N18 Gang rating and hangers on...

[Thorgor]

I thought it has never been discussed before...

Gang rating in Necromunda is used to determine the underdog, which in turn is used to balance the game through inducement/tactics cards. If two gangs are identical except one's rating is bloated because of injuries and compensating advancements, then why should they be considered the top dog? If anything, they should be the one to get inducement, since their player was bad enough to get their fighters injured.

As it stands, Neomunda encourages you to fire injured fighters and replace them with identical non-injured fighters as soon as possible. I think it's a complete non-sense, as encouraging you to keep them as long as possible would generally make for a more flavourful narrative.

Gang management should be a matter of credits, not rating.

 

[TopsyKretts]

I thought it has never been discussed before...

It's for the digital version, perhaps discussed by people who never played the "real" tabletop game. Also, I had to google to find it!

 

[Thorgor]

Yeah yeah, I'm being a bit facetious here.
But seriously, it does show how people new to the game can identify this as a potential issue and not some clever game-design feature. Older players simply seem to be in a "if it ain't broke don't fix it" state of mind.

Having read the whole thread now, I'd say it mostly highlights that advancements are overvalued in Blood Bowl, just like they also are in Neomunda (if a player with a couple injuries can end up with a ridiculously low TV).

 

[EarthDragon]

If it wasn’t such a layered compound issue, I’d default it’s part of the strategy. Blood Bowl (at least my experience with the original rules) had a bit better system of tracking overall strength of a club I felt.

But when there is a hefty list as mentioned by Thorgar and all these individual line items start to stack, of which many are out of your control, it just opens up for too many exploits.

Why can’t Escher have a great Lasgun contract but still have the weapons value the same as everyone else?

Why don’t territories have an associated gang rating increase? If they give you “stuff” the value should be nominal, but you’re still saving credits. If they give you scenario advantages, it should have a noticeable impact.

These types of things are what made the snowball effect in the original so bad. Ratskin maps, Better territories, replaced leader benefits and the like weren’t accounted for, and these things could put players in an “underdog” position, even though it was clear as day they had the advantage.

This should have been priority one to address for campaign play when updating the rules, but instead, they layered it even more in an effort to, I assume, level it out, but instead there are even crazier swings since so many of these things are manipulable now with a player getting more, better cards since he owns more and could put a better deck together (I know there are more ways to manipulate this that seem to be the standard, but we’re addressing RAW).

 

[JawRippa]

First, I think that with different prices for gangers in different gangs, advancements or equipment affecting stats (bionics) can't be properly priced unless there are separate price lists for each gang, since basic bodies are so different. I think it is obvious that +1W to a T4 goliath and +1W to a T3 cawdor should not affect gang bloat the same way. And also you need to make melee work outside Mortalis, since you can have all the crazy melee stats only to be pinned every round by a juve wielding a stub gun.

And yeah, sometime you'll get a lucky injury that helps you minmax a fighter (say -1WS on a ranged specialist). I don't really see why it's more of an issue than getting +1XP as the result of the injury roll.

It is an issue, because I find it very unflavorful to let fighters run around with advantageous injuries. +1XP is not as much "in your face", in fact, you probably don't care how much XP an enemy fighter has, because it does not effect your current game.

Personally I'm in the "no lowering cost for injured" camp, because when advancements are priced properly, you end up with players not healing "advantageous" injuries on purpose (ex:-1 WS, -1 A, -1 INT on a shooty champ). If a player is presented with a cheesy, non-flavorful but effective strat, they will very often go for it. Not blaming anyone, it is just a fact.

If you want to motivate players not to swap out injured fighters willy-nilly, you need to:

1. Have a basic cost of a fighter be significant enough to demotivate players from replacing fighter as soon as he breaks his pinky. Also, reducing cash flow would indirectly help with this.
2. Make bionics not affect gang rating (Players would rather replace a fighter than bloat their rating with useless equipment)

After this you need to make players care about even minor injuries. The only way to make it work in my opinion would be to have something similar to how Eye Injury works in NCE - if you get multiple injuries of the same type without fixing them using bionics, your fighter dies (or becomes a catatonic idiot if we are talking about multiple mental injuries of the same type). In fact, I was going to test exactly this with my group this autumn.

 

[Thorgor]

Injuries are never strictly advantageous though. If you paid for something you don't use and I steal it from you, you still lost something and should get insurance money. They are also random, so not something you can willfully exploit. Sometime you'll get lucky and get rid of a stat you don't care that much about and get some free gang rating as a result. Still preferable to the current state of affairs imo, where you can pay for an advancement, have an injury steal it from you and not be compensated in any way for the rating bloat.

Alternatively, I'd happy with bionics not affecting gang rating (or affecting it only slightly, since they also protect you from getting the same injury in the future). Do the same for advancements that don't bring the stat above its base value, and you've another valid way to solve the issue.

 

[JawRippa]

Do the same for advancements that don't bring the stat above its base value, and you've another valid way to solve the issue.

I think this is also a very solid solution. Combination of +1M and -1M results in the same effectiveness of a fighter, so he should effect gang rating just as a fresh ganger would.

 

[spafe]

I think this is also a very solid solution. Combination of +1M and -1M results in the same effectiveness of a fighter, so he should effect gang rating just as a fresh ganger would.

But that fighter could take a bionic leg to up his movement again...

 

[Thorgor]

But that fighter could take a bionic leg to up his movement again...

Sure. Then the advancement would once again bring the stat above its base value and would once again contribute to gang rating.

I think it's a quite simple rule:
If the fighter's current Movement (taking into account only injuries, advancements and bionics) is higher than their base Movement, you add 10 credits to your gang rating for each extra point.
If their current Movement is equal to or lower than their base Movement, then gang rating is unaffected.

It doesn't matter how or why the fighter got this Movement value. All you have to do is compare the current value to the base value.

 

[Jacob Dryearth]

In my experience, I don't think that injuries encourage people to fire fighters and rehire them too much. I find credits are tight enough in Dominion campaigns that people would rather buy more fighters without firing the injured ones, or brutes, or rare gear.

When fighters do get replaced is in splinter gangs. Our group just founded our first, and its an interesting balance of who to keep for their upgrades vs. who to retire due to injury. It all seems logical as well, the fighting cools off for a few months, some people return uphive to the factorems, some stay in the Underhive becaue their addicted to the thrill of gang struggles.

What remaims to be seen is if splinter gangs and new gangs can stand on a level (enough) playing field at the start of a new campaign when running semi-perpetual campaigns.

 

[pathatrick]

Offshoot, d66, does the winner of the scenerio get the wargear of the slain or does it stay in the gangs stash

 

[Jacob Dryearth]

Offshoot, d66, does the winner of the scenerio get the wargear of the slain or does it stay in the gangs stash

The owner keeps the equipment if they have at least one fighter on the battlefield at the end of the game. The killing gang cannot steal dead fighter equipment. See "Update Roster: Delete Dead or Retiring Fighters"

 

[jlallen]

My campaign are having a discussion about how to account for hangers on in gang rating calculations.

Example: hive scum cost 30 to hire for a single battle. They come with 60 cred of gear chosen from the trading post. The rules say they contribute to gang rating “in the normal way”. The only explanation for gang rating calculations I can find simply says it is the value of the unit plus the cost of their equipment.

So does a hive scum (hired for one battle for 30 cred) contribute 90 or 30 to gang rating?

Similarly, one of our players has a free rogue doc and a free ammo jack. They each come with weapons and would not normally be sucked into combat. But if they are, how do they contribute to gang rating? Are they zero? Or listed hire cost? Or hire cost plus value of their items?

firstly hired guns (hive scum and bounty hunters) and hangers on are completely different things hangers on get their equipment as part of their cost and are usually not going to be taking part in battles that means if they do only their hire cost is taken into account when calculating crew rating. A hired gun doesn't count towards your crew numbers whether or not this means hired guns count towards crew rating is debatable also hired guns don't come with their gear you have to pay for it so you can buy up to 60 creds of gear on top of the 30 cred hiring fee so the rating of the hive scum would be between 30-90 depending on how much you spent on them

 

[TopsyKretts]

The main purpose of "gang rating" is to count up everything you bring to the table. So if you bring a hive scum with equipment, of course that should increase your gang rating more than a hive scum without equipment. Because a hive scum with equipment has more "power" on the battlefield than one without. In that sense, calculate full value of everything you bring to the battle? What is the other alternative?

To nitpick, I'd say hired gun can also come with gear baked into their price, like all those named characters. Hive scum however are generic, just like generic bounty hunters or generic agents, and generic hired guns don't come with equipment.