[NetEpic ML] Re: Revision Issue: Titans

From: Tzeentch <tzeentch666_at_...>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 13:50:24 -0800

I'll cover several posts here hehe.

> > A titan on First Fire does not move. The titan is as big as a building.
> > (A skiny, wavering building in the case of Eldar)
> > How can your weapon even fail to hit? Think about it.

Maybe ECM technology in the WH40K universe is very very very good. When was
the last time you noticed ANY rules for ECM/ECCM? If you really want to
handwave matters then blame it on the Titan pumping out massive levels of
countermeasures..

> > Even though we roll the die to see if the weapon hits, those missed
> > shots do not just vanish into the Warp. Yes, some miss the titan
> > completly, landing on the battlefield somewhere. But, other shots do
> > not miss. They simply hit strong parts of the armor and do no real
> > damage. Or, they hit and damage a non-critical system. Maybe they hit
> > an important system, but it has a redundant backup. Shots that miss,
> > often really do hit the target, they just don't do enough damage.

That sounds ok, but read below...

> > Now, as vehicles get smaller, the chance to miss gets higher. Smaller
> > vehicles have less armor, they rely more on thier speed and small
> > profile to avoid getting hit in the first place. The same principle
> > holds true for any other unit in the game.

Nope, the smaller you are the more chance you do have of hitting something
important. After all, how can you logically explain that a volcano cannon
has LESS chance of critically damaging a Reaver then a Warhound? Or a tank
for that matter (assuming it could survive somehow)? Especially when the
weapon can make CRATERS fercryinoutloud.

> > I think that all this weapons fire (including a lot the missed shots)
> > combines, to eventually overload the Void Shields/Power Fields. Void
> > Shield generators were equiped with circuit breakers, Power Fields
> > generators were not.

Actually they are quite different technologies. VSGs are MUCH more advanced
and require a good degree of technology to maintain. Power fields are
apparantely so easy to make that you can MacGyver a field with bubblegum and
a squig.

> > How about scaling weapon damage? I mean, should a single stand of
> > infantry be able to take down any titan's void shield? Does that stand
> > generate enough energy/power to take down/overload the shield? I would
> > say not. Something like 6 infantry scale hits in a single turn, to take
> > down 1 shield. 5 for hvy weapons, and 2 for the bigger guns. Things
> > like the volcano cannon, and other titan weapons would still act as
> > normal. I do see where this could cause some PITA work, but it does
> > make some sense. This would help put an end to the use of infantry
> > firing off to take down the shileds before hitting a titan with the big
> > stuff. Other than that, the stuff above works for me.

I gave an alternate system a while back that scaled damage. It was a bit to
ocomplex for the player's tastes though ;) You can search for it in
egroups...

>>-->true enough, but all those misses that get rolled also account for
>>weapon jams, misfires, dud shells, etc. My problem is conceptual in that
>>I just have trouble visualizing a 1/2 squad of marines pouring enough
>>bolter fire at say a phantom Titan, to take down a shield. Sure it could
>>happen, there is always that chance, but ingeneral, it's too easy for the
>>lightly armed 9relatively) infantry stand to take down a shield. I mean
>>like this, what are the chances of a M-16 taking out a T-60? Or even a
>>fire team with M-16's of doing so? It can be done, but how small is the
>>probability of it? i don't know if this warrants the changes I
>>suggested, but it should be looked at.

Even the normal squads have some degree of heavy weapons. In Adeptus
Titanicus squads specifically had their weapons broken into "Basic" and
"Support" categories and could fire both separately. In a Marine tac squads
case they had a missile launcher. When infantry first appeared in AT they
even had stats for the kind of GRENADES they were equipped with...

Of course back in AT armored vehicles were a LOT tougher.

> I think it works for every weapon system except WARP MISSILE, I could be
> paranoiac, but one of the reason I don't use it for titan hunt is that
with
> two scatter dice the probabilities to miss are too many, now if we give
them
> an auto location hit we have the sample equation one missile = one titan
> kill, otherwise we could have a situation where the first player to shot
> these missiles win.

Simple fix - missiles don't use the "glancing shot" rules. The Titans ECM or
point defenses took care of it.

> Many people think that are vortex missiles the real
> problem, but we have to consider that they hit only 33% of the time and at
> 150 pts each they are a gamble; warp missiles have a much better killing
> power because if they hit a location, they destroy; think about every
> location you can hit in a titan and you see that with a damage roll of 2d6
> you have a great probability to do a 6+ and in general this is the death
of
> the titan/pretorian, in the pretorian case the probability is lower
because
> you have a killking blow only if you lucky hit the bridge (I suppose that
> most of the shots hit the front target), otherwise we have that every
other
> locations resul, only destroy the system (weapon, pad ect.), only with a 6
> roll we have to check the bridge/reactor with a bonus of +1 for each
points
> over 6, but in any case we have that, normally the second roll has 50% to
> destroy the pretorian; titans however don't have this privilege and every
6
> rolled mean death.

I liked the idea of making them Special Cards but keeping the point costs
and the like.

But really, against orks they are about the only balancing weapon to the
stupidly powerful gutbuster ball. I've lost more titans to that damned thing
then I care to admit. You're SOL if that thing hits you.

In the old days the ball round was said to travel too slowly to knock
shields down. So at least if you got hit you still had your shields
(assuming it did not blow out your legs). Of course, back then it just
exploded - not blew legs out. And it did not scatter...

Ken
---------------------------
There's a war out there, old friend, a world war. And it's not about who's
got the most bullets, it's about who controls the information. What we see
and hear, how we work, what we think, it's all about the information!
     Cosmo, 'Sneakers'
Received on Fri Feb 18 2000 - 21:50:24 UTC