2E Worth it?

[Tankdriver]

The way I see it, swarms are deadly for two reasons, Squadrons, and init sinks.
Sqaudrons: by putting ships into a squadron, you limit or even eliminate your init sink bonus for the chance to score with massive numbers of attack dice, the way smaller ships should be used anyway, ie. destroyer squadrons. If your opponent groups his ships in squadrons, fire everything at one of the little buggers and watch your big ship make his small one go BOOM! This was better in the first edition as the ship went then and there and would likely take some friends with him, or at least hurt him. A little harder the way the 2E rules look, but then again I have not really seen them yet.

Init Sinks: Scores of small ships all running around the map trying to line you up and sow havoc. Great! Marrianas Turkey Shoot time. Hunt them down individually. If they attempt to swarm, then it is one-good-grenade-formation time again and with so many of his ships on the board, he will have a hard time getting all of them away, especially if you have brought multiple ships to the explosion point in the same turn. Which may be possible if he goes with swarms of patrol ships and you are throwing raid to war ships at him.

As the folks above said, tactics, man, tactics.

And tic tacs. Never forget the tic tacs.

 

[Triggy]

The way I see it, swarms are deadly for two reasons, Squadrons, and init sinks.
Sqaudrons: by putting ships into a squadron, you limit or even eliminate your init sink bonus for the chance to score with massive numbers of attack dice, the way smaller ships should be used anyway, ie. destroyer squadrons. If your opponent groups his ships in squadrons, fire everything at one of the little buggers and watch your big ship make his small one go BOOM! This was better in the first edition as the ship went then and there and would likely take some friends with him, or at least hurt him. A little harder the way the 2E rules look, but then again I have not really seen them yet.

Init Sinks: Scores of small ships all running around the map trying to line you up and sow havoc. Great! Marrianas Turkey Shoot time. Hunt them down individually. If they attempt to swarm, then it is one-good-grenade-formation time again and with so many of his ships on the board, he will have a hard time getting all of them away, especially if you have brought multiple ships to the explosion point in the same turn. Which may be possible if he goes with swarms of patrol ships and you are throwing raid to war ships at him.

As the folks above said, tactics, man, tactics.

And tic tacs. Never forget the tic tacs.

In testing I've tried the uber-swarm three times now using these tactics. They won utterly convincingly all three times. I reported the results (although not the details) as such and I think most of the other playtesters agreed with the principle (sorry if I'm putting words in people's mouths). It's a shame these games were only carried out about a month ago rather than six months ago.

 

[animus]

I think we'll be talking about organization limitations sooner than later. I don't see any reason not to have them, ACTA's unique PL system seems to beg for something like it. Actually, I don't know of a single wargame that doesn't incorporate it somehow.

 

[Right Hand of God]

maybe opinions will change once the rules and fleet books are available to everybody rather than a limitted few. At this rate there will be an S&P update before the book hits the shelf. Not everybody that has seen the rules seems to think it is a problem. I think there should be a chance for everybody to try them out before the calls for knee jerk changes cause yet another about face from MGP

 

[bigtop305]

Ahh the dreaded "swam of doom" MAN I really do not like all those little guys running around causing havoc on my perfectly fun, tactical war game, how dare they? :wink:

Well I for one sincerely HOPE that all is well, and I have supreme confidence in the team at MGP AND on these boards that IF, in fact this IS a bad bad thing, very bad, then it will be fixed. I have to admit though, since I may not get to a tourney to play ACTA this will not be an issue for me personally since my gaming friends and I have seen this very thing RUIN far too many a game for us, so we would avoid the temptation, as it were, but I have seen it far too many times.

On a brighter note I once faced down an "uber" killer army of the Gouda variety in another system (to not be named) and went with an unorthodox, FUN, unconventional build myself as I wanted to have fun, long story short the good guys lost(me), but just barely, and I gave them a run for their cheesy money on the way down! (came down to a last turn roll for a start up from shutdown, first one up won, I was not first) so take that Limbergers!!

Oh yeah, I most certainly will wait until I have actually seen the rules myself, in my HAND at my reading room before passing any kind of sentence, all that I have seen so far is very positive to me and has me stoked!

 

[Chernobyl]

A simple solution would be to limit activations to the no more than the number of FAP.
so, if you break down a Fleet allocation point, then you have to have a squadron of some kind. If you buy up (say, spend 2 Raid FAP to buy a battle PL ship) then that ship counts as the same number of activations. Its pretty elegant and simple, really. It might even speed some games up a bit.

Chernobyl

 

[Ripple]

Only issue with that is it screws the Drazi and some incarnations of other bore sighted fleets.

Initiative sinking is essential for bore sighted fleets (assuming your opponent is not a dolt). If there was a way to line up bore sighted ships other than initiative sinking it would be easy to solve. Bore sight, sadly leads to an intiative sink arms race.

So any solution to the swarm also has to have a solution to the 'Drazi Problem' or your just trading issues.

An issue with squadroning btw is it leads to the old issue with fighters. Moving last in their sides roster but firing first can give a real I go/You go feel to what is supposed to be a more phased game. Especially given the easy with which squadrons can be broken. Right now a popular build for us is lots of either end of the profitable builds for any given battle, with the high end all squadroned until the sinks start vanishing. You max your firepower with no real downside.

Ripple

 

[Chernobyl]

if everyone's ships are squadroned, and activations are limited to the FAP, then both sides will have to move numbers of ships at a time. I don't see how this makes drazi fleets (or narn or EA for that matter) any worse off. Either you win your initiative or you don't but you should have no lack of targets available.

Chern

 

[Stonehorse]

Swarms do sound rather nasty, but if they are made up of very low PL ships I can't see them being too powerful for a few reasons:

i) Being a low PL ship they tend to have few AD in the weapons, which means not a lot of hits against hig PL ships as they tend to have 5-6 armour.

ii) They don't have that many weapons.

iii) It doesn't take too much to reduce a low PL ship to space dust, or skeleton crew, with some of the powerful weapons carried on the bigger ships I'm sure they can take care of a few ships at once.

Ok, so a lot of this may change once the fleet book is out, but I can't see Mongoose changing the power of low PL ships too much.

With everything there are pros and cons, I think in the case of Swarms the 2 are equal. People need stop being as knee jerkery as the News of the World/twat readers :wink:

I'll gladly take on a swarm fleet with my Minbari and Narn fleet when I get my hands on those tiger stripped ships.

 

[Burger]

i) Being a low PL ship they tend to have few AD in the weapons, which means not a lot of hits against hig PL ships as they tend to have 5-6 armour.

Yes each ship does normally have less AD than higher PL ships. But you get more of them. So either 20x 2AD weapons or 2x 8AD weapons... the swarm has much more ADs in total.

ii) They don't have that many weapons.

See i).

iii) It doesn't take too much to reduce a low PL ship to space dust, or skeleton crew, with some of the powerful weapons carried on the bigger ships I'm sure they can take care of a few ships at once.

True but that is where the redundancy factor comes in. The swarm is composed of many parts, each of which can function perfectly well without the others. Destroy 3 ships, and the swarm still has 17. Get a 6-6 crit against one, the swarm still has 16. On the other hand, the large ship doesn't have this advantage. Get a 6-6 crit, and it has lost the game. Get a 4-6 crit and it may well lose 50% of its total firepower, depending on the ship and the weapon arc. Get a 1-6 crit and it is a sitting duck. THAT is why swarms will always win against small numbers of larger ships.

The best fix we've found is to run games a 1 point Armageddon. That way, the swarm player doesn't get as many ships, and the player who takes large ships gets better value. 1 War, 1 Battle and 2 Raid can fight 12 Skirmish much more effectively than 1 War and 1 Raid can fight 10 Skirmish.

 

[Right Hand of God]

Interesting post Burger. Especially the 1 point of Armageddon breakdown. How does that manifest itself in the standard 5 point raid size game? I say standard, it certainly isn't for my gaming group but I understand that most posters on these forums and most tournaments seem to use this size game as the standard size. People have mentioned swarms of 40 ships, is that possible in 5 points of raid?

What I would like to know is what constitutes a swarm? Just how many ships do you need to field to be considering swarming and at what numerical advantage over your opponent?

My friend and I just played a 10 point war game, 57 Drazi ships faced 26 Narn. Sligtly more than a 2:1 advantage. We called the game to a halt after 3 turns when the Drazi had lost over 30 ships and the Narn just 7

 

[Burger]

How does that manifest itself in the standard 5 point raid size game?

Err not sure I understand. 1 point Armageddon is a replacement for the "standard" 5 point Raid game. In our opinion, it is much fairer to all races and counters "swarm" tactics.

People have mentioned swarms of 40 ships, is that possible in 5 points of raid?

In 2e, yes. 1 Raid point buys you 4 Patrol ships, and some ships you get 2 per patrol point. So you could get 4 x 2 x 5 = 40 Tethys for your 5 Raid.

What I would like to know is what constitutes a swarm? Just how many ships do you need to field to be considering swarming and at what numerical advantage over your opponent?

Well it isn't really black & white, its a sliding scale. The more you have, the more swarmish your fleet is. As a benchmark I'd say if you have double the number of ships than you had FAPs then you have a swarm.

 

[animus]

Burger, couldn't the 1 point of Armageddon break down into a huge swarm with the patrol twofers?

 

[Triggy]

The "points breaks" on that sort of split are less favourable (i.e. you get fewer than the equivalent 4 Patrol choices per Raid FAP). This means a single Armageddon FAP is less open to abuse. However, rather than forcing alternatives, I think what people what to see is an actual solution.

 

[Burger]

Yes, but you'd only get 36 twofers rather than the 40 you'd get at 5 point Raid. And you'd have a War, Battle and 2 Raid (8 raid points) to counter them, rather than just 5 points raid. So while it might not be a complete fix, it is certainly an improvement.

And yes, this is a workaround rather than a fix.

 

[Triggy]

Yes, but you'd only get 36 twofers rather than the 40 you'd get at 5 point Raid. And you'd have a War, Battle and 2 Raid (8 raid points) to counter them, rather than just 5 points raid. So while it might not be a complete fix, it is certainly an improvement.

And yes, this is a workaround rather than a fix.

Exactly, I'm happy playing this sort of game but would like both as "fair" options in a tournament situation too.

 

[animus]

I guess I need to stare at the PL breakdown a bit harder - is it the same as 1e?

 

[Burger]

I guess I need to stare at the PL breakdown a bit harder - is it the same as 1e?

No; http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=29640

 

[animus]

Hurm...twofers....?

Why not just make a PL below Patrol? It could be called "fodder."

 

[Sulfurdown]

I was just going to ask that question, animus.