Fleeting System Update

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Captain Larraq"] [member="sabrina"] [member="Gir Quee"]

See what you think of this critical hit table. I'll add the mechanics below, but basically capital ships get a critical hit at 80-60-40-20%. First roll inflicts the first result. If on a second critical you roll the same number as previous you get a more dire result.
First rank of criticals (except the first) can be repaired each turn by a roll of 6. Roll once for each critical. Second rank indicate much more extensive damage which cannot be repaired.

I also have a dice rolling log I've used before: https://dicelog.com/joinlogdice

It will ask to confirm a security exception; let it.

The log you want to join is: pdeadman@gmail.com password: Starwars (with capital S)

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

The system's brutal and has ships doing impressive amounts of damage to one another. I like that.

Ships with a mixed armament will be a pain in the butt to calculate... And ships with armament rating instead of listed armaments can't utilize the system. Even if they could, it appears as if they'd be at a massive disadvantage.

I like how each weapon has a specific utility, be it against shields or hull...


Assuming we're operating on a hex-grid, giving Long Range weapons unlimited range is... a bit insane. I get the balancing effect. Personally, I'd have gone with 20-25 hexes. Just makes me cringe a bit.

Each time a capital ship does hull damage to an escort or other capital ship roll a D20. On a roll of 20 the damage is increased by 50% to represent a critical hit. If this happens, roll an additional D20. If this also is a 20 (a 1 in 400 chance) the target ship is immediately destroyed, representing a catastrophic hit.

For attack craft attacking escorts or capital ships see below. This assumes squadrons of 12 attack craft. If squadron count is different, scale the below appropriately. Bombers inflict 10 damage on escorts or capital ships per surviving bomber in the squadron. This is increased by +2 if the bomber is carrying unusual ordinance or has some other special armament. This damage ignores shields. Roll 1D20 for a whole squadron if it inflicts damage to check for critical hits, not one for each bomber. Fighters and interceptors inflict 2 damage on escorts or capital ships per surviving craft in the squadron. This damage ignores shields. Roll 1D20 for a whole squadron if it inflicts damage to check for critical hits, not one for each craft.

Does the original critical system still apply?


Are you still having Escort Defense Guns and Capital Defense Guns do different damage profiles per shot, or are you incorporating the Point Defense / Fighter-Bomber attack/defense system that I suggested?



Your original link also shows Attacker Speed, Defender Speed, Difference, Speed Penalty, Range, Range Penalty, Heavy Armor, Flanking, Misc Modifiers... but doesn't really explain them. What's the speed penalty? What is the range penalty? Flanking benefit/penalty?

Also, Long Range weapons typically have horrible tracking speeds at close ranges and have a very hard time hitting a small and/or fast moving target.
Have you factored that into the system?


How much damage is each ship actually putting out?
What are the miss/dodge ratings?
Do all weapons automatically hit, or do dice get rolled?

Are they rolled "per attack" with an all or nothing damage output?
Are they rolled per weapon? (please, for the love of god, don't tell me dice are rolled per weapon)
Are dice rolled per "battery", or just "per type of weapon"?


What about escorts designed just to do point defense? Are they still limited to 1 hex range of point defense?
What about unique weapons? I don't think I'd end up using Mandal Hypernautics ships on this system any time soon, but what about stuff like Ram'or Assault Missiles and Vulcan Gatling Mass-Driver Flak Cannons (good lord, I forgot how long its full name was)?

I've also got a weapon that's suppose to do the same damage as a Heavy, Long Range Turbolaser, but with twice the rate of fire and standard engagement ranges.... What would that thing look like on this system?
What about Draco's Turbolaser that is nothing but 8 Capital Ship Weapons worth of damage modifiers?
Popo has a weapon that is nothing but 15 Capital Ship Weapons worth of damage modifiers...

Why are Hypervelocity Cannons doing so much damage?
They are valued the same as a Heavy, Long Range Mass Driver. Why are they doing 2.5 times the damage of a Heavy, Long Range Turbolaser?
What about Heavy, Long Range Hypervelocity cannons and LR Hypervelocity cannons?
What about "Proton Beam Lasers" and "Light Proton Beam Lasers"?




Also, in regard to these critical hit effects, what about ships with built-in defenses against such effects?
Like... the Victory III has a self-sealing foam/liquid worked into the hull to protect against breaches in the armor, environmental control shields and automatically deploying blast/depressurization doors.... How would that translate? Ignore the first "hull" critical hit effect? Immune to "hull" critical hit effects?

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

The system's brutal and has ships doing impressive amounts of damage to one another. I like that.

Ships with a mixed armament will be a pain in the butt to calculate... And ships with armament rating instead of listed armaments can't utilize the system. Even if they could, it appears as if they'd be at a massive disadvantage.

I like how each weapon has a specific utility, be it against shields or hull...


Assuming we're operating on a hex-grid, giving Long Range weapons unlimited range is... a bit insane. I get the balancing effect. Personally, I'd have gone with 20-25 hexes. Just makes me cringe a bit.









Does the original critical system still apply?

Are you still having Escort Defense Guns and Capital Defense Guns do different damage profiles per shot, or are you incorporating the Point Defense / Fighter-Bomber attack/defense system that I suggested?



Your original link also shows Attacker Speed, Defender Speed, Difference, Speed Penalty, Range, Range Penalty, Heavy Armor, Flanking, Misc Modifiers... but doesn't really explain them. What's the speed penalty? What is the range penalty? Flanking benefit/penalty?

Also, Long Range weapons typically have horrible tracking speeds at close ranges and have a very hard time hitting a small and/or fast moving target.
Have you factored that into the system?


How much damage is each ship actually putting out?
What are the miss/dodge ratings?
Do all weapons automatically hit, or do dice get rolled?

Are they rolled "per attack" with an all or nothing damage output?
Are they rolled per weapon? (please, for the love of god, don't tell me dice are rolled per weapon)
Are dice rolled per "battery", or just "per type of weapon"?


What about escorts designed just to do point defense? Are they still limited to 1 hex range of point defense?
What about unique weapons? I don't think I'd end up using Mandal Hypernautics ships on this system any time soon, but what about stuff like Ram'or Assault Missiles and Vulcan Gatling Mass-Driver Flak Cannons (good lord, I forgot how long its full name was)?

I've also got a weapon that's suppose to do the same damage as a Heavy, Long Range Turbolaser, but with twice the rate of fire and standard engagement ranges.... What would that thing look like on this system?
What about Draco's Turbolaser that is nothing but 8 Capital Ship Weapons worth of damage modifiers?
Popo has a weapon that is nothing but 15 Capital Ship Weapons worth of damage modifiers...

Why are Hypervelocity Cannons doing so much damage?
They are valued the same as a Heavy, Long Range Mass Driver. Why are they doing 2.5 times the damage of a Heavy, Long Range Turbolaser?
What about Heavy, Long Range Hypervelocity cannons and LR Hypervelocity cannons?
What about "Proton Beam Lasers" and "Light Proton Beam Lasers"?




Also, in regard to these critical hit effects, what about ships with built-in defenses against such effects?
Like... the Victory III has a self-sealing foam/liquid worked into the hull to protect against breaches in the armor, environmental control shields and automatically deploying blast/depressurization doors.... How would that translate? Ignore the first "hull" critical hit effect? Immune to "hull" critical hit effects?

[member="Captain Larraq"]
Monster post requires monster answer. I'll number stuff.

1. The damage done is less than you think, considering you need to chomp through the shields first in most cases before hitting the hull. But I think it’s a good mix. Only testing will show me what’s necessary as far as buffs/nerfs.
2. Do any ships actually use that rating system? I’ve seen like…3 ships which use it, none of which are in common use. But it’s also an easy solution; make 20 for each class the maximum a ship of that class could get, and scale it from there. So an armament 10 cruiser gets half the guns of a cruiser. Easy enough.
3. Valid concern over range. I might make it a max range of 20. I may also increase the speed penalties for long range weapons, showing that they’re best used against larger ships than smaller ones.
4. New critical system will be used, it’s outlined in my previous post. I’ll do a rework of my document and put things better under headings and repost that today.
5. Yes, working on the fighter system today.
6. In that document the fields marked in green are ones which the user fills in, the rest are places where the calculations happen. The flanking/armour/misc modifiers are put in by the user as though they were percentages. So if something has heavy armour put in 10, if it’s vulnerable put in -10. It all calculates and then when you put weapon totals in it’s all calculated automatically.
7. The damage, once modified by range/armour/speed etc inflicts its damage automatically, usually at a reduced amount unless you’re firing point blank against a larger ship.
8. When you put in the number of weapons you do the number of ‘barrels’. So a turbolaser battery is 4 regular weapons. A heavy turbolaser battery is 4 heavy turbolasers etc.
9. I think yes, as defence weapons are short ranged and inaccurate at long distance. The plan is of course that such escorts add their firepower to larger ships or other escorts to form a network of firepower to stop attack craft.
10. Unique weapons have to be dealt with on a per case basis. I’ve added my vortex cannon for instance. Basically if it’s like an ion cannon with a different name, or a double heavy turbolaser, then use it as such. If it has wildly different systems and damage it can be added in. I want to keep the number of weapons as low as possible.
11. HVC cannons count as 10 don’t they? Or is it 20? I get confused. I can edit it if needed.
12. Proton cannons…I don’t know. Since only the Immortal has one and it didn’t quantify the numbers I guess it’s like a Vortex Cannon in scale?

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

HVC are 10, LRHVC are 50, HLRHVC are 100.
But that's 4 points of famage, 20 points of damage, and 40 points of damage. The rest is range modifiers.

Same with HLR Tubolasers. 4 points of damage, 6 points of range modifiers.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Captain Larraq"]
So essentially they're the same as long range weapons? Hmm, OK, I always thought they were different.

OK, I'll edit that.

Anything else you want to ask before I rework things?

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

Nope. I think that covers it.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Captain Larraq"] [member="Gir Quee"] [member="sabrina"]

OK, this is the new pasting of the document. I'll remove the one in the first post. Pay attention only to this. A big thanks to Larraq for finally helping me crack the code of attack craft in a satisfying way.

SWRP Fleeting System 2015 v2

Overview:
Unlike previous systems, this one has very few random elements, and instead relies on the calculation of factors to determine damage.
These factors include:

• The composition of the firing ship’s guns.
• The relative speed of the ships.
• The range from one ship to another.

All ships using this system must have been approved in the factory. Those ships will fall into a variety of classes defined using the Anaxes War College System. During this document, these classes are further subdivided into types. The types and classes are listed below.
Attack Craft

• Fighters
• Interceptors
• Bombers
• Elite Fighters
• Gunships
• Transports

Escorts

• Corvettes
• Frigates
• Cruisers

Capital Ships

• Heavy Cruisers
• Destroyers
• Battlecruisers

Fleeting System Rules

Basics and Movement

• Each series of posts in the RP is called a ‘round’. The term ‘turn’ is not used for this as it can be confused with ship movements.

• All ships have a shield and hull rating. This starts out as being equal to their length in metres. Thus a ship which is 600 metres long begins the battle with 600 shield and 600 hull points.
• Ship speed is determined by the following formula: (21 – S /2) where S equals speed, scoures rounded up. Thus a ship with a speed of 10 can move 6 hexes a turn. If a ship was submitted through the old factory 1-10 scale the movement amount is instead (11 – S).
• The number of turns a ship can make is dependent on its manoeuvre rating. The following are suggestions for ship manoeuvre.
  Ships with a manoeuvre rating of 1-6 can make any number of turns and face any direction.
• Ships with a manoeuvre rating of 7-12 can make up to three hexface turns each round.
• Ships with a manoeuvre rating of 13-18 can make up to two hexface turns each round.
• Ships with a manoeuvre rating of 19-20 can make up to one hexface turn each round.

[*]Opposing ships cannot end a round in the same hex. They move ‘through’ a hex meaning the ship moves close by above or below.
[*]Only one capital ship can occupy a hex at any one time.
[*]Ships cannot fire through a hex containing a capital ship unless either attacker or defender has been written as being substantially above or below the ‘plane’.

Weapons and Damage

• Regular weapons have a maximum range of 10 hexes. Weapons designated ‘long-range’ have a range of 20 hexes and also have reduced range penalties.
• Defence guns have a range of 1 hex and can be used to support other ships, adding their defence guns to another ship within 1 hex. This can be combined across multiple ships. If a ship supporting other vessels is attacked itself it will defend itself at half strength.
• Damage is determined by inputting the total number of weapons being fired, the relative speeds, ranges and other factors into this spreadsheet.
  Only green shaded fields may have data entered. The red shaded fields contain formulas and should not be edited.
• When entering figures positive numbers make targeting harder, whilst negative numbers make targeting easier.
• When inputting the ‘count’ of weapons, count the number of guns. For example, 10 batteries of dual turbolasers are inputted as 80 regular weapons.
• Damage is rounded up to the nearest whole number.

[*]Shields recover at 10% base total per turn. Redundant shields or other special shielding tech increases this to 15% or 20% depending on the specific tech. If shields are reduced to zero, residual damage is applied to hull. Shields cannot begin to regenerate if fully down until they go a round of not being fired on.
[*]Ships with especially reinforced armour, ablative plating etc have a base damage reduction of 10% to all hull damage.
[*]Ships being fired on from the rear or into other weak areas take 10% more hull damage and do not benefit from special armour or plating.

Critical Hits

• For capital ships taking hull damage, whenever they drop down to 80-60-40-20% levels of base hull damage, they must roll on the attached critical hit table. For example, roll on the critical hit table for a Star Destroyer when it passes 1280, 960, 640 and 320 damage.
  Damage caused by the first level of critical hits (excluding hull) can be repaired at the start of each round by a D6 roll of 6. If the ship elects to remain stationary and not fire this increases to 4+. Roll 1D6 for each critical hit.
• If a critical hit is rolled at later levels for damage and the roll equals a previous score or repaired score the damage moves to the second level where the damage is permanent and more severe.
• In the unlikely event of a third roll falling on a single component reroll on the table and apply the new result to the ship.

Attack Craft

• Attack craft engage in combat by moving into the hex of an enemy. After this attack they are moved to the nearest unoccupied hex.
• Escorts and capital ships (and supporting craft) fire and inflict damage first on attacking craft. The survivors may then make their attack runs. In the case of attack craft versus attack craft the damage inflicted is simultaneous. This can lead to both sides being wiped out, which is fine, as it assumes not all ships are destroyed, just damaged etc.
• For defence guns firing at attack craft please see below.
  Escorts and capital ships cannot bring all their guns to bear on a single target. Divide an escort’s defence guns by 2 and a capital ship’s by 4. For every 2 extra squadrons this can be reduced by 1. For example, to concentrate all defence guns on a target an escort must be attacked by 3 squadrons and a capital ship by 7.
• Once the number of defence guns is calculated, each gun counted inflicts 5 damage. This damage is allocated in this order: Fighters, Interceptors, Bombers, Gunships, Transports. Partial damage is counted as a full craft lost.
• Fighters, Interceptors and Bombers have hull points equal to their greatest dimension rounded up. For example an X-Wing would have 13 hull points. If the attack craft has no shields this is reduced by 25%. If the craft is especially sturdy or heavily shielded it is increased by 25%.
• An example: A squadron of X-Wings attack a corvette with 20 defence guns. The corvette can being 10 guns to bear, inflicting 50 damage, destroying 4 of the X-Wings. The remaining 8 X-Wings can make their attack runs on the corvette.

[*]For attack craft attacking escorts or capital ships see below. This assumes squadrons of 12 attack craft. If squadron count is different, scale the below appropriately.

• Bombers inflict 10 damage on escorts or capital ships per surviving bomber in the squadron. This is increased by +2 if the bomber is carrying unusual ordinance or has some other special armament. This damage ignores shields.
• Fighters and interceptors inflict 2 damage on escorts or capital ships per surviving craft in the squadron. This damage ignores shields.
• After making these attack runs, the attack craft must return to a hanger to be rearmed. This is assumed to happen between rounds, so if a bomber squadron docks at the end of one round it is assumed to be ready at the start of the next.

[*]For attack craft attacking each other see below.

• In an attack craft melee pair squadrons off against each other in the following order: Interceptors, Fighters, Bombers, Other.
• Average and compare the speed and manoeuvrability of the opponents.
• Craft inflict 1 damage for each cannon and warhead launcher (Interceptors and Fighters only). The faster craft inflict 1 damage more each per difference in the averaged speed/manoeuvrability.
• Fighters, Interceptors and Bombers have hull points equal to their greatest dimension rounded up. For example an X-Wing would have 13 hull points. If the attack craft has no shields this is reduced by 25%. If the craft is especially sturdy or heavily shielded it is increased by 25%.
• Damage is applied simultaneously. Partial damage results in a full craft lost.
• An example: A squadron of speed 1 interceptors attack a squadron of speed 5 bombers. The bombers inflict 2 damage each on the interceptors. The interceptors inflict 4 (cannons and warheads) + 4 (speed difference) for total of 8 each on the bombers. Assuming squadrons of 12, this means the damage inflicted is 24 by the bombers and 96 for the interceptors.
• Another example: A squadron of speed 4 fighters with resistant hull engage a squadron of speed 3 fighters. The damage inflicted equals 72 on the faster and 84 on the slower craft. Assuming a length of 12 each, 6 craft in both squadrons are lost as the slower one has an adjusted hull rating of 15.

[*]Attack craft may return to their hanger to attempt to repair ships lost in combat. Each round a squadron does so, roll a D6 for each missing craft. On a 5 or 6 a craft is brought back into operation. A squadron must have at least 1 surviving member to do this.


Victory

• Victory is determined by the amount of metres destroyed. Ships reduced to less than half of their starting hull points count for ¼ points. Only escorts and capital ships entirely destroyed or reduced below half hull are counted.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

As a note the document above can be found here.
I've buffed bomber damage to 15 and +5 for special weapons.

I've also added some additional material to the Excel file which to add some lists of base capital and defence guns, sample calculations and so on.

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

Page 6 and 7 are out of order. (Here)

I have no idea what the feth is going on in page 8, 9, 10, or 11. (Here)

Heavy Ion and Long Range Ion do the same damage profile, but Heavy Turbolasers and LR Turbolasers have different damage profiles.





How do the heavy armor and flanking modifiers work?

What about Light Turbolasers?
Fast mounts?
Repeating Weapons?
"Tail Gunners" and other defensive guns on Bombers?



How do the speed modifiers work? What about ships with advanced targeting and/or tracking speeds?

What about Ewar that screws with targeting and tracking systems?

What about targeting starfighters/bombers with missiles?

Did you incorporate "minimum targeting distances" for Long Range weapons? Do long range weapons suffer additional penalties against fast moving targets?

Long range weaponry is more accurate when used from a slow, steady platform. Is that taken into account? If a ship is firing HLRTurbolasers, but moving at high speeds, they would be doubling the aiming difficulties of targeting another ship.



(sorry, just trying to make sure you thought of all the angles.)

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Captain Larraq"]
Download the file and open it. The way the page is laid out is crazy.

Heavy Armour and Flanking increases/reduces the damage dealt. As mentioned, put in a positive to increase the modifier, a negative to decrease damage.

Fast mounts are something I'm not sure how to implement without a whole heap of work. Maybe just for those weapons count it as the ship being faster.

Speed modifiers make it harder to hit a moving ship. The modifier is 5% per point the enemy is faster.

Not added minimum ranges or increased speed penalties for LR weapons. I can do that however.

Targetting starfighters with missiles is...possible. Regular warheads could probably do this, but not heavy ones.

 

[Gir Quee]

I'm really liking the look of this system.

Targetting starfighters with missiles is...possible. Regular warheads could probably do this, but not heavy ones.

I'd argue that this is probably more dependent on the warhead guidance system than its size.

For example, I wouldn't expect an unguided light energy torpedo to regularly hit a starfighter.

On the flip side, I'd expect that a heavier warhead like a cluster missile or a canon diamond boron missile fired into the middle of a starfighter squadron to take out several starships.

But again, this is probably something that's better worked out on a case per case basis.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

Because of limited time I haven't read through this all, but having Cruisers split up as they are seems to diminish their real world (and surprisingly, somewhat imitated in Star Wars) role.

You've got Escort and Capital Ship. That's something of a big jump (arguably not incorrect, of course...) Would Escort/Cruiser/Capital ship work? So instead of a simple triangle you've got a slightly more complex box.

Strike Craft > Capital Ships
Escorts > Strike Craft
Capital Ships > Escorts
Cruisers balance out.

They would provide an interesting strategic trade off, lacking clear weaknesses but also clear strengths.

Of course then there's also the distinction to be made between a small ship designed to kill big ships, and a big ship designed to kill strike craft. On second thought, nevermind, this is probably complex enough as is...

Hopefully I have enough time to pitch in on the dominion, [member="Captain Larraq"]

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Cyrus Tregessar"]
Cruisers are split up in the factory between regular and heavy ones.

However, the way their armament profiles read they actually do read like middlemen between true escorts and true capital ships. With testing I'll know more of course.

[member="Captain Larraq"]
Can fast mount turbolasers be used against attack craft? If they can that's a way I can use them. People can choose to use them as anti-ship or as anti-craft weapons.
Thoughts?

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

I've always used fastmount turbolasers and fastmount light turbolasers as anti-corvette, gunship, and bomber weapons. Basically useful against anything speed 4 and slower.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Captain Larraq"]
OK, that works for me. They can be used against either.

Since they can only be single fast-mounts and there's never a huge amount of them, there's no point creating a whole new range calculation for them.

Anything else we need to discuss?

I've added rules for ramming to the linked Word doc. I'll add the fast mount thing later.

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

I have 100 Repeating Light Turbolasers on Fast Mounts on the Victory III.

>_>

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Captain Larraq"]
Well aren’t you just a special snowflake?

So that gives you 100 guns you can use as defence guns or normal weapons.

Considering what [member="Gir Quee"] and [member="Cyrus Tregessar"] said…should I move cruisers to capital ships and leave corvettes and frigates as just the escorts?

 

[Gir Quee]

In [member="Captain Larraq"]'s defense, there is an OS cruiser that's outfitted primarily with light turbolasers and point defenses to act as an escort cruiser. In addition, the Republic does have dual-purpose mass driver cannons that fulfill a similar dual-purpose role as the Victory's light repeating turbolasers.

In my experience, I think that cruisers aren't exactly the easiest thing to work out in a game system. They often seem to be too squishy against bigger ships, but yet not quite effective enough against the smaller ships as well for the points spent. I don't have a good answer to that, but I will think about it.

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Gir Quee"], [member="Valiens Nantaris"], [member="Cyrus Tregessar"]

Back in my day, we had Cruisers and Battlecruisers.

All these newfangled kids and their "Cruisers" don't know what they're missing.




Seriously though... I use 750 to 850 meter long Battlecruisers as the "main line units" for the Mandal Hypernautics fleet. And at 900 meters, the Victory III fits fairly snugly into that same "main line" role.

Personally, I agree with Cyrus in regards to (some) of the ships in the Cruiser category being acceptable main line units. Think of them as a well built fourth or fifth rate ship using age of sail terms. Strong enough to hold up (for a while) against the bigger ships, but with better speed and maneuverability, and typically with a few niche abilities/equipments.

I'd have to go through and look at a few subs to figure out at exactly what length Cruisers become capable of holding their own in an engagement... But I'd hazard a guess at 600-750 meters being the lower end of the category and the upper end being right at the 1,000 to 1,200 meter mark.

Again... with the key feature of the ships being that they are "durable enough" and "lethal enough" to hold their own in a fight, but are typically significantly faster than the true "Capital Ships".

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Gir Quee"]
It would probably be cleaner to set it up that way, since escorts are supposed to be small and agile.