When squadroned ships with different armour values comes under fire the lowest armour value is taken, and hits are allocated to the closest ship that could be hit by the incoming fire. So if you have a 6+ armour ship in front of a 5+ armour ship then any 6's rolled will hit the 6+ armour ship as normal. Then any 5's rolled will hit the 5+ armour ship.
The effect is to split the damage across the squadron. Meaning you get more shield impacts, and reduced crippled threshold for the protected ship. The bullet shield takes all the damage it would normally take if it were on its own, the protected ship essentially gets immunity to lances and 6+ armour.
If we were to look at the alternative condition of running the two ships solo in the same configuration we see two scenarios. The enemy shoots at the closer 6+ armour ship, or they shoot at the 5+ further ship.
In the former condition you actually take less damage. Because the 5's are discarded. In the latter condition you don't get the protection offered by squadroning them, obviously, but you do get to individually brace, and your opponent will be forced to take target priority tests, which will serve to split the incoming fire anyway when taking fire from multiple ships.
So it might be better to run them separately all things considered.
Against 5+ armour at normal range with no BMs or other penalty shifts, there's almost no difference between 5 Aconites vs 7 Hemlocks (Hemlocks cost 5 points more, do less than 0.05 less damage). The Aconites can get better by getting within 15cm (+2.8 damage compared to Hemlocks). The Hemlocks do much better against 6+ armour (+4.45 damage at normal range, +2.9 damage at close range).
When not locked-on (the standard situation for Corsair Eldar), the Aconites and Hemlocks will both do around 6 damage (slightly more for the Hemlocks) against 5+ armour, no column shifts.
All in all, the Aconite is a solid choice. The decision to use lances or weapon batteries is situational, and you need some of each in an all-rounder fleet. The Hemlocks do have the advantage of survivability though; their firepower is spread across 7 platforms instead of 5, and they're faster when flying into the sun.
So unless you think you're coming up against other Eldar, or are likely to be able to fire on 4+ armour, I would typically just take the Hemlocks. But Aconites are quite usable.
Ok, you made a bit of a hash of the FB rules, so let me clarify. To start, let's lay out the normal bomber, fighter, and turret suppression rules. They are:
1. Bomber wave contacts ship base. 2. Any fighters on CAP interact with the wave. Survivors of the wave will attack the ship. 3. Defending ship decides to brace or not. 4. Defending ship fires turrets if they elect to shoot at AC this turn (as opposed to torpedoes). 5. Turret hits are allocated to attacking fighters first, before any other ordnance (they still get to suppress turrets). 6. Each surviving bomber in the wave makes a number of attack runs equal to 1d6 – the number of the defending ship's turrets (regardless of whether they shot at AC or torps), down to a minimum of 0 attacks for each bomber (no negative attacks!). 7. Total up the number of attack runs for all the bombers in the wave, and add 1 to the total for each fighter in the wave, up to a maximum of the number of surviving bombers (note: this used to be up to a maximum of the number of turrets of the defending ship but was changed). 8. Once you have the grand total, roll that many dice against the lowest armour value of the ship. Any that score equal or higher are hits. Defending player attempts any brace saves. Any that get through the brace save score a hit on the hull, roll for critical damage (against capital ships only). 9. Any assault boats in the wave make their attack run. Roll a d6 per boat, apply any modifiers that are appropriate, consult the critical hits table for the result, defender rolls brace saves against each attack if he's braced.
Those are the normal rules. Ork Fighta-bommas modify the rules as follows: 1. After step 2 you nominate how many FBs will be acting as fighters and how many will be acting as bombers. 2. Those that act like fighters will behave exactly as noted above, except that the maximum benefit you can gain from turret suppression is equal to the number of turrets of the defending ship or number of surviving fighta-bombas, whichever is lower. So if you have 3 FBs on turret suppression and 3 FBs bombing, but the ship only has 2 turrets, you only gain +2 attacks instead of +3. 3. FBs that are bombing will make 1d3 – turrets attacks, instead of 1d6 – turrets, down to a minimum of one per bomba, instead of zero as is normally the case.
So, as an example. Let's say you have a wave of 8 normal AC and you're launching against an Emperor class battleship with 5 turrets. Under the old rules you would launch 5 fighters to suppress turrets, 1 bomber to make the attacks, and a couple of a-boats to maybe turn off something critical for a turn. This would give you a guaranteed 5 attacks, maybe another attack if your bomber rolled a 6, and a couple of H&R attacks. Now that you're limited to the number of surviving bombers instead of target turrets you would send a squadron of 4f and 4b. This will give you 4 x (1d6-5 min 0) attack runs (or possibly 3 x if he hits with all 5 turrets) and an extra 4 attacks. For an average of 4.65 attacks total, and no H&R attacks. Stupid change.
For an Ork player in the same situation he would simply send in 8FBs, and declare 4 of them are acting as fightas. This will give him a total of 8 attacks. Unless the opponent hits with all 5 turrets (3.125% chance). In which case he gets 6 attacks instead.
Fighta-bombas are better against high turret targets than normal bombers.
dang , I missed the live stream
When squadroned ships with different armour values comes under fire the lowest armour value is taken, and hits are allocated to the closest ship that could be hit by the incoming fire. So if you have a 6+ armour ship in front of a 5+ armour ship then any 6's rolled will hit the 6+ armour ship as normal. Then any 5's rolled will hit the 5+ armour ship.
The effect is to split the damage across the squadron. Meaning you get more shield impacts, and reduced crippled threshold for the protected ship. The bullet shield takes all the damage it would normally take if it were on its own, the protected ship essentially gets immunity to lances and 6+ armour.
If we were to look at the alternative condition of running the two ships solo in the same configuration we see two scenarios. The enemy shoots at the closer 6+ armour ship, or they shoot at the 5+ further ship.
In the former condition you actually take less damage. Because the 5's are discarded. In the latter condition you don't get the protection offered by squadroning them, obviously, but you do get to individually brace, and your opponent will be forced to take target priority tests, which will serve to split the incoming fire anyway when taking fire from multiple ships.
So it might be better to run them separately all things considered.
Shame RT cargos only give the plus 1 LD for torpedoes equipped ships only.
Against 5+ armour at normal range with no BMs or other penalty shifts, there's almost no difference between 5 Aconites vs 7 Hemlocks (Hemlocks cost 5 points more, do less than 0.05 less damage). The Aconites can get better by getting within 15cm (+2.8 damage compared to Hemlocks). The Hemlocks do much better against 6+ armour (+4.45 damage at normal range, +2.9 damage at close range).
When not locked-on (the standard situation for Corsair Eldar), the Aconites and Hemlocks will both do around 6 damage (slightly more for the Hemlocks) against 5+ armour, no column shifts.
All in all, the Aconite is a solid choice. The decision to use lances or weapon batteries is situational, and you need some of each in an all-rounder fleet. The Hemlocks do have the advantage of survivability though; their firepower is spread across 7 platforms instead of 5, and they're faster when flying into the sun.
So unless you think you're coming up against other Eldar, or are likely to be able to fire on 4+ armour, I would typically just take the Hemlocks. But Aconites are quite usable.
Ok, you made a bit of a hash of the FB rules, so let me clarify. To start, let's lay out the normal bomber, fighter, and turret suppression rules. They are:
1. Bomber wave contacts ship base.
2. Any fighters on CAP interact with the wave. Survivors of the wave will attack the ship.
3. Defending ship decides to brace or not.
4. Defending ship fires turrets if they elect to shoot at AC this turn (as opposed to torpedoes).
5. Turret hits are allocated to attacking fighters first, before any other ordnance (they still get to suppress turrets).
6. Each surviving bomber in the wave makes a number of attack runs equal to 1d6 – the number of the defending ship's turrets (regardless of whether they shot at AC or torps), down to a minimum of 0 attacks for each bomber (no negative attacks!).
7. Total up the number of attack runs for all the bombers in the wave, and add 1 to the total for each fighter in the wave, up to a maximum of the number of surviving bombers (note: this used to be up to a maximum of the number of turrets of the defending ship but was changed).
8. Once you have the grand total, roll that many dice against the lowest armour value of the ship. Any that score equal or higher are hits. Defending player attempts any brace saves. Any that get through the brace save score a hit on the hull, roll for critical damage (against capital ships only).
9. Any assault boats in the wave make their attack run. Roll a d6 per boat, apply any modifiers that are appropriate, consult the critical hits table for the result, defender rolls brace saves against each attack if he's braced.
Those are the normal rules. Ork Fighta-bommas modify the rules as follows:
1. After step 2 you nominate how many FBs will be acting as fighters and how many will be acting as bombers.
2. Those that act like fighters will behave exactly as noted above, except that the maximum benefit you can gain from turret suppression is equal to the number of turrets of the defending ship or number of surviving fighta-bombas, whichever is lower. So if you have 3 FBs on turret suppression and 3 FBs bombing, but the ship only has 2 turrets, you only gain +2 attacks instead of +3.
3. FBs that are bombing will make 1d3 – turrets attacks, instead of 1d6 – turrets, down to a minimum of one per bomba, instead of zero as is normally the case.
So, as an example. Let's say you have a wave of 8 normal AC and you're launching against an Emperor class battleship with 5 turrets. Under the old rules you would launch 5 fighters to suppress turrets, 1 bomber to make the attacks, and a couple of a-boats to maybe turn off something critical for a turn. This would give you a guaranteed 5 attacks, maybe another attack if your bomber rolled a 6, and a couple of H&R attacks. Now that you're limited to the number of surviving bombers instead of target turrets you would send a squadron of 4f and 4b. This will give you 4 x (1d6-5 min 0) attack runs (or possibly 3 x if he hits with all 5 turrets) and an extra 4 attacks. For an average of 4.65 attacks total, and no H&R attacks. Stupid change.
For an Ork player in the same situation he would simply send in 8FBs, and declare 4 of them are acting as fightas. This will give him a total of 8 attacks. Unless the opponent hits with all 5 turrets (3.125% chance). In which case he gets 6 attacks instead.
Fighta-bombas are better against high turret targets than normal bombers.