Rules Questions about NB2

Hello fellow Xenomorphs,

I have two questions about some new rule elements introduced in the 2.0 update for Night Brood which are only touched lightly in the design notes:

• Regeneration: What does it affect, how does it work?
  
• Boarding: How do I determine what kind of crew my ship has? Is there a point buy system and if yes, has someone created a cost table or something?
  

I hope someone can answer this, although I'm certainly not above finding my own explanation. 

Welcome to the Interstellar Flying Circus! Here's the Boarding Action rules thus far:

 
Boarding Actions
 
While destroying a hostile ship can be viscerally satisfying, sometimes it’s not necessarily the best or most desirable course of action. Sometimes circumstances will demand that a vessel be captured as much intact as possible, perhaps in order to capture a specific crew member or passenger for intelligence collection purposes or to free hostages from space pirates. This requires a ship be boarded by your own personnel, either crew members of an escort vessel forming an ad hoc boarding party, or dedicated zero-gravity combat specialists such as Colosian Stosstruppen or Tokugawan Special Naval Landing Forces troopers equipped and specially trained for EVA ship-to-ship assaults. 
 
In the context of Silent Death: The Next Millennium, the terrifyingly brutal reality of zero-gravity infantry combat is beyond the scope to the game, yet capturing an enemy vessel especially an expensive and hard-to-come-by Warhound can be a very lucrative and advantageous pastime, so to this end a set of straightforward and simple Boarding Action rules are in order.
 
Boarding Actions may take place when the following criteria are met:
 
1)   The target ship and the assaulting ship are not moving faster than a speed of 1.
2)   The target ship and the assaulting ship are on a parallel course during the turn the boarding attempt is taking place.
3)   The two ships engaged may not be further than one (1) hex apart.
 
 
The Defending player must declare during the Warhead Launch Phase which crew members will remain at their posts and which will repel boarders. If the boarders win the initial exchange, they gain access to the ship’s interior. 
 
The next turn the defending player must decide whether or not they will allocate any additional crew to repel boarders. If none are committed, and the boarders outnumber their surviving opponents by 3 to 1 or better, they may send extra boarders over 2 to 1 to bypass the designated defenders and attack the remaining crew at their stations. 
 
Ordinary Crew = D4
 
Shipboard Security Personnel, Galandar, Draconians = D6
 
Night Brood, Zero-G trained infantry, Galandar “Yetis,” 
Millennium Warriors, shipboard marines, Draconian “Raptors”  = D8
 
Blood Worms, Draconian “Tyrannosaurs”  = D10
 
Powered armor = D12+1
 
 
Players roll 1 die for each boarder vs. 1 opponent. Difference between the dice equals the number of casualties in favor of the higher rolling player. Draws produce no casualties.
 
Exception: Blood Worms only suffer casualties if difference in die roll is twice the Bloodworm player’s boarding action combat roll if opponent’s combat die is less than a D10. This is due to the fact that Blood Worms are exceptionally tough, resilient creatures able to withstand hard vacuum, levels of radiation that would kill most other life forms, and will keep fighting to deadly effect even after sustaining wounds that would kill a small dinosaur. 
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So as you can see, we've stuck as much as possible to the K.I.S.S. Principle. The majority of crew members on ships in Silent Death are classified as ordinary Crew. I'd say for the other types you can designate a quarter of a Warhound's Gunners (but not gun crewmembers) as the equivalent of Shipboard Security Personnel or even Marines. Otherwise (for example) Powered Armor troopers are only going to turn up as passengers on a transport ship or specialty assault ship. 

Point value wise we haven't carried matters that far along yet. Hence why we're always eager to have playtesting feedback and hear from the fans of Silent Death about their solutions and ideas. 

Again, welcome aboard!

• Regeneration: What does it affect, how does it work?
  

Oh, and regarding Night Brood Regeneration, when it comes to repairing damage, it works the same as Damage Control on a Terran fighter. The only difference is that it is also used by the Brood to replenish their ammunition supplies while in combat circumstances permitting. It is also used by the Brood to regrow lost weapons. In Campaign System terms there is the possibility of a Brood being subject to mutations due to regenerating a lost weapon system or repairing damage, and all of that exposure to cosmic radiation has finally caught up with them...

Welcome to the Interstellar Flying Circus! Here's the Boarding Action rules thus far:

Yes, I have read this and the following part stumped me:

Ordinary Crew = D4
 
Shipboard Security Personnel, Galandar, Draconians = D6
 
Night Brood, Zero-G trained infantry, Galandar “Yetis,” 
Millennium Warriors, shipboard marines, Draconian “Raptors”  = D8
 
Blood Worms, Draconian “Tyrannosaurs”  = D10
 
Powered armor = D12+1

See, where do I get to decide what kind of crew my vessel has? For Worm Pods that is obvious but terrans not so much.

Since there seems to be no "official" solution (yet), my humble suggestion would be to simplify this by declaring all crew members highly trained military personnel (which seems fitting to me) and using a D10 for all terrans by default (we don't use aliens other than hatchlings in our games). So you would need to remember only two dice – D12 for blood worms and D10 for terrans.

The rest of the boarding rules makes sense to me. We will use this sooner or later, I'd happily post how this went.

Again, welcome aboard!

Thank you. ^^

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• Regeneration: What does it affect, how does it work?
  

Oh, and regarding Night Brood Regeneration, when it comes to repairing damage, it works the same as Damage Control on a Terran fighter. The only difference is that it is also used by the Brood to replenish their ammunition supplies while in combat circumstances permitting. It is also used by the Brood to regrow lost weapons. In Campaign System terms there is the possibility of a Brood being subject to mutations due to regenerating a lost weapon system or repairing damage, and all of that exposure to cosmic radiation has finally caught up with them...

Thank you for clearing that up. Unfortunately, this brings up another question: If you say it works the same as Damage Control, does that mean it can also be used only once per mission?

Since all hatchling vessels have only limited ammo, that would put them at a huge disadvantage against the terrans. We tried that and it didn't work out very well for the brood.

We houseruled it as a way to regenerate ammo and ammo only, which can be used indefinitely, following the same restrictions DC use also follows (didn't fire, didn't take damage this round). That seemed to work better. But, of course, much more games with both versions would be needed to say for certain.

---

Also, someone here proposed some sort of energy lens that can extend and redirect hatchling beams when hit by friendly fire, using an ammo point.
I'm highly intrigued by this idea. It would be truly unique to the brood and balance some of their ammo limitations in the wider scale of game balance.
I have already forgotten the given name (and can't find the original post X-/ ) but I would equip a Monarch and maybe a Muskellunge (this name cracks me up as a german native speaker, btw ^^ ) with this and field test it a bit.
I have the feeling you should really consider putting this in the final version of this expansion. It's, mechanically speaking, an easy rule and quickly explained but changes brood tactics a lot.

See, where do I get to decide what kind of crew my vessel has? For Worm Pods that is obvious but terrans not so much.

Since there seems to be no "official" solution (yet), my humble suggestion would be to simplify this by declaring all crew members highly trained military personnel (which seems fitting to me) and using a D10 for all terrans by default (we don't use aliens other than hatchlings in our games). So you would need to remember only two dice – D12 for blood worms and D10 for terrans.

The rest of the boarding rules makes sense to me. We will use this sooner or later, I'd happily post how this went.

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Oh, and regarding Night Brood Regeneration, when it comes to repairing damage, it works the same as Damage Control on a Terran fighter. The only difference is that it is also used by the Brood to replenish their ammunition supplies while in combat circumstances permitting. It is also used by the Brood to regrow lost weapons. In Campaign System terms there is the possibility of a Brood being subject to mutations due to regenerating a lost weapon system or repairing damage, and all of that exposure to cosmic radiation has finally caught up with them...

Thank you for clearing that up. Unfortunately, this brings up another question: If you say it works the same as Damage Control, does that mean it can also be used only once per mission?

Since all hatchling vessels have only limited ammo, that would put them at a huge disadvantage against the terrans. We tried that and it didn't work out very well for the brood.

We houseruled it as a way to regenerate ammo and ammo only, which can be used indefinitely, following the same restrictions DC use also follows (didn't fire, didn't take damage this round). That seemed to work better. But, of course, much more games with both versions would be needed to say for certain.

---

Also, someone here proposed some sort of energy lens that can extend and redirect hatchling beams when hit by friendly fire, using an ammo point.
I'm highly intrigued by this idea. It would be truly unique to the brood and balance some of their ammo limitations in the wider scale of game balance.
I have already forgotten the given name (and can't find the original post X-/ ) but I would equip a Monarch and maybe a Muskellunge (this name cracks me up as a german native speaker, btw ^^ ) with this and field test it a bit.
I have the feeling you should really consider putting this in the final version of this expansion. It's, mechanically speaking, an easy rule and quickly explained but changes brood tactics a lot.

To address each of your questions/ideas...

1) Regeneration was intended to work *at will* for the Night Brood, making them rather more difficult to kill off at least potentially. Note though that a damaged Brood ship trying to regenerate damage has to go unmolested and unengaged for a full turn to pull off the repair effort. So while a designated Brood ship is trying to self repair, and several Terran ships manage to pile on...

2) Concerning crew quality and crew selection, ordinary crew are trained personnel. They're basically deck hands and technicians, not fighter pilots or dedicated combat soldiers such as Warworlder infantry or elite fighters such as Millennium Warriors. The reason they are rated as highly as they are is that an ordinary deck hand would once battlestations has sounded be packing a sidearm at the very least, and even against a Bloodworm a .357 hollow point slug fired at point blank range is going to sting a bit. Now of course you could find yourself grappling a nice, fat, juicy Terran Narwhal with your Worm Pods, only to discover that the cargo in fact consisted of a full platoon of Warworlder shock troopers in powered armor and a full course of zero-g combat training under their belts (and the EVA gear to go along with it), but that is something that would be specific to a scenario or a happenstance (or cunning player strategy) in a campaign game. 

We do plan to keep expanding on this particular subject as we compile more playtester feedback (and we encourage you and your gang to please share your experiences with us accordingly). 

3)Now, I will confess that I am an unapologetic fan of the Space Battleship Yamato canon, so this idea is (1) just too campy to ignore, and (2) just too cheesy nasty good Night Brood fun to not put to use. I would only say that the capability of acting as a receiver/transmitter of the lethal beam should reside with the Monarch (hence the big "butterfly wings"), and I'd say further that it is used as a Warhound/orbital platform killing weapon, that can gather the energy of multiple Beam shots in a single shooting step and add them all together into one big ZAP! directed at one really unlucky Warhound or orbital platform. Mind you it would require a degree of coordination between individual Brood that only the Brood could pull off, and of course I'd say that all of the Brood participating in such an attack had to have the same or higher Gunnery skill rating to pull it off (ie., they've all got to be able to "be on the same page" as it were). 

Frankly, this idea is insidious to say the very least, and worthy of Ming the Merciless Himself. So I say go for it, while I'm going to tinker with the idea at my end and see what shakes loose accordingly.