EA Nova

[Voronesh]

However the beam part proved to be pretty useless, it scored less hits on average and had less range.

One word: interceptors!

Not always. There was one case of hull value, where you needed more than one for beams to be good. But still, you just have to remember 3 hull values, and at which Interceptor number beams became better. Not what i call a tactical choice, its more of a "i remeber" "i automatically do".

Not quite like the Lighning cannon on a VCD. Rare occasions to use, but potentially very good. (i know far too rare occasions).

 

[Silvereye]

However the beam part proved to be pretty useless, it scored less hits on average and had less range.

One word: interceptors!

You could also make it benefit from Scout locks and CAF! Being able to re-roll the opening salvoes from Beams was always worthwhile. However with the Beam changes to 2e this was suddenly written out of the calculations and their potential usage was massively reduced.

I always thought that Beam mode should have increased the range though, would have made them a lot more useful in my opinion.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I'm not sorry to see the back of LPAs. AoG's nonsense, not supported by the source material amd of limited value in game terms. Why go to the effort of making it useful when you can get a more accurate game by binning it?

 

[Ripple]

I guess one question I have is the hostility to AoG. These are the people who created the great majority of anything you are playing with. They didn't always get it right by the show (frankly neither has Mongoose, those are Warbird hulls firing missiles folks), but they tried to be canon, and when they screwed up they came out with stuff that tried to correct it. (See secundus.)

The laser pulse array was trying to cover the on screen weapons seen on the omega, a very similar hull to the nova. We see single hard points with dual weapons mounted where the mounting alternates between the two weapons as it fires. Why? If it could fire them all at once wouldn't that make more sense? A dual purpose mount with one power feed seemed to fill the bill, letting each weapon cool between shots maybe?

Give me another explanation why the alternating fire.

As to the CGI flock up argument... supposedly the hyperion firing a beam is one... we didn't strip those off.

Ripple

 

[Sulfurdown]

I'm also a little put out by the shift in weapons coverage. I understand the perception that "weapons forward is tactical" but Wpn-Fwd is the hallmark of fast attack ships, not slow area denial/assault ships. The slower a ship is the more it needs to have full defensive coverage. That's why predatory animals have their eyes forward and the rest then to have eyes on the side to keep coverage. But that is a shift across the board for 2E, I just get the feeling that it's moving toward Full Thrust's No-aft-weapon style.

 

[Greg Smith]

I'm also a little put out by the shift in weapons coverage.

If you are talking about the Nova, the shift on coverage was to reflect the position of the guns on the model.

 

[Burger]

I'm also a little put out by the shift in weapons coverage.

If you are talking about the Nova, the shift on coverage was to reflect the position of the guns on the model.

Most Nova models I've seen, have most of their guns facing either forwards or backwards...

 

[Sulfurdown]

But the all seemed to be mounted on a turret like hardpoint.

 

[tneva82]

I guess one question I have is the hostility to AoG.

Yeah. There seems to be quite a lot of that...Where does that come anyway? Seems there can't even be 2 B5 game(even if one is out of market...) in existence :?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

It's simple. AoG made up a lot of stupid things, like LPAs.

 

[Da Boss]

I guess one question I have is the hostility to AoG.

Yeah. There seems to be quite a lot of that...Where does that come anyway? Seems there can't even be 2 B5 game(even if one is out of market...) in existence :?

Had not noticed alot really - I must admit B5 Wars looks scarily like Star Fleet battles to me but I know people enjoy that sort of game as well as the ACTA type of game whihc I prefer

 

[Voronesh]

I'm also a little put out by the shift in weapons coverage.

If you are talking about the Nova, the shift on coverage was to reflect the position of the guns on the model.

Most Nova models I've seen, have most of their guns facing either forwards or backwards...

But very often they seem to be mounted in such a way, that firing forward would kill you own turrets.

No offense against AoG, but LPAs cant really wok under 2e rules that well. basically it would be an extra weapon at close range or a extra weapon mode for long range fire (which would run counter to the ship design to fill space with pulse cannon fire.)

 

[Ripple]

Let's be careful about throwing around the 'stupid' term given we're playing a game that can't get it's wording straight and came up with the Sagitarius for last time.

As Voronesh's point, no. The whole point of the comment was that you had something in the show that needed an explanation. The dual mounts that never fire together. So in ACtA terms you would have a single weapon line that can fire in two seperate modes. By making the stats different enough to warrant use of either one you would encourage the ship to fight like was imagined from evidence in the show.

It could just have easily been done as two slow loading weapons with a note that both cannot fire in the same turn. Similar effect. Just saying that it was not dreamed up out of thin air, wasn't 'stupid' and could have translated over in a form that was useful rather than a form that was almost always going to produce near identical results, making us question why it was there at all.

Ripple

 

[emperorpenguin]

As to the CGI flock up argument... supposedly the hyperion firing a beam is one... we didn't strip those off.

Ripple

I wanted to! :lol:

But as I said, there was the possibility of having many of the EA weapons as dual mode (eg the Omega you'd pick whether to fire the laser OR pulse rather than both as now) but Mongoose didn't want to go down that route. It'd have taken months more playtesting if nothing else

And there was footage in "In The Beginning" of Novas firing beams

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Got clips?

 

[emperorpenguin]

Got clips?

look at the nova in the topmost pic of this page

http://www.b5tech.com/science/misc/Omega_Evolution/Omega_Evo.htm

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Can't see any beams coming off that ship... :?

 

[emperorpenguin]

Can't see any beams coming off that ship... :?

are you red/green colour-blind!? :lol:

just left of the leftmost minbari beam

and here's a pic

see the beam from the nova left of the hyperion?

 

[Voronesh]

As Voronesh's point, no. The whole point of the comment was that you had something in the show that needed an explanation. The dual mounts that never fire together. So in ACtA terms you would have a single weapon line that can fire in two seperate modes. By making the stats different enough to warrant use of either one you would encourage the ship to fight like was imagined from evidence in the show.Ripple

No what i meant was that the turrets on a Nova are lined up in such a fasion, that forward firing the guns, as seen on emperorpenguins pic would mean the destrcution of your own turrets. Not individual turrets. (this doesnt have anything to do with LPAs, but with the shift of forward firing AD)

Yes i wholly support your idea, that bringing them back in a good fashion is perfectly ok. I just dont see how, and the 1e LPAs were UGH. Unless you had a scout going (now impossible) or the other ship had multiple ints (Still valid). A new bonus is that you would get to choose between Pulse mode against hull 4 and beam mode for hull 6. Its just that, MGP decided to go with Pulse cannons as EA close in weaponry. (Kinda like AoG and centauri beams) Both are rare to not seen on the show, and in season 5 we have Omegas shooting only pulse weaponry, which might be a pointer that LPAs have existed (canon on screen) but had some kind of flaw that made them less effective than pulse batteries. Maybe their energy comsumption was faulted whatever, there can be enough fluff made up reasons :S.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

How about this as a possible explanation:
First we had the Nova, which in its standard configuration is laserless. Novas were then used as the basis of the development of the Omega, and whilst the most visually obvious refits were to test the rotating sections, some others were refitted to test other planned features, including (drumroll please) the heavy laser cannons! 8)
This theory would even fit in with the Nova being in question being shown alongside the other experimental units.

This has got me thinking about what the stats would have been on some of those Nova refits. It would basically be the Omega Pulse refit, but in reverse, so strip off a load of AD from the heavy pulse cannons, and slap on a weak heavy laser firing forward (rear firing would be less important, and would possibly have been skipped on the test refits). It would make for a nice Nova variant maybe