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CRMcNeill Director of Engineering


Joined: 05 Apr 2010 Posts: 11762 Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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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. _________________ "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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ZzaphodD Rear Admiral


Joined: 28 Nov 2009 Posts: 2421
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 7:15 pm Post subject: Re: Battery Dice for Capital Ships |
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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? _________________ My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course.. |
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CRMcNeill Director of Engineering


Joined: 05 Apr 2010 Posts: 11762 Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 11:18 am Post subject: Re: Battery Dice for Capital Ships |
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ZzaphodD wrote: | So basically you fire 'one' cannon and apply the dice pool to damage or to hit or to cancel maps? |
Correct. _________________ "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


Joined: 05 Apr 2010 Posts: 11762 Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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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). _________________ "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


Joined: 05 Apr 2010 Posts: 11762 Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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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. _________________ "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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