Against most people a Fed force with three BCHs is a bit like a force of 8 Kzinit ships 7 of which are FFs. Its unbalanced and while the game has free reign as far as fleet design goes it has the slightest wiff of cheddar.
Still the Romulan’s AND the Gorn share many problems which while reflective of SFB are much worse than SFB or FC.
Both cannot handle Drones in any numbers, both have massive problems matching a mobile enemy (Roms can remain uncloaked but if they cloak they are as manoeuvrable as lumbering Gorns just slower.
Both have short weapon ranges and easy to destroy heavy weapons which require a concentration of fire on a single target which is complicated by the lack of manoeuvrability and short range.
The Drone side races are all able to handle each other, the Feds, Klingons, Kzinti and presumably Methane suckers and Lyrans are all able to fight each other reasonably well. Most have good drone defences or are highly mobile to offset Drone swarms.
Its the Plasma side that comes of worst against those races. Drones are a complete pain, with or without a cloak. A cloaking ship is dog food if there are Drones in range and with a 36" range its fairly hard to be out of range, cloaking in waves should in theory allow other Roms to provide cover. Except that the best way to do that works 50% of the time because of IDFs crew check. So you can have two ships cloak, two other cover them and both fail the crew check, one dead Rom ship. You reach the point where re cloaking isn't worth the time or risk since you can just reload rather than having to run behind some terrain then cloak in safety then come back out, you may as well just reload and keep going.
With Hawks or Klink ships its easier to just not cloak most of the fleet. Treat them like a normal plasma fleet, use superior manoeuvrability to get those plasmas on target and save the cloak for emergencies or special tactics.
Its much like the Gorns except the Gorns don't bother with the whole cloaking thing, we just take the Drones on the chin from the get go.
Yes people keep saying its SFU and the Plasma races are not designed to fight Drones. This doesn't stop them fighting Drones in SFB or FC. Its in ACTA-SF where the drones are significantly more dangerous that the problems are found. No chance of other ships to destroy them, no Drones on the map you can avoid, no mines, EW, Scouts breaking lock ons etc.
If Drones are not changed then IDF should be or some other defence should be introduced.
Balancing entire fleets against each other is not possible at a fine scale. But given roughly equal skills on the players sides the Plasma races should have a roughly equal chance of winning.
Just as a final note because its gone a bit quiet on that front. Why oh Why are the Gorn cruisers lumbering. :roll:
It seems to me that to stand a reasonable chance as a Gorn fleet I need no more than one Lumbering ship or even none. That restricts the entire fleet choice to 4 ships. Beware the Gorn HDD pack (6 HDDs and a BDD) :lol:
Lincolnlog said:
Agreed this doesn't help the Gorn or the Romulans, but if I was a tournament organizer, sticking with the background of the SFU, only given fleets would be able to pair off against other fleets. Putting the Gorn up against the Kzinti just doesn't seem fair.
It isn't :roll: :wink:
However this would mean Gorn would only ever fight Romulan, Klingon/Kzinti/Fed would only ever fight each other. Every tourney would have one set of tables for the Drone side of the map and a token table for the plasma fools.
I have never played an SFB campaign where we were limited to fighting the traditional Fluff enemies, games like Fed and empire yes but in a free campaign if using the SFU map as Gorns I have Rom, ISC and Fed on my borders plus its not far round the neutral zone to the Tholians and Klingons. Plus in games where I have been allied to someone I end up with fleets in their space and so come under attack from races the other side of them anyway. On free campaign maps, all those little Galactic clusters out there then anyone could be next to anyone else.
This game is based on the SFU, it doesn't (well so some people say anyway) follow the SFU with ironclad locks where the Gorn never ever fight the Kzinti because they never did in the SFU background.
Its a free flowing game, player against player, fleet against fleet. It is its own game. That’s why the fleets should have at least a chance against each other. If Gorn players are saying they will simply resign when they find they are facing Kzinti fleets something has gone rather wrong somewhere.
), I just reserve judgement until a point has been proven EMPIRICALLY (on the field of battle so to speak, I've always ignored armchair generals who think they know something). That said, I have been curious about how well balanced the play testers found the Romulans to be, and that is also why I posted a thread regarding ideal Romulan fleet composition and tactics/counter tactics/counter to counter tactics. Anyways, have fun with your numbers and Fed Com, and again, Bye!
