Ship Combat

Another House Rule I would like to propose. Many tweaks have been submitted in regards to fixing what is seen by many the Macrocannon vs. Lance argument. We haven't had a lot of experience in this game in regards to this issue but I know from other games that it does not pay to mount Lances on a ship and that makes me sad.

Example Time:
Our Gunnery Master makes his roll to hit with two Barrages of Macrocannons, managing to garner miraculous 30 on each with his BS of 60. This gives him a total of 6 hits with the Macrocannons against Joe Smoe Destroyer. We roll damage 6,6,11,9,4 and 11 then with the least of them being eaten away by the shields. ((I had to roll this three times as the other example dice rolls were even more insanely high.)) A whopping 43 damage is dealt, minus the armor of 16 for 27 damage. Against the Illusion this would leave 3 Hull Integrity left. One more shot and she's done.

Now the same rolls but our Gunnery Master makes his roll to hit with one Macrocannon and a lance. This gives him a total of 3 hits with the Macrocannons and 1 with the Lance against Joe Smoe Destroyer. We roll damage 10,6,12 then with the least of them being eaten away by the shields. Lance hit bypasses armor and deals 7 damage. 22 damage is dealt, minus the armor of 16 plus the lance damage comes out to 13 damage. Against the Illusion this would leave 17 Hull Integrity left with a randomly determined critical hit.

So here's the question? Is that critical worth 14 damage? If so, then we keep things the way they are. If it's not, then we can look at solutions. I'd really like to hear feedback on this either way.

This is another balance issue. Mathhammer wise macrocannons are best overall hands down. Fluff wise some ships should have lances, it's a signature weapon of Crusiers. Lances just don't seem to do much in RT. They seem as if they just had to put them in for completness. Oh, throw stacking the deck and other bonus on BS for marcocannons and they will always hit that Crit rating. So the only thing lances get is ignoring armor. Which unless you are facing a ship with like 40 armor is pretty useless since you can stack macrocannon shots.

Now ground wise a lance strike is much better at taking out a hard target then a macrocannon. Pinpoint strike vs wide area devasation.

Saint wrote:This is another balance issue. Mathhammer wise macrocannons are best overall hands down. Fluff wise some ships should have lances, it's a signature weapon of Crusiers. Lances just don't seem to do much in RT. They seem as if they just had to put them in for completness. Oh, throw stacking the deck and other bonus on BS for marcocannons and they will always hit that Crit rating. So the only thing lances get is ignoring armor. Which unless you are facing a ship with like 40 armor is pretty useless since you can stack macrocannon shots.

Now ground wise a lance strike is much better at taking out a hard target then a macrocannon. Pinpoint strike vs wide area devasation.

Ground combat though isn't what's going to get people to consider mounting them. So here's a fix I've seen pop up that I'd like to float.

All Ships: -10 Armor to a Minimum of 0.

Macrocannons: No longer can be combined and now get the Storm Quality. This means that a lot more hits but quite a bit less chance of damage. Against a Cruiser, a Thunderstrike will only do damage on a 0. I can find this acceptable.
Lances: Receive Tearing and still ignores armor. This allows them to have the potential to hurt a cruiser solidly but as they should.

Another ding vs Lances is that a Starbreaker Lance is 4 space, and 6 power. You can fit two Thunderstrike Macrocannons and still have 2 power left over. With the storm ruling that would give you 4x more hits then a lance, with a better arc of fire. If you have the mounts for 3 cannons you're looking for 6x more hits then a lance. You would vaporize a frigate.

In said example with 3 dos on 2 cannons, that 12 hits (3 dos x storm x 2 batteries) I got 22 damage after 6 points of armor soaked up almost half my hits. (I just rolled em on the game table.)

Saint wrote:Another ding vs Lances is that a Starbreaker Lance is 4 space, and 6 power. You can fit two Thunderstrike Macrocannons and still have 2 power left over. With the storm ruling that would give you 4x more hits then a lance, with a better arc of fire. If you have the mounts for 3 cannons you're looking for 6x more hits then a lance. You would vaporize a frigate.

In said example with 3 dos on 2 cannons, that 12 hits (3 dos x storm x 2 batteries) I got 22 damage after 6 points of armor soaked up almost half my hits. (I just rolled em on the game table.)

The arc of fire would be the same regardless. Prow mounts on Light Cruisers or better covers just as much as Dorsals. It's on the lessers that they only strike forward. So let's scale up our example fix as more or less, I expect Destroyers to fall with ease no matter what we do. Let's do Cruisers.

The Aerie unleashes an attack onto another Cruiser. With the Macrocannons, she does 10,6,5,5,9 and 8. Against armor 10, we're talking no damage at all. Then it unleashes the Lance, getting 13 damage. It was the only way to do damage to the cruiser but at least it was something.

Now we use it against the destroyer. 9 damage from the Macros, 13 damage from the Lance. Not bad at all, all things considered.

While the two batteries of Macrocannons are better for small ship destruction, it's the lances that reign supreme when you get to Capital ships. It makes them relevant again.