Still doesn't make lances better than macrocannons. Even comparing one macrocannon to one lance, the macrocannon is substantially better by RAW, assuming PC skill levels. Removing the ability to combine shots is just a nerf to lower-skilled gunners, ie NPCs.

HeavensThunderHammer said:

Bah! Back in my day a thread-omancer wasn't content unless the thread was at least 2 years old!

On a serious note, the dozens of fights I have tested these rules mods with it works great. It adds much more of a cinematic feel to the combat as well in my opinion.

My condensed version that I will be inflicting on my players in my new RT campaign:

• Armour stats on all vessels are reduced by 12, to a minimum of 0.
• Macrocannon and bomber damage is resolved one hit at a time with the reduced armour rating counting against every hit, not stacked into one massive amount.
• Stygies class macrocannon penetrator rounds only reduce armour for hits from that weapon, not all macrocannon hits in that salvo.
• All broadsides have their strength reduced to 3, but gain the Storm quality.
• All lance class weapons gain the Tearing quality.
• Lance batteries score additional hits per 2 degrees of success, not 3.
• All torpedoes (except vortex) reduce the damage they do by 12.
• Rak’Gol Howler class macrocannon reduce armour rating temporarily by 1 per hit from that weapon. Note that this is per weapon, not per ship firing.

Yes, I do want lances to be a truly terrifying weapon. I want the pc's to poop themselves at the sight of a Gothic class, and have a heart attack at the sight of a Star Dragon.

Hygric said:

I like these rules, but could you clarify if you are allowing salvos or not? From your second rule I would think you don't allow salvos, but from your third rule it would appear that you do allow them.

What are your thoughts on the Star-flare lance (the one that reduces the DoS needed for additional hits from 3 to 2)?

Red Bart said:

Salvos are decoupled in this system. Each individual hit is resolved against armour.

For the Star-flare lance it would hit on every DoS.

Larkin said:

Wouldn't that make the Star-flare lance a bit too overpowered though? Wouldn't it be better to drop that rule and give it a +10 to hit instead? It already has a strength of 3, so it surpasses the other lances anyway.

Not that I've noticed honestly. I've been experimenting with various combat mods and at one point we did lances hits same as macro hits. And yes, the lance kills ships, that's the point.

A +10 wouldn't be amiss though, as that gets you halfway to another hit anyway.

Having read this thread, I get the impression that this whole issue has been overcomplicated dramatically. There's a simple rule to make macrobatteries less powerful (reduce armor), and then a whole bunch of additional rules to fix the problems this causes for other weapons. I went with a simpler solution for my game: Reduce the armor for macrobattery attacks ONLY. There's no reason to make any changes to the other parts of the combat rules IMO. As for unusual stuff like the Rak'Gol cannons, I just revert to the standard rules for those attacks.

Why make things complicated when they can be easy?

TiLT said:

Yeah. I've been wondering if simply removing salvo and adding +12 to macrobattery damage, and making broadsides strength 3 with Storm quality wouldn't give basically the same results without the need to modify a lot of other weapons.

Sutekh said:

agreed. simple is better

I like the idea of just adding +12 damage to all macrobatteries, but alas I've came upon a dilemma. A cruiser, with Void armour and Armour Plating. So say now the cruiser has an armour rating of 25. With the advanced Pyros Melta-cannons combined with the +12 dam, this nets it only a max of 26 damage. So, if you somehow do max, you will only inflict 1 damage to the cruiser……

Now, if you add +1d10+5, you get a max of 29, and a Transports armour can still take some hits if the roll is bad. Or you can say certain weapons do +2d10 (like the Pyros, so a max can be 34), while almost all others do +1d10+5. Just an idea.

Nameless2all said:

No need to worry, Nameless. First, I believe out of all published material, only the Avenger Grand Cruiser has 21 armour base, so this issue would be a rarity. Admittedly, +3 from void armour and +1 from armour plating would admittedly result in 25 armour. In terms of overall effectiveness though, this grand cruiser now has a speed of 3 and a maneuverability of 0. Unless the mission is "destroy the grand cruiser", explorers and other NPCs can and should avoid the well-armoured ship. If, because you hate your players, the mission is "destroy the grand cruiser", it can be overcome with any of the following (in order of effectiveness):

• Lance weapons
• Disruption macrocannons
• Hit & run attacks or boarding actions
• Critical hits (automatic 1 damage, and a damaged component)
• Ramming: specifically Ork brute ram ships or armored prow and/or power ram human capital ship
• Creativity! Teleportarium shenanigans?

Your dilemma seems to be that a ship designed solely to survive a specific subset of conventional attacks is able to survive those specific attacks. For an illustration of how useless superior armor can be, and to train up your space combat skills, take a damaged Eldar ship of your choice and have it continuously use the supreme manoeuvrability rules to fly out of the grand cruiser's firing arc while plinking away at it. For an added challenge, only use macrocannons, so that only critical hits will damage the grand cruiser.

Highest Armor and Hull Integrity, as best as I can figure…

Avenger Grand Cruiser: 21 Armor, 90 Hull Integrity

Armor Plating: +1 Armor

Armored Prow: +4 fore armor

Excess Void Armor: +3 armor

Reinforced Internal Bulkheads: +3 hull integrity

Field Bracing: +6 hull integrity

Resolute: +3 Hull Integrity

Wrested From a Space Hulk: +1 Armor

Total Armor: 26, 30 fore

Total Hull Integrity: 99

Speed: 5 base, -2 excess void, -1 Resolute, +1 wrested from a space hulk: Net 3!

Maneuverability: 5 base, -2 armor plating, -3 excess void armor, +3 wrested from a space hulk: Net 3!

Assuming my arithmetic is correct, of course!

That makes a wonderful Ironclad linebreaker.

On that note, the best possible damage you can get out of a macrobattery is 1d10+8. (Bombardment cannon + good quality + munitorium) Factoring in the 12 penetration to balance things out with mathhammer, you're still not going to punch through that Avenger's prow armour. Just barely. Max. armour is 30, max. damage + penetration is also 30. You have a shot at the side or aft armour, though, particularly given the wretched handling of that Avenger. There are a few other macrobatteries that could also damage that side armour, but they're rare.

At first, I thought this meant the Mathhammer rules didn't work… but the more I think about it, the more I think it means they do work. Rules as written, macrobatteries were overwhelmingly good. Now, the macrobatteries will still rip the hell out of a transport or frigate, but they are much less effective against heavily armoured targets. Going cruiser hunting? You'd better equip with lances or torps, then. The rules also heavily favour those macrobatteries that have above average damage, but those are often short range, lower strength, or both. That means the ubiquitous twin sunsear batteries on a Sword no longer looks so good. Yeah. I like it. I like the trade offs…

Cheers,

- V.

Gavinfoxx said:

AFAICT, there is no restriction against taking multiple selections of Reinforced Internal Bulkheads and/or Field Bracing provided you have the Power and Space to do so.

I'd argue that components like that provide redundancy rather than additional armour, but that's just me speaking as a GM of munchkins and rules-lawyers.

HappyDaze said:

Check the errata, mate. All the supplemental components in the core rulebook should have the little dagger symbol that means they may only be selected once per vessel. So, that means the RIM are a one time boost. I wouldn't be surprised if all the supplemental components are once only, but I don't recall seeing a rule to that effect.

Cheers,

- V.

Vandegraffe said:

Sorry, but you've misread the errata. It notes that Additional Facilities should all be marked with the dagger. It does NOT say that Augments and Enhancements (a separate category of Supplemental Components that includes Reinforced Interior Bulkheads) should be marked with the dagger, nor are other Supplemental Components such as Macrobatteries , Lances , or Cargo Holds and Passenger Compartments .

So, again, it is legal to have multiple installations of Reinforced Interior Bulkheads.

Well, trying to figure out what other facilities could make that grand cruiser more reliable (not just via armor, but in general)…

Let's see!

Jovian 8.4 drive

Emergency Gellar Field

Triple Void Shield Array

Clemency Life Sustainer

Bilge Rat Quarters

A Tenebro Maze

A Fire Suppression System

Extended Supply Vaults

Ship's Stores

Superior Damage Control

Overload Shield Capacitors

Medicae Deck

Manufactorum

A bunch of small sacrificial components… no components that can explode in general, no extra large munitorums, nothing that can easily catch on fire or explode, etc. etc.

If every non-weapon component is best quality then there is more space and power available for yet more components. The more components, the more capabilities the ship has. With the neat side benefit of having more components to sacrifice if fires start devouring the ship.

Decessor said:

Many non-weapon components can't fully benefit from being Best Craftsmanship since values of 1 in either Power or Space cannot be reduced to 0.

Decessor said:

Fgdsfg said:

I see someone knows how to be a proper GM, then.

Cheers,

- V.

I had a simple idea for just making Lances stronger and did a bunch of calculations in the Troll Dice Roller and Probability Calculator ( http://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/troll.msp ) to try it out. I haven't examined in detail how it would compare to macrocannons when it comes to various armour values the way Moribund has, but I figured I might as well post it anyway.

What if we gave Lances a form of collective Tearing? Assuming full strength hits with the Void Shields downed or destroyed:

A Strength 1 Lance (Lance Weapons) would roll 2 dice and pick the highest roll for damage.

A Strength 2 Lance (Best-quality Lance Weapons, Lance Batteries) would roll 4 dice and pick the 2 highest rolls for damage.

A Strength 3 Lance (Best-quality Lance Batteries, Voidsunder, Dragon's Breath or Star-flare) would roll 6 dice and pick the 3 highest rolls for damage.

A Strength 4 Lance (Best-quality Voidsunder, Dragon's Breath or Star-flare) would roll 8 dice and pick the 4 highest rolls for damage (a considerable feat which would require massive stacking of bonuses for that many degrees of success at once).

This would make Lance Weapons increasingly dangerous according to ship size, so that a single powerful hit from a Dauntless Void-Sunder Lance could potentially deal as much or more damage as a squadron of Firestorm escorts. Lances would work essentially the same way they do now, they'd just be stronger to better represent that they're "incredibly high-powered energy weapons that are capable of burning straight through an armoured hull or cutting an escort in two".

Any thoughts on this idea?

The is one Lance not covered above which would greatly benefit from these rules. One sitting on top of the to date only Battleship with official stats: Da Wurldbreaka from Rogue Trader Edge of the Abyss.

Dorsal Weirdboy Towerz (Strength 1d5, Damage 2d10, Crit Rating 4, Range 3, May be fired as either a Macrobattery or a Lance, choose each time the weapon fires before rolling any dice. If fired as a lance and any single hit rolls an 18 or higher for damage, this Component is immediately destroyed from a backlash of WAAAGH! energy.)

As far as the "single hit rolls an 18 or higher for damage" rule goes, one could just roll 3 dice at a time, count the highest two in each set for that rule and put it all together in the usual "highest rolls regardless of hit" after all the rolls are done. Just thought I should mention it since it's the only lance that rolls 2d10 for damage instead of 1d10+n. It is considerably more powerful with these rules, but it still has the same flaws of " variable strength, short range and inability to fire in the aft section", something a clever captain going after Da Wurldbreaka can exploit in full.

Hypothetically, should Da Wurldbreaka roll a 5 for strength and somehow get the obscene amount of DoS necessary for a full hit, something I don't believe is possible without GM Fiat ("Weirdboyz WAAAGH!, everyone dies."), then it would roll 15 dice and pick the 10 highest for damage, almost certainly destroying anything short of a Grand Cruiser in a single blow.

Ship combat hasn't come up too much in my game yet, so I'm sorry if this is an ignorant question, but I'm not sure I understand part of these rules; if the Sunsear nerf is used, should all Broadsides use 4 STR, or just the Las-Broadsides from ItS?