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Of course, increasing the number of ships would also counteract the negatives of ship fragility. Lose a ship and it didn’t even get to do anything? No problem, you’ve got 10 more!
I assume you’re saying there would be more ships because less ships would be dismasted or sunk on average?
Oops, I didn’t explain well (I was trying to not write a novel length post!). An alternative to making ships more tough would be to simply increase the number of ships in a standard game. So ships would still be flimsy, but the loss of said paper thin ship wouldn’t matter as much as you have more on the table in general.
I’ve always disliked the fragility of ships.
Oftentimes a ship will be sunk in one volley. This of course does not make the game very fun for the person who lost the ship.
This fragility also limits crew compositions. If you want to get anything accomplished with a ship, you have to take the helmsman/captain combo. This is the standard. That way you have the maneuverability to strike the enemy ship first, otherwise you will get struck first, and likely crippled. Engagements between opposing ships very rarely last more than 1-2 turns. And there are rarely interesting maneuvers that I think would result from less captains being in play. If ships weren’t so fragile, captains wouldn’t matter as much because you would be more likely to get to return fire.
I think making ships twice as durable would provide for more interesting engagements. Either they get 2 “hull points” for every mast (so 5 masters would have 10 hull points), or the classic 2 hits for every mast in same shoot action (which I think I saw utilized in one of Ben’s campaign games or something to introduce more realism).
Of course, increasing the number of ships would also counteract the negatives of ship fragility. Lose a ship and it didn’t even get to do anything? No problem, you’ve got 10 more!
All of this said, I’ve never been bothered by long games, and either of the above changes would of course increase game length. Some people, probably most people, want a short game so the fragility of ships in standard games makes sense.
1) It’s still based on a single roll, but isn’t an “all or nothing” result anymore. One bad cannon won’t ruin the shot for numerous other good ones.
Its not necessarily an “all or nothing” result anymore (if all cannon ranks are the same it would be), but instead a “something or nothing”. Which is arguably worse. Although your chances of completely missing go down if using BA with a ship equipped with mismatched cannon ranks. I still don’t think I would use the ability, but its certainly better than the original rule.
I also think it takes a bit away from the flavor of the rule if you don’t need to be in range/LoS with all cannons, but that’s just me.
I can’t say I’d ever want to roll even more dice while shooting either, unless perhaps the entire combat system was completely revamped. I think the second example overcomplicates the shooting process, but I’m not someone who has played more complicated games outside of complex Pirates situations.
I guess I come from a WH40k background where rolling pools of 20 dice at a time is not uncommon, occasionally even 100+ dice at a time (yea lets not talk about it). Although I was also erroneously thinking that Pirates shoot actions were rolled in groups, not one cannon at a time. My group rolls similar cannon ranks together if firing at the same target. So I guess if you were rolling each cannon individually, rolling my BA on a 5 masted ship (so 10 shots) would take a bit.
As for the complex game mechanics, it only sounds complex until you actually try it out, believe me! Although again, X-Wing rolls shoot actions in groups. If rolling each cannon individually, it does get a bit more complicated (roll 1, roll 1, roll 1 then roll 1, roll 1, roll 1 — instead of roll 3 then roll 3). So oops on my part on forgetting how Pirates is actually played.
For an idea of how to automate enemy actions, take a look at the AI system for the custom X-Wing Heroes of the Aturi Cluster campaign. I think the AI from that ruleset works pretty well, although X-Wing has much more clear cut movement. X-Wing like movement templates might need to be created if you want Pirates AI to function completely autonomously.
I have a 3 masted ship with 4 cannons. I maneuver into a broadsides position against an opposing 3 masted ship with 2 cannons. I know that if I don’t take out any masts this shoot action, my ship will likely be crippled next turn. As opposed to doing a normal shoot action (with ~30% chance of all misses) I perform my modified BA. Instead of rolling 3 dice and possibly knocking the opposing ship out in one go (~4% chance), I roll 2 dice. I now will not be able to derelict the ship in one shoot action, but I am guaranteed at least 1 hit for performing broadsides attack. So rolling 0 hits will result in 1 hit, rolling 1 hit will also result in 1 hit, rolling 2 hits will result in 2 hits.
I haven’t looked at the stats enough to see if this would be viable to use across the range of ships that have BA or can get access to it from crew.
Another option could be to borrow a rule from X-Wing. Roll for hits twice. For each roll, if any hits are made, eliminate them and add 1 success. This one is maybe a bit hard to decipher so I will provide an example:
I have a 3 masted ship with 4 cannons. I maneuver into a broadsides position against an opposing 3 masted ship with 2 cannons. I know that if I don’t take out any masts this shoot action, my ship will likely be crippled next turn. As opposed to doing a normal shoot action (with ~30% chance of all misses) I perform my modified BA. Instead of rolling 3 dice and possibly knocking the opposing ship out in one go (~4% chance), I roll 3 dice twice (basically performing my shoot action twice). I now will not be able to derelict the ship in one shoot action (as only 1 hit can be taken from each shoot action), but my chances of rolling 1-2 hits goes way up. I roll 3 dice, I get 2 hits. I eliminate all results and add 1 hit. I roll 3 dice again, I get 0 hits, so not hits are scored.
This would bring the example ship’s chance to score at least 1 hit way up, from ~70% to >90%. The chance of getting at least 2 hits goes from ~25% for the standard shoot action to ~50%. The chance for the ship to score 3 hits goes from ~4% to 0%.
Again, not sure if this would get too under or overpowered across the wide range of ships with access to this rule. Not only is there a variable in # of shots (1 cannon x 2 VS. 5 cannons x 2 = BIG difference), but also quality of cannons (the opposing ship in example above with 3 2 cannons would go from ~75% of at least 2 hits to ~92%, but would lose out on ~30% chance to score 3 hits, so probably would opt for standard shoot action).
I’ve never like broadsides attack as a ship keyword. I’ve always wanted to use it because the idea is super cool, but it is just too swingy. And usually swingy rules are not fun for the person using it (swings low and misses) or for the person facing it (swing high and knock a ship out in one go in most cases).
Taking a step back, the purpose of a broadside attack in my mind is to take advantage of good positioning to inflict consistent damage before the enemy has a chance to open fire with its full armament. This is not reflected in the BA rule, as there is a possibility to totally whiff and leave yourself open to full return fire. The suggestion by Countyupyourcoyne is a step in the right direction:
Something like you can roll and additional die and take the highest option but you lose one “hit” and have it scale up, giving heavy ships the option to risk all hits for a low chance or basically have a for sure single hit.
But still not enough in my mind, ships pay a lot in points for that keyword. Instead of rolling an additional die and dropping a hit, the attack could lose a die for a guaranteed hit. So your maximum damage on a 4 masted ship would be 3 hits, and your minimum would be 1 (even if rolling all misses). This achieves the same result as the above proposed rule, just with absolute consistency.
EDIT: Of course, I guess this would cut out some of the flavor. Rolling less dice makes the attack seem less impressive. Countyupyourcoyne’s rule provides a high number of dice rolled so the attack is appropriately fun to roll. Although I guess rolling 1 dice for the original BA rule is pretty unimpressive. However, I think my rule has a more meaningful end result and game impact.
This is my house rule!
Concerning the after effects that you mentioned Ben, the idea was that the crew would be usable on the capturing ship. My group never thoroughly playtested this, so I’m not sure the best way to manage this. I reckon the cleanest way would be to change the nationality of the captured crew to that of the capturing ship. Without extensive playtesting, I am unsure of the possible implications of such a nationality switch on some crew.
As for your comment on the bribe system being underpowered, that is definitely by design. Keep in mind that capturing crew is an additional bonus on top of a successful boarding action. If the roll is failed, the crew is still eliminated. So either way a positive result is being obtained. The bribes exist mostly to add just a touch more flavor. However, it could also allow for very interesting game decisions. Deciding whether to spend precious gold to bribe during an important capture could either win you the game by giving you the edge in the next engagement, or lose you the game due to the loss of coin. Tough choices like these are what make games interesting, and Pirates is missing these sorts of decisions in my opinion.
That being said, I think the bribe system would scale well in larger games or economy scenarios. With more gold on the table, bribing would happen more often which would of course lead to more successful captures. This is ok in larger games as it won’t have such a large impact on the course and outcome of the game (capture of a key crew in a standard 40 point game could EASILY sway the outcome of the game).
You could check; the Code is on the homepage of my site here. Don’t mean to be harsh but I’m tired of looking things up for people that are VERY easy to find/search. (though if you’re on a phone let me know if you can’t get files from the site up since mobile can get funky)
You sounded pretty sure of yourself so I figured I would just ask if you were confident of that rule. I wasn’t looking for a specific reference to the code (you’re right, I could have looked that up myself). I should have been more clear!
That certainly opens up some more ship/fleet combos. I’ll have to build a fleet with that in mind the next time I play.
This might need to go to 20, seeing as how a world hater could make 5’s trigger the ability as well, which would end up being a decent percentage of the total hits.
I always assumed that the “2 masts on roll of a 6” ability (and others like it, ex. “double range of cannons but must hit on 6”) only hit on a natural roll of a 6. So regardless of modifiers added. Is this specified in the Code?
I think it is important when talking about these things to distinguish between community rules and “official” rules (Pirates Code is for all intents and purposes, official). Oftentimes when a game goes out of print, is discontinued, or loses support, the player community (if it survives discontinuation of the game) will group together to create and maintain a community rule set. This was the case for many Games Workshop games (Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic, etc) before a recent company push to bring some of these games back.
A community ruleset is nice because it allows the active player community to make necessary balance changes/rulings for games where the company failed to do so. This could attract players to the game as it shows that the playerbase is active enough to keep playing and improving the game. And as long as the community ruleset is kept entirely separate and distinguishable from the original ruleset, there should be no confusion for new/current players.
This comment was mine. (I was active to a small degree on MT forums in 2014-2015 under the name CodyScheer, just registered here)
I think I may have elaborated on this comment in a later survey response, but maybe not. What I want is for towing to be standardized across the game. I could go either way as to how it works; either using the derelict towing rules or flotilla towing rules.
With that being said, I would probably prefer derelict towing rules being the standard as you suggested in your post Ben. This would decrease the average speed of flotilla tows which is a good thing. The vast majority ships would only be able to pull off an S+S move with the addition of a helmsman.
On the flip side, flotilla towing rules being the standard could be kind of fun too. This would of course increase the average speed of derelict tows. This could make a lot of cheap smaller/faster ships viable that aren’t currently. Many of these ships have a good base move but lack the guns/cargo to be a gunship or gold ship. Adding a helmsman to these ships is just spending more build points on a ship that could easily be sunk in one volley. If base move could be used when towing derelicts, these ships could be used to dart in quick and start towing away an enemy derelict while your gunship holds the line. This would be in line with the theme of the game: pirating.
So I could go either way. However, I think the flotilla rules are easier to abuse, so using the derelict towing rule would make the game more balanced overall.
