macrobattery/lance combination out of the water damage-wise, you would be using Plasma or Melta macrobatteries and then all bets are off.

So lances are worthless against cruiser class targets because multiple macrobatteries outperform them cost for cost. And this performance gap will only increase as you target your macrobatteries on vessels with less and less armour (as opposed to the cruiser class armour used in the example).

This was proven mathematically based on the interpretation that strength applies to all weapons (which is likely RAI). My contribution to the thread is pointing out a, probable, misprint in the rules that applies strength only to macrobatteries per RAW. And now I'm curious if doing the calculations this way makes lances top-dog against heavily armoured/shielded targets again - as they should be - or if another fix needs to be found.

Cannonball said:

The example given above shows that they are quite effective, especially if maximum DoS are not assumed. I don't routinely see starships hitting with 4 DoS. Generally simple success or perhaps 1 to 2 DoS is more the norm. If we assume hits with 2 DoS then Macrobattery + Lance is much better against a high armour target than Macrobattery + Macrobattery. OTOH, if you have accuracy raised to the level where 4 DoS results are common, then you are probably better off with massed Macrobatteries.

Cannonball said:

I'm not sure I see how a Macrobattery with a Critical Rating of 5 is better than a Lance with a Critical Rating of 3 in scoring a critical hit. Less degrees of success required to score a critical makes it more likely to score with the Lance.

Yes, massed Macrobattery salvos will have a strong tendency to be better against low-shield, low-armor targets. I personally prefer macrobatteries over lances for most weapon components anyway, especially Sunsear batteries for their greater range. That said, there will be those times when a Lance Weapon or Battery will just make things die all the faster.

-=Brother Praetus=-

HappyDaze said:

Umm... please reread my initial post. I never assumed maximum DoS, I actually did the math. I don't know why you would assume every hit would achieve 2 DoS, and even if you did, 6 hits (which is what 2 DoS from each battery) isn't anything to laugh at. Remember, as the accuracy of the weapon increases, the chance of achieving maximum DoS (which is 3 if you're talking about hitting at full strength) increases, while every other DoS remains constant. The reason why math for the batteries is complicated is that you have to figure out the probability of each combination of damaging hits. My math used the probabilities for scoring 5, 6, 7 and 8 hits, ignoring all salvos that hit 4 or less times. Only at 40% accuracy did the lances win, and even then by only 0.14 points of damage on (they also only crit 3 more times out of a hundred salvos). At every other accuracy I surveyed, the batteries did more damage, and crit more often.

Here, I'll explain my math:

Scenario 3, 60%

Draw a grid of every combination of number of hits. Remember each battery has a 10% chance of scoring 1 hit, 10% of 2 hits, 10% of 3 hits, and 30% of 4 hits, so include 3 extra rows of 4 hits, and 3 extra columns of 4 hits. Now, disregard any combination of 1, 2, 3, or 4 hits, because although it is possible to get through the target's armor and shields, it isn't likely. Then count the number of times each other combination appears, there are 8 fives, 7 sixes, 6 sevens and 9 eights. Since we were talking about hits in increments of 10%, each point on the grid is 1% of probability.

The damage is straightforward. 7.5 damage per hit on average (the bell curve should be steep, low damage hits are counteracted by high damage hits, and rolls so low as to be reduced to zero by the armor are counteracted by 1/2/3/4-hit salvos that roll high enough to exceed armor, so this is a pretty safe figure to use), at 5 hits, 2.5 damage goes through the armor, at 6 hits, 10 damage goes through the armor, at 7 hits 17.5 damage goes through the armor, and at 8 hits 25 damage goes through the armor.

Now, just set up the formula, and solve: 8%*2.5+7%*10+6%*17.5+9%*25=4.2 damage per round.

Please, I am open to the idea that I did my math wrong, but show me where my math went wrong. Don't just make additional assumptions.

Now: on to the math I promised yesterday. (the RAW Lances that have no cap on the number of hits)

I'm not sure why I felt I needed to to it in a spreadsheet. The addition of extra hits from the lance doesn't change my battery calculations, which was the more complicated of the two, so here we go:

40% accuracy:

1.14 DPR from possible hit 1

0.03 DPR from possible hit 2 (.3*.1*9.5)

1.17 DPR compared to 1 DPR from batteries.

50% accuracy

1.9 DPR from possible hit 1

0.76 DPR from possible hit 2 (.4*.2*9.5)

2.66 DPR compared to 2.35 from batteries.

60% accuracy

2.85 DPR from possible hit 1

1.425 DPR from possible hit 2

4.275 DPR compared to 4.2 from batteries.

-

So... yeah, if you allow single-lances to hit multiple times, then it is a much closer horse race.

My concern is that damage is really not that far apart. The macrobatteries still outperform on crits, and against smaller ships. Also, it looks like once you hit 70%, the batteries will once again outperform the lances (although it will still be close, because the lances would then have a 10% chance of penetrating the voidshields unassisted... and lances may take the lead again at 80 or 90%). And what kind of bonus do you give cap-ships that use lance batteries?

So, this may be a solution, but it may not be the most elegant. I like the path Tantavalist suggested. At first I thought you should just give each class of ships a flat boost to armor, but that doesn't respect the differences that may exist within a single class. Of course, right now, there aren't many differences between the hulls within the same class, but that might change when Battlefleet comes out (though I hope FF uses that supplement to fix this whole problem themselves).

Doubling armor over 10 seems overkill. Cruisers with 30 might be okay, but not frigates with 26. Doubling over 18 doesn't give enough of a boost for cruisers (remember, 24 is approximately the breakeven point between RAI lances and batteries).

I guess we're now encroaching on the houserules subforum, but I'd hate to fork this thread, and I hope some FF devs see this and take note (if it isn't too late to rebalance the Battlefleet supplement, and they haven't already fixed this problem).

p.s. Brother Praetus: Please read my math. I'm using Sunsear Laser Batteries as a double complement of them is close in resource use to the minimum setup of macrobattery+lance. Sunsear Laser Batteries have a better crit rating than 5, giving them a pretty good chance of critting when you roll twice per round. The lance has a better crit rating, but the trap is that you have to hit at least twice with the battery, in order for the lance to have a chance to crit. Otherwise the lance's hit is negated, and as far as I'm aware, you can't crit on a miss. And no, there really isn't mathematically a time where the lance+battery combo kills anything faster than the battery+battery combo, except at incredibly low accuracies against the heaviest of targets. And even then, the difference isn't much.

Unfortunate that uncapping the # of hits lances can make doesn't lead to any appreciable DPR gains (Etheric, I assume you accounted for the possibility of macrobatteries scoring one hit and then lances making two hits, penetrating void shields that way? Your new calculations aren't as detailed as the originals). I suppose the next question then is trying to figure out how to rebalance lances and macrobatteries to a semblance of what they should be...but how, I do not know. And that is probably a topic for a different thread (would someone like to make one?).

Upon reading this thread, I made an excel sheet to simulate weapon damage. It's brute force, just throwing lots and lots of dice, and accounts for:

• Void Master rerolls
• A crit that fails to penetrate armour does 1 damage anyway
• Count number of crits wasted by combining into barrages
• Different lance weapons with different Strengths and DoS / hit rates (such as the Into the Storm one, that's 1/3/5 instead of 1/4/7.
• Setting different hit% for different weapons (possible due to bonuses on a single roles, different ranges)
• Different armour and Void Shield settings.

And I must share the OP conclusion: Lance Weapons are almost never worth it from a pure damage perspective. They are advantageous in situations with low hit chances, but only barely. They do generate slightly more damaging hits, but the average is almost always lower. And the better your crew gets, the bigger the difference becomes. Even the Archeotech lance weapon is almost always worse then the Ryza Pattern plasma battery. The one thing lances do perform better in, is generating crits. And those can be important.

A sample:

70% Hit chance with a VM vs 20 Armour, 2 void shields:

Macrocannon Broadside + Ryza Battery / Starflare lance

Broadside: 91% hit, 40% of attacks does damage, Avg Dmg 3,2 per attack, Crit 38.9%

+

Ryza: 91% hit, 78.5% of attacks does damage, Avg Dmg 17,4, Crit 31.8%, 20% chance to "lose" a crit due to barrage

OR

Starflare: 91% hit, 82.7% of attacks does damage, Avg Dmg 14,38, Crit 65,2%, 25% of attacks has crits from broadside and from lance.

The sheet is still pretty rough, but I believe the math to be sound:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HX3TWD1W

Good lord lol why is it 7 megabytes?

Because it's pure brute force, and rolls 10000 attempts for each weapon, with hitrolls, damage dice, and functions to determine DoS, total damage etcet... i. I could've zipped it, because of all the repetitive lines it should shrink, but I'm lazy and bandwith is cheap these days. Interesting enough, even with 10.000 rolls it's not that exact yet, if you press F9 to refresh the rolls the data skips a bit.

Wow, 10,000 roll brute force. Fascinating. You won't get "perfect" numbers, but within a margin of error, they'll be pretty darn good.

Are you factoring in if all the hits get eaten by the voidshields, you won't crit? That significantly dropped the crit rate of the lance systems. Also, if you take two crit rating 4 systems for batteries, it gets even better compared to the lances (my theoretical starting point was escort-level payloads).

Cannonball: You're right, I didn't include that. That's what I get for trying to get a post together during my lunch break. It won't make much of a difference though. Scoring exactly one with the cannon is always a 10% chance, therefore .1*(chance of getting 2 hits)*9.5 isn't a significant change.

I would appreciate someone checking my numbers for the breakeven point of 24 (where lances are even with batteries). After I said that, I started wavering and wondering if a more accurate breakeven point would be 22.

SanderJK said:

Thanks for the great tool. I played around a bit with armaments for a Solaris class light cruiser (I don't have Edge of the Abyss yet, so I used the starflare lance as a stand-in for an Eldar lance) and added up the average damage when combining fire with the macro-batteries against a few (sometimes upgraded) conversions from BFG.

Space Marine strike cruiser (armour 24) with 2 void shields

3x Starcannon Cluster Battery: 11,1
2x Starcannon Cluster Battery, 1x Starflare Lance: 8,41

Space Marine battle barge (armour 24) with 3 void shields

3x Starcannon Cluster Battery: 6,51
2x Starcannon Cluster Battery, 1x Starflare Lance: 9,18

Torture Class Cruiser (Armour 20) with Shadow Field (reduces BS like holofield)

3x Starcannon Cluster Battery: 13,56
2x Starcannon Cluster Battery, 1x Starflare Lance: 9,27

Chaos Cruiser (armour 20), 2 void shields

3x Starcannon Cluster Battery: 14,4
2x Starcannon Cluster Battery, 1x Starflare Lance: 14,33

Chaos Grand Cruiser (armour 20), 3 void shields

3x Starcannon Cluster Battery: 8,73
2x Starcannon Cluster Battery, 1x Starflare Lance: 10,3

Either I did something wrong or lances become effective against ships with more than two void shields. So far that's only ships with Castellan shield arrays, but maybe Battlefleet Koronus will add a few enemies that will make lances useful.

Xisor said:

Wrong. The Gothic is great in BFG. Pair it with a Dominator and you'll know why.

Also Mjoelnirr: NEVER EVER LANCES ON Space Marine strike cruisers or battlebarges. I hate that.

Current BFG draft has Strike Cruiser which can prow BC for 1 lance at plus 20pts.

horizon said:

Hehe, unfortunately that doesn't work in RT since the void shields reload between enemy turns.

horizon said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I'm not using lances ON strike cruisers or battle barges but AGAINST. As I wrote it's a test for an Eldar light cruiser. And I found bombardment cannons always scarier than lances.

I'm not a math guru, and didn't read real closely at all the numbers flying around. I just want to make sure ... when you are calculating the hits for two macrocannon batteries that you are still rolling to hit for each one separately? Even though you might be combining their damage, each weapon battery still needs to roll to hit. You don't roll once and use that for both.

If we extrapolate out Praetus's simple example:
EXAMPLE: A Firestorm-class Frigate brings all guns to bear against a renegade Lunar-class Cruiser. The Firestorm has a Mars-pattern battery in its Dorsal Mount, and a Titanforge lance weapon in its Prow Mount. The Lunar has a Void Shield Array (2) and 20 armor. For the sake of this example, the Firestorm generates enough DoS on each weapon component to scores hits equal to each ones Strength; 4 for the Macrocannons and 1 for the Lance.

Resolving the Macrocannons first, two hits are absorbed and negated by the Lunar's shields. This will leave two hits, combined for 2d10+4 to resolve against an armor of 20. The Lance hit benefits from the Macrocannon shots dropping the Cruiser's shields and plows on through to inflict 1d10+4 damage, which is unaffected by the Lunar's armor of 20. On average the Macrocannon hits will inflict 17 damage, reduced to nothing by armor. The Lance will inflict from 5-14 damage to Hull Integrity, plus effects to crew population and morale. /EXAMPLE

Macrocannons have 1d10+2 per hit, for an average of: 7.5, a max of 12.
Lance has 1d10+4, for an average of 9.5 damage

The target ship has 2 shields, meaning the macrocannons must hit *at least* 4 times(succeed+3 DoS) to even have a chance to overcome an armor of 20. In order to do so, however, means you would need to roll near maximum for damage (max damage for 2 hits is 24, needing 21+ to do any damage)

success+4 DoS from macrocannons results in an average damage of (3*7.5) = 22.5. Barely enough, on average, to penetrate the armor with a measly 2.5 samage, while the lance is doing an average of 9.5 by itself.

success+5 DoS from macrocannons results in an average damage of (4*7.5) = 30. Now, this does 10 damage, on average, after armor, while the lance is doing an average of 9.5. So, this is essentially parity.

So, you need to have success with 5 DoS total with macrobatteries, every round, to generate the same damage as a lance getting just a single success and a success+1 DoS with a macro (to take down shields).

With higher BS, the macrobatteries begin getting better, as its more likely for more DoS. Still, needing 6 hits vs 3 to do the same damage really means that the Lance is essentially superior vs high armor because it requires fewer degrees of success.

dvang said:

Well, only if your first shot with macrobatteries generated at least two hits. Otherwise there is no need to even role the dice since you cant penetrate the shields anyway.

So, two good roles needed to deal damage for lances, versus, one good role with dual Sunsear Batteries might deal damage, as long as the armour isnt incredibly high.

Might by interesting to check the math for an enemy with, say one shield and 26 armour (Ork Rock?), lances should be far better here.

Just did 26 armour, 1 VS through my sheet (Broadside+Ryza vs Broadside+Lances). While it's an approximate number (I just enter percentages till the outcome is near equal), it comes out like approx this:

No VM, archeotech lance: about equal at 70% hitrating, above that Ryza wins

VM, archeotech lance: about equal at 55% hitrating, above that Ryza wins

No VM, titanforce lance: about equal at 50% hitrating, above that Ryza wins

VM, titanforce lance: about equal at 45% hitrating, above that Ryza wins

About crits in my sheet: No, it does not account for the scenario of not penetrating Void Shields, but still scoring a critical. I could change it, but I don't see where in the rule it states that (though I have been doing it the way suggested in my live game, I just reread p220 of core and it seems to suggest that as long as number of successes >= Crit rating, you get a crit with 1 damage, and a 1d5 on the chart. Unless it's written somewhere else.... please point it out then.)

By the way, the overwhelming conclusion I have made from my chart is: If you like to blow ships up, bring a VM with the gunnery trait. It's overwhelmingly powerful at lower and middle skill levels, and still quite powerful at high levels. For instance, fighting the Ork ship at 55% accuracy, your average damage increases from 5.9 to / 6.7 to 11.5 / 11.5, which is near double. This difference is far greater then weapon differences. At 80%, 15.6 / 14.0 to 22.0 / 18.0.

dvang: please read my post in this thread at reply #32 published December 27th. I explain my math there. If there's a specific part of my math you have a question about, feel free to ask.

SanderJK: Hrm, I suppose you're right, it isn't written out in specific. That changes a lot. If you can crit even if every hit is negated, that means a "Gothic" style cruiser would have a way of winning. Heck, you wouldn't have to equip batteries ever. All you need to do is crit and target the voidshields. A cruiser with full lances could get three shots in an arc, pretty much guaranteeing those shields won't be back up for awhile. I'll have to look at this further. I could have sworn there was some connection with voidshields negating hits and a crit requiring hitting.

Well a couple things about lances.

1. They can be used for planetary bombardment. It's unclear if Macrobatteries can also do so.

2. Sunhammer Lance Batteries are great for supplementing a light cruiser with short range broadsides. Two hits from the lance will voids, do structural damage and give you a crit on any frigate or fast raider out at 18VU trying to plink you to death with lasers. A laser battery getting in all 4 hits is going to end up doing 3d10+6 damage, and need another DoS to get a crit. Against a frig with 20 points of armor, a single battery isn't going to do much damage.

3. At 4VU's (or is it 5) a Sunhammer is going to get an extra +10% due to short range. Basically that's fishing for a crit.

4. A Salvo, of multiple batteries, is limited to only one crit. A lance gives you a second, good crit range, weapon also fishing for a critical hit. Also, a lance is not limited to one crit, and could potentially generate two with a high BS gunner and stacked bonuses. For that matter, not being in a salve allows the battery to generate multiple crits, though that's unlikely outside of a xeno or laser battery.

Macrobatteries can be used for orbital bombardment (firing from low orbit would offer better - faster options than indirect high orbit shots. Lances offer better options - direct fire.

I think we talked it out long before ItS was published too (on this forum here ), the sheer size of the projectiles means they can survive a non terminal trajectory and with rough math / guidance you can it on a general area without much effort.

Sorry Mjoelnir, I misread it.

Having about 40++ pages of discussion regarding lances on strike cruisers in BFG gets me on my toes if I see the words Lance & marines in one line. heh heh. (specialist games forum fyi).

The Lance can do a pin-point attack from orbit to a ground target (think armoured big thing). Weapon Batteries can do real orbital strikes and waste entire areas.

(per epic:armageddon rules etc etc).

As per dvang'post. Yes lances have better " values" vs higher armoured values. eg they do better against the prow on an Imperial cruiser.

Lances vs Weapon Batteries are not equal, they are different but in the long run the same. In a fleet engagement both are needed.

horizon said:

Because of the way RT shields act, what's good 1:1 is what's going to be good for fleet engagements too. This may change if Battlefleet Koronus gives us rules that allow one ship to strip the shields so a lance-heavy vessel can finish you off.

HappyDaze said:

Yes and no. In this particular case I agree with you, but be careful not to oversimplify. Alone, a ship needs to handle a wider variety of situations. It needs long range weapons if it isn't fast. It needs weapons that work in singles, and weapons that work when paired with other weapons (from its own arcs). A fleet ship can afford to go point blank and powerful, because it can rely on the other ships in the fleet to deal with pesky opponents who try to outrange it, and it probably won't need to fire from a disadvantageous arc as often, unless it is against a target of opportunity.

However, because of the way voidshields work, lances vs batteries are identical in 1v1 and many v many until we get ships with even higher armor values (high-twenties and low-thirties).

As an aside, I've queried FF about how crits and voidshields interact. Depending on the answer, then there may very well be a place for critfisher ships, especially in fleet actions.