Battlefleet Koronus: weapons quality bonuses, nova cannon names and the Voidsunder lance

[Little Dave 0]

I assume the values sets you get to choose from for good and best quality lances and macrobatteries are strength, damage, crit rating and range, with space, sp and morale all applying regardless. It only makes sense this way but it never explicitly states, potentially leading to confusion.

There are several references to the Stygies-pattern nova cannon. I assume, for now at least, this means Mars pattern. Nowhere key, but in a few of the descriptions.

The voidsunder lance battery. I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to have the same combat stats of a titanforge lance weapon with all the extra power, space and mounting requirements it has. I'd expect it to be at least str 3 if it's echoing the Dauntless armament from BFG, which it seems to want to.

[HappyDaze 10,108]

I would expect that the Voidsunder Lance needs errata.  Strength 3 seems reasonable.

[Little Dave 0]

Except I just realised that strength 3 on a lance isn't really that great given that's a hit with 6 DoS. Add on the mounting restrictions and I'd probably still take a lance battery.

[MILLANDSON 306]

Except that normally batteries have to be placed on the Port or Starboard areas, you can't put them on Prows.

I'd imagine it being a typo, and it should probably be Strength 2, like all the other batteries.

[HappyDaze 10,108]

MILLANDSON said:

Except that normally batteries have to be placed on the Port or Starboard areas, you can't put them on Prows.

Really?  I've seen several Light Cruiser and Cruiser builds with a Lance Battery on the Prow.  Can you quote me something from the rules on this?

[MILLANDSON 306]

I believed it was a clarification posted from someone's "Rules Question" emails to the devs. I've just sent an e-mail to Sam asking both about Lance Batteries, and about any typos with the Voidsunder.

[MILLANDSON 306]

Hey Jordan,

1) Can Lance Batteries only be mounted on the Port/Starboard locations on the ship, making them the lance equivalent to macrobattery broadsides?

No, batteries can be mounted on the prow as well, unless noted otherwise. However, lance batteries cannot be mounted on ships smaller than Light cruisers. Frigates, Raiders, Transports, they can't carry lance batteries. That's in the errata.

 

2) Is there an error with the Voidsunder Lance Battery in Battlefleet Koronus? It's listed as a battery, but only has 1 Strength, and so is basically exactly the same as a single Titanforge Lance Weapon, but is restricted to the Prow slot for ships. I assume it's a typo somewhere, otherwise it's entirely pointless as a weapon (why would anyone take it?).

 

Yeah, you caught my most painful error. I put the Voidsunder in there so that you could make a full on Dauntless Light Cruiser from BFG, then made the mistake of not making it St. 3. It'll get changed in an errata. And yeah, that can be on the prow slot of a light cruiser.

 

Sam Stewart
RPG Designer
Fantasy Flight Games

Seems I just mis-remembered the errata for the batteries

But yea, Voidsunders should be Strength 3.

[HappyDaze 10,108]

It's still going to be **** hard to get the 6 DoS to get all three hits in.  Without a special rule that grants the additional hits with every 2 DoS (so "only" 4 DoS would get you the full three hits), there's still really no good reason to take this over a Titanforge Lance Battery which can also fire to the Port and Starboard.

[guest469 2]

 I assumed you did a separate BS roll for each point of lance Strength

[MILLANDSON 306]

guest469 said:

 I assumed you did a separate BS roll for each point of lance Strength

Nope, Strength works for Lances the same as it does for Macrobatteries, it's the number of hits you can get total (with 3DoS needed for each hit with lances).

 

[guest469 2]

 Ouch, that makes lances even worse compared to batteries. 

[MILLANDSON 306]

Unless you do as most people do, and as you did in Battlefleet Gothic, that being using macrocannons to take down the shields of your opponent, and then firing the lances (which ignore armour). Lances are still plenty strong enough.

[George Labour 2]

I just changed the voidsunder to strength 3 (which turned out to be right) and will be letting it do one hit per 2 DOS. That makes it much more respectable as a weapon.

Also, it seems nova cannons are fairly good at punking Eldar ships since they target a square, not a ship. Which makes sense I guess as you do know there's a ship in that area. PLus the ammo's rare, it's slow to fire, and only a handful of vessels have them. So I guess it all evens out.

Still I think I need to read up on making ships harder to locate so they can do more than one surprise attack before the players hurl everything they have in one direction.

 

 

 

[Veroldindir 0]

George Labour said:

I just changed the voidsunder to strength 3 (which turned out to be right) and will be letting it do one hit per 2 DOS. That makes it much more respectable as a weapon.

Also, it seems nova cannons are fairly good at punking Eldar ships since they target a square, not a ship. Which makes sense I guess as you do know there's a ship in that area. PLus the ammo's rare, it's slow to fire, and only a handful of vessels have them. So I guess it all evens out.

Still I think I need to read up on making ships harder to locate so they can do more than one surprise attack before the players hurl everything they have in one direction.

 

 

 

 

Well you also have to note that the nova cannon can't fire if the ship makes any maneuvers that are challenging (+0) or higher, so in order to fire the nova cannon, the ship has to be sitting still since all maneuvers are +0 in the book. Given how fast eldar ship's are, as long as they outrun the 90 degrees arc of fire, they are generally safe from any nova cannon attack.

[George Labour 2]

There're a couple of talents and or ship upgrades that reduce the difficulties of some manuevers, but yes for the most part you have to line up the shot carefully. Even more so with the eldar. Which might make going last a better option for nova cannon armed ships.

[Veroldindir 0]

I'm not sure if the nova cannon penalties are the base penalty or with modifiers from skills and talents. I would assume it is the base penalty for the maneuver since it's more of the cannon's targetting array not being able to compensate for the rapid change in speed or direction of the ship rather than an easier time for the pilot to maneuver the ship. I suppose that's another question to pose to FFG about.

[Moribund 23]

Veroldindir said:

Well you also have to note that the nova cannon can't fire if the ship makes any maneuvers that are challenging (+0) or higher, so in order to fire the nova cannon, the ship has to be sitting still since all maneuvers are +0 in the book. Given how fast eldar ship's are, as long as they outrun the 90 degrees arc of fire, they are generally safe from any nova cannon attack.

No, the wording is "performs a manoeuver action with a total modifier of greater than Challenging", not Challenging or greater.  Unless you have some penalty to Manoeuver checks, you can perform all Challenging manoeuvers without a problem.

[Moribund 23]

Little Dave said:

I assume the values sets you get to choose from for good and best quality lances and macrobatteries are strength, damage, crit rating and range, with space, sp and morale all applying regardless. It only makes sense this way but it never explicitly states, potentially leading to confusion.

I would think only morale and sp would always apply.  Space is probably one of the available choices (after all it's a choice for Good-quality other components), what makes you think otherwise?

[Little Dave 0]

Space was a mistake, it should be an option. I like the 2 DoS idea, makes it a poor copy of the Archaeotech Starflare, fitting in with the whole technological decay.