Armageddon ships, how useful are they?

[Arch Lector Petrovski]

The larger the ship the larger the surface area and as such the larger the gap between things like weapons arrays, engines, sensor arrays and other protrusions. This means that though there may infact be a great deal of detail it is actually spread over a larger area and so it 'seems' that there is less. Also think how small the majority of the outer-hull detail would be on a ship that sized when viewed on that scale, many things would either be non-existant or so small they appear merely as bumps. Anyway, There isn't exactly a great deal of detail on things like the Drakh carrier and no-one complains about that.

Stop picking on the Adira, you'll hurt its feelings. 'There, there. everyone loves you really.' *Offers Adira a cup of tea and some biscuits for comfort.* 8)

 

[Voronesh]

Well i wasnt necessarily thinking of the Adira more of the WSC.

And that one has less detail on some spots even though its quite a bit bigger than a standard WS model.....

Plus while im fond of big huge ships, i do have a problems with ships costing more than 20-30 bucks........ (since we cant get relative sizes perfect theres no need for an overblown ship)

 

[Adept D]

The VIctory class is very effective, its a damage sponge. Adaptive armour means it will survive for ages, i've delt one 155 damage (tecnicaly) left it on 45 points left.

 

[tneva82]

Whatabout vorlon heavy cruiser? Noticed to my suprise it's main gun is precicely identical with light cruiser. What's up with that? :?

Yes it has secondary guns but light cruisers have better turn rate and there's 2 of them.

Kinda makes the big boy feel redundant :-/ Pity. I rather liked the armageddon version.

Something I'm missing?

 

[Greg Smith]

Well the 10Ad discharge gun is likely to cause more crits than the lightning cannon, but less raw damage. Other than that 2 light cruisers does seem a better choice.

 

[Stonehorse]

I'm still not sold on the Blue Stars, they are nice, but they seem to need a lot of luck to survive. Sure a 3+ Dodge is good as is adaptive Armour... but having 5 damage means that if the Dodge fails enough times they are going to die. Their gun is nice, but is short ranged, sure the ship is fast, which might help off set that.

As someone who has fallen for the Shadows, I'd like to see an Ancient Shadow Ship take on the swarm.

 

[Zeru]

I'm still not sold on the Blue Stars, they are nice, but they seem to need a lot of luck to survive. Sure a 3+ Dodge is good as is adaptive Armour... but having 5 damage means that if the Dodge fails enough times they are going to die. Their gun is nice, but is short ranged, sure the ship is fast, which might help off set that.

Unless faced with E-mines or Accurate weapons, they are far more durable then any other patrol ship in the game, and most skirmish level as well. (Math-wise, they would only get hit by half of the shots fired at them (mini-beam or normal weapons) and dodge 2/3 of those, and then adaptive armor cuts that damage in half (rounded-down).

So they are amazingly durable, unless you meet them with a direct counter.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Still, with only five hits on their profile, you only need one solid round of firing to take them down. A few fluffed dodges and they're blown out of the sky.

 

[Zeru]

But ask yourself this, how much fire did you just throw out there to kill a single PATROL level ship?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

As much as was necessary. So maybe a battle-level unit fired its full primary armament to kill it, but if that what it takes, that's what it takes. This is war, not a garden party. :wink:

Unless the Blue Stars are swarming, you probably wouldn't devote that level of firepower to killing one unless no other target was around. A patrol ship is still worth an XP die to a battle ship in a campaign, and it gives up VPs when it dies.

 

[Zeru]

With the durability (and pretty impressive gun) of the Blue Star, most other ships would either be dead (Because the White Star would not perform half as well as 4 Blue Stars) or be even lower priority. 4 Blue Stars generate a pretty significant amount of firepower, and in a cheap and hard to kill package.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I wonder if critical fishing isn't the best way to off Blue Stars? With so few hits to spare, a good critical could easily finish one with a single hit. Precise weapons could well be the answer.

 

[Voronesh]

Yes that is true.

But this just occured to me. Normally you would not put WS into 8" range of an enemy ship, because that is where the enemy has his secondaries. Yet the Blue Star has to go exactly there. Now that should leave you with two options. Keep your WS away and let the BS face the wrath of the secondaries or give the enemy an even better target.

Of course this only applies to mixerd fleets, in a swarm that doesnt work ^^.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Swarming is always going to be an issue, I suppose. I'm not sure what the rules can do to limit it, except impose restrictions on the number of FAPs that can be broken down to lower level purchases.

 

[Da Boss]

you could always - if you wanted restrict numbers of certain ship types?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

That old chestnut? I supported the common, rare, unique idea at the time, but most low-level units would be pretty common. Not going to see only a handful of Havens available to a Centauri commander, are you? The tiny little patrol ships are the most commonly built units in any fleet.

 

[Twin-Linked Aldades]

We once had a guy at our club that preferred to play to the letter and not to the spirit (in any kind of game).
He gave up after three months of not getting games, people preferred even not to play instead of playing against him.

As I said elsewhere about the Blue Star... if persons field 20 `stars on 5 raid, its the player that needs a tweek, not the ship

 

[Shadow Queen]

If there was a battle that called for big guns then yes id use a Victory or one of the nasty Shadow Ships

 

[Da Boss]

That old chestnut? I supported the common, rare, unique idea at the time, but most low-level units would be pretty common. Not going to see only a handful of Havens available to a Centauri commander, are you? The tiny little patrol ships are the most commonly built units in any fleet.

probaly right but not sure of a good way of stopping this happen if it is a problem - not had it where I play as yet..........

 

[Voronesh]

Gotta agree on the player part. If someone plays only to win with dubious aka one-sided tactics, there is nothing wrong with the game.

But the people who go to tourneys dont really have a choice about that. Sure swarm fleets will probably die quickly to E-mine based fleets, or some others out there, but not all races are that lucky.