Demos - Crazy overpowered?

[zulu01]

Am I the only one who thinks this ships is stupidly broken? A Skirmish level ship with Speed 14, agile, 2 turns, Hull 5, Interceptor, and more firepower than most raid ships?!?

I have been running some 6 pt patrol scenarios against a fleet containing just 3 Demos and nothing I can come up with - nothing - so far even comes close. I am playing Narn.

Turn one 18 20" precise SAP shots, most likely with "concentrate all firepower" will kill almost any skirmish ship - maybe two.

And that's before it brings its main firepower to bear in turn two!

What am I not seeing here?

 

[H]

I was on the receiving end of a whooping last week, courtesy of the Demos, I'm not convinced it is broken per-se, it is after all very fragile, but it does have a sickening amount of Forward firepower , however it's flanks and rear are gun free, so in the right scenario it's as dangerous as a drunk kitten. So personally, whilst I think it is a tad tough, I wouldn't say it was broken

 

[Da Boss]

I certainly would play with it more than the Vorchan - It could have done with dropping 2AD of Ion Cannons to make them more comparable.

Still you are playing Narn so have little sympathy :wink:

Seriously - at least the torps are not DD any more

 

[Target]

I play Centauri all the time.
Only issue is why 10Ad instead of 8AD.
Centauri are easy to play. rush forward & shoot.
Get past that & we are fairly screwed.
Yes we turn quick ships like the Olympus ruin my day or frazi's.
It's a point of view thing.
I can't stand Olympii. Bane of my life.
Turreted rail guns. Arrgggh
I do feel for you though it's really the 10AD that stupid bring it to 8 & every Centauri player will still happy.
Interceptor 1 makes up slow loading. Torps are a fair swap for plasma accelarator.

 

[Misiolak]

Not a first topic on this subject.
Yes, Demos is a little over the top. Kill it first.

 

[inq101]

Ka'Tan. A few TD, SAP emines followed by DD beams will sort them out. Or beat them at their own game with 12 Sho'Kovs. Your torps aren't slow loading.

 

[Locutus9956]

1) I have to say if you play the game at such low PLs your going to notice a lot of disparity between some ships, the game really doesnt generally work very well at that level.

2) No the Demos is not broken. As others have noted I would advocat dropping it to 8AD Ion cannons though, as it stands it IS in my book a no brainer compared to the Vorchan.

3) Yes its scary firepower but its ALL forward arc, and has NO ANTIFIGHTER GUNS WHATSOEVER AND FEW HITS. I suggest a Frazi suppository :twisted:

(for that 6 point patrol if you insist on playing at that level if he keeps just taking 3 Demos try just fielding 6 wings of Frazis and watch him go crying home to Centauri prime)

(and yes I know its not that simple since theyre FASTER than Frazis but if you spread them out its not as hard as you might think and for your 6 patrol points you get THIRTY flights of them, you can pretty much cover such a large area that at least some will be in attack range and thats 120 potential Attack dice. Ok so in practice its gonna be more like 12-16 attack dice at any given time but thats still nasy and to boot the Demos will have a damned hard time actually KILLING them in return.

 

[Swiss Tony]

I've recently played a couple of 5 point battle games with my EA vs Centari, and by turn two of the first game I was in agreement that they are overpowered, I was facing four/five of them, as they concentrate fire and launch mass missile Salvos, they are definatley more than a match for the Artemis and Olympus, but by the end of both games my Orestes in game one and my Omega's in game two had left both games finishing close. I think they are a shade overgunned, but after facing them twice they are not to OTT.

 

[Davesaint]

The Demos is busted. You NEVER, EVER CAF with the Demos. You run around with Blast Doors Closed and Kill stuff. If facing 3 Katans, you could alternatively all power to engines past his front arc so he cant e-mine you(especially if it the scenario is Call to Arms)

IIRC - Triggy ran the numbers through his formula and got a score of 3.8 or so for it. The average for a skirmish level hull should be around 2.

It's busted. If you really want to fix it, drop it's Ion Cannons to 6 AD and the Torps to 4 AD.


Dave

 

[Locutus9956]

sigh.... which just goes to show that to my eyes Triggys magic formula has some serious flaws....

I'm am heartily sick and tired of people calling ships broken just because theyre slightly better than x y or z other ships. The Demos as I've said IS I'll grant you a tad too good compared when compared against the Vorchan but just because its better than the Narn versions does not make it broken. And frankly 3 Ka'Tans should rip it to SHREDS. ONE Ka'Tan can give it a good fight (though it will lose 9 out of 10 times imo).

Statistics are all well and good but they really dont take into acount a ships true strenghts and weaknesses. The Vorchan/Demos as I (and others) have said now MANY MANY TIMES is INCREDIBLY vulnerable to fighter attack... if you play to its strenghts and try to just outshoot it then of course your going to lose and it serves you right!

And as for 'never ever CAFing you always run around on close blast doors' thats just stupid and short sighted, its a damn fast ship and agile too so if you have any sense whatsoever you will try to get to a position where your not going to be shot at AT ALL and in that situation closing blast doors is just idiotic unless you dont want to fire one of your weapons because..... erm...

 

[Da Boss]

Normally I would only Close Blast doors whilst my Torps are reloading unless I need to Come about or similar.............or if the enemy was going to be out of range on turn one of my Ion cannons

 

[Davesaint]

sigh.... which just goes to show that to my eyes Triggys magic formula has some serious flaws....

I'm am heartily sick and tired of people calling ships broken just because theyre slightly better than x y or z other ships. The Demos as I've said IS I'll grant you a tad too good compared when compared against the Vorchan but just because its better than the Narn versions does not make it broken. And frankly 3 Ka'Tans should rip it to SHREDS. ONE Ka'Tan can give it a good fight (though it will lose 9 out of 10 times imo).

Statistics are all well and good but they really dont take into acount a ships true strenghts and weaknesses. The Vorchan/Demos as I (and others) have said now MANY MANY TIMES is INCREDIBLY vulnerable to fighter attack... if you play to its strenghts and try to just outshoot it then of course your going to lose and it serves you right!

And as for 'never ever CAFing you always run around on close blast doors' thats just stupid and short sighted, its a damn fast ship and agile too so if you have any sense whatsoever you will try to get to a position where your not going to be shot at AT ALL and in that situation closing blast doors is just idiotic unless you dont want to fire one of your weapons because..... erm...

Locutus, Closing Blast doors on the Demos makes the Ship 33% larger without any loss in maneuver. You are correct in that I can only fire 1 weapon. Big Deal. What I need the CBD is to get past the 2AD of Emines and the 2 AD of beams. Once the Demos gets behind the Katan, the Katan is Dead. I have looked at the demos in comparison to other ships at it's PL and here is my opinion.

Ships it's better than:

Milani
Artemis
Katan/Katoc
Thentus
Olympus
Torotha
Ikorta
Chronos
Light Raider
Warbird
Pak Ikorta and Warbird
Xorr
Ximm
Xirr
Xixx

It is a toss-up against these
Xeel - Because of the 4 Tzymms
Brikorta - Because it can take 4 Pikitos.
Rail Hyperion - Because it is very Big for a shirmish ship
Maximus - Hull 6 with interceptors
Darkener - 3 AD of precise beams could crit it out.


I might be missing some ships, that's just off the top of my head.


Dave

 

[Davesaint]

sigh.... which just goes to show that to my eyes Triggys magic formula has some serious flaws....

I'm am heartily sick and tired of people calling ships broken just because theyre slightly better than x y or z other ships. The Demos as I've said IS I'll grant you a tad too good compared when compared against the Vorchan but just because its better than the Narn versions does not make it broken. And frankly 3 Ka'Tans should rip it to SHREDS. ONE Ka'Tan can give it a good fight (though it will lose 9 out of 10 times imo).

Statistics are all well and good but they really dont take into acount a ships true strenghts and weaknesses. The Vorchan/Demos as I (and others) have said now MANY MANY TIMES is INCREDIBLY vulnerable to fighter attack... if you play to its strenghts and try to just outshoot it then of course your going to lose and it serves you right!

And as for 'never ever CAFing you always run around on close blast doors' thats just stupid and short sighted, its a damn fast ship and agile too so if you have any sense whatsoever you will try to get to a position where your not going to be shot at AT ALL and in that situation closing blast doors is just idiotic unless you dont want to fire one of your weapons because..... erm...

Locutus, Closing Blast doors on the Demos makes the Ship 33% larger without any loss in maneuver. You are correct in that I can only fire 1 weapon. Big Deal. What I need the CBD is to get past the 2AD of Emines and the 2 AD of beams. Once the Demos gets behind the Katan, the Katan is Dead. I have looked at the demos in comparison to other ships at it's PL and here is my opinion.

Ships it's better than:

Milani
Artemis
Katan/Katoc
Thentus
Olympus
Torotha
Ikorta
Chronos
Light Raider
Warbird
Pak Ikorta and Warbird
Xorr
Ximm
Xirr
Xixx

It is a toss-up against these
Xeel - Because of the 4 Tzymms
Brikorta - Because it can take 4 Pikitos.
Rail Hyperion - Because it is very Big for a shirmish ship
Maximus - Hull 6 with interceptors
Darkener - 3 AD of precise beams could crit it out.


I might be missing some ships, that's just off the top of my head.


Dave

 

[Tolwyn]

I fully have to agree with Dave.

 

[Locutus9956]

I DO agree with you on the list of ships. I dont agree that that makes it broken.

That's my point! Ships are not equal across a PL nor should they be frankly as that leads to everyone having the same fleet that just looks a bit different. Yes the Demos (and to a slightly lesser extend the Centauri in general) EXCEL in their skirmish ships but then again I happen to think they lose out at raid and battle compared to some others and the fleet in general is vulnerable to heavy fighter attack. Seriouly, vs Centauri more than anyone else nowheredays I would pile on the carriers and and fighter wings etc. Do this and I think you'll find the upper hand is on the other foot as it were

To reiterate the main issue though it's that some people cant seem to get that just because something is the best in its class does not translate to that meaning its broken!

And need I remind people that close blast doors is not some magic trick only available to Demos! Try doing so with a Drazi Warbird for example and you can still fire its main beam, or for that matter so can a Ka'Tan/Ka'Toc. It's not like the Demo's gets some huge amazing bonus from it that other ships dont (except when reloading but that's another issue... I happen to think that you shouldnt be able to reload while CBDing as it means that as it stands you basically suffer no penalty for the special order!)

I'll admit that my initial reaction to the Demos when I heard the stats was that it might be too much but having played with them for a while now I have to say they dont seem that bad any more, yes its one hell of a punch but they are surprisingly easy to remove, even with CBD...

 

[Da Boss]

Interesting points:

Demos - its great - prob a bit too good (take it down to 8AD Ion Cannons) as mentioned previously - I would add the Gaim Skirmish Queen Ship to the "Really Good Skirmish" ships list. Esp in numbers. The Demos's interceptor often makes a big difference to its survivability.

I did also find Olympus gunships nasty - epscially in squadrons..........and the rail gun hyperions I agree seemed very good

Not sure whats wrong with the Centauri Raid / Battle Choices

Balvarian - its great - lots of useful abilities - and excellent fighters - sullust - nothing worng with that......alot of people rate the Centurion but I don't really like the model or the ship.

Liati - its wonderful Primus - not sure yet but at least its better than the G'Qoun, Dargan - interesting choice.

 

[Right Hand of God]

Personally I don't think the Demos is busted for all the reasons covered already. Nor do I think it's a no brainer choice between the Vorchan and the Demos. They are different ships and have different roles. There is always going to be one ship that is considered the best for its class, that really doesn't mean it's broken, good god I hate that term, it has plenty of weaknesses, is it fair that they don't have a hull 6 like the Chronos? Is is fair that they only have weapons to the F arc? Really, these arguements are somewhat circuitous and quitefrankly pointless once they have gone past a certain point and been debated ad infinitum. The only resolution to this kind of discussion is the vanilla fleet where everything is the same just the models are different. Revamp it, drop its AD, then what? Another ship takes over as top of the pile then we start on that one?

 

[Triggy]

Without getting into the whole "is it broken?" debate - I can safely say it is better than the Vorchan in a couple of significant ways. Whilst speed and manoeuvrability are not an issue, the firepower is almost identical, it is the following that are significant:

1. The Demos has an interceptor. Not the end of the world for some fleets (Minbari, Vorlons, etc.) but against others it is a huge increase in toughness.

2. The Demos can run CBD in turns when it is reloading its torpedoes with no penalty. Even if only running CBD then, it is a 16.7% increase in toughness with little penalty.

These factors in my book make it a no-brainer choice over the Vorchan.

 

[Davesaint]

Without getting into the whole "is it broken?" debate - I can safely say it is better than the Vorchan in a couple of significant ways. Whilst speed and manoeuvrability are not an issue, the firepower is almost identical, it is the following that are significant:

1. The Demos has an interceptor. Not the end of the world for some fleets (Minbari, Vorlons, etc.) but against others it is a huge increase in toughness.

2. The Demos can run CBD in turns when it is reloading its torpedoes with no penalty. Even if only running CBD then, it is a 16.7% increase in toughness with little penalty.

These factors in my book make it a no-brainer choice over the Vorchan.

It also has 8" of range advantage over the Vorchan which can keep it out of some of the mid range firepower of a lot of ships.


Dave

 

[Target]

Still ships with 2 turns + turret or side firepower can get you & nearly any decent fighter rains on your parade.
Sure you can outrun the fighter/ship but that means you haven't turned to get back to fire again.
Ships facing the Demos can CBD or IDF the turn it fires the torps as well.