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All right, I dug out my rulebook, looked over the barrage points table, made a couple of observations, and I think I have something that might be of interest.
Assumptions / design goals
1) The proposed 3BP change in to-hits will be accepted and made standard.
2) Use as much of the existing rules as possible.
3) Strive for flexibility and simplicity.
4) Strive to avoid re-costing existing units that have BP weapons.
5) Increasing the flexibility of BP weapons by allowing them to change from how they operate currently to a more fluid structure is, in effect, a minor increase in their firepower.
Here is the current Barrage Table from the rulebook, with the semi-official change to the 3BP entry already reflected:
BP ? ? Extra Templates ? ? Extra Blast Markers ? ? AP/AT
1 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?None ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? None ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6+/6+
2 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?None ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? None ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 5+/6+
3 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?None ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? None ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4+/5+
4-5 ? ? ? ? ? ? One ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? None ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4+/5+
6-7 ? ? ? ? ? ? One ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?One ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4+/5+
8-9 ? ? ? ? ? ? Two ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?One ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4+/5+
10-12 ? ? ? ? Two ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Two ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4+/5+
13-15 ? ? ? ? Two ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Three ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4+/5+
16-18 ? ? ? ? Two ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Four ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4+/5+
Observations:
1) Once you get beyond 3 BP everything is pretty much a 3BP template except for extra templates or extra blast markers.
2) For every level / step of the table the sum of the number of extra templates and extra blast markers increases by 1
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Assuming a set number of shots from barrage to barrage of the same BP strength, Extra Templates effectively represents the idea of spreading some of the shells fired over a larger area while extra blast markers effectively represents concentrating some of the shells in an area. ?Aside from varying the concentration of how many shells you land in a certain area there is only really one other thing an artillery officer can do to affect the performance of a fire mission: changing the warheads (and fuses) from a high explosive style warhead to other warheads, such as terminal guidance, sub-munitions, terminally guided sub-munitions, earth penetrating, chemical, biological, nuclear, or worse. ?(This is the future?) ?Since the over-riding strategic objective of most armies in Epic:A is the capture and later use of planets and their resources the nastier warheads can be assumed to not be used except for special cases. ?All of the other warheads can be abstracted into the idea that you are trying to enhance the likelihood that an individual artillery shell is going to hit an enemy in the target sheaf. ?In other words, improving accuracy to generate more kills.
So ideally we would like to represent artillery rules in a simple and concise way that will allow players to have their artillery either spread their area of effect, concentrate their fire so as to pin and degrade the target?s ability to operate, or concentrate their fire (or change warhead type) to increase the likelihood of a hit in an effort to get a kill. ?But the problem is that assuming that the time allowed to fire and the number of shells fired during a fire mission is fixed (the number of BP is fixed) there is only so much you can do. ?How do you represent that?
Allow me to present a slightly modified Barrage Table. ?There are two changes of note:
One of the changes is to split up the 6-7 BP level between the 4-5 BP level and the 8-9 BP level. ?This makes a 4-6 BP level and a 7-9 BP level. ?(You also might notice that aside from the really small barrages all of the barrage levels have their highest number divisible by 3.) ?This has the effect of reducing the number of extra templates and/or extra blast markers for the higher numbers of BP, bringing down the effectiveness of high BP levels a little. ?This is desired since the following rules that increase the flexibility of larger barrages will make them slightly more powerful. ?The hope is that this will all even out in the end.
The other change is that the Extra Templates and Extra Blast Markers columns have been summed up in a single column called Artillery Action Points. ?(If somebody has a better name for this I?m willing to listen.) ?Please see the rules following the table for what you can do with the Artillery Action Points.
BP ? ? ? ? ?AP/AT ? ? Artillery Action Points
1 ? ? ? ? ? ? 6+/6+ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? None
2 ? ? ? ? ? ? 5+/6+ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? None
3 ? ? ? ? ? ? 4+/5+ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? None
4-6 ? ? ? ? ?4+/5+ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? One
7-9 ? ? ? ? ?4+/5+ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Two
10-12 ? ? ?4+/5+ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Three
13-15 ? ? ?4+/5+ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Four
16-18 ? ? ?4+/5+ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Five
There are three different things you can do with the Artillery Action Points:
Disperse fire: Spending one Artillery Action Point allows you to create an extra template. ?The extra template has to be placed so that it is touching the initial template placed. ?This extra template does not have any BP associated with it, you have to reduce the number of BP that the initial template has to increase the number of BP that the new template has. ?The new template can never have more than 3 BP put into it and the initial template cannot have its number of BP reduced below 3. ?All extra templates must have 3 BP put into them before any additional templates can be added.
Concentrate fire: Spending one Artillery Action Point allows you to place an extra blast marker on a formation that is targeted by one of the templates in the attack. ?The only limitation is that you can only place one extra blast marker on a formation for each unit in that formation that is targeted by the artillery attack.
Increase accuracy: ignore this part, I have deleted the rules suggestion because it would give a quasi-sniper ability to artillery that they don't deserve.
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As part of these rules I?d like to introduce four new specialist weapon types for rules section 2.2 Specialist Weapons. ?These would be potential modifiers for weapons that list their firepower in BP. ?Note: not all BP weapons would have one or more of these modifiers, only selected ones.
Single Blast: These artillery weapons generate their area of effect by single large blasts instead of a rain of smaller shots. ?Artillery Action Points may not be used to increase the number of templates that an artillery attack makes.
Saturation Attack: These artillery weapons generate their area of effect by a rain of smaller shots instead of single large blasts. ?Artillery Action Points may not be used to place extra blast markers as part of an artillery attack.
Inaccurate: ignore this part, I have deleted the rules suggestion because it was associated with rules that would give a quasi-sniper ability to artillery that they don't deserve.
Spray Attack: These weapons may alter the way that they fire so that instead of multiple round templates area of attack they may instead opt to affect an area with a teardrop shaped template. ?Units/weapons that are capable of doing this may not combine barrage points with other units/weapons to create spray attacks; all units/weapons do this on an individual basis. ?The player wanting to do this must use one Artillery Action Point to create a second template. ?Don?t allocate BP to the second template, instead the barrage points that the weapon has are halved, rounding down, to determine what the AP/AT to-hit numbers are. ?Once this is done then any remaining artillery action points from the original number of barrage points must be spent on giving extra blast markers or generating +1 to-hit modifiers. ?Unless otherwise stated here all of the rules for flamer templates are used.
Walk Fire: These artillery weapons, which fire several times as part of a barrage attack, may start their area of effect in one location and move it as they fire instead of having to create a larger and larger area of effect. ?If the unit/weapon that is attacking spends all of its Artillery Action Points on Dispersing fire then it does not have to have all of the extra templates touching the initial template, only the first extra template has to touch the initial template. ?Any extra templates after the first one only have to touch either the initial template or one of the extra templates.
Bracket Fire: ignore this part, I have deleted the rules suggestion because it would give a quasi-sniper ability to artillery that they don't deserve.
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So, what do you think?
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I shot a Deathstrike Missile and destroyed an enemy titan in my pajamas last night. ?How it got into my pajamas I still don't know...
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