What are the minimal easy houserules required to make naval combat interesting? This is something I've been debating with marcussmythe in relationship to the
warship design challenge. I'm curious about other's take as well.
Edit: We seem to have converged on
attempt 9 with marcussmythe and UnLimiTeD in rough agreement around:
Standard scale damage does not affect capital scale armor greater than 10 times the standard scale value. For standard scale weapon bays use the damage of the largest weapon in the bay. For cluster weapons, use cluster damage (i.e. 5). Where standard scale weapons can damage capital armor, add up all damage to a facing from an attacker and divide by 100, rounding normally. Critical hits can only be delivered by individual attacks dealing at least 1 capital damage.
In addition, there was quite a bit of discussion leading to
point defense rules which make more sense.
- Point defense standard damage equal to 4 * capital damage generates a 50% chance to kill a capital missile (or a flight from a capital missile bay). Multiple 50% chances to kill the same capital missile(s) can be generated, but all point defense applied to a capital missile passing through a hex must be designated before rolls to kill the capital missile are made. Additional point defense may be applied in successive hexes.
- Antimissile systems and bays on smallcraft and largecraft may fire up to 6 times in a turn, generating heat and consuming ammunition each time.
- Antiship missiles do 1 capital damage.
There is no convergence around nuclear weapons rules.
The problem: The current rule set (and all previous as far as I know), suffer from severely overpowered standard weapons compared to capital scale weapons. As an example, a clan ER Large Laser doing 10 points of standard damage with 10 tons (=4 base + 6 tons of double heat sinks) is comparable to an SCL1 doing 1 capital damage (=10 standard scale damage) with 162 tons (=150 base + 12 double heat sinks). This disparity in damage/ton gets only worse with larger scale naval weapons. As a consequence, standard scale weapons tend to heavily dominate in naval warfare anywhere they can be applied. Furthermore, since aerospace fighters are much more mobile than capital weapons ranges a game with design collapses into a single kind of combat warships and dropships: carriers.
Aerospace fighters do radically more damage/ton at a radically larger range than capital weapons and their cost is easily amortized by the high cost of warships and dropships. The only notable weakness of ASF is a lack of SI which make thrust beyond 9 (=4.5g ) cause structural damage for all but light scouts. This hole is easily filled by somewhat more expensive fast combat smallcraft. You could still try to make a combat warship or dropship based on standard scale weapons. For both dropships and warships of any significant scale it's easy to carry enough ASF to destroy any plausible assault/battleship of a similar scale in a single round making the number of weapons on standard scale weapon assault/battleships irrelevant. In addition, fire control tonnage grows quadratically with the number of weapons, so only quite light warships could even benefit from heavy use of standard weapons. These observation makes all warship designs based around capital scale weapons easy pickings for carriers.
Solution attempts:
Attempt 1: standard scale / 100 = capital scale.
Effects include:
- Capital weapons have damage/ton only modestly lower than standard scale weapons. This seems pretty reasonable in the context of greater range.
- ASF and smallcraft are typically killed by any hit from a capital scale weapon. Only those with particularly heavy armor can survive an SCL1 and a Barracuda is extra deadly with the bonus to hit. This change partially degrades carrier-based warfare.
- Even heavily armored dropships are destroyed by modest capital scale weapons (e.g. NAC/10). This is reasonable in real life as a NAC/10 is a 2000 ton gun but it's a little bit questionable in Battletech where crazy-good ablative armor is the norm.
- ASF and Smallcraft have difficulty damaging capital scale armor. Using TW rules (page 238) with errata page 42, each attacker must inflict 50 standard damage on a location to inflict capital damage or it's rounded down to 0. With normal dispersion of fire and to-hit penalties this is typically difficult for ASF. For smallcraft, this is more feasible with the use of bays but it requires specialized designs. Even with specialized designs a carrier is potent but perhaps not more powerful than battleship types of designs.
- Jumpship armor becomes respectable since many ASF can't penetrate that easily.
The above generally seems like what we are looking for, but there are problems remaining or introduced as well.
- Warships still have a problem with critical hits because massed fire from many standard scale weapons is likely to result in many rolls of '12'. Appropriately designed fighters could again make carriers win through critical hits.
- Antiship missiles (TO page 358) are devastating since they inflict 3 capital damage and require 3 capital damage from point defense to destroy as per other capital missiles. These weapons plausibly make a carrier with well-designed strike fighters capable of carrying 2 antiship missiles again dominant.
- Point defense is heavily degraded against capital missiles because 10x more point defense is required than under current rules. 200MGs, 134SLs, or 67 AMS shots destroys a Barracuda (or a factor of 2 better if you play rounding games). Missile boats are kings so long as MGs and SLs are only available for point defense. With particularly deep heat sink reserves, AMS can effectively counter missiles.
- Ortillery hits like a nuclear weapon. Multiplying by 100 rather than 10 has a devastating impact when interacting with land-based units as even the lightest of capital scale damage essentially kills every land-based unit in a direct hit.
- If individual weapons rules are used (SO page 114) for standard scale weapons the random roll to do capital damage would need to be modified as it does not make sense at a 1:100 ratio.
Points 1 and 2 still leave carriers dominant while drawbacks 3&4 seems undesirable. Further changes to scale (e.g. 1000:1) do not address this issue and exacerbate the drawbacks so we need some new rules. The best I've come up with is:
Attempt 2: Standard scale / 100 = capital scale. Only capital scale damage from a single event can cause a lucky critical hit. Capital missiles require standard damage = 10x capital damage in point defense to destroy. Ortillery operates according to standard scale = 10x capital scale. Remove the individual weapons rule for stochastic capital damage.
Looking at the issues again, we see:
- An ASF can cause a critical hit on a warship through a ramming attack or a high speed engagement with an AC/20. There are not common tactics for several reasons.
- Antiship missiles (TO page 358) are still devastating but it's possible to defend with AMS. It's still ridiculous to have a 2 ton missile inflict 3 capital damage so downgrading to 30 standard damage is reasonable.
- Point defense remains as-is with 20MGs, 14SLs, or 7 AMS shots destroying a Barracuda. A warship could easily mount 320 SLs in an arc providing a modest point defense and appropriately designed ASF or small-craft could contribute point defense in excess of a missile boat's capacity. When AMS becomes available it can completely nerf missile-based attacks at some cost with a carrier executing an alpha strike with Antiship missiles at the high end.
- Ortillery hits as normal.
Edit: This leaves dropships unable to effectively contribute in combat against warships as
Atarlost says. I don't see how to cope with this other than via another rule.
Attempt 3: Standard scale / 100 = capital scale. Only capital scale damage from a single event can cause a lucky critical hit. As an exception, standard scale damage remains only 10x capital damage for the purpose of damaging dropships, shooting down capital missiles, and ortillery. Remove the individual weapons rule for stochastic capital damage.
This modification allows assault dropships to modestly threaten dropships while consolidating the rules from attempt 2 and otherwise functioning as before.
Edit again: Attempt 3 fails because a
smallcraft carrier is still overwhelming. We need a new approach. I like the damage reduction idea, but we've established that -5 damage reduction isn't adequate and it seems desirable to avoid the need to recompute damage statistics.
Attempt 4: Standard scale damage by a standard weapon bay or a unit not using bays against capital armor is reduced by the amount of capital armor on a location before it is applied. Only capital scale damage can cause a lucky critical hit against capital armor.
Examples: An AC/20 does half damage against a jumpship with 10 capital armor and no damage against a space station with 20 capital armor. A warship mounting a 70 PPCs in a bay would do no damage against a warship with 700 capital armor. A smallcraft with a bay using 12 medium lasers would do no damage against a warship with 60 capital armor.
- Capital weapons have damage/ton much lower than standard scale weapons but they are not reduced by capital scale armor so they always remain relevant in warship combat.
- ASF have difficulty damaging capital scale armor. Using TW rules (page 238) with errata page 42, you add up all the standard scale damage against each location before converting to capital damage. Now, after adding you subtract the amount of capital armor, then divide by 10 and round normally to get the amount of capital scale damage.
- Smallcraft have difficulty damaging capital scale armor because the weapon bay's damage is reduced by the amount of capital scale armor.
- Dropships have difficulty damaging capital scale armor with standard scale weapons as smallcraft. However, they can mount heavier standard scale bays which can damage larger warships and sub-capital weapons which damage any warship.
- Standard weapon based warships have damage reduced to zero by sufficiently large opposed warships. This point seems the least satisfying because there remain a broad range of warships for which a 70 PPC bay remains effective.
This seems to fail by leving
standard weapon armed warships too powerful.
Attempt 5:
(From monbvol) Standard weapons don't damage capital armor. Advanced Point Defense, Missile Waypoints, and Bearings only launches are no more. Antiship Missiles are backdated to always be available.
This seems to
leave ASF carriers dominant.
Attempt 6:
here Capital damage by standard weapons is equal to the damage on a facing by an attacker / 100, rounded down. The maximum number of weapons in a weapons bay is 6 for Smallcraft, 12 for Dropships, and 40 for Warships, Jumpships, and Space Stations. Critical hits on capital units can only be caused by individual attacks dealing at least 1 capital damage.
No counterexamples yet exist although it is odd that standard scale units have an easier time doing damage to capital armor than capital structure.
Attempt 7:
from marcussmythe. Non-capital weapons effect capital IS at 1:10, but cannot harm capital armor. Fighter carried ASMs deal 1 point of capital scale damage. No optional rule for AMS.
This
eliminates ramming as per cannon and it makes
missileers to powerful.
Attempt 8: Standard scale damage does not affect capital scale armor.
This again eliminates ramming as per Miraborg. It means that jumpships are very robust against ASF although they can be easily boarded by smallcraft. ASF still have roles to play in naval battles via Antiship Missiles, in damaging exposed structure, or in electronic warfare.
Attempt 9: Standard scale damage does not affect capital scale armor greater than 10 times the standard scale value. For standard scale weapon bays use the damage of the largest weapon in the bay. For cluster weapons, use cluster damage (i.e. 5). Where standard scale weapons can damage capital armor, add up all damage to a facing from an attacker and divide by 100, rounding normally. Critical hits can only be delivered by individual attacks dealing at least 1 capital damage.
Under this rule:
- Capital armor of 50+ is immune to standard scale cluster weapons and capital armor of 250+ is immune to all standard weapons including the heavy gauss in normal play.
- Jumpships generally remain vulnerable to standard scale weapons although they may have immunity to particularly light weapons and a particularly large jumpship may achieve immunity to cluster weapons on some facings.
- Warships short of the Leviathan III are vulnerable to a standard scale AC/20 used in a high speed engagement.
- Warships can take damage (and a critical hit) from a ramming attack as per the Miraborg ram.
- Critical hits can only be delivered by a ram attack or a hit during a high speed engagement with a particularly heavy weapon (i.e an AC/20).
- When standard scale weapons can damage capital armor, the damage they inflict is inline with naval weapons on a damage/ton basis.
- ASF can inflict capital armor damage (i.e. achieve 50 damage on a threshold) even in the Age of War with a well-built heavy ASF. More modern ASF can be lighter/faster or potentially inflict 2 capital damage.
- Capital structure is more vulnerable than capital armor, since 15 standard scale damage inflicts 1 point of capital structure damage as per existing rules.
Am I missing effects of these rule tweaks? Do side effects seem intolerable? Once you start tweaking rules it becomes tempting to tweak many more, but it seems important to minimize tweaks. Is there a better alternate set of tweaks which is no larger?