Hi folks, sorry for the long absence, just moved house and the forces of Chaos are still rampaging through my living room - though I was pleased to see over 1200 posts on the list by the time I came back. I am so pleased to see that the holofield debate is still ongoing (no, I'm not really ). Ok lets see if we can sort out some of the current stuff.
The way I see holofields as working against attacks which inflict multiple damage is that one save is made for the holofields for the attack, therefore if a Nova cannon scores a direct hit a successful save means no damage, a failed save means D6 hits (ie damage points). If I fire four lances at an Eldar ship and three of them hit, the Eldar player makes three saves any which are failed cause one point of damage. If a boarding action or ram is intiated the Eldar player makes a save, if it succeeds the boarding action or ram doesn't take place - no damage can be inflicted, if it fails the action proceeds as normal.
This was a debate we had so long ago that most people have probably forgotten about it by now. Basically it was about assigning fighter squadrons to directly protect ships instead of them free hunting as they do at present. I received some very interesting and well argued cases for not monkeying around with the rules (if it ain't bust don't fix it) and after a few more games I'm inclined to agree, the protection of ships with fighters can be achieved without any need for extra rules and since more rules=bad I don't intend to use this idea.
However, due to the advent of torpedo bombers (which should get in to 'Dwarf sometime) and the fighters in bomber waves idea (see below) ships are going to need improved anti attack craft capability to prevent carriers becoming too dominant. My current thoughts on this are that ships in squadrons should be able to assist each other with turret fire if they are close enough together (ie base to base contact). Probably something like this " Ships in a squadron which are in base to base contact increase their turret factor by one for each ship in contact up to a maximum of +2 turrets". Obviously this will mainly benefit escorts, but they're the ones that need most help.
I've also taken against the idea of allowing fighters to break up bomber waves which don't include any fighters. It's neat, but it's a negative rule which forces players to include fighters in their bomber waves, I'd prefer a positive rule which encourages fighters instead. So, I was thinking about letting fighters in bomber waves suppress turrets on the target ship instead. This would mean the bombers can disregard one turret factor on the target ship for each fighter in their wave when they roll to see how many attacks they make. For example a wave of three bombers and a fighter attack a Lunar class, the bombers roll D6 -1 each for their number of attacks due to their supporting fighters neutralising one of the turret factors. Squarons shot down by turret fire would be ignored for this so you couldn't take casualties on fighters in a wave and then use the dead fighters to suppress turrets (or maybe they should, I welcome your comments).
I've been led to believe that the moulding problems with the Chaos Grand cruiser and planet killer have now been resolved and they should hopefully be available around WD 239-240. Tim Adcock has also been working on a secret extra ship for the American market (you guys really seem to love this game) but I'm not allowed to say any more about that on pain of death. The hulks and roks rules are in WD238.
Well thats all for now, hopes there's not too much bad wording and deliberate mistooks in this lot.
Andy