• Registered: 2007-01-13
  • Posts: 33

Topic: Nova: Confusion on BAS and Attack Dice

OK, apologies if this has been gone over before, I did try searching the forum but didn't get very far and maybe I'm just overthinking this, but I'm starting to do some work in setting up my own designs (B5 conversion) in the drydock and I'm not quite "getting" BAS and/or Attack Dice (as they seem to be related).

First, let me be sure I correctly understand some of the terms and concepts:

A "Battery" is collectively all of the weapons of the same type, regardless of their facing, on any given ship.

A "Bank" is one particular weapon in the battery - it may or may not share the same or similar facings with other weapons in the battery.

Each bank can be fired independently of the others in its battery, at different targets, or not at all depending on the situation and the wishes of the player.

Good so far?

OK, if all of that is correct:

Is the starting value of the "Attack Dice" row referring to the Battery as a whole, or to each individual bank within the battery?

The original description of Attack Dice on p. 6 seems to imply that it refers to the Battery as a whole, but the example on p. 13 seems to imply that it refers to each Bank separately (because one Bank firing is starting with the full value).

How does this interact with "BAS" from the Drydock?

I'd assume that to mean the base value for each Bank, because in designing a ship with two identical weapons in the same arc (for reference, I am trying to build a conversion for the Narn G'Quan heavy cruiser from Babylon 5) the Attack Dice value that shows up in the print-out is double the value that I put in for BAS on the main screen.

This also seems to imply that "Attack Dice" does refer to the Battery as a whole (because it's the combined BAS from all of the banks in the battery).

If this is the case, though, how is it resolved when you fire only one of your weapons from your Battery, or if they're fired at multiple targets?

A fairly logical assumption would be that you would start as a fraction of the value (1/2 in this case as 1/2 of the total Battery is firing). In this case, there are only two of this particular weapon so this is fairly simple and easy, but it seems like it could get unnecessarily complicated and gamey* if there are many different weapons of the same type all firing into different arcs and there is no mention in the rules (that I have found) of starting with a fractional value if you split your fire, or if firing only a part of the battery.

  • Registered: 2007-01-13
  • Posts: 33

Re: Nova: Confusion on BAS and Attack Dice

Never mind - starting to make sense of this - the modifiers to handle each weapon are built into the Arc Modifier.

:oops:

Figures, I stare at this thing for hours trying to make sense of it and then it all clicks right after making a long post asking about it.

  • Registered: 2010-06-29
  • Posts: 82

Re: Nova: Confusion on BAS and Attack Dice

Yerr the cardboard cutout syndrome. Its the process of writing it all down that somehow makes it so much clearer. I once worked on my own doing very technical things with computers, others were around just not techinical. If I got stuck I would pick a someone in the office and explain my problem, at some point I would stop having solved it. All you need is a cardboard cutout to explain it to big_smile .

  • Registered: 2022-11-16
  • Posts: 516

Re: Nova: Confusion on BAS and Attack Dice

It sounds like you're starting to get it figured out, and it's been a few months since I've designed any ships, but I thought I'd weigh in with a tip or two.

RedShark92 wrote:

A "Battery" is collectively all of the weapons of the same type, regardless of their facing, on any given ship.
A "Bank" is one particular weapon in the battery - it may or may not share the same or similar facings with other weapons in the battery.
Each bank can be fired independently of the others in its battery, at different targets, or not at all depending on the situation and the wishes of the player.

Check, check and check.
Keep in mind, though, that per the design rules you're technically not supposed to have multiple identical weapon banks.
If you want to be able to fire into the same arc multiple times, then I believe the rules intent is to have a lot of dice, and then use the rules for splitting fire.
During playtesting, we did design ships that used multiple identical firing arcs, and it certainly didn't break anything.
For example, if you want to use a [TT][TT][TT], it works.

RedShark92 wrote:

Is the starting value of the "Attack Dice" row referring to the Battery as a whole, or to each individual bank within the battery?

The battery as a whole.
Each weapon bank in that battery may then have firing arc mods to reduce the starting dice.
The firing arc mods may be the same, or may all be different.

RedShark92 wrote:

If this is the case, though, how is it resolved when you fire only one of your weapons from your Battery, or if they're fired at multiple targets?

Each bank may fire at a different target, and each bank may also have its dice split up to fire at different targets.
Note that it's probably simpler to not split weapon bank fire.

My take for weapon battery/bank design is the following, and certainly take this with a grain of salt:  smile

* Always set the BAS set at 1.
* Decide how many starting dice you'd like the battery to have.
* Decide how many banks you'd like the battery to have, and what firing arcs to assign them.
* Decide what mods to assign to those banks, which will simply be a reduction from the starting dice of the battery.

Note that you're not really supposed to duplicate banks in the same battery, but I don't believe it affects the point costing, and it certanly doesn't affect game play if you do.

EXAMPLE:
Main Beam [FF][FP2][FS2], 10 dice
This means, assuming no other mods, that the beam can fire three times, and will have 10 dice in the FF arc, and 5 dice in each of the FP and FS arcs (because of the two column shift).

Hopefully the above helps.

Kevin

  • Registered: 2009-04-22
  • Posts: 34

Re: Nova: Confusion on BAS and Attack Dice

If this is the case, though, how is it resolved when you fire only one of your weapons from your Battery, or if they're fired at multiple targets?

In this case you would be using the splitting fire rules that are in the options section of the book.

  • Registered: 2005-03-29
  • Posts: 859

Re: Nova: Confusion on BAS and Attack Dice

underling wrote:

Keep in mind, though, that per the design rules you're technically not supposed to have multiple identical weapon banks.
If you want to be able to fire into the same arc multiple times, then I believe the rules intent is to have a lot of dice, and then use the rules for splitting fire.
During playtesting, we did design ships that used multiple identical firing arcs, and it certainly didn't break anything.
For example, if you want to use a [TT][TT][TT], it works.

snippage

My take for weapon battery/bank design is the following, and certainly take this with a grain of salt:  smile

* Always set the BAS set at 1.
* Decide how many starting dice you'd like the battery to have.
* Decide how many banks you'd like the battery to have, and what firing arcs to assign them.
* Decide what mods to assign to those banks, which will simply be a reduction from the starting dice of the battery.

Note that you're not really supposed to duplicate banks in the same battery, but I don't believe it affects the point costing, and it certanly doesn't affect game play if you do.

Hopefully the above helps.

Kevin

Where does it say that? I've skimmed through the design rules and it doesn't say that, and I'm now a bit concerned about some of my designs... :?

  • Registered: 2022-11-16
  • Posts: 516

Re: Nova: Confusion on BAS and Attack Dice

murtalianconfederacy wrote:
underling wrote:

Keep in mind, though, that per the design rules you're technically not supposed to have multiple identical weapon banks.
If you want to be able to fire into the same arc multiple times, then I believe the rules intent is to have a lot of dice, and then use the rules for splitting fire.
During playtesting, we did design ships that used multiple identical firing arcs, and it certainly didn't break anything.
For example, if you want to use a [TT][TT][TT], it works.
snippage
My take for weapon battery/bank design is the following, and certainly take this with a grain of salt:  smile
* Always set the BAS set at 1.
* Decide how many starting dice you'd like the battery to have.
* Decide how many banks you'd like the battery to have, and what firing arcs to assign them.
* Decide what mods to assign to those banks, which will simply be a reduction from the starting dice of the battery.
Note that you're not really supposed to duplicate banks in the same battery, but I don't believe it affects the point costing, and it certanly doesn't affect game play if you do.
Hopefully the above helps.
Kevin

Where does it say that? I've skimmed through the design rules and it doesn't say that, and I'm now a bit concerned about some of my designs... :?

I don't know if this is actually stated in the rules, or if it's something that was said to me verbally by Dan.
But I got the impression that his intent was to not allow multiple identical banks.

My understanding is he'd rather see this: [TT] (12 dice)
Than this: [TT][TT][TT] (4 dice each)

I prefer the multiple bank method, as it's less fiddly, and easier to understand.
Instead of having to split the dice from a bank, you simply use multiple banks at full strength.

I haven't looked at the numbers yet, but it may be slightly more efficient (either cost wise or dice wise) to run multiple smaller banks than one large bank and split the dice. When we first started playtesting we did have a lot of ship designs that used multiple identical arcs, and it played just fine.
My guess is that, regardless of intent, the point costing and game play would be the same, or nearly the same, using either method.
Maybe Dan can weigh in on this one.

Kevin