Re: Boarding combat

On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Thomas Pope wrote:

> Roger Books wrote:
>
> > Marines should be better at this then your average squid.  I'd say
they
> > would work as heavy fighters, no kills by opponents on a 4.  If you
> > send a mixed force the squids die on 4's and one of the 6's, the jar
> > heads die on 5's and one of the 6's.  You want DC under ship fire
> > navy doods are wonderful things.  You want us to stick our heads out
> > when someone is fireing up close and personal you crazy, why do you
> > think we joined the navy?
> > 
> > It's a little fiddly, any better suggestions?
> 
> 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" :).

> 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, 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.

tom