Armageddon ships, how useful are they?

[Lord David the Denied]

Vetting of lists for sportsmanship/spirit of the game by the organisers could solve that...

 

[tneva82]

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.

Yep. That will work nicely. I might play against that once but if somebody keeps on bringing same fleet over and over(and not particulary interesting list at that...) why bother? I have better things to do in my life than waste time on unenjoyable game.

Same goes for tournaments for me. If I come across game that promises to be unenjoyable(for example against person I don't like to play against) I rather just give him that WO and concentrate on getting good time rather. But then again I'm not aiming for tournament victories :lol:

Thankfully not that many people around whom I would refuse to play against but option is always there.

 

[Ripple]

One reason I liked the older PL structure was it made real swarms harder to do.

The dimishing returns for going down thing. If it was 3 slot for every 2 slots you went down one it would make taking the level of the fight more important. You had that to a degree before with the 1 for 3 slots going down 2 levels thing...but that got dumped.

That the worst thing about the current pl system. It tries to be a point system (ie each ships is worth its 'pl slots' regardless of level of the scenario) when it's greatest strength was its ability to change value based on the level of the scenario. Ie a raid ship was most worth its points in a raid scenario...returns dimishing as you moved away from raid.

Ripple

 

[thehod]

Bluestars are among one of the top tier Patrol choices in the Game but it is mainly a defensive ship that has the +3 dodge going for it. The True Magic number is 6 to decrew them. Like many people said, E-Mines will trash Bluestars and not to mention their weapons can be intercepted easily. Their best a hard to kill init sink that can burn interceptors on. I am afraid to get close to an EA fleet now with Bluestars muchless Abbai or Brakiri and of course the anti-ISA Narn.

The biggest Issue people in our gaming store have is the fact Skindancing is broken with Bluestars.

 

[Zeru]

Saying the problem is the player is only half-right, many players naturally look for what will give them the best bang-for their buck.

Blue Stars are a top tier patrol choice, in a game were swarms are very effective, bar a few races, so naturally a player seeking an effiecient and powerful fleet will notice the power of the Blue Stars.

Considering how much fire they can avoid (if its a none AP weapon 50% of the attacks will hit, and 2/3 of them will be dodged, then that damage is halved-rounded down.) It is obvious why some people think they are way over the top. I would never field 20 of them, ever, but the option is still there, and the chances of winning against such a specialized fleet is slim, unless you have the direct counter for it.

Skin-Dancing is actually rather ineffiecient, as it gets Blue Stars killed faster then anything, they have a 50% chance at failure after all.

 

[Triggy]

I'm a great advocate of getting the fleets balanced so that there isn't really any opportunity for players to "cheese" their fleet. Then players who want to take what they perceive as optimal combinations can do so without fear of reprise and those who choose fleets based on other criteria can also end up with competative fleets.

Of course if there is a "known issue" then people can make house rules but at the end of the day many players will simply take the best ships because not to do so is to handicap yourself against others who will.

 

[Voronesh]

Absolutely.

In friendly games a game can be a bit more "unbalanced" because you never neet to play someone who cheeses out his fleet. But since there are tourneys (though i never go to one, but there are enough people around who do) i really prefer a balanced fleet list.

Plus when i go up against a fleet i can normally say i lost (or won) because i just had teh better (or worse) strategy or my dice are to blame (no remedy, luckily, for that in a tabletop game). When a whole fleet like it is going to dominate regardless of player skill, it gets boring real fast. Fighting up hill and winning feels very good, but you never win often enough, so losing against such a fleet makes you stop playing. Like Minbary were 1ed, i practically never liked to battle them, because so much was based on stealth and your luck to break it, far to less strategy/ tactics for my taste.