Next Armageddon Fix?

[Burger]

Liati should be completely changed IMO. It tries to beat the WS at its own game, with a fast movement and 2/90 turns. Instead it should accept that WS will be more manouverable, and stick to 8" movement with 2/45 turns. It should have 18" turreted AF/DD weapons. It should be Battle level.

WS Gunship should be Battle level.

Troligan should be hull 6.

Neroon should have one of: Hull 6. Stealth 6. Adaptive Armour. Double the damage and crew values.

Nials shold be 2 per wing, WS fighters should be 1 per wing but Patrol level.

 

[Slightly Norse John]

Besides which, I'm having a b&stard of a time trying to produce something credible as an Armageddon- level dilgar warship without so many heavy weapon dice hanging off it, you could probably beat a Brivoki to death with them.

Definitely the Neroon to fix.
The Warlock should be War level, that much I agree with, in spades. Some of the other ships- well, ship designers and procurement boards sometimes do get it wrong. (Pretty much every wooden hulled ship the French ever built, for a start.)
I'm not saying the Nemesis is right- nowhere near- but it is a feasible mistake, of exactly the sort EA could and possibly would have made. Whoever had design oversight should have been beaten to death with a Shadow stalactite, but concentrating on their strengths to serve their needs (big main gun, kill Minbari and other aliens, ug) is plausible enough to be taken seriously.
Similarly the WS- splurge. Someone sufficiently deranged by Vorlon biochemical secretions from the fused technology could easily have decided to run with this.
It's the Neroon that makes no sense. One fleet exercise with the prototype, and it should have been back to the drawing board. It's simply not a warship; it can neither give nor take punishment, and it cannot control the pace of the battle.

 

[H]

Mark this moment people, I am going to do something I never have done before... Defend the French.

Fremnch wooden hulled, ships, quite specifically during the Napoleonic era were well designed and fantastically built ships, almost alwys the superior of those built by the english. The reason they did not beat the English, or British if you prefer, is due to the comparable quality of the Sailors on both sides. The men of the royal navy could quite often outshoot their opponents by 3 shots to 2, or even more

 

[Burger]

I'm not saying the Nemesis is right- nowhere near- but it is a feasible mistake, of exactly the sort EA could and possibly would have made.
...
Similarly the WS- splurge. Someone sufficiently deranged by Vorlon biochemical secretions from the fused technology could easily have decided to run with this.

Fair enough; but fluff reasons can't justify its placement in the purely out-of-game priority structure. The ships should be placed on the priority scale according to their ability, not their intended ability.

 

[Alexb83]

Yes, like Burger says there is a real danger of putting 'Battleships' at Battle, and 'Warships' at War (positioning things based on names or fluff or whatever). But this is a game, and supposedly one balanced to give roughly equivalent forces between equivalent PLs.

Whic, in VAS is why the QE Class battleships and the Yamato wont be the same PL (or I wouldn't think they would) - both are battleships in name, but the difference in speed, armour and armament is significant.

Based on armament etc. I would've put both the Liati and the WS Gunship at Battle, not War, and that'd be after they were fixed.

 

[Shadow Queen]

why not a totaly automated fighter???

 

[TenaciousB]

Can we focus please? We're talking about fixing armageddon. That means: the ships in armageddon which for various reasons aren't that good or are downright pointless.

We're not talking about adding ships (that wouldn't be fixing armageddon). And ideally before adding any more, you'd want to ensure what already exists is working fine.

I'd stretch to say we can also cover other ships which are broken/pointless, like the Troligan.

But this isn't the place to ask for new ships.

Well, I'm talking about fixing the entire Armageddon book to include those races that need "settling-in" periods.

And to be honest, pretty much all of the stuff in armageddon was pointless for me, but hey, I'll stick to the "rules".

Personally, raising the levels of the Shadow Hunter and Ship to War and Armageddon respectively was a bit harsh - I know the Shadows were broken, but raising the PL level was too much in my opinion. Armageddon had a stab at changing how the Ancients worked, which was probably good enough - maybe changing some AD/Hull scores/Damage levels at their current levels would have been sufficient.

 

[Locutus9956]

I'm not saying the Nemesis is right- nowhere near- but it is a feasible mistake, of exactly the sort EA could and possibly would have made.
...
Similarly the WS- splurge. Someone sufficiently deranged by Vorlon biochemical secretions from the fused technology could easily have decided to run with this.

Fair enough; but fluff reasons can't justify its placement in the purely out-of-game priority structure. The ships should be placed on the priority scale according to their ability, not their intended ability.

He's just bitter cos we wiped out his species

 

[Burger]

Personally, raising the levels of the Shadow Hunter and Ship to War and Armageddon respectively was a bit harsh - I know the Shadows were broken, but raising the PL level was too much in my opinion.

I think the level changes were good, but they should've been boosted a bit more. Shadow Ship losing its T weapon was very harsh.

 

[H]

Personally, raising the levels of the Shadow Hunter and Ship to War and Armageddon respectively was a bit harsh - I know the Shadows were broken, but raising the PL level was too much in my opinion.

I think the level changes were good, but they should've been boosted a bit more. Shadow Ship losing its T weapon was very harsh.

especially from what we see i nthe show, it can clearly fire in any direction... apart from upwards thorugh it's own hull

 

[Slightly Norse John]

JMS would probably be interested to know how you wiped out the Centauri
No law that says you have to stick to one species, is there? (The fact that both happen to be bad guys, well, details, details.)

Ships should be rated according to their tactical ability, but sometimes it does seem that Mongoose write the fluff without reference to the stats, or actually write the stats around the fluff.

And the French ships of the 1770's Borda- Sane establishment were designed for high speed in fair weather; they had short service lives, high maintenance costs, poor seakeeping abilities in bad weather, and came apart relatively easily when shot.
Largely because they were designed purely to a theory.

 

[H]

during the early 1800's many french captured ships were placed into British service, serving in the Indies, the med and the trecherous English Channel, Many English captains would have rather had a french ship in his command as they were faster, easier to maneuvre, and hardy, many of them lasted for 50 years, as long if not longer than the English ships.
The main reasoning behind this was that French ships were built by the french government, while british ships were built in independant shipyards, who used inferior wood (Napoleon had access to better trees) and often used only single laid rather than twice laid matereal to save costs, resulting in poor quality bad handling ships. Also the Admiralties views on sails limited the effectiveness of british ships, whereas french ships were often built to fit unusual new configurations

I would like to see a new Dag'Kar, it took such a knock in SFOS, from an arguably OTT ship, to a pretty weak, very specialised vesel

 

[Slightly Norse John]

They lasted fifty years if they were maintained in Royal Naval dockyards, yes; rather less in the french service- and more than 50% of French ships of the line built from 1750 to 1810 ended up in British hands.
The British timber supply was more closely controlled than that; the royal yards were frequently too busy with repairs and refits, but think about the economic situation. Independent yards, bidding (against the Navy Board) for timber, to build ships- for the Navy Board. Eh? They were quite capable of working this out at the time, and there were fairly strict terms of what was and wasn't acceptable quality.
Known deficient goods were brought in, at prices over the odds, as an act of economic warfare- to stop them reaching the French. The Revolutionary government and Napoleon had problems of their own, one of them that the early tumult had managed to drive out many of the effectively petit-bourgeois suppliers of the French Navy, many of whom emigrated and took the tricks of their trade with them. Mostly to Britain. Captains effectively took their ships to pieces and reassembled them to suit themselves anyway.

Wouldn't you love to have any of the B5 alien races' history in this sort of detail :?:

Anyway; the WS- Gunship at Battle would be a high Battle, but I'd rather do that and tinker with the stats a bit- it would become a companion piece to the WSC-2; that has developed in the direction of agility, the WS-Gun for heavier firepower. I'd have to run them in parallel to be sure, but I like the sound of that.

 

[Locutus9956]

Wouldn't you love to have any of the B5 alien races' history in this sort of detail :?:

Thats why I ignore the Mongoose fluff and read the AoG source books

 

[TenaciousB]

Thats why I ignore the Mongoose fluff and read the AoG source books

Is the AoG fluff proof-read??? :lol:

 

[Locutus9956]

Yes

 

[Triggy]

All of them are fairly equally bad in my book but IMO the overpowered ships need to be brought back into line first. Even though they are not as far out of whack as the examples you site, underpowered ships won't ruin a game, they just wont' get played (which is a shame).

 

[lastbesthope]

you get 4 starfuries to a nial but only need 2 to take the nial on with equal terms.

I thought it was 3 Starfury's per Patrol cost wing, so that's 3 Furies to a Nial.

LBH

 

[Alexb83]

All of them are fairly equally bad in my book but IMO the overpowered ships need to be brought back into line first. Even though they are not as far out of whack as the examples you site, underpowered ships won't ruin a game, they just wont' get played (which is a shame).

What ships are you considering as overpowered, and how do you suggest fixes for them?

 

[B5freak]

Earlier in this thread, someone posted that the general concensus for Armageddon was, "Good rules changes, bad ships". Sadly, this seems to be the trend for MGP's management of ACTA. In my local area, we've given up on the MGP fleet lists and built a set of our own.

Lists and playtest results here:

http://www.geocities.com/stephan1313/B5/B5_Altered.htm