High Value, Low PL ships.

[nekomata fuyu]

One reason I don't like to take the Explorer class too often despite it being the better scout option for EA:CE fleets is because it's meant to be a rare and very valuable ship - much more valuable than being Raid PL would suggest. This then started me thinking about how the true value of such ships could be shown in the game.

Overall, this has raised three main questions for me, which are as follows:
How do you show the true value of a ship?
My first thought would be that such ships should have a special rule giving away more VPs when they're damaged/destroyed/captured. Possibly either by assigning such ships a multiplier or by saying that such ships are treated as being a higher priority level for the purpose of VPs.

Do you need to compensate for the above, and if so, by how much?
If you were just to offer extra VPs to your opponent, it would make the ship less worth taking. How you compensate for this can vary from ship to ship (extra weapons, extra defences, etc), but by how much you need to compensate would be a bigger question.

Which ships should be considered for such a rule?
I would say the EA Explorer for definite, but also possibly the Psi Corps Mothership, which has always struck me as something that should only be in combat as a last resort, not as something where you throw them at a problem as if they were Hyperions. Are there any others?


Does anyone else have any input on the original problem, or the questions to come out of it?

 

[Triggy]

If you give away more VPs but improve the ship too then it's almost like you're simply making the ship "cost" more.

If ships are rare then they ought to be restricted in a fleet. Unique ships already are and rarer ships like the Explorer aren't at the moment as it comes down to player discretion. Sure we could implement rules like that but it would then come down to complicated systems like in AoG (complicated because of the exceptions with low numbers of ships).

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Not necessarily. There's a big difference between a ship that costs a Battle point, has Battle level stats, and gives Battle level VPs, and a ship that only costs 1 Raid point, has slightly higher than Raid level stats, and gives War level VPs. In a sense, it would be more similar to the situation we already have with some Patrol ships, with an effective cost of half a Patrol point, stats higher than half a Patrol point, and VPs being given as if each ship were a full Patrol point.

 

[Commador Q]

It's not really feasable to represent "value" in the way you mean in call to arms. cta is based on the principle of balanced engagments where either side (ignoring tactics and dice results) will have an equal chance of winning.

sure you could take Unique and make a trait like Limit X, that says something to the effect of "No more than x of this class of ship can be present in a game of raid or lower PL, and no more than double that many in a game of PL battle and up". but that's going to feal artaficial, Unique works because it only applies to named ships like Excaliber, or Lindra, and not to a class of ship.


If you want to represent more acurately the dynamics of a real war i recomend using Mongoose' D20 RPG, as (even though i've never used it personally) it's more likely to have such things as what it costs to produce a ship, rather than just it's usefulness in combat as measures of commonality.

As an alternate option you could try the assasinate scenario with the explorer as the target.

 

[Burger]

Make it cost more RR to buy in a campaign if you like, to represent its cost. But giving away more VPs, no.