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Bren
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 Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 11:23 pm Post subject: FLAK |
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This topic was inspired by ideas chiefly put forth by atgxtg.
Flak in Star Wars
This will summarize some ideas that have been on several other threads as well as summarize some info from the Star Wars movies and novels. Please note this is a long post. Sometimes I am long winded.  If you really can’t deal with that, please click on another thread.
OK first a quote from the novel, Revenge of the Sith - Chapter 1
| RotS Chap 1 wrote: | | Antifighter flak flashed on all sides. Even louder than the clatter of shrapnel and the snarl of sublight drives, his cockpit hummed and rang with near hits from the turbolaser fire of the capital ships crowding space around him. Sometimes his whirling spinning dive through the cloud of battle skimmed bursts so closely that the energy-scatter would slam his starfighter hard enough to bounce his head off the support of his pilot’s chair. |
Good news – according to canon, flak exists in Star Wars.
Bad news - according to canon it appears that flak is shrapnel which, by contemporary definition, is the fragments thrown out from an exploding bomb or shell. Now I didn’t see that the novel text ever specified that the flak is coming from the ground, but that is the traditional meaning of flak. And in the movie one can clearly see flashes from the ground that look like the source of the flak bursts. Now why Coruscant would use projectile launchers at the bottom of its gravity well to defend against ships in space when Star Wars clearly has energy weapons that can reach from ground to orbit – well you’ve got me and why Coruscant is more or less indiscriminately lobbing shrapnel at both Republic and Separatist fighters and capital ships alike – again I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that Star Wars is Space Opera and often it doesn’t have consistent, sensible tactics. So let’s move on. According to canon, flak appears to be a ground to air/space effect of shrapnel from exploding shells exactly like WWI Archie or WWII flak on earth. Fair enough, but despite the films, not very Star Warsy in tone. Nor does it get me what I want, which is a flak-like effect from existing capital ships.
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OK now some history of where this idea started. atgxtg came up with some rules on flak from capital ships.
| atgxtg wrote: | | What I did was eliminate all the shots from the Captail ship with a FlaK rating, based on skill, fire control, and number of guns. Starfighters must make a piloting roll to dodge the FlaK or thet get hit. Failing by 5+ means hit twice, 10+ - 3 times, and so on. The rule has really helped to keep starfighter-captial ship fights from bogging down. |
This seemed like an interesting idea since it put success or failure in the PC starfighter pilot’s hands and avoided a bunch of NPC capital ship gunnery rolls. This seems like a win-win since it reduces dice rolling of NPCs which saves time and it puts the PCs fate squarely in the players hands.
What I Want (note if you don’t want any of this, you may want to save time and aggravation and visit another thread).
I want capital ships to have three means of warding off starfighters.
(1) Other starfighters – this is adequately covered with existing rules; hence I will not address this here.
(2) Point Defense – which consists of starfighter scale lasers or turbolasers mounted on capital scale ships. This is something that existed for a few ships in the WEG design, e.g. the Lancer Frigate, but was missing on many ships, e.g. Imperial Star Destroyers. It appears that WOTC changed this for many ship types. Tactically this seems an improvement, whether it is more or less consistent with the films, I will not address here.
(3) Flak – which for this purpose I define as fire predominantly from capital scale vessels designed to deter close assault by starfighters. Essentially this is an attempt to either keep starfighters away from capital vessels or to attrition the starfighters sufficiently so that they no longer pose a significant threat to the capital scale vessels.
Underlying assumption A – even without linked, massed concussion missiles or proton torpedoes, a group of starfighters may be able to closely strafe a capital ship to gradually knock out weapons, shields, and engines. This may be done by targeting the capital scale weapons rather than the ship as a whole, by combined fire rules, or by sufficient shots that lucky dice rolls eventually cause a hit.
Underlying assumption B – while starfighter scale weapons may damage or cripple a capital scale vessel they are not powerful enough to destroy a large capital scale vessel. See my thread on Alternate Ship Damage http://www.rancorpit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3485 for a more detailed discussion of this point.
Now, since I want flak to originate not just from a planet surface but also from large capital ships, then flak can’t just be shrapnel from exploding shells as that would contradict virtually every ship design I have ever seen in Star Wars. So, being as I care about what I care about, I will ignore the movie which appears to have most or all of the shots originate from the surface and ignore the text that says that flak is shrapnel and assume flak means some sort of energy burst or series of blaster shots. To get the effect I want (which is similar to WWI Archie or WWII flak) from the existing capital ship designs which, with the exception of capital-scale missiles and torpedoes, consists almost exclusively of energy weapons, I will assume that there is a way to get flak like bursts with Star Wars energy weapons. Whether this is a rapid sequence of low powered bursts from a large weapon, an ability to cause lower damage, area effect energy explosions, or some other effect I leave as an exercise for the reader.
What I Really Want
(1) I want to avoid having NPCs make a lot of rolls with capital scale weapons to target incoming Starfighters.
(2) I want the PCs to roll to avoid the antistarfighter defense of the capital ship and, depending how strong the defense is and how well the PC starfighter pilot rolls, determine what damage, if any, the incoming starfighter sustains.
(3) In addition, I want good pilots in maneuverable ships to take less damage (on average) than poor pilots in unmaneuverable ships.
(4) I want a system that can (sometimes) generate gradually accumulating damage to starfighters rather than an all or nothing situation of total miss or instant destruction from capital scale damage.
Here is How I See This Working
(1) Calculate the capital ships antistarfighter defense or Flak Value (FV). This sets what is in effect a terrain difficulty.
(2) Have any starfighter pilot that is closing roll against the FV.
(3) If they roll well, they take no damage. If they roll less well, they take a variable amount of damage based on how much below the FV they rolled. For every X points they rolled below the FV, they take 1D starfighter scale damage.
Examples of What Effect I Want
For a typical Flak Value (FV) I expect something like the following.
(i) Great pilots in maneuverable ships take no damage.
(ii) Good pilots take 1D to 2D of damage. For an X-wing or Y-wing this degrades or may knock down the shield but won’t do any damage.
(iii) Average pilots take around 4D damage. For an X-wing or Y-wing this may mean controls are ionized or if the pilot is unlucky the ship may take light damage.
(iv) Poor pilots take 6D damage. An X-wing or Y-wing will likely take light damage or if unlucky may take heavy damage or worse.
(v) Unskilled pilots take 9D+ damage. This is equivalent to a capital scale hit and is likely to cause severe damage or even destroy the starfighter.
(vi) Unlucky, unskilled pilots take 12D+ damage and immediately turn into a fireball.
Note that a pilot should move up or down a stage if they are lucky or unlucky with their rolls or based on being in ships of superior or inferior maneuverability.
Determining Flak Value (FV)
How to determine the flak or terrain difficulty for a given capital ship? This should relate to the number of guns devoted to antistarfighter defense, the accuracy of the gunners and their guns’ fire control, and possibly how much damage the guns do. Also perhaps there may be a maximum number for damage that can be inflicted which would probably relate to the maximum damage that the guns can do.
Here is what atgxtg, who came up with the Flak Value idea had to say:
| atgxtg wrote: | Subtract 6D for scaling (point-defense/starfighter scale weapons don't have that problem). This is the basic Flak Value.
Option: If you want some randomization. Keep the wild die or even two dice and roll a flak value each round.
• Apply any combined fire bonus (whichever method you prefer. I think I like the +1D per doubling rule best) to the Flak value for multiple guns firing at the same ship. Usually I just divide the attacks equally among the targets, but sometimes it makes sense to concentrate on specific ships (like ignoring the A-Wings and concentrating on the ships with torps).
The ship can't normally attack more fighters than guns that threaten the fire arc. If you want to threaten more ships, you can attack twice as many ships by reducing the Flak Value by 4. |
Question: Does this suggestion work for the FV?
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How Do We Determine the Damage Inflicted?
Mechanism for damage– for each X points that a pilot rolls below the FV, the pilot’s ship takes 1D damage.
Question: What should X be? |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 12:41 am Post subject: |
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Looks like a LOT of working out, and with skill levels being variable, having only the ONE roll (pcs in their ships) and not the gunners seems to neuter even having them with a skill value..
My Suggestion.
FV
Ave the Gunnery + Fire control + 6 per weapon being used.
This sets the area Flac Value
Incomming ships need to roll piloting (NOT A DODGE, but their standard Maneuvering roll for the round) to make it through.
Each 4 points (or fraction thereof) like with wounds, gives 1d of damage the ship takes, up to a max of the weapons output.
EG
Ship U-Bak has 7 Flak emplacements, 2 each side, 2 foward and 1 in the rear. They give 2d fire control and have 5d max damage.
A trio of PCs in their modified Ywings is trying to close to straife them.
Each NPC Gunner has 5d+2 gunnery (ave 19.5), and the FC of the guns are 2d (ave 7). If each gun 'interdicts a zone around the ship, they set up a Flak value of 27 (rounded up). 33.
Each PC needs to make a piloting roll to avoid them while closing in.
Say PC 1 rolls a 34 (he makes it)
PC 2 rolls poorly and gets a 22 (10 less, so 3d damage)
while PC 3 screws the pooch and gets a 13 (20 less for 5d damage).
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Bren
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 9:39 am Post subject: |
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Thanks garhkal! 
| garhkal wrote: | | Looks like a LOT of working out... |
I don't know, it kind of looks like you just worked out a version. And I agree that the gunnery skill needs to figure in. That was the intent in atgxtg's earlier post and I believe I mentioned it in my top post, though I certainly understand if it was missed amidst all the verbiage.
(1) I prefer to use powers of 2 for handling multiple weapons adding in rather than a flat +6. So each power of 2 more guns adds +1D. So 2 guns = +1D, 4 guns = +2D, 8 guns = +3D, etc. It makes it easier for me to calculate and it keeps the numbers from getting rediculously high if all the guns in one arc of an ISDII are being fired for flak.
(2) I'd prefer to calculate in Ds rather than average rolls. So in your example the forward and rear arcs get 7D+2 and the starboard and port arcs get 8D+2. That way I can roll for each side or arc and get a different number for the flak. So in your example if the 3 PCs came in from different sides they might end up with a different FVs depending on whether the FV rolled was high or low. In addition in a long battle I can re-roll if I want and get a different FV. But your way works fine if you want less randomness in your world. Also flat bonuses will make it easier to decrease the FV as guns are disabled on the source ship.
| Quote: | | Each 4 points (or fraction thereof) like with wounds, gives 1d of damage the ship takes, up to a max of the weapons output. |
(3) It would be easier to include pips in the calculation if it was 1D per 3 points below the FV rather than 1D per 4 points, but that may deal out too much damage. 
(4) I like the cap on damage based on max weapon output. That seems simple and kind of hard to argue with. But if we allow faster fire with lower powered shots from capital ships, e.g. switch to starfighter scale for damage and chance to hit, I would assume that would lower the max damage then to starfighter scale.
EXAMPLE
A squadron of X-wings are closing on the port side of an ISD-I which chooses to fire all its 5D capital scale turbolasers for flak. The gunnery is 4D+2, the firecontrol is 4D, and there are 20 turbolasers on the port side. So FV is 12D+2 = 4D+2+4D+4D (20 ~ 2^4)
Option 1: Fire for capital scale effect - so we need to apply the 6D scaling factor which reduces the FV to 6D+2 but the guns can do up to 11D starfighter scale damage.
Option 2: Fire for starfighter scale effectt - so no reduction in FV but the guns can only do 5D starfighter scale damage.
Here is a second problem. the turbolasers cannot blanket all of space in a firing arc. Therefore they must be aiming in the general direction of the incoming fighter(s). We have not considered the fact that there are 12 X-wings as targets. This should probably lower the effective FV for each X-wing.
(4) Reduce the FV based on number of ships incoming. Use the same doubling formula. So 12 X-wings is about 3D+1 decrease. So now we have for our two options:
Option 1: Fire for capital scale effect - so we need to apply the 6D scaling factor plus the 3D+1 decrease for number of attackers, which reduces the FV to 3D+1 and the guns can do up to 11D starfighter scale damage.
Option 2: Fire for starfighter scale effectt - so no reduction in FV for scale but a 3D+1 reduction for number of attackers so the FV = 9D+1 but the guns can only do 5D starfighter scale damage.
If every three points below the FV = 1D of damage, I think I like option 2 and it seems fairly simple.
I'd like to get some more input before writing something up though. Comments? Thoughts? |
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ZzaphodD
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 10:20 am Post subject: |
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You dont really need to use the actual gunnery skill, but can establish the general experience of the crew handling the starfighter defences (I dont like the name 'flak'). Adjust the SDV (Starfighter Defence Value) with between -2 for rookie crews to +2 for crack veterans (go with the principle here, actual numbers just from the top of my head).
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Bren
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 10:34 am Post subject: |
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| ZzaphodD wrote: | | You dont really need to use the actual gunnery skill, but can establish the general experience of the crew handling the starfighter defences (I dont like the name 'flak'). Adjust the SDV (Starfighter Defence Value) with between -2 for rookie crews to +2 for crack veterans (go with the principle here, actual numbers just from the top of my head). |
SDV is fine too and actually more accurate for what I am proposing. Although as I found while reading RotS flak is canon - in fact if you look closely in the movie it appears that Coruscant has canon flak cannons! 
The WEG ship stats include a crew gunnery skill so it's no trouble to factor that in. Of course as you point out, modifying it up or down for veteran or rookiee crews makes sense as well. |
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ZzaphodD
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | ZzaphodD wrote: | | You dont really need to use the actual gunnery skill, but can establish the general experience of the crew handling the starfighter defences (I dont like the name 'flak'). Adjust the SDV (Starfighter Defence Value) with between -2 for rookie crews to +2 for crack veterans (go with the principle here, actual numbers just from the top of my head). |
SDV is fine too and actually more accurate for what I am proposing. Although as I found while reading RotS flak is canon - in fact if you look closely in the movie it appears that Coruscant has canon flak cannons!
The WEG ship stats include a crew gunnery skill so it's no trouble to factor that in. Of course as you point out, modifying it up or down for veteran or rookiee crews makes sense as well. |
And you can make a simple generalization.
Starship gunnery:
2D: Untrained - SDV -2
3D: Inexperienced - SDV -1
4D: Average - SDV 0
5D: Experienced - SDV +1
6D: Veteran - SDV +2
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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Going back to my source for this....
What if we eliminate the damage roll, and instead say the damage roll is equal to the difference between the FlaK Value and the piloting roll.
So if you fail the roll by 10 you have to roll against 10 points o damage.
Captial Scale Ships could use 2x the difference. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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That doesn't give any weight though to using heavier damage weapons..
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Gamer
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 6:38 pm Post subject: |
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Couldn't you just have weapon modifiers to fix that.
Say a 40mm could be a straight roll with this example | Quote: | | So if you fail the roll by 10 you have to roll against 10 points o damage. |
Compared to a 120mm that adds more dice or what ever. |
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Bren
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: | What if we eliminate the damage roll, and instead say the damage roll is equal to the difference between the FlaK Value and the piloting roll.
So if you fail the roll by 10 you have to roll against 10 points o damage.
Captial Scale Ships could use 2x the difference. |
You could. It would match up with the suggestion to calculate in points that garhkal made. Personally I like calculating in Dice instead of points and since I calculate in dice to deal with combined action/numbers anyway I am more inclinded to stick with dice. So 1D for every 3 points you fail by, but since 9 points = 3D ~ 10.5 that's actually pretty close to your suggestion. As long as the rest of the math works out, swapping dice for set points shouldn't be a rule breaker so we ought to continue to discuss and progress this idea and just leave the notion of dice or points up for grabs. What say?
Separate question, I don't understand what you mean by Capital Scale Ships could use 2x the difference. |
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vanir
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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Nice. I'm going to ad hoc some FlaK ideas in our game.
We did something similar for scaling explosive damage from large energy weapon mountings so that blaster artillery and orbital bombardment had some character scale effects when a PC party is running around in power armour in a city that's being bombarded by Imperials.
Same sort of thing, artillery in action should be devastating and you shouldn't need to be specifically targeted by a Star Destroyer in orbit to get blown to bits by its bombardment.
So we did a sort of area effect thing, blast radius was proportionate to the scale/damage rating of energy-artillery piece. Basically a man sized character doesn't want to be anywhere near the point of impact from a Star Destroyer's turbolaser during an orbital bombardment.
Along similar lines, FlaK is an application of artillery fire rather than lead and shoot direct hits. Off the top of my head it comes down more to starfighter tactics than skill to actually hit individual craft, a face off between fleet commanders and a scene section rather than a combat round.
Because FlaK doesn't try to hit individual aircraft, that's not how it works (there is no way you're going to directly hit a B-17 flying at 400mph TAS at 8km altitude with a 7-ton 88 on purpose, you don't bother trying and that's not how FlaK is used).
FlaK is about forming grids of dangerous airspace which enemy air fleets fly into and get decimated.
It's about smartly choosing areas of airspace in which to place overlapped crossfire of exploding area of effect munitions.
So that's one thing. I'll have to think some on this for how I'd apply it in our game. But one of our Players has a starfighter character with a Y-Wing so it will become important, since he doesn't like Imperials and is likely to attack even a Star Destroyer thinking he can take down the entire TIE Wing...thing is he might. It's been done before in our campaigns, and I had to get real creative as a GM to control that.
FlaK sounds like a way to do this plausibly.
First idea (off the top of my head): what about varied loadouts. Turbolasers are called turbolasers because their power distribution system and fire control allows for operator selected proportions of tibanna gas injection and energy pulse, to vary either accuracy or area of effect blast radius.
So when you "fire for effect" you use full fire control and target specific points for maximum accuracy. When you "lay a spread" the computer changes gas/energy proportions to an area effect blast radius at the cost of fire control, this system uses tactics/command rolls rather than skill/fire control in order to lay an area of dangerous airspace (or ground bombardment).
hmm, dunno, still thinking... |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 6:13 pm Post subject: |
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Sounds like Tactics might make an important roll here... to best define the area to deny, and to plan routes through..
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vanir
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 8:11 am Post subject: |
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Tactics is definitely what I'm leaning towards. Besides we need more ways to creatively use the tactics skill (and specialisations) in game, during actual combat rounds.
One way we ruled to use tactics was substituting the Perception roll for initiative in starship combat at sensor range. Anything outside 2-5 spaces for a starfighter sized craft, within that is visual but you have to shoot over open sights to fight that way and lose fire control...but fire control isn't a sure thing in our game. It represents "locking up" an enemy vessel with a successful sensors roll and winning the electronic warfare phase at BVR. But when you're talking 6-12D skills plus command/coordination combined actions, another 1-3D in fire control isn't that big a deal and NPCs get the same penalties.
But we're always looking for applicable combat round mechanics for the tactics skill. FlaK and denying airspace sounds like a real good one. |
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 10:24 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | That doesn't give any weight though to using heavier damage weapons.. |
Yeah. A fix would be to give the FlaK a base damage and an add.
FOr instance, if we say you need to beat the foe by 10 to get a "solid" hit to get full damage, you'd take 10/3D off the base damage. |
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 10:29 am Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: |
You could. It would match up with the suggestion to calculate in points that garhkal made. Personally I like calculating in Dice instead of points and since I calculate in dice to deal with combined action/numbers anyway I am more inclinded to stick with dice. So 1D for every 3 points you fail by, but since 9 points = 3D ~ 10.5 that's actually pretty close to your suggestion. As long as the rest of the math works out, swapping dice for set points shouldn't be a rule breaker so we ought to continue to discuss and progress this idea and just leave the notion of dice or points up for grabs. What say? |
I like dice, too. But that does opening the door for a "minor" hit doing fantastic damage. Remember the Body/Hull soak roll will randomze the results anyway. But Dice are cool, too.
Or +5 damage per SL? Oops, I wandering.
| Quote: |
Separate question, I don't understand what you mean by Capital Scale Ships could use 2x the difference. |
I mean twice the damage. For example, let's say the FlaK value is 16, and the pilot rolls a 10. 16-10 is 6, so that would be 6 points (or 2D) of damage, normally. But if a captial scale ship used 2x the difference, it could do 12 points (or 4D), reflecting the more powerful guns.
This would allow the big guns to be more lethal, but not the "autokill" of the RAW. |
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