Re: Boarding combat

Tom Anderson wrote:

> > Hmmm, how about weighting the other end?  Marines score kills more
> > often than normal crew, but die just as easily.
> 
> i support this approach, as otherwise, the 'take lossess on marines
first,
> crew next' thing doesn't work, as roll of a 4 is a kill against crew
but
> not against marines. you'd get "i'll take that kill on these marines
..
> oh look, it wasn't a kill after all" :).

...which gives the strange effect that any defending marines get no
benefit at all vs attacking sailors (since the '4's will hit the
defending sailors instead), but a pure marine attacking party will get
the bonus. I knew there was something that felt wrong with this
approach :-/

> > So a normal crew will score one kill on a 5, two on a 6.  A marine
will 
> > kill one on a 4-5 and two on a 6.  Or some variation on that theme.
> 
> the thing to do, imho, is to use some mechanism from fighter combat. 
> the most sensible thing seems to be to say that marines are like
normal
> fighters, and crew are like attack fighters, 

A bit too weak IMO - it makes teleporters in particular god-awfully
effective against undamaged light ships (ie, anything too small to
carry a screen). Treating marines like PDS and crew like C1 batteries
in PDS mode (ie, kill 1 on rolls of 5 and 6, re-rolls on 6s) seems to
balance OK, though.

> in that they are not well
> trained at boarding. normal fighters roll a normal beam die, and
attack
> fighters, iirc, roll a beam die and subtract one from the pip count.
i
> could very well be wrong here.

You are. Attack fighters hit other fighters on rolls of 6 only; they
*add* 1 to the dice when attacking ships. However, through that mistake
you arrived at exactly the same odds as I did above - ie, kill 1 on 5
or 6 :-)

Later,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry