House rules for beam-less Centauri?

[emperorpenguin]

Yup TL is as good if not better than AP in some situations.

I based my calculations on a base target hull of 5, more common and it allows you to factor in weak weapons.

crunch the numbers and a Primus (6AD with beam, DD and SuperAP + 10AD twin-linked) puts out a similar amount of fire to my proposal (6AD with beam, AP, precise + 10AD twin-linked DD)

If you give Ion cannons AP and DD then how do you differentiate with Matter cannons? AP and TL would be sick.
Plus the Secundus and Demos are supposed to represent what was seen on screen and both vessels have TL and DD weapons....

 

[Lord David the Denied]

They're an interpretation of AoG's attempt to represent what was on screen. Plus the Demos doesn't have any TL weapons. Its heavy array is DD only.

 

[emperorpenguin]

They're an interpretation of AoG's attempt to represent what was on screen. Plus the Demos doesn't have any TL weapons. Its heavy array is DD only.

ah I'm thinking of the tourney list version, the missing twin-linked in SFOS is annoying!

What would you propose for Ion cannons? Bearing in mind you don't want to just duplicate matter cannon stats

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Well, I put forward my ideas a page or two back...

 

[Voronesh]

I only dont know why your beam gets a precise EP. Apart from that your stuff looks good.

But yes Matter cannons and Ion cannons should be different. But AP means that ion cannons are actually individually weaker than matter cannons, and maybe just less energy hungry or something. Precise would have been another way to keep AD down and represent high tech.
ACTA seems to have the usual tech progression of less AD and more traits for old races. Thats just another reason to drop TL. Makes Centauri like Abbai with lots of weapons but no tech behing that. Abbai do concentrate of defensive tech and not offensive stuff.


But essentially TL is a stupid representation of anything. Well its a good rule, but apart from that...........

TL represents extra batteries. Which is the same as extra AD. And if you put twin, or quad or however many barrels on a turret doesnt matter. You still fire one after the other. Doesnt matter if you have 6 turrets with 2 barrels each or 12 turrets with a single barrel.
Hei make the Omegas boresighted lasercannon TL. cause its 2 barrels on each side of the ship. So thats just the same.

Sry yes but thats me ranting.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Rant all you want, I don't mind... :wink:

 

[emperorpenguin]

I have long argued that cause for the Omega.....

I say twin-linked because 1) they already are 2) appear to be in terms of on screen and model wise and 3) pour out a vast amount of fire.

As to precise on the beam? Well because I was copying the lighter Abbai weapon and I felt that precise would make up in some way for the loss of Super AP and Double Damage (plus range loss)
Also it would put the Centauri into a more high tech laser grouping with Abbai and Minbari rather than the sheer brute force of the Narn and EA
Also of note the EA has a lot of precise weapons in missiles and the Narn have Ion torps but the Centauri are lacking precise weapons. I would prefer precise beams as the massive gatling gun volleys of ion cannons to my mind are anything BUT precise!

 

[Lord David the Denied]

That's fair enough. I like your idea for the battle lasers, and if memory serves, didn't the Abbai obtain laser technology from the Centauri Reverse-engineered Centauri shipwrecks from the attempted invasion of their system, I believe...

Ion cannons can have SAP and DD, I think, to be suitably scary without causing undue numbers of critical hits. Range, AD and perhaps AP/TD can be added for light or heavy versions, perhaps.

 

[emperorpenguin]

That's fair enough. I like your idea for the battle lasers, and if memory serves, didn't the Abbai obtain laser technology from the Centauri Reverse-engineered Centauri shipwrecks from the attempted invasion of their system, I believe...

Ion cannons can have SAP and DD, I think, to be suitably scary without causing undue numbers of critical hits. Range, AD and perhaps AP/TD can be added for light or heavy versions, perhaps.

Indeed that was why I nabbed the Abbai stats :wink:

The only problem I have with Super AP is that I'm dead set on the weapon staying twin-linked HOWEVER there is also the Narn to consider.

They currently use a weak version of the twin array, with my proposal they would now be using a weak ion cannon, but you cannot have SuperAP or AP and weak which was why I decided on dropping AP (my first idea for ion cannons)
Sorry I'd forgotten to mention that crucial piece of evidence!

 

[Lord David the Denied]

My position on that is simple.

Ion cannons don't replace twin arrays in the fleet. Twin arrays just get used as light, defensive guns where the EA would use light pulse cannons or particle beams.

So, the Narn could still capture twin arrays from Centauri ships, but their inferior technology produces twin arrays with the weak trait, whereas Centauri versions don't have it.

Gone will be the big numbers of twin array dice on every ship; they'll only appear as defensive guns for large ships or secondary weapons for smaller ones.

Makes sense to me, anyway...

 

[emperorpenguin]

I'm approaching this from the view that what we call twin arrays are the ion cannons (as in the Primus Ship plans)

We only see the one type of volley fire coming from the Primus in the show and that is what I'm trying to reflect.
I dislike the legacy AOG left us with and have never liked the peashooter twin arrays, so my idea is to simply use the references which identify them as ion cannons, match that with the impressive damage they do on screen and work from there

that's my thinking anyway!

 

[Lord David the Denied]

So how do the Narn get from powerful ion cannons to piss-poor twin arrays without some sort of Centauri twin array?

 

[Locutus9956]

I must say that if you think twin arrays (and god forbid heavy arrays...) were pea shooters in B5Wars you probably werent on the cecieving end of many Centauri fleets.... They may not look as scary on paper as the big heavy weapons but trust me on this, they HURT. Demos and Vorchans in B5Wars could very well perfom as well as they do on the show

(thats actually what I liked most about B5Wars, by and large everything was almost spot on to how it appeared on screen (ok the Centauri lasers thing was a bit of a mistake but that wasnt AoG's fault, the original CGI model for the primus they worked off of had the spikes at the front labelled as lasers)

 

[Lord David the Denied]

That's all fair enough, but in ACtA, twin arrays are not battle winners except in lucky instances.

Also, using twin particle arrays instead of some kind of pulse cannon would make them different to the Narn and EA who use such technology.

 

[Voronesh]

Actually Narn ion torps are from EA missle tech.

And EP Now since you have me the info for loss of AP.

I LOVE YOUR IDEA!!!!!!111111

Both the precise beams and Ion cannons. Also that makes the connection from battle to combat laser even more evident. Just keep it maybe a bit shorter ranged.

And I am in favor of replacing Twin particles with ion cannons. Otherwise Centauri would get 3 weapon systems on most ships.

So the current list of weaponry is:

Twin particles aka Ion cannons advanced
Battle lasers
Plasma accelerators
Matter cannons (thats what i hate. both look the same on the Vorchans....)
Plasma stream (too weak for a weapon coveted by the Centauri, has to be different from Battle laser and in an interesting way)

Maybe make plasma accelerators more short ranged? Keep matter cannons as long ranged.

Also should make the Vorchan balancing easier. Switch ion cannons(tin particle array) and plasma accelerator range.

 

[emperorpenguin]

So how do the Narn get from powerful ion cannons to piss-poor twin arrays without some sort of Centauri twin array?

the Narn curently have a less powerful version of the twin array.

With ion cannons being TL & DD the narn would again have a less powerful version, after all they are reverse engineering and won't have the same capability

 

[emperorpenguin]

And EP Now since you have me the info for loss of AP.

I LOVE YOUR IDEA!!!!!!111111

thanks

Both the precise beams and Ion cannons. Also that makes the connection from battle to combat laser even more evident. Just keep it maybe a bit shorter ranged

.

I think a range of 15 to 18" for the battle laser would be right

Plasma stream (too weak for a weapon coveted by the Centauri, has to be different from Battle laser and in an interesting way)

I'd like to see the plasma stream become the Centauri equivalent of the mag gun, so maybe TD BUT with slow loading to reflect the poorly understood tech? The Morgrath would then become the fanhead version of a ka'toc and very different from the darkner and vorchan

 

[Voronesh]

Sounds good.

But the AD of the supportive battle laser would have to be low, to refelct longer range, from 8" support to double the range.

And the Plasma stream seems good too. Kind of makes the Morgrath a specialty ship, more like an experiment ship with is used in combat to understand the tech better.

 

[Target]

With the Omega being Beam being TWL it actually works, we had all boresights TWL before we converted to d12's. Now Boresight +4 while fwd arc +3 to hit. In our games it seemed to help balance.
Things on the ion cannons and others are starting sound good and give the Centauri real flavour.

 

[Ripple]

My stat block on the last page was to show that you do not want the AD to be the equivalent of a CAF'd Primus because then the Primus is free from the restrictions it would normally need to be under to preform that well. You wanted the TL Ions to be equivalent to an unCAF'd Primus with the laser making up for a bit in the short range area.

As to the interceptor thing...Centauri fights are not weak. They have weapons with a number AD with the weak trait. Interceptors do not care where the hit came from, if you can generate four hits the interceptors are depleted. Three flights will nock off the first two of those on average.

Second interceptor point is that if we were one on one then the first four being blocked does matter (maybe another one out there), but we are not. Every ship that fires after is going strait through. So much like the Kaliva, you must be careful, as there will be either a second Primus or some smaller ship that will remove those pesky initial interceptor dice for you.

All that said I like what I am seeing so far. The 10 AD plus laser looked good, and the laser could CAF to get you a really strong medium range punch.

Ripple