Arma/Ancients/Shadows ~ Alteration from SFoS

[Sulfurdown]

This is something that's puzzled me since Arma came out with the shift of the Shadow Ships weapon to forward arc. Initially the move to a Forward only weapon arc bothered me (-"Why do you hate my pretties!!") But I really don't have a basis for complaint until I get my hands dirty with some test runs. Has anyone played out the Shadows to see how they've changed since SFoS? And why shift the Shadow ship to F arc and not fighters (which would drastically impact the game)?

 

[Burger]

Shadow Ships arc was changed to F because it is only seen fiing forward in the series. The Shadow Ship is not half as scary as it used to be now, and is easily outclassed by 2 Hunters.

 

[Sulfurdown]

I just got curious since those ships seemed to be able to twist around pretty fast and had a very impressive arc of fire. (Super Manu, I know) They had a wider arc then the White Stars did which are about the only things in the show that were close to being as maneuverable as the Shadow vessels.

 

[Burger]

Thats what I thought too, the T arc was to represent the thing spinning around quickly. *shrug*

 

[Chernobyl]

Gee, I thought that's what Supermaneuverable was for...

Chern

 

[DrSeltsam]

So the Shadow Ship lost the turret because it is not seen in the series but the Centauri have beams as main weapon ?
How do you identify the front of a ship that changes its direction for traveling and fighting ?

I love fluff reasons for ... öhhh ... strange decisions :roll:

However ... the turret on the Shadow Ship was very good - maybe even too good - ( and im a Shadow player myself ! ) but now the Ship is just not worth 2 Hunters.
I would always suggest taking 2 Hunters instead of one Ship ( and use the Ship model for the Hunters ). With the turret you could use the total speed of the Ship of 6/12 and still use the main weapon in all directions.

I would have expected to see a better range and maybe a few more AD on the weapon to compensate for the lost turret arc but ...

 

[Sulfurdown]

I'm all for getting the Fluff to line up with the rules! ... or vice versa. Either way I prefer to not have confusion from the description saying one thing and the ship doing another and the show displaying completely unrelated things.


Unfortunately I have yet to be convinced that the "Hunter" isn't EA hybrid tech. Of all the ships in the game that one that just hurts my brain everytime I look at it.

 

[Burger]

Unfortunately I have yet to be convinced that the "Hunter" isn't EA hybrid tech.

It is

 

[DrSeltsam]

Has anyone played out the Shadows to see how they've changed since SFoS? And why shift the Shadow ship to F arc and not fighters (which would drastically impact the game)?

We our current campaign i play with Shadows and my experience so far is the a Ship is not a useful / RR-point-efficiently option. 80 RR is just too much ...

This is reducing your fleet options to 3 : Hunter, Scouts and Fighters. You need some fighters to fill up the remaining PL points in same battles or for real low PL battles.

 

[Hash]

* Sigh * I swear some of these threads are here to bait me,,,

Put it this way, I watched the whole series and I never saw a single episode where the Shadow Ship was easily outmaneovered so was in a position that it couldn't fire...which I see happen in ACTA all the time...

 

[Apachex]

What he said. The Shadow ship can pivot on a dime, that alone should rank its Beam as a Turreted weapon. These are the Battle Crabs with their Ginsu death rays we are talking about here. They should be the scariest ships in the game

 

[Shadow Queen]

Whats the Ep where the Shadow ships are flying backwards? They then turn around when the Vorloons arrive and start shooting

 

[Sulfurdown]

It nagged at me until I went back to review what I could find on the shadow fire. I looked over some of the uploaded images on youtube and in one of the "Total War" clips I found both examples I was looking for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpH3rsCGCjE&mode=related&search=

At the 04:12 mark there is the shadow ship firing from the traditional 'spiky' end which you can find in a lot of episodes.

At the 04:30 mark right at the end, Keffer get's blasted by a shot that is from the 'flat' end.

 

[sidewinder]

There also the episode where sheriden takes the whitestar to kill the shadow ship at mars. when the SS takes off you can see the beam coming from pretty much all over the center of the ship while its destroying the base on the ground.

 

[Shadow Queen]

There also the episode where sheriden takes the whitestar to kill the shadow ship at mars. when the SS takes off you can see the beam coming from pretty much all over the center of the ship while its destroying the base on the ground.

it wasnt mars

 

[Reaverman]

* Sigh * I swear some of these threads are here to bait me,,,

Put it this way, I watched the whole series and I never saw a single episode where the Shadow Ship was easily outmaneovered so was in a position that it couldn't fire...which I see happen in ACTA all the time...

But if you go by the series, Narn dont launch that many E-Mines

 

[JoeSmokem]

But if you go by the series, Narn dont launch that many E-Mines

They were out of ammo :lol:

 

[Shadow Queen]

Blasted arms dealers :wink:

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

If the Shadow Ship has a turret mounted laser, then there's almost no reason to ever use SM movement - you'd only ever use the "travel double speed in a straight line and turn 90 degrees" movement mode. now you've got to balance speed with easy use of the laser.

 

[Sulfurdown]

If the Shadow Ship has a turret mounted laser, then there's almost no reason to ever use SM movement - you'd only ever use the "travel double speed in a straight line and turn 90 degrees" movement mode. now you've got to balance speed with easy use of the laser.

How often to the Vree players use their SM movement? (the couple times I played them I used it about 50%-60% of the time.)