Lets talk Gorn

[archon96]

Just played a match with my son last night. It was a 500 point game he was fed and i was Gorn. I understand the reasoning for the lumbering trait, but there should be a survivability trade off. If they can dance all around me and i cant get that lovely boresight shot. Im not got to pretend i know what that trade off should be but just something, extra shields, higher hull value, something like the klinks with the 1/2 damage on forward arc, just something. On a good note after loosing almost every initiative roll i finally won near the end and my son moved his cruiser into boresight of my Epi. say bye bye cruiser.

my fleet was:

2x stego
1x Epi

he had a NCL, frigate, 2x ortega.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Welcome to the World of Gorn :lol:

We are no more survivable than anyone else and if your enemy sneakily picks a fleet of ships that can all but spin on the spot you (well we :roll: ) can be trouble.

Advantages Gorn have to offset the poor turning mode, good all round phaser coverage and Plasmas that either fire into the left and right arcs or some ships with l/r side Fs than can fire backwards.

Aside from the Klingons who are clearly someone’s favourites what with most of them being agile and having super shields :wink: most everyone else’s heavy weapons are forward only. Those feds may be agile and nimble and keep getting behind you but they have to be nose on to fire at you, the mighty Gorn can return fire with generally half the ships plasmas out of the side arcs.

It means as Gorn you tend to have a fleet that needs to weave to and fro so at least one ship can fire at anything attacking your rear end.

My idea of a Gorn defensive formation looks like a random mass of ships going in circles, every ship covering every other ships rear. It may not be some choreographed Fed or Klingon attack manoeuvre but if it works then it doesn’t need to be pretty.

Give it a month or two and lots of Gorn vs everyone else battles and we will have a better idea of balance.

It could be that the Gorn players lay siege to Mongoose tower to demand a boast to our ships, it may be that once enough battles have been fought some Gorn unique tactics are developed and everyone else is demanding Gorns get a nerf (unlikely as that may seem :lol: )

In the mean time keep playing, have fun. And next time your son gets the Gorns :twisted:

 

[archon96]

interesting tactic thought, circle the wagons have youre smaller non lumbering ships cricle around the larger ones providing defensive fire and a swarm of plasma until youre big guns catch someone on a reload.

 

[Keeper Nilbog]

At least they didn't give the Feds proximity Torps and Kuffman ( :?: spelling) retrograde. Then we really would be weaping into our Romulan Ale.

I agree that we make up for the brick like nature of our ships with good phaser coverage and Plasma fire arcs - we also tend to have more torps than the sneaky bird bothers, so people tend to stay away. The only reason to turn is to get those torps in, so we're not slow, and if the enemy forgets a second line ship can appear 'as if by magic' in that 8" zone (in which all other Empires weep into their Ale). Remember Distroyers carry very heavy armament for a ship of its size - a G and 2 F Plasma's are 7AD at 8", and it isn't lumbering (HDD is even more fun). We're one of the few Empires (Romulan, ISC, and Lyran. Fed possibly, but 2-3 Photons aren't as scary as 4D6 from a plasma salvo 'after' you defensive fired it) with little ships that can punch well above there weight.

 

[Ben2]

I was going to submit proximity photons as an optional rule, so I wouldn't put away the cup of tears yet.

 

[Da Boss]

The only thing I find strange is that everyone talks about the "brick like nature" or how tough the Gorns ship are but apparently they are not??

They seem to be designed as lumbering, heavy but short range gun platforms (*)

They certainly don't look tough and they are not especially tough in the game - is it just down to myth and idosyncracies of how SFB allocates damage? Are they actually tough in FC?

(*) Does this remind anyone else of the Narn - to be fair though they are not that bad

re the OP it also does not help if you are outnumbered in ships - its usually best to have more ships than the opponent in ACTA

 

[Spence]

Aside from the Klingons who are clearly someone’s favourites......

As well as just obviously being the best :mrgreen:

But back to topic. \
I really haven't looked that close yet, having recently gotten my book and in the middle of painting my ships. But isn't the Gorn "survivability trade off" supposed to be the ability to absorb massive punishment before anything important gets affected. It has been eons since I played SFB, but I seem to remember having to stand off and snipe followed by litereally swarming a heavy Gorn with large numbers when playing Klingons. Otherwise it was like pounding on a steel helmrt with a rubber hammer.

I've been assuming that ACTA:SF Gorns would be the same. Especially since they have lumbering as a trait.

 

[Da Boss]

I don;t know what they are like in FC but in ACTA they are no more survivable and in many cases less damage than their opposite numbers...

Like I say I am not sure if they whole thing is a myth or only in SFB and then purely due to the way damage allocation works in that game - I don't know if this was a design element in the Gorn or something that just arose?

 

[archon96]

my stegos were rendered useless pretty quick by just the 2 destroyers and the frigate.

 

[Nomad]

I don't think you used an optimum choice of ships.

Try a mix of CLs (can fire Pl-Ss into their port and starboard arcs, and Pl-Fs directly astern), HDDs (also wide plasma arcs, better shields, turn mode 4), BDDs and DDs. None of those ships Lumber, and with greater numbers it will be difficult for an enemy to avoid all of them.

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

Like I say I am not sure if they whole thing is a myth or only in SFB and then purely due to the way damage allocation works in that game - I don't know if this was a design element in the Gorn or something that just arose?

It is the latter. The damage allocation chart in SFB/FedCom and the way Gorn ships are design combine to make it so they can take a good pounding. Unfortunately it didn't translate so well in CTA:SF since damage totals are based only on the number of hull boxes.

 

[Finlos]

GalagaGalaxian pretty much summed it up, but better than I would have said it.

 

[Spectrar Ghost]

So as an interested bystander - I've a friend who's waiting on the rules, and will probably start if I like them - how can this be resolved? Can [should] it? Is there a somewhat quantifiable effect that can be included if neccessary? Modification to the total hull points would be easiest, but a change in the point at which Gorn ships become crippled might be better to show the similar damage totals but better protected major systems.

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

I have plenty of worries myself, but I'd say just keep them in mind but make no changes just yet.

Let's just play the game as written for a while, if there is a huge glaring problem with the Gorn, or the Klingons, or Reloads, or anything else, a few hundred players playing lots of games will find them, and Mongoose will make changes. It happened in Bablyon 5 a couple times, so we just gotta wait and see.

 

[Keeper Nilbog]

The idea of reduced crippled numbers has already come up (in the 'Gorn - Chocolate Brick' thread). It was suggested that ships should have a reduced cripple rating (by me, to be fair), by 1 for small ships up to 4 for Dreadnoughts. When actually looking at the figures, they fell quite neatly at a quarter of damage for the mid-range ships (BC would be 32/8), so that may be a way to look into it (would make the Dreadnought crippled on 13, which is just 2 higher than a lot of Empires Heavy BattleCruisers.

Personally, i feel they need something to help them out - all well and good having 'scary' Plasma's, as with the lumbering and -1 initiative, along with costly ships, they don't apear to have much going for them. Reduced Crippled would not make them stronger, as usually it's only a point or 2 (though it's 5 odd for the Dreadnought, which also has the lowest damage rating i believe). It would support them in 'weathering the storm' as they end to do in the parent games (and they're going to have to do something before we get to Hellbore armed Hydrans - very large blocks of reactors acting as structure/hull. Though if they count it as hits, Hydrans with Hellbore will have lots of damage), whilst not altering the damage rating for the actual ships (like the way G'quans suddenly found themselves with 10 extra hull/damage).

I think this is going to keep resurfacing on threads as long as the fleet is not played by most people (and just looking at it from the point of someone coming new to the SFU, why would you want to play an Empire that appears to have no 'special' ability, and has only drawbacks on there ships (the BC may be equivilent to it's competitors, but the other ship classes are not). Plasma's are there main strength, but you have Romulan's that have plasma's, cloak and have +1 initiative.
Understood that's the way the ships came across when converted over, and i'll still play them (untill the ISC arrive , and occasionally after that ), but they are the Empire that got no love.

Still lookng forward to a Gorn Fleet on the table though 8)

 

[archon96]

im curious if scoutdad got to playtest the gorn, if he did and found they were ok then im cool; with that, but if he didnt i wonder if he could and then let the rest of us know what he thinks.

 

[scoutdad]

Funny.
We don't have a single local player that enjoys playing the Gorn in SFB or Fed Comm, so no; we never played them. We did play everyone else.

I have a massive SFB game scheduled for this weekend, but we'll try to knock out some 5 on 5 Gorn battles soon and report back.

 

[archon96]

thank you and if i didnt live 10 hours away in kansas youd have a gorn player.

 

[Frankvas]

What about giving all their ships the armored trait? that would negate some of the damage they take without overpowering them.

Frank V.

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

That'd be pretty powerful on the larger ships, since Armor trait basically gives you about 16% more damage points, and makes even phasers vulnerable to scoring a bulkhead hit (something they're usually immune to thanks to precision, and since most of the AD on any given ship is phasers, this is pretty significant).

Like I said previously, I agree that gorn look a little concerning, but I think more "as is" games need to be played before changing things.