Gaim-simple solution to reballance

[Burger]

Anyway, better example is Hermes 2AD missiles range 20", Apollo 8AD missiles range 30" :lol: Bigger goes further!

There is your SCUD vs ICBM. I think the Apollo is a tidge bit bigger then the Hermes and can carry the big boy missiles.

EXACTLY! So why smaller Gaim bombs go further than big ones? Whats the difference between a photon bomb and a missile, except a missile is guided whereas a photon bomb is a timed detonation?

played Nuclear War last night - much fun!

LOL! I remember that :lol:

 

[Sulfurdown]

Anyway, better example is Hermes 2AD missiles range 20", Apollo 8AD missiles range 30" :lol: Bigger goes further!

There is your SCUD vs ICBM. I think the Apollo is a tidge bit bigger then the Hermes and can carry the big boy missiles.

EXACTLY! So why smaller Gaim bombs go further than big ones? Whats the difference between a photon bomb and a missile, except a missile is guided whereas a photon bomb is a timed detonation?

You'd think I'd have been word trapped into a corner here but I'm going to apply a double standard and get out of said corner.
I'm saying that the Photon Bomb is using the same technological basis between the Shuuka and the Shaakak (1 PL difference). Same delivery system with lighter payload means longer range. In the case of the Hermes vs Apollo (3 PL difference), I'm going to claim a difference in the delivery system which allows the Apollo the additional range with the heavier payload.
The Shuuka and Shaakak are both firing Minuteman with differing payloads.
The Hermes is firing a SCUD and the Apollo is firing Trident II
EDIT: I have no idea if I'm using the appropriate missiles - I haven't been up on them since highschool physics.
EDIT2: All of this being academic, IMO the Photon Bomb on the Shuuka needs to come down to 20" and the rest of the PBs need to be reduced by around 10" range OR, preferrably, locked into specific arcs. There was such fanfare for the "Tactical" with 2nd Edition and it feels like the Gaim were designed to completely ignore a lot of the attempts to make the game a more thinking game. I don't view them as broken, they strike me as an Early Win or No Win faction, but the style of them speaks to a roll dice to see who wins.

 

[Burger]

And Hermes vs Sag? 6AD missiles, 30", 1 PL difference :lol:

 

[inq101]

Air in space, different ranges. Don't you guys know anything. In sci-fi everything happens 'cause of Nano!

Tom

 

[Voronesh]

And dont forget warp!!! and beaming.

 

[Sulfurdown]

And Hermes vs Sag? 6AD missiles, 30", 1 PL difference :lol:

Transport vs Dedicated Missile Cruiser!!

Air in space, different ranges. Don't you guys know anything. In sci-fi everything happens 'cause of Nano!

Tom

And dont forget warp!!! and beaming.

SuSHAFSBReTT!

 

[stryve]

With EA, more AD for missiles means the ship is firing more missles, not that the missiles are larger.

 

[Target]

Back to the Gaim
I really can't see why they have interceptors & advanced anti fighter.
They have more than enough fighters to do these jobs.
There fighters aren't bad when you compare them to some of the other league fighters eg Kotha, Star snake.
Don't really see why they should have e-mines either mainly cause of their heavy use of fighters but thats less of a issue .
Would of liked to see a type of weapon like a Weak, TD things. No one else has those sought weapons. Thought that might of been cool.

 

[Tolwyn]

After reading the rules I can only see that it is very hard if possible at all to beat the Gaim.

They do not have to move at all if they have launched all their fighters. They have swarms of fighters which could be converted into crewed missiles, superior initiative and do not have to fear fighters because of the Photon Bombs.

 

[Chernobyl]

I've got some ideas on how to adjust the Gaim fleet organization.

Assault Drones - rolling two dice seems a bit over the top, but boarding actions aren't that common, so it's probably OK to keep this rule.

Pilot Drones - it should take some type of training to get the pilots ready though. and even if you get the pilots for free, the material and parts to build a fighter has to come from somewhaere. Suggest 1/2 cost rather than free.

The Queens. - broken. There's virtually no incentive to take a fleet that anything but queen ships in it. It gives them the same ability as Vree (even with one queen onthe board, it is the nearest queen) and no real basis for it. Suggest only ships activly squadroned with a Queen ship recieve the +1 CQ bonus. Also, there are too many opportunities to bring Queen ships due to the varied PL of queen ships (which are a required component of the force). Suggest modifying this rule so that while a queen ship must be taken, you may not bring a queen ship of a lower PL than the game being played. IE, you can't take a skirmish queen if you are playing a raid-PL scenario. You can't take a raid queen in a battle scenario. This would require making more queen ships for War and Armageddon PL games I believe, which isn't a bad thing right really. more models! As a stopgap, allow battle-pl queens in War an Armageddon PL games.

Dynamic squadrons - I really don't like this rule, but with the above changes it may be tolerable.

Protect the queen - this is a drawback rule, that will only matter if the number of queen ships can be limited in some manner. With the above changes it may function as intended.

Ships - crewed missiles have to fly a more direct course to collide with a ship, and so should not have such a high dodge rating. suggest lowering this to 4+, or, 5+ on the turn thay intend to collide with the enemy.

Shuuka skirmish queen ship - 40" mines are over the top for a skirmish ship. recommend combining this to a turreted 20" mine with 6 AD instead, and add some short ranged pulse cannon type weapons.

Stuteeka - reduce carrier ability to 6.

might be others, but those are my thoughts for now.

Chernobyl

 

[Sulfurdown]

The Gaim do seem to be a depot for minor rules that aren't individually unbalanced. It's just when they are all combined.

Ships - crewed missiles have to fly a more direct course to collide with a ship, and so should not have such a high dodge rating. suggest lowering this to 4+, or, 5+ on the turn thay intend to collide with the enemy.

In the case of the Crewed missiles, they are supposed to be exactly that so I would expect that the traits wouldn't change at all. Otherwise what's the difference between a "Crewed Missile" and a "big missile"? But it does say that it overloads the core so I'd think that they should get one turn after converting to make their attack run, succeed or fail, at the end of turn it's destroyed.

 

[Enalut]

First point: posted in the other thread but these were my tactics at the OH tornament this weekend:
My general tactics were relatively simple:

Fleet: 2 Battle and 6 skirmish queens.

Stand off and move parallel to the edge of the board while emining the opposing fleet concentrations. Generally I would go for targets of opportunity first: concentrations of ships and usually prioritizing those that were the most threat. I usually kept 4 Skirmish Queens and both battle queens as a single squadron to maximize the firepower delivere at once. The remaining two ships were used to finshi off ships or remove fighter cover.

Deploy Fighters with the intent of converting them to missiles and attack larger ships in mass as they approached, but only after I could bring sufficient numbers in range on a given turn to overwhelm defenses.

Use Breaching pods to pick off targets of opportunity and especially to mob any large ship coming through a jump point close into my fleet. I will say that I was most surprised by the effectiveness of the breaching pods/boarding actions. They probably won me 2 of the 3 games.

--End reposting

Following the tornament: I did not find the Battle queen over the top. It was a flying brick but was not capable of doing much dmage on its own. It struck me as an excellent command ship, useful but not oveblown. I do think it probably carried to many breachign pods.

Generally the quuens should be command ships, more survivable than most similarly statted ships, but conversly with less hitting power. The number of fighters per ship--givne thier role--is not unballenced, but the firepower generated by the emaines is.

The Skirmish Queen was compeltely over the top. In the large squandron i used 60% of he emine firepower came form 33% of the point cost (4 raid in battle shipsand 2 raid in skirmish ships). The Skirmish queen is a effective bombardment ship that carries to many fighters and way to many braching pods.

The Skirmish Queen is not built as a command ship, but rather as a heavy bomber. It doesn't have the survavability of the larger queens (something not exploited by my opponents atht eh tournemnt) but hits way above its level in offencive punch.

My Suggestion would be to actually increase its survivability (say add 5 points to its damage track), but greatly reduce its combat power: 1 4AD emine with the same 30" range a the Raid Quuen, and reduce it to 2 Brachign pods and 4 troops.

Conversly, I think the Gaim should get a stand off emine bombardment vessle: but a ship--not a queen--with greatly reduced survivability and fighter and troop scores, and probably at raid level.

Finally, I found that emines that do not crit a ship (nad hence a do predictable amount of damage) are an excellent way to reduce crew scores ahead of/during a boarding action. I think some rule change is needed regaridng firing at ships you have troops boarding (or at least to work in a manner in which freindly fire can kill your own troops that are attemptign to take over a ship). For instance, role a dice for every crew casualty sustained by the borded ship by wepaons, on a 4+ you also lose a troop.

 

[armbarred]

As I said when we were talking about the Ohio tournament from the previous weekend, I do not believe the fighters were a problem. So I won't address them here.

What I do see as a problem is the 40" every turn emines from Skirmish ships. I see no real reason for a ship to have the same weapon in multiple turrets. Make it one turret at the same AD total, and dcrease the range to 20", or make it 30" and slow-loading.

Also, too many queens on the table does have a drawback. Double VP is huge in tournaments. But I don't think it is a balance to the advantage.

I like the idea of limiting the number of Queens. Perhaps make it a Priority-based thing. IE: in a patrol scenario you can take only one Queen, at skirmish two Queens, in raid three Queens, etc. Also, I firmly believe that Queen should be a trait that can be lost. She could get killed when a ship becomes crippled, and make her special in that the trait only gets lost on a 5+ (and when it is gone the double VP goes with her).

 

[eldiablito]

Just a thought, and I forget if this was already stated...

What if the limit of the number of queens was based on the number of points allocated to the fleet. So, a 5 point raid would only get 5 queens, a 1 point Armageddon would only get 1 queen and so on...

 

[stryve]

I know it's been mentioned before, but I think it's worth bringing up again: all Gaim ships have the Fight Computer trait. Since this seems to negate half the penalties of Protect the Queen, it's somewhat questionable.

 

[Da Boss]

I like the idea of limiting the number of Queens. Perhaps make it a Priority-based thing. IE: in a patrol scenario you can take only one Queen, at skirmish two Queens, in raid three Queens, etc. Also, I firmly believe that Queen should be a trait that can be lost. She could get killed when a ship becomes crippled, and make her special in that the trait only gets lost on a 5+ (and when it is gone the double VP goes with her).

Yeah I liked that and made a similar suggestion a while back - which was not badly recieved so stuck it in Darkness Rising along with restriction on number of pods/missile fighters can get in one turn - and a War level Gaim ship and unique admiral .................

 

[Chernobyl]

an interesting idea would be to force the Gaim player to take an Admiral "queen" instead of having all the queen ships. It might encourage more variation in Gaim fleet composition.

Chern

 

[Gray Dagon]

I've been reading this thread for awhile and thought I'd put in my 2 cents.

My group has one Gaim player who I've been playing against when ever I can, with my Vree Fleet. The first couple of games where to put in nicely-disasters I got wiped out for no kills in return in the first and one kill in the second. After these we started playing senarios and I got in two wins- one in a flee to the jump gate, where I activated the gate on my first try an ran like hell, the second was a blockade at 5 war, only one Gaim ship got off the table.

The last game we played was for our campaign and was a 5 war annihilation senario. I was very nervous about this game because A) it was practically my whole fleet and B) I couldn't score double VP against his queens, which IMHO is the only real weakness of the Gaim List.
Much to my surprise I won. If anyone is interested I have fleet lists for this game as well as ship and fighter losses recorded.

I agree with others that the Shuuka skirmish queen needs to be 'fixed' but all that should be done is a lowering of the Emines to 30". The other fix is to the Sataaka Gunship, the other skirmish choice for the Gaim. It needs some teeth,if you side by side these ships the queen will be picked every time, barring a need for 9" movement as in blockade senario.

Well there it is are the Gaim a rock solid fleet? Absolutely. Unbalanced? I used to think so but not after playing them as much as I have.

*prepares to duck*

 

[Methos5000]

B) I couldn't score double VP against his queens, which IMHO is the only real weakness of the Gaim List.

Why couldn't you get Double VP for his queens? The Victory Conditions rules state VP for the blockader are as normal. Gaim Queens normally give up double VP. Or was there some other reason?

That said I would be very interested to hear how people have fared against the Gaim in just straight up kill em all Scenarios since those have the highest chance of appearing during Campaign games (being a 6,7 or 8 die roll)

 

[Gray Dagon]

The annihilation scenario is played until only one ship is left, no time limit or VP used. This is the only time I have beaten the Gaim in a straight up fight.