Conversion kit #1: Battlefleet Gothic Star Trek Units

[Jedi Master Spock]

Hypothetical here: Let's say I have a certain number of little metal Starfleet minis, and I want to run a conversion sheet to convert these into Battlefleet Gothic.

What do I break these units up into, why, and what stats do I give them?

There are, I feel, two choices. One is the "hardcore VS debater" method, which will attempt to convert the units using hard and fast figures of comparison. This I will call "conversion kit A." I'll work on that one first.

The other is the "interested crossover gamer" method, in which we adapt Trek ships' relative behavior in relation to what's normal for WH40K ships. This means pretending they're larger, slower, clumsier, et cetera. We'll call this "conversion kit B," and it may be more useful to folks interested in actually playing.

Galaxy Class Starship
Type/hits Speed Turns Shields Armor Turrets
Escort/1 100cm Unlimited 0 5 2

Armament Range/Speed Firepower/Str Fire_Arc
Phaser 150cm 1 All
Photon_Torpedos 100cm 1D2-1 All

Specials: Transporter, Precision Targeting
Optional refits: Deflector Dish Weapon, Metaphasic shielding

Vor'Cha squadron (3)
Type/hits Speed Turns Shields Armor Turrets
Escort/1 90cm Unlimited 0 6 3

Armament Range/Speed Firepower/Str Fire_Arc
Phaser 60cm 2 All
Photon_Torpedos 100cm 1 All

Specials: Transporter, Cloak
Optional refits: Additional ordnance supplies

[Jedi Master Spock]

Star Trek special rules (Conversion kit A)

Weapons:

Star Trek phaser banks and disruptors are high penetration weapons capable of slicing through kilometers of rock with ease. A highly accurate focused near-lightspeed beam, phasers most closely resemble lances, with their strength not being particularly dependent on the relative velocity of the two ships.

They are nonetheless low-intensity weapons with a relatively low chance of damaging a capital ship. Like lances, roll 1D6 for each point of phaser strength; each roll of 6 causes one damage point.

Pulse phasers and disruptor cannons are treated as weapons batteries with the indicated strength.

Photon and quantum torpedos are a long string of tiny shielded torpedos. Photon torpedo salvos have a 2+ save against all forms of damage and strength reduction, and may turn up to 90 degrees at the beginning of their movement phase. A limited supply of torpedo salvos is available to starships.

Specials:

Transporters. Star Trek ships with transporters may make teleport attacks. However, a Star Trek ship with a listed "Shield:0" shield strength may not be subject to teleport attacks unless already successfully damaged.

Precision targeting. Federation ships in particular are highly skilled at disabling rather than destroying their foes. Star Trek ships with precision targeting inflict critical hits on a roll of 5-6 following successful damage. On a roll of 5, they inflict one critical hit; on a roll of 6, roll two critical hits.

Cloaks. Against attacks that use the gunnery table, cloaks cause one column shift to the right. Against any other form of attack, cloaked vessels have a 2+ save to avoid damage. A cloaked vessel may not take special orders.

Adaptive shielding. Adaptive shielding gives a save against damage, 4+ for large, 5+ for medium, and 6+ for small ships with adaptive shielding. Brace for Impact special orders make this a 2+ save. All repair dice rolled for a ship with adaptive shielding succeed on a 4+, and may be applied to shield points if the ship is at full hits.

Metaphasic shielding. So will this.

Movement

Unless otherwise noted, Star Trek units move as attack craft, turning freely throughout the movement phase.

Damage

Armor on Star Trek ships, for the most part, reflects the difficulty of target they present rather than actual armor.

Star Trek ships use highly volatile warp cores. When a Star Trek ship with a warp core is destroyed, roll 1D6. On a result of 6, the warp core detonates critically, inflicting the equivalent of a Nova Cannon. (And how shall we handle self destructs?)

The Galaxy class is the pride and joy of the fleet. The largest starship used by the Federation, it is also one of their most advanced.

[Gniops]

Star Trek phaser banks and disruptors are high penetration weapons capable of slicing through kilometers of rock with ease. A highly accurate focused near-lightspeed beam, phasers most closely resemble lances, with their strength not being particularly dependent on the relative velocity of the two ships.

You do realise that the "weapons batteries" include lasers and plasma beams don't you ?

I mention this because you've clearly misinterpreted the BFG book.

Call them a weapons battery, the rules for weapons batteries are not predicated on "strength" but rather accuracy.

Hence why rules comparisons with BFG are often a crock of shit. Its pretty hilarious that your arguments get called Bullshite so often you have to alter your forum to get rid of the word.

Pulse phasers and disruptor cannons are treated as weapons batteries with the indicated strength.

See above, they should be combined as part of weapons batteries.

Photon and quantum torpedos are a long string of tiny shielded torpedos. Photon torpedo salvos have a 2+ save against all forms of damage and strength reduction, and may turn up to 90 degrees at the beginning of their movement phase. A limited supply of torpedo salvos is available to starships.

As I've mentioned before, torpedoes effectively qualify as weapons battery fire.

Transporters. Star Trek ships with transporters may make teleport attacks. However, a Star Trek ship with a listed "Shield:0" shield strength may not be subject to teleport attacks unless already successfully damaged.

Um, why not ? Their shields are down, you don't have to damage a trek ship to allow beaming, you just have to drop their shields.

Precision targeting. Federation ships in particular are highly skilled at disabling rather than destroying their foes. Star Trek ships with precision targeting inflict critical hits on a roll of 5-6 following successful damage. On a roll of 5, they inflict one critical hit; on a roll of 6, roll two critical hits.

40k ships don't tend to have a single "weapons array" that you can cripple, one look at the front cover should have made this clear.

Cloaks. I'm not quite sure how we should treat this yet. Suggestions?

On the turn the cloak is activated, the armour save is increased to represent the increased difficulty of targetting the vessel. The vessel cannot fire during the turn in which the cloak is activated, or use special orders.

Adaptive shielding. This will be interesting.

Not really, Star of Damocles *hawk spit*, Shadow Point and Grey Knights indicate that shield systems are altered/adjusted to optimise their defence against different offensive weapon systems.

If you are desperate for an analogue, look at Necron adaptive armour.

Metaphasic shielding. So will this.

what is it ?

Star Trek ships use highly volatile warp cores. When a Star Trek ship with a warp core is destroyed, roll 1D6. On a result of 6, the warp core detonates critically, inflicting the equivalent of a Nova Cannon. (And how shall we handle self destructs?)

Trek ships don't explode with detonations the size of small moons, I'd recommend that you look at the Warp drive implosion critical as the nearest analogue, except that when Imperial Battleships deliberately blow themselves up, they destroy "the heart" of a fleet of thousands.

Phaser 150cm 1 All

Nightbringer has a Strike cruisers 30cm weaponry hitting a target at 300000km, this can obviously be extrapolated out for the various weapon ranges.

In other words, you've just decided that phasers are poor cousins of a strength one lance battery, with a range longer than the longest range weapon in the game.

Photon_Torpedos 100cm 1D2-1 All

Similarly photon torpedos, you want them to be both torpedos and move faster than a Necron vessel using its inertialess FTL drive in combat each turn ?

[Jedi Master Spock]

You do realise that the "weapons batteries" include lasers and plasma beams don't you ?

And an assortment of other weapons, including mass drivers et cetera, firing in an unfocused array, with limited accuracy.

Call them a weapons battery, the rules for weapons batteries are not predicated on "strength" but rather accuracy.

Precisely why the rules for weapons batteries are inappropriate. Weapons batteries represent fairly inaccurate weapons with no substantial penetration capabilities.

Hence why rules comparisons with BFG are often a crock of shit. Its pretty hilarious that your arguments get called Bullshite so often you have to alter your forum to get rid of the word.

That's not the reason for my humorous filter. The rules against rudeness are. Follow them.

See above, they should be combined as part of weapons batteries.

These weapons have accuracy issues and don't drill deep.

As I've mentioned before, torpedoes effectively qualify as weapons battery fire.

Torpedos are torpedos.

Um, why not ? Their shields are down, you don't have to damage a trek ship to allow beaming, you just have to drop their shields.

Because the listed shield strength is zero, on account of them only requiring one hit to destroy.

40k ships don't tend to have a single "weapons array" that you can cripple, one look at the front cover should have made this clear.

40K ships tend to take critical hits to weapons fairly easily and do, as one look at the front cover makes clear, have fairly exposed system.

On the turn the cloak is activated, the armour save is increased to represent the increased difficulty of targetting the vessel. The vessel cannot fire during the turn in which the cloak is activated, or use special orders.

Except on the scale of a BFG turn, Klingons can be expected to decloak and recloak multiple times.

Not really, Star of Damocles *hawk spit*, Shadow Point and Grey Knights indicate that shield systems are altered/adjusted to optimise their defence against different offensive weapon systems.

If you are desperate for an analogue, look at Necron adaptive armour.

Necron and Borg have a good few points of commonality. That may be a good idea.

what is it ?

It's a different type of shielding that allows ships to sunbathe with complete impunity.

Trek ships don't explode with detonations the size of small moons, I'd recommend that you look at the Warp drive implosion critical as the nearest analogue, except that when Imperial Battleships deliberately blow themselves up, they destroy "the heart" of a fleet of thousands.

Actually, they do explode with detonations the size of small moons on the rare occasions the warp core goes critical, as indicated in "11001001."

Nightbringer has a Strike cruisers 30cm weaponry hitting a target at 300000km, this can obviously be extrapolated out for the various weapon ranges.

That's funny, because the BFG rulebook describes ranges of "up to tens of thousands of kilometers" in its fluff, and I think the rulebook fluff is a little better than a novel in describing typical behavior.

In other words, you've just decided that phasers are poor cousins of a strength one lance battery, with a range longer than the longest range weapon in the game.

Equal to the longest range weapon in the game, actually. Nova cannon can reach 150 cm.

Similarly photon torpedos, you want them to be both torpedos and move faster than a Necron vessel using its inertialess FTL drive in combat each turn ?

Photon torpedos have a maximum real-space range that astounds... and regardless of distance, usually require less than a minute to impact.

[Gniops]

And an assortment of other weapons, including mass drivers et cetera, firing in an unfocused array, with limited accuracy.

Yes, I'm well aware of this, are you going to ignore what I said ?

Precisely why the rules for weapons batteries are inappropriate. Weapons batteries represent fairly inaccurate weapons with no substantial penetration capabilities.

Weapons batteries can be redialed to target ordnance. (Execution Hour, page 109)

The Battlefleet gothic book also makes reference to the nature of direct fire weaponry such as lasers, plasma projector weapons batteries, lances etc hitting almost instantly.

Hence why its perfectly appropriate, Phaser output of a federation ship is a minute portion of the output of a weapons battery array, and they certainly aren't capable of the slicing beam and armour penetration of lances, nor are they multiple beam projectors.

In short, they don't match lances, they match small weapons batteries, which are less accurate at range. As federation weaponry IS.

That's not the reason for my humorous filter. The rules against rudeness are. Follow them.

Of course not ;) Besides, my awful rudeness was directed against games mechanics arguments you great wuss.

These weapons have accuracy issues and don't drill deep.

Neither do Phasers against opposing ships, Andy Chambers described lances as akin to the advanced races beam weapons in Babylon five, incredibly powerful sweeping beam weapons that cut ships into bits, pierce armour etc.

This simply isn't what phasers do, they are basically short duration beam weapons in Trek when used in ship to ship combat, functionally not much different than lasers or plasma beams.

Certainly they also lack the armour penetrating design of Imperial mass-reactive macro-cannons, i.e. KE penetration and explosion inside enemy target.

Torpedos are torpedos.

40k torpedos don't have energy shields. Explain to me how this concept is difficult for you ?

Because the listed shield strength is zero, on account of them only requiring one hit to destroy.

That begs the question then, if their shield intensity is so drastically inferior, why should they stop transporters at all ?

40K ships tend to take critical hits to weapons fairly easily and do, as one look at the front cover makes clear, have fairly exposed system.

1: They take critical hits to specific weapon systems, their entire "weapons array" doesn't go offline because of a few weapon strikes.
2: Federation strikes are of such puny magnitude in comparison to say, a torpedo with more firepower than two entire ships photon complement at once, low end, that comparing their effective capability to cripple a target is nonsensical. That torpedo punches its way into the armour with a breaching charge, then gets injected with another secondary charge, with the main warhead detonated theoretically inside the guts of the ship.

This is incredibly different from where a Trek ship simply fires a phaser shot at a ship and every weapon system on board is crippled.

3: The cover ship, or the Divine Right (the double page spread with the Battleship) makes an utter mockery of the concept of a single turns worth of firing causing critical hits, rather than supporting the concept. With multiple turrets and firing points, how you think a few phaser shots is going to somehow damage the vast majority of a broadside is beyond me.

Except on the scale of a BFG turn, Klingons can be expected to decloak and recloak multiple times.

Eldar ships never turn their cloak off, and they not only include visual and sensor stealth, they generate false images and sensor ghosts!

Never mind that yet again you've misunderstood the turn system. In 40k space combat, they don't actually take turns to fire, opponents can fire through each others broadsides, turn a 3km ship,or a 8km one in a few seconds etc, but the "turn" is meant to represent discrete blocks of time, often overlapping in which this occurs.

Unless you want to insist that a ship can fire its weaponry in seconds, destroying multiple targets, as happens quite often in 40k, but then has to wait four minutes 54 seconds to do it again.....

Necron and Borg have a good few points of commonality. That may be a good idea.

I can't wait.

It's a different type of shielding that allows ships to sunbathe with complete impunity.

Define "sunbathe"

Actually, they do explode with detonations the size of small moons on the rare occasions the warp core goes critical, as indicated in "11001001."

And how big is a "small moon" pray tell ?

That's funny, because the BFG rulebook describes ranges of "up to tens of thousands of kilometers" in its fluff, and I think the rulebook fluff is a little better than a novel in describing typical behavior.

The BFG book also describes 75k leagues as out of range for everything bar torpedos for a bunch of orbital defences versus the Blackstones, strangely, thats about 450 thousand km. Which corresponds with my point.

I should also mention that the Blue Book describes "gigawatts" of energy pounding away at 40k ships. It ain't perfect.

Execution Hour by Gordon Rennie, which is a novelisation of a Dictator class cruisers exploits during the end phases of the Gothic War (the setting for the BFG games debut) makes reference to ranges in both magnitudes, tens of thousands, and then the same weapons batteries hurling energy across hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Equal to the longest range weapon in the game, actually. Nova cannon can reach 150 cm.

So by any meter, you've grossly overegged the capacity of phasers as far as them retaining capability and accuracy over range.

Photon torpedos have a maximum real-space range that astounds... and regardless of distance, usually require less than a minute to impact.

And you expect something travelling at this sort of velocity to pass through Orkish power fields ?

Fast moving objects get interdicted spocky, as do energy projectiles.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Yes, I'm well aware of this, are you going to ignore what I said ?

No. As I pointed out, the limited accuracy and low penetration of weapons batteries makes them poor candidates for phaser banks of the type seen on the GCS.

Weapons batteries can be redialed to target ordnance. (Execution Hour, page 109)

Even dedicated point defense batteries have very limited accuracy against ordnance. Phasers have, comparatively, insane accuracy; it's fairly rare that something using phaser banks misses something 200 feet across, let alone with full salvos during an straight multi-thousand km incoming attack run.

Hence why its perfectly appropriate, Phaser output of a federation ship is a minute portion of the output of a weapons battery array, and they certainly aren't capable of the slicing beam and armour penetration of lances, nor are they multiple beam projectors.

They certainly are. Typical phaser bank behavior is of a single beam that tracks a precise point even while the ship maneuvers; within seconds, a phaser can drill precisely through kilometers of solid rock. The GCS in particular often sustains a beam for 1-2 seconds and then hits the exact same spot with another beam (see, for example, this video.

Nevertheless, they have limited collateral damage. They don't cause gross scale damage, but high precision surgical destruction. Thus, very similar behavior to 1/3 strength lances with similar critical damage to full strength lances, which conveniently places a single point of phaser strength at a reasonably accurate level (single digit GT/sec or so) for a GCS.

In short, they don't match lances, they match small weapons batteries, which are less accurate at range. As federation weaponry IS.

Federation weaponry is not noticably less accurate at long range.

In fact, most misses occur at close range.

Neither do Phasers against opposing ships, Andy Chambers described lances as akin to the advanced races beam weapons in Babylon five, incredibly powerful sweeping beam weapons that cut ships into bits, pierce armour etc.

This simply isn't what phasers do, they are basically short duration beam weapons in Trek when used in ship to ship combat, functionally not much different than lasers or plasma beams.

Certainly they also lack the armour penetrating design of Imperial mass-reactive macro-cannons, i.e. KE penetration and explosion inside enemy target.

In a two second strike, a phaser can slice through several km of solid rock, which, as we've seen in the case of Roks, is considered substantial armoring material for WH40K ships. It is on the basis of this performance that I consider them to have similar deep penetration abilities to lances.

40k torpedos don't have energy shields. Explain to me how this concept is difficult for you ?

Explain how energy shields hurt the torpedo's chances of penetration. If anything, they should increase it.

That begs the question then, if their shield intensity is so drastically inferior, why should they stop transporters at all ?

Actually, it isn't. If I wanted to communicate precisely, I should give the GCS .9 shields and 0.1 hits, but that wouldn't fit BFG stats normally, now, would it?

1: They take critical hits to specific weapon systems, their entire "weapons array" doesn't go offline because of a few weapon strikes.
2: Federation strikes are of such puny magnitude in comparison to say, a torpedo with more firepower than two entire ships photon complement at once, low end, that comparing their effective capability to cripple a target is nonsensical. That torpedo punches its way into the armour with a breaching charge, then gets injected with another secondary charge, with the main warhead detonated theoretically inside the guts of the ship.

It takes very little actual physical damage to disable any critical system - it simply must be applied precisely.

As the GCS in particular is famous for doing.

This is incredibly different from where a Trek ship simply fires a phaser shot at a ship and every weapon system on board is crippled.

Actually, that rarely happens. Trek weapons do target specific systems.

3: The cover ship, or the Divine Right (the double page spread with the Battleship) makes an utter mockery of the concept of a single turns worth of firing causing critical hits, rather than supporting the concept. With multiple turrets and firing points, how you think a few phaser shots is going to somehow damage the vast majority of a broadside is beyond me.

Not in the least bit.

Eldar ships never turn their cloak off, and they not only include visual and sensor stealth, they generate false images and sensor ghosts!

That makes it a good match for modern Klingons, who typically either fight the whole battle uncloaked or stay cloaked 90% of the time.

Never mind that yet again you've misunderstood the turn system. In 40k space combat, they don't actually take turns to fire,

I've never said that.

Unless you want to insist that a ship can fire its weaponry in seconds, destroying multiple targets, as happens quite often in 40k, but then has to wait four minutes 54 seconds to do it again.....

"As happens quite often?"

I can't wait.

The rules are positively disappointing - they don't actually involve any specific-weapons-system adaptations - but they fit OK. I'll get to them when I get around to the Borg ships.

Define "sunbathe"

Drive straight into a nice bright active star and sit there for hours without any damage to any system.

And how big is a "small moon" pray tell ?

In the case of "11001001"? The Enterprise goes on autopilot at warp speed in order to achieve safe distance. So we're saying... several astronomical units, perhaps.

1 in 6 may be too frequent for the most catastrophic events, but a catastrophic warp core breach involves an explosion that's violent enough to force interaction with all the ship's antimatter stores - i.e., tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of tons of antimatter being annihilated.

By comparison, a nova cannon shell is probably not more than a couple thousand tons, and upon implosion of this matter, will accordingly release a couple orders of magnitude less yield than the rapidly expanding plasma of a catastrophically destroyed Trek ship.

The BFG book also describes 75k leagues as out of range for everything bar torpedos for a bunch of orbital defences versus the Blackstones, strangely, thats about 450 thousand km. Which corresponds with my point.

A bunch of orbital defenses that include ... what? Everything but nova cannons from the Imperial arsenal?

Well, if we take 5 km to be 1cm, which would place 75,000 leagues past the firing range of everything but Nova Cannon in the Imperial arsenal, that puts tactical phaser range against mobile ships at 60cm, which I suppose is much more normal for something that acts a lot like a lance in any case.

I should also mention that the Blue Book describes "gigawatts" of energy pounding away at 40k ships. It ain't perfect.

Any other similar key quotes that have been neglected?

So by any meter, you've grossly overegged the capacity of phasers as far as them retaining capability and accuracy over range.

Perhaps I have overestimated them... and as soon as I can peg down WH40K weapons better on range, the sooner I can scale them precisely.

And you expect something travelling at this sort of velocity to pass through Orkish power fields ?

Yes.

Fast moving objects get interdicted spocky, as do energy projectiles.

I've placed the photon torpedos as barely three times the speed of normal Imperial torpedos. That's not likely to suddenly change an object from not stopped to stopped.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Now, with that in mind (I'll be editing the current proposed "conversion kit" stats back into the first post to keep the heading and the current proposed rules into the second post), how about this for the Vor'Cha:

Vor'Cha battlecruisers are primarily deployed in trios. While not individually as powerful as a Galaxy class, they are very near and highly capable. Cloaking devices make these vessels particularly difficult to target.

Vor'Cha(3)
Type/hits Speed Turns Shields Armor Turrets
Escort/1 90cm Unlimited 0 6 3

Armament Range/Speed Firepower/Str Fire_Arc
Phaser 60cm 2 All
Photon_Torpedos 100cm 1 All

Specials: Transporter, Cloak
Optional refits: Additional ordnance supplies

And... time to go into the Borg.

If we scale a large Borg cube so as to resist 36 GCS ships, we should get something like these. Borg largely ignore incoming small ships, so I've stated them to have 0 turrets, although obviously the "phaser" weapon can be split to deal with some ordnance.

Borg Cube, Large (3+ km)

Type/hits Speed Turns Shields Armor Turrets
Battleship/10 60cm Unlimited (4+ save) 5 1

Armament Range/Speed Firepower/Str Fire_Arc
Phaser 60cm 15 All
Specials: Borg transporter, adaptive shielding

Borg Cube, Small (~1-2 km)

Type/hits Speed Turns Shields Armor Turrets
Cruiser/7 60cm Unlimited (5+ save) 5 1

Armament Range/Speed Firepower/Str Fire_Arc
Phaser 60cm 10 All
Specials: Borg transporter, adaptive shielding

Borg Sphere, Large (600m)

Type/hits Speed Turns Shields Armor Turrets
Escort/4 60cm Unlimited (6+ save) 5 1

Armament Range/Speed Firepower/Str Fire_Arc
Phaser 60cm 6 All
Specials: Borg transporter, adaptive shielding


Borg Sphere, Small (450m)

Type/hits Speed Turns Shields Armor Turrets
Escort/3 60cm Unlimited (6+ save) 5 1

Armament Range/Speed Firepower/Str Fire_Arc
Phaser 60cm 4 All
Specials: Borg transporter, adaptive shielding

Assimilated Vessel, Small

Type/hits Speed Turns Shields Armor Turrets
Escort/2 60cm Unlimited (6+ save) 5 1

Armament Range/Speed Firepower/Str Fire_Arc
Phaser 60cm 3 All
Specials: Borg transporter, adaptive shielding

[Gniops]

No. As I pointed out, the limited accuracy and low penetration of weapons batteries makes them poor candidates for phaser banks of the type seen on the GCS.

Its called bracketing a moving target Spock, what you are basically arguing is that a single beam weapon that sometimes struggles to hit targets at hundreds of meters, never mind thousands should be judged as one of the more accurate weapons in the game.

Its also not likely to be slicing any escorts in two, or sweeping across oncoming flights of fighters like lance beams.

Go watch the Shadow vessels in Babylon five, thats a lance.

Plus, y'know the individual yields of the weaponry are far greater.

Even dedicated point defense batteries have very limited accuracy against ordnance. Phasers have, comparatively, insane accuracy; it's fairly rare that something using phaser banks misses something 200 feet across, let alone with full salvos during an straight multi-thousand km incoming attack run.

Are you stoned ? Go watch the video you've linked to your post, a veritable barrage of short range misses and limited ROF.

Lets not forget the utter lack of torpedo spam, or sweeping cutting beams slicing ships in half.

They certainly are. Typical phaser bank behavior is of a single beam that tracks a precise point even while the ship maneuvers; within seconds, a phaser can drill precisely through kilometers of solid rock. The GCS in particular often sustains a beam for 1-2 seconds and then hits the exact same spot with another beam (see, for example, this video.

This has little or no bearing on what I've said. Lances are extremely powerful, accurate and above all, high energy weapons.

Unless you've made some sort of about face, and are estimating trek weapons to be in the hundreds of gigatons per strike, Phasers simply don't qualify as powerful enough to warrant them being able to sear through the front prow of an Imperial vessel.

And bloody hell, that video is supposed to prove long range accuracy for phasers ?

The ludicrous attack formation was a hoot as well, some of those vessels weren't even a hundred meters away. I'm sure you've seen that text box describing a vessel under fire in the section on shields IIRC ;)

Nevertheless, they have limited collateral damage. They don't cause gross scale damage, but high precision surgical destruction. Thus, very similar behavior to 1/3 strength lances with similar critical damage to full strength lances, which conveniently places a single point of phaser strength at a reasonably accurate level (single digit GT/sec or so) for a GCS

I.e. they aren't a big beam of doom that slices into a ship, not even other trek ships.

Is this the time to point out that in a "hard core fan " analysis, or whatever you were drooling, you'd need to have like a hundred trek ships with phasers firing at a single vessel to bother it ?

Federation weaponry is not noticably less accurate at long range.

In fact, most misses occur at close range.

That would be, funnily enough, because Federation phasers are rarely employed at said long ranges.

In a two second strike, a phaser can slice through several km of solid rock, which, as we've seen in the case of Roks, is considered substantial armoring material for WH40K ships. It is on the basis of this performance that I consider them to have similar deep penetration abilities to lances.

Its on the basis that you can only blag your way into 10 gigatons per second for a short maximum blast (with your usual standards of variable standards of evidence) that I'm telling you these weapons simply aren't up to scratch for lances, particularly when they are outgunned by mere weapons batteries.

Explain how energy shields hurt the torpedo's chances of penetration. If anything, they should increase it.

Because they are then interdicted by the enormously more capable than trek shielding systems.

Torpedos in BFG ignore shields, thats why they are useful weapons, as it normally requires the combined firepower of roughly two similar weight vessels to damage another through its shields. Torps not only cause damage more easily, they can also be used tactically, creating a battlefield hazard, forcing vessels to change course to evade etc

Trek torpedos are basically energy blasts as far as shielding systems are concerned, and this means they become nothing more than weapons battery shots. Or, if you want to retain some aspects of torpedo function, just have them as normal torps of whatever range and tracking function that don't ignore shields.

Frankly I find the turn rating exaggerated as well, trek torpedos don't usually loop de loop and track particularly well.

Actually, it isn't. If I wanted to communicate precisely, I should give the GCS .9 shields and 0.1 hits, but that wouldn't fit BFG stats normally, now, would it?

Well Spock, as you must admit, even giving them stats in BFG, in this "form" of conversion is a waste of time, they barely register on a 40k space battle scale.

It takes very little actual physical damage to disable any critical system - it simply must be applied precisely.

As the GCS in particular is famous for doing.

Actually it takes rather a lot of physical damage to disable a FTL warship that is technologically superior to your own. And its pretty silly to argue that your average Imperial Cruiser bears much resemblance to any opponent a GCS has applied precise damage to cripple systems on before.

You hear the orders in trek, "target their weapons array, " "target their shields" etc. But a 40k ship isn't likely to have a single target that they can DO that too. Multiple shield projectors, subsidiuary power sources, decentralised weapons systems etc.

Best you can say is "target their bridge", which will be shielded, armoured, and probably have the Command staff in a Strategium globe or something similar (unless your names Leoten Semper I suppose)

Actually, that rarely happens. Trek weapons do target specific systems.

I can say with reasonable confidence, no bugger in 40k has ever shot at a target and destroyed entire weapons systems spread along an entire multikilomter ships.

Obliterated said multi-klom ship, yes.

Not in the least bit.

This is what you do isn't it ? You don't need to make any effort at all, just sit there and type "oh no it doesn't"

That makes it a good match for modern Klingons, who typically either fight the whole battle uncloaked or stay cloaked 90% of the time.

A good match ?

It makes it a completely different, and much superior system!

Remember, the turn sequence represents constant action, on a sliding scale to boot, one turn could be an hour drifting while cloaked, the next could be five minutes of furious gunfire, then special orders at some point back to cloak.

I've never said that.

Then stop "thinking" it, then you might make sense.

"As happens quite often?"

A single cruiser can blast several targets in a turn, a Battleship could do probably 2-3 times more damage.

The rules are positively disappointing - they don't actually involve any specific-weapons-system adaptations - but they fit OK. I'll get to them when I get around to the Borg ships.

Thats because the designers weren't daft, the game is meant to be fun, and not one where you mooch about determining whether or not you've got your shields set to C versus X, or how getting shot while shields are at C while XYZ fires at you works.

Specific adaption is however what the Necron ships do, living metal alters its defensive properties to compensate for offensive fire, which then obviously alters the profile of the vessel in some fashion, hence their loss of stealth. Borg get the shit kicked out of them before altering their systems to compensate for fire, but obviously neither of the two systems render vessels immune to incoming fire.

Drive straight into a nice bright active star and sit there for hours without any damage to any system.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Metaphasic_shield

Memory Alpha describes it as shielding that allows a ship to remain in a stars corona.

How long did this allow the vessel to remain in the corona of the star ?

I should point out that this isn't anything special either, in Xenos the Essene, a 3km vessel used by Inquisitor Eisenhorn hides inside the corona of a nice bright active star for more than 60 hours.

In the case of "11001001"? The Enterprise goes on autopilot at warp speed in order to achieve safe distance. So we're saying... several astronomical units, perhaps.

I find your definition of a "small moon" almost as hilarious as your logic.

By that little gem, a warp drive overload should affect most vessels on the average BFG table, and damage every vessel derived from Trek.

By comparison, a nova cannon shell is probably not more than a couple thousand tons, and upon implosion of this matter, will accordingly release a couple orders of magnitude less yield than the rapidly expanding plasma of a catastrophically destroyed Trek ship.

Gosh, I must have missed these several AU in size explosions, either that, or Trek ships are so massively safe that even when they self destruct their power generation doesn't go up.

I'd question the value of such a rule, given that its never actually happened, execpt that its a big pile of bollocks anyway.

A bunch of orbital defenses that include ... what? Everything but nova cannons from the Imperial arsenal?

Go look at the end of the BFG book. It actually HAS orbital defence stations.

Well, if we take 5 km to be 1cm,

Why would we do that ?

Go read the section in the BFG book that talks about vessels bases, and recall that you can actually have planets as terrain in BFG.

I think thats the difference between you and me. You would have scaled the BFG vessels as thousands of KM based on their size relative to "large" planets.

I just know that they aren't scaled.

Any other similar key quotes that have been neglected?

Tell me with a straight face that a chunk of metal hitting at 20 % of the speed of light is going to produce the horrific pounding of gigawatts of energy.

And go fuck yourself for implying that everything I've said previously about 40k power generation was a lie.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Its called bracketing a moving target Spock, what you are basically arguing is that a single beam weapon that sometimes struggles to hit targets at hundreds of meters, never mind thousands should be judged as one of the more accurate weapons in the game.

A beam weapon that handily hits targets at 300,000 km, the previous generation of which engaged in pinpoint accuracy at tens of thousands of hm.

It's rare to see a phaser bank "struggle" to hit something at hundreds of meters. It's even rarer to see phasers miss at ranges past 10 km.

Plus, y'know the individual yields of the weaponry are far greater.

Which is why it behaves like a weakened version of a lance.

Are you stoned ? Go watch the video you've linked to your post, a veritable barrage of short range misses and limited ROF.

A barrage of short range misses by the Defiant using pulse phasers and the ships attacking it. Overall accuracy in that video for incidents not involving the Defiant is actually very good.

The video demonstrates something in particular about continuous phaser weapons - namely, that they can be locked on the precise same point of the target essentially continuously. The example there is short range, which requires a greater angular shift by the GCS's weapons.

This has little or no bearing on what I've said. Lances are extremely powerful, accurate and above all, high energy weapons.

Unless you've made some sort of about face, and are estimating trek weapons to be in the hundreds of gigatons per strike, Phasers simply don't qualify as powerful enough to warrant them being able to sear through the front prow of an Imperial vessel.

The front prow of an Imperial vessel is how many kilometers thick?

Is this the time to point out that in a "hard core fan " analysis, or whatever you were drooling, you'd need to have like a hundred trek ships with phasers firing at a single vessel to bother it ?

On the high end of that, one ship firing for several minutes...

... which is about right for this scenario.

That would be, funnily enough, because Federation phasers are rarely employed at said long ranges.

Actually, it's not that rare, and I have trouble thinking of any episode with less than a 50% hit rate at tens of thousands of km.

Because they are then interdicted by the enormously more capable than trek shielding systems.

Torpedos in BFG ignore shields, thats why they are useful weapons, as it normally requires the combined firepower of roughly two similar weight vessels to damage another through its shields. Torps not only cause damage more easily, they can also be used tactically, creating a battlefield hazard, forcing vessels to change course to evade etc.
Trek torpedos are basically energy blasts as far as shielding systems are concerned, and this means they become nothing more than weapons battery shots. Or, if you want to retain some aspects of torpedo function, just have them as normal torps of whatever range and tracking function that don't ignore shields.

Actually, trek torpedos are very material and - in certain rare cases - bypass Trek shields using their own shields. They are not energy blasts in any way, shape, or form.

Trek shields commonly stop material objects, unlike WH40K shields, which allow small craft to pass straight through.

It may be simpler to treat Trek torpedos as direct fire weapons, though, as they don't really occupy space and have basically unlimited range/maneuverability on the scale of a WH40K space battle within the rough scale of a BFG "turn."

Frankly I find the turn rating exaggerated as well, trek torpedos don't usually loop de loop and track particularly well.

You'll note that I've only made them twice as maneuverable as the lumbering WH40K Imperium ships.

Well Spock, as you must admit, even giving them stats in BFG, in this "form" of conversion is a waste of time, they barely register on a 40k space battle scale.

Not at all.

Actually it takes rather a lot of physical damage to disable a FTL warship that is technologically superior to your own.

Evidence for this? The rulebook's fluff speaks of jamming traverse systems, severing power lines, gunners being killed, sections being ripped open, et cetera all as possible causes for disabling the weapons systems of an arc.

This could happen as the result of a squadron of Marauders dropping 80 tons of payload just as easily as a 200 foot long torpedo striking the ship. Are you going to argue that a phaser strike is less powerful than tens of tons of bombrs?

But a 40k ship isn't likely to have a single target that they can DO that too. Multiple shield projectors, subsidiuary power sources, decentralised weapons systems etc.

Source?

I can say with reasonable confidence, no bugger in 40k has ever shot at a target and destroyed entire weapons systems spread along an entire multikilomter ships.

Disabling weapons systems is all over the critical hit table.

A good match ?

It makes it a completely different, and much superior system!

Actually, I would call the Klingon cloaking system superior, because it curtails almost all active emissions, whereas what you describe sounds more like an active deception system broadcasting false information.

Remember, the turn sequence represents constant action, on a sliding scale to boot, one turn could be an hour drifting while cloaked, the next could be five minutes of furious gunfire, then special orders at some point back to cloak.

What's the source for this, by the way? I'm having trouble finding this.

A single cruiser can blast several targets in a turn, a Battleship could do probably 2-3 times more damage.

A Galaxy class can, in five minutes, engage a hundred different targets.

As I read the turn-based approximation, we're representing five minutes of furious gunfire by having each weapons system make a singular attack against a target.

Thats because the designers weren't daft, the game is meant to be fun, and not one where you mooch about determining whether or not you've got your shields set to C versus X, or how getting shot while shields are at C while XYZ fires at you works.

Specific adaption is however what the Necron ships do, living metal alters its defensive properties to compensate for offensive fire, which then obviously alters the profile of the vessel in some fashion, hence their loss of stealth. Borg get the shit kicked out of them before altering their systems to compensate for fire, but obviously neither of the two systems render vessels immune to incoming fire.

Right. (Although, as you can see from the post above, I'm suggesting Borg accept initial damage more readily than Necrons. And have much less firepower. Even though the largest Borg cubes are substantially larger than the largest Necron ships, Borg ships don't have a very good power to cubage ratio, especially compared to Federation ships.)

Memory Alpha describes it as shielding that allows a ship to remain in a stars corona.

How long did this allow the vessel to remain in the corona of the star ?

Unknown. Up to several days may have passed, or less than an hour.

Memory Alpha understates the case of position, however. As we can plainly see in "Inheritance," Dr. Crusher took the ship rather deeper than the corona itself; although the script uses the word "corona" to describe it, the corona is not as thick as seen in the episode. It might be the chromosphere.

I should point out that this isn't anything special either, in Xenos the Essene, a 3km vessel used by Inquisitor Eisenhorn hides inside the corona of a nice bright active star for more than 60 hours.

Pretty nice. I notice, in contrast, looking through the advanced rules of play, that a solar flare deals 1 hit to all ships that don't have their shields up, and half of all ordnance.

I find your definition of a "small moon" almost as hilarious as your logic.

Yes, it's an understatement in the extreme. That particular episode is one of the "uberantimatter" collection, brought to you by the e!=mc^2 committee.

By that little gem, a warp drive overload should affect most vessels on the average BFG table, and damage every vessel derived from Trek.

Inverse square law helps a lot. Vessels past a few tens of thousands of kilometers should be completely unaffected.

This point of concern is actually a consideration when we talk about Star Trek shields.

Go read the section in the BFG book that talks about vessels bases, and recall that you can actually have planets as terrain in BFG.

OK, orbital defenses commonly have 60 cm range.

I think thats the difference between you and me. You would have scaled the BFG vessels as thousands of KM based on their size relative to "large" planets.

If you want to look at planets as terrain, you'll see that 1 cm = 5,000 km (that's the ratio I meant to assert - 1 cm = 5 km is silly, and would make phaser maximum established tactical range 600 meters on BFG-scale) is actually quite generous as a ballpark conversion (very clearly, "scale" is a loose thing in BFG). Earth is a bit under 13,000 km.

Interestingly, I found reference to "four thousand" (leagues, I presume?) as a nice short range for BFG weapons ("can't miss") from an ambushing ship. That's the sort of bit of evidence that builds towards a whole. Speaking of which, I'd like to know more about Ork Roks. See the other thread.

Tell me with a straight face that a chunk of metal hitting at 20 % of the speed of light is going to produce the horrific pounding of gigawatts of energy.

Tell me with a straight face that a Star Trek ship that hauls millions of tons of metal from system to system can't produce more than a terawatt.

I'm interested in all the evidence, even the bits that may not seem to make sense - because if you think 610 gigatons for a torpedo is a low-end figure, you may not believe that something lower makes any sense.

And go fuck yourself for implying that everything I've said previously about 40k power generation was a lie.

Gniops, a few things. One, you've said practically nothing about power generation and only a little about weapons. Two, I don't think you've lied to me. Performed analysis that I would dispute, perhaps. If I thought you would lie to me, I wouldn't have asked you if there were any more "key" references. I want to know what you know about and are discarding as unreasonable - i.e., not telling me. No offense was intended, and I'm sorry I didn't phrase that a little better.

Three, telling me to go fuck myself is undeniably rude. This is your third warning to be polite, and while I greatly appreciate your contributing to my knowledge of WH40K, I will enforce the board rules as outlined in the enforcement policy located in the rules section of this forum.