<![CDATA[Latest posts for the thread "Imperial Navy thought experiment"]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/16.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net Imperial Navy thought experiment TO BE TAKEN AS ALLIES.
Smaller and less loud disclaimer: They're restricted to their own detachment type, can never claim or contest objectives, and cannot be a Primary Detachment, so if you try playing only them you WILL loose on objectives.

It occurred to me the other day that the Imperial Navy aircraft could make a reasonable mini-Codex if we're going to accept that this game is the sort of place where Codexes are released with three or four units for the purpose of Allying with other people. After a quick brainstorming session this is what I've come up with.

Imperial Navy Detachment. You can only use the Navy Codex with this Detachment, you cannot use an Allied detachment or a CAD, and models from an Imperial Navy detachment may never claim or contest objectives. It is an Imperial army for purposes of the Allies matrix and can never be your Primary Detachment. 0-1 HQ, 0-1 Elites, 1-3 Troops, 0-2 Heavy Support, 0-1 Lord of War. I'm also considering a Flying Circus formation that has more Aces but I don't know what I'd have it do.

HQ Choices: Squadron Leader. Must fly a Lightning or a Thunderbolt (the emphasis here is on the fighter pilots), comes with Orders that can be issued only to aircraft in his detachment.
Elites Choices: Ace Pilot. Special veteran Lightning or Thunderbolt pilot.
Troops Choices: Fighter Pilot. Run of the mill Lightning or Thunderbolt pilot.
Heavy Support Choices: Ground Attack. Avenger or Vulture pilot.
Lord of War: Marauder Bomber. Definitely the base variant and the Destroyer, waffling over including the Colossus (a nuke) and the Vigilant (an EWACS plane) from Aeronautica Imperialis.

Now, the big changes beyond price tweaks that I'm not sure about, trying to make planes functional here.

Close Air Support. Half your non-Superheavy planes start the game in Ongoing Reserves, the rest are rolled for as normal. This is to facilitate the use of a heavily-airborne army and make it harder for the dice to completely screw you; I've got precedent in Combat Drop from the Elysian lists.

Rearm. Any non-Superheavy Imperial Navy aircraft in Ongoing Reserves may choose to return to a forward base for a quick repair/ream instead of returning to the table at the start of the turn. The plane remains in Ongoing Reserves, regains one lost Hull Point, removes all damage results, and regains all expended one-use-only weapons and wargear. This is supposed to be a tradeoff between keeping your planes on the table and getting more use out of them when they're on; it would make the planes more durable, make one-use missiles and bombs more valuable, give you more control over what you do with your planes, and in a six-turn game you're getting this exactly with the remain-off-the-table-an-extra-turn limitation. My other thought was to allow a plane to do it once per game without requiring the extra turn tradeoff but that didn't make as much sense with the timeframe involved.

Redundant Armour. This is supposed to replicate the myth of the Flying Fortress and similar improbably durable planes that can keep flying on one engine and half a wing. The first time a Thunderbolt is ever reduced to 0 Hull Points do not remove it from play or roll for the crash template, at the start of the Imperial player's turn roll a die. On a 4+ the Thunderbolt regains one Hull Point and is placed in Ongoing Reserves (where it can limp back to base for repairs as normal). Also note that hitting it with an AP 1 or 2 weapon and rolling Explodes! bypasses this completely. This is supposed to represent the durability of the chassis without pumping its armour values much, I wanted to stick with lower AV for this Codex and stick more other tricks in to help.

Dogfighter. A rule for the Ace Pilot and the Squadron Leader only, this is supposed to represent that an experienced pilot gets better at avoiding fire in addition to just getting BS4. Instead of snap-firing everything after Jinking these guys reduce their BS by half for the turn (note that this means they can still fire blast weapons, though they won't be particularly good at hitting with them).

Squadron Leader. I have a few candidates for the officer's Orders. Unload: Target plane fires all of its weapons past the normal limit. Disengage: Target plane enters Ongoing Reserves immediately (this represents climbing out of the battlefield). Stay With it: Nominate a model in the target plane's front arc, and rotate the plane up to 45 degrees to directly face the target. Hose Them Down: Target plane gains Ignores Cover. Other suggestions would be appreciated.

The Long-Barreled Autocannon. A big fat reason the Lightning is a bad plane, one 72" range autocannon doesn't do a whole lot. Trying to keep the Lightning in its role as an air-to-air plane I think either giving it a shrapnel round that's an Ignores Cover S7/AP4 blast that can be fired at air targets (special airburst rule to override the normal blast rule) or just pump it to S8 would both be ways to make it more useful.

Bombs. They're too expensive on normal planes, and the Marauder is too expensive hauling them. S6/AP4 Large Blasts that require you to get in your target's face to drop them are useful but they aren't worth ten points a shot; they either need a price drop or some kind of boost. Not sure what they'd get if they do, I'd prefer to hold them as they are and drop their price.

Flyer Wargear. Five points for infrared targeting is too much; either give it to the planes default or expand it into a general-purpose auspex that does other things (open to suggestions as to what, reduce the cover save of your target by one is all that's coming to mind right now). Chaff launchers do so little since nobody plays with AA missiles; I propose making them a one-use effect similar to smoke launchers that forces enemies to reroll to hit the Flyer for a turn. Ilum flares are cool but night fighting is so irrelevant to the game that they're not going to do much; the Distinctive Paint Scheme is conceptually cool but I don't like its current implementation. I'd either like to go back to the last iteration where it was a morale save reroll to everyone who could see it at all times automatically or give the planes some benefit against Shaken/Stunned while it's nearby and make it a Leader/Ace-only item.

Relics. I know this is Warhammer but I don't know how silly putting a relic gun on a plane is. Any thoughts on silliness or ideas for relics?

This is the result of the brainstorming session, some of the planes' points values need to be tweaked and there are still questions to be answered but any comments and ideas would be very helpful.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608158.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608158.page GMT Imperial Navy thought experiment
Perhaps if you made it a Supplement, that could work, you could take 0-3 Flyers in addition to your normal forces, but anything else is a bit ridiculous.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608170.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608170.page GMT Imperial Navy thought experiment
 Valkyrie wrote:
Having an army entirely made of Flyers makes most, if not all of your opponent's firepower useless, and any damage they do can simply be mitigated by the "Fly away and magically regenerate everything" effect. There's not much you can really do with this before you start going into Aeronautica rules.

Perhaps if you made it a Supplement, that could work, you could take 0-3 Flyers in addition to your normal forces, but anything else is a bit ridiculous.


If you read the detachment rules at the beginning you might notice that it's not allowed to be your Primary Detachment and it's intended for use with other Imperial armies, not as a list on its own.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The 'fly away and magically regenerate everything' effect gives you one hull point back and costs you two turns of having that plane on the table.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608176.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608176.page GMT Imperial Navy thought experiment all damage results, and re-arms all expended weapons. Considering my above point that very few armies will have enough AA to take on a significant number of Flyers, you'll be losing very few models when you can just fly off and repair yourself.

Forge World already have a publication for including one, maybe two Flyers at the most. Letting you take them in much larger numbers, combined with the special rules you propose, is a bit overkill. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608332.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608332.page GMT Imperial Navy thought experiment
 Valkyrie wrote:
What you left out of your reply is the "Fly away and regenerate everything" also removes all damage results, and re-arms all expended weapons. Considering my above point that very few armies will have enough AA to take on a significant number of Flyers, you'll be losing very few models when you can just fly off and repair yourself.

Forge World already have a publication for including one, maybe two Flyers at the most. Letting you take them in much larger numbers, combined with the special rules you propose, is a bit overkill.


Flyers are already in the game in large numbers. Guard, Necrons, and Space Marines can all have more, tougher, and cheaper planes than I'm proposing with more firepower in normal non-limited-use guns, transport capacity, the power to be Scoring, and any number of other things these planes can't have, all without referencing FW rules at all. I'm trying to take two of the worst Flyers in the game that haven't been changed since the fourth edition Apocalypse book at least and make them viable in the modern game here.

As to 'fly away and regenerate everything' removing all damage results consider that every damage result also removes a hull point and we're talking about planes with two to three hull points here; you get to regenerate one hull point and one or two damage results once on Flyers with no armour value above 11 at the expense of two turns of shooting with their normal guns, and they have to stay alive long enough to leave the table. From my experience running Elysians I predict this being a situational choice that gives options, not an insane game-breaker. Rearming one-shot weapons is an attempt to make them worth taking instead of their current status as a horrendous waste of points.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608381.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608381.page GMT Imperial Navy thought experiment CAD. I also like most of rules you've suggested. I even think the Rearm rule works, but I'd suggest one change: you get your Damage Table effects repaired and your one-shot weapons back, but you do NOT get a Hull Point back -- that requires a lot more time in maintenance than fixing a gun, and it does potentially make planes unkillable.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608404.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608404.page GMT Imperial Navy thought experiment
 SisterSydney wrote:
I like the idea of an Imperial Navy detachment as opposed to cramming all those lovely Forgeworld fliers into a regular CAD. I also like most of rules you've suggested. I even think the Rearm rule works, but I'd suggest one change: you get your Damage Table effects repaired and your one-shot weapons back, but you do NOT get a Hull Point back -- that requires a lot more time in maintenance than fixing a gun, and it does potentially make planes unkillable.


Point taken. It's still restricted to non-superheavies on the off chance I do end up writing rules for a Marauder Colossus (vortex nuke from Aeronautica Imperialis, for those who don't know of it), it'll still be a time sink, and it's still one-use-per-plane, and you don't get a hull point back.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608413.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608413.page GMT Imperial Navy thought experiment
 Valkyrie wrote:
Having an army entirely made of Flyers makes most, if not all of your opponent's firepower useless...


To be fair, since this is a homebrew thang, you could only use it with an opponent's permission, and as a practical matter you'd do best telling your opponent well in advance so they could tailor their list a bit.

 Valkyrie wrote:
Perhaps if you made it a Supplement, that could work, you could take 0-3 Flyers in addition to your normal forces, but anything else is a bit ridiculous.


I do take this point more to heart. It seems odd to have various kinds of fliers categorized as "troops." Perhaps the FOC should be more like HQ (aces), Elite (rare crazy aircraft), Fast Attack (most things), Heavy Support (bombers and heavy ground attack), and Lords of War (FLYING FORTRESS OF DOOM).]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608612.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/636600/7608612.page GMT