Battleship Smash Playtest

[countercheck]

For fun, I ran a few simulated tests with two divisions of almost identical BBs bludgeoning each other for 6 rounds. I had been under the impression that Guided was excessively powerful, and should cost a lot more than AS. I was so very, very wrong.

The contenders!

Iowa class Battleship Starship TL0 [40MU]
BC 20, BT 10, MC 10, CR 10, CC 4, DV 10, PD 10, AS 10, FTL 1

Moscow class Battleship Starship TL0 [40MU]
BC 20, BT 10, MC 10, CR 10, CC 4, DV 10, PD 10, Guided 10, FTL 1

DD Starship TL0 [8MU]
BC 4, BT 2, MC 2, CR 3, CC 0.5, DV 4, PD 1, AS 1, FTL 1

Battle 1
3 Iowas vs 3 Moscows

I saw my error immediately. Because PD subtracts directly from Guided, a PD roll higher than the guided roll (which, given equivalent values, will happen more than half of the time) means that absolutely nothing gets through, while even with a high PD roll against AS, something always gets through. Formation Levels helped reduce the American damage, but the command cost of the battleships was so high I could never raise them above level 3. All three Russian battleships were destroyed, and while the American force was seriously damaged, none of their vessels were crippled. I should have probably had the Russians use Directed Damage more aggressively, but they were doing so little damage that halving it seemed like a bad bet. I think I was wrong.

Battle 2
3 Iowas vs 3 Moscows, identical dice rolls

I had been concerned by the swinginess of the results... massive damage one turn, none the next, so I decided that each side would use the same die rolls as the other, just to see what would happen in the absence of that random factor. By the end of the second turn, the Russians were getting mauled again, so I called an early end.

Battle 3
3 Iowas & 4 DDs vs 3 Moscows and 4 DDs.

Really interesting. On the american side, there was one crippled battleship and all four destroyers were crippled. On the russian side, two battleships were crippled and a third heavily damaged. No ships were destroyed. The escorts, because they had such small CCs, could easily be pushed up to extremely high FLs, and their high DV for their size meant they could soak crazy amounts of damage. They could also always take the tiny little leftover PD values after the larger ships had been levelled up. Because we're supposed to round up for cripples, they didn't even suffer any degradation in their combat abilities once crippled, so there was no reason to shoot at them, and every reason to absorb fire with their effective DV of 8. Again, the Guided weaponry proved fairly ineffective - I'm thinking it would probably work best when mounted on fighters. Combining Guided and standard AS also gives your opponent some interesting choices to make.

Conclusions:
It's REALLY swingy. The difference between 10% and 100% is obviously large, but it can't really be over-emphasised. I never knew if my squadron would generate 30 PD or 3. Maybe 2D6 would be better?

I think that rounding down for cripples makes more sense. The ships are damaged, they should always suffer system damage, and it deters the 1 Battleship 24 DD armada.

Guided should maybe halve FL rather than ignore it. That's actually more powerful, because it makes Directed Damage against FL1 ships free.

[wminsing]

countercheck, I haven't had a chance to dig into the new CSCR yet but thanks for running through this- I think this sort of play testing is definitely very valuable.

-Will

[virtutis.umbra]

Agreed, Countercheck - actually running the numbers for the variant weapon ideas is extremely useful. Thanks, esp. for the point about the swingy-ness of the results on a d10.

My thought, though, is that it seems like the Moscow-class BB isn't particularly well-suited to killing the Iowa-class BB or to defending against it; whereas the reverse is true in the other direction, the Iowa is a great ship for killing Moscows. The apparent stat-parity between the two is perhaps a bit misleading.

Here's why: the Moscow's high PD is somewhat wasted given the lack of opposing targets that can be harmed by it -- it's relegated to using its PD purely for DV boost, which is nice but something of a losing game. Especially since, as you've observed, the Guided weapon's Achilles heel is that it's readily countered by enemy PD on more or less a one-for-one basis. This implies a tactical doctrine for effective use of Guided weapons which certainly bears out in e.g. the Honorverse and Gearyverse novels, namely that guided weapons are best used in overwhelming numbers to swamp enemy point defense. PD-to-Guided parity indicates a battle that ought to be avoided, if possible.

I'm not in a position to test this out just at the moment, but I wonder - what would this fight look like if the Moscow were redesigned to be a bit more aggressive, trading some of its underperforming PD for enough offensive punch to claw through the enemy's defensive fire; and if perhaps the DD ships were purely devoted to a defensive-escort role on both sides to help balance the scales a bit? Do the choices about how to spend PD each turn become more interesting then, or is it still a one-sided smashdown?

Iowa class Battleship Starship TL0 [40MU]
BC 20, BT 10, MC 10, CR 10, CC 4, DV 10, PD 10, AS 10, FTL 1

Moscow class Battleship Starship TL0 [40MU]
BC 20, BT 10, MC 10, CR 10, CC 4, DV 10, PD 5, Guided 15, FTL 1

DD Starship TL0 [8MU]
BC 4, BT 2, MC 2, CR 3, CC 0.5, DV 4, PD 2, AS 0, FTL 1

Or, what happens with a few wings of flight units in the mix, or a full-AS division of Iowa BBs against a mixed AS/Guided BB division (say 1x Iowa, 2x Moscow) ? Obviously that's getting into fairly complex multiple-variable territory here where it'd be hard to tease apart what effect each part has, so maybe not such a useful analysis... but fun to think about, certainly!

[countercheck]

Thanks for the feedback guys! I tried another one, but it was a bit too ambitious. Two battleships supported by five offscreen light carriers and 10 flights vs two dreadnoughts, a heavy cruiser, a pair of light cruisers, and five destroyers. It's looking pretty even. Flights make Guided way more effective, because your enemy needs to choose between keeping the fire from hitting him, and shooting down the fighters.

I'll give the modified Iowas and Moscows a shot. I wanted to start it out even to see how it worked first.

[countercheck]

virtutis.umbra, you have a good eye for numbers. Rearranged like that, it was a pretty fair fight. I ran a pair of fights (I have a spreadsheet that makes it pretty fast for small fights), and while the swinginess is still quite alarming, the results were interesting.

Code: Select all

Fight 1
Turn 1
The Russians manage to raise all their ships to the same level, making directed damage a fool's game.  Russians take 1 damage each, Americans block all Russian guided fire.
All Russian Ships lightly Damaged
All American Ships Undamaged

Turn 2
The Russian point defence is approximately as effective as last time, but the Americans drop the ball, and almost all the Russain guided fire gets through, crippling one Iowa and damaging two others.  The american fire focuses on the lead russian ship, but fails to cripple it	
One Russian Ship nearly crippled, two lightly damaged
One American Ship crippled, two lightly damaged									
									
Turn 3
Both sides are reeling and neither makes a good show of it. Lead russian battleship is crippled by an additional point of damage. All Russian fire intercepted
One Russian Ship crippled, two lightly damaged	
One American Ship crippled, two lightly damaged	

Turn 4
The Americans completely stop the Russian's fire, and just do some superficial damage.
One Russian Ship crippled, two lightly damaged	
One American Ship crippled, two lightly damaged	

Turn 5
The Americans get the better of the russians, but just barely										
One Russian Ship crippled, two moderately damaged	
One American Ship badly crippled, two moderately damaged	

Turn 6
Americans stop russian fire dead, and cripple another battleship.
Two Russian Ships badly crippled, one heavily damaged.
One American ship badly crippled, two moderately damaged.

Russian PD Rolls	36
American PD Rolls	32
Russian AS Rolls	21
American AS rolls	34
Russian PD Total	49.75
American PDTotal	84
Russian AS Total	77.25
American AS Total	84

As you can see, it was pretty even. The Americans got significantly better AS rolls than the Russians - they rolled a 10 on that last turn, but other than that it was pretty even. Also, nothing really happened on turns 1, 3, and 4 due to poor AS rolls, while ridiculous amounts of damage were done on rounds 2 and 6.

But that was rather civilized. Unlike Fight 2.

Code: Select all

Fight 2
Turn 1
Russian fire is completely blocked, and point defense is utterly ineffective.  The americans could choose to assign directed fire, almost crippling a russian ship, but decide to let the russians allocate the fire.  This way, they'll be closer to crippling two ships.											
All Russian Ships moderately damaged
All American Ships undamaged

Turn 2
Russian heavy investment in offensive firepower pays out here, as the Americans utterly fail to dent the russian salvo.  There is a price, though, and the russians are also savaged.  All three american battleships are crippled, and two of the russians are too.											
Two Russian ships crippled, one heavily damaged
Two american ship crippled, one badly crippled.

Turn 3
A third russian battleship is crippled, as the russians pound the worst damaged ship.											
Two Russian Ships crippled, one badly crippled
Two American Ships crippled, one near destruction

Turn 4
The americans focus their fire and kill Moscow 3.  THe russians kill Iowa 1, and damage the other two											
One Russian ship destroyed, two crippled.
One American ship destroyed, two badly crippled.

Turn 5
The americans get the better of the russians, but just barely											
One Russian ship destroyed, two badly crippled.
One American ship destroyed, two badly crippled.

Turn 6
The Americans stop russian fire dead, and do some more damage to both survivng russian BBs											
One Russian ship destroyed, two badly crippled.
One American ship destroyed, two badly crippled.

Russian PD Rolls	25
American PD Rolls	27
Russian AS Rolls	32
American AS rolls	40
Russian PD Total	24.25
American PDTotal	51
Russian AS Total	60.75
American AS Total	67.5

Brutal. But the Russians did well. I think Guided might be accurately priced, given it did relatively well with poor rolls. I also think this may not be where it shines - because it blows through formation like it's not there, it may be optimized for picking off escorts in larger fleet battles... escorts have such tiny CCs that they're trivial to bump up to high FLs. If guided munitions are NOT intercepted, they can be applied as direct damage to remove those escorts from the battle.

Question. Do you think Guided munitions should ignore the FL penalty due to Directed Damage? I played as though it took two points of Guided to make a point of DD, but I'm not sure. I think that might make it too powerful

[Tyrel Lohr]

I'm not opposed to going to a 2D6 bell curve distribution for combat rolls. It would probably weight the results towards 50% effectiveness, with variable effectiveness from there. The downside to the 2D6 method is that you either have to do 2D6/12 or have a separate percentile effectiveness chart that you roll on. The chart method is probably the easiest, but it's also one that would require look up / memorization to use, which is not as handy as a D10/10 roll.

Of course, that being said, there's not any strict reason why you couldn't do 2D6/10. If you had modifiers apply to the 2D6 roll itself, then you could dip below the base 20% but you have the best chance of doing about 70% of your maximum output per turn, with rolls greater than 100% demonstrating critical hits. Such rolls would be relatively rare.

Another thing that I've been hammering at the last month is trying to work out some problems with the CSCR, specifically relating to ship stats and issues with the rules that haven't been sitting well with me.

Firstly is Defense. I grandfathered over most of the Defense rules from 1E, but I don't like that it's a glaring exception to the "halve combat factors when crippled" rule. To that extent I've been thinking about replacing Defense with a Damage Threshold (DT) stat, probably tied to Command Cost, that Defense would then provide a bonus to. For example, a 3 CC ship might have 3 DT and with 4 Defense would then require 7 damage to cripple and then 5 damage to destroy. That really is the major quibble I have with doing it this way, though: the damage required to destroy a ship is different than what it takes to cripple it. Not a big deal, but it makes it harder to quickly calculate the amount of damage required to outright destroy a unit.

I've also considered changing how Command Rating functions and returning it to a purchasable unit stat. The change I'm looking at is to have Command on the strategic level replace the scenario intensity that previously existed in the rules. The pool of "command points" you generate at the start of the encounter are then used to generate battles in the system that turn. For example, let's say you had 32 CR of ships in a fight and your effective CR for the encounter ends up at 20 CR. You could spend up to 20 CR in that encounter on scenarios, and the total CR spent determines the max CC of units that both sides can add to the battle. Once the CR allotment is used you can't generate any other scenarios, though you can still be drawn into battle by the other player using their own CR. This provides a more concrete method of determining scenario intensity and gives CR a more defined purpose.

On the tactical level, CR would instead move into the role currently filled by PD and be used to increase friendly formation levels or decrease enemy formation levels.

Where does that leave PD? Its defensive application may be better suited to providing an effective Defense bonus to friendly units instead of the formation level bonuses. That weakens PD, but it would still be useful as a "shield" against incoming fire. I'm thinking that putting max PD per unit should be pegged to CC, at least without paying a penalty, to prevent ships from being oversaturated with point defense fire. I.E., a 4 CC ship could get 4 PD this round at no penalty (1 PD = +1 Defense), but each additional point of DV bonus might cost 2 PD (twice the normal amount).

Taken together, let's say we had two trios of Iowa-class BB (DV 10, AS 10, PD 10, CR 10, CC 4) from countercheck's original battle duking it out:

Round 1:
Force 1 rolls 21 AS, 18 PD, 24 CR. The CR is enough to purchase 6 formation level bonuses, which are spread around to give each BB a +2 FL (3). The PD is also spread around, giving each BB +5 Defense (probably need to call this something else, as its more of a temporary damage shield...). The PD bonus is blunted a bit because the PD exceeds the BB's CC, so they pay more for the last point of bonus.

Force 2 rolls 24 AS, 36 PD, 30 CR. Much better rolls. The three BB have formation levels bonuses of +3, +2, and +2, respectively. Each BB gets 12 PD for their defense, which ends up +9 Defense (which is really too high, better to go with the formation levels bonuses as before... trouble with stream of consciousness writing).

If PD did just give FL bonuses, then we'd be looking at +2/+1/+1 to Force 1 and +3/+3/+3 to the second. Might as well just run with that.

Okay, with that correction, we have our AS fire resolution. Force 1 has 21 AS. That scores all of 5 damage against one of the BB in Force 2 (+5 FL). Return fire from Force 2 is 24 AS, which scores 5 damage against the lead BB in Force 1 (+4 FL). An even exchange of firepower.


Now, to jump the rails, here's some other rapid fire thoughts:

Maybe DT is simply the amount of damage required to crippled/destroy, and Defense becomes the equivalent of the formation level bonuses in the current rules in that it's the surcharge a unit must pay to score 1 damage to a unit. For example, it would take 6 AS to score 1 damage to a ship with 5 Defense. Alternatively, Defense could be the straight AS cost to damage the unit, and DV 0 units just takes 2 damage per point.

Another thought I had was to have the DT be equal to build cost instead of command cost. That would make it so that at 12 EP unit would take 12 damage to cripple/destroy. The mechanic could also be changed back so that a unit would become crippled when it takes half or more of the damage required to destroy it. If that happened, the 12 EP unit would cripple after taking 6 damage and be destroyed on the 12th point of damage.

Yet another deviation from this would be the break Defense into Shields and Armor. Shields would provide a temporary bonus, absorbing damage meant for the ship, while Armor would provide a DT bonus that would increase a unit's survivability. I've been fighting that one for awhile now, and I still can't find a good way to break the two apart and be different enough to be worthwhile to track separately, though.

Another thing to bring up: formation levels can be retained as a damage reducing mechanism, but maybe they should apply penalties to their combat abilities if they're in a high formation level? That would reflect that they've buffeted enough from combat that their own weapons are less effective.

I guess I should quit and regroup, but this is a lot of what I've been hitting my head against the wall with the last month, trying to find a more elegant answer with fewer contradictory rules or special cases to muddy the waters. Some of the ideas just don't work at all, but I'm throwing them out there just to have them out there.

[Tyrel Lohr]

As a quick diversion before I get back to work, here's a basic rundown of what I'm kind of thinking of:

Defense measures how durable a unit is and increases the amount of damage the unit can take before it's crippled or destroyed. This works best with a fixed Damage Threshold value that is tied to either Build Cost or Command Cost.

Attack Strength is the strength of its weapons that it can use to engage non-flight units. Heavy weapons, basically. This is used to score damage against enemy non-flight units.

Point Defense weapons are used to fire on enemy flights or intercept incoming weapons fire. The offensive PD application is straight forward, as it is just used to assign damage to enemy flights. The defensive application has historically been a formation bonus, and that is probably still preferable as it prevents a player from putting an "invincibility shield" around a unit as would happen with a straight +Defense bonus.

Command needs to represent command and control and electronic warfare. Tying into scenario intensity via a replacement command point system is fine on the strategic level, but on the tactical level the question becomes what should the ability really do? There are several possibilities, the most appealing probably to wrap together a lot of the other tertiary abilities (such as being able to lower enemy formation levels) but I also like the idea of having Command be an activator ability that is used to do other things. For example, maybe Command has to be spent to allow ships to assign extra PD to other units? That would represent command interactions on the fleet level to coordinate defensive fire. For example, a ship with 4 PD might be able to spend 4 PD to increase its own formation level, but each point above that takes a point of CR to help it out. Or just require CR to be spent to screen using PD at all.

Speed is something that I keep going back and forth on, too. I see this being a basic formation level increase (faster = harder to hit), but it could also be tied back into CR and allow the player to spend CR (up to maximum speed) to raise/lower formation levels during a battle. It could also tie in to the scenario length mechanics, with fleets being able to apply Speed modifiers to pursuit or retreat during a scenario. For example, if your slowest unit is Speed 3 and the enemy's slowest unit is Speed 1, then you could choose to pursue and apply a -3 modifier and the enemy could choose to retreat and get a +1. Then, at the end of each combat round, you would roll 2D6 + # of Rounds resolved + Modifiers. The scenario ends on a 13+. That provides a more randomized scenario length, and would allow faster fleets to outrun slower ones and vice versa.

I'm also seriously reconsidering the current approach to special abilities with an eye to reducing the number of them and tying their cost and effect to specific stats. For example, Bombardment might double a unit's AS for purposes of bombardment point generation but then have a cost equal to 50% of the unit's total AS.

Just more thoughts as I try to get ready for a meeting.

[virtutis.umbra]

Thanks for posting your current thoughts, Tyrel. I'd like to take a swing at proposing terms and mechanical interactions, per this recent noodling.

Unit Factors

Hull Value (HV) - Capacity for Hits due to raw structural integrity.
Number of Hits the Unit can sustain before being Destroyed. Damage equal to half the Hull Value Cripples the Unit. (This ties to BC in some direct linear way, so a DD @BC4 is always, say, 4 hits to cripple + 4 more hits to kill. e.g. HR=1x BC for Flights [w/ no Crippling?]; 2x BC for other units; 3x BC for Starbases / Groundbases .)

Defense Value (DV) - Capacity for Hits due to passive physical barriers.
Number of Hits the Unit ignores before Hull Value is affected. (This effectively grows the non-Crippled "half" of HV.)
DV is the sum of:

• Armor - Mark off one point of Armor to avoid one Hit affecting Hull Rating. Must be repaired (either by Combat Repair capabilities or between battles via the normal Repair/Refit rules) before being used again.
• Shields - As Armor, but self-repairs at a specified rate (Intrinsically 1 point per combat turn? +more from a "Shield Recharge" ability?).

Evasion Level (EL)- Active defenses that turn Hits into Misses.
(A more general term to replace Formation Level)
Refer to the EL Hit Ratio Chart: a particular EL maps to a numerical value. This is the ratio at which incoming AS Roll Successes assigned to the unit are converted into Hits ("N Successes per Hit").
Evasion Level is the sum of:

• Speed - A Unit's usable Speed = the lowest Speed in the Squadron PLUS ONE, or its own Speed, whichever is lower.
• Formation bonus for Squadron flagships, TF Flag Squadrons, etc. [are these still in?]
• Point Defense - any Squadron PD Roll successes assigned to the Unit.
• Command Evasion - any Squadron CR Roll successes assigned to the Unit.

Other Terms

"*** Roll Successes" - Generally, {Relevant Stat} * {Die Roll} / {Hit Rate}, e.g.
AS Roll Successes = {Squadron AS} * {1d6} / 10
The First Centauri Lancers Squadron has AS 12 and rolls 3. They score 3 AS Roll Successes.

Hits - Damage dealt to a target as a result of AS or PD Roll Successes. [The disctinction is important because EL can convert N AS Roll Successes into X Hits, where N >= X.]