"Real Transport" rules draft

[Dave Baughman]

Hi everyone, I'm posting this as a preview of one of my major projects and to get feedback about possibly broken aspects/rules loopholes. Please note that this is a transcription of written notes, so its presentation will be more linear and better broken up by topic in the final version.

Task Forces

To facilitate the new movement rules and to provide a wider range of available collars (i.e. to bridge the gap between the Monolith and the Potemkin) non-warship JumpShips can be bought in groups of 1-4. This means that the following combinations should be readily available to most factions:

1 Collar -- 1 Scout
2 Collars -- 1 Merchant
3 Collars -- 1 Invader
4 Collars -- 2 Merchants
6 Collars -- 1 Star Lord
8 Collars -- 4 Merchants
9 Collars -- 1 Monolith
12 Collars -- 2 Star Lords
18 Collars -- 3 Star Lords
24 Collars -- 4 Star Lords
27 Collars -- 3 Monoliths
36 Collars -- 4 Monoliths

Coincidentally, this means that the group with the largest number of collars (the "4 monolith" task force) can carry the same number of dropships as a normally-distributed 2d6 table. DropShip tables will have their numerical distribution updated to cover the normal 2d6 bell curve.

With the increased importance of jumpships, factions will need to account for what jumpship designs they actually produce just like they already do for their WarShips. Initial research suggests that the "original 5" (scout, merchant, invader, star lord, monolith) are reasonably well distributed, but we will have to add some non-canon production sites for some of the smaller factions to ensure they have at least some access to production.

Task Forces behave just like normal warships, except that if they fail a survival roll they are not totally destroyed; instead, their size is reduced by one. So, if a group of 4 invaders fails a survival roll, it turns into a group of 3 invaders. Only units that it could not carry (i.e. excess dropships, etc) are 'orphaned.' Of course, if they are moving troops or cargo, that payload might become stranded if the new, smaller group lacks the lift to transport them.


Transporting units

Two new statistics are introduced with these rules: lift and lift cost. Lift is the ability of a space vehicle to move ground units; this is handled somewhat abstractly to avoid having issues where a huge transport group is needed to move a very small unit that happens to include some exotic vehicle type.

Lift is equal to: (number of light vehicle cubicles * 0.80) + (number of 'Mech cubicles * 1.25)^†) + (number of all other ground unit cubicles)^‡.

^† only for Clan technology units; this reflects the Clan tactical doctrine of using Heavy 'mechs as the core battle unit rather than Medium 'mechs as the I.S. does.
^‡ for infantry and other 'blob' units, a "ground unit" is defined as one platoon of conventional infantry, one point/squad of battle armor, or one point of protomechs.

If a naval line-item has sufficient lift, it can be used to move ground units along its flight plan for the turn. A naval unit can carry more than one ground unit (if it has sufficient lift) but a ground unit cannot be carried by more than one naval unit. However, see 'splitting ground units' below.

Lift Cost reflects both the raw lift needed to move a ground units as well as factoring in a penalty (or bonus) reflecting the amount of off-camera resources needed for transporting ammunition, spare parts, non-combat personnel, support vehicles, etc.

A ground unit's lift cost equals the total of:

For each light unit: 0.75
For each medium unit: 1.00
For each heavy unit: 1.25
For each assault unit: 1.50

Units that do not have weight classes (infantry, etc) are considered medium.


6-8 restrictions for DT table

To ensure proper balance of the lift capacity of small task forces, there are restrictions on what designs can appear on the Transport Ships table's 6-8 band. The exact math will probably change as dropship tables migrate back to a "natural" 36-outcome setup, but on the current 30-outcome table, the rule would be that the total lift of the first four allocated dropships (i.e. 7, 8, and 2x 6) cannot exceed 125. This ensures that overstrength or unusually heavy regiments will need a minimum of 5 dropships to transport. Clusters will be a little better off, but should still generally need a bare minimum of 3-4 dropships to transport.

Players will also want to ensure that their 7 row (the 1st dropship allocated) has enough lift to carry one bottom-level unit (to facilitate raiding). The 7 row will probably be restricted on its maximum lift as well, to discourage "Scout+Colossus" type shenanigans.


Splitting Ground Units and Maximum Ground Unit Size

Each ground line-item will be capped at 12 companies (IS) or 12 binaries (Clan). Future "unit improvement" game mechanics may further define these limits. A 'normal' regiment is 9 companies and a 'normal' cluster is 7-8 binaries (really, 5 trinaries). The purpose of this restriction is to ensure proper quality level accounting and to prevent rules exploits such as the TH's old brigade-level ground unit line-items.

The same size restriction applies to static aerospace and dropship fleets. This means that many of the "aeroswarm of doom" formations will need to be broken up into more reasonably sized formations.

For the purposes of splitting a unit between multiple transports or for raiding (or any other purpose - for example garrisoning multiple locations), a regiment or cluster-level unit can be broken into multiple line items. Units can be broken or combined freely as long as they are A) in the same location and B) have the same quality and loyalty level. Future rules will address combining dissimilar units.


Reduction of Lift due to damage

As the status of individual dropships (and warship critical hits) are not tracked at the record sheet level, it is neccessary to abstractly track the impact of battle damage on both Lift and Lift Cost.

Lift Cost is reduced in proportion to the percentage of damage suffered by a unit. If a regiment has a lift cost of 108 and suffers 50% damage, its lift cost is reduced to 59.

Lift is reduced based on the relationship between damage and FP lift proportion. FPLP is equal to the unit's Warship/Dropship/Jumpship FP divided by its total unit FP. For example, if a Monolith and 9 DT is worth 2.25, but fighters bring its FP up to 5 FP, its FPLP is 0.45.

FPLP times the damage percentage equals the percentage of lift lost. So, if the Monolith described above took 50% damage, it would lose 22.5% of its lift.

Movement Order redesign

The introduction of real transport units means that the risk/reward calculations involved with moving through foreign territory need to be re-examined. Some or all of the restrictions on hostile territory movement, in particular the restriction on invasions, may be removed. Further analysis is required before a final rule is made.

This rules refresh will probably also significantly change the way LFB works, allowing for the "double jump" ability to have a meaningful game benefit.

Intrinsic Lift

All jump-capable ships receive three points of bonus lift to facilitate carrying marines (though it can be used for any purpose, such as offsetting weight class lift cost modifiers for Union-based raiders carrying heavy 'mechs). Related to this, ship's militia will be revised and expanded to provide a more appropriate defensive FP level for resisting boarding actions based on the size of the ship.





I will put my notes on cargo carriers in a reply to this post later once I have transcribed them.

[Cannonshop]

Lift Cost reflects both the raw lift needed to move a ground units as well as factoring in a penalty (or bonus) reflecting the amount of off-camera resources needed for transporting ammunition, spare parts, non-combat personnel, support vehicles, etc.

A ground unit's lift cost equals the total of:

For each light unit: 0.75
For each medium unit: 1.00
For each heavy unit: 1.25
For each assault unit: 1.50

Units that do not have weight classes (infantry, etc) are considered medium.

Per the FP values shown here (see reply #11) you're assigning "Medium" weight capacity to units that (when they HAVE an FP value) run about a quarter of a FP.    Recalling that Infantry has, unless it's Marines or Battlesuits, a FP value of zero, maybe that assignment's...um...wrong?  Particularly as the only dedicated infantry carriers in the game all run on the extreme light-end of dropships (the Fury being the prime 'common' example).

[Dave Baughman]

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Are you saying that you think that infantry should require less lift than other unit types or are you saying you are concerned that people will try to bust the system by milking infantry transports for relatively low-FP lift generation?

[Dave Baughman]

I should clarify, also, lift cost is totally unrelated to FP. By default, one point of lift (i.e. one ground forces cube of any type) will pick up one ground unit (one point of lift cost). The altered lift costs by weight class exist solely as a disincentive against people building "all assault" or otherwise unrealistically heavy units. Since infantry only comes in one "weight class" by and large, there's no reason to price it differently, since 1:1 lift cost:lift ratio is "working as intended"

[Cannonshop]

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Are you saying that you think that infantry should require less lift than other unit types or are you saying you are concerned that people will try to bust the system by milking infantry transports for relatively low-FP lift generation?

a little of column "A" and a little of column "B".  We've got FP values for infantry, and the dedicated transports in canon are some of the smallest dropships in tonnage, so lowering the lift value makes sense- a Fury isn't going to carry a Lance of light 'mechs, much less mediums.  My other point, was that the dedicated transports FOR infantry are some of the lightest dropship units in the game- the aforementioned Fury being a battalion transport and one of the smallest vessels anyone could build in the canon (one of the few that are outweighed by a Leopard, which is one of the lightest 'mech transports extant)

So, my argument REALLY is that Infantry should be weighted as "Light" units for transport, as opposed to heavy.    (for the sake of this discussion, we'll use the only inf. that actually counts in this game-BA.  'light' infantry has no FP value and doesn't factor into most MM games.)

[Cannonshop]

Also: don't think revamping "Ship's Militia'' is a good idea.  If someone doesn't want to spend the effort and time to install marines, well....that's their problem.  Rules this detailed don't need to be angled to reward people for short-sightedness, or you end up dictating exact tactics, which really removes the need for players to make any decisions at all.

[Daemonknight]

What're you talking about Cannon? He's saying that 1 FP of armsmen for every ship in the game needs to be reworked. A Fox is much easier to board and take over, than a Levi II, but if there are no on-board Marines, they're equally likely to be taken over. This makes no sense.

Instead, a ship's armsmen(it's internal anti-boarding crewmen) will be relative to the size of the vessel in question- as it should be.

[Cannonshop]

What're you talking about Cannon? He's saying that 1 FP of armsmen for every ship in the game needs to be reworked. A Fox is much easier to board and take over, than a Levi II, but if there are no on-board Marines, they're equally likely to be taken over. This makes no sense.

Instead, a ship's armsmen(it's internal anti-boarding crewmen) will be relative to the size of the vessel in question- as it should be.

Exactly how many times in the last twenty turns, has anyone gotten a chance to test that?  Was there even ONE incidence of a boarding check in the entire Vorzel battle?

Coventry?

Sudeten II?

We're already talking about dictating what jumpships a faction can have, with the structure of the random tables, those'll already be deciding what size forces you can deploy, and in what strength, at what distance.  with a limit of 3 on your 'Intrinsic lift' marine capacity, you're also deciding how many marines a player can have per ship-which translates out to not needing ANY marines on your "proportional" Leviathan, since it's going to have more ship's militia than any attacker can reasonably apply Marines to board (aside from another Leviathan II)

So for the sake of providing "Immunity" you're pretty much getting it-you never have to worry that someone is going to rook your super-dreadnought.

The "intrinsic Lift" maybe needs to be proportional, and if you want a boarding-repulsion beyond 1 FP regular or green, you pay for it-that leaves the decisions to the players.  as someone who spent a LOT on Marine forces (along with spending a lot on units that're losing their particular abilities with the MP revamp), well, you might consider my objections somewhat selfish-I'm getting shafted out of the RP that's been spent on both, plus lookng at having the production I paid for turned into 'repair stations'  and at limits on non-warship jumpship designs beyond the limits I imposed on myself.

so I might be a little cranky at seeing yet another big advantage going to the Terran Hegemony or Dominion at the expense of everyone else.

[Dave Baughman]

CS, why are you assuming that ship's militia is going to be structured in a way that gives any ship "immunity?" Why do you feel the TH and Dominion are receiving an unfair advantage (indeed, I would have thought you would have picked up from the research thread that both of those factions are getting screwed just a teensy bit by these rules - especially the TH)? Why do you believe you are going to be, quote, shafted out of anything you have spent money on? Why do you believe that hex improvements you bought as one type are going to be automatically converted into another?

I'm confused, because I am not seeing where you are drawing your conclusions from.

What're you talking about Cannon? He's saying that 1 FP of armsmen for every ship in the game needs to be reworked. A Fox is much easier to board and take over, than a Levi II, but if there are no on-board Marines, they're equally likely to be taken over. This makes no sense.

Instead, a ship's armsmen(it's internal anti-boarding crewmen) will be relative to the size of the vessel in question- as it should be.

Exactly how many times in the last twenty turns, has anyone gotten a chance to test that?  Was there even ONE incidence of a boarding check in the entire Vorzel battle?

Coventry?

Sudeten II?

We're already talking about dictating what jumpships a faction can have, with the structure of the random tables, those'll already be deciding what size forces you can deploy, and in what strength, at what distance.  with a limit of 3 on your 'Intrinsic lift' marine capacity, you're also deciding how many marines a player can have per ship-which translates out to not needing ANY marines on your "proportional" Leviathan, since it's going to have more ship's militia than any attacker can reasonably apply Marines to board (aside from another Leviathan II)

So for the sake of providing "Immunity" you're pretty much getting it-you never have to worry that someone is going to rook your super-dreadnought.

The "intrinsic Lift" maybe needs to be proportional, and if you want a boarding-repulsion beyond 1 FP regular or green, you pay for it-that leaves the decisions to the players.  as someone who spent a LOT on Marine forces (along with spending a lot on units that're losing their particular abilities with the MP revamp), well, you might consider my objections somewhat selfish-I'm getting shafted out of the RP that's been spent on both, plus lookng at having the production I paid for turned into 'repair stations'  and at limits on non-warship jumpship designs beyond the limits I imposed on myself.

so I might be a little cranky at seeing yet another big advantage going to the Terran Hegemony or Dominion at the expense of everyone else.

[Cannonshop]

CS, why are you assuming that ship's militia is going to be structured in a way that gives any ship "immunity?" Why do you feel the TH and Dominion are receiving an unfair advantage? Why do you believe you are going to be, quote, shafted out of anything you have spent money on? Why do you believe that hex improvements you bought as one type are going to be automatically converted into another?

I'm confused, because I am not seeing where you are drawing your conclusions from.

What're you talking about Cannon? He's saying that 1 FP of armsmen for every ship in the game needs to be reworked. A Fox is much easier to board and take over, than a Levi II, but if there are no on-board Marines, they're equally likely to be taken over. This makes no sense.

Instead, a ship's armsmen(it's internal anti-boarding crewmen) will be relative to the size of the vessel in question- as it should be.

Exactly how many times in the last twenty turns, has anyone gotten a chance to test that?  Was there even ONE incidence of a boarding check in the entire Vorzel battle?

Coventry?

Sudeten II?

We're already talking about dictating what jumpships a faction can have, with the structure of the random tables, those'll already be deciding what size forces you can deploy, and in what strength, at what distance.  with a limit of 3 on your 'Intrinsic lift' marine capacity, you're also deciding how many marines a player can have per ship-which translates out to not needing ANY marines on your "proportional" Leviathan, since it's going to have more ship's militia than any attacker can reasonably apply Marines to board (aside from another Leviathan II)

So for the sake of providing "Immunity" you're pretty much getting it-you never have to worry that someone is going to rook your super-dreadnought.

The "intrinsic Lift" maybe needs to be proportional, and if you want a boarding-repulsion beyond 1 FP regular or green, you pay for it-that leaves the decisions to the players.  as someone who spent a LOT on Marine forces (along with spending a lot on units that're losing their particular abilities with the MP revamp), well, you might consider my objections somewhat selfish-I'm getting shafted out of the RP that's been spent on both, plus lookng at having the production I paid for turned into 'repair stations'  and at limits on non-warship jumpship designs beyond the limits I imposed on myself.

so I might be a little cranky at seeing yet another big advantage going to the Terran Hegemony or Dominion at the expense of everyone else.

Star Lord: FWL and DC, production in the FWL is 2 per year (JS&DS)
Monolith: Fedsuns Exclusive for the IS.

Leviathan/Lev II: Snow Raven, Ghost Bears, and Terran exclusive. the Terran part is game-canon, otherwise it's CSR and CGB only.

What's a "proportional" miliz complement for a Leviathan II? it's over two million tonnes of ship, with a passel of dropcollars, lots of guns...assuming a base of a 1FP for your smaller corvettes?  Most conventional JS don't have the crew to spend on security teams-if you go with canon crew requirements, they don't have any, if you go proportionally, it means either a fapping huge complement on the Lev, or no complement on anything under 100k tonnes.

Since you're looking for canon sources, the next step is to limit/eliminate access to jumpship designs-which isn't so hard on the big five or the Clans, but it's a sledgehammer on anyone smaller or newer.  

You've seen my naval tab. It's one of the longer ones in the game, in spite of having a relatively small navy.  I'll lose most of my lift capacity when these rules go on-line, whoosh-gone.  The distribution of 6, 7,8 on the table, and what you need for collar space, and what FP values MEAN, means I'm losing most of my ability to move-I don't have a lot of abstract 'groups' to suddenly churn into transportation for ground units, I didn't buy a shit-ton of independent wings that can be converted to make up the loss.

NOw, you're limiting the 'free' lift to 3 points...which means I'm losing a fair chunk of my existing Marine capacity, because I really do NOT have the budget to shit out the necessary number of jumpships to take them in.  I'm already losing the resources spent on my small collection of "Mobile" units since they'll, in turn, lose the traits that made them worth spending 6x FP value to build.

I don't expect I'll be getting that cost back-because everyone ELSE who built them would reasonably expect to get THEIR investment back as well, and that turns into real money pretty quickly.

The factions that aren't going to feel much pain from this, are the ones that were so big that they could pretty much toss RP's down the shitter and not worry about it.  That's three factions: FWL, TH, and Dominion. (okay, four-the Lyran/Falcon thingy won't take much of a hit either.)

Factions that already HAD transport problems are going to get bit harder, and the ones that don't have the bottomless treasury of a megafaction are going to get positively NAILED by this.

I ran the numbers on what it would take to 'real transport' out a 5 FP unit- in terms of how many droppers per company/binary, and the cost of those dropships, and the number of collars needed.  5 points is about the smallest I've got, so it wasn't difficult, but the difference in collars needed between 5 FP of 'mechs, and 5 FP of mixed forces, was pretty significant.  on a typical distribution off the tables as they're structured, I can't get the right types of dropships to move any force that isn't primarily battlemechs on a transport smaller than a Star Lord.

Much less the more common Invader and Merchant classes (the two most common jumpships in canon.)

[chaosxtreme]

What're you talking about Cannon? He's saying that 1 FP of armsmen for every ship in the game needs to be reworked. A Fox is much easier to board and take over, than a Levi II, but if there are no on-board Marines, they're equally likely to be taken over. This makes no sense.

Instead, a ship's armsmen(it's internal anti-boarding crewmen) will be relative to the size of the vessel in question- as it should be.

Exactly how many times in the last twenty turns, has anyone gotten a chance to test that?  Was there even ONE incidence of a boarding check in the entire Vorzel battle?

Coventry?

Sudeten II?

We're already talking about dictating what jumpships a faction can have, with the structure of the random tables, those'll already be deciding what size forces you can deploy, and in what strength, at what distance.  with a limit of 3 on your 'Intrinsic lift' marine capacity, you're also deciding how many marines a player can have per ship-which translates out to not needing ANY marines on your "proportional" Leviathan, since it's going to have more ship's militia than any attacker can reasonably apply Marines to board (aside from another Leviathan II)

So for the sake of providing "Immunity" you're pretty much getting it-you never have to worry that someone is going to rook your super-dreadnought.

The "intrinsic Lift" maybe needs to be proportional, and if you want a boarding-repulsion beyond 1 FP regular or green, you pay for it-that leaves the decisions to the players.  as someone who spent a LOT on Marine forces (along with spending a lot on units that're losing their particular abilities with the MP revamp), well, you might consider my objections somewhat selfish-I'm getting shafted out of the RP that's been spent on both, plus lookng at having the production I paid for turned into 'repair stations'  and at limits on non-warship jumpship designs beyond the limits I imposed on myself.

so I might be a little cranky at seeing yet another big advantage going to the Terran Hegemony or Dominion at the expense of everyone else.

Well in SimRes the last time someone got a chance was this turn. In the trial between the Vipers and Shark's at New Hope Station

[Cannonshop]

What're you talking about Cannon? He's saying that 1 FP of armsmen for every ship in the game needs to be reworked. A Fox is much easier to board and take over, than a Levi II, but if there are no on-board Marines, they're equally likely to be taken over. This makes no sense.

Instead, a ship's armsmen(it's internal anti-boarding crewmen) will be relative to the size of the vessel in question- as it should be.

Exactly how many times in the last twenty turns, has anyone gotten a chance to test that?  Was there even ONE incidence of a boarding check in the entire Vorzel battle?

Coventry?

Sudeten II?

We're already talking about dictating what jumpships a faction can have, with the structure of the random tables, those'll already be deciding what size forces you can deploy, and in what strength, at what distance.  with a limit of 3 on your 'Intrinsic lift' marine capacity, you're also deciding how many marines a player can have per ship-which translates out to not needing ANY marines on your "proportional" Leviathan, since it's going to have more ship's militia than any attacker can reasonably apply Marines to board (aside from another Leviathan II)

So for the sake of providing "Immunity" you're pretty much getting it-you never have to worry that someone is going to rook your super-dreadnought.

The "intrinsic Lift" maybe needs to be proportional, and if you want a boarding-repulsion beyond 1 FP regular or green, you pay for it-that leaves the decisions to the players.  as someone who spent a LOT on Marine forces (along with spending a lot on units that're losing their particular abilities with the MP revamp), well, you might consider my objections somewhat selfish-I'm getting shafted out of the RP that's been spent on both, plus lookng at having the production I paid for turned into 'repair stations'  and at limits on non-warship jumpship designs beyond the limits I imposed on myself.

so I might be a little cranky at seeing yet another big advantage going to the Terran Hegemony or Dominion at the expense of everyone else.

Well in SimRes the last time someone got a chance was this turn. In the trial between the Vipers and Shark's at New Hope Station

That's because you can't invade a station with anything BUT Marines...

[chaosxtreme]

Acctually no Canon. That was because in the trial. Holt rolled the "board largest vessel or do somethingelse equally awesome" crit.

[chaosxtreme]

Or we could calculate out what the FP of the canon marine complement is.

I mean I know I have beaten this dead horse before but every warship lists its marine compliment.

Which has tonnage and bv assigned to it as part of ship creation.

Why not just use those numbers and translate them into game mechanics.


*Disclaimer*

This does clearly benefit the Free Worlds as all our canon LFB ships have battlearmor marine's and plenty of them*.

It always bothered me people stacking essentially entire marine division and army groups on warship's that then didn't have to account for them but I have always gone "whatev's" and moved on.

[Cannonshop]

Acctually no Canon. That was because in the trial. Holt rolled the "board largest vessel or do somethingelse equally awesome" crit.

The split I'm trying (and failing) to illustrate properly, is the split between intentional and random here.

Random: Roll a 1/36 chance crit, followed by another 1/36 chance outcome.

Intentional: in MegaAero, sidle up with smallcraft, and execute a boarding action deliberately as part of an overall strategy.