New Gaim

[silashand]

I always take exception to that sentiment personally. ACTA is a wargame. If you want to play it as or as part of a role playing game fine but the thing is, game balance and adherence to the fluff are NOT mutually exlusive.

And yet you would suggest that they are. Sorry, in *any* game that has a well established and comprehensive background, those considerations should come first when designing a game to work within it. Otherwise you may as well go play chess.

Now the assault ship being tough is fine, and good by the fluff side of things but if you want to keep it balanced you have basically got two options, either weaken it or make it higher PL. Mongoose chose the first of these two options to stop the the fleet going too top heavy I would assume. It's for similar reasons we get the Nova at raid level rather than a battle level behemoth and the sharlin at War rather than Armageddon and the first ones, well, AT ALL. rather than off the scale somewhere.

Except that they addressed the problem with the assault ship in other ways, i.e. the breaching pods/assault drones. Carrying that over into the ship went too far IMO.

You can play it as much as a role play as you want to but its NOT a roleplaying game and as a wargame it should strive to be fun and balnaced.

Agreed, but if you're going to write fluff that supports it (or already exists) then the rules should reflect that plain and simple. It's one of the reasons people like the B5 universe in the first place.

Sorry to rant it's just that too often folks hide behind fluff to defend broken rules.

And too often folks hide behind the rationale of "game balance" in order to justify their own opinions as to how they think something should work. Sorry, but how something *should* work is the whole purpose of the background to begin with. Otherwise, there's no point in it whatsoever so why even bother? Just print up a list of ships, shuffle them together however you like and call it a wargame. For the record, there have been several systems out there that have done that kind of thing in the past and you know what? Not *one* of them has achieved the kind of following that any system with a comprehensive background has. *That* is what sells the miniatures in the first place.

Cheers, Gary

 

[H]

then I hope you house rule that only ships from the show can be played, G'Quans always blow up, and that Shadow ships can only be killed by a multiple round whitestar and G'Quan combo beam hit. (and that said g'quan has 2 beams in a forward arc)

your very argument is flawed in itself, as you are complaining about the gaim assault ship and it doesn't even exist. I'd be very impressed if you could refer me to a show in which it appears.

 

[locarno24]

Edit: I'm also tired, hence missing the obvious witty reply of 'Well, not for sleeping, GIGGETY!' )

Silence, peasant.

Given that the thing is supposed to close with the enemy, from a background standpoint I think this is stupid. But oh well.

Not necessarily. It's still tough for its priority level. Making it hull 5 has not made it fragile - indeed it has the same hull and interceptors score, and a fraction more damage capacity, as the EA Nova-class dreadnought.

Furthermore (from the gaim perspective) there's no point in turning it into an armoured monitor of a ship since (a) speed/troop capacity ratio is the vital element of an assault ship and (b) it doesn't have a queen on board so is ultimately an expendable asset.

 

[wkehrman]

Secondly does the "make contact" part refer to stem contact (for suicide/ramming) or base contact (for ignoring stealth), or both?

It says "make contact with a ship's stem" so one would assume that this is for suicide/ramming. Base contact is much easier to determine visually.

 

[silashand]

your very argument is flawed in itself, as you are complaining about the gaim assault ship and it doesn't even exist. I'd be very impressed if you could refer me to a show in which it appears.

No it's not. I'm talking about the *written* background, which in developing the storyline more fully as Mongoose has done, is just as important as keeping to the canon from the show. That's what adds depth to a system. Your argument is the one that's flawed, otherwise the Minbari would never lose, Whitestars would kill almost anything in one shot, and Sheridan would effectively be immortal in the game. Sorry, you can't base everything on the TV series, but you can base it on the rest of the background that has been established. That's what I'm talking about. If Mongoose is going to write that the Assault Ship is meant to "batter through enemy defenses," you would think such a ship would be among the most survivable in the fleet in order to fulfil that objective. That it isn't seems incongruous with what has been established as the background in that instance.

Furthermore (from the gaim perspective) there's no point in turning it into an armoured monitor of a ship since (a) speed/troop capacity ratio is the vital element of an assault ship and (b) it doesn't have a queen on board so is ultimately an expendable asset.

That's a rational argument, though I still disagree because if it's meant to disgorge troops in the form of breaching pods, etc., then it would need a higher carrier value to accomplish that once it got in close. Since it doesn't have that, it either has to launch them early, leaving them behind since they are slower, or try to launch only a few at the critical juncture which leaves it more vulnerable to counterattack, and thus less likely to accomplish its objective. I can accept that it is expendable, but then it either has to be able to actually *assault* the enemy ship with sufficient force when it gets there, or survive long enough to be able to do so over a longer period of time/protracted battle. To me the current configuration would seem a disparity. JMO though.

Cheers, Gary

 

[H]

ah, the Written background it could be argued are the stats provided for the game itself anyway. in which case the ship perfectly fits it's written stats.

 

[CZuschlag]

Highly disappointed. My calculations showed a far stronger reduction was necessary. I am extremely pessimistic that this update was sufficient. Local bans will likely stay in effect.

 

[katadder]

always hard to balance something that uses e-mines though.
what would you have done further Czuschlag?
the fighters have been limited, the breaching pods are not as bad and theres less of them.
more queen limitations as well, plus skirmish queen and some other ships quite seriously downgraded.

 

[Locutus9956]

always hard to balance something that uses e-mines though.

Well forgive me but surely the solution there presents itself fairly obviously? Lose the Emines. I STILL think the combination of a fighter swarm fleet and emins AT ALL is potentially too much. At least now you can counter them with escort ships and so on to an extent though without them just getting emined to death.

 

[CZuschlag]

Agree strongly. I would have converted the race to lots (sorta) of heavy pulse, and forced the race to close to 12 to use guns. Solves the Drakh balance issue as well (raiders are proportially more susceptible to pulse vs. most Hull 5/6 ships, and you can roll hot and overcome the worst of GEGs. Crits can happen, too).

I would also have changed the entire boarding party damage on ships rule to fix the Breaching Pods.

Also, the rule to allow the Gaim in campaigns to replace all fighters for free is downright broken. You can inflict damage indefinitely while keeping your fleet out of contact, and disengaging, over and over. You may not get much economy, but what he's getting, he's spending just repairing ships. Then, when he's forced to send darn near his whole fleet back to fleet command, you can overrun, get all that economy back, and never have paid one point to replace your losses. BROKEN.

Edit: All this is preliminary; we have to check the results over the board. I'm only doing a cursory deskcheck (I do QA for Lincoln Financial as a statistician in IT as my job --- it's what I do), but the early calcs aren't good.

 

[No. 1 Bear]

If i was making them i would loose the e-mines. Lots of up close to medium pulse weapons and lots of standard beams, with thousands of fighters, no interceptors of AF, just thousands of fighters, so looking at 150+ in a standard fleet But really crap ships.

 

[katadder]

only cause damage if your fighters get there - limited numbers remember.
that and the fact your own fighters have more of a chance to stop them too.

consider the fact of the Gaim having to buy replacement fighters - 1st game use up all the fighters. 2nd game have a few fighters backed up by the e-mines and lose your fleet. remember Gaim fighters are their main weapon, you dont have to buy ammo for a saggi so why should the Gaim have to buy their missiles every game?

 

[silashand]

Agree strongly. I would have converted the race to lots (sorta) of heavy pulse, and forced the race to close to 12 to use guns. good.

In other words, make them look just like all the other league fleets.

For the most part I am happy with the changes, though as I said I probably would have gone a different route in some ways. I disagree that the combination of emines and fighters is inappropriate. On the contrary I think the changes reinforce the idea that the Gaim are actually a swarm fleet and that the majority of their damage potential should come from fighters and boarding actions. Making the emines slow loading goes a long way toward that goal. Combined with the fact that Gaim ships are almost invariably slow period, I think the new list should work relatively well. As I have noted before, I think it's entirely appropriate that a fighter-based fleet have weapons that are effective at preventing enemies from using the same tactics against them.

About the only thing I am concerned about is the calculation mechanism for determining numbers of fighters, etc. It just seems cumbersome, but maybe in practice it won't be. Who knows.

Cheers, Gary

 

[CZuschlag]

silashand,

Last I checked, Vree have bombardment capabilites en masse due to the Xixx and Xirr. The Brakiri have access to Lances, and, the primary gun is a range 18 DD, SL beam (a pretty unique configuration). The pak'ma'ra long-range barrage of Plasma Torpedoes is downright frightening. The Drazi are beam-or-boresight, they are not a wade-into-the-middle-of-it fleet.

They'd only be remotely like the Abbai, who are hopefully getting a major upgrade in P&P (they deserve it!), and just stink. And, of course, the idea of massed suicide fighters and (I think a majorly overlooked but massive advantage) dynamic squadrons is a big, big deal.

 

[Triggy]

well carte blanche seeing all the tourneys the sentient rabbits run won't be using Gaim I can't care less!

I'd like to hear Triggys reasoning though. He usually makes a lot of sense and genuinely would've tried to make this a ballanced fleet!

Well, we've already got four pages of replies before I've been able to log on for the day to start answering you!

It looks like most people think they're a lot more balanced (apart from CZuchlag but more here later...) and most complaints now stem from the fact they have e-mines, don't follow the written fluff or that they don't play how they would like them. I must say at this point, I've not read the fluff in the RPG books at all and I don't know what the other playtesters' positions are regarding this.

The first and biggest concern for us was to make the fleet follow a single philosophy. Matt liked the Photon Bombs and I must say, so long as they are used against capital ships, I've grown to like them too. Back that up with a swarm of fighters and tough but slow ships, and only the non-Queen ships having conventional firepower and they certainly have a character to them. We removed Flight Computer from all but the Queens, reduced the AAF to AF and spread the ranges of Photon Bombs, numbers of fighters/breaching pods and Interceptor dice more evenly over the PLs. We also reduced fighter and breaching pod numbers in general as fleets with too many auxilliary craft just aren't fun to play with or against.

Then came the balance issues - these weren't a small point! Actually getting the ships roughly balanced wasn't hard but the bigger points concerned: balance against fleets relying on Dodge; against fleets relying on fighters; against fleets relying on Stealth; against fleets with low speed/manoeuvrability.

Fleets like the ISA and Drazi were the main reason that the Photon Bombs were made mainly Forward arced (with some Turret arcs) to allow them to get behind the Gaim after a turn or two.

Slow-Loading and Double Damage were added, to force the Gaim player to only fire on fighters if really necessary. In combination with removing Fleet Carrier from the Stuteeka War Carrier this means that both players have to play a lot more tactical battle with their fighters (a Raiders or EA player still won't win the fighter war most games but can make a lot more use out of them).

Minbari were the main fleet looked at for Stealth issues but frankly didn't appear to need a massive amount of adjustment as their weapons cut through the Gaim ships at range (particularly the Queens) with ease and compensate for a lot of the lack of use for Stealth.

Fleets that can't evade the Gaim easily like Narn or Brakiri are one of the main reasons why the breaching pods were made only 6" in range. This encourages a tactical battle of positioning.

Klikkita/Klikkitak choice was another issue and we really wanted for there to be a choice. Matt was the one who suggested making the Klikkita faster and the Klikkitak slower and with a worse Dodge (although retaining the higher Hull as it didn't seem right a suicide fighter being taken down by AF fire so easily). This seems to work quite well now. Also the numbers of Klikkitaks being able to hit in a turn was debated, with the model worked out through a bit of trial and error. Incidentally, this also helps with ISA and Drazi fleets as not so many fighters can hit them but keeps it so large ships can be hit by enough fighters to allow significant damage to be inflicted.

All in all, they are pretty fun to play now and although balance may or may not be perfect (this is always hard to achieve), hopefully most fleets will see themselves having good chances to win or lose every battle they fight against the Gaim and equally, every ship should now be a decent option for any Gaim player.

 

[Locutus9956]

quite. I actually rather dislike thesquadrons rule with a vengeance. Its potentially DISGUSTING. The Gaim already have a massive advantage where initiative is concerned:

1) They have a high inititiative anwyay
2) They dont use boresights whatsoever (indeed most of their ships have turrets with long ranges)
3) Their primary weaponry is basically fighters that all go ahead of the intiative count.

I merely havent mentioned it prior to now since I dont think its even in the close to the problem. The issue is simple. You can tone down the emines all you like, make them anti ship oriented with their double damage less seperate system slow loading nature but theyre STILL the best anti fighter system in the game, and fighters are the best defence against enemy fighters. To give Gaim the absolute easiest and best way of clearing away a fighter screen and then base their offence around hordes of fighters is frankly a bad idea.

The new list IS a big improvement and I would happily take a gaim fleet on now but I still think theyre going to prove rather dull (wham emines clear all the fighters, swamp with suicide fighters, see whether youve won or lost. The difference now is that it's no longer always going to be a win....)

Still as I've said I'm willing to cut them some slack for now and see how they actually PLAY. You can whine about how something looks on paper till the cows come home but till you actually try it you cant REALLY tell.

 

[katadder]

but do you save your slow loading e-mines to take out enemy fighters or do you hit their ships?
makes more choice really later on when getting for the now slower suicide and breacihng pod assaults.

 

[Burger]

You can do both, most Gaim ships have 2 tubes.
Making them one-shot (triple damage, boost ADs?) would have definitely made them anti-ship.

 

[wkehrman]

Unless someone beats me to it, I hope to have an Excel spreadsheet to post somewhere that has all the numbers figured out. I'm not big on working maths on the fly so I came up with a cheat sheet.

 

[silashand]

You can do both, most Gaim ships have 2 tubes.
Making them one-shot (triple damage, boost ADs?) would have definitely made them anti-ship.

Yes, but at what cost? Against fast, hard hitting fleets like Minbari or ISA if you sacrifice a turn of shooting you are effectively dead. Since they have no other weapons that would seem to be a significant risk if they do, especially since the emines can't crit.

As for being dull to play, that remains to be seen. Now that the numbers have been reduced for the fighters I think it will be a little better. One of the main things I found tedious in the old list was the sheer amount of things I had to move around. Yes, Gaim are a swarm fleet, but at larger game sizes it became a bit overwhelming keeping track of which one's I'd moved, which ones I hadn't, etc.

Unless someone beats me to it, I hope to have an Excel spreadsheet to post somewhere that has all the numbers figured out. I'm not big on working maths on the fly so I came up with a cheat sheet.

Having seen the spreadsheet, my opinion that the system is going to be cumbersome is reinforced. I like the precision with regard to how many can get in based on size of the ship, but I'm starting to think a simple table would have worked better, i.e. something like the following:

Target Starting Damage..........Number of fighters that can contact
1-10..................................................2
11-20................................................3
21-30................................................5
31-50................................................7
51-75................................................9
76-100..............................................12
100-125............................................15
126+................................................18

The numbers are only an idea, but you get the picture. I think that would have been a lot easier to use, actually. I am, however, willing to give the new formula a try. Who knows, maybe it won't be as troublesome as it looks.

Cheers, Gary