House rules

[m1a1dat]

I have been seeing in many posts here about groups using house rules. So i was wondering what people use, have tried, what works, what didn't work and so on. To me using to many or drasticly different house rules (such as in this topic http://www.starfleetgames.com/federatio ... php?t=2298 ) alter the game way to much; and you wont be able to play outside your group or in tournaments. And may turn away existing players from your group since they want to play Fed Com and not this strange new game your group is playing. Being an old SFB player there are many things i miss from that and would like to try some house rules/borders of madness to bring in more from that.

One thing we are thinking about trying out now is something that comes from SFB. That you can't do more movement things (being speed + evasive/HET) than you have warp for. Basically a (undamaged) ship can not HET nor start evasive manuevers in an impulse that it accelerated to speed 24+1. A ship that was already doing evasive manuevers at speed 24 could still accelerate though, since in SFB impulse power could be used for evasive maneuvering. Maybe something like this could be put in borders of madness.

What is your group doing

[Hod K'el]

The only House Rule we use is the frame damage option that is allowed by the rules. You know, primary damage (ain't got), secondary damage (ain't got), frame. We don't skip damage. Our thinking is that damage is going to occur and if the item that was supposed to be damaged is already damaged, then that point of damage must be taking out the frame and thus weakening the ship so that it has a harder time to stay together than it otherwise would if you skip that damge and apply it to something else.

If your M1A1 takes a hit on the turret and you have reinforced armor that negates the damage, but is itself blown away, then you get hit in the exact same location, are you going to apply that damage somewhere else? Stupid thinking, uh? The same thinking can be applied to the engine gets hit with shot #1, the transmission gets hit with shot #2, then the engine gets hit with shot #3, but it has been hit already so we apply the damage to the track. Again, stupid thinking!

I hope this explains why we [Battlegroup Acadiana] play it the way we do.

[Scoutdad]

Since we have access to SFB, if we want complete and detailed - we play Fed Comm as written... No House Rules, no modifications.

This also helps us teach new-comers the correct wat to play as we do not have to "un-learn" house rules... and when we Demo games - we're demo'ing what comes in the box, not our version of what should be in the box.

YMMV.

[Requete]

m1a1dat, I like your avatar.

If your M1A1 takes a hit on the turret and you have reinforced armor that negates the damage, but is itself blown away, then you get hit in the exact same location, are you going to apply that damage somewhere else? Stupid thinking, uh? The same thinking can be applied to the engine gets hit with shot #1, the transmission gets hit with shot #2, then the engine gets hit with shot #3, but it has been hit already so we apply the damage to the track. Again, stupid thinking!

Whatever floats yer, er, starship. Though I would point out that I think the DAC is supposed to be abstract... there are more than 6 possible angles from which a ship may be struck. So I don't think that it means that the damage (energy) is entering the superstructure in a coherent mass that punches through, say a drone rack and then hits a lab, or whatever.

Though the conjunction of the OP's cool avatar and the idea about the DAC reminds me of the Twilight: 2000 vehicle damage tables. "So your 120mm APFSDSDU hits for 420 points on his front glacis, halve the armor, that's 195 in... hits the driver (sorry, Ivan), the commander (sorry, Boris), the radio (didn't work anyway), the stores (there goes the vodka) then the ammo... boom." Of course, then you had to wait around for a month making enough wood alcohol to move your tank another 2 klicks.

I play FedCom with a few different folks. In the big group (as many as 8 players... I think we have 10 folks in theory but they don't all show up at the same time) we don't use 3C8, "Shield Burn Through". I like the rule just fine but some folks there really hate it. I don't miss it or anything.

[djdood]

Damage to starships doesn't really match any modern real-world equivalents all that well. To me, this makes sense, as the energies involved are mind-bogglingly huge. The damage does reflect what was seen on TV though.

The most important (and most vulnerable) thing on a starship is its energy generation systems and the distribution network for that energy.

When a hit happens, it is all to easy for an overload or containment-disruption in that distribution network to disable unrelated systems, sometimes located in a completely different part of the ship (high voltage electricity and high-energy plasma are unpredictable and weird like that).

On TV this was depicted by consoles on the bridge going up in a shower of sparks (even when it was the engines at the other end of the ship that were hit), etc. Starships distribute damage in their own unique way.

[Kahuna]

I'm all about keeping the game quick and simple. As such, I do a few things that are house rules to help this along.

I play the frame damage the same way as Hod. It helps me to keep track of how much damage has been recorded, meaning each cycle on the DAC will always be 10 points damage until the ship blows or there's no more damage points to allocate. There could be 36 points of internal damage and I know I will always be 3 cycles on the DAC and will always end on the 6th column of the DAC.

When we use the ISC and their PPD's, I saw a rules option in these forums that I really liked that further simplified that weapon. It's the one that takes a missed roll and lessens the pulses that strikes your target by the amount missed on the "to hit" roll.

One more thing I do, sometimes, is an all or nothing with my like weapons. The other night I did a fleet action with 5 Klingon ships on my side and 6 Gorn ships on the other. When my C10 lined up for a strike against the Gorn BC, I decided I did not want to roll 9 (I don't remember the exact number but I think it was 9) PH1's. So, I rolled one die for all 9 and then a separate one die for all 6 disruptors. This allowed me to quickly calculate the damage done at that range. Yeah, it messes with the averages, but I like things simple and I'm probably a touch lazy.

The last house rule that comes to mind is regarding the Hydran Stingers. Once more, I like things simple. So the Hydran player must form his Stingers into "flights" of 3 Stingers. If he only has two or four, then flights of 2 stingers each. The flights move together and fire together. When they take damage, the same one is always hit until destroyed. This helps me cut down the clutter on the map and helps keep track of where those pesky fighters are at.

Mostly though, I keep the game pretty pure. Nothing dramatic or game altering and nothing that brings it closer to SFB. As Scoutdad pointed out, if you would like SFB, it's right over there and is an excellent detail oriented game.

[malleman]

The only House Rule that we have is NO DRINKS on the table. We do have our etiquette. Sometimes we will try something that is in SFB, but not in FC such as mines, or fighters (BOM). We have kicked some other ideas around, but we normally try to play the correct rules, except with the short DAC (Frame Damage instead of Next).

[Dan Ibekwe]

I've threatened to use a few specific houserules, but generally I play RAW.

The only added rules I've messed around with are the SFB Module M advanced marines rules.

[Mike]

Hmmm... I kinda like the one about rolling all the same weapons in a volley with one die roll. That is probably the least invasive house rule I've seen yet.

[JEGoodrich]

My GURPS Prime Directive group uses FedCom for the battles, but we've integrated a lot of the SFB rules into the battles. We've used fighters (organized as flights with special rules), commander's options to modify the ships (show me a PC group that doesn't want to modify any ship they have), simple EW rules (ship-to-ship cancels out, but scouts and bases are tough), mines (running over your own t-bomb to destroy a pack of drones was done once), the advanced ground combat rules, and Klingon mutiny to name a few items.

Our system is the illegitimate offspring of SFB, FC, and GURPS, but it works for us. Any rules purist would likely have a stroke ...

[pinecone]

No playing when mom is calling to dad to do chore (Not actually official, but mutual)

[dharras]

Hmmm... I kinda like the one about rolling all the same weapons in a volley with one die roll. That is probably the least invasive house rule I've seen yet.

Are you sure? A Fed CA at range 25 has a 16.66% chance of hitting with one photon, or 0.08% hitting with all four. With this adjustment, they've still got a 16.66% chance of dealing 32 damage; at range 8, you have a 6.25% chance of hitting with 4 photons normally, or 50% otherwise.
After all, if you were receiving 64 points of damage and could choose between a 50% chance of not being damaged, or a 93% chance, what would you pick?

[Hod K'el]

The only House Rule that we have is NO DRINKS on the table. We do have our etiquette. Sometimes we will try something that is in SFB, but not in FC such as mines, or fighters (BOM).

Oh, yeah...forgot about the NO DRINKS ON THE TABLE rule. And the other stuff is just 'sizzle, not steak'. But I do like the fighters for my Kzinti (Kilrathi) (Hacon).

[junior]

There's a rule in Starfleet Battles called 'Narrow Salvoes' that allows weapons of the same type to be fired using just one die roll.

It's also banned in the official tournaments, iirc.

The technique is probably okay when you've got a fairly good chance to hit and/or with weapons that don't do much damage. No one's probably going to complain if four disruptors that hit on a 4+ and only do a few points each use that method to resolve their damage. But when you're looking at four overloaded photon torpedoes at range 8, and basically one die roll means the difference between taking just a small amount ofshield damage from phaser fire or watching your ship get gutted (with no 'in-between' result), then that method of shooting suddenly can become somewhat contentious...

[Scoutdad]

There's a rule in Starfleet Battles called 'Narrow Salvoes' that allows weapons of the same type to be fired using just one die roll....

But more often than not, it's used to fire at ascatterpack at long range. Hopefully, you'll hit and destroy it - but at least you don't hit with just enough damage to cause premature release...