how good are the vorlons

[Voronesh]

Yes but the part of no explosions is kinda fun when you realize that they take lots of damage from explosions themselves. Vorlons at least. Sarcrifing practically dead ships that way is fun

 

[Furious Jedi]

How good are Vorlons? Way over powered.

This is good if you are playing a historical game. Vorlons and Shadows one on one, pound for pound should be able to kill anything the younger races can field. However in just a normal game, say, as part of a campign there is no mechanisim biult into the game to balance out their supperior ability.

I'm going to make the suggestion to our group that we either outlaw them under normal conditions or that they can only bring half the points rolled when PL and point size are randomly determined.

 

[Guchi]

Vorlons over powered? Not really, especially in campaigns where the complete lack of a skirmish level and only moderate level fighters as the sole priority choice hampers them in small games. Yes the Heavy cruiser is a leathal piece of kit, but at armaggedon level you would have to roll a game weighing in a either war or battle level to be practical.

In a strictly average roll of 5 points of raid, your looking at either one light cruiser and a transport, or a couple of destroyer and a transport, and 5 transports isn't that scary really.

Boresights are attually good weapons, since you only need to take a few initative sinks to make good use of them, and fighters even with the new anti fighter rule are still good solid damage dealers (especially tough ones like thunderbolts).

Point for point Vorlons are not better than the younger races, but they do start a lot higher on the priority scale.

 

[Furious Jedi]

In a strictly average roll of 5 points of raid, your looking at either one light cruiser and a transport, or a couple of destroyer and a transport, and 5 transports isn't that scary really.

I disagree. Just saw a War 5, Vorlon vs. Drahk. Vorlon lost nothing, Drahk lost 7 ships before he could get of the table.

Let's look at the average game with the non scary 5 Transports. I usually play EA , Centari, or ISA. Out of those fleets the White Star is probably pound for pound my best choice so I'll take 5 of my best against 5 of the Vorlon's least scary option. On average a WS will do 4 dice of damage over the course of 3 turns verses a Vorlon Transport which has a hull of 5. Due to adaptive armor those 4 dice get reduced to 2 dice of damage, an average of 9 points of damage, triple the damage for a grand total of 27 points of damage over a 3 turn period. At that rate it will take a WS 9 turns to kill a Vorlon Transport. Whoops I forgot 2D6 damage reduction. The Vorlon Transport will repair an average of 21 pts. over three turns. That reduces the damage done by the WS over 3 turns to 6 whopping pts. It will take a WS 14 turns to kill a Vorlon Transport and that is assuming that the WS can always bring it's weapons to bare every turn. If all 5 WS can manage to get the same Transport in range and arc of 3 turns they would manage to kill one Transport.

One Transport will kill one WS in 3 turns

 

[Lord David the Denied]

To kill Vorlons you need weapons with loads of AD. Twin-linked makes it even better. Every AD means a chance to hit, and every hit is D6 damage, so the more AD you're throwing at him the quicker he dies.

It's also imperative to centrate your fire on one Vorlon at a time. Pound it mercilessly and watch it shrivel up and die before moving onto the next.

 

[Wulf Corbett]

Let's look at the average game with the non scary 5 Transports. I usually play EA , Centari, or ISA. Out of those fleets the White Star is probably pound for pound my best choice so I'll take 5 of my best against 5 of the Vorlon's least scary option.

Actually, against Vorlons, the WS is probably one of the worst choices, you want loads of AP or Twin Linked Dice. The Hull isn't high, the more dice you roll the better. The nova would be good, it's got all-round firepower too so no need to maneouvre much.

Wulf

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Double damage weapons nicely negate the Vorlon's adaptive armour, as well, so Centauri matter cannons and battle lasers are very useful. In fact the Centauri get several advantages vs Vorlons. All their secondary weapons are either double damage, AP, or twin-linked, so you should be doing loads of damage to them every turn.

 

[Furious Jedi]

To kill Vorlons you need weapons with loads of AD. Twin-linked makes it even better. Every AD means a chance to hit, and every hit is D6 damage, so the more AD you're throwing at him the quicker he dies.

in my example, Raid 5, there are very few ships that carry enough AD to to do the 80 pts. needed within a reasonable amount of time.

It's also imperative to centrate your fire on one Vorlon at a time. Pound it mercilessly and watch it shrivel up and die before moving onto the next.

Also in my example I showed that it would take 3 turns for all 5 WS to kill one Transport. In the mean time the Vorlons 4 buddies are consentrating thier fire and killing 3 of the WS during the same 3 turns.

 

[Furious Jedi]

So what we have here is a giant game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Nova beats Transport, Transport beats White Star, White Star beats Darkner etc, etc, ...

 

[captainsmirk]

Well the Vorlons are several million years more advanced than most of the rest of the fleets so you would perhaps expect that they would be somewhat more powerful...

I mean how well do you expect cave men with stone spears and clubs to stand up to a modern army? And that isn't as long a time gap...

Plus the last set of Vorlon rules we had everybody complained that they were too weak...

Nick

 

[Voronesh]

Point for point the Vorlons are rather nicely balanced id say.

Just bring as many AD as you can. You need to kill single ships as well as possible. Spreding fire is a bad idea cause they got self repair.

In SFOS an Omega-X nearly managed a oneshot kill on a HC.....142 damage before we calced AA in......

The rest of the fleet killed it. During a 5 point battle that is not desired.

 

[Ripple]

Have not had a chance to play the latest Vorlon ruleset, so take this with a grain of salt.

First, yes historically the Vorlons should kick the crap out of just about everybody. (We do not actually see this in the show so much as it is implied, think there is only one battle Vorlons vs younger races.) BUT, and yes it is a big but...we are not necessarily playing historical games. We are often playing balanced games and do not want the guy who bought the Vorlon models to have to sit and admire his expensive paper weights. We feel the same way about the Dilgar purchaser. Sue us for having a heart.

Second, the mechanics for fighting the Vorlons and Shadows does mean the best weapons are not the most technologically advanced, but the most mounts. Lots of AD vs them vs really fancy AD with lots of traits. I would give the Narn an even chance of doing as well as the Minbari. Seems strange if the idea was to show 'tech progression'.

Ripple