Battlefleet Gothic ships for CB

[admiralgrafspee]

Our local Vancouver BC group has been working on some CB stats for BFG ships. Here is our latest version that we used in a recent game (see bat rep in the other forum soon).

members.shaw.ca/Marauder/cb/Project_gothic_v1.2.pdf

We've got a few tweaks to do to the imperials and chaos after the last battle, and Trent is going to redo his eldar. I'll probably add in a few more of the imperials and chaos ships that aren't there yet.

I'm not overly happy with the substitutions for the pulsar, nova cannon and bombardment cannons. I want to work on some custom weapons for them. Bombardment cannon will probably just be fine just using toasters forumla, but I need something that goes outside the current boundaries for the nova cannon and pulsar. We shall see.

Here are the design notes:

Short range batteries (30cm) - weapons with d6 to hit and d6 to penetrate - auto cannon family
Long range batteries (45cm +) - weapons with d10 to hit and d6 to penetrate - laser family
Short range lances (30cm) - weapons with d6 to hit and d10 to penetrate - anti-proton/neutrons
Long range lances (45 cm +) - weapons with d10 to hit and d10 to penetrate - disruptor family
Torps - ASGMs
Bombardment cannon - I went with the Mag Cannon/Railgun family. Its the only weapon that can be used for ground assault in CB, and that is the main fluff behind the bombardment cannon. Its not a perfect fit though. The real bombardment cannons actually hurl magma bombs or something, so are relatively short range - would have been perfect if mag cannons only hit with a d6. I really need a weapon that is a hybrid between a plasma torp and a mag cannon
Nova Cannon - okay, nothing in CB really fits these. I suspect there will be some future weapons that will (Harry mentioned "spinal mounts" in one battle rep). I went with Phazers because they are long range and own shields - spacial torp might have been a good fit too, but it would have meant overhauling the tech for the imperials.
Fighters - split between Interceptors and Strikers
Assault boats - Boarding Marines!
PD - equal to number of turrets
Shields - approximately 10 CB shields per 1 BFG
AV - In general SM had the most, and chaos the least - tough to really match as AV goes up with size in CB but not in Gothic
Size - I made chaos cruisers a bit smaller than the Imperials as in general they were a few less points in Gothic. The SM strike cruiser should have been a CL, but I had to make it a small CA so it could both mount a Mag Cannon AND so that SM's could actually build a fleet!

One other challenge was trying to pack all the weapons on these ships that they have in gothic. A lot of them have tonnes of weapons on their port and starboard sides. Its hard to do in CB as there is no discount on tonnage for having stuff on the sides as opposed to the front (where I think its generally more useful). In addition to that, if they had mixed weapons on the sides, it meant that buying FC to operate them all became really expensive. So what I did in some cases was mount them in P/S turret arcs. The logic is that while they may have weapons present on both sides, they had to share a common power/targetting system, so only one side can fire at a time. Cheating a bit I know, but it was the only way to try to represent the firepower for the space available. Its also a much more efficient design.


If anyone has any comments please post!

[robertthedamned]

Nice work so far, still haven't even started doing stats for my BFG fleets. My one slight niggle is that by using Turbo Lasers for long range batteries you then make them more armour penetrating than the short range batteries, but then again I guess the short range batteries are getting the rapid fire trait so both will probably end up doing similar amounts of damage.

I like the idea of doing P/S arcs for the ships to save on tonnage, probably the only way you'd get all the weapons on given GW's tendency to have things chock-a-block with guns. Think I'll have to steal that idea for some of my designs!

[toaster]

Nice I look forward to further instalments, great that you took the time to lay out the logic behind the choices you made. Personally I would have gone with the SD Torp for Nova Cannon it needs that area blast and pushing QM to tech 5 also allows teleport marines which are in the fluff.

Robert

[admiralgrafspee]

Thanks for the ideas guys.

1) I was thinking the Nova cannon could be a spacial torp combined with a rail gun. You'd have to actually shoot at something though, no just lobbing it into a hex. If you hit, you get the effect of the rail gun and then the spacial torp takes effect too. I think an ammo weapon would be reasonable as would a minimum range (as opposed to a maximum range for spacial torps).

2) Marines did teleport, but unfortunately I can't have both boarding marines and teleporting marines on the same ship... and I think the boarding a-la thunderhawk is a bit more impressive. Anyway, maybe Harry will have a nice "boarding" type fighter in his BFG supplement that I can use for thunderhawks and then pick up some more teleporting marines!

[warchariot]

Nov 13, 2010 23:33:02 GMT -5 admiralgrafspee said:

Thanks for the ideas guys.

1) I was thinking the Nova cannon could be a spacial torp combined with a rail gun. You'd have to actually shoot at something though, no just lobbing it into a hex. If you hit, you get the effect of the rail gun and then the spacial torp takes effect too. I think an ammo weapon would be reasonable as would a minimum range (as opposed to a maximum range for spacial torps).

Nice idea combining the two.

2) Marines did teleport, but unfortunately I can't have both boarding marines and teleporting marines on the same ship... and I think the boarding a-la thunderhawk is a bit more impressive. Anyway, maybe Harry will have a nice "boarding" type fighter in his BFG supplement that I can use for thunderhawks and then pick up some more teleporting marines!

Why not? just use the sec forces as the boarding marines!

[TheDreadnought]

There are in fact 'boarding fighters' in Man vs. Machine.

[TheDreadnought]

One thing you could try doing to mimic the age of sail weapon arrangement on those BFG ships is say:

Crit slots 1 & 2 can only fire forward, and only mount 1/2 the normal number of weapons per slot, rounded up.

Crit slots 3 - 6 can only fire in their "primary" direction, and can mount 1.5 times the normal number of weapons in each slot, rounded up.

[fastgit]

I like the sound of this... perhaps a glimpse into a forthcoming SDG expansion!

[warchariot]

Nov 15, 2010 10:12:54 GMT -5 TheDreadnought said:

There are in fact 'boarding fighters' in Man vs. Machine.

I didn't want to spoil it for them. ;D

[admiralgrafspee]

Yay, thunderhawk gunships here we go!

-Tim

[valthonis]

Now if only I could find BFG ships in a smaller scale...

[warchariot]

Not many places that have small scale. You might look here:
www.shapeways.com/shops/irrationaldesigns?sg4370%5Bpage%5D=7#sg4370

He has a few that would work for Battlestars, not sure about Cylon.

[toaster]

Warchariot BFG with a F not an S.

Valthinois, like these you mean, Oh Drat can't find them.
Someone over on SCN was making smaller scale BSG ships but I can't find the thread, I think they were for personal use but you never know he might be amenable to casting you a few.

Robert

[robertthedamned]

I think you're talking about Scouls502, he's done loads of nice stuff, I traded some of my castings for his and they're really nice. I don't think he usually does direct sales, puts up ebay auctions now and again though I highly doubt he'd put up his BFG stuff for auction as GW wouldn't be happy.

Here are his BFG ships.

[toaster]

Thats exactly the page that I couldn't get the search function to produce for me. Thanks Robert.

also a Robert.

[toaster]

Here's a possible mechanism for the Nova cannon that might capture the feel of the original weapon.

1) Declare your target and roll 1 or 2 dice, D6, D10 or even 1 of each.
2) Add or subtract up to your fire control rating to the generated number, the blast occurs at the hex at that range along the line from the firing ship through the target. Minimum range 4 hexes.
3) the blast is identical to that of a SD Torp.

This should allow highly accurate short range shots for ships with high FC, as range increases accuracy drops off but you still have a chance of catching some of the enemy in the edge of the blast. Of course if the enemy is helpful enough to approach in line astern...

For mass I 'm guessing drop 1 from the launcher and 1 from the ammo as compared to the SD Torp, you lose in reliability but you get back some in extra range.

Robert

[regan555]

Nice work on these designs. Are there any plans to stat up the Ork fleet? I'm a newcomer to the game looking for opponents in my area. My brother plays BFG, which I don't like, so if I could give him CB stats for his models he may be more inclined to play this game. :-)

[admiralgrafspee]

Mar 28, 2011 14:37:33 GMT -5 regan555 said:

Nice work on these designs. Are there any plans to stat up the Ork fleet? I'm a newcomer to the game looking for opponents in my area. My brother plays BFG, which I don't like, so if I could give him CB stats for his models he may be more inclined to play this game. :-)

There aren't plans to expand on this anymore at this point. However making up ships in CB is where half the fun is! I think if you follow the notes I have above you should be able to come up with something consistent.

[TheDreadnought]

There was a question about the shipyard here, so I moved it to its own thread in the General Discussion board.