I've just got a reply re: my assertion that the Strength stat rule in the book, despite the wording using "macrocannon", applies in the same way to lances as they do to macrocannons.

It follows thus:

> Rule Question:
> Hey,
>
> In the rules for starship weapons on page 219, it states that
> Strength is "the maximum number of hits a macrobattery can land on
> an enemy ship".
>
> Some people have stated that this means that Strength, and the rules
> relating to that, therefore don't work for lances in the same way as
> macrobatteries.
>
> Should the mention of "the maximum number of hits a macrobattery can
> land on an enemy ship" instead read "the maximum number of hit the
> weapon can land on an enemy ship", therefore removing the mention of
> solely macrobatteries and meaning that Strength applies equally to
> macrobatteries and lances, and that they both work in the same way
> in relation to the total number of hits they can make?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jordan

Hey Jordan,

Yeah, Lances follow the same rule as Macrobatteries.

Hope that helps!

Sam

Sam Stewart
RPG Designer
Fantasy Flight Games

As such, this confirmation of many people's reading of the rules shows that Lances aren't as weak as some have asserted.

MILLANDSON said:

I assume that's a typo on your part. Not sure how confirmation that lances are LIMITED (like they should be) in the amount of hits they can achieve makes them not as weak as some (I) have asserted. I'm glad they went with that ruling. The extra hits from the lance really didn't make up for enough when I recalculated the math.

However, the response I received about how voidshields and crits interact does give a bit of a boost to lances. They still don't compete in the damage department. A cruiser fully loaded with batteries does inflict severe damage, and I still have suspicions that a double-battery escort would be better off in th long run against a cruiser. However the strict "batteries are better in every sense" math has been nullified. Why?

Because crits ignore voidshields.

The math swings back (properly) to lances critting more. This even validates the "gothic" cruiser build. Never again should the advice be given "you shouldn't even bother firing the lance", because you can always crit with it.

Now I still think armor values of the ships of the line should be higher. I'm not entirely certain +1 crit rating warrants the loss in the damage department. However, the math to simulate is a bit more involved than I'm willing to set up at this moment.

Etheric said:

Karoline said:

And I agree entirely that crits are incredibly valuable. However, how much added crit percentage (remember, although you get a chance of two crits, to achieve a comparable power/space usage you usually have take a weapon that has -1 crit rating to compliment that +1 crit rating lance) makes up for how much damage lost? And remember, those batteries are still criting on a regular basis as well.

I dunno. It's like you said. Now it's apples to oranges and hard to quantify. My gut still says lances should outdamage batteries vs larger ships, but now the only way to prove that is to run a multi-round simulation with a ton of variables.

Thanks guys for bearing with me through the course of this thought experiment, but I'm kind of out of steam on this. If anyone has any new ideas to bring up (or reasons why I shouldn't give cruisers a point or two of extra armor in my games), let me know.

Etheric said:

I can write a program to run battle simulations fairly easily. Give me ship loadouts and skills and I'll give you a % of victory. Might be a little crude and assume both just slug it out and fight as opposed to using fancy maneuvering and such, but that is more or less what we're trying to figure out anyway.

I'm fully aware that the title of this post is "Mathhammer", so this really isn't an appropriate reply - I just feel it's worth throwing in there.

Lances are cool.

I mean, all startship weapons are cool. The massed ranks of giant cannon, grav-projectors, laser batteries, missile pods. They're all cool. But a laser cannon that has to be centerline mounted on a starship over a mile in length, that has railways systems running along it because it takes too long to simply walk down the thing to get repairs done and that slices similar startship in half (fluffwise ) is really stupidly awesome. Or maybe that's jsut me.

Also, perhaps this is jsut the way I run games, but the starship combat in my game tends to involve a lot of negative modifiers - raiders lurkin in asteroid fields, bad guys using the evasive actions manouveur. Generally speaking, even with a BS of 65 at the helm and whatever bonuses other PCs grant with their actions, it's rare to see more than a few degrees of success. As others have said, raw damage doesn't win starship combat - critical hits do. You can have 70 hull integrity let, but if your Void shield generators are damaged, your macrocannons are depressurised, there's no power to your geller field and your life sustainer is on fire, then you're basically boned.

professor_kylan said:

Negative modifiers aside, batteries aren't any worse at critting than lances are really - as the math in the thread points out. For a roughly equal ammount of space, you're looking at a crit rating of 5/3 for bog-standard batteries and a lance and 4/4 for two batteries (those lances are hefty). Note: this disregards whatever extras you might be able to get - be that range from sunsear batteries or the meanest crits this side of Mars with the Pyros Melta-cannons (fire with every crit result? Don't mind if I do).

Point being, I like lances too. But after this thread, I can't help but feel the balance between lances and macrocannons needs to be adjusted for them to be a truly competitive choice.

Cannonball said:

The Sunsear range advantage is easily matched by the Sunhammer which only gives up 1 point of damage from the Titanforge for 150% more range (Range 9).

HappyDaze said:

While true, you neglect to take into account that to use that lance properly at that range you'll also need an equivalently ranged macrobattery. Which means you're using more total power/space than the macrobattery/macrobattery option for statistically worse results most of the time; albiet wtih a slightly improved crit rating (I'd hope you would get something out of using more power/space after all).

Cannonball said:

Power I cant speak to, but both the 'suns' guns have 9 range.

korjik said:

That they do - however, it's not an issue of whether you can get guns with that range, but whether it is economical to do so. If you want a Sunhammer Lance, then you're also almost assuredly going to have to get a Sunsear battery as a compliment (as lances need batteries to effectively down void shields and if you're not getting an equally ranged battery, you're not taking advantage of the sunhammer's range). And a Sunlance/Sunsear combination is a total of 15 power / 8 space while two Sunsear batteries is only 12 power / 8 space. So what you're getting is a slightly higher crit chance (crit ratings 3 and 4 instead of 4/4) at the expense of statistically less damage (several less hull points per round) - but you pay three more power for the privilege!

Alright Karoline, I'l take you up on your offer. Thanks much. Everyone please critique the scenario I'm proposing, I'd like Karoline to only have to do this work once for a pretty good answer.

First off, let's assume the target ship is the same throughout all the scenarios. 20 armor, 70 hull, 2 shields. I really have no idea what it should be armed with. I'll propose giving it a titanforge lance battery and a mars macrocannon battery broadside on each side with a sunsear laser battery on the prow. The target ship's armament doesn't really matter except as a pacing instrument. If someone else has a better "standard cruiser" payload, please suggest it.

As for our escort protagonist, let's say she has 16 armor, 1 shield, and "unlimited" hull. Please include in the data the amount of damage the raider would have received if the cruiser managed a side arc shot on it EVERY round, as well as the round the damage exceeds 30. Why not stop the sim at 30? I'm presuming it's the pilot's job to mitigate damage from the cruiser, and since we aren't tracking maneuverability, we can't compensate for the rounds the raider is in the aft or fore arcs. Let's assume the target ship is an NPC with a 40 in everything. I'm not sure a legitimate number of times a round the target ship should be able to make an emergency repairs roll. I'd say no more than twice in a round, but I could see a lot of GMs only doing it 1/round.

The payload for the raider will come in two varieties: Payload BL will consist of a titanforge lance and a mars pattern macrocannon battery. Payload BB will consist of a pair of sunsear laser batteries. This keeps the cost of both payloads close to the same. I'm open for someone disputing the validity of the BL payload as being unrealistic, saying if someone is going to go with a raider, they're going to go with big weapons. That's fine, but if you're going to suggest titanforge and ryza combo, remember that the BB payload could buy two ryzas for the same price. A more valid concern might be the incompatible ranges of these two payloads. For the sake of this scenario, I'm fine with ignoring the range difference, but two solutions might be: 1) grant the BB payload +10% attack compared to the BL payload, 2) change the BB payload to Mezoa macrocannons and a Ryza (this would also even the SP cost). Again, I'm fine going with the double sunsears and ignoring the range difference. Lets assume both raider payloads have the same crew, giving it a 70 to attack (already including the bonuses the other PCs give the gunner) and a 60 to perform emergency repairs.

The data output needed is 1) number of turns needed to destroy the target ship, 2) damage sustained by the attacker, 3) what round the attacker was dealt the 30th point of damage (and if that comes up really quickly, go ahead and add a "what round the attacker was dealt the 60th point of damage" datapoint)

Each payload of the raider needs two sets of simulations (for a total of 4 sets of sims). The first time through, the attacker focuses their crits on the target's weapons, then the voidshields. The second time through, the attacker focuses crits on the voidshields, then on the weapons. I almost want to run another pair of sims too, where the BB attacker chooses not to salvo her weapons until the target receives a couple of crits, but I think that might be overcomplicating things.

Alright, am I missing anything? Did I overlook a intrinsically valuable piece of data that needs to be reported? Are my comparable payloads/skills set at ridiculous numbers? Should the raiders that target weapons, only care about taking down the two batteries, and leave the lance by itself before targeting the voidshields?

P.S. Wouldn't a ship with a pair of melta-cannons just be the sickest knife-fighter ever? That is against targets that couldn't outmaneuver it... and the DPR would probably be a bit lower... oh but the burninating....

I do have one question that I want to confirm the answer to. Does a critical strike bypass void shields? And if so, does it simply ignore them, or does it take them down in the process of the strike? And what happens in the case of a ship with 2 void shields? Besides being potentially very important for damage output, it also strongly affects the validity of a ship that uses only lances.

And since fire will come up, what spread order should I assume? And how many firefighting attempts a turn?

For data output I'll be setting it up to run through each simulation a few million times to get accurate numbers, so I can give you:

'Average number of turns to destroy the target' fairly easily

'Average damage sustained by raider' is also easy to manage.

Turns to reach X damage on the raider could be more difficult though because it is possible that X damage will never be reached depending on how quickly weapons are taken out, which would throw out any attempts to make a good average. I suppose for the information I can figure out the % of times that X damage is reached, and on the times it is reached, how quickly it happens on average.

This will take me a while to put together as I'm busy with some other work at the moment, but I will work on it as time permits.

I believe, according to FFG, crits do affect ships even if they have voidshields up. In such a case, the voidshield nulls the hit (and the majority of its damage) but a 'localised burn through' deals one point of hull damage and a 1d5 critical effect. To be honest, I'm not sure I particularly like that ruling...it makes voidshields much less useful and combat far more deadly for larger ships but there you have it.

Also, aye, two melta-batteries is definitely a scary thing at close quarters.

Karoline said:

No problem no the "turn til x" issue. I thought that'd be a hard thing to program for. My spare time has been a bit busy as well. Toying around with a few Dogs in the Vineyard one-shots and stuff.

Criticals, as ruled by FF work as follows: treat the hit as normal, if the attack does no damage for ANY reason (including voidshields) do 1 damage and 1d5 crit. The shields are just as intact for follow-up attacks as they were if the attack had just been a hit. The crit is just an application of the "always do a minimum of one damage" rule.

Example: A ship with two lances targets a 2 voidshield cruiser. The attacker crits on the first hit, but doesn't manage to take out the shield generator. Because the lance is strength one, it only takes down one of the shields. The second lance will also be negated by the attack (unless it too can crit).

Although I do like your idea that a crit with a lance might take down all of the voidshields for a round. That would improve the damage of gothic-style cruisers, although it doesn't much fix the situation with raiders. Let's stick to the official ruling though.

Fire spread: hrm, this one is tricky, because it is both random and DM adjudicated. How does a 50% chance of spreading to a weapon + 5% chance of spreading to voidshield generator sound?

Firefighting (and repairs): Just re-read the book. The NPCs get as many extended actions as the PCs get NPC actions for their ship. The two choices are a flat 3 or 1 per 10 rating of the crew. As we are treating the NPC ship as skill 40, I'm fine with either 3 or 4 actions, split between repairs and firefighting. Say firefighting as priority, and any left go to repairs.

There is something I forgot to consider before. Since this is an escort vs cruiser scenario, that cruiser really has more than 3 weapons, it actually has 5. I think the only way we'll be able to keep the programming simple though is to assume the escort can stay in the crippled arc. That sounds pretty reasonable, even though on the table, not all battles are 1v1, and the cruiser might be able to pull some tricks to get its good side in play for a round or two.

Well, don't forget that there is going to be one action for moving, and if there are still weapons left, one for shooting. So, one action will go to firefighting if there is a fire, one will go to repair if there are any repairs that need to be made, one will go to movement always (presumably if they don't think moving is important any more, they've lost), and finally one going to weapons as long as there are any of those to fire at the attacking ship. Extra actions go to firefighting and then to repair and then are simply lost if there aren't any crisies to deal with.

I think you're misreading that section. The NPC ships get as many extended actions as the PCs get NPC actions (page 214, sidebar). So it's like non-PC piloted ships get two free actions (shooting and piloting).

Ah, yeah, it does say extended actions (or other actions). And shooting/moving don't seem to be extended actions (though other actions is perhaps questionable, I think that might be too restrictive on NPC ships)

Am I the only person who reads that lances may achieve a number of hits equal to their strength plus an additional hit per 3 degrees of success? This would essentially limit a lance to 3 hits at 9 degrees of success (rare sure more like two in practicality) and a strength 3 lance battery would hit 4 times with 3 degrees and 6 hits with 9 degrees, while 1 or 2 degrees of success mimic macrocannons. essentially you add the lance rule to the macro rule, saying that for particularly skilled or lucky strikes one might hit more than once per strength of the lance (battery).

This is expanded upon in the Fluff of BFG and even RT corebook if i remember correctly in that the difference between a lance and a laser macrocannon is that the lance fires sustained beams of energy possibly many seconds or even minutes long (not sure), and therefor can "rake" or "lash" an enemy Vessel. I always picture it as a massive laser beam being dragged across a vessel's surface, leaving red hot metal and crippling damage in it's wake.

Maybe i'm nuts, but after all this discussion, whether or not anyone agrees with me, from what i've seen in this thread and what i seem to remember from various sources, this was the Intent of the writer when designing the Lance mechanic and is how i *ALWAYS* will run them. perhaps running your bruteforce test with this mechanic will level the playing field or even drag the advantage towards lances (I feel that with the higher SP/Space/Power cost it belongs there.)

My imput anyways.
Cheers.

I'm fairly sure you are. The book says that when firing ship weapons you get one hit if you succeed, and in the case of a macrocannon one extra hit per DoS to a maximum number of hits equal to strength, and for lances you get one extra hit per 3 DoS to a maximum number of hits equal to strength. Your rules seem... kind of out of left field. I don't know where you would get that you apply macrocannon rules for DoS up to strength on a lance, and then switch over to the lance rules after that.

Last session of the game I'm running, I tried a fairly small house rule to see if it made a big difference between lances and macrocannons. A couple of my players tend to be more concentrated on Mathhammer and number crunching, rather than just getting on with the RP and they've been starting to grumble about lances for quite some time.

System is pretty simple. Lances add +1 to rolls on the critical hit chance. Doesn't change the maths all that much, but makes criticals you get with the Lance just a little bit more reliable (and a little bit more terrifying if an opponent has one).

System trialed in a twelve turn combat (RT Firestorm [Titanforge lance, Sunsear Macros] and Cobra [Twin Sunsear macros] vs. Four Iconoclast destroyers [Mars macros, ryza macros - one destroyer swapping ryza macros for Titanhammer lance]) in an area with patches of heavy dust clouds inposing between -20 and -50 on shooting. THe number crunching players weren't all that impressed by the change to begin with, but by turn three of the combat they were starting to panic every time the lance-armed Iconoclast got close. The rest of the players started to feel especially proud of their lance, especially when they managed to get a Engine damaged result, which was only ever previously available to them via Murder Servitors.

Might not change the maths much, but changed the feeling of the combat a lot. Which is more important, imo.

Karoline said:

Unfortunately, he is not the only person. The book says, that macrocannons score one hit on a success, plus one extra hit per DoS up to a maximum number of hits equal to their strength rating. Lances score one hit on a success, plus one extra hit per three DoS. Yeah, the part "up to a maximum equal to their strength" is missing in the description of Lances. But the book says, Lances work basically the same way as macrobatteries, with several distinct differences. The paragraph about lances only covers these differences. Otherwise, all rules from the macrocannons paragraph do also apply to lances.

gomme said:

I am harldy a rules laywer, and usually pick up a system and adapt it to my means regardless, but in this case and after doing a good deal of reading sources and re-reading rulebooks I am fairly certian this whole thread is based on a misunderstanding that lances cannot exceed their stregnth in hits. And until the author of the core rulebook starships section, who I've read is a big BFG fan comes here and argues my point, i will remain adamant that this entire thread is moot in that lances can exceed their stregnth rating in hits.

I understand that many of you are arguing this thread are basing your comments on rules (published and or answers from site here) I feel that if you're sure something is broken, give it a nudge in the appropriate direction. i could care less about rules in any given system. If something seems so obviously broken that even the sucker gives it a second thought and decides against it, then for the sake of player choice and game balance it needs a change. Chances are that my players will NEVER come across another RT GM so why should I (or you?) take the 100% (arguably) acurate interpretation of the rules? Final judiciation is the ROLE of the GM, why overcomplicate it with semantics? go with what you feel is right and if it turns out to be broken or can be logically shot down, cede.

point is still moot in my opinion, and I can understand rules laywership (some players try and take every advantage of the GM) I would rather capture the flavor of the weapon and give my players a (very) effective and expensive option that accurately represents something I LOVE in 40k fluff, rather than take a literal interpretation to the point of limiting player option.

RP is the most important part of the entire game, otherwise regardless of all associated bonuses of 'misc' supplemental components every RT would be floating around in the biggest, shootiest, Imperial Navy ship they can get their grubby mits on because the theme of the game has become "Be as combat effective as you can so you can loot endevours from rivals."

again, my opinion.

Lancea said:

The person who answered the rules question - Sam Stewart, who has been the man in charge for all things Rogue Trader since just after the rulebook was released - was the one who wrote the starship rules in the Rogue Trader rulebook.

You'll probably not see him come here and argue this point - Sam, Ross and Mack all have a lot of things to do that take priority over trawling the forums for discussions to weigh in on - they are, afterall, busy being in charge of the creation of new books full of things for people here to disagree about.

That all aside, consider this: If Lances aren't bound by the limitations of weapon strength as batteries are, what is the point in having any lance component with a Strength of higher than 1, such as Lance Batteries? The difference between individual lances and lance batteries is not only irrelevant, but detrimental to anyone using a lance battery, if all lances can score as many hits as they get the required DoS for, regardless of strength.

Phew~ not often I see the same argument repeated in the same thread just a few pages back. If everyone goes back a couple of pages, I actually brought up the issue with lances and strenght toward the beginning of the thread. By the rules as written in the book, lances aren't technically capped to strength like macrobatteries are. However, the rules as intended (supported by the word of God) is that they _are_ limited by strength just as macrobatteries. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate but uncapping lances like that doesn't actually make a drasatic change to the lance vs macrobattery debate. It helps, to be sure, but not enough to be a worthy fix really.