Which means that each fleet needs to have three different eras.
Not necessarily; but some fleets could do with being split; centauri, and narn, for instance.
The aim is not to have a fleet list for each era for each fleet, merely the ones that noticable change as you progress through the spans of time. Nor is there a need to have the same eras for each fleet - the Centauri, for instance, couldn't give a **** about the Earth-Minbari war as they had the sense not to get involved. The Narn rebellion, on the other hand, was a big turning point, as was the fall of Centauri Prime - so their 'eras' might fit there.
As long as the different eras have dates associated with them, you can still do 'historical' campaigns or games, but one of the main problems with enforcing
just in-service dates is that, as noted, everyone has a fleet and not all ships in that fleet exist at all time periods. People, it's been said and observed many times, do not use ISD.
I play dilgar. Do you want a game? Oh...no...wait - you play ISA.
In reality people won't care - and even if you divide fleets up people can still use whichever ships they like in friendly games, the Mongoose Thought Police won't come and try to kill them. But era-based fleets, with some development of different classes, does allow for tournaments that still have fleets that 'feel right', all the ships being of an appropriate period.
Priority level is NOT anything to do with how the fleet's admiral sees warship X, it is a measure of how good warship X is.
As noted, at any tournament (5 points at raid), you will have (for instance) dilgar war EA versus crusade EA, or crusade EA versus dilgar, or Drakh who will, over the course of the day, play one EA fleet from each era.
In this case, a 'raid point' needs to represent a ship of a given fighting power, or else different era fleets will win without trying.
If I start with an early EA hyperion (say a railgun variant, about the earliest), it will have capability X. It is a skirmish ship. It should therefore always be a skirmish ship so long as its abilities stay the same. Agreed?
Also, a hyperion Mk 1 will have the same firepower (in terms of rate-of-fire, weapons yield, warhead weight), even if this is less effective against newer ships. Agreed?
a Crusade era Hyperion when fighting in Crusade era times is a battle level choice, but when fighting in the Dilgar war era its PL choice will probably become Armageddon and you will have to add to it's speed, damage dice and armor value to show the comparison to its poorer ancestor.
But there's absolutely no need to have PL vary with era; PL is the ship's 'cost' - a measure of its combat prowess.
Hyperion Mk 1 - a railgun variant - is skirmish priority.
Hyperion Mk 2 - the heavy cruiser, gunned up with its laser - is raid
Hyperion Mk 3 (sort of) - the Marathon cruiser - is battle.
this is balanced against any fleet of any other era; the fact that the hyperion is a flanking ship rather than a battle-line slugger doesn't affect priority level; if you want a 'more representative' crusade era EA fleet simply up the number of points the game/campaign is played at - just bear in mind that you'll get more of the older ships for the same increase.
There's no need to 'downgrade' the Mk1 in later eras - it still has the same weaponry. It will be less effective (read: utterly shafted) in a matchup of equal numbers because it is facing Marathon cruisers, who's neutron cannons ARE more powerful, and whose armour IS thicker - this is already in the marathon's improved statline, and the reason why a fair game doesn't involve an equal matchup of
numbers, it is an equal matchup of
points.
Now let's move the timeline up to Crusade era. New armor has been developed, more powerful weapons, better targeting.
Which is why new crusade ship classes are almost universally more expensive than their older equivalent; delphi-oracle, marathon-hyperion, warlock-omega, apollo-sagitarius, chronos-olympus.
Using the reasoning that as you advance you "just add more dice" is a simplistic view
Except it works. One AD represents the ability to do X amount of explosive yield, with traits to repesent any additional special abilities.
we will wind up soon having to use 32oz soda glasses just to hold our dice when we roll weapon dice.
Why - If ancient priority is the upper limit, then nothing can be more powerful than a lordship (for instance). However, if you play a balanced game, not just say 'lets use all the ships we have', then a 5 point game will give you less ships at higher priority.
In addition, in order to play balanced fleets the PL level will have to keep on increasing and increasing and increasing to the point where a post crusade era scout ship is so advanced that it compares to an armageddon level battle cruiser from the Dilgar war era.
Um.....yes. What's wrong with that?
A ship that can take apart a dilgar cruiser should be worth more than said cruiser, even if it's nominally a scout ship.
This is why Crusade era EA, Minbari and Shadow scouts are higher priority than a Minbari War era EA cruisers - they will batter them to bits in a fight.
Balance has to be applied somewhere and it can be applied many ways, but increasing dice / pl levels is no more valid than reducing dice/armor/pl levels when old ships fight the new ones.
Because some ships exist in the same form at all eras. A vorlon destroyer is a vorlon destroyer; yet the same weapon statline would be able to blow a Hyperion M1 to bits in crusade era but only wing it in the Early EA. You could argue that the priority level of the vorlon destroyer should increase in early eras, but why a 5 point fleet have to be re-written every time I face a different opponent?
To make it simple, there should be ONE SINGLE era that all PL levels are based on.
YES! And that's what there IS!
Third age is pretty much the yardstick - crusade era ships have their priority levels set by comparing them to third age equivalents - hence they are more expensive and the crusade fleet list moves generally up the PL scale, just like more any other more advanced fleet (minbari, vorlon, etc), whilst early fleets are lower on the PL scale as an Orestes defence monitor - whilst the heaviest ship of the line for the early fleet - is not a fair match for a command omega, just like less powerful-per-ship third age fleets - like the drazi.
Setting all of the fleets to a common 'priority scale' means that you can pick up a 1 point warfleet and know that it is a fair fight against any other 1 point warfleet, whether that fleet consists of 5,674,231 drazi whateverhawks that appear in any time period, a few early era nova dreadnoughts or one crusade era warlock class advanced destroyer.
