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Battery Dice for Capital Ships
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Argentsaber wrote:
At the risk of reopening an older post, I had a question about how this might apply in a specific situation. Say a Victory Star Destroyer is attacked by a Nebulon B, a Corvette, and several fighter Squadrons. The rebels obviously want to split up.. so with one ship in the front arc, one in the side arc, and fighters to the rear, how do you determine which battery dice you can use to overcome MAP using this system?

Well, the Battery Dice conversion I posted above was based on the x2 = +1D formula, so if you are splitting the Battery Dice between multiple targets in the same arc, just turn that formula on its head and subtract 1D of Battery Dice every time the number of targets in that Fire Arc doubles.

Obviously, this will be harder to do with odd numbers of attackers, or attackers that don't cleanly fit with the doubling progression (2, 4, 8, 16, etc.). I see three possible ways to handle this:
    1). Rounded Up: Say you have three attackers; just round it up to four, then reduce the Battery Dice by -2D

    2). Rounded Down. Same three attackers, but round down to two, then reduce the Battery Dice by -1D

    3). Tiered. Three attackers again, so you split the guns so that half of them are firing at one attacker at -1D Battery Dice, then take the other half of the guns, split them in half again with an additional -1D Battery Dice, so that you are engaging one target (presumably the largest) with -1D Battery Dice and two others with -2D Battery Dice.

Also, something occurred to me while I was thinking of this. While most ships in the RAW have weapons with only a single fire arc, a lot of the ships I redid the stats for have weapons that can fire in more than one arc. I wasn't sure how I could apply multiple fire arcs to battery dice, but what I'm thinking is splitting the Battery Dice into Fixed and Discretionary. For example, a ship might have 1D Battery Dice in the Front, Left and Right Fire Arcs, with an additional 1D Discretionary Dice that can be put into any one of those arcs.
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ZzaphodD
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 8:15 pm    Post subject: Re: Battery Dice for Capital Ships Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
Something I've been toying with is, rather than giving ship stats a specific number of weapons, simply saying that a ship has turbolaser batteries, and then giving a D rating that is used as a dice pool when allocating fire. For example, rather than saying an ISD I has 60 turbolaser batteries allocated equally between the Front, Left and Right Arcs, the stat would read like so:
    Turbolaser Batteries
    Fire Arcs: 4D Front, 4D Left, 4D Right
That number can then be allocated by the ship's captain as a bonus to Damage, Fire Control, or could cancel out MAPs when firing at multiple targets.

While most of us are used to using the numbers generated by WEG, the simple fact of the matter is that we game in a system where fans have the dedication to pore over the various models and come up with actual numbers for how many turbolaser batteries a given capital ship may have.

That's why I'm wondering if a non-specific D rating might be less prone to dispute in stat writing. It won't really matter exactly how many guns an ISD has, because the Battery Dice would just be an aggregate rating of how well the various cannon can coordinate their fire.

Thoughts?

So basically you fire 'one' cannon and apply the dice pool to damage or to hit or to cancel maps?
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16163
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:18 pm    Post subject: Re: Battery Dice for Capital Ships Reply with quote

ZzaphodD wrote:
So basically you fire 'one' cannon and apply the dice pool to damage or to hit or to cancel maps?

Correct.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 5:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm giving this a bump because I had a new thought. I have theorized elsewhere that, once a smaller-scale ship gets in close to a larger-scale ship, it should be more difficult to bring massed firepower to bear.

Now, my solution applies more directly here, but can also be applied to the standard Coordination bonus.

What I'm thinking is, at Point Blank Range, a ship should suffer a penalty to its Battery dice equal to 1/2 of the Scale Difference. This would apply only to combining for damage or fire control, and would not affect the ability to engage multiple targets.

For example, let's say an ISD has 40 point defense laser batteries (10 per arc, which works out to a Battery rating of roughly 3D). It can combine fire normally until a target gets within 3 SUs of the ship, at which point, it suffers a -3D penalty (12D Destroyer - 6D Starfighter = 6D. 6D / = 3D) to its Battery rating. So now, only one Laser Battery at a time may be brought to bear on a target, as the fighters in question are too close for other batteries to be brought to bear.

For another, let's say a Super Star Destroyer has 600 point defense laser batteries (150 per arc, which works out to a Battery rating of 7D). However, it has an even bigger scale gap (16D Dreadnought - 6D Starfighter = 10D. 10D / 2 = 5D). Fortunately, its surface is so saturated with laser batteries that it can still bring 2D worth of battery dice (Battery rating of 7D - 5D scale modifier) to bear.

I haven't quite decided how to handle negative numbers, perhaps as a penalty to Fire Rate (i.e. for every -1D, reduce the fire rate by one level: 1 to 1/2, 1/2 to 1/3 and so on).
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 5:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And, for the most extreme example of them all, the Death Star.

When I redid the stats, I gave the Death Star more normal fire arcs, with 1,250 laser batteries per arc. That works out to a Battery Rating of 10D per arc. However, the Death Star is at +24D Scale to the +6D of Starfighters, which works out to a difference of +18D (or 9D for the purposes of this rule). As such, despite the massive numbers involved, once the starfighters got within 3 SUs of the station, it would only be able to bring a couple laser batteries to bear at a time (10D - 9D = 1D).

Then start stacking X-Wing strafing runs taking out laser batteries and you end up with a dead zone where starfighters can operate without being shot at at all.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I had a thought about this recently. One aspect of this that I hadn't worked out is how to split battery dice between multiple targets in the same fire arc. However, as it turns out, the solution is amazingly simple: just apply the number of attackers in that arc to the Coordination Chart, and apply the number generated as a penalty to the Battery Dice.

For instance, if a ship has 4D Battery Dice in its Left Fire Arc, and there are three targets in that arc, a 3 on the Coordination Chart equates to 1D+2. 4D minus 1D+2 is 2D+1, so the shooter can make three separate attacks (one per attacker) with 2D+1 Battery Dice instead of 4D. An even simpler version would be to make a single attack roll at 2D+1 Battery Dice that counts equally against all three opponents.

Of course, the shooter could also choose not to shoot at every target in his Fire Arc, and could split his fire accordingly. Using the above example of three attackers, the shooter could decide to engage only two of them and ignore the third for that round. In this case, use the number of engaged targets (two) on the Coordination Chart, for a result of -1D. Thus, when the shooter fires, he gets 3D Battery Dice.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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CRMcNeill
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

PostPosted: Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Giving this a bump on account of a thought I just had while replying in a different topic.

While most WEG capital ships confine their guns to a single fire arc per mount, most film models and homebrew ships aren't so confined, and weapons often overlap into multiple arcs. Obviously, the WEG system sacrifices accuracy for the sake of playability, and the Battery Dice combat is an attempt to resolve the two into a playable whole. However, I struggled with how to assign Battery Dice to ships' weapons when it was clear that most/all of those weapons could bear on multiple fire arcs. At the time of my stat House Rule Note update, I decided to represent this by just giving an extra pip or two to the affected arcs.

However, an idea recently occurred to me based on the anti-aircraft gameplay from World of Warships, where a ship commander can designate either the port or starboard side of his ship as a priority AA sector, focusing fire to that side at the expense of the other. I'm thinking of doing the same to the Battery Dice Rules and Stats, reducing the Battery Dice on some weapons' fire arcs on some ships, and giving all of the ships 1D-2D of Priority Dice which can be assigned by the captain. The amount of dice given will be an aggregate representing how well placed the ship's weapons are in general.

I haven't put much thought into the details, but I wanted to update as to where my thoughts are at the moment.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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Naaman
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 04, 2021 12:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So... after reading the post in the Fractalsponge thread, I came here with a thought.

What is the source of the coordination bonus? Are we assuming that some officer is making a command roll for a particular battery?

Or are we just assuming that volume of fire is responsible for the bonus?

In other words, could the bonus be increased further by a good commander? Could (or should) the given bonus be reduced/eliminated in the event the commander is disabled/removed?

If we are going with the commander option, I can see a fun scenario where some PCs have to board a ship and take out a specific officer in order to assist with some starfighters making it past a blockade that would otherwise be impassable due to highly coordinated fire.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 04, 2021 2:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
Or are we just assuming that volume of fire is responsible for the bonus?

This. Crew skill, quality and command competence would be expressed through other avenues. The Battery Dice rule is strictly to represent the added efficacy of having multiple weapons firing at the same target.

Quote:
In other words, could the bonus be increased further by a good commander? Could (or should) the given bonus be reduced/eliminated in the event the commander is disabled/removed?

Right now I'm picturing Command as a multi-tiered thing, where Command is rolled both during and before the battle to affect different aspects of the crew's aggregate skill level. Based on what I wrote up here, a commander would make multiple Command rolls "off screen" to represent day-to-day ship operations, drills, etc, which would then affect the ship's Crew Quality modifier.

Then, during combat, a ship's captain would use Tactics and Command to generate short-term bonuses that would stack with the combined Crew Skill and Crew Quality Modifier. Removing a commander wouldn't reduce the Crew Quality modifier for that battle but might do so in the long term if said commander was replaced by someone less capable.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That makes a lot more sense than RAW command.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
That makes a lot more sense than RAW command.

Well, it'd be hard to make less sense than RAW command, but thank you. Very Happy

At the moment, I'm picturing two different "off-screen" rolls, one for Morale, as a short-term modifier, while general Quality is more long-term, improving more slowly, but also less susceptible to immediate fall-off in the event of a drop in Morale.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

PostPosted: Wed Dec 29, 2021 8:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Regarding the above idea about priority dice, I'm thinking about having the type of mount play a role in how much priority dice a given weapon has available. Weapons in casemate mounts (ala what we see on the Death Star in ANH), for example, would be restricted to a single Fire Arc, thus having 0D in Priority Dice. Turret-mounted weapons would be a noticeable improvement, able to cover all of one arc and a good portion of at least one more would have 1D, and tower-mounted turrets ala the Lancer would have 2D.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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