skavendan said:
I just think if you got B arc weapons then lumbering is too limiting! I think changing either of those to front arc or taking lumbing off would be a significant improvement
Honestly, I am not sure the crux of the problem is the boresight. The Omega gets by just fine with its boresight because its beam is significant enough against an equivalent opponent that it can hurt it those times it gets the boresight off. The G'Quan on the other hand with its weaker beam can't cause much hurt even the few times it gets a boresight. Honestly, boresights on big ships aren't so bad unless the ships is alone. You should have a T'Loth or something out there to Init sink for the G'Quan. It will probably get to boresight something every turn, not necessarily the ship it would like to, but something. The problem is the beam is so poor than even when it boresights it still doesn't get much return. The indignity is then compounded by a secondary weapon that is 1 shot and can't crit. Once it fires this load, the only real weapon it has is a weak boresight which it can't fire to good effect very often anyway.
My fix is again:
6d beam,
4d, slowloading e-mines.
That makes for a respectable ship. The rest of the Narn list is ok.
Another point to remember is that the Narn aren't an easy fleet to win with. They are a powerful fleet (Battle level excepted) but they aren't easy. A lot of the time new players (not referring to anyone on these boards) take the Narn because they are familiar then loose a lot against good players. The Narn fleet is not forgiving like early years EA or the Centauri. The learning curve on Homeworld is steep.
The Narn navy generally has burlier ships with longer ranged weapons than most contemporaries. They are also generally a step slower and have more restricted weapon arcs . The key to winning with the Narn is hit them hard
at range then finish the cripples with the tertiaries if the opportunity presents. They don't start with the intention of operating at close range because that just allows more maneuverable foes to skip out of Boresight easily.
Long range is a necessity as it means a ship has to be VERY fast to skip out of the G'Quan's 45 degree turn arc. At 8" range a couple inches of move is enough to take a maneuverable enemy clean out of FA and then the G'Quan is probably screwed. That is why I have an issue with this focus on the Narn tertiary weapons. Truthfully, if the enemy is that close he is Drakh (raider), Shadow (scout), some other small ship with short range or he screwed up. The G'Quan has a lot of tertiary weapon dice but they are all soft-hitting dice. Against a hull 6 ship, they will net only a couple hits for little damage. Adding a couple of more dice won't change that. They are intended to take out enemy light ships that outflank the G'Quan not to be a main method of attack. The ship is simply too slow, too unmaneuverable and they weapons have too little punch for that to be the case. Yes you could increase the tertiaries and give them more punch (and up the speed and turn) but then you'd have the Centauri and the Narn are not the Centauri.
The G'Quan is a long range brawer. The ship is intended to hit hard with its lasers and bomb the enemy with e-mines at range. Its weapon layout does not support any other conclusion. Unfortunately, the weapon loadout it was given is not up to the task. It simply needs more beam (and possibly weaker but reloadable e-mines) to even it off and make it credible at what it is supposed to do.
As for the Boresight argument, I wouldn't object to the G'Quan's lasers being FA but I don't think that it would be accurate and I think it is more than they need. Note to those who go by that side-angle shot that it isn't firing sideways as much as down. The ship clearly can't fire lasers directly sideways as some of the hull protrudes in front of the barrels. Boresight in the game does not necessarily reflect that the ship can only fire dead foreward. It represents weapons with a weapon arc that is more restricted than FA and thus the ship has to turn to help bring the foe into the narrow arc. While according to the picture the G'Quan clearly can fire off the centerline (and in that case WAY off the centerline), it also clearly does not have a full FA field of fire, thus while boresight is not desireable I think it is supportable by the evidence.
The piddly 4d beam however is NOT supportable by ANY evidence. A G'Quan destroyed the primus/secundus blocading B5 with great burst of beam and small gouts of pulse fire. When asked what was able to take on the shadows, G'Kar responded that only the G'Toc had that kind of firepower (close to direct quote). The G'Toc then jumped into the fight firing its BEAMS and nothing else which with the aid of the power-depleated whitestar destroyed the shadow ship. When asked to bring its best it brought its LASERS. It did not fire bursts of e-mine or close to point blank range and spray popgun shots with its pulse arrays. While not every aspect of the game can follow the show exactly, it should at least credibly look like it tried to and there is no reason why the iconic ship for the Narn has such a weak main weapon when the show states that it was a rather powerful one.
Tzarevitch
P.S. Sorry if I get worked up about this but the G'Quan is my favorite ship in the show and it irritates me that in 2 editions of the game it ends up sucking more than nearly every other Narn ship.
