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I don't know if people have had enough time to digest the new SOM options, but I thought it might be time to discuss some of the new options and how they make starship combat different.
1. Mines: These provide an advantage to a maneuverable ship that loses initiative and has to go first. Average maneuverability will make it pretty easy to lay three adjacent mines on a ship in your forward arc, and four is possible if you are very maneuverable. Getting 3-4 attacks from one gunnery action potentially concentrated on one arc is...good. That leaves aside the options to repeatedly apply things like Vortex or Irradiate (if that wasn't already completely busted) in the same round.
If you expect to win initiative and have to go last you may want the smart mines upgrade to ensure all of your mines attack at the end of the helm phase after you've dropped them adjacent to enemies.
2. ECM Modules:
Hacking modules are in a weird place where they're better to use against higher tier ships that likely have better computers than against scrubs. It's a very big debuff against an opponent with big computer bonuses.
Nav-scram is potentially a very good debuff against piloting, and I like that the short range encourages knife fighting maneuver tactics rather than standoff turret battles.
Gravity Well has some overlap with Nav-scram in that both make the pilots job harder, but the flat speed/maneuverability hit from Grav Well is probably worse in most cases. But requiring power diversion and effectively two crew actions to activate it probably too steep a price once you've taken some damage and the engineer has better things to do.
Warp Puck (transposition) mines present an interesting tactical option: drop 1-2(heavy version) mines during your helm movement, then be able to teleport back 4-8(heavy) hexes back to it next helm phase, potentially setting you up behind or flanking enemies who are chasing you before your pilot even maneuvers. But that requires a gunner action to set up (no damage) and a science action that can fail to complete, plus the weapons aren't cheap. This probably falls more into the realm of cool gimmick than cost effective, but maybe there's a weapon loadout and tactic that makes it better than I think.
3. Automated weapon property: This can be added to anything, and combined with the new broad arc options it might make sense to stick some of these on your port/starboard arcs to always have free shots, even if they aren't very accurate and relatively low damage. Wait, did I say not very accurate? The magic torpedo units have the quantum trait and get to roll twice. Worth considering if your GM is putting on turret limits and you've got the BP.
More tomorrow on defensive options and expansion bays. I welcome any feedback or other ideas for new combat tactics/synergies people have seen in SOM.
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More thoughts on mines: the +4 TL bonus for being attacked by a mine in the same helm phase that it was laid does actually provide a reason to use them when winning initiative and to avoid smart mines. Be patient for an increased change to hit. On the other hand, if you win iniative and end up facing a bunch of mines laid around you, it may be best to go ahead and trigger them now rather and take the +4 TL bonus rather than accept being pinned, especially if you can dive through one or more and split them among your front/aft arcs and perhaps soak 1-2 with an easy point defense check.
But the capital weapon mines, especially the quantum ones, are looking pretty brutal as an option on a maneuverable cruiser looking to deliver some crazy single round damage from one gunner action. I might build an NPC ship around that to make things hard on a high tier PC ship.
4. Adamantine Ripper weapon combo: This does disgusting things to unshielded ships. An adamantine Gatling Cannon heavy weapon does an average of 52.5 damage to an shielded quadrant for a cost of 20 PCU and 27 BP - compare to average 35 damage and 40/25 for a Persistent Particle beam. With the various specialized weapons now available it might make more sense to mount two or more highly specialized (albeit usually short range) weapons rather than link two good (but expensive) long range general purpose weapons in a turret. Vortex mines provide a decent chance of taking down forward or aft shields in one blow - are they likely to be missed three times if they try to move away?
5. Deflector Shields plus Adamantine Armor: Adamantine Armor gives you a damage threshold equal to your armor value, which combos well with the deflector shields damage reduction to help make you largely immune to weak damage. An NPC dreadnought with adamantine and strong deflector shields can laugh off most things that aren't capital weapons and soak the heavy weapons that make it through with the big HP pool.
6. Concentrated Deflector Shields plus Gravity Guns: Deflector Shields generally seem like a bad idea unless you're fighting lots of weaker ships with relatively light weapons, but in a one on one duel where you can reliably control positioning you can rebalance them to get very good damage resistance in one quadrant. For example, the highest level deflector shields can provide 20 resistance in every quadrant, or 77 in one and 1 in the other three. Use a gravity gun to hold your opponent still and prevent it maneuvering (or gravity well ECM or vortex weapons to restrict maneuvering) and laugh as they try to batter their way through that.
7. Consciousness Uplink Drive: My god this thing is amazing. Gives you basically an extra crewmember, and custom made for technomancers, engineers, or operatives who want to two of science officer, magic officer, pilot, engineer, or gunner in the same round. Consider fortified hulls or reinforced bulkheads to reduce the amount of brains leaking out of your ears from critical damage.
8. Horacalcum defensive countermeasures: Feel like the cost adjustments in the new CRB printing didn't hurt tracking weapons enough? Toss this on, cutting their range by 25% and making point defenses even more capable against them.
9. Booster Thrusting Housing speed stacking: Let's see, M12 speed thrusters, +3 (for five rounds per day) from Booster Thruster Housing, +1 from Horacalcum thrusters, +2 from engineer boost, +1 from a feat, and +50% from the full power action, can get you a 28 speed. Not bad. A two seat fighter with T14 can still get 27 and not need the limited duration boosters, though, as can a single seat interceptor with a consciousness uplink drive.
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10. Tiny ship specific system synergies: A lot of the foregoing seem especially good for tiny interceptors and fighters, which previously were very hard to put enough BP into to make dangerous or tough at high tiers.
Consciousness uplink drive to add an extra crew action.
Automated (preferably broad arc or front arc) weapons for extra (albeit relatively poor) gunnery actions. But maybe you should just be loading up on four of the 10-13 average damage weapons in your turret and front arc and using the broadside action to fire them all until you're out of resolve (which you hopefully won't be).
Deflector shields since you can't get targeted by capital weapons and can use speed and maneuverability to hold enemies in a quadrant of your choosing and focus your shields there. Add on the adamantine since you can afford to lose a maneuverability category and get some damage threshold to further laugh at weak weapons.
Mines seems especially good (if lower damage) because you can wrap them effortlessly around a target in whatever quadrant you want and end your movement in whatever quadrant and facing you want afterwards.
Ablative armor is probably best on these since you have so few HP. Also bulkheads for the percentage reduction in critical damage.
Ramming speed plus deflector shields: With a speed of 16 (T14 thrusters plus Sky Jockey and horacalcum thrusters) and a 2d4 ram you can do 47.5 avg damage on a Ramming Speed stunt (52.5 if you have a consciousness uplink drive and divert power to the engines). This is available at very low tier and doesn't require a lot of BP! What does require a lot of BP is the deflector shields you'll want to focus in the front arc to completely absorb the half damage you'll take in return. Remember that your DV counts as twice against ramming/collision damage, though, so you won't need to reinforce it that much to hopefully soak it all, especially if you have adamantine damage and a damage threshold to soak any small amount that gets through.
A defensive note on interceptors/racers: you can at level 20 get an AC and TL of...49/47 and only reduce your turn radius to 2, the same as a destroyer/cruiser.
10 (base) + 2(size) + 3(max deflector shield) +14(armor) + 20(pilot ranks) = 49. The TL is 47 with a +15 for defensive countermeasures and a -3 for the armor.
If you have max deflector shields and adamantine armor you are immune to damage less than 35 points. 35 is, incidentally, the average damage of the persistent particle beam, the highest damage "normal" (not specialized with weird traits) direct fire weapon, and is on six of the ships in SOM, one in the CRB, and two in Near Space.
You're immune to capital weapons, effectively immune to light weapons, and highly resistant to heavy weapons, with only a high roll on a high damaging weapon likely to hurt you. A tier 20 ship will need to use a computer bonus to approach a 40-50% or so chance to hit you.
Of course if they do hit you and roll much above 35 you're a space splatter, so good luck!
If you're trying to maximize damage threshold as one of these things, why no Vanguard captain? The TIM for mitigate would add their CON mod to the total.
Any thoughts on the force weapons? Sacrifice 40 shields to deal 40 extra damage seems okay at first glance... well against NPC ships, not so much custom opponents.
Any thoughts on the force weapons? Sacrifice 40 shields to deal 40 extra damage seems okay at first glance... well against NPC ships, not so much custom opponents.
The ram is...ok? Maybe as a sort of finishing move, since it's relatively cheap. But the Force Blaster seems too expensive and too short range given that you're not likely to use it more than once per combat. It's not even the drain on your shields, it's the mandatory science officer and probably engineer support to balance and recharge shields when they could be doing other things.
If you're trying to maximize damage threshold as one of these things, why no Vanguard captain? The TIM for mitigate would add their CON mod to the total.
Great point! I had overlooked the Training Interface Module options.
Hmm, the Deployed weapon trait doesn't exist on any published weapons, but is an add on option if you double the BP cost. Is it worth it?
A weapon with this special property consists of a launcher containing tiny armed drones that chase and attack nearby foes. A gunner can launch a drone by performing the deploy drone gunner action (page 15), causing the drone to appear in an adjacent hex at the beginning of the next round. The drone has a speed of 4 and good maneuverability (turn 1). It can perform one crew action and one minor crew action per round, though these actions are limited to fly, glide, shoot, and snap shot, with total Piloting and gunnery bonuses equal to the launching starship’s tier. The drone attacks only targets that are within its weapon’s first range increment, and a drone can make only
three attacks before expending its energy reserves and becoming disabled. For all other purposes, a deployed drone functions as a Tiny
starship with an AC and TL equal to 12 + the launching starship’s
tier and total HP equal to twice the launching starship’s tier. A drone
lacks shields, has no quadrants, and does not take critical damage.Deployed weapons can’t already have the limited fire special property, and these weapons can be mounted on only a Medium or larger starship. A deployed weapon gains the automated and limited fire 3 special properties.
Consider a level 1 gunner in a Tier 1 ship. He can fire every round at up to +5, or deploy drones (+1) and let them fire three times.
Let's assume an opponent with an AC of 16, and you're using a coilgun (avg damage 10) either normal or deployed.
If you fire a normal coilgun, you do an expected damage of 5 per round (50% hit). If a deployed coilgun is firing, it does an expected damage of 3 per round (30%) if shooting and not using snap shot.
Round 1 coilgun: 5 damage, 5 cumulative
Round 1 deployed coilgun: 0 damage, 0 cumulative (one drone deployed)
Round 2 coilgun: 5 damage, 10 cumulative
Round 2 deployed coilgun: 3 damage, 3 cumulative (second drone deployed)
Round 3 coilgun: 5 damage, 15 cumulative
Round 3 deployed coilgun: 6 damage, 9 cumulative (third drone deployed, no more drones)
Round 4 coilgun: 5 damage, 20 cumulative
Round 4 deployed coilgun: 9 damage, 18 cumulative (first drone exhausted)
Round 5 coilgun: 5 damage, 25 cumulative
Round 5 deployed coilgun: 6 damage, 24 cumulative (second drone exhausted)
Round 6 coilgun: 5 damage, 30 cumulative
Round 6 deployed coilgun: 3 damage, 27 cumulative (third drone exhausted)
This is a lot more even than I expected, but it doesn't look worth it against early equal opponents unless you have a second weapon to fire rounds 4-6 after your deployed weapons run out. But that's even more BP on top of your double cost for the deployed weapon itself.
Presumably a deployed weapon does better against swarming lower level opponents, but then an array might work just as well. I'm assuming the decoy/extra target value of the drones is minimal.
Anyone see a way to make these worthwhile?
Hmm, the Deployed weapon trait doesn't exist on any published weapons, but is an add on option if you double the BP cost. Is it worth it?
Consider a level 1 gunner in a Tier 1 ship. He can fire every round at up to +5, or deploy drones (+1) and let them fire three times.
Let's assume an opponent with an AC of 16, and you're using a coilgun (avg damage 10) either normal or deployed.
If you fire a normal coilgun, you do an expected damage of 5 per round (50% hit). If a deployed coilgun is firing, it does an expected damage of 3 per round (30%) if shooting and not using snap shot.
Round 1 coilgun: 5 damage, 5 cumulative
Round 1 deployed coilgun: 0 damage, 0 cumulative (one drone deployed)Round 2 coilgun: 5 damage, 10 cumulative
Round 2 deployed...
Surprised that no one responded earlier, but your example is not the correct way to use drones. As your math shows, if the shooting has started and you are deploying drones, you are wasting your actions. However, if you are lying in ambush, or see numerous small craft approaching at range, you can deploy drones in a stack so that they are fresh once the enemy is in range, and do a nasty burst of damage in the opening rounds while the drones last.
On the Consciousness Uplink Drive, is there an Errata or FAQ on the limitations of the Minor Actions granted by the system?
On the Consciousness Uplink Drive, is there an Errata or FAQ on the limitations of the Minor Actions granted by the system?
What do you mean? Why do you think it needs a FAQ/errata?
The general rules for Minor Actions do not state that they can only be used if no other actions for that role have been taken that phase. That is spelled out in the specific description of the Minor Actions. (It is worth noting that with the Science Officer and Gunners now having actions in different phases, even if one applies those rules to the special use 'Minor Actions' allowed by the CUD, a Gunner could lay mines, and the SO could Rapid Jam, and, since those are not Gunner actions in the gunnery phase, or SO actions in the Helm phase, someone with a CUD could still take either a normal Gunner, or a normal SO action allowed as a Minor Action by the CUD.) Therefore, one could rule that the 'Minor Actions' allowed by a CUD are a more advanced action economy, similar to the Captain action Orders. Hence my question about the existence of a FAQ/Errata.
Additionally, on the topic of Orders, can those really allow a Pilot to trigger the engines twice and get a double move? O.o
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The general rules for Minor Actions do not state that they can only be used if no other actions for that role have been taken that phase. That is spelled out in the specific description of the Minor Actions.
This is incorrect.
You can take one minor crew action per round regardless of your current role, but only if no other action was performed this round for the role associated with that minor crew action.
Though, this may have been an errata for the third printing, as the text is duplicated for the glide and snap shot actions below.
Edit: digging out my old CRB, no that was not an errata, it always said that under the general description of minor actions.
Um. Oops?