I think (and I am probably not the only one) that the current way how critical works in BFGA2 is not satisfactory.

• Criticals are based on a random system
• The result of the critical is random (a Chaos lance can go from a ignore armor for 2 damages to a engine crit for -50% speed and no more manoeuvres)
• It is too easy to target the system you need to totally cripple a ship (engines/decks are the best shots) (and also it give you a bit of scouting because roks/escorts/kroots don t have subsystems and necrons don t have generators)

Too often, you have on the first volleys a ship with 95% HP and no more engines making him totally useless.

I don t have a solution to make the things perfect but here some ideas :

• Above 85% HP you can take only ignore armor/fires crits, between 50% and 85% susbsystem crit chance is reduces by 50% (compared to fires/ignore armor) --> This is to remove the early crits and also as a lore view, you need the armor to be destroyed before hitting the systems
• Instead of selecting a subsystem on enemy, you select on your ships what subsystem he will focus --> works like behavior panel
• Only susbsystems in the hit arcs can be damaged (so engines only from rear and no more from sides/ torps launchers only from front...). Deck is front + sides and generator sides + rear but both have a innate reduced chance to get hitted --> Emphasize a good positionning to get the crits you need instead of just click the button on the enemy
• The specific subsystem only works for lances crits (they are the only accurate enough weapons to target something specific) --> A little buff to lances and also more lore accurate
• Fires can only comes from macros crits
• Lock on give crit chance only for lances --> to compensate the accuracy that works only for macros

In regards engine crits, had a thought, what if engines could suffer multiple smaller crits, (like the eldar Sails) where speed takes incremental reductions. Could increase number of potential crits as tonnage increases as generally ships gain more engine "nozzles" as they get bigger.

Removes the all or nothing issue with engine crits rendering a ship near useless within potentially the first exchange of volleys.

@beernchips all solid ideas, nothing to add here. The first idea though(crits only after losing certain HP) is very badly needed in ths game though.

This has to be one of the best ideas I've seen in a while. Early engines/deck crits are way too swingy, especially when you play as orks. You got engine crit on your enemy early on? Its a dead meat, no matter how much HP it has. Deck crit on your flagship into mutiny at the start? Instant loss as orks.

Btw, a sudden thought - what about crits from boarding? Should they stay the same or follow this system? Because boarding is the worst source of subsystem crits after all, when you can often have a hulked ship with 80% HP and 2-4 perma critted subsystems/weapons. So, may be boarding at 85% HP should cause only fire crits?

Perhaps i am wrong but boarding crits only deal +1 troop damages and no system crits. Those comes when you lose a troop layer

you are fully right
boarding crits is +1 crew damage
only losing a chunk does anything
and thats 1 temp crit for going to yellow
2 for going to red
and 3 when hulked
you get the same result for executing an insubordination, they are even targeted the same
a hulked ship always has 3 permacrits unless you repair after the first, in wich case its 2 and a temp as you need two temp crits to get a permacrit
if losing a crew chunk only do a few fires you should just remove boarding from the game and stop the charade
or rework the boarding system to actually be something meaningful instead of a on/off bullshit system

Yes please. These are all good ideas

Hey!

Thanks for this feedback, it has been passed on to the dev team!

@jellyfoosh it is great to see that you guys are keeping up the good work with patches and balancing!

I would personally recommend looking into engine crits thoroughly, as these are the most deciding crit most of the time. Ship without engines can't cap and is as good as a dead meat most of the time.

I'd propose to have multiple crit stages for engines like eldar but for all races. Bigger tonnage means more stages for a ship, as it gradually drops it's speed. Something along the lines of 1 for LC, 2 for C, 3 for BC, 4 for GC and 5 for Boost becomes unavailable at the last stage. Maybe BS could keep their speed for first 3 stages (it is already pretty low).

Also other system damage could become more gradual in order to make it less swingy as well and allow heavier ships to have multiple stages in order to absorb punishment better. Like multiple stages for generators. In order of normal shields each stage could have reduced max shield HP or regeneration speed. For eldar ships each stage could reduce holofield/shadowfield speed gain time and increase holofield's degradation time on low speeds.

I am generally very reluctant to big changes, but this one seems to be very important, even as a mainly singleplayer guy. Nothing is as frustrating as getting the engine of your glorious battleship knocked out right at the beginning of a battle, be it in MP or SP. Because this makes the big ships basically useless.

I'm not sure if the update with bigger crit modifiers for large ships was reversed or not, but I do believe if we were to go for full multi-stage criticals then the crit modifier should be reverted to old value. This way crit chances would be again more in-line for all ships BUT getting critted wouldn't mean as much for large ships since they have a few backup generators.

But overall, I very much like this idea.

Above 85% HP you can take only ignore armor/fires crits, between 50% and 85% susbsystem crit chance is reduces by 50% (compared to fires/ignore armor) --> This is to remove the early crits and also as a lore view, you need the armor to be destroyed before hitting the systems
Instead of selecting a subsystem on enemy, you select on your ships what subsystem he will focus --> works like behavior panel ( love this idea, but concerning if you have different ship types, I might focus a deck on a flag ship if Im going to moral bomb, but still want my broadsides and stray fire to hit others in the engines or other sub system) Not sold on the idea, but be interesting to try.

Only susbsystems in the hit arcs can be damaged (so engines only from rear and no more from sides/ torps launchers only from front...). Deck is front + sides and generator sides + rear but both have a innate reduced chance to get hitted --> Emphasize a good positionning to get the crits you need instead of just click the button on the enemy I believe this is already implemented in the game, if not, there is a lot less % chance of a crit when for example your not facing engines, to get an engine crit. Tested this out with a buddy in game.

The specific subsystem only works for lances crits (they are the only accurate enough weapons to target something specific) --> A little buff to lances and also more lore accurate
Fires can only comes from macros crits
Lock on give crit chance only for lances --> to compensate the accuracy that works only for macros Once again it would be interesting to try out the idea but, this seems like a massive game change that will unbalance the entire game as it currently stands. Sometimes you need to focus engines with Macros to win vs someone, and that option shouldn't be taken away, also this is basically naval combat in space, you can order cannon broadsides at close range to target sub systems.

Good ideas, but I wouldn't be a fan of these kinds of tweeks, maybe the first one as it has the least impact with the best benefit to gameplay. Imo this game as at the point where minor tweaks need to be looked at not entire reworks.

Some mechanics (Stealth for example) will need rework (like they did for boarding) and cannot be only tweaked.