If you have any questions for Andy Chambers, you can e-mail them to me or join the BFG List and ask him directly on the list.
How would you end up playing a 2000 pt battle in the campaign? As written, it appears to top out at 1500 points.
A: If you both agreed to it.
In a campaign, do you roll for each ship's leadership independently as normal? Do you roll once for each escort in a squadron or just once for the squadron?
A: Yep, when they are first added to the registry. Just make one roll for the whole squadron in the case of escorts.
Escort Squadrons In Campaign Games. The escort squadron starting a campaign has a certain number of ships and so a certauin point value. It is however possible that during the course of campaign it falls below the starting strenght. How should be calculated the points value of such squadron (a bit important when picking fleet for battle or calculating VPs)? a/ Keep the starting point value (like capital ship that was not fully repaired) b/ Calculate according to the current number&value of escorts in the sqd.
A: I'd go b] on this one because the captial ship still gets full guns, shields etc (assuming it isn't crippled and no-ones going to committed already crippled ships to a game) whereas the escort squadron will be less effective because of the reduction in ships.
- I'm going to take a crack at these but in the case of campaigns (even more than usual) I think it's down to you players to decide on exactly what you want to do to get the best campaign - I have no idea of what game frequency, number of players, reliability etc you're trying to accomodate.
I'll be starting a multi-player campaign very soon and have several questions that I'm hoping some people all ready running campaigns can help with concerning the campaign rules in the main book.
To start with each player selects a sub-sector system to begin with? Is there a good a ration of neutral sub-sectors Vs players at the beginning. Meaning two neutrals per player or one neutral per player, etc.
A: You seem to have got slightly confused here, reread Getting Started on p148 bearing in mind that you pick a sub sector to fight in and then players choose a starting star system each. If you still have problems e-mail me again.
You may only take control of a sub-sector if it is linked to one you control via a warp route.
What happens if you no longer control any sub-sectors, i.e. you just lost your last controlled sub-sector in a battle? I was thinking of allowing any player to be able to always declare an attack on his starting sub-sector regardless of who controls it. Or should they move to the closest neutral sub-sector to set up a new base ( This could make for and interesting scenario. Having to run your entire fleet through controlled sub-sectors to get there.)
A: Sounds great to me
The book also mentions that you should discourage attacks against the same race. Do you think it would have much baring on the campaign if you allowed imperial fleets to freely move through imperial controlled sub-sectors regardless of the player how controls it? The same would apply for chaos.
This would apply for controlling the neutral sub-sector.
A: I'd leave it up to players whether they allow people through or not - the basic premise is to force players to build their own little interconnected empires but we've suspended this rule in the large campaign we've been running here at the studio
What are the ramifications to an Ork or Eldar player when their base is discovered and destroyed? The rules don't say much about the after effect.
Do they simply pick another sub-sector with some penalties applied or should they just start another fleet and secret base.
A: The survivors will simply 'move house and set-up in another system.
New ships, Replacement ships, and their leadership.
When I read the rules on this subject I came to the concusion that ships in the campaign started with leadership 6, and that ships killed had to be replaced by your reinforcements, who also arrived with leadership 6.
A: At the risk of seeming picky, what made you think this? It doesn't say this anywhere, In point of fact, the normal random leadership rules apply to your starting fleet (p10).
A friend of mine pored over the same rules, and came to the conclusion that you started with a random leadership, that killed ships were immediately reintroduced into the campaign under a new name and leadership 6, and in *addition* to that you could get extra reinforcements with a random leadership.
A: Yep, replacements are Ld 6 (p154), reinforcements have a random Ld but with a -1 modifier to represent hasty training (p149)
We then both looked at the rules together, and found both and neither to be true. At that point we gave up, throughly confused.
Capturing Hulks.
In campaign play, you get bonus points for capturing hulks. How, exactly, *do* you capture hulks? By controlling the battlefield at the end of the game? By boarding with a prize crew? And after you capture it, then what? Can you send a captured hulk off for repairs? Can you send one of your own hulks off for repair?
A: See p66 for capturing hulks. The value of hulks is that they can be rebuilt into capital ships in the long term (say a few hundred years). Some players have been allowing hulks to be refitted in their campaigns, leading to Chaos with nova cannons and so on - which sounds like good fun to me!
I don't have my rulebook handy now, as I'm mailing from work, but there is some phrase in the beginning of the random leadership rules that describes them as rules for "one-off" games, and that rules for leadership in campaign play follows later in the book, and when looking at those, I found no direct reference to the beginning of the book.
A: Doh! (sound of palm slapping forehead), yes you're dead right - it really should refer to p10 for generating starting LD values.
Yep, replacements are Ld 6 (p154), reinforcements have a random Ld but with a -1 modifier to represent hasty training (p149)
OK. This means that your fleet can never dwindle, only grow, regardless of whether you win or lose battles. I guess that all the fluff (which I liked very much btw) gave me such a feeling that the Gothic war was one of attrition, that I kind of refused to believe that interpretation could be true... :-)
Hi, I got a similar question from GW Canada and thought you might like a copy.
Here's the Canadian Q:
> Hello Andy! Everyone really seems to be enjoying the Battlefleet Gothic
> campaign here, but we came across another question. If one of your ships is
> destroyed, do you really get it back with all hits and Ld 6? We were
> reading the point of reinforcements as a way of reducing attrition in your
> fleet, but if you don't lose destroyed ships then I gather that
> reinforcements are more a means of giving you tactical flexibility.
A: Originally we forced people to rebuild their fleets with reinforcements but it was simply too harsh if you lost several ships or escort squadrons in a major engagement, hence we changed over to reinforcements being a way of expanding your fleet and , as you say, making it more flexible. Feel free to change this back to the original if you and the other players like, but be prepared to fight with some pretty sorry-looking fleets if you do!
If playing a campaign would navigational shields work against that annoying solar flare thingy? (was that flare rule an oversight?)
A: Yes