These are just thoughts that I have had recently. One thing I know from playing a ton of Alpha Strike games... Vehicles can be pretty powerful. I've been in a situation before where a lance of them gave a lance of 'Mechs hell. Not really a bad thing, but since that game, Vehicles really didn't feel much different than 'Mechs outside of the occasional motive system hit.
Expanded Vehicle Critical HitsIn Total Warfare, Vehicles suffer critical hits (not talking about motive hits, here) more often than 'Mechs. A lot more often, in fact. 2 or 12 on the front and rear tables results in a critical. The side arcs have them at 2, 12, and 9, where they are more vulnerable. Doing it like this is pretty close to the odds of scoring a critical across all 4 vehicle charts (1/12 chance). This does not translate into the rules for Alpha Strike... IMO, this really should, and I think this is a way to do it by adding something to the motive system damage chart:
2-8 No Effect**
** A result of 2 or 3 results in a critical hit (do not apply vehicle type modifiers)
So when you roll to check for motive hits, any time you roll a 2 or 3, you then roll on the critical hit table and hope for the best.
This is more in line with how Vehicles work in Total Warfare and gives them a slight de-buff against 'Mechs. There are no extra rolls either since critical hits are tied into the motive hit table. Also, vehicles already get some discounts in conversion, so I don't think any changes to PV would need to happen.
Variable Damage 2.0 (Method 1)I still feel like the current system for this is pretty weak. I was inspired by
DFA's thread and their blog for rolling
weapons hits and damage locations. Their method for rolling weapon hits is pretty cool. Essentially, 1d6 (yellow die) is a pilot die, every 1d6 after (different colored/size die) represents a weapon system. The pilot die applies to all weapon die after the roll.
For Alpha Strike, using this method for Variable Damage, it would work like this:
Let's say the to-hit was 7.
- Roll pilot die 1d6 (yellow die) results in a 3.
- Roll 1d6 per damage. Let's say the unit does 3 total damage. Roll 3d6 (white die). Results are 5,2,4.
- The unit combines damage die results with the pilot die. This would be 8,5,7. The unit causes 2 damage.
- For 0*, you would just roll 2d6 for the to hit roll, then roll 1d6 to determine if damage is caused (3+ causes damage). You can probably roll 3 die together. 1 yellow, 1 white, and 1 red as a "minimal damage die").
It sounds complicated, but when you roll some dice, you will see it that it is a lot faster using a dice pool like this when there are a lot of units on the board. It's seemingly better than rolling 2d6 to see if you hit and then rolling #d6 and sorting out the ones that hit. Or better than rolling a pool of d12 or 2d6 per point of damage (other house rules others have used). You no longer need to have the "1 damage minimum" rule as well.
With what I propose hits are more in line with the odds of rolling 2d6/bell curve. The lower the to-hit, the more damage you are likely to do, JUST like in Total Warfare. It also speeds up Variable Damage because hits are more concentrated depending on your pilot die result. If you have a high pilot die you increase your odds of scoring multiple hits. Likewise, if your pilot die is low, you have a lower chance of scoring multiple hits. If you read DFA's blog, it explains how the odds work for Total Warfare... some of that translates here and I feel it works better for Alpha Strike because it retains the focus on speed. The current system for variable damage does this poorly. It requires an extra dice roll and you can score a hit on a low target number and whiff all of your damage by rolling under a 4 on all of your d6 (basically, the odds of flipping a coin). The damage results are independent of the bell curve so you get some strange results.
Also, I would propose that when Variable Damage is in play, it applies to all damage except for Charge and DFA attacks. Currently physical attacks are not lumped in with this. This would also mean you would roll a die for damage bonuses (like for rear and melee attacks).
EDIT: Example, dice are rolled together for each example: