"Broadside" weapons do 2d10 damage per hit instead of 1d10. Alternately if this is way too powerful, 2d10, discarding the lowest.

What is the current difference between broadside and not? (latecomer to this debate)

Broadside cannons are like the old sail ships of old, the cannons are located on the sides and can only fire toward the sides, while dorsal macrocannon batteries for example, is more like a Cannon turret on a WW2 Cruiser: they can fire on both sides and front (or back depending on where it is)

The damage boost comes form the fact that you can get way more cannons on the sides of a ship than on a weapon battery

Fortinbras said:

I`d go withe the second idea. adding 1d10 to the normal damage is imo to powerfull. A broadside isn`t about doing more damage but adding more guns to an attack, so you have a chance to score more hits.

GregorM1980 said:

A Mars-pattern Broadside only adds 2 STR to the total hits, from a base of 3. All other stats are the same. For the power and space cost, there is almost zero incentive currently to equip a broadside instead of say, a Melta-Shell Turret, or a Ryza-Pattern Plasma Battery. Simply upping the STR bonus isn't a good solution because that's still reliant on an extremely high BS skill, when the idea of a macrocannon battery is you don't need to be accurate.

The 2d10, discard lowest thing makes sense to me is because it is in fact a fusillade of ammunition being flung at you.

Alternately, kill two birds with one stone: A Munitorium component gives +3 to Broadsides instead of +1?

This is probably a massive nerf on regular macrobatteries, but an idea that springs to mind is to rule that a regular macrobattery only scores one additional hit per 2 degrees of success (ala semi-auto rapid fire), while the broadside retains the one additional hit per success bonus. This has the additional benefit that that it makes lances more attractive, since the disparity between lances and macrobatteries is reduced.

I have absolutely zero actual play experience, but I'd be interested to hear how people think that this house rule would affect space combat.

Or one could give a BS bonus to attacks using Broadsides to give them an additional hit or two they wouldn't have... +20, +30, something like that.

Edit: In fact, assuming it doesn't nerf the heck out of regular macrocannon batteries, my initial thought is regular macrocannons are 1 hit per 2 DoS after the first two extra hits (ie. regular success = 1 hit, 1 DoS = 2 hits, 2 DoS = 2 hits, 4 DoS 3, , etc), and broadsides would get +20 to BS and are 1 hit per DoS.

That doesn't nerf the heck out of the regular broadsides, simulating that the amount of guns would peter off in comparison to full broadsides... and rewards higher BS for actual full broadsides... Anyone object/have a better idea?

I think what I'll wind up doing is using the Howler Cannon special rule for Rak'Gol guns. (Rak'Gol Howler Cannons do 2 hits per success instead of 1)

However I'll limit this to optimum firing range rating or closer.

Give them something akin to the scatter quality. Maybe a +5 or 10 Increase to BS. Should make them scarier without too much imbalance.

A +5/+10 is insufficient for the added power/space requirements of a broadside in terms of balance.

At ranges of 6 or less each hit could either count as two hits, to a max of twice the weapons strength. Or possibly give it a slightly modified version of Tearing. Roll damage twice, take better result.

I agree! Isn't that what I said several posts up?

I prefer the Howler Cannons method to boost the Broadsides ; if you think the Munitorium is a bit weak as a component, then instead of giving +1 dmg to all batteries, this component give the tearing quality to all macro-batteries ?

That's what I get for leaving this open before going to work. What you've come up with is probably the most elegant solution for Broadsides. Maybe an increase to the Range of broadsides would also help.