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I feel like it's become my job around here to ask dumb questions, but I'll persist...
I'm a bit confused by the maneuvers and stats for vehicles as shown in the troop listings. As an example, have a look at the Galleon. It lists the broadside maneuver as "0/11" and "half cannons fire". According to the summary, it can carry up to five troops and up to 12 cannon or ballistae.
First of all, what does the 0/11 signify? It is not in the standard format for attack and defense dice.
Secondly, how do you play out cannon fire? "Heavy cannons" are available as a troop, so I assume you're giving your cannons individual maneuver orders. My concern might be that rolling for something like 6 individual cannons on a galleon is going to get a bit excessive. I would have assumed that the armament for a vehicle might just be bundled into its maneuvers--that a ship would have a typical number of cannon and a typical attack and defense die for each of it's maneuvers.
In short, I'm feeling like I'm failing at connecting the dots here....
Lastly, a comment and a question: The rules talk about troop "formations", but the troop lists show "stances". Are these one and the same? If so, it would be good to clean up term usage.
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Not at all BB! It's not a dumb question. Actually the 0/11 is in the standard format - it just doesn't look like it. 0 is the attack die because the galleon doesn't attack. Instead, the cannon attack, using their normal attack die (from the cannon unit, a d10). Only half the cannon can fire because you're using a broadside attack. The other half are on the other side of the ship. The 11 is a static defense. The galleon always has an 11 defense, just like buildings have a static defense value. Imagine that whatever it's defense die is, it always rolls an 11. It's hard to take out a galleon!
So an example: One galleon, the Daughter of Mary Celeste, has 10 cannon, the other galleon, the Nimbus, has 8 cannon. They both execute the broadside maneuver, targeting the opposite ship. The Daughter rolls five attack dice - 5 d10s. Fortunately she had used the aim maneuver for 3 cannon last round, so she gains +1 attack die size, making it 3 d12s and 2 d10s. The Nimbus has defense 11, so the Daughter needs to roll an 11 or higher to hit it. The daughter rolls a 5, 7, and 12 on the d12 and a 10 and 2 on the d10s. The 10 explodes, but on the d12 re-roll the result is a 2 (the result is the original 10, but that still misses). Out of all this, then, there was one hit on the Nimbus. It loses 1 health, down to 15. The Nimbus fires back, and it had aimed with all four of its cannons. It rolls a 1, 1, 2, and 8 - all misses. It can be hard to sink a ship, but if you focus fire from many ships on one, it will go down. Brigades are key here. A brigade of three galleons rolls a d20 attack die even without the aim maneuver.
Yes, thank you for the point about stances and formations. They are indeed one and the same.
More examples like that are forthcoming. I hope it clears things up a little bit in the interim!
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BiggerBoat thanks for askign this, I saw this too (though I remember the Zepplin entry which is simular). This was confusing (and now is not. i missed the building rules tie in for these. .
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YcoreRixle wrote:
More examples like that are forthcoming. I hope it clears things up a little bit in the interim!
That clears it right up for me. Thank you! In your experience, how robust does 1-on-1 duels between airships or sailing ships "feel" using the standard war/mass combat rules? I see these types of situations coming up a lot in my game, and I was considering creating ship-level style sheets for small-scale naval duels. I love the style sheet concept in general. I could imagine balancing manuevers to load different types of shot or gain the wind gauge, attack manuevers going from harrassment fire to full-on broadsides, and special manuevers such as grappling, etc. All that said, I haven't played things out yet, and it may be that the limited set of troop-level manuevers is enough detail.
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