Anti swarm ideas

[Nightmares about Minbari]

OK, as I see it, the problem is fleets of small, low priority ships using initiative sinking and numbers to make high priority ships useless. Now I've been out of touch for a little while so this might have already been addressed elsewhere. If not, here are three basic ideas that I'd like opinions on to address the problem.

1)

Ships that are not directly involved in the combat have to be left till last, preventing their use as initiative sinks. Ships would qualify as not directly involved if they are outside of weapons range or line of sight to any enemy ships (could be changed to outside weapons range + move distance).

Basically means initiative sinks have to be up close to the enemy so they can at least be destroyed, rather than hiding on the other side of the table.

2)

Add a hull modifier to the firing process based on the comparative priority levels of the ships. For each priority level that the target is larger than the firing ship, increase it's effective hull value by one. For each priority level that the target is smaller than the firing ship, decrease it's effective hull value by one.

This will basically mean that smaller ships will struggle to damage larger ships, and larger ships will be able to gut smaller ships more easily.

3)

Add a damage modifer based on the relative priority levels. If the firing ship is two priority levels larger than the target, then double the damage done to the target ship. If the firing ship is four priority levels larger than the target then quadruple the damage to the target ship. If the firing ship is two priority levels smaller than the target, then half the damage done to the target ship.

This again makes it easier for a single large ship to engage and destroy large numbers of smaller ships.

I'm interested in feedback on these ideas guys, look forward to reading your responces.

 

[katadder]

anything between damage on priority levels wouldnt work as this balance is taken into account by number of AD etc on bigger ships compared to smaller ships

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

Katadder: Cheers for that. If it is currently balanced, then we don't need any of these anyway. If we do need to do something, then it isn't balanced, surely?

 

[katadder]

maybe but thats not the idea. a chronos has a heavy pulse cannon, why would it find it any harder to damage a warlock than an omega with its heavy pulse cannon?
heavier firepower is already shown with number of AD. survivability is shown with hull and damage.

some people say swarms win down to crits, others down to init sinking. theres various opinions but changing things that dont need changing like with your 2 hull/damage will seriously effect what balance there already is.

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

Katadder: Thanks again.

I've not been on the receiving end of the swarm fleet problem myself, the guys I play against are more sporting than that, so I'm offering suggestions based on what I've herd about the problem.

Yes these ideas would change balance between larger and smaller priority ships, but they wouldn't affect balance within a priority level. My understanding of the problem is that this balance needs changing.

But thanks again for the feedback.

 

[katadder]

they would effect overall game balance as not everyone uses ships at just one priority. all this would mean is all you see is the biggest ship you can squeeze in. 5 raid becomes one war and one raid ship.

the balance problems are not down to AD or hull/damage or how they interact between PLs as this is fairly balanced in and of itself. theres other reasons for problems with swarm fleets.

 

[Ripple]

Yup...

There has been a number of suggestions on how to make big ships tougher, but in reality almost all the issue is crit resistance. How do I keep my big ship firing? Or at least keep it able to jump out, and deny victory points. Right now crits can make large percentages of your fleet useless quickly, and prevent you from getting it off the table at the same time.

The sink issue, while not entirely bore sight related, is largely so. Enough sinks means, given the current mechanic, that bore sighted ships cannot target anything. This is the glaring example, but can also see this with good range management.

So solutions have to be based on crits and more open targeting options.

Ripple

 

[AdrianH]

I like the first option: anything which is too far out of the combat area doesn't count as an init sink, you can move it if you like but you still have to move something else.

It may need a bit of work. For example, I move my ship so it's behind an asteroid 32" away from a G'Quan. The G'Quan can theoretically hit it with an energy mine, if it wants to use its one-shot weapon to do a little damage to that ship. Or, I move my ship behind a dense asteroid field. The enemy can theoretically attack it if they go at full speed and risk taking more damage from the asteroids than either side will inflict by weapons fire.

But basically, the idea that the ship which is just sitting in a far corner doing "All Stop!" every move should not count as an init sink - that I like.

As for the others, I agree with Katadder - damage should not be dependent on PL of firing ship or target ship. 1D of fusion cannon should do exactly the same whether it's on a Torotha or a Sharlin, whether it's fired at a Tethys or a Command Omega. The differences are that the Sharlin has more of them and the Tethys has fewer damage points.

Crit resistance, e.g. armour or redundancy, is already being discussed in a number of threads. This could become another one.

 

[Ripple]

That is actually what I tend to agree with. Right now big ships have more damage and sometimes better hull, but have no greater crit resistance. So 1AD of fusion cannon should not have the same chance of shutting down the guns on a Warlock as it does on shutting down the guns on a Hermes, but it does.

Same for damage control, movement, bridge stations... what the Warlock has no back up control center? I can see it on a Hermes, but no way there isn't a next in chain of command waiting to take over on a Warlock.

Ripple

 

[mrambassador1]

why not just make the small ships more expensive. If
1 Battle = 4 skirmish

just try
1 Battle = 3 skirmish

if its still not enough try
1 battle = 2 skirmish

eventually you will find the right balance and it is a hell of a lot simpler and easier to play test than giving different PL's all these different rules based on what ship they are shooting at. If 4 skirmish kicks a battle PL's arse then 2 should be just right, if that makes the skirmish too weak then 3 is probably just right. And you don't have to stuff around with redundancy or saves based on PL or based on the PL of the target divided by the PL of the attacker summed over the square root of the AD of the weapon times the log of the hull value or whatever some of the other systems proposed are. If small ships are too powerful make them more expensive.

 

[Ripple]

two issues with that idea...

first is buying down. we tried arcane formula for buying down before and it didn't work out well. folks wanted a simple system to buy down. The two for one level above works very well for that, and if it wasn't for the crit issue and sink issue, that might work very well.

two is that two skirmish don't stand a chance against a battle level ship unless they get a good crit. the problem there is you never know how good your crits will be. they can be huge or nothing... so you very hard to balance over any one game.

Ripple

 

[AdrianH]

why not just make the small ships more expensive. If
1 Battle = 4 skirmish

just try
1 Battle = 3 skirmish

Take a look at the P&P playtest, specifically "New Rules", most specifically "Fleet Allocation Points".

The new formula isn't all that arcane; buying down goes by factors of 1.5 (rounded up) instead of 2, although buying up is still factors of 2.
Going down: 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 5 -> 8 -> 12
Going up: 32 -> 16 -> 8 -> 4 -> 2 -> 1

Specifically, 1 Battle = 3 Skirmish, as requested.

 

[Ripple]

I' aware of that, and the fact that you can bypass it by simply buying down one level at a time and still creating swarm fleets.

One of the most powerful local swarm fleets was the 5 Battle - 5 Hyperion, 3 Olympus, 2 Oracle and 10 Hermes fleet. The two for one every level you go down still creates swarms.

You can't tinker with the levels that much if you can still sub split a point, or you don't get to one of the basic swarm configurations. If you try to change the sub splitting of points you get the odd arcane splits... a raid becomes a skirmish and a patrol, or two patrol, but never two skirmish seems easy and follows the 1.5 idea.

Let's do it for War -
one battle and one raid
three raid
two raid, one skirmish, one patrol
two raid, two patrol
five skirmish
four skirmish, one patrol

That assumes you can only sub split one point per split downward... don't have that rule and it gets really hard to judge quickly whether a particular fleet is legal at a glance.

It's easy to look at the one battle and one raid and three raid splits and go so a battle is worth two raid, right? But it isn't if it's a battle point, that would be a raid and skirmish...

The two for one stayed even no matter what pl, thus was easy to work with. The new splits are fairly easy, but only because they kept the can only split one down per sub split.

Ripple

 

[mollari_uk]

I like Ripples suggestion. I'd like to see penalties for breaking down right from the off, and even bonuses for buying up if possible.

The fact that 1 War still breaks down into 2 Battle is something that annoys me. One solution is to make games 1 higher priority than you want and reduce the points.

This doesn't stop the breakdown choice from say War to Patrol that gives no penalty though. You can still create small swarms/init sinks same as before. E.g. 1 War = 1 battle, 1 Raid, 1 Skirmish, 2 Patrol.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

I'd personally like to see the problems rather than the symptoms fixed.
Buying down is only a problem because smller ships have the advantage (due to lack of redundancy, initiative, etc). Fix those problems and not only do we have a better game, but it won't be a problem if someone wants to use a swarm.

Edit: Either that or switch to a more basic points system which is a little less clumsy than the current one. Then you really will be able to say that Ship X is worth 1.5x Ship Y. You'll also have the advantage that everyone is taught basic addition at school, but not many are as happy with exponential counting (which the current points system has been bastardised from).

 

[CZuschlag]

Correct. The swarm problem isn't reducible by changing the point breakdown ratios unless you force people off the N -> (N-1)+(N-1) -> (N-1)+(N-2)+(N-2) -> et.al. tree.

 

[Burger]

I like the flexibility of the FAP breakdown as it is (or rather, as it was in Armageddon ). I wouldn't want to change it except maybe tweak the numbers, ideally back to Armageddon numbers, but I'll settle for the P&P playtest ones. The solution to the swarm problem lies in making big ships more resilient.

 

[CZuschlag]

I worry that even that might not be enough. I'm just not sure about the valuation of .5 -> 1. I think it's closer today to 0.62->1. And, if we have that, the closest mechanism that you can have is a specific list of conversions .... which is precisely what we got in SFoS. Miraculously enough, we didn't have nearly as many swarm issues there. Meh.

 

[Da Boss]

I like Ripples suggestion. I'd like to see penalties for breaking down right from the off, and even bonuses for buying up if possible.

The fact that 1 War still breaks down into 2 Battle is something that annoys me. One solution is to make games 1 higher priority than you want and reduce the points.

This doesn't stop the breakdown choice from say War to Patrol that gives no penalty though. You can still create small swarms/init sinks same as before. E.g. 1 War = 1 battle, 1 Raid, 1 Skirmish, 2 Patrol.

Any changes should ensure that fleets have at least an option (and preferably a reasonable one) at all PL? At present this is not the case.......

 

[mollari_uk]

Yeah I think you're right. Redundancy would give some incentive to take 1 War ship over 2 Battle.

I originally didn't like the idea of redundancy but it's shown time and again to be a solution (at least in part) to quite a few issues. I hope it does make it in to P&P.