One more run at carrier kills
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation & Empire: F&E INPUT:
F&E Proposals Forum:
One more run at carrier kills
Okay, if carriers are still a problem (I've seen no indication that they're not), how about this idea:
Ships in carrier groups can now be directed by expending an amount of damage equal to the defense value of each ship outside it in addition to any other damage spent to do the directing. Killing it adds escorts again. An example:
CV+MEC+EFF
To cripple EFF: 8 (4*2[EFF])
To kill EFF: 12 ((4+2)*2[EFF])
To cripple MEC: 18 (7*2[MEC] + 4[EFF])
To kill MEC: 30 ((7+4)*2[MEC] + 4+4[EFF])
To cripple CV: 31 (10*2[CV] + 7[MEC] + 4[EFF])
To kill CV: 52 ((10+5)*2[CV] + 7+7[MEC] + 4+4[EFF])
To kill cv in cv+MEC+EFF (pursuit, maybe): 21 (5*2[CV] + 7[MEC] + 4[EFF])
This is doable in larger battles, even without maulers. Much less than the 64 it takes to kill the whole group. But it's not like a Kzinti CVLs with CLE escorts are going to be dying in open-space battles every turn: (16+8)+(6+6)+(4+4)=45 damage to kill.
Naturally, a response to this is "It's far too easy! They cost too much!". Which is why I introduce the second part of this idea: free fighter factor salvage.
When a carrier is killed or captured, even out of supply, the owning race receives two thirds of its fighter complement as free fighter factor "salvage".
That's it. The whole idea.
Now, some more math to show this just about works out:
When a DN is killed in form, it's 54 damage for 16-4=12EP (after salvage), or 0.222 EP/damage.
When a CA is killed on the line, it's 24 damage for 8-2=6EP, or 0.25EP/damage.
When a CV is shot out of its (CV+MEC+EFF) (10+7+4) group, that's 52 damage for 12+12-(2.5+8)=13.5EP, or 0.259 EP/damage.
When a CVL is shot out of its (CVL+MEC+EFF) (8+7+4) group, that's 48 damage for 10+9-(2+3)=14EP, or 0.291 EP/damage.
When a CVA is shot out of its (CVA+2MEC+FKE) (12+7+7+5) group, that's 74 damage for 18+24-(4+16)=22EP, or 0.297 EP/damage.
Hydran hybrid factors would, of course, be worth half of what carrier fighters are for salvage.
Some practical consequences of this rule:
- Carriers would die. Not every battle, but frequently.
- Everyone would have too many FFF. Potentially, races should no longer receive them as production, but that's somewhat out of scope of this proposal. My gut feeling would be to cut production FFF in half.
- Maybe everything else works out?
I'll admit that I don't have tons of experience with the game. I do think I have a good sense for game balance, though, so I think this would work somewhat well.
Sam wrote:
>>Okay, if carriers are still a problem (I've seen no indication that they're not), how about this idea:>>
What is the problem that carriers present, that this is trying to fix?
Carriers are hard to kill. Interior escorts are hard to kill. Carriers don't die much. Interior escorts don't die much. That is how the game works. I'm unclear on what "if carriers are still a problem" is trying to articulate.
My impression was that SVC (among many others, myself included) felt that carriers should die. They essentially do not. Hence the large number of proposals on the topic. The proposals have gone nowhere because it's a hard problem to solve. I'm just throwing my hat in that ring.
Carriers can die sometimes. I tend to lose a group here and there once in a while.
True. In my game with Richard, just last week, using a capital assault line over a stripped planet (something like 130 compot) I rolled well and managed to use a mauler to pop one of Richard's CVS/CLE/EFF carrier groups.
Even easier with a CVL carrier group.
It doesn't happen easily, but it can happen.
I don't see the high kill resistance carriers have as being a problem. It's an important part of the game, and an advantage the Alliance NEEDS. Otherwise, the Coalition will blow their capital ships. Even if doing so is at high cost, the Alliance cannot really replace them early game.
What's good for the goose is also good for the gander. When the absolutely superior Rom groups come out, the Alliance has to deal with those monstrosities as well.
So, with the few kills that happen, I think it all works out.
I will say this about the proposed system:
74 damage to one-shot a whole CVA group sounds like a lot, but it is doable to get to 64 damage (with a mauler) even without fixed defenses to bolster your fleet. Even early game I can manage that if the opponent cooperates with a high BIR and I have a DN-heavy fleet that busts 140 compot.
I think the Alliance would poop clay rectangular objects if they started watching their CVA groups disintegrate.
Your CVS defined group would die *frequently* if all I had to generate is 42 damage (52, less 10 for a mauler).
If I have a Lyran STL on the line, those numbers go down even further.
So, there would definitely be a lot more carrier deaths. Is that a good idea?
Dunno for sure without play testing, but overall the game seems vaguely balanced. Let sleeping dogs lie?
I guess, if I were the game designer, I'd need more convincing, but it's an interesting proposal.
Yeah, like, I'm not convinced that there is a problem here.
If the "problem" being addressed is "Carriers don't die!"[*], well, someone needs to articulate how that is actually a problem. Yes. It is very difficult to kill carriers. Ok? The game works fine in a situation where it is very difficult to kill carriers. Both sides of the game benefit from it, and that it is very difficult to kill carriers is the only reason that the Alliance can fight the early part of the war. If you changed the rules so that it was easier to kill carriers (and, as such, the Coalition would probably be doing all of the carrier killing, due to the maulers...), you'd have to rejigger the balance such that the game worked again.
Like, I'm not a total apologist who refuses to accept that the game has flaws. The game has flaws, and things that could use some fixing. But that it is hard to kill carriers isn't one of them.
[*] Yes. Carriers can die. It happens once in a while while assaulting fixed defenses, or when the Gorns are fighting the Romulans and a CV group that they can't overstuff gets mauled and then mauled again in pursuit 'cause they didn't happen to have an FCR near by. But generally speaking, carriers don't die much. And this is fine.
Well, in my game with Paul, my Hydrans can put up 100-110 compot lines where all he can direct on is an FF or the SF. And he usually doesn't want to fry the SF, because there are plenty more where it came from, and doing so would allow the CVA group to remain on the line.
That said, I think the best solution is to allow a player to kill multiple escorts in the same group with dirdam, provided they score enough damage. So if my Hydrans put up ID+3DE+CU, then he could kill CU+DE for:
12 [to kill the CU]
+ 18+3 [to kill the DE]
= 33 damage.
Not exactly easy to do. But it means that he wouldn't have to suffer results like 37 damage scored to kill just a CU. This actually happened during the current turn.
William wrote:
>>Well, in my game with Paul, my Hydrans can put up 100-110 compot lines where all he can direct on is an FF or the SF.>>
Sure. But how is this a *problem*?
Yes. You can use carrier groups in a way that the only things anyone can direct are cheap FFs, or crippling a formation DN or SC. How is this problematic for the game?
The Coalition does just fine only being able to kill FFs on carrier groups. Kill an FF, kill some fighters, rinse and repeat until they are out of full carrier groups (or you no longer care, and you just run away). This isn't in any way problematic for game play.
I think it's a problem because the lack of ship kills slows down the game. If the two sides combined are generating (say) 600EP per game turn, then one has to inflict 600EP worth of damage per game to keep the overall fleet sizes steady. If a round of combat inflicts very little economic damage, that's a lot of rounds of combat, or else the fleets will grow, which will slow the game down even more.
That's why so few games finish, with you being the honorable exception.
First, there's a math problem, crippling the EFF from the [CV+MEC+EFF] is 10 not 8, due to the group bonus of 2 non-crippled escorts, killing it adds 4 (total of 14) as it's a one shot deal. Now if the EFF was an ad-hoc FF, the it's 8 and 12 as the ad-hoc doesn't get the escort bonus.
And one cannot cripple the MEC unless the EFF is already crippled, nor kill it unless the EFF is already dead (of course, going after the group is a bit easier in either case).
Hmmm, that might be a way to lower ad-hoc use if one could hit the ad-hoc and the next escort at the same time (making ad-hoc use an emergency measure instead of a regular occurrence) ...
I think it's a problem because the lack of ship kills slows down the game.
Only when both sides decide not to kill is that a major problem, note SB and capital assaults.
Ash, yes, I did error there. Not super important to the meat of the idea, though.
The only reasons that carriers not dying is a problem, in my mind, are:
- It warps the game around it. This isn't a problem, per se, except that it lowers, broadly, the number of strategies. "Build more carriers or not?" is not a question that gets asked, and (in theory) games which have a greater diversity of strategies are more interesting. The game is good as is; this only asks whether it would be better another way.
- There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction in battles which accomplish nothing (Hydrans fight for 0218, woohoo) and have no effect on the game (a CU dies). This isn't the only emergent pattern in the game that causes important battles and not all battles can be equally important, but reducing the portion of "nothing happens" results is a net positive.
In short, a game where killing carriers is a valid strategic option but not a necessary action is better than one where it is not; this may or may not be the way to do so.
I will note that there seems to be a little confusion here: killing carriers and inner escorts is easier under the proposed rules but killing carrier groups wholesale is not.
William wrote:
>>I think it's a problem because the lack of ship kills slows down the game.>>
But that's not a problem with *carriers*. You can still kill a ship every combat round (and the games I play see, basically, a ship killed every combat round in every combat except for a small number of exceptions).
If you have a line full of war cruisers, you can lose one ship per round. If you have a line full of carriers, you can lose one ship per round. You lose 1 ship per round.
If the issue is "not enough ships get killed", come up with ways to allow the killing of multiple ships per turn (which this does, certainly, but only in regards to carriers), or making rules that require people to self kill ships more often or something. The issue is not carriers don't die. The issue is that ships don't die, if that is the issue one is trying to address.
That being said, in the game I finished recently, well over 1000 ships exploded during the course of the game (i.e. about 30 per turn between both sides). Which seems like plenty of ships dying.
Sam wrote:
>>- It warps the game around it. This isn't a problem, per se, except that it lowers, broadly, the number of strategies. "Build more carriers or not?" is not a question that gets asked, and (in theory) games which have a greater diversity of strategies are more interesting. The game is good as is; this only asks whether it would be better another way. >>
Sure. But that horse is *way* out of the barn by now. Yes. The game *could* have been different if carriers were different, and the game wouldn't revolve around them the way it does (and it does, and I don't at all disagree with that point). But it is totally too late to change that dynamic at this point without completely rebuilding the game.
Like, the basic idea of "it should be easier to blow up escorts or carriers or whatever" isn't a terrible one. But at this point, you can't, like, invent a way to do that and just graft it onto the game without completely changing a thousand other things to rebalance the game around this. If carriers are easier to kill, the Alliance will have a *vastly* harder time surviving the first half of the game (when their whole game revolves around having carrier groups, and the Coalition mostly just use individual ships and independent fighter squadrons, till they have good carrier groups). Which means that the dynamic of "The Alliance gets mangled for 15 turns, and then if things go well, they make a comeback" just becomes "The Alliance gets mangled for 15 turns and then the game ends."
>>- There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction in battles which accomplish nothing (Hydrans fight for 0218, woohoo) and have no effect on the game (a CU dies). This isn't the only emergent pattern in the game that causes important battles and not all battles can be equally important, but reducing the portion of "nothing happens" results is a net positive.>>
This is all a matter of perspective. If you just focus on "there are a few battles and all that happens is an FF dies, and that's lame", then yeah, you'll likely feel dissatisfied with this dynamic. If you look at the game as "This game goes for 30+ turns, and the more ships you kill, even if they are only FFs, the better off you are, and every dead FF is a score", this doesn't seem to be an issue. The Coalition spends a lot of time killing an FF and watching the Alliance run. Yes. The Alliance spends a lot of time sending comically overgunned forces to attack a group of 4 small ships and watching an E4 get sacrificed. Once in a while, there is a big fight over a spot that someone wants to hold on to (capital, SB), and then plenty of ships get vaporized and a lot of damage happens, and exciting things happen.
This is a big, long game. And people seem to get a little too caught up in what happens in a micro scale, instead of what happens in a macro scale. Which I understand completely, but the game focuses on what happens on the macro scale way more than the micro scale, and trying to change the micro scale significantly will have a *lot* of impact on the game overall.
As others have said.... Maulers probably make this rule non-workable
To cripple CV: 31 (10*2[CV] + 7[MEC] + 4[EFF])
31 is certainly high enough, that it will not come up that often (outside an Alliance assault on a Coalition base)…
But 24 or 21 with a War Cruiser or Full Mauler is is perhaps common enough to occur on a regular basis.
To kill cv in cv+MEC+EFF : 21 (5*2[CV] + 7[MEC] + 4[EFF])
11 to Kill the cripple CV (with a Full Mauler), is highly probability, even 14 will occur outside of a bad roll (i.e. 3 points owed).
The Kzinti will not last long if they are losing a CV a turn.
And Weaker Carriers would die in droves.
The Coalition could use weaker carriers (FV etc) to feed fighters forward and use normal hulls on the line..
What could the Kzinti do? It's Carrier groups...or basically nothing for them.
Note - I have also avoided the obvious - the Kzinti only have CL/CLE's to start - so that drops the required numbers by 1 (or 2 to direct kill)…. and what happens if the escort is crippled?
A Kz CVL would die for just 38 - or 28 with a full mauler, if the group was say CVL+cle+EFF.
The best comment though is
"Which means that the dynamic of "The Alliance gets mangled for 15 turns, and then if things go well, they make a comeback" just becomes "The Alliance gets mangled for 15 turns and then the game ends"
Any changes can't effect this very very fine balance - if the Alliance gets too far behind the curve - it's game over (and Carriers are the main factor which helps the stay near that line - trade fighters plus cripples and yes dead escorts -for a greater number of Coalition crippled and dead.).
Something else would need to change (Maulers can only hit crippled ship for example), to help keep that balance.
I do agree - less fighters would help the game though 
Building less carriers (and FCR's) might be a better solution therefore.
Regarding the problem of maulers:
As I understand the CVG is a formation of ships around a carrier they are supposed to protect.
One might argue that attacking the carrier using Sams proposal would place the carrier in a kind of formation slot that would qualify for 308.45.
The mauler can use its full power if attacking the whole carrier group under the normal rules or
using Sams proposal attacking the carrier inside the carrier escort formation which will cause the mauler to loose 50% of its effect, because attacking a non-slow ship in a formation slot (308.452)
That would be 5 more damage points needed for killing the carrier despite using a 10pt-mauler.
The expert players would have to decide if that would still be too much of a game breaker. My carriers mostly die in capital combat or by being crippled before pursuit battle.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Soeren Klein
Soren
Maulers can't be used against the Formation Slot - unless it's slow or crippled.
So, the rule could be written to give the carrier the formation slot - and it would add 5 (FV) to 12 (CVA) damage needed to cripple it - over and above the mauler damage required reduction amount.
So probably fewer carriers would be direct crippled with the rule - but more than currently generally die.
The main issue though would be (which I overlooked in my earlier post) - is that Maulers would be easily able to kill crippled Alliance carriers..... so until X-Ships turn up, it would basically allow the Coalition to kill Alliance carriers, without really risking their own still
Paul
Are you sure? Rule 308.452 says otherwise.
Maulers used to attack other units with the formation bonus 308.72 are discounted 50%.....
I understand that meant any ship not crippled or slow.
Or does that paragraph meant the free scout slot and the support echelon?
I have to admit that I might have misunderstood the meaning of formation slot and formation bonus.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Sören Klein
Maulers can only maul crippled ships or slow ships in the formation bonus (308.451).
If the ship in the formation slot is uncrippled and not slow? It can't be mauled. If it is crippled or slow, it can be mauled, but at 50% effectiveness (of the mauler).
Allow directed damage vs a carrier group in increments until the defender says, "I'll take that as a crippled frigate..." Then I dirdam some more or not... So a defender might decide given the amount of damage coming his way to lose the Escort Cruiser, DWE, etc.
I score say 40 points points. I tell you I'm dir dam on your CV group. "One point, two, three..." until you say, "OK, my frigate throws itself in the way and explodes..." If you don't choose to throw the FF now your next bigger ship is exposed..." Basically the defender gets to choose what dies while the attacker can keep piling on damage (up to the limit of how much they did) until they are happy.
The rest is details. Like if the damage is enough to cripple a bigger ship, or explode a smaller one, the attacker gets to choose. So the defender can't game the system.
Another way to approach this is simply to require a player to self-cripple an escort to resolve damage above a certain threshold.
But note I don't think it's necessary.
Soren - Form (and Scout Box) got changed in 2010...
Prior to then, Maulers could always be used, but at the 50% level.
Mike - that's going to slow the game dame massively.... (might be workable Face to Face, but not PBEM).
Accepting SVC said nothing needs to change...
...what might get traction?
1) More Carriers Die
2) Less Fighters get built
3) Less Fighters die each round
Paul wrote:
>>1) More Carriers Die >>
Seems like it would be terrible for the Alliance, who rely on carriers to survive the early game.
>>2) Less Fighters get built >>
See above.
>>3) Less Fighters die each round>>
See above.
Like, it seems like the main issue here is "It seems lame that 100 ships are in a hex fighting, and all that happens each round is that an FF explodes and fighters die [*]", which is a thing that one can certainly feel, but I think the game is simply too hard wired at this point to accept that this is the case, and I think that anything that changes this dynamic at this point will shift balance further away from the Alliance's ability to survive the first dozen turns of the game.
[*] There are plenty of fights where things other than FFs and fighters die, but they tend to be over fixed points like capitals and bases. But I do certainly agree that in probably the majority of battle rounds over the course of the game, someone will lose a small ship and possibly fighters.
Note that ship death is in the player's hand, excepting capital assaults that do more damage than the battleline can handle.
No rule forces a player to kill a ship (the auto-kill 6 can be negated by directed damage), so if you want bloodier game, stick around for one more combat round, even in open space. Or figure out how much you can afford to lose and then stick around to lose all of it before leaving (betting the fleet to control the hex).
Of course, getting your opponent(s) to agree to that is a very hard sell ...
If we were to make it easier to kill carriers, there would have to be something (or somethings) of similar value to balance out the change.
I personally don't see any "problem". Carriers are really hard to kill. At best, I could get on board with making them slightly easier to kill, but if it gets very easy, then the costs of the ships and their fighter wings would probably have to be reduced substantially, otherwise they'd be a bad deal.
Also, the game shouldn't turn into whack-a-mole of vaporzing every carrier that dares to make an appearance. My own experience when admirals where first introduced into playtest showed me glaringly what happens when something is too good to pass up. The game should always be about choices and trade-offs
I haven't seen any reason to change this.