Rules Updates for Turn 52

[Dave Baughman]

As early as Turn 6, I would like to begin reducing the presence of doomstacks in FGC. This will come in three general phases:

Phase 1: limited voluntary trade-in
Phase 2: unlimited voluntary trade-in
Phase 3: GM-mandated involuntary conversion

First, lets define a doomstack.

A doomstack, for the purposes of these rules, is a single line-item that contains more than 12 company/binary-sized elements. The worst offenders are large independent wings (regardless of their movement class), and those will be the target of Phase 1.

I would like your feedback on the proposed implementation of Phase 1.



Phase 1: Independent Wing Reduction

In turn XXX, FGC record sheet 0.55 will be released. One of the changes on this sheet will be a reduction in the dropship capacity of independent wings to 6 DropShips. This will render the majority of large independent wings currently in the game invalid. These independent wings may not/not be broken into multiple, smaller independent wings - however, the lost BV will be able to be recouped. Recapture works as follows:

1. Identify the total amount of FP lost for each movement class (transported/mobile/LFB mobile)
2. Multiply the mobile and LFB mobile FP by their purchase modifier (x6/x10) and combine with transported total to get the raw RP cost of lost units.
3. This RP may be spent immediately, exempt from SY capacity restrictions, to build warships. Only warships may be built with this RP (i.e. no independent wings or Jumpship-based flotillas).
4. Warships built in this manner may not derive more than 50% of their FP from dropships or fighters. RP may be spent on marines and taxis if desired without any special restrictions as long as they are part of a warship line-item.
5. The GMs must approve each faction's recapture list, and reserve the right to disapprove purchase plans if they feel they will be disruptive or involve gaining non-faction ships or technology (i.e. faction Z builds 126 Leviathan IIs? Probably gonna be denied.)



Thoughts?

[Holt]

Will factions be able to purchase designs from other factions? Not be able to build it or reverse engineer them, just acquire them. I say this because some factions are very limited in the warships they can build and I am not sure people want 1,253 Vincent mk. 39s.

[Parmenion]

How does this proposal work in regards Veteran and Elite units (and dare I say Green, if there are any of those)?

For instance, if Clan Stone Lion had an Elite 50FP Independent Wing (Mobile), will the resulting Warships also be Elite rated?

In general, I'm not against the idea in principle, although once the above questions (and any that other players might think up) are answered I'll be more prepared to say one way or another.

[Fatebringer]

LOL, this will be nice for those Uber Dropship stacks I have. For some reason someone had the genius idea of instead of stacking Fighters, they stacked Droppers... I can trade the overstack into fighters or seperated floatillas

[Dave Baughman]

Will factions be able to purchase designs from other factions? Not be able to build it or reverse engineer them, just acquire them. I say this because some factions are very limited in the warships they can build and I am not sure people want 1,253 Vincent mk. 39s.

Yes, subject to GM approval. Needless to say, older designs - especially the TRO 2750 classics - are most likely to be approved as out of faction choices.

How does this proposal work in regards Veteran and Elite units (and dare I say Green, if there are any of those)?

For instance, if Clan Stone Lion had an Elite 50FP Independent Wing (Mobile), will the resulting Warships also be Elite rated?

In general, I'm not against the idea in principle, although once the above questions (and any that other players might think up) are answered I'll be more prepared to say one way or another.

Good point. I have no problem in principle with higher-skill units coming out of this as long as the total number do not exceed the number that were traded in. For example, say you had a 100 FP elite independent wing. That wing got knocked down to 10 FP by the new rules, leaving you with 90 FP. If you used that 90 FP to buy a pair of (LFB Mobile, so x10 cost) Lola IIIs, I would have no problem with one of them carrying over the elite skill. Beyond that, I'd have to decide on a case-by-case basis looking at the totality of the purchase.

As a rule of thumb, I'm inclined to approve buys that are well-balanced overall, and inclined to disapprove buys that lean to extremes in their composition.

[chaosxtreme]

I am not seeing where the -10 is coming from in the rules.

if you have 100 FP Elite Wing and you are transitioning it into warships. Shouldn't you at the end of it have 10 FP of Elite LFB Warship or 16.6FP Of Elite Mobile Warship?

Also to become balanced purchase's some of that is probably going to need to be broken up.

For example.

if someone has most of their navy in large FP Stack's. Their either ending up with several Mobile Battleships at 16.6 or they need to break it up into

An Elite Clan Essex Class Destroyer is 6.5FP if they built 2 Mobile rated Essex's out of that FP  that's 13 leaving 3.6 for corvette's or escorts on the essex.

It wouldn't be fair for that second Essex and what not to now be Regular (Though I for one would try to take advantage of it if I could do Veteran as they would be cheaper and upgradeable later).

[Dave Baughman]

I am not seeing where the -10 is coming from in the rules.

if you have 100 FP Elite Wing and you are transitioning it into warships. Shouldn't you at the end of it have 10 FP of Elite LFB Warship or 16.6FP Of Elite Mobile Warship?

The independent wings are not being deleted, they are just being reduced to a more reasonable size. The 10 FP was an arbitrary number for the sake of the example.

[chaosxtreme]

Oh ok so the wing's aren't going away. They are just being reduced. to 10 FP and all FP above 10 is being built into new warship's. Beautiful.

[Dave Baughman]

Oh ok so the wing's aren't going away. They are just being reduced. to 10 FP and all FP above 10 is being built into new warship's. Beautiful.

Green part is true. Red part is going to vary from faction to faction. Indy wings are being reduced to a maximum of six dropships. This will lower their max FP across all factions, but the exact amount will vary based on the dropship choice and the composition of your dropship & fighter tables.

[chaosxtreme]

Ouch yeah I can see a major reduction in the FWL most of our pocket dropships are low FP.

[Fatebringer]

Well, you have to think about it though, assuming the Sharks ASF list is comprable to the Raven one, the 85 FP Stacks are around 6 or 7 of these new units each.

[Fatebringer]

Oh ok so the wing's aren't going away. They are just being reduced. to 10 FP and all FP above 10 is being built into new warship's. Beautiful.

Yeah, will hit the FP stacks pretty hard for people who've been twinking up on ASF clusters. I mean, I know I was concerned when I went from dominating the space lanes to seeng matching floatillas in an instant.

It'd be nice to see a stack of 600 FP in fighters turned into a nice Potemkin with escorts

[Cannonshop]

Oh ok so the wing's aren't going away. They are just being reduced. to 10 FP and all FP above 10 is being built into new warship's. Beautiful.

Yeah, will hit the FP stacks pretty hard for people who've been twinking up on ASF clusters. I mean, I know I was concerned when I went from dominating the space lanes to seeng matching floatillas in an instant.

It'd be nice to see a stack of 600 FP in fighters turned into a nice Potemkin with escorts

Nicer still to see it broken into an actual warship star or three.  Many Clan players felt ripped off by the distribution of 'cached' warships in the KC back around turn 26/27.  Converting that fighter ARMY into 600 FP of mixed ships  (Aegis, say, with Whirlwinds, Rigas, essex and Lolas) is a little more um...'stylish'.  I'm sure someone out there has been eyeing a new Nightlord or Liberator that the trade-in would allow them to afford like...now.

Which brings ME to an interesting (at least, to me) question:

Say you have multiple 15 pointers that are going to be downchecked to 10 pointers-but you don't have much ABOVE 15 points...

can the slack be compiled to buy one or two big assets?

[Dave Baughman]

Ouch yeah I can see a major reduction in the FWL most of our pocket dropships are low FP.

Remember that this only applies to independent wings, not to your jumpship- or warship-based forces. If there is something that can be threatened by a survival roll at the heart of the formation (i.e. the proper risk vs. reward calculus), then it is not impacted by Phase 1 of this program.

Oh ok so the wing's aren't going away. They are just being reduced. to 10 FP and all FP above 10 is being built into new warship's. Beautiful.

Yeah, will hit the FP stacks pretty hard for people who've been twinking up on ASF clusters. I mean, I know I was concerned when I went from dominating the space lanes to seeng matching floatillas in an instant.

It'd be nice to see a stack of 600 FP in fighters turned into a nice Potemkin with escorts

I agree. Just be mindful of the "50% FP threshold rule" before you get too set on Potemkin supercarrier groups. Now, some nice sleek Black Lions...

Oh ok so the wing's aren't going away. They are just being reduced. to 10 FP and all FP above 10 is being built into new warship's. Beautiful.

Yeah, will hit the FP stacks pretty hard for people who've been twinking up on ASF clusters. I mean, I know I was concerned when I went from dominating the space lanes to seeng matching floatillas in an instant.

It'd be nice to see a stack of 600 FP in fighters turned into a nice Potemkin with escorts

Nicer still to see it broken into an actual warship star or three.  Many Clan players felt ripped off by the distribution of 'cached' warships in the KC back around turn 26/27.  Converting that fighter ARMY into 600 FP of mixed ships  (Aegis, say, with Whirlwinds, Rigas, essex and Lolas) is a little more um...'stylish'.  I'm sure someone out there has been eyeing a new Nightlord or Liberator that the trade-in would allow them to afford like...now.

Which brings ME to an interesting (at least, to me) question:

Say you have multiple 15 pointers that are going to be downchecked to 10 pointers-but you don't have much ABOVE 15 points...

can the slack be compiled to buy one or two big assets?

Yes. Before you buy anything, you should pool all the lost FP and back-convert it by movement class into RP. So you'll be buying from that pool instead of from each individual unit.

[Dave Baughman]

So, how many times have we seen a planet with a strong garrison conquered by a huge stack of aerospace units plus a some token ground unit to hold the real estate afterwards? I know I've seen it more times than I'd like.

I am tempted to port in the Flashpoint aerospace support order more or less unchanged. If you didn't play in Flashpoint, here's how it worked:

Aerospace Support
Category: Support

Prerequisite: Friendly unit in the same or adjacent theater using attack, defense, or movement
orders

Size Limit: 1 Top-level unit (ASF or Conventional Fighters only)

This order places air units on standby to assist other forces in the same or an adjacent theater.
For example, a fighter wing in the Atmo/Orbit Theater could be assigned to support an attack
occurring on the Planetary Surface.

The exact amount of support available is determined by a roll on the Curved Percentage table –
compare the percentage to the number of enemy FP engaged in the operation to determine
how many FP of friendly ASF may participate.

Example: a 50 FP ASF wing in the Atmo/Orbital Theater is assigned to support a 50 FP Patrol
Division on Interception orders in the Interplanetary Space Theater. A 40 FP enemy Transport
Division is being intercepted as it attempts to execute a Landing order. The result of the roll on
the Curved Percentage table is 20%. 8 FP of ASF support may join the Patrol Division in attacking
the enemy landing forces.

In FGC, it would look like this:


Ground Support
Type: Special Scenario (used in conjuntion with a Raid or Battle order occuring in the same hex)
Requirements: Aerospace Fighter, Conventional Fighter, or DropShip FP

Effect: roll on the Interdiction/Guerilla Warfare table. You may add air FP equal to the percentage of enemy FP roll to the battle.

For example: Joel is invading with a 10 FP 'Mech regiment. He has a Leviathan II worth 85.5 FP in orbit (60 FP of that FP is fighters and dropships). The defending force is a Galaxy of Elite Clan 'Mechs worth a total of 125 FP. If Joel rolls a 7, he is entitled to 15% of the enemy force -- 18.75 FP -- in fighter support. If he rolled a 11, he would be entitled to 60% -- 75 FP -- but could only use 60 FP because the WarShip portion of his Leviathan II's FP is not eligible to be used.



Thoughts?