N0-1_H3r3 said:

And for that alone I'd be thanking you. Weeell, assuming my copy had arrived, but since I only had the funds and ordered it on Saturday, said praise and thanks will have to wait until it arrives and I can glory in it.

And build the HDMS Lord Solar Macharius...

MILLANDSON said:

Well, that is the gaping issue. Any unit of the same base type does the same base damage, regardless of size. That needs to be fixed.

But still, the whole thing just seems like a sprawl of not very-well connected mechanics. It's not completely a loss with some GM-created props but I was prepared to have my socks knocked off like I saw with Frozen Reaches.

Have to say it's a bit more complicated than that. I raised on the other thread some of the scaling issues. But it gets downright silly the bigger you start to think. 2 units from a standard tech level imperial world.

Squad of 10 Guardsmen - strength 1, Power 6, Armour 12, damage 4D10+6

Baneblade (crew of 10) - strength 1, Power 12, Armour 24, damage 4D10+12

Of course, the armour is higher for the Baneblade, as is the 'power'. But both units do more or less the same damage (ok, +6 vs +12, but on 4D10 thats nothing).

The book mentions (in one sentence) support crew, etc. So in other words give your baneblade 1000 people to push it around and you will get a strength of 110!!!

Edits: Fixing + numbers for die rolls...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Nathan, apologies. I saw the connection to BFG straight away and just assumed it was Andy Chambers doing. Not being familiar with how these books are written I just made an assumption as he (I think) helped out with BFG.

I'd just like to add, since obviously some of the writers and contributors use the forum, that my criticism of any particular rules or sections of the book isn't directly aimed at them. It's easy to pick apart something you had no involvement in and I know it can sting to see someone nitpicking at what you put a lot of effort into. I thought all but the last few chapters were excellent, but the ground combat stuff, despite it's 'big' billing really did not do it for me. If I'm complaining it's because I hope FFG will sort it and save me having to write a replacement system...

My only big disappointment with BFK is that there are not additional charts for Machine Spirit Oddity and Past History. With so much to use in building new ships, I'd like more than 10 choices for each. I expected these to be in there much as Deathwatch got an expansion to the Power Armour Histories in RoB.

Just got my copy, and I've done my usual initial skim of the material inside.

I just wanted to thank FFG for getting this book out. It's the one I've been waiting for since I started running my RT game. Kudos, gents (and gals!)!

RobOut said:

I also have some concerns regarding the mass combat section. The scaling does not seem to be appropriate. Going on the very high end the Warlord Titan is indestructable even from another Warlord Titan if I am reading the rules correctly. With a power rating of 45 it does 4d10 + 45 damage which means a max damage of 85. Its armour will be 45 * 2 = 90. Even with a max damage role it cannot be hurt.

I love the majority of the book but I am little disappointed with the scaling of power between the various unit types in mass combat. The rules seem to work well for infantry groups but once vehicles are taken into account it does not seem to make sense.

Peacekeeper_b said:

If anything, Voidmasters could do with some mechanical options to make them look less like Naval Officers.

flavion said:

I've poked Sam about that problem, and sent in a variety of suggestions to fix it, so hopefully we'll see something on that soon.

Well, I did tell Sam I was kinda surprised to find such a large section in the book devoted to ground warfare. It isn't rubbish but if it hadn't been it it would not have made the book less good.

Alas, waiting on the finished copy.

What is the point of boarding torpedos? I think that a hit-and-run tactic without an escape vehicle is a suicide mission. Is the torpedo on a tether and reeled in after the run or does it have a reverse gear (including the claxon sound and the blinking backlights)?

Edit: Several humiliating typos.

Depends on the mission. And who you put into the torpedoes. I can see a squad of terminators deployed into a genestealer space hulk that way. Maybe we don't expect them to come back unless they succeed at the mission.

Besides, who is to say the PCs will be doing the boarding. They could always switch to a squad of house troops for a suicide mission to blow up the bridge/weapons array/engines of an enemy vessel.

Some fluff depictions (well, one or two) have the boarding torpedo being able to disengage and fly a short way after deploying the troops it carries, but the majority of descriptions suggest that the boarding party is recovered by other means (either by teleportarium, which means that they have to disable the target's shields,by a regular shuttlecraft/assault boat). The latter option exploited a little gaming mechanic in the BfG rules which had a ship's point defence turrets able to try and shoot down torpedoes (including boarding torpedoes) or attack craft (fighters, bombers, assault boats, etc) but not both in the same turn.

The back end of the boarding torpedo could launch as a form of savior pod.

MILLANDSON said:

Do you suppose it would be okay for you to ruminate on some of those suggestions before you've gotten feedback? I'd be interested in hearing your ideas concerning the scaling.

I picked up the book a couple of days ago, I'm quite pleased with it. I was hoping the fluff material in the middle would be a bit more indepth, but it's still pretty good. It gives me plenty to work with and extrapolate from on my own. The ships and components and new rules are fantastic, and make the book worth the cover price on their own, I think. It's particularly nice having so much more detail on xenos and Chaos vessels.

I've noticed some of the problems with the ground combat rules. They seem a little bit slapdash to me, as if they could have used a few more rounds of playtesting and some fine tuning. There seems to be some bits missing, honestly; like explaining how unit strength applies to tanks and aircraft, and the various scaling issues mentioned. I'm quite confident though that in time FFG will be able to revise that and issue errata on it, or at least clarifications.

Despite those problems with the ground combat rules though, I still have to admit I like them.

AkumaKorgar said:

My main suggestion, which is the one I'm using in my game (my group already had a unittwo on their ship, so I stated them up with the new rules), is that damage should be tiered based on the overall size of the unit.

Basically, Company-sized units would have 2d10+Power damage, Battalions would have 3d10+Power damage, etc.

It seems to work quite well, for me at least. All it means is that you have to jot down what "size" unit it is, where as before you didn't.

MILLANDSON said:

That actually makes a lot of sense, I think that solution works quite well. You could even develop a chart that shows how many men or vehicles qualify as any given unit size, and then display the corresponding damage tier.

@MILLANDSON That's a very elegant solution. I'll be using that for my games.

I suppose the only thing that leaves then is deciding how to calculate unit strength for armor, artillery, and air units. Doesn't make sense to do it by headcount, since a company of tanks has significantly less men than a company of infantry, but shouldn't be too easy to kill.

In reference to Mill's solution: when I saw this problem mentioned here in the thread (I hadn't read any of BFK yet), I also gave the idea some thought. Instead of a flat out bonus, I though of using multipliers. Platoon would be the lowest levelthus use the basic unit strength. A company would be x5 platoon's US; a battalion x5 company's strength; a brigade x4 battalion's strength; a division x3 brigade's strength, etc.

Much more complicated, I admit,it would have to be put in a huge table. Possibly tie it to personnel numbers, dropping the multiplier for understrength units (thus an understrength battalion would become x4, x3, x2, etc. of company's strength) until they become oversized lower-tier units (thus the depleted battalion from the previous example would become a x6 company, for instance). Haven't written it up yet, but that's the gist of it. Possibly not practical enough for an RPG like this (unless someone's really into playing out ground warfare).

AkumaKorgar said:

Well, the actual book states that you should include the support staff, etc, for tank units, as that would bring it up to roughly the same number of heads (tanks need more people to look after them than humans do, plus they're more important and less replaceable in the eyes of the Imperium ).

I've been pondering these rules, which are a real shame because obviously a lot of work went into them, but the math behind them seems nonsensical.

Things that I see as problematic:
It makes complete sense to split your army in the smallest fractions possible. They still do exactly the same damage, same initiative, same morale. Because they are so small, they can't really break, and because they only have 1 hp, even the mightiest unit can only do 1 damage to them. Obviously this is not intended, but (to a less ridicilous degree) splitting up your army should probably not be beneficial. If I split my army into two pieces to do a pincer attack, it probably shouldn't average double damage.

The damage gap is too low. An army of 10 cavemen does 4d10+1 damage, the same amount of modern heavy tanks do 4d10+12. That's about a 33% increase. Note that the cavemen still have about a 45% chance to chip a hp of the tank (whose armour is 24). Of course the tanks do destroy the cavemen in one turn...

Gear and troop quality do not influence damage. Arguably the point is that this is folded into the "era" stat, but it still seems very odd.

Current ideas:

Army size should influence damage. A lot. 1000 men should kill 10 men extremely fast. I like the basic idea of 10log(Unit Strength)=number of d10 +1, though I would perhaps add First number/2(Round down) to the damage. (This would mean that say 900 men would do 2d10+4, and 1000 would do 3d10, which is a fairly smooth, if still logarithmic transition. Also not that damage goes down as killing is done, which is perhaps unfortunate timewise, but I think it's needed.

Standard size modifiers by vehicle class. Rough idea: infantry stays divide by 10, Cavalry divide by 2, Artillery divide by 2, Astartes 0, Tanks multiply by two, Fighters multiply by 5 (Very rare, quite sturdy). 100 men = 20 cavalry = 20 Artillery = 10 Astartes = 5 tanks = 2 jets. Combined with the first rule this would also up the damage potential of heavy ordenance.

Troop Quality should influence damage. Perhaps +2 damage for every level above volunteer. Again, make some squads devastating.

Troops of the same type in contact with the same enemy count as one army. (To avoid the splitting issue)

The main problem with this is that small squads may have issues destroying each other, and that even battles can take a long time to resolve, and in time. I think that is a problem the original designers tried to avoid.

Honestly I think something like the astartes shouldn't be relegated to a lesser 'status' than tanks. This isn't the tabletop where there's a dozen marine players to every guard player, and no need for balance. Thus IF (big IF even for a rogue trader) the angels of death make an appearance their impact should be beyond what mere men can do even with the best of their gear (titans are gawds, not gear).

Unfortunately I really lack the patience to put my thoughts into a real solution so I'm not sure how I'd take the alternatives here and twist them to suit my vision.

Although I was pondering something. In The Frozen reaches certain units gain bonuses when performing certain actions. The tank units get bonus strength used offensively, some infantry get better when kept in certain areas, etc. I think the various classifications of unit types each deserve a similar treatment.

An example would be light infantry (or other light units) getting a bonus to things like flanks, withdrawals, or recon operations, while heavy infantry (as well as tanks, cav, and mechanized units) get a choice between a bonus when used in an assault, OR when dug in. Medium units might also get one or two specializations to represent their being the core of many modern military units in the 41st millenia.

Then of course, I also have to ask the question of how to handle Xenos units. Do things like ork infantry need further rules stacked on top of them to make them different from every other infantry unit of the same class? Maybe something as simple as +1 damage and morale per size class or an ability to recover small amounts of strength each round as boys get stapled back together. This would make a unit of ork heavy infantry on the offensive deadlier and more resilient than a human one.

I guess I should point out I'm not seeking balance in the sense that things are fair between units, but instead thematically appropriate for what's being used.

Oh also apologies if this is unreadable. It seems the boards have been removing certain words from posts. Specifically, AND, and , OR.

Hum, having had a good read of the mass combat rules in battlefleet koronus I am alittle suprised that some of the basic errors didnt get picked up. I do like the rules for buying/creating units but I dont think some of the rules make much sense. The option that Millandson mentions with regards to unit damage ,ight work but need abit of play testing to confirm. Im not sure about the vague comment about adding in support personal to the numbers of armoured units to give them a strength as all units have support personal, infantry units have a signals platoon, mt platoon etc etc. I would prefer giving the vehicles are a hard value such as 5 x Recce Veh 10 x MBT etc etc Also having just read the frozen reaches the mass combat system in that looks good.