Long story short. My parties ship dissabled a Rak'Ghol ship in one blast from a disruption cannon battery. Now admittedly they hit with all 3 of it's strength, and it's shields were down from another battery. First random component to go down: the plasma drive. Woops! Oh well, just fix it I thought. What, tech-use at -10 to fix it in 5 TURNS?!?

Needless to say, there is one less Rak'Ghol ship in the expanse now. Campaign wise, I couldn't care less (they got to play with their new BC and it was only a Frigate, so it was doomed anyway), but I can oh-so easily see the same result on more important enemy ships.

Has anyone else had any experience with these new-fangled disruption weapons, and how powerfull have you found them to be?

Hygric.

Disruption cannons are insane. A single frigate with an excellent gunnery crew can take down a cruiser. Interesting experiment for me, definitely put the fear of god into the players.

The rules on them are unfortunately vague; I houseruled that only the damage that gets past the void-shields and armour is able to disable components. They're still horrifyingly effective weapons.

Not vague enough: "This weapon's damage is not affected by Armour."

The problem is, as a GM, I don't want to ban them (I prefer to be a yes GM rather than a no GM) and I know they will be usefull to inflict on the PC's at some stage. Pirate squadron that shuts down the ship then boards, leading to lots of tense encounters in dark corridors while the clock is ticking... heck yeah!

We've got the crew modifying the Ryza turret to shoot flowers and chocolates first, before the armoured prow f**king next time!

Seriously though, I thought they'd be an interesting, tactical choice of weapon that would have its place knocking off 1-2 systems every now and then, clubbing things into submission for boarding etc... it honestly suprised me that they'd knock out that much even on a really good hit that we saw. I'm sort of the opinon that maybe it's probably easier just to pretend there's a Galactic Cheesy Weapon Amnesty in effect that even chaos forces abide and just forget they ever existed like 2D10 tearing, automatic weapons, Yu-Varth battleships with no components, Slaugth disintergrating weapon properties and other dumb **** that should never have passed into print.

Hygric said:

Hence the houseruling.

MKX said:

Heck yeah.

If something is too good to be true... and all that.

Or introduce hardening. If the disruption cannon is comparable to an EMP attack, it should be possible to harden the hull with comparatively limited means. I am no physicist, but if I am correct a cage of Farraday should do the trick. This could be a simple ship upgrade, not costing any power to be worth mentioning and very little space, so at most 0 Power 1 Space, and possibly no space at all. The next time the disruption cannon open fire, the result might be a fizzling burst of energy from some copper rods at the bottom of the ship.

If you are truly evil, you introduce a 'capacitator' that is linked to the EMP defence grid, allowing you to feed the power of the disruption cannon shot to your own weapon systems, boosting a lance shot.

In each case, defenses would allow you to limit the use of disruption cannon. Make it an external component (you have to feed that energy somewhere) and it can even be damaged as well, so that players can still try to destroy the EMP defenses and then use their cannon. The technological side of these ideas might be wobbly in the real world, but this should cover Imperial 'logic'.

Friedrich van Riebeeck, Navigator Primus, Heart of the Void

P.S. If there might be one race hardening their ships against EMP it might be the Rak'Ghol, with their primitive drives of atomic doom.

Errant said:

So you houseruled that the disruption cannon effect only affects a ship with the amount of hull integrity damage it does, because the original rule of "only damage done to hull integrity is counted for the disruption effect" was too vague?

Well the original rule leads to crippling half of a cruiser in a single volley, so yes.

I just treat it like a Critical Hit to "randomly select" the component. In this way, the plasma drives will not be "disrupted" but they can disrupt the thrusters. They still need to use their Augury to determine what components are available. They can shut down systems like Void Shields, which is potentially deadly. Obviously the systems will never become "damaged" or "destroyed" because there is no critical hit but they lose power. It's a simple way to solve these problems. In this manner, Stoic vessels and the like will be able to "shrug off" shots as if they were Ion Shielded. It also means that a "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" will have protected sections.

In the games I've ran, the players treat their Disruption Cannons as a tool to cripple other ships but it's not the end all be all. They even have a Munitorium on their Sword Class Frigate and the Void Master is a Gunner with a 52 BS. Since they need to use their Augury to target shots and those shots are limited, it keeps the Dis-Cannons from being b0rken.

You guys should see what the hell party did.

My players used an Avenger, a teleportarium, murder servitors, and two out of three macro cannon broadsides as disruptors per side with a munitorium, an armored prow, and a power ram.

All your ships are belong to us!

BaronIveagh said:

That's pretty bad ass! But if you treat it like a Critical hit then they won't be nearly as bad for obvious reasons. They'd be limited on what they can do. Double results would appear resulting negated hit. Systems affected would be limited to chance, though they could choose if the proper result appeared.

BaronIveagh said:

"THIS THE IMPERIAL VESSEL #Name of your ship # ; STAND TO AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED !"

really, the only thing your ship needs now is a tractor beam.

Mordechai Von Razgriz said:

"Inquisitor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding the Rogue Trader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board. "

"So you see lord-captain, there is nothing you can possess that I cannot take away. Not even your ship."

meanwhile, in an holographic message :

"Inquisitor Clousseau. Years ago, you served my father in the Meritech Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Chorda. I regret that I am unable to present my father's request to you in person, but my ship has fallen under attack and I'm afraid my mission to bring you to Port Wander has failed. I have placed information vital to the survival of Footfall into the memory systems of this R2 servitor. My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this servitor safely delivered to him in Port Wander. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Sherlock Clousseau. You're my only hope."

"What of the Inquisition? If the loyalist dogs have obtained a complete technical reading of this station, it is possible, however unlikely, they might find a weakness and exploit it."

"The plans you refer to will soon be back in our hands."

"Any attack made by the Imperials against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they have obtained. This station is now the ultimate power in the universe! I suggest we use it!"

"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed, Magos. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the Ruinous Powers".

"Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerous ways, Lord Sindri. Your sad devotion to the Changer of Ways has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you enough clairvoyance to find the Imperial forces..." (begins to strangle)

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

Just too cool.

And the usual but:

Only problem is that within 40k a single frigate launched torpedo kills a planet.....

Voronesh said:

you kill all life on it, but you don't make the entire planet explodes. that's the job of the Planet Killer for that.

Lexicanum to the rescue.

Two stage cyclonic torpedo:

A more exotic version of the cyclonic torpedo. Though the warhead is still the same, the delivery system is radically different. Instead of exploding on impact, this device will burrow though a planet's surface with a Melta charge, and detonate at the core. This will destabilize a planet, and will shatter that world in many cases. They are used against worlds that are devoid of atmosphere or biological life, such as Necron Tomb worlds.

Reads like a pretty destroyed planet to me. Maybe not as spectacular as the Planet Killer, but still.

BTW:

An archeotech nova cannon fires vortex shells, with a 15.000 klick radius of destruction. I guess that nova cannon is VERY, VERY rare compared against cyclonic torpedoes.

Voronesh said:

It's nice how 40k authors are never bothered with things like how thick planets actually are, or how blowing up anything on a planets core would have near zero effect on things on the surface, let alone shatter the planet. Even if it were an anti-matter weapon, and anti-matter really exploded like it does in the movies, a mere 150 foot long torpedo could be packed full of it and still not have that sort of explosive force.

'We've packed it with Chaos soaked explodium!.... no one sneeze'

The major problem with fictional super weapons is that if they were as powerful as they supposedly are, a malfunction would be the end of you, your fleet, and probably quite a bit of the surrounding area. An explosive really capable of blowing up a planet would actually be more of a threat to the firer then the target, particularly in 40k were 'safe handling' consists of waving a amulet over it and giving it a good smack with a hammer.

BaronIveagh said:

While i agree with you on the rest. This is a small point of contention. Or rather interpretation. For me a Techritual is a simple technical procedure, simply with more holy smoke. But it can be anything like chanting the broken motor to correct function even. Its about as consistent as super weapons.

But yeah, meeting a Scifi universe that uses consistent physics, that dont get created because it looks good/is cool for the game is really hard to find.

But yeah 40k fails at consistent crew numbers so its nothing new really .

Considering the text descriptions of kill-ships and cyclonic torps, it really makes me wonder how planet's like DW's chaos forgeworld of Samech still continue to exist.

I'd imagine they'd be rather high priority targets...and the "unstoppable swarm" should make it rather easy...but hey, its a much better tactic to let them keep on cranking out arms, ammo and vehicles for the chaos hordes. That way the imperial hordes have something to fight with.

But hey for a game that's basically WW2 + Age of Sail in space some "small" adjustments by the GM is only to be expected...