CT Errata HG - Crew Sections

[Matt123]

I see your argument. Personally I still prefer that BB's taking a few rounds of crew damage.

I occured to me this morning, another thing to consider is how often a ship will be destroyed by a J or T Meson regardless of crew losses.

For example a Fuel Tanks Shattered result (11.11% of interior explosion damage rolls), mission kills a ship. A J will on average score this once, a T will score it twice. And if you look at mission killing Critical results, a Critical will be rolled on the Interior & Radiation tables 19.44% of the time.

"Mission killing" is subject to interpretation of course & is dependent on the presence or not of back-up systems. I've assumed nasty = results 2, 3, 5, 9, 10 which is 38.88% of those rolls. Meaning in a nutshell a Meson J will usually get a "critical" mission killing result and a Meson T will almost definitely score a "critical" mission kill result.

Sooo,
A J Meson will often score a "Fuel Tanks Shattered" result plus a really nasty Critical damage.
A T Meson will often score two "Fuel Tanks Shattered" results, plus a really nasty critical.

In light of this, perhaps seeking to enable BB's to survive a couple of rounds of Crew damage is a bit redundant.

(caveat; I'm not a mathematician, corrections to my math is by now almost expected...)

 

[Matt123]

It has to be remembered that the complaint leading to introducing the new errata, is that a ship should not be crippled after just one Crew-1 result. And this is achieved as soon as we collectively decided to step away from the original HG's exponential number system that suggested a single crew hit represented the loss of up to 90% of the crew. Almost any new system adopted will achieve a crew hit = less than half the crew is lost.

It should also be recognised that BB vs BB combat was intended to be lethal - on several levels. Not just crew losses. Whilst equally there has been no complaint that ships smaller than BB's are "broken" with regard to crew factors.

We can in effect keep the existing range of crew values (1-5) and achieve the desired goal (a crew hit does not kill more than half the crew), merely by changing the basis of of the crew factor away from representing exponential growth.

I keep coming back to Deans table, not to suggest it is perfect, but I do like that it shows a crew factor range that is not exponentially larger than the game started with and has the scope to give very large ships a crew factor edge.

Deans original Crew USP/Factor table

[FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 1.      1 crew
USP 2.      2-10 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 3.      [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]11-100 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 4.      [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]101-1000 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 5.      [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]1001-2000 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 6.       [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]2001-3000 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 7. [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]      3001-4000 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 8.       [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]4001-5000 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 9.       [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]5001+[/SIZE][/FONT]

Perhaps modified to.

[FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 0.       no crew
USP 1.       1-5 crew                     range of most fighters
USP 2.       6-50 crew                   range of most SDB's & light escorts
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 3.      [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2] 51-250 crew              range of most destroyers, which can survive a single Crew-1 hit.
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 4.      [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2] 251-800 crew            range of most cruisers & battle-riders
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 5.       [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]801-1200 crew          range of most BB's, which can take 2 Crew-1 hits and not be below 50%
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 6.       [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]1201-2000 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 7. [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]       2001-3000 crew
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 8.       [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]3001-4500 crew        The [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2] 500 kton [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]Tigress has 4054 crew & is the largest published design
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]USP 9.       [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][SIZE=2]4501+[/SIZE][/FONT]

Note that no formulae was used & I haven't double checked the crew ranges.

 

[dean]

My original reply with the crew sized based table came to me when I first read the thread and considered the implications of the rule as-written. We had just started the now-defunct TCS game frostvarg started, and I had never really had occaision to need to use HGs combat system, as my campaigns really only deal in adventurer size craft.

I read the relevant rules section and it surely seems rediculous to say that the crew codes should be based upon the size of the hull. It's especially erroneous to believe that there would be an equal number of crew spread through out the ship, as just from AHL, one can clearly see that a HUGH proportion of any ship is meters of cubic in fuel tankage.

Reasonably to me is that the crew are likely concentrated in much smaller areas in certain locales (engineering and the bridge come to mind), so it seems equally likely that having huge chunks of casualities happening at once would be the norm rather than the exception.

After the introduction of meson weapons, I'd suspect a big paradigm shift in design where the presence of one or more secondary bridges, as well as a dispersed engineering space (where possible), along with a general dispersion of crew would then occur. I would even posit that the exact location of the bridge(s) and engineering control spaces would vary for each ship in a capital ship class so the enemy has a more difficult time knowing where those spaces are so they cannot take them out so easily.

So, it was with those considerations in mind that the original table was set up in such a way that the crew hits would still take out a relatively large number at once, without the awkward exponential curve of the powers of ten idea.

It just. Occurred to me that perhaps there should be a costly option to build in an extra dispersed crew into the standard hulls so to mitigate the effects of meson hits, but maybe that's going too far against the grain of the idea of meson guns.

 

[AndreaV]

/me is glad to see that Pascal isn't entirely dead...

I almost always use pascal a) I know it well, b) its code is way more "person readable" after 10 years than C or Java.

 

[AndreaV]

I occured to me this morning, another thing to consider is how often a ship will be destroyed by a J or T Meson regardless of crew losses.

For example a Fuel Tanks Shattered result (11.11% of interior explosion damage rolls), mission kills a ship. A J will on average score this once, a T will score it twice. And if you look at mission killing Critical results, a Critical will be rolled on the Interior & Radiation tables 19.44% of the time.

"Mission killing" is subject to interpretation of course & is dependent on the presence or not of back-up systems. I've assumed nasty = results 2, 3, 5, 9, 10 which is 38.88% of those rolls. Meaning in a nutshell a Meson J will usually get a "critical" mission killing result and a Meson T will almost definitely score a "critical" mission kill result.

Sooo,
A J Meson will often score a "Fuel Tanks Shattered" result plus a really nasty Critical damage.
A T Meson will often score two "Fuel Tanks Shattered" results, plus a really nasty critical.

In light of this, perhaps seeking to enable BB's to survive a couple of rounds of Crew damage is a bit redundant.

(caveat; I'm not a mathematician, corrections to my math is by now almost expected...)

Yes the Uber J gun and the dread FTS, one of the major "its broke" parts of HG. My concern about keeping the crew levels at a low range is that we introduce (or more likely keep) another path for the Uber-J. Perhaps we should look at just how many crew-1's each spinal meson will score when it hits.

$ ((1/3)+(1/12))*1= 0.4166666667
A ((1/3)+(1/12))*2= 0.8333333333
B ((1/3)+(1/12))*3= 1.25
C ((1/3)+(1/12))*4= 1.6666666667
D ((1/3)+(1/12))*5= 2.0833333333
E ((1/3)+(1/12))*6= 2.5
F ((1/3)+(1/12))*7= 2.9166666667
G ((1/3)+(1/12))*8= 3.3333333333
H ((1/3)+(1/12))*9= 3.75
J ((1/3)+(1/12))*10= 4.1666666667
K ((1/3)+(1/12))*11= 4.5833333333
L ((1/3)+(1/12))*12= 5
M ((1/3)+(1/12))*13= 5.4166666667
N ((1/3)+(1/12))*14= 5.8333333333
P ((1/3)+(1/12))*15= 6.25
Q ((1/3)+(1/12))*16= 6.6666666667
R ((1/3)+(1/12))*17= 7.0833333333
S ((1/3)+(1/12))*18= 7.5
T ((1/3)+(1/12))*19= 7.9166666667

Assuming we stick with the low factors and don't go for crew sections, A D is guaranteed to get Crew-2 and that's half your crew gone. There's something wrong when you need a Tigress to survive a D gun.

I *really* think we need to errata from 50% of crew to 50% of crew code at the very least. Comes down to just how fragile we want battleships to be. My take is that they should have some staying power (riders OTOH may well be a lot more fragile). We keep the crew code low and we get one hit kills for virtually all spinal mesons.

However, this is increasingly convincing me of the need to test these suggestions properly, so my fingers will be flying in lazarus for the next few weeks I expect.

 

[AndreaV]

It should also be recognised that BB vs BB combat was intended to be lethal - on several levels. Not just crew losses. Whilst equally there has been no complaint that ships smaller than BB's are "broken" with regard to crew factors.

We can in effect keep the existing range of crew values (1-5) and achieve the desired goal (a crew hit does not kill more than half the crew), merely by changing the basis of of the crew factor away from representing exponential growth.

Okay I disagree with the BB vs BB combat should be lethal. BB's should be designed to be pretty damn hard to kill. Without wanting to draw too many similarities with RW naval combat, throughout history capital ship vs capital ship fights have been slugging matches rather than instant kill affairs.

However the issue I think people are missing, is you effectively don't get Crew-1 results. The vast majority of crew hits come from spinal mesons on the radiation table (in the range of 80% and we won't go into the deeper in game implications of incapacitating crew via radiation poisoning) and they don't get crew-1, they get crew-3 to crew-8 damage.

 

[BytePro]

Wrote a program for handling HG combat back in the 8-bit computer days and I recall that I thought the Crew hit thing was a bit too arbitrary and didn't like the 'no damage control' after first hit. So I changed Crew hits to 10s of percentages. A Crew-3 would take out 30% of the crew - not directly decrease Crew code. This would be applied to the counts to see if the Crew USP changed.

This was just a quick hack - obviously it is flawed, but it worked as I recall. It also deals well with the fact that a ship with X times more actual crew should be harder to make ineffective, crew-wise. Given scaling differences, such a thing could benefit from a mod based on Crew code, and would also need some minimums on the low end (don't recall how or if I handled that).

Of course, we grew bored of HG combat pretty quickly as there was minimal RP involved - I probably did more experimenting than actual play with HG combat.

 

[Matt123]

The ships are dead with one hit from a large Meson anyway. As the game is designed, they are killed by Crew loss, Fuel Tanks Shattered and Critical hits on crucial systems. All on the same Meson hit.

Its difficult to believe the designers didn't intend the best Mesons on the day to be ship killers, once they hit (roughly once every three turns). I think you are seeking to solve a problem without considering the designers solved it via the to hit & penetrate procedures instead .

For example, with regards the Tigress being killed by a Meson D, the Meson D has to penetrate a Meson Screen factor 9, needing a 12 plus. That assumes both ships have the best TL 15 computer (unlikely if facing a TL12 Meson D), otherwise its impossible for the Meson D to penetrate the screen.

I will add that the BB vs BB scenario changes when you consider different tech BB's. A TL14 Meson Q hits a TL15 BB (Agility 6, very large) on a 9+ at long range, defeats a Config 1 on a 5+ and a Meson Screen 9 on a 7+. It'll hit & penetrate defenses once every 7 or 8 turns. And that is only one TL apart.

 

[BytePro]

Yeah, was thinking meson weps are really analogous to nukes today for RAW - in the RW, one could easily neutralize even the biggest capital ship if it manages to come within range, and that range can be pretty darn large. Today, there are numerous defenses designed to prevent the weapon from getting in range - but its iffy, and a lot of that tech didn't exist.

The designers definitely had a good handle on odds, so I think you nailed the rationale. I don't see the crew thing so much as an error, but rather a difference in intent.

For wargaming I can definitely see it, but for an RPG that level of psuedo-'realism' didn't play as well for me. Though I don't think I ever actually played HG combat with pen and paper - mine were largely handled by programs, so ships surviving longer wasn't an issue...

 

[AndreaV]

The ships are dead with one hit from a large Meson anyway. As the game is designed, they are killed by Crew loss, Fuel Tanks Shattered and Critical hits on crucial systems. All on the same Meson hit.

Yes the dread FTS, guaranteed kill for anything over H. Every revision of HG3 has changed this. The criticals, well not so much. The guaranteed mission kill results on the critical tables occur 1 in 6. This gives the J a roughly 27.7% chance of killing on a critical and the T roughly 52.8%. Which leaves crew loss which guarantees a kill for anything over an A in the original system, and anything over a C in the proposed modification of it.

However lets look at the differences from the original system in the proposal. Does it change small unarmed ships? No they still die on Crew-1. Does it change Big heavily armoured ships being hit by spinlals? No, they can take Crew-2 but are suffering that or more. Does it change non-spinal mesons? No anything they can hit and penetrates dies on Crew-1. Does it change things for big unarmoured ships (AKA fleet auxilaries)? Perhaps just a little. Spinals still kill them, but they might survive a few nukes. Then again, well designed fleet auxilaries pack so much sand its very hard to actually land a missile hit on them and if they're being shot at, you've done something wrong.

In practice the new proposal achieves exactly the same results as the original broken Crew-1 = 90%. So if the new system is just the old one in a shiny wrapper, I have to ask why change? Bear in mind that any new system is likely to carry over into HG3 and its seems pointless to me to change FTS and the Uber-J just to bring it back in somewhere else.

 

[Matt123]

Yes the dread FTS, guaranteed kill for anything over H. Every revision of HG3 has changed this. The criticals, well not so much. The guaranteed mission kill results on the critical tables occur 1 in 6. This gives the J a roughly 27.7% chance of killing on a critical and the T roughly 52.8%. Which leaves crew loss which guarantees a kill for anything over an A in the original system, and anything over a C in the proposed modification of it.

Then you need to change your gaming tactics to take into account this games realities, not change the realities. If the conclusion you are coming to, is that it is not a good idea to pit BB vs BB in HG, thats a conclusion that was established quite firmly in the '80s by Doug Lenat.

HG3 is a different topic, but in effect it is a new interpretation by new designers. Shoehorning HG2 into a perspective developed for HG3 is...

However lets look at the differences from the original system in the proposal. Does it change small unarmed ships? No they still die on Crew-1. Does it change Big heavily armoured ships being hit by spinlals? No, they can take Crew-2 but are suffering that or more. Does it change non-spinal mesons? No anything they can hit and penetrates dies on Crew-1. Does it change things for big unarmoured ships (AKA fleet auxilaries)? Perhaps just a little. Spinals still kill them, but they might survive a few nukes. Then again, well designed fleet auxilaries pack so much sand its very hard to actually land a missile hit on them and if they're being shot at, you've done something wrong.

In practice the new proposal achieves exactly the same results as the original broken Crew-1 = 90%. So if the new system is just the old one in a shiny wrapper, I have to ask why change? Bear in mind that any new system is likely to carry over into HG3 and its seems pointless to me to change FTS and the Uber-J just to bring it back in somewhere else.

You need to play some games!

HG Tactics Class 101
Whats the best way to avoid having your BB's being taken out by large Spinals?

 

[AndreaV]

Then you need to change your gaming tactics to take into account this games realities, not change the realities. If the conclusion you are coming to, is that it is not a good idea to pit BB vs BB in HG, thats a conclusion that was established quite firmly in the '80s by Doug Lenat.

HG3 is a different topic, but in effect it is a new interpretation by new designers. Shoehorning HG2 into a perspective developed for HG3 is...

You need to play some games!

HG Tactics Class 101
Whats the best way to avoid having your BB's being taken out by large Spinals?

Yep HG2 is broke, because it doesn't model the canon as presented in Fighting Ship, Spinward Marches Campaign, Fifth Frontier War et al. That has been (as you point out) long recognised. That is why people are working on HG3 which is a revision, so any official errata now will carry over into it.

But the point you're missing is that all the proposed tweaks of the "original as published system" achieve exactly the same results as the "original as published system." Any ship that gains a benefit will only suffer crew hits from a weapon that will inflict more than sufficient crew hits to totally negate the advantage. And if the minor tweak simply reproduces the original rules, why change?