Battle in the Chat: A visit with the Queen

[Theblackdog]

TURN 3
Bavarians (Silverdream)


The FLEIJA detonates, doing two points of damage to both Blackdog's ship and the Tiger Shark. Blackdog's ship is destroyed entirely; the Tiger Shark has 2HP left.


The Schadenfreude focuses all four of its plasma cannons on the Wolfhound, but due to poor damage rolls only inflicts 1 damage. The Wolfhound has 1 HP left. The Captain casts a spell to reduce the Tiger Shark's armor...


... but it's not enough to let the Weltschmerz penetrate it.


The Verklempt advances and fires two FLEIJAs at the vectors of the approaching Praetorian frigates.

Bad Dogs (Theblackdog)

Although backed into a corner, the Wolfhound still strikes ferociously, inflicting 2 points of damage on the Schadenfreude. The missiles fired by Blackdog's ship before its destruction add another point, bringing it down to its last HP.


The Tiger Shark attempts to shoot out the Verklempt's FLEIJA launchers, but fails. It also fires a missile at the Weltschmerz.


Overview.

[Theblackdog]

Brittannians (Quantumsurfer)


The Monitor destroys the Wolfhound.


The rest of the fleet moves up. The Patrol Gunboat takes out a Praetorian drone.


"Admiral, the catapults are repaired."
"Launch the Vulcans!"
Three Vulcan bombers launch, heading out into the battle.


Overview.

[Theblackdog]

Praetorians (Dilanski)


The Praetorian frigates drift along their vectors. The Legionnaire shoots down both FLEIJAs while the Vengeance inflicts a point of damage on the Verklempt (4 remaining).


All 5 remaining drones attack the Vulcans, but fail to do damage.



Overview.

[Theblackdog]

Turn 4
Bavarians (Silverdream)

The Weltschmerz opens fire on the Praetorian frigates but can't pierce their armor. The Verklempt fires two FLEIJAs towards the Praetorian ships' vectors.

Seeing that his ship is on its last legs, the Schadenfreude's captain plays the Bavarian national anthem over its speakers and orders the engines to full emergency power. "For the Fatherland, we shall destroy them all!"

Or not.

The Bad Dogs (Theblackdog)


The Tiger Shark fires a missile at the Verklempt. The missile it fired last turn hits the Weltschmerz, inflicting a point of damage (3 remaining).


Overview

[Theblackdog]

The Vulcans inflict a point of damage on the Tiger Shark (1 HP remaining, 1 bomb each remaining on the Vulcans). Response fire damages a Vulcan.


The Brittannian ships advance, but they only manage to kill drones.


Overview

[Theblackdog]

Praetorians (Colette)

The cruiser advances and launches another wing of drones. The drones gang up on the Vulcans and kill two.


The frigates turn around and inflict another point of damage on the Weltschmerz (two remaining). They also destroy the FLEIJAs.


Overview.

[Theblackdog]

Turn 5
Bavarians (Quantumsurfer)


They both fire on the Praetorians. Two FLEIJAs are on the way, but nothing else did damage.

Bad Dogs (Theblackdog)

The Tiger Shark fires a missile at the Verklempt and does some damage to the Vulcan bomber.


Overview

[Theblackdog]

Brittannians -- Scratch

The Britannian ships move up and do a point of damage to the Legionnaire (4 remaining). The Vulcan turns around to make another run at the Tiger Shark. The captain of the Ark Royal attempts to find Blackdog's escape pod, but runs into some debris and takes a point of damage (7 remaining).


We called it there, and will continue tomorrow.

[Theblackdog]

Thoughts on the rules as they stand:
The biggest problem, and one that's hard to resolve, is that battles typically become jousts with both teams flying towards each other, trying to reach the optimal range. This results in an interesting opening as both sides jockey for position, and a not-very-interesting endgame as one side or the other reaches its optimal range and is content to stay there, or both sides reach optimal range and have no reason to move.

Changing some of the weapons was supposed to fix this somewhat, by giving players incentive to dodge enemy missiles and torpedoes; but it seems many players would prefer to take the hits. I might buff missile and torpedo damage (the damage of heavy torpedoes needs to be buffed anyway, they should be taking off multiple wounds each time they hit) to increase this incentive. I would also like to change how cover works in this game; some weapons will be able to shoot through it with a penalty and some will be blocked by it.

Anti-fighter weapons are another problem; there's quite a few of them and they do very little to anything that isn't a fighter. Even against fighters their damage is pretty low; I might reduce fighters' AV to compensate. In the future, I'll also use light weapons for component damage against larger ships more often.

[Theblackdog]

Just so you know, the battle is officially over as I am several thousand miles away from my legos right now and will be for the next few months. I did manage to write a conclusion to the storyline here, but you've probably already seen it.

I'd really appreciate it if players gave feedback on the battle and the disadvantages/advantages of this rule set. My goal is to develop a skirmish scale (3-9 ships per faction) ruleset, and while this one definitely has its advantages it's nowhere near perfect. Here are some of the definite changes I'm going to make:

--Torpedoes will have enough 'fuel' for 8-12 inches' acceleration and no more, making it possible for players to dodge them. On the other hand, their damage will be buffed so that, on average, you can expect to lose multiple HP to a torpedo hit.

--Special abilities will be completely revamped. Instead of having to choose between shooting or using a special, each special will now have a 'cooldown' time of 1-3 turns, making timing more important. So you charge in, use your special

--Ship-mounted Anti-fighter weapons will have a +1 damage bonus, allowing them to pose a bigger threat to other ships. Hopefully this will make anti-fighter 'specialist' ships more useful. The fighter-mounted weapons seemed fine, a squadron of fighters with standard weapons would on average do a point of damage per turn to a larger warship.

--Heroic feats don't really work here. I liked them in Bragspace because they provided some amusement, but overall it feels like the possibilities for them in this ruleset are pretty limited. I will add more special abilities to compensate, and you're welcome to suggest faction-specific abilities to represent, for instance, RARcom tek or Bavarian Magik.
UPDATE: I've put my rules into a Google doc and made a thread for it.