New VBAM Unit Traits

[Tyrel Lohr]

In the interests of kicking off dicussion in this forum, how about discussing some of the new VBAM units traits that people have been using in their campaigns?

I have to get my list together, but I know I have reworked some of the base traits as well as added some new ones in order to liven up campaigns a bit:

Assault (X): Instead of having the rating of an Assault ship be based on maintenance divisions, I have started just assigning Assault ships an Assault Rating. One ground unit requires 10 Assault Rating to be transported/attack from Assault ships (or 5 for Marines/Compact ground units). This helps to allow source designers to differentiate capabilities between Assault ships. It also helps when trying to convert ships over from other games that give troop numbers, such as the old FASA Star Trek game.

Armored: I think Garland was the one that came up with this; Armored acts like Shields, except that it applies AFTER a ship is crippled.

Ranged: Functions like the old Ballistic trait, but is now weapon-type neutral. This means the ship has some long-range weaponry that allows it to gain a formation level bonus while maintaining full AS.

Kinetic, Energy, Ballistic: I have been using these traits to describe ships that primarily have an arsenal of one specific type. This does not have any immediate effect for the ships, but allows them to purchase appropriate weapons packages to install. For example, you could have the various ordnance packages from Starfire be separate weapon packages and then install them aboard ships as needed.

Shield-Piercing: In considering weapons like Starfire's Primary Beam, it became clear that having the option of giving a ship (or weapon package) the ability to bypass shields might be appropriate. Right now, based on my notes, each ship with the Shield-Piercing trait allows you to ignore shields when scoring damage against a single enemy target. However, a more graceful solution has to be available.

Armor-Piercing: See Shield-Piercing above, just applying to the Armored trait.

Long-Range Sensors: Another trait that I think originated with Garland's tech system, each point of LRS rating gives the player's fleet a +5% detection chance bonus.


Those are the traits I can think of off of the top of my head. Throw your own ideas out. I will add the best ideas back here to the first post as things come up -- that way we can use this as a collecting point for unit ability ideas!

[Charles Lewis]

Lately, I've started separating Explorer from Scout in that Scouts do not automatically get to Explore.

This stems mostly from Voidstriker having distinct enough systems that some allow exploration while others provide battlefield advantage and therefore fall under the Scout rules.

I have also started using a Long Range trait that function identical to Ballistic but was for non-missile weapon systems. (the same as your Ranged trait)

I like the notion of the Assault trait. The problem is that it can be tricky matching the number of troops to a VBAM level ground unit.

[Emiricol]

Shield-Piercing: In considering weapons like Starfire's Primary Beam, it became clear that having the option of giving a ship (or weapon package) the ability to bypass shields might be appropriate. Right now, based on my notes, each ship with the Shield-Piercing trait allows you to ignore shields when scoring damage against a single enemy target. However, a more graceful solution has to be available.

Armor-Piercing: See Shield-Piercing above, just applying to the Armored trait.

They could halve the relevant KEB defense type (RU).

Assault (X): Instead of having the rating of an Assault ship be based on maintenance divisions, I have started just assigning Assault ships an Assault Rating. One ground unit requires 10 Assault Rating to be transported/attack from Assault ships (or 5 for Marines/Compact ground units). This helps to allow source designers to differentiate capabilities between Assault ships. It also helps when trying to convert ships over from other games that give troop numbers, such as the old FASA Star Trek game.

I like this. And to peg it to a ground combat system, I think all they'd really need to do is decide how many points each Assault (X) represents for their particular source material. For Battletech points are specific to the number or tonnage of unit types; for WH40K it might be 300 points per X. And so on.

I have added Star Law to my special abilities, which doubles the value of EP for Star Law ships as far as piracy is concerned but they have 1 month OoS survivability and limited strategic mobility.

[Charles Lewis]

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the Star Law trait that you had added. I really like that one - it'll give Will something to do with all of those police units in SFB for his conversion.

[MarkG88]

I really like the dection rules. When I run a campaign with my gamer buddies I intend to use the Reconnaissance trait as a "scout light" function, it will allow fleets to have the detect/hide bonus 5% for both function for each ship present in squadron/task force.

It would be class size limited: minimum size-- frigate, maximum size-- light cruiser to "encourage" the building of these otherwise oft neglected ship sizes. This reflects the David Webber's "Honorverse" ship class usage (typically destroyers are out on the hunt for enemy forces in a system) and back to the old wet navy concept of lighter vessels out being the "eyes" of the fleet. I like that "feel" and operational/strategic necessity in building destroyers and light cruisers.

The updated assault function looks interesting and I don't mind some extra planning in regards to ground unit logistics, that's realistic strategic level stuff which the hard core wargamer in me approves of mightily.

[Emiricol]

It came about because of two things. One, I like raider activity to be more a special event than regular occurrance. And two, the setting is getting converted to the Savage Worlds RPG as a free setting (of which there are many in that system), and having a law enforcement option that went beyond the local level but was not military is important for that.

And yeah, it would work great for a setting like Star Trek. Hadn't thought of that!

-Emiricol

[Tyrel Lohr]

That reminds me: after your created your Star Law ability, Emiricol, I went in and created a similar trait called Police which, when applied to a unit, doubles its EP for purposes of calculating military force sizes during raider checks. So a 3 EP Police FF would count as 6 EP of ships for raider checks. When combined with a split Logistics Rating (I know Charlie calls it Endurance -- I like my Logistics Rating, dammit! ), you can get the same basic effect as Star Law.

Charlie touches on another point, and one that probably should be addressed in the CSCR 2.0 that we are still hammering the details out on. After seeing Garland's tech system and a few other options, I think it would be best for us to split out a lot of the previously combined traits in order to allow for greater variety.

On the Scouts side, you end up with Explorer and Surveyor [/b] as the scientific, non-combat traits. Neither have any impact in campaigns where the Exploration and System Survey rules, respectively, are not in use. On the combat side we can break it down even further, so that each element is more or less a separate ability. Electronic Warfare is a good catch-all for the core combat abilities, though other abilities such as Jammer and Reconnaissance filling in other niches.

With Supply, I have taken to splitting it into Collier (resupply), Cargo (cargo movement), and Field Repair (field repair).

Another ability I have been trying to replicate, based on the Arachnid ships from In Death Ground, is the short range plasma weapons. A good concise name for the trait escapes me, though Short Ranged or Point Blank are contenders. With this trait, the ship would receive an AS bonus so long as it isn't placed into a formation bonus. This represents the extremely powerful but short ranged plasma weapons some of the Bug dreadnoughts were equipped with.

[Emiricol]

I like where you are going with all of that, to be honest. Breaking out the abilities lets people pick the ones that matter for their system defaults (and fluff).

Yeah, Star Law ships have LR: 0

I liked In Death Ground, though it was so long ago that I read it... Point Blank isn't bad, and fits with the Ranged ability thematically.

-Emiricol

[Tyrel Lohr]

I am currently grinding through The Shiva Option, but still have 300 pages to go (oi!).

I do think the best way to handle most of the Starfire weapon systems would be via special weapon packages. Primary beam packs for fighters would be Shield/Armor Piercing combo weapons, for example. For the capital ship missiles I would have to refer to their max damage and range, but they could give a mix of formation level bonuses and AS bonuses, depending on their type. Then the antimatter warheads... an AS bonus but with the chance of horrible destruction when crippled!

As to Logistics Rating, I do think that is a good thing to add, as it allows a source designer to be able to further differentiate units.

Getting back on topic, another new trait I have been playing around with is Weak Hulled (there has to be a better name for this one). Units with this trait do not cripple; they are simply destroyed when they take their DV in damage. In return, the ships are comparatively cheaper to build/maintain. For a "hard and fast" rule, maybe decrease the ship cost to 2/3 normal (rounding up) and increase the maintenance divisor by 50% (round up). I am hoping that this ability will be able to be used to allow minor powers to field slightly more powerful warships, with the downside that they have little to no survivability.

[Emiricol]

That's awesome. It would let powers like my Struvans, who are not that rich, field battleships - briefly Weak-Hulled doesn't roll off the tongue though, does it. How about Brittle or Pocket?

The Struvan defense of Barnard's Star would have been greatly aided by the addition of Pocket Heavy Cruisers to bolster their offensive power...

-Emiricol

[Tyrel Lohr]

Although not historically accurate, Pocket does sound much better

In Starmada X terms (for your campaign), I would say the Pocket trait would halve the number of Hull boxes a unit has (rounding fractions up). So a Hull 5 Pocket warships would have Hull 3 for purposes of SX.

Alternatively, and this would actually cover Hull 1 Pockets, you could just add 2-3 more Hull hits to the hit chart -- I think having all hits be Hull hits would probably be appropriate for such ships. They are going to blow up easily, but they are cheaper and can cram more equipment in than normally would be possible for the same cost.

[MarkG88]

As to Logistics Rating, I do think that is a good thing to add, as it allows a source designer to be able to further differentiate units.

Getting back on topic, another new trait I have been playing around with is Weak Hulled (there has to be a better name for this one). Units with this trait do not cripple; they are simply destroyed when they take their DV in damage. In return, the ships are comparatively cheaper to build/maintain. For a "hard and fast" rule, maybe decrease the ship cost to 2/3 normal (rounding up) and increase the maintenance divisor by 50% (round up). I am hoping that this ability will be able to be used to allow minor powers to field slightly more powerful warships, with the downside that they have little to no survivability.

First of all, Logistics Rating sounds good to me.In regards to Weak Hulled, I vote for War Hull -- weak, brittle and pocket are all negative in connotation (FYI the German "pocket battleships" from WWII were heavy cruiser hulls with 11 inch guns, the German navy eventually classified them as.......heavy cruisers).

A War Hulled ship is simply a massed produced offensive minded vessel and I'd limit it to DV 4+ sized ships (destroyers or light cruisers as the minimum) smaller ships are already "stripped down".

Modular hull is something else I've been kicking around. This would represent SFB "battle tugs" and in the Traveller universe, there were modular ships as well. A modular cruiser (2) would have the base stats: say DV 6, AS 3, AF 1, BC 2, CR 5, CC 3 and the ability to add on two modules.

The Modular Cruiser would cost as much as a battlecruiser while the individual modules would be in the corvette-frigate price range. The module stats would be added to the base stats for combat and command purposes. Examples below:

Battle module-- DV 2, AS 2, AF 1, CR 1, BC 0

Assault module-- DV 1, AS 1, AF 0, BC 1 (Assault 2--new rule discussed earlier in this post)

Fighter module-- DV 1, AS 0, AF 2, BC 3

Other modules could include: Electronic Warfare, minesweeper, mine laying, attack boat tender, etc.

Expensive ships to build and operate, but the ability to make modules "locally" (the could be built without shipyards maybe, not sure on this). Plus a quicker way to refit ships for various mission needs. The U. S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) currently under development will have a "modular" capability: Minesweeper, ASW, SEAL assault, etc.

[Emiricol]

Although not historically accurate, Pocket does sound much better

In Starmada X terms (for your campaign), I would say the Pocket trait would halve the number of Hull boxes a unit has (rounding fractions up). So a Hull 5 Pocket warships would have Hull 3 for purposes of SX.

Alternatively, and this would actually cover Hull 1 Pockets, you could just add 2-3 more Hull hits to the hit chart -- I think having all hits be Hull hits would probably be appropriate for such ships. They are going to blow up easily, but they are cheaper and can cram more equipment in than normally would be possible for the same cost.

Make all ships be 2-3 more hull, but these pocket/brittle/weak ships all get only hull hits? Or only normally Hull 1-3 ships?

I like halving hull boxes RU, with a minimum size of say, Hull 4 to get a Pocket trait. It is much simpler, though more limited.

Modular hull is something else I've been kicking around. This would represent SFB "battle tugs" and in the Traveller universe, there were modular ships as well. A modular cruiser (2) would have the base stats: say DV 6, AS 3, AF 1, BC 2, CR 5, CC 3 and the ability to add on two modules.

The Modular Cruiser would cost as much as a battlecruiser while the individual modules would be in the corvette-frigate price range. The module stats would be added to the base stats for combat and command purposes. Examples below:

Battle module-- DV 2, AS 2, AF 1, CR 1, BC 0

Assault module-- DV 1, AS 1, AF 0, BC 1 (Assault 2--new rule discussed earlier in this post)

Fighter module-- DV 1, AS 0, AF 2, BC 3

Other modules could include: Electronic Warfare, minesweeper, mine laying, attack boat tender, etc.

Expensive ships to build and operate, but the ability to make modules "locally" (the could be built without shipyards maybe, not sure on this). Plus a quicker way to refit ships for various mission needs. The U. S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) currently under development will have a "modular" capability: Minesweeper, ASW, SEAL assault, etc.

This is really neat, but hammering out the costs will be interesting. What price do you put on the ability to manufacture modules planetside? Or to refit an entire navy with AF improvements in a couple months when that fighter-focused INT-3 A90/I20/X80 race is encountered... pretty cool

-Emiricol

[MarkG88]

Yeah I've no idea how to price modular ships or their modules, I just know I like the idea. I can see them being expensive (and "rare" if availability rules are being used). If you ever played Star Fleet Battles (SFB) the Federation "battle tug" had more firepower than the DN, and the Klingon and Kzinti "battle tugs" had an OBSCENE amount of firepower (and drone power hehe) BEFORE any pods were added.

And as I noted the "real world" wet navy is going this way so I can see any future space navy also having a class of ships of this type.

[Rainer]

Tyrel, what (if anything) will happen with all the unit traits in the CSCR 2.0 revision?