dag'karlove
Mongoose
Yeah forgetting is what happens when you get old gary
Giam Reworked
- Thread starter No. 1 Bear
- Start date
If they do get around to re-stating the Gaim, I personally hope that the focus is more on making them fun then on making them balanced (and I hope that they make them balanced as well). I think most tournament organizers could come up with some balancing ideas for their events, but when they show up to a match under their current form, everyone loses…. Without the ability or need to maneuver, the only big choice the Gaim player has is when to convert fighters to overload mode and at what point to launch the breaching pods of doom vs. fighters.
Balance is very important, but when it comes down to it, fun is the thing.
-Humbaba
Balance is very important, but when it comes down to it, fun is the thing.
-Humbaba
Burger said:
Considering how slow they are, I'd say all of the above would be too much without also giving them additional weaponry (non-emine) or defenses in return. This is based on my own playtesting with them as they are simply too slow to manouver effectively out of any powerful fire arc if they need to. As I have stated many, many times here I play a balanced Gaim fleet and the only thing that needs to really change is to limit the Queen ships to make them playable and not abusive. Granted, I think they are kinda underpowered as far as weaponry goes if played in such a manner, but they are definitely not the horrible worst-case scenario that most people claim.
Sorry if I think most of the suggestions herein hit them with too hard a nerf bat. Yes, I want them to be fun to play, but I don't want them to be the victim of some players' irrational hatred of emines and fighters simply because that would mean some people have to adjust their tactics occasionally. Unfortunately, I'm not certain I have faith that this will not happen anyway.
However, in the interest of contributing, the things I think need changing are:
1. limit the queens as I mentioned in a previous post.
Reason: enforces background consistency with fleet composition
2. Reduce emine range on the skirmish and raid queen to 20". Change the Battle queen to 30" since that's the only large ship the Gaim have. Leave them turreted.
Reason: the Gaim use the emines to prevent the kind of swarm fighter tactics they use being used against them. Thus they would only be really effective once ships close in with them or once the are threatened by enemy fighters. As slow as the Gaim are these would need to remain turreted or risk being useless. They are not the Narn emines after all. Reduce the emines attack dice as follows:
battle queen (3 tubes of 2 = total 6)
raid queen (2 tubes of 2 = total 4)
skirmish queen (3 tubes of 1 = total 3)
3. Remove breaching pods from all the queen ships.
Reason: Queens should not be engaging in hand to hand combat anyway from a background perspective. Leave that to the assault ship/gunship.
4. Remove flight computer from all but the queen ships.
Reason: There is no reason for it really given that all Gaim ships have the same crew quality as the nearest queen most times.
5. Give the Queen ships additional weaponry in discrete fire arcs (F/P/S) to compensate for the loss/reduction in AD of the emines. My suggestion would be to keep with the existing weaponry they already have, i.e. the gatling lasers. Would need to make them a little more long ranged than they are now because the combination of them staying slow and also reducing the emines both in power and range leaves them vulnerable to almost everything.
6. Give the Gaim scout ship a reason to exist. Right now almost none of the scout abilities apply to Gaim weaponry and reducing the enemy's stealth value is useless if they don't bring scouts themselves. My suggestion would be to turn them into larger versions of the fighters, i.e. allow them to suicide/ram automatically without taking a crew quality check. There would have to be a limit on the number of these ships allowed in a fleet, say 2 per queen since they would be directly and telepathically controlled by the queen herself, hence the automatic passing of the CQ check.
Reason: it would remain consistent with the expendable philosophy of the Gaim queens re: their own kind and make the scouts somewhat useful without changing all the weapon fits on Gaim ships.
7. An alternative idea for the scouts would be that if they are within 18" of a flghter (non-suicide) flight that gets destroyed they provide a +1 bonus (non-stackable, so you couldn't have 3 of them generating +3!) to the fleet carrier ability to try and recover them.
Reason: this would represent them "scouting" the battlefield in search of damaged vessels they could use. The Gaim history we are presented with suggests they are very pragmatic when it comes to recycling almost anything of value. Very insectiod mentality IMO.
Well, those would be my own thoughts. I doubt any of them would be considered since it seems the powers who are changing them already have pre-conceived notions of what they want them to look like, but anyway.
Cheers, Gary
Da Boss said:Actually most of your ideas tally nicely with mine - not that I have any power though!!!
I tried to encompass both camps: keep the emines turreted (since it's unique), but reduce the power/range because people complain about them. Then compensate for the weaknesses added so they actually remain playable.
It would, but I kinda like them unique which was the reason behind my suggestions ;-).
Would add - a new War level ship
Definitely! As I noted elsewhere, it's not like lack of a mini will be an issue now ;-).
Cheers, Gary
No. 1 Bear
Mongoose
I feel emines should be consolidated to forward arc. Reduce the AD accordingly and remove the AAF thats what emines are for the Flight PC its a league fleet. Finally reduce the Inteceptor by one or 2.
No. 1 Bear said:
And I disagree entirely with all of the above except reducing AD and maybe the FC issue for non-queens. Sorry, no way in hell, but as I said, the emine hate on this board is probably sufficient to do just that.
The problem I have with suggestions like the above is simply that they list what the player doesn't like without any real consideration to what would be in theme or provide a rationale as to why such things should occur. For example:
1. drop AAF
- for a race that relies primarily on fighters it makes infinite sense that they would adopt defensive measures designed to prevent the enemy from doing the same to them.
2. reduce interceptors
- any slow ship must have advanced defensive capability as they simply do not have the speed to either run away or outmanouver the enemy.
3. make the emines forward arc only
- combined with #1 above this is ridiculous. first you say they use emines as fighter defense, then you stick them on a slow ship and limit their fire arc to the front only, then you remove their anti-fighter capability. Tell me exactly *how* that's supposed to be able to protect them from *anything* given that you also list they should drop the AD *and* the range? Sorry, this alone makes your suggestion about the most unbalanced change I can imagine.
4. reduce fighters *and* breaching pods
- umm, first you take away their defenses in AAF and Interceptors. Then you move the only weapon they carry, a semi-defensive one at that to the front arc only and drop its firepower significantly. To top it off you reduce the only remaining offensive weapon they have, the fighters and breaching pods. Explain to me how you think this is a balanced solution in *any* context? I've played a lot of game systems out there over the years and this just sounds a lot like "nerf them just because I don't like them." JMO though.
5. drop FC (I presume this is what you are referring to)
- sure, on all but the queens I agree.
6. Finally, the only things in this post were a list the things you didn't like about the fleet. At no point do I see where the combination of suggestions made did anything to
a) keep the fleet in character
b) keep the fleet actually playable and competitive
c) make the fleet fun to play and play against
Sure, if you enjoy pummeling a helpless fleet then your suggestions work fine for anyone except the Gaim player. Sorry, but as I said before - no way in hell.
Cheers, Gary
