Balancing Ships

[vitalis6969]

Perhaps being perdantic here but the Nova appears only once in the show, where as the Omega is a much more prominent and recognisable ship...

Sorry, my mistake, that is what I meant, the Omega.

(Plus what's so phallic about the Vorchan? The Liati (not in the show admitedly) is much worse...)

The whole end and well, ummm, phallic portion of it. :lol: Oh, and the fact that without me naming it you knew exactly what ship I meant. Of course that could be just because they were so common in the show.

-V

 

[captainsmirk]

Always looked more bird like to me personally.. (and yes I knew because it was only other Centauri warship in the show...)

And as I an archaeologist I see a surprisingly large amount of phallic objects :shock: (strange lot those ancient peoples...).


Nick

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Always looked more bird like to me personally.. (and yes I knew because it was only other Centauri warship in the show...)

And as I an archaeologist I see a surprisingly large amount of phallic objects :shock: (strange lot those ancient peoples...).


Nick

But you've never seen a penis gratiffied on a public toilet wall? It's not just ancient peoples that love their phallic symbols. Chavs venerate them, too...

 

[Methos5000]

Thats actually a very tough choice to make. I like it when the fluff from the show matches the stuff in the game (Primus and G'Quans should be about equal in power for example, which is not currently the case). But I voted for balance in one off games. I think if they are balanced well in a one-off game they will end up being fairly well balanced for a campaign too. The fluff is still important but I can understand that sometimes the fluff would not be possible to reach in the name of balance (otherwise a Whitestar would be SM with a 30" 4AD SAP TD Beam a huge amount of damage and crew and still only be a raid level choice, how was it described in the show? As maneuverable as a fighter, as powerful as a warship, but cheap to manufacture. Something like that.)

 

[Morakas]

One off games is most important!

 

[Locutus9956]

I've gone for the one off games but let me elaborate:

A ship should have its concept and basic design based off of the show (or at least if not seen on the show then it should follow the general philosophy shown on the show). In addition to this B5W is a great source of information and should be used as a basis but in this case the information can be slightly altered if it means a better feel and balance to the fleet.

Once the general fleet styles are settled I believe every ship should be balanced so that it fairs well in one-off games of all sorts (by that I mean it has at least one sort of game where it will perform as well as any other ship). For most ships this means they can be taken fairly in any game at all.

Finally I believe that the campaign rules ought to take these fleet lists and allow more options and variety with any radically different effects (e.g. Self-Repair ships regaining all of their Damage) being balanced out with other rules.

Overall this keeps one-off game balance, fleet style and campaign balance all in check.

/agree

(thats more or less what I was saying in my previous post )

 

[Matt]

singel games are the most important to me.

 

[Davesaint]

The problem you will have if you balance the game by the fluff on the screen, you will only have 4 races ever played. Minbari, Shadows, ISA, and Vorlons. No other race has a chance against the Minbari, Shadows, and the Vorlons in the show.

With the current way of selecting units, yes. But with a different way, no. See my further comments below.

Why would you want to play a game and invest in a fleet if you were guaranteed to lose every battle you were in if a given fleet showed up? That is what balancing off the fluff would do to you. The EA would NEVER, Ever have a chance against the Minbari. The LONW would get slaughtered by the Vorlons and the Shadows. The Narn would be an afterthought race.

You wouldn't be, especially if a points system were used with the ships rather than the current level system. That would reflect show canon far better than the current system works.

Lets say for example that a single sharlin cruiser is worth five nova (should be Omega) destroyers. For an equal game you would have the minbari player fielding one sharlin against the EA player's five nova's (again, instert Omega). Hence you would have an equal game.

Same system used every day by thousands of people for WHFB and 40k. In 40K, individually my chaos space marines are worth far more than a single ork, yet I have had my butt handed to me by the greenskins because of the great green tide and lucky dice rolling.

Now it can be said that by sticking to canon you would never have had a single sharlin vs five novas (and Omegas again.. sigh). True, but the question wasn't about how you fielded your troops, it was about what should be most important about balancing game play in the sense of ship STATS. The death from a thousand bites does work and using a points system or a further spread out pl system that more accurately represents the difference of power levels between ships would go a long way to supporting balanced fights whether they are in tourney, one-off or campaign games.

The other thing that would help greatly is a "commonality" stat for a ship as this would stop fleet min/maxing for the most incredible fleet you could put together. In the show the most recognizable Narn ships are the T'Loth in the first season and the G'Quon for the rest of the series. For the EA it is the Hyperion and the Nova (Omega). For the Centauri, you have the winged Phallus of Doom followed by the Primus Hull.

My personal take is that canon from the show should come first in deciding what weapons load out, etc a ship has. Then the fleets are balanced from there taking into account my above comments. If you aren't using canon from the show you are just playing any space game that came before using B5 ships. And so, what is the point? I might as well dig out starfleet battles or star frontiers again from their place of reverence in the gaming cabinet.

-V

I disagree. If you go by Canon, there is no amount of EA ships that could ever destroy a sharlin. The only way the EA was ever able to kill a sharlin was by ramming it, or luring it into an asteroid field and nuking it. Since the earthers were never able to lock on to a Minbari ship I could have thousands of Omegas to 1 sharlin and never be able to shoot it. Gee, that sounds like it would be fun to play. :roll:

Like others have said, you can use the show as a framework for the design philosophies of individual races, but you can't build a game that is fun to play if you go strictly by Canon. That was one reason I got out of B5Wars. Someone would take Minbari and I would say, well, I guess I've lost already.

There are many systems that have point systems that are not necessarily balanced. Games such as Star Fleet Battles, 40k, WFB, and others have issues with balance. In many ways, they have become rock, paper, scissors games where army choice has become more important than your tactics on the battlefield. This is one of the reasons I no longer play 40k or WFB. With SFB you can house rule some of the options to bring things back towards some semblence of balance, but there are still ships that are way too good of a buy for their point cost. There have been times that I have wondered if Steve Cole puts point costs on his ships by throwing a dart at a dartboard, but I digress.


Dave

 

[lastbesthope]

If a ship is truly balanced it will be balanced for all game types.

LBH

 

[Davesaint]

If a ship is truly balanced it will be balanced for all game types.

LBH

Very true LBH

 

[Ripple]

Well depends on what you mean by type. If you limit it to one off, campaign and tourney, that may be true. Problem is the pl system in effect changes the 'point value' of your ship depending on the pl of the game, especially going downward. This means if a ship is balanced vs its cost at one pl it almost has to be unbalanced at another.

You also have scenario issues. Speed is critical in blockade run, but almost a detriment in standard beatdowns for some ships. High damage is meaningless in many scenarios if you don't have the guns to back it up...but something like ambush changes that equation.

Just saying there are real issues with 'balance' due to the number of different objectives your trying to achieve and no stable points platform.

Ripple

 

[CZuschlag]

Ripple's comment is valid. A correct formulation may be:

A ship is balanced if and only if the sum of the product of the probability of the scenario, the probability of the priority level, and the balance error in that ship at that specific fight over all scenarios and probabilities is zero.

 

[vitalis6969]

I disagree. If you go by Canon, there is no amount of EA ships that could ever destroy a sharlin. The only way the EA was ever able to kill a sharlin was by ramming it, or luring it into an asteroid field and nuking it.

I may not be remembering correctly, but I never saw Omegas go up against a Sharlin. So I don't get where you are getting the data for your statement that EA would NEVER win. Hyperions can't go against a sharlin. Novas can't go against a sharlin. Thus, through canon, it shows the sharlin as far far more powerful. Now the Omega was a newer ship type that was portrayed as seriously outclassing the war era ships. Hence, it was closer to the sharlin, but still not its equal. Again, all proveable by canon. And a basis for writing the rules.

Remember, what I am saying here is that canon is most important, but I am pretty much saying what the others have been saying. You start with canon, as that is the most important, period. Then from there you fill in the rest. Canon forms the cornerstone, then the rest of the game is constructed upon that. Without canon you do not have Babylon 5, you have nameless faceless space game. Without canon I want "Warp Whirlwind Shooters" on my G'Quons that have a range of 40, a 12" area of effect and do 26ad of precise super armor peircing triple damage. Oh, wait, they weren't in the show? Who cares, when did that matter?

Since the earthers were never able to lock on to a Minbari ship I could have thousands of Omegas to 1 sharlin and never be able to shoot it. Gee, that sounds like it would be fun to play. :roll:

They were never able to lock on during the war, and they were not able to lock on during the episode with the rogue sharlin (actually they were able to lock on and that was the crux of the issue). BUT, that was an outdated sensor package, the same as what they were using in the war, it was later updated to a current level when B5 got its new weapons loadout in the episode GROPOS. Anything beyond that was never addressed, but it can be built upon.

There would be many things about the game that would be ironed out if canon was used better as a basis.

Boresight - wouldn't exist, canon proves otherwise

Shadow slicer beam - double the range, at least equal to fighter egg thingy if not further.

Centauri Beams - wouldn't exist, I'm rewatching the entire series and through season three they still haven't fired a single beam that I can recall. I have to recheck their assault on the Narn homeworld.

Vorchan being more powerful - if canon were followed this should would be very mean and used much more often.

E-Mines being the end all/be all Narn weapon - So far in the rewatching of the series they have been used once, and for one salvo only. Main weapon of the G'Quon is beams and should always be beams. Secondaries are pulse style weapons.

These are just a few off the top of my head while writing this.

-V

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I agree with this chap. Listen to him, playtester types!

 

[Locutus9956]

Well I agree with you for the most part about your latter points I think you are making what is in my oppinion a common error. Much is made of how great the Omega is in the show but the main thing is (and Sheridan comments on this at one point) that its basically propoganda, sure Omegas are an improvement over the War era ships but theyre not THAT huge an advance. Theyre still not even CLOSE to a match for a Sharlin.

The EA captains know this and dont even think twice about running when Delen tells them to sod off (this as far as I can recall is just about the only time a Sharlin ever faces down an Omega on the show).

And much has been made of the 'are these the same scanners we used in the war' line. I always too mean Sheridan double checking they were still using standard EA sensors and not some more advanced alien system (B5 WAS a joint project after all...). I dont see the EA being able to break Minbari stealth systems that quickly frankly without the Minbari TELLING them how to do it (and why on earth would the Minbari tell ANYONE that, even current allies)

As to the other points though:

Boresight: I really dont see what the big deal some people have with this is, its just a gameplay mechanism that I feel adds an interesting dimension to some fleets

Centauri Beams: True here. You wont see a Centauri ship fire a beam on the show. Ever. The whole lasers thing comes from a mislabling of a part on a CGI diagram that AoG based their Sharlin on and it went from there really. As much as I like the AoG stuff generally they werent infallible and this is one mistake that I think is long overdue fixing.

Narns: I like emines being big hittiers. Sure they may only get used once but how many times do we see G'Quans fighting anyway? About 2 other occasions is all that comes to mind and both those were cases where Emines would have hit friendly ships too. I would like to see the beams pumped up a bit maybe though.

Vorchans: I dont think the Vorchan is as worthless as some people would have you believe but its certainly nowhere NEAR as nasty as it should be. Id prefer to have it as a raid level ship and statted accordingly.

 

[emperorpenguin]

The whole lasers thing comes from a mislabling of a part on a CGI diagram that AoG based their Sharlin on and it went from there really. As much as I like the AoG stuff generally they werent infallible and this is one mistake that I think is long overdue fixing..

there was no mislabling

there are clear laser barrels in the wings of the Primus if you look at the pictures of it

 

[vitalis6969]

Locutus,

For the Narn thing, I make this reply more personal and from the heart cause I love me Narns so much. The G'Quon is the iconic ship for the Narn race, just like the Sharlin, the Omega, the Shadow Cruiser and the Vorchan are for their respective races. Thus I notice much much more how it is represented in the game. Just like a true passionate EA lover could probably ramble off everything about the Omega and its variants or the Hyperion and its many variants.

As the G'Quon appears in the series, its main weapons, the beam lasers, are proven to not have boresight restrictions. Thusly I want to see it represented accurately in the game. Same goes for e-mines, I wouldn't even mind if they were removed entirely or they were made boresight, i.e. could only shoot along the center axis of the ship. They were used once in the entire show. I don't care what effect they have on the game, I don't care if they do make the Narn "interesting". They were used once, make them the support weapon that they are.

Then, in fareness, I look at other fleets, like the EA. We plainly see that their beams are not restricted to boresight either. So, if I want the same for me Narns, then why not the other fleets?

Its a difference of what is important to different people mainly.

It all comes down to taste, I want a game that is a bit more pure in its foundations to the show. Others want a space sim with B5 ships to push around. And even others want a balanced blend of both.

-V

 

[Locutus9956]

I can apreciate that but its a long established thing now really that boresight is just there for game reasons.

As for emines, well as I said before yes they only get used once but seriously, we only see G'Quan cruisers actually FIGHT 3 times.

The first time theyre fighting a Centauri ship at close range, right outside B5 and with civiillian ships (including Narn ones) in the area. So of course they wouldnt fire a huge blast weapon then!

The second time is vs the Shadows where they DO fire emines like mad (not that it does them much good)

The third time is when they jump in to rescue the whitestar and the Minbari from the shadows, again their targets are close to friendly ships so using emines would be stupid.

In other words every time it would be pracitcal to do so on screen we DO see Narns use energy mines.

Edit: Just remembered we do see Narns fighting again in season 5 when they attack the Centauri homeworld and DONT use emines in this instance so the above statement isnt ENTIRELY true) that said who knows, maybe emines dont work in atomosphere or something?

 

[tneva82]

Now the Omega was a newer ship type that was portrayed as seriously outclassing the war era ships. Hence, it was closer to the sharlin, but still not its equal.

Too bad EA still could not break the stealth, as proven in canon, and ergo omega was just more pricey turkey shooting target.

They were never able to lock on during the war, and they were not able to lock on during the episode with the rogue sharlin (actually they were able to lock on and that was the crux of the issue). BUT, that was an outdated sensor package, the same as what they were using in the war,

And EA has NO sensors that would be able to break the stealth. Sheridan makes it perfectly clear.

Centauri Beams - wouldn't exist, I'm rewatching the entire series and through season three they still haven't fired a single beam that I can recall. I have to recheck their assault on the Narn homeworld.

Ship designs however have lasers on primus...They weren't used in show but that doesn't mean it doesn't have them.

 

[tneva82]

And much has been made of the 'are these the same scanners we used in the war' line. I always too mean Sheridan double checking they were still using standard EA sensors and not some more advanced alien system (B5 WAS a joint project after all...). I dont see the EA being able to break Minbari stealth systems that quickly frankly without the Minbari TELLING them how to do it (and why on earth would the Minbari tell ANYONE that, even current allies)

Here's JMS comments regarding issue btw:

# Sheridan asked what kind of scanners the fighters were using because he couldn't figure out why they were picking up the Minbari fighters. He wanted to be sure nobody had snuck by some kind of new tech. Once he knew they were the same tech as before, he knew something screwy was up.

# Correct above; Sheridan says, quite specifically, in the conference room with Ivanova after the Grey Council guy is gone, "they used some kind of stealth technology WE'VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO BREAK." It's not a matter of old or cheaper tech; we just haven't broken their technology yet.