House rules for beam-less Centauri?

[Slightly Norse John]

Most of the Ion weapons already in the rules (including now the Var'Nic's torpedo) do have Precise, it seems to be their signature trait in much the same way that if something is a Laser, it'll probably have Beam. That, if anything, is the rationale behind it.
I think you're over- construing from the age of sail; it was a foregone conclusion- the simultaneous shock of a broadside was far more damaging than the erosion of single shot. In the chaos caused by heat, noise and casualties, it simply wasn't possible after the first couple of salvos.
Partly, it's a question of who gets what. Of the major races, the Minbari get Stealth, Precise, Beam and Mini- beam. The barbarian scum- or rather the Narn, to distinguish them from the other league barbarian scum- get E-mines, good strike Fighters, heavy boresight Beams and quite a lot of minor variety. EA, Fighters, Interceptors, Missiles, boresight Beams and good all round close up firepower, with lots of minor variety. The Centauri get Beams. Pretty much. That and Twin- link, and decent interceptors, poor strike fighters. Less of the same and more of different stuff, please.

 

[angelus2000]

Agree with the point that Ion's trait does tend to be Precise, however nearly all the examples I can find in SFOS seem to indicate a single shot, which was the reasosing behind the Precise trait given to the simultaneous salvo.
IMO, of the 4 major races, the Centauri are the only one that lack their own signature weapon. Narn have E-mines, EA Missles, and the Minbari have Stealth; the Centauri get a butt load of beams but all the races have beams to one degree or another.
A long range pulse weapon would fit the bill nicely. No other race(maybe dilgar, never seen thier stats), has a pulse weapon over 20" AFAIK. and if they did, the optional salvo mode would definitely make it unique. Just giving the centauri more beams than anyone else always smacked of lack of imagination.

And I play Narn, I can't believe I'm actually suggesting fixes here

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I think precise would have to stay for ion cannons if I (or us, depending on who does all the work) do this conversion. It'd make up for the loss of beam and the subsequent hits you can get combined with ignoring interceptors.

Matter cannons can stay as they are, I think they work fine on the ships that use them. I'll variously replace the battle lasers with ion cannons or (rarely) plasma streams on the main "beam" ships and see what you all think of the numbers, traits and so on. I'll keep the plasma stream rare, but I want to include it on other ships so the Centauri get some beams, even if poor ones. I've seen plasma streams on some AoG B5W sites mounted on ships like the Octurion, so that's my precedent. I'm probably mad, but there you go. I just get sick of the beam-team controversy...

 

[Ripple]

I thought plasma steams were short range. In a way they sort of filled the role the matter canon fields now, the medium range hitter. But that was B5wars.

Wieghing in the TD/Precise thing. This is a really bad combo. Makes the weapon almost impossible to balance as lucky hits destroy raid level ships but unlucky hits do not feel like they are earning their keep. If you go this route with a fair number of AD then even mild criticals will add up fast.

Mini-beam. Not a bad idea. I never was a fan of mini-bem being anti-fighter, that should have been a seperate trait. How about we just add a trait called non-interceptable if we went this route.

Interceptable...do remember that centauri have lots of twin links/matter canons. They soak interceptors well. As someone who plays the Dilgar regularly, the fact that the Bolters are interceptable rarely means squat as your interceptors are either depleted by the pulse weapons or by your squadron mate that just fired before you. Interceptors are much more powerful in small numbered ship engagements, incidentally where you will see the plasma streamed Vorchans. Centauri have lots of small fast ships that can go clear interceptors.

Just try not to think linear hear as in fleets interceptable weapons are quite strong, only in one on ones will the interceptors stop the normal 3 hits (or more precisely will those 3 stopped hits matter). The 12 AD on the Targrath has often prove to be overpowered when combined with the pulsar and the torpedoes. Too many AD assigned thinking it had to overcome interceptors when in reality it usually does not.

Very cool ideas though...looking forward to seeing what folks do.

Ripple

 

[philogara]

Interesting about the mini-beam. It might be worth sticking anti-fighter on the light ion cannons, actually. We see a Vorchan shoot down three Frazis in rapid succession in one episode, with every round hitting perfectly. Since I intend to replace the plasma accelerator with a light ion cannon to be in line with fluff sites I've seen, that would reflect the source material and make some of the Centauri skirmishers useful in a whole new dimension.

Converting the Vorchan to Ion cannon would perhaps justify the Precise, after all ItB shows a G'Quon dispatched in a single salvo from a Vorchan.

Of course, in ACTA there is no reason for all weapons of the same type to have the same stat line! So some could have precise, others not.

 

[Target]

I thought maybe you could have ion as a trait eg Non interceptable. Primus would have 6ad SAP, TD. Went TD because lost of beam rerolls. TD and Precise would be bad. Precise would work if it only meant you didn't get bulkheads and then you could have super precise trait giving crits on 5-6.

 

[emperorpenguin]

If the Dilgar did not exist I would say the weapons stats for the dilgar are just about perfect for the real centauri.

that's EXACTLY what I said after playtesting the Dilgar! :wink: :lol:

 

[emperorpenguin]

on the "should it be interceptable or not" argument

my view is YES it should be, we saw B5's interceptor grid trying to hold off the large volume of fire from a Primus. Ion cannons should throw out a lot of dice but interceptors would have to be dealt with..

I'm now in two minds on the ion cannons

1) remove beams as they were never on screen and just have ion cannons

2) keep beams as their are arguments in favour of them (the probes in the wings...) and instead go with the Primus ship plans and call the twin arrays ion cannons. The F arc heavy hitting beams could then be reduced to a light weapon and the ion cannons would step up into the heavy hitter role, with the battle lasers supporting...

 

[Voronesh]

Im against MB, simply because we would replace one problem with another. Beams are never seen, yet Ion cannons did get intercepted quite nicely by B5.

On the precise im all for it, simply because beam and precise both are very poweful traits. Losing beam and not gaining something like precise would increase the AD hideously.

Plus we have seen that during the battle of Primus vs G'Quan the Primus was destroyed to heavy firepower, yet the G'Quan was lost due to failure of the jump point engine. Which makes a good point for some crit ability on the ion cannons.

Ions are just charged particles. Yet they all have the same charge, so a hit on an enemy ship will provide some extra electrical charge, unlike a particle cannon, which while it relies on charged particles is neutral overall.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I'm going to wait to see what SNJ does with the rest of the fleet before having a go myself. Might be he cracks it and I won't need to do anything...

 

[tneva82]

my view is YES it should be, we saw B5's interceptor grid trying to hold off the large volume of fire from a Primus.

Well we also saw in B5 one EA cruisers crew talking about interceptors of other EA cruiser being off so they could punch through the hull and then...Laser blew it. Hmmm...If lasers ignore interceptors why was the interceptor thingie so important

ACTA and serie don't match in every aspect. IMO playbalance should be priority concern and ACTA seems awfully lot like beam game.

 

[frobisher]

Well we also saw in B5 one EA cruisers crew talking about interceptors of other EA cruiser being off so they could punch through the hull and then...Laser blew it. Hmmm...If lasers ignore interceptors why was the interceptor thingie so important

A whole other kettle of fish, believe me.

This was covered in the B5 Wars game. EA Interceptors (which were actual weapon system...) had an associated energy grid built into the hull of the ship, that reduced the chance of being hit by weapons fire (this came down as a directive from Babylonian productions just as the Primus Lasers did...) - this was in addition to the intercept fire capability of the weapon. If all the Interceptors covering that arc were lost, the energy grid was lost too, and the ship became more vulnerable.

That didn't translate terribly well to the ACtA games mechanics and is absorbed into the EA Hull ratings.

Almost all other ships with Interceptors X gained them through a variety of different mechanics from the AOG units they were based on (shields, lots of rapid fire weapons with a good intercept rating (Twin Arrays... gotta love 'em), the odd Guardian Array on the Centauri (Interceptors without the energy grid), Particle Impeders on the Abbai (which given they have shields as well, you can see why they get the Interceptor ratings they do...) etc.

ACTA and serie don't match in every aspect. IMO playbalance should be priority concern and ACTA seems awfully lot like beam game.

Yup - ACtA does diverge from the established (and that's Mongooose's RPG...) canon in quite a few cases. Game balance is more important to the game, because that's the kind of game it is. It's a game to be played primarily for recreation than for re-creation

 

[blackphoenix]

Ion cannons by the story line are supposed to be geared to be deadly against crew. Also with b5wars they had a good rate of fire and good range but little real hitting power, so what about this?

Ion Cannons: A bulkhead roll ignores the damage to hull like normal, but still inflicts a point of crew damage.


Centurion:
Medium Ion Cannon---32"---F---6AD---AP

Dargan:
Medium Ion Cannon---32"---F---6AD---AP

Darkner:
Light Ion Cannon---24"---F---6AD---AP

Octurion:
Heavy Ion Cannon---40"---F---16AD---AP
Heavy Ion Cannon---40"---A---6AD---AP

Primus:
Medium Ion Cannon---32"---F---16AD---AP

Sulust:
Light Ion Cannon---24"---F---9AD---AP



Probably too much, but figuring a starting point.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I'm not too up on what AoG reckoned was right and wrong, but we see an ion cannon blow a lump off B5 with a couple of hits. Doesn't seem like it had no real hitting power but slaughtered crew.

 

[Target]

Problem with these ion cannons is no one is sure what really do. Ionic energy mines cancel SA (EMP burst im guessing). Take chunks off Bab 5.
Ion Bolt on rutarian is DD Precise, Ion Torp SAP, Precise.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

So what these traits tell us is that ion weapons cause critical hits more often than others and either penetrate armour well or cause more damage than average pulse weapons.

We should be more interested in finding fluff from the show and applying that to make traits, not following the traits that are already there without checking the source material first.

 

[captainsmirk]

Ah the B5wars Ion weapons are not the same as the centauri ones in the show, because the Centauri hardly use any...

The Ionic weapons in B5wars were more radiation based rather than actual ions. They just used the word, they were also beam weapons...

Nick

 

[emperorpenguin]

what we see in the show is Centauri weaponry ripping chunks off B5, reducing G'Quans, Aviokis and White Stars to junk

Ion cannons should be hard hitting, interceptable, explosive and fired en masse

 

[captainsmirk]

Couldn't agree more on that one. The B5wars Ion weapons bear no relation...

Although I still struggle to give up the Battle Lasers.

*sigh*

Perhaps I just too sentimental and have spent too long with B5wars...

Nick

 

[emperorpenguin]

Couldn't agree more on that one. The B5wars Ion weapons bear no relation...

Although I still struggle to give up the Battle Lasers.

Nick

Well having long been of the opinion we should give up battle lasers now I feel that we should simply have less powerful lasers. Let the EA and Narn have big lasers, the signature Centauri weapon waere the turret weapons which appeared more powerful than EA equivalents.
The Primus ship plans call the twin arrays "ion cannons" so I say we go from being a heavy beam fleet to more of an individual, unique fleet, with mass fire and wolfpacks. Keep the lasers but in a lighter support role