2nd Ed Beam Question

[Target]

I gathered from the threads on 2nd beams that you won't be able to redirect or concertrate.
Is this right & why would be my question ?
We have been playin beams hit on 4+ with CAF & redirecting with the current ship stats & i can't see why it becomes unbalanced if you do.
We have played over 20 games recent weeks ( smaller ones due to our campaign system) & it hasn't unbalanced them even with Ka Tans & Drazi beams everywhere. We have found them quite good.

 

[CZuschlag]

This has indeed been confirmed, Target.

I understand that many, many pieces are in motion during this revision, so the concept of ships staying they same but the weapon properties changing may not be valid. An extreme example is the Centauri, who will largly depend on their new Ion Cannons (Range somewhere around 15, TL, DD) and have relatively few Battle Lasers. The Minari Stealth mechanic has changed, too. The new Front-Arc/Non-Stealth beam team race may be the Brakiri, who have their own Slow-Loading issues.

I wouldn't expect they rules to overwork the Ka'Tans and Drazi --- they're all boresighted, so they rarely got to concentrate in the first place. With the new Avioki, if I guess what the ship will do correctly -- it would be HIDEOUS.

 

[Target]

Still not seeing how it becomes hideous from the games we have been playin as added the rule to CAF that if you turn you need a CQ 9 to be able CAF. The Avoiki is only equilvalent to a Sulusts firepower over two turns. There hasn't been any outrageous amount of beam dice hitting. I've been CAF my Sulusts generaly getting 5-7 hits on average which isn't spectacular or terrible. I have seen a 3AD beam get 11 hits but that was a lot of one dice rolling crap load of 4+.
Im just wondering on the thinking behind the ruling?

 

[cordas]

I suppose we will just have to wait and see what the new rules are.... Its pointless to take one facet of 2e compare it to 1e and ask the type of question you are asking, because we simply don't have the answers.

 

[Target]

I suppose we will just have to wait and see what the new rules are.... Its pointless to take one facet of 2e compare it to 1e and ask the type of question you are asking, because we simply don't have the answers.

I was hoping the playtesters would know since they are playing with 2e.
We know that beams hit 4+ regardless & looks like the can't be redirected or CAF. Im just wondering what is thinking behind the new rule.

 

[emperorpenguin]

part game balance, part rules stream lining. avoids the "only re-roll the first dice" bit which oddly caused confusion with some people

 

[CZuschlag]

Here are some of the more obvious possibilities ---

A). The Beam Team's first-turn CAF advantage was severe
B). The Centauri, who are based on it, aren't after 2e (it's Ion Cannons now, baby!)
C). Vorlons aren't missing out on anything, they didn't get redirection anyways
D). This makes boresight beams more comparable to arced beam systems


Honestly, before Armageddon made swarm fleets (overly) viable, how many Centauri Prefect/Sulust/Tertius stacks did we see? And fighting them was real entertaining -- Not! [One exception to the above, of course, was the Saggitarius Flash Missile stack. Guess what else is changing, the Flash Missile! >rimshot<] Without them, it was Minbari FA beam stacks? There was -- is -- a reason, and a theme behind all these common Tourneyfleets -- beam balance. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a direct attempt to fix this. Heck, my Drakh are getting seriously downgraded by not getting Beam redirection, and I still think this is fine.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Honestly, before Armageddon made swarm fleets (overly) viable, how many Centauri Prefect/Sulust/Tertius stacks did we see? .

a fair few. But before then they were no less nasty but Minbari and ISA were even nastier. It wasn't unil those fleets got fixed that people began to notice the Centauri. We Centauri players had long known that those ships were much better than the rest of the fleet :twisted:

 

[Target]

The way we got round the CAF thing was drop the hull by 1 when you used it. Made you think whether it was worth it.
CAF in our current house rule is
Reroll misses, -1 hull if you turned CQ9 to suceed.
The Redirect roll only effects 1 chosen ship with 1 weapon system.
We always found redirect to powerful if it effects the whole fleet.
The streamlining thing makes sense.
Thanks

 

[katadder]

its always a CQ check wether you turn or not to CAF.
as for beams not getting it, the more original hits you get on 4s the more likely you are to get your insane numbers of hits so this balances it out some.

 

[Target]

its always a CQ check wether you turn or not to CAF.
as for beams not getting it, the more original hits you get on 4s the more likely you are to get your insane numbers of hits so this balances it out some.

You have to be pretty damn lucky for that to happen as far as i can tell. Out of the 20 odd games weve played with the new mechanic it hasn't happened in any of our games. What tends to happen is when you are reduced to one dice you get rolls that aren't average, one dice seems to keep rolling 4+. I guess the more dice you roll the more it follows the average. Im waiting for the supa roll to come but it has eluded me so far. I'll keep on trying though.

 

[H]

in our mock 2nd ed test, the Avioki, without caffing, took a bimith to one dmg point in a salvo, thats a lot of damage, if it had caffed, no doubt the bimith would have exploded. the 4+ to hit for a ship whose beam used to have no AP/SAP is a mighty difference.

 

[Tankdriver]

I asked Hiffano this in a private message, and I THINK I understand correctly.
I fire my three AD beam weapon and get four 4s (Yeah!). I reroll and STILL need a 4+ (right?). I get 5, 4, 2. So next I roll two dice and still ned a 4+, right?

 

[Greg Smith]

That's pretty much it. It is possible for a 2AD beam to get 10 or more hits.

 

[Tankdriver]

Makes that 1AD beam on the white star seem a bit better. I still have only a 50 percent chance of hitting, but I have a better chance of follow´ups.

 

[CZuschlag]

Seem or not, if you do the math, you'll recognize the number of hits to be the result of the Geometic Series ....

SUM [(1/2)^n] n from 1 to infinity

... whose result is 1. This is pretty close to the expected number of hits from a Beam against effective Hull 3 [Hull - SAP/AP]: 1.13.

So, it's not wholly accurate, and the results now are far more likely to vary widely, but the new beam experience is almost identical to the old if you simply:

Consider every beam SAP
Consider every target Hull 5
Reduce the resulting effect by 10%.

 

[Jim?]

I've been playing with the new beam rules with various race combinations and it seems like there is usually a single beam shot that at some point in the game swings the whole thing completely.

The fact that beams continually hit on a 4+ means that you can get a ridiculous string of hits and destroy a ship with one shot, this seems to happen with alarming frequency (at least once in every game I've played).

I was playing as the Dilgar against Centauri, and a Darkner destroyed half of my fleet on turn one, by shooting at a Tikrit and scoring 23 hits. With the resulting number of crits caused by this, the Tikrit exploded, destroying the 3 nearbly ships that it was squadroned with and effectively ending my chances of salvaging anything from the game.

In another game, I was playing as Early Era EA against Narn, and while my beams were having massive effect against his ships, my opponent’s return fire (with a Var'Nic) only managed to cause one hit in the entire game, due to him rolling strings of 2's and 3's.

The randomness involved with beams now seems to swing the game into something relying on blind luck rather than tactical play. I would definitely prefer that beams always hit on 3's with their first round, then on 4's, 5's and 6's. This would maintain the effectiveness of hull 4 ships as the new system does, while preventing the huge string of hits that a beam always seems to manage to make at some point.

 

[MustEatBrains]

Don´t forget that the overall number of AD of beam weapons are going to be rebalanced, so using current ships with the new WIP rules is bound to give some strange results...

 

[Ripple]

My only gripe with that 'remember they are changing more than just...' is we do not know what else is changing and there is little actual room to change beam dice on most ships. We're already talking about systems that have few dice. How many frustrated whitestar players are there that hate their one die beam cause it feels too luck dependent. Is the new plan to just share the feeling?

I've played around with the new rule, using fights I already played to see how different the results would have been if. Like was said above my rolling the dice around found that at least once a game I would get the 'supra string' and a number of can't hit the broad side of a... type results. I don't like the wildness of the swings the new re-roll structure seems to cause, even if statistically it should produce more even structure.

The idea we need to simplify the re-roll structure cause the only re-roll the first die was too hard for folks also feels very off. All games have some concepts you just have to get, this was one, and not a particularly difficult one. I don't want to see us go down the road of lowest common denominator.

Ripple

 

[CZuschlag]

Given the change in expectation values is fairly minimal, Jim's alteration is very wise if you want more predictable results. I realize it's far too late for the published edition now, but I find his mechanic fundamentally superior. Now, we're still off original balance by 13%, making beam-based ships approximately 5-10% (subtract some off for point defense, actual values vary on the porportion of total firepower is beam-based) overgunned; reducing damage and crew by approximately that selfsame 5-10% should bring values back in line with a more 1e feel.

The above action would not change the beam balance at all, and would result in a change that should not affect any other balance mechanic. In the case of battle level ships, we're talking 1-3 points of crew or damage, which is a very fine tune indeed.

Would give the game more of a result based on skill vs. a result based on luck feel, for zero cost.