Dreadnoughts

Crippling damage shouldn't be 1d3 IMHO. Should be a flat 1 extra damage on 3-4 and 2 extra damage on 5-6. Simplifies the crippling roll table to initial d6. Then up to 2 1d6 for system damage. Also means 2 damage on a 4 hull Frigate can kill it but you'd be looking to do 3 damage to have a 66% chance of knocking it out in one go. Which seems reasonable to me.

Also makes cruisers quite a bit more durable. Which is not a bad thing.

I believe the crippling system as is right now, is meant to do something similar to what you can find in Battlefield: Gothic.
I mean in BFG the escort ships had one HP and died immediately and in DFC the situation is almost the same (typical escort ship dies 66% of the time if it gets dealt 2 damage). Messing with this system will make escorts more survivable without necessarily increasing overall survivability of capital ships.

I would say that the line of increasing overall armour of capital ships and giving them the rule that decreases armour after going critical makes more sense to get tougher capital ships.

I believe the crippling system as is right now, is meant to do something similar to what you can find in Battlefield: Gothic.
I mean in BFG the escort ships had one HP and died immediately and in DFC the situation is almost the same (typical escort ship dies 66% of the time if it gets dealt 2 damage). Messing with this system will make escorts more survivable without necessarily increasing overall survivability of capital ships.

I would say that the line of increasing overall armour of capital ships and giving them the rule that decreases armour after going critical makes more sense to get tougher capital ships.

How so? Critical mechanics mean a 2+ save means nothing. Far too many ways to ignore armour. Frankly a change to crippling mechanics to streamline and remove danger as well as more common use of reinforced will provide the correct balance in terms of resilience IMHO.

Indeed. If that ca be achieved Weapons Free Heavy cruiser designs like the Moscow become a real threat to Frigates. Which are a threat to alpha cruisers which are a threat to weapons free cruisers. You start seeing nice opportunities for synergy and more than "Strike carriers" and "Burn through cruisers".

They should have been just use DZC mechanics. A critical hot = double damage. But saveable.

I like the lethality of the system, what I dislike is the quite apparent lack of awareness (design wise) how lethal it can be.

Though how fast ships die is a bit a matter of taste, the critical table should certainly be simplified at least for Frigates (possibly for destroyers as well) to d3-1 damage, this means one less roll and less tracking of mostly insignificant information through tokens.

Also I think durability is best represented with more hull if that is the goal, it is applicable to all kinds of damage instead of special rules like "Reinforced Armour" which only affect some types of damage (those that can crit) but do so in a drastic way.

Andy Chambers commented on a thread somewhere on facebook that he wanted to see the crippling table changed. Simplified and less deadly. I'm sure we will see this with the armor change as well.

If I would be redesigning the rules I would do the following things:
- critical roll doubles the damage dealt, armour rolls apply,
- particle crit on +3 (or not at all), but bypasses armour, BTLs crits instead of doubling damage bypass armour,
- while crippled all ships receive d3-1 damage, capital ships in addition roll d6 on critical damage table (minor spike, scanners offline, fire, engines failure + orbital decay, armour cracked + orbital decay, d3 damage + orbital decay),
- all crippled ships lose efficiency - lose stealth, on weapons free can use up to 2 weapon systems, on other non-standard orders cannot use weapons at all,
- some battleships get better armour,
- Shaltari have 6+ escorts/5+ capital armour with +2 to armour with shields up,
- some changes to weapon damage, BTL levels ect.

It would make ships more survivable, as in many cases crippling would be enough to render ship nearly useless. Different weapon systems would start to behave differently (e.g. particle in case of Shaltari or 6400s/Cobras for UCM).

I believe the deadliness is an integral part of the game and intentionally built into it.
If you follow the interviews, product presentations and bat reps with Dave - you know that he is a big fan of battlefleet gothic and how much he enjoys the overall mayhem on the battlefield. His face literally lights up when he describes chain reactions and exploding ships left and right.

If you are such a big fan of mayhem it might be difficult for you to grasp that there are many people out there with a different preference.

I personally don't like the mayhem that much. I prefer my space battles more like slugging matches between heavyweight champions - rather than suicidal attack runs by paper maché ships with a 75% loss ratio.


Beside the personal preferences there is the "40K Orc Effect":

Why should you painstakingly paint your beautiful ships if they spend so little time on the tabletop.

And of course the loss of realism. I don't mean the weapon effect approach - those might be quite deadly. I mean the untenable loss of life and resources.
It just feels super unrealistic to deploy strike carriers and troopships in hot zones at all, if they are packed to the brim with troops and equipment and have the survivability of an ice cube in a magma chamber.

Well if I had the choice to serve on a cruiser or strike carrier I would choose the strike carrier. Better survival rate

@Ljevid

Have you ever had a UCM Massdriver bs PHR Broadside duel? That should be more sluggish, for Shaltari you can use Lances (except the Battleship) to a similar effect. Try if you like that, honestly do so.

Personally I doubt that level of weapon effectiveness works in a game where you usually don´t have that many turns to fire. A lot of scenarios have (thanks to approach types) some sort of reserve that arrives later, usually there is 0 shooting T1 and often in T2 as well, I even had games where T3 passed with mostly cautious approaching in silent running by both sides.

So in general T3-4 have the main action if you wanted the combat to be more "sluggish" you would have to extend this period in game or risk a game where losses matter little or mostly to late to influence half of the scoring.



In regards to realism, I agree that the combat deployment feels odd if it happens every game. However otherwise you would essentially remove the ground aspect if you relegate it to only moving troop carriers in if you secured the void zone. That is a sacrifice of sci-fi "realism" for game purposes. The whole planet focus would feel odd and it would be a "standard" space combat game.
For me this is the same "lack of sci-if realism" as (at least in theory) balanced fleets, rarely have truly balanced fleets or armies fought each other, yet in tabletop this happens all the time, or at least is usually attempted all the time.

I believe the deadliness is an integral part of the game and intentionally built into it.

Partially however I doubt that the full extend was realised. In particular as the differences in damage between certain weapon systems have not really been fixed, in some cases not even attempted to do so if we look at Massdrivers vs BTL. The Shaltari Lances are also in a sad state with the only concession was the Jade change to 2+ after several threads that showed the maths between them and the Topaz, which was immediately undermined by creating a point difference between the Jade and Topaz after those weapon systems were properly in balance for the first time.

So no I do not think the designers fully understand the maths behind their weapon systems. Thus fail to see their deadliness in comparison to each other. Which is quite common in tabletop gaming systems.