Reworked Gunnery: An insane proposal?

EvilKobra · **EvilKobra**

Well, I've been doing some thinking... and that's usually bad.

Some of you may have read the Heavy/Medium/Light gunnery vs Large/Medium/Small ships suggestion I made a couple of days back.

The gist is that each gunnery system is rated as H/M/L, and each ship is rated as L/M/S (the nomenclature probably needs to be adjusted to prevent confusion, but please bear with me for now). A weapon system engaging a target of the matching category suffers no penalties. Attack a different category, and the effectiveness decreases: a Heavy weapon would have a -2 on each die against Small ships, a Medium weapon would have a -1 against Large ships, and so on.

The fact that ships now have a size category also helps with some traits/SAs, such as Extended Range, which may have limitations against certain targets. For instance, say, a Medium target could not be attacked at range 5+, and a Small target could not be attacked at range 4+.

Another interesting result of this rule is that a Large ship with armor 5 is actually better armored than a Medium ship with armor 5, because a Medium gun attack on it will suffer a -1 penalty and is thus less likely to penetrate. This, in turn, means we can assign a wider range of armor values to ships.

And while we're at it, we can also consider whether gunnery needs to stay at the range of values we're used to (i.e. roughly equivalent to their caliber in inches, with arbitrarily assigned range drop-off).

Crazy idea: have a fixed drop-off of, say, two dice per sector distance from the target, regardless of weapon. But (and it's a big but!) you'd remove them after rolling. Meaning you'd drop the 1s, 2s and 3s and keep the successes.

There's a whole host of interesting implications to this, and I don't have time to write them all down right now. And there's another possibility, with the drop-off being done by the defending player... but I'll discuss this all later Smile

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lotharlutjens · **lotharlutjens**

Boy, I'm not a big fan of reworking the gunnery tables, but I like most of your Idea. The thought of dropping die after rolling seems strange to me, I must think about it awhile. I will wait for your next post on this subject before I will get into a debate on this subject. I want to fully hear you out. I DO like the Idea of rating guns as Large, Medium or Small indtead of mains , secondaries and tertiaries. Therefore a ship like the just rated King Edward VII would have one large battery. two medium batteries and 2 small batteries. This could do away with the CONFUSED SPOTTING SA and instead be covered in the rules by saying something like "when 2 or more batteries of the same type fire at the same target, each battery gets a -1 modifier to its die rolls (Ie. Hits on 5's and 6's)".
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Jesse_James · **Jesse_James**

It is an intersting idea, I think it is a bit too much for a game that was to be simple an similar to WaS.
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swarbs · **swarbs**

Having guns take a -1 on the way down to attack smaller targets sounds like a penalty for ship size with smaller ships being harder to hit by larger guns. Having guns take a -1 on the way up seems like a penalty for smaller guns being unable to penetrate heavy armor. Both make sense, but did armor and size necessarily go hand in hand? A light cruiser vs. an armored cruiser probably isn't a gigantic size difference, both should be 'medium' size ships with slight penalties for large guns to hit them. However, an unarmored cruiser doesn't seem like it deserves small guns to take a penalty against it. The answer may be that size and armor correlate enough to make your method make perfect sense in terms of the game.

This proposed system is a bit like the Avalanche Press system, all gunnery broken into three levels, they also throw in range, big shoots 3 sectors, medium shoots 2, small shoots 1. That fits in with your idea of a pre-ordained gunnery drop too, if a player knows how many sectors he can shoot and how many die you lose per sector then you can simply put the range one number on each card and leave it at that.
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EvilKobra · **EvilKobra**

lotharlutjens · **lotharlutjens**

Ok, so you have the following
MAX RANGE TARGET SIZE DR TO HIT NUMBER
Small Medium Large
Light guns 2 4 5 6
Medium guns 3 5 4 5
Large guns 4+ 6 5 4

Now lets call range 0 point blank range
range 1 is short range
range 2 is medium range
range 3 is long range
range 4 and beyond is extreme

MODIFIFIERS TO NUMBER OF ATTACK DIE THROWN

Point Blank Range = +1 to # of die thrown
Short Range = +0 to # of die thrown
Medium Range = -1 to # of die thrown
Long Range = -3 to # of die thrown
Extreme Range = -5 to # of die thrown

So now there would be just one number for each size battery in each field of fire ( Bow, Broadside, Stern. So for example, let's take one I just statted out, the HMS Neptune. She is armed with one large battery of ten guns at broadside. She can bear six forward and eight astern, her secondaries are a small battery of guns that can bear eight to the broad side and two to the bow and stern.

Her combat values are BOW BROADSIDE STERN
Large Battery 12 14 13
Small Battery 1 4 1

TO HIT NUMBER
She is firing at Large Target Medium Target Small Target

Large Battery 4 5 6
Small Battery 6 5 4

The range to target is say, range 2 or medium range and the target is size medium, a cruiser.
So the number of die thrown for a Bow FOF shot would be 12 and the modifier for the range of medium would be -1, modifying the total to 11, correct.
Now the type of target you are firing at is a medium size target so your to hit number would be 5 or higher because you are firing a large size gun battery at that same medium size target, correct.

Ok, I have a few reservations on some things, but I just wanted to make sure I'm with you on the basic idea ? So if I misunderstand anything please explain before we engage in discussion on this issue. But I gotta tell ya, I mostly like it.
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Jesse_James · **Jesse_James**

Que?
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lotharlutjens · **lotharlutjens**

I am just seeing if I have his proposal right. There are some interesting ideas involved, I don't agree with certain things, but I want to make sure I'm percieving this right.
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EvilKobra · **EvilKobra**

That's mostly it, with a couple of minor differences: the modifiers I proposed were: 0/-2/-4/-6/-8/-10. And you'd still roll the basic amount of dice regardless of range, but you'd discard the above number after rolling. But otherwise you got it.

Anyway, in retrospect I'm not convinced, because of the rapid increase of expected hits per die as range increases. It creates this anomaly:

If A => G - Pr
(where A is armor, G is gunnery value, and Rx is the range penalty at range r)

Then P(hit at range r) = P(hit at range 0), regardless of weapon type.

Which is fine for targets in the same or larger category (it means in most cases the probability is going to be the same at range 0 and at range 1, which is how it works in WAS anyway), but for shooting at small stuff it doesn't seem right (you'd have the same probability to hit a destroyer at range 0 and range 3).

As I mentioned briefly in the top post, another possibility is to remove hits, not misses, with range. In effect, it would mean always rolling the same attack dice, but adding two to armor per sector difference. Unless you count a 6 as a single "drop" - then things get interesting... but gotta work out the math first - I think the drop-off in this case should probably be slower.
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lotharlutjens · **lotharlutjens**

In principle, there is a lot I like about your Idea, the two things that I didn't like was smaller ships rolling less die when firing at bigger ships ( Or removing more die after you roll), and the dropoff being so steep for firing at range( the difference in our approaches to # of die thrown would be). ( broadside value for Neptune cited.)

RANGE 0 1 2 3 4

LARGE BATTERY
EK's Neptune 14 12 10 8 6
LL's Neptune 15 14 13 11 11 (9 in new system)
If WAS had Neptune 14 14 13 11 11

SMALL BATTERY
EK's Neptune 4 2 0
LL's Neptune 5 4 3
IF WAS had Neptune 4 4 3

Now granted, in my old system, ships lose one to their to hit # at extended range, If we adopted this new system (modified by ideas taken from you), I would reccomend suspending the loss of the to hit #. ( Ie you would still need 4-6's at extended range, not 5-6's) This would now be reflected in the loss of the ammount of die thrown at extreme range vs long range.

I feel that your curve is much steeper than WAS paramaters and would be too much when dealing with the lighter guns. You'd have to up the light battery by +3 in order to make it's range 2 shot come out to WAS paramaters, which in turn would throw the Point Blank shot out of whack because it would increase from 4 to 7 die thrown.

I like the Idea of there just being one number in each FOF, but then I think you would need modifiers more like I suggest. I also like the idea that batteries be classified as large, medium or small instead of mains, secondaries and tertiaries.

I also like the Idea that BB's would need 5's and 6's to hit CA's, BB's would need 6's to hit DD's, and CA's would need 5's and 6's to hit DD's, But I don't like it affecting them conversely.

When you have had a chance to reorganize your formulae and rethink things I would be very much interested in hearing more on this manner.
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Aquarius · **Aquarius**

Just an observation: We are moving further and further away from WaS. Do we want to be doing that? I don't.

Also, I will hold off on making the ship cards until this is resolved.
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EvilKobra · **EvilKobra**

The curve seems steeper when looking at the number of dice rolled, but remember that those 6 dice (instead of 11) are actually the best 6 dice out of 14. This means that you're essentially just rolling 14 dice, except to hit a (say) 8-armor ship you can't just roll 65554443322211, since you'd only get to keep the 655544. And for small ships, you'd have to up the base gunnery slightly to accommodate for the dropoff (5/3/1, where the 1 die would be the single best one out of 5). So it mostly works just fine.

But mostly is not enough, and in my previous post I highlighted a case where it breaks down. So, so much for this system.

Let's backtrack a little, keep what works, dump what doesn't.

-Penalties when attacking small targets: We both like it. KEEP.
-Penalties when attacking big targets: You don't like it, I'm not sure. Dump.
-Rolling a fixed number of dice: You're not sure, I find it a great leap forward. KEEP (bear with me...)
-Fast drop-off: You don't like it, I think it doesn't actually work too well. Dump.

So, keeping those two features, we are again faced with the problem of how to gradually reduce accuracy and penetration power at range, in a streamlined and realistic manner. Like I mentioned before, we could drop hits instead of misses. Unlike in the former proposal (where what really mattered was just the proportion of 6s among the hits), this effectively means that you need more hits as the range increases. The simplest method is to basically add one armor per sector distance. That almost works, but it results in a too slow dropoff for big guns. A two-armor bonus per sector, on the other hand, is too fast for small guns. The optimal solution? A 'variable speed' dropoff, which sounds very complicated but is in fact superbly simple: drop one die per sector distance, beginning with the 6s.

The statistical effects are threefold:

1) A faster performance drop-off for big guns (if you roll more dice, you're much more likely to have various 6s) than for small ones (who'll probably just be losing a 5 or a 4 per sector). That's more or less like in WAS, though very slightly more pronounced at range 1.

2) It becomes much harder for big guns to hit small targets at long range, as they'd need at least four 6s (the first 3 will be dropped), while retaining very good odds of doing severe damage at shorter ranges. By comparison, in WAS the bigger BBs had around 95% chance of crippling a DD at range 3! And 25% of outright vitalling it, which was hugely frustrating.

3) The maximum ranges are not enforced artificially, but rather naturally. For example, a small battery with 5 attack dice could still attack a 2-armor destroyer at range 4, but it would need to roll 5 sixes (0.01%, or 1/10,000 chance!) to hit. Even at range 3 it will have severe difficulties (1/300), and against better armored targets it simply couldn't possibly penetrate beyond short range. The same sort of thing happens with medium and big guns. Another example: a 14-dice large battery would have around 3% chance of damaging a 7-armor battleship at range 5, around 5% chance of damaging a 4-armor cruiser (presumably splash damage from a near-miss), and a bit under 2% of damaging a 2-armor destroyer (again, presumably from a near-miss). The chances of vitalling the cruiser and the destroyer, i.e. of scoring a direct hit, are close to zero.

So, summing up, the complete gunnery rules proposal:

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·Ships are designated as Large, Medium or Small.
·Gun batteries are likewise divided into Large, Medium and Small.
·Each battery has a unique rating in each field of fire. This is the number of dice that are rolled when attacking against a target in that arc, regardless of distance or other factors.
·After rolling the dice, the highest X dice are discarded, where X is the distance to the target in sectors.
·The remaining dice can score hits as follows:
-Each 6 counts as two hits.
-Each 5 counts as one hit against targets one size smaller than the battery, the same size as the battery, or larger than the battery.
-Each 4 counts as one hit against targets larger or the same size as the battery.
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lotharlutjens · **lotharlutjens**

There has been no change Aquarius, this game is still very much in the developement stage, If you hold off on the cards the changes that ND suggested (thats why some of the gunnery factors changed) can't be playtested, It's up to you, you're the one making the cards and I probably wouldn't want to do unnecessary work either, but debate on how we handle this or that function will continue, just don't read to much into every debate, this is a community effort and If someone suggests an alternative method, I will listen, the worst thing that could happen is using up my time, the best is an improvement in the system, odds are we aren't going to use most of what we discuss, we throw out the options and start weeding them down, this unfortunately will mean the cards probably will change from time to time as we agree on needed changes. It's the developement-playtest process, I wish I knew an easier way, but I don't.
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NeuralDream · **NeuralDream**

I agree that the cards can go ahead. They may need to be reworked later, but certainly not soon. Aquarius, if you're too busy, don't worry about this.
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lotharlutjens · **lotharlutjens**

Let me crunch some numbers on this theory, I do find it thought provoking from a game designers perspective, but some will consider it too much a deviation from the WAS system, which is why everyone likes the simple, "How far is the target from you ?", cross referenced with "Which battery am I firing ?", resulting in a determined number of die thrown, which is accessed without any "higher" math ( addition, subtraction ) involved. I am worried that at the longer ranges there will be an overexagerrated lack of hits because, for example, a battleship such as our beloved Neptune, whose base die thrown would be 15 would lose 4 die at extreme range, and these would be the 6's first. Let's take the average ro1l of 15 die which is approxtimately 10 hits, take away the best 4 (2 x 6's and 2 x 5's) that leaves 4 hits on an enemy BB, 1 hit on a CA, and 0 hits on a DD. That would be excessive. (This of course figures average die rolls (6,6,5,5,5,4,4,4,3,3,2,2,2,1,1)

I like the die drop off, but I think dropping the dice that hit will be to much, I would suggest just simply dropping the die before thiy're rolled, with the caveat that small targets cannot be engaged at extreme ranges. We will discuss this further. I also prefer keeping the WAS curve as to the number of die dropped, so, at point blank you would actually add one die to number of die thrown, at short range there would be 0 modifier, at medium range you would lose 1 die, at long you would lose 3 die, and at extreme 5. The only difference in this approach and the way we are doing it now is these modifiers to the ammount of die thrown has already been done for the player on the cards, whereas your suggestion would be to put one number for each FOF for each size of battery and the player would then do his own modifier calculation. The biggest diiference here is the difference in our suggested modifiers, and whether to drop the die before or after their thrown. I prefer before.
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Jesse_James · **Jesse_James**

After reading all this I think I should start using aquaboy's avatar.

Laughing

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EvilKobra · **EvilKobra**

Actually there's no math involved at all: count the range ("one, two, three, four"), roll the dice, then remove some from the table ("one, two, three, four"). In fact, since it removes the cross-referencing step, it's actually simpler and more streamlined than the original method Wink

As for the "average" results, they are indeed low. But that's the point. Perhaps my assumptions are wrong but, do you really want a BB to hit another, at range 4, almost every turn?

Now I very much understand the point about not deviating too much from WAS. It's a very valid challenge, and I labelled this whole thing as insane from the very beginning Laughing

. That said, I think for once the math actually turned out solid.

Come to think of it, I might use this system for another pet project of mine...
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lotharlutjens · **lotharlutjens**

I agree your math is solid, I just think the idea of removing the die after they are thrown creates an almost guaranteed miss, whereas removing them before they are thrown creates a wider spread of possibilities, this was not an insane idea and I greatly appreciate you putting it forward. I was being "cute", when I said it involved higher math (like subtraction), I just feel the players like the fact they can count the range and the card spells out the number of die rolled in this catagory, otherwise I agree that putting one number in each catagory of FOF would be simpler and more elegant. I intend to pursue your notion on target size modifiers and possibly changing mains, secondaries etc, to L btty, M btty etc. I can see where this might be needed in a game where so many ships have confusing batteries of the same type. For instance, to do the King Edward VII class justice one would give her 1 L Btty, 2 M Btty and 2 S Btty. The current way of doing things is not really adequate. Thank you for sharing your ideas sir, I find you an innovative thinker.
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EvilKobra · **EvilKobra**

Ah, I'm sorry - I'm tired and hungry and didn't read twice. Well, glad to share whatever ideas pop up in my poor old head Wink

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Lobukia · **Lobukia**

I've read the entire thread... I still am at a loss why dropping dice (hits or otherwise) AFTER rolling is a good idea... it completely diverts from WaS and really will be confusing to players.

I teach, so I have a fairly good appreciation for simple concepts that can become very obtuse when being explained... this really rings of good concept that will be understood poorly when made into game rule
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