does anyone else feel plasma's are too easy to kill.
- Thread starter archon96
- Start date
When its playtested (*) with stats for a compeletly different system and then weapons are removed (or usually with Romulans added) with no points adjustment does that make any sense in terms of logic or balance?
(*) yes this was limited but small pool of people with constant rules changes means it was always going to be so.........
(*) yes this was limited but small pool of people with constant rules changes means it was always going to be so.........
What if they were - you have to have a starting point - I stand by my original statement.If ships are unbalanced in play - things need adjusting - the majority of the changes thus far have been unrelated to balance as can be seen from previous posts by MGP.
The ships were playtested in the original form (to whatever degree) and for whatever reason Apparent errors in the transfer ship weapons / stats were not picked up on the ADB side.
The ships were playtested in the original form (to whatever degree) and for whatever reason Apparent errors in the transfer ship weapons / stats were not picked up on the ADB side.
Da Boss said:
However unlike you my assumption is here correct. Point values are never correct so assuming they aren't correct is pretty damn safe assumption since I'm assuming world hasn't turned upside down and impossible to have become possible
You meanwhile are assuming impossibility is not impossible...They were never correct in a first place and will never be. So either we accept tweaks or we don't try to fix it.
If they fix things it's pointless to say "oh but you increases their strength without upping point values! They are now too good for points!" because they could simply be upping underpointed unit's value more in line with others...
A note on Points Values in Space Combat Games/Insight to Games Design:
Something I learned while working on Battlefleet Gothic way back when. There is no fixed points value for any ship in a typical space combat game. I'll give you an example;
The Federation Heavy Cruiser is listed in the book at 180 points. However, that is not its true points cost. Its true points cost floats between (if I recall correctly) 165-190 points. It will vary depending on what else is in your fleet, what you are facing and what scenario you are playing. We give it a listed value of 180 because we know that is well within the ballpark and players don't want to make points costs calculations for every battle they fight, especially if they have to take into account what their opponent is taking (you can see the nightmare that awaits there).
Now, this is true of most miniatures games, but the effects of this points spread is exagerrated in space combat games because a) there tend to be fewer units on the table, b) because each unit is just one model rather than several and c) because there are defined classes of unit in the game that cause ships to 'clump' together on a points spread anyway - all destroyers are similar, all heavy cruisers are similar, etc. Not to mention the big gap - some of you players out there are just better than others...
This, incidentally, is exactly why A Call to Arms: Babylon 5 used Priority Levels. Each PL represented that points spread (you can argue whether the spreads were too wide, and so forth, but that was the reasoning behind it).
This is also why a straight points build/construction system would have enough holes to fly a battle group through, and why we haven't done one. The playtesting to settle on points values is essential and cannot be replaced by mechanics.
So, you can make a convincing argument as to why the Heavy Cruiser should, in fact, be 175 points, and you would likely not be wrong. So, why did we pick 180 points? Well, there has to be a fixed standard (of course) and there will have been comparisons made to other ships in the fleet and those in other fleets that caused us to settle on 180 points.
This means that, for example, a difference of 5 points between ships is, nine times out of ten, pointless and irrelevant. However, another factor springs up here, the psychology of the gamer - and this is where we try to mess with your heads Two (or more) ships may be extremely similar in fighting potential in a game but playtesters, for whatever reason, start leaning towards one or the other. To counter this, we might increase the more used ship to five points (or whatever) more than the lesser. It doesn't actually mean much (if anything) in terms of the game itself (because of the aforementioned points spread on what a ship is really worth), but it is a little dose of psychology to make the lesser used ship a little more attractive.
And that is why you Klingon players now pay more for a D5 and D5W We just moved them a little further up on the points spread to encourage you to take more D6 and D7 ships in your fleets. But they are still effectively the same points cost...
Now, to come back to the original point, what happens to a ship when it has a weapons, Damage or Shields change (or whatever). The first thing we look at is its points spread, and whether we have artificially made it higher or lower than the average. Most ships are not in that position, and so can stand a change without a corresponding points tweak, because you have an effective 10, 20 or even more points as a 'buffer' on either side. What we have to watch, of course, is how that affects the other ships in the fleet and whether it makes certain vessels an automatic choice (if they are not truly iconic ships, we don't really like automatic choices in fleet lists). If nothing looks like it will be affected, we may well let things pass without further change.
I was going to save all that for a Planet Mongoose article, but now seems like as good a time as any!
Something I learned while working on Battlefleet Gothic way back when. There is no fixed points value for any ship in a typical space combat game. I'll give you an example;
The Federation Heavy Cruiser is listed in the book at 180 points. However, that is not its true points cost. Its true points cost floats between (if I recall correctly) 165-190 points. It will vary depending on what else is in your fleet, what you are facing and what scenario you are playing. We give it a listed value of 180 because we know that is well within the ballpark and players don't want to make points costs calculations for every battle they fight, especially if they have to take into account what their opponent is taking (you can see the nightmare that awaits there).
Now, this is true of most miniatures games, but the effects of this points spread is exagerrated in space combat games because a) there tend to be fewer units on the table, b) because each unit is just one model rather than several and c) because there are defined classes of unit in the game that cause ships to 'clump' together on a points spread anyway - all destroyers are similar, all heavy cruisers are similar, etc. Not to mention the big gap - some of you players out there are just better than others...
This, incidentally, is exactly why A Call to Arms: Babylon 5 used Priority Levels. Each PL represented that points spread (you can argue whether the spreads were too wide, and so forth, but that was the reasoning behind it).
This is also why a straight points build/construction system would have enough holes to fly a battle group through, and why we haven't done one. The playtesting to settle on points values is essential and cannot be replaced by mechanics.
So, you can make a convincing argument as to why the Heavy Cruiser should, in fact, be 175 points, and you would likely not be wrong. So, why did we pick 180 points? Well, there has to be a fixed standard (of course) and there will have been comparisons made to other ships in the fleet and those in other fleets that caused us to settle on 180 points.
This means that, for example, a difference of 5 points between ships is, nine times out of ten, pointless and irrelevant. However, another factor springs up here, the psychology of the gamer - and this is where we try to mess with your heads
Two (or more) ships may be extremely similar in fighting potential in a game but playtesters, for whatever reason, start leaning towards one or the other. To counter this, we might increase the more used ship to five points (or whatever) more than the lesser. It doesn't actually mean much (if anything) in terms of the game itself (because of the aforementioned points spread on what a ship is really worth), but it is a little dose of psychology to make the lesser used ship a little more attractive.And that is why you Klingon players now pay more for a D5 and D5W
We just moved them a little further up on the points spread to encourage you to take more D6 and D7 ships in your fleets. But they are still effectively the same points cost...Now, to come back to the original point, what happens to a ship when it has a weapons, Damage or Shields change (or whatever). The first thing we look at is its points spread, and whether we have artificially made it higher or lower than the average. Most ships are not in that position, and so can stand a change without a corresponding points tweak, because you have an effective 10, 20 or even more points as a 'buffer' on either side. What we have to watch, of course, is how that affects the other ships in the fleet and whether it makes certain vessels an automatic choice (if they are not truly iconic ships, we don't really like automatic choices in fleet lists). If nothing looks like it will be affected, we may well let things pass without further change.
I was going to save all that for a Planet Mongoose article, but now seems like as good a time as any!
tneva82 said:
Except thats not whats happening /happened - the changes to ships have nothing to do with the game - they are to match ship stats in a completely different game with no thought to if that has any impact on the present game. No one said - oh the Gorns are too good - they need to loose phasers - it was - they are like this in another game - they must be the same in this one and any consequences are irrelvant...........
I agree with much of what Matt said.............
H said:
Yeah, with the amount of plasmas you are fielding, you won't get much sympathy
H said:msprange said:H said:
Yeah, with the amount of plasmas you are fielding, you won't get much sympathy
oh i know that, but in the pbem game, I can't bloomin close him down as it's simultaneous move and the wolverine is FAST!
Well I think 12 phaser's is bit of optimistic
Even on optimal scenario I can't bring more than 10 phaser's per ship to you. And fifth of that is phaser-3's! Mostly it's 6 or 8 depending are you on my side or front.But yeah I told the one who designed the rules pre-game that I think that fleets that are fast and nimble and/or long range wide arc guns are main benefittors and slower/less agile ships with short range narrow arc guns are disadvantaged.
But then again there's still hope. You have 3 fully loaded gorn ships and two of my three wolverines are suffering from impulse criticals...Kinda makes running away or skirting your edges more difficult. Especially as one of them is pointing in the wrong direction!
But at least I brought the ships less suited for zig-zag battle
I think 4 kearsage's would have been lot nastier than the 3 wolverines and ramiles. Okay so less phaser's and no fast but turn 4. And less hindering from your lucky punks in phaser banks who have been scoring disproportionate amount of critical hits :-<H said:my best crits were against the ship the plasma obliterated
I would say all those speed 10" crits you are causing beats those. "Oh I have 1AD. Let's cripple mobility of that wolverine this turn".
Oh no. This is one major reason why I often don't actually reload photon's. I'm too hard pressed on choosing between APTE(SPEED! And extra turn to boot!) and boost shields for extra survivability.
Though albeit this gets eased up on bigger games since boost shield becomes increasingly ineffective at bigger games. Though then again so do reloads! Your ships generally get blown apart before they get to do either of them
msprange said:This means that, for example, a difference of 5 points between ships is, nine times out of ten, pointless and irrelevant. However, another factor springs up here, the psychology of the gamer - and this is where we try to mess with your heads
And that is why you Klingon players now pay more for a D5 and D5W
Whilst I agree with some of this re points cost, I was thinking about this last night - and I find I am having increasing trouble getting my head round it.
If the D6 / D7 is not being used in favour of another ship - does this not point to an issue with that ship or more liekly its relative worth? Putting the cost up to be honest just irritated me and I had to try and find other ways of squeezing the D5/D5W in. If on the other hand the points had gone down for the D6/D7 then I would look again at the ship and consider it on its revised merits. If it does not matter which ship goes up or down - surely its better to put down the "inferior" ship?
What am I missing here?
