Next Armageddon Fix?

[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).

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

There aren't too many but they are the Tertius, Prefect, Drakh Light Cruiser, Tigara, Corvan, Ka'Tan, Ka'Toc, White Star Carrier and a few star bases. I have minor fixes and will post my work soon.

However, I don't want to discourage from this thread getting somewhere and feel all are worthy choices to be looked at. May I suggest as other underused and underpowered ships the Kutai, Haven, Torotha, Avioki, Shadow Ship, Nemesis, Mishakur, Mankhat and the Sagittarius (just kidding about the Sag!)

All are 25-50% underpowered and some need massive reworking to make them viable (such as the Kutai and Mishakur). Again I have theories but wanted to finish off the last couple of ships before I showed my thoughts.

 

[TenaciousB]

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

Some of that stuff I like, but a lot I don't - in particular, you're need to nerf the poo out of the Dilgar, yet make the Shadow Ship quite nasty indeed.

I also think a lot of the stuff has been over-complicated for no reason, such as interceptors, which I feel work quite well as they are, and the addition of shields - bit too much of a Star Trek influence maybe?

Some good stuff in there, but not enough to interest me - for all their faults, Mongoose have a pretty solid system with Acta - its the balancing of some of the ships that needs addressing.

 

[Target]

I've been studimg the "A" book for a while now. One thing annoys me a lot is a single issue of White Dwarf is actually far superior. The Photo part in the middle is rubbish, paid a lot of money for that im guessing. Thinking it didn't need to be hard covered at all. The ship fixs were a joke, 1 page near the back saying things like the Varnic gets precise.
The reason i bought it was i thought i was going to get a more balanced ships list. The losing of tourney list is quite bizarre when most people thought it helped a lot. New rules were fine but the fact that the EA lists take up most of the book is silly since the stats don't change. Wasted a lot of space repeating pretty much the same thing.
Really this book should been soft covered like the Dilgar book and about the same price.
V 2.0 better be much better than Armagedon because i am becoming quite disallusioned with what Mongoose has done lately.

 

[meglos]

i voted the nemesis needs fixing but i would prefer the warlock to be changed first and as a person who hates the minbari iv got to say what happened to the neroon ? and as for v2.0 can we have all the fleets in the same book im sick of carrying around half a libary on my back to play a game now

 

[Locutus9956]

I've been studimg the "A" book for a while now. One thing annoys me a lot is a single issue of White Dwarf is actually far superior. The Photo part in the middle is rubbish, paid a lot of money for that im guessing. Thinking it didn't need to be hard covered at all. The ship fixs were a joke, 1 page near the back saying things like the Varnic gets precise.
The reason i bought it was i thought i was going to get a more balanced ships list. The losing of tourney list is quite bizarre when most people thought it helped a lot. New rules were fine but the fact that the EA lists take up most of the book is silly since the stats don't change. Wasted a lot of space repeating pretty much the same thing.
Really this book should been soft covered like the Dilgar book and about the same price.
V 2.0 better be much better than Armagedon because i am becoming quite disallusioned with what Mongoose has done lately.

I may not like alot of the ships but in all honesty that seems ridiculously harsh! The ship fixes in the case of misprints are in the errata section where they should be, what did you expect in this case?

There are 3 full lists for the EA but we all knew this before we bought the book! There are also full lists for the Shadows and Vorlons too. And the Ancients dont foget!

There are a whole bunch of new scenarios and redone versions of some old ones.

Theres a few pages of rules updates and a bunch of new ships for most races (though Im less keen on most of them thats not a major deal).

As for the price and it being hardback the book is £15, its not a huge amount and the book has easily got 3 times the content of the Drakh or Dilgar books (which cost £5 each and are softback). It might have been better to do the new lists as seperate books and make the Armageddon rules updates a smaller book but I would probably have bought them all anyway and I personally PREFER having it all in one hardback. (also if you start going down the route of fleet books you end up almost invariably with GW style 'codex creep'.

Lastly though comparing it to an issue of White Dwarf is just silly. White Dwarf is quite frankly a load of arse and has been for some time. It seems to go up in price about 50p every year and is now more or less 90% advertising (and I shouldnt need to point out that Mongoose give us S&P for FREE)

 

[captainsmirk]

I think Target's problem with the EA lists is that ships with the same stats in each list or in fact the same stats as in SFOS are repeated where it is unnecessary.

As for his other comments, well, its probably a free country..

Nick

 

[Locutus9956]

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

Some of that looks quite good but unless youve deliberately changed some rules in your quick reference sheet youve got a few things wrong, most noteably: Dodge vs EMines, and Scouts only redirecting one friendly ship, reading the actual rules changes now to see more on this...

Ok have read a bit further and its a tad unclear on emines vs dodge?

Oh and Im not sure about the fact that interceptors are done per ship attacking rather than per turn as it seems to render auxilliary craft totally unable to attack most EA ships seemingly!

 

[tneva82]

Personally, raising the levels of the Shadow Hunter and Ship to War and Armageddon respectively was a bit harsh

That could be to give them room to be suitably powerfull. Those shadow ships are SUPPOSED to be powerfull. Look the B5 serie. You see shadow ship slicing through hull of sharlin without problems. Even minbari had trouble with those things and everything in the show screamed "even sharlin is not match for shadow mothership!".

Sharlin is already war level. You can't have ship strong enough to make sharlin wish for backup while keeping it war level so...Up the cost of shadow vessel!

And for that I say: About frigging time. Facing shadow vessel SHOULD be nightmare unless you have whole bucketload of ships with you.

 

[Burger]

Personally, raising the levels of the Shadow Hunter and Ship to War and Armageddon respectively was a bit harsh

That could be to give them room to be suitably powerfull. Those shadow ships are SUPPOSED to be powerfull. Look the B5 serie. You see shadow ship slicing through hull of sharlin without problems. Even minbari had trouble with those things and everything in the show screamed "even sharlin is not match for shadow mothership!".

Sharlin is already war level. You can't have ship strong enough to make sharlin wish for backup while keeping it war level so...Up the cost of shadow vessel!

And for that I say: About frigging time. Facing shadow vessel SHOULD be nightmare unless you have whole bucketload of ships with you.

But it should also have its stats boosted (more).

 

[tneva82]

But it should also have its stats boosted (more).

That's different kettle of fish of course. If the new stats don't make it strong enough to compete(haven't seen them) then yes power needs upping more.

For me it just felt "wrong" that shadows(and Vorlons) were so...Similar...in power level to younger races. Specifically that their big ships were war level which even EA could reach without even crusade era tech.

I'm too big of a fan of the serie for that to not stick out like sore thumb. Shadows should be scary ships that will make lone sharlin wish for escape

 

[TenaciousB]

Personally, raising the levels of the Shadow Hunter and Ship to War and Armageddon respectively was a bit harsh

That could be to give them room to be suitably powerfull. Those shadow ships are SUPPOSED to be powerfull. Look the B5 serie. You see shadow ship slicing through hull of sharlin without problems. Even minbari had trouble with those things and everything in the show screamed "even sharlin is not match for shadow mothership!".

Sharlin is already war level. You can't have ship strong enough to make sharlin wish for backup while keeping it war level so...Up the cost of shadow vessel!

And for that I say: About frigging time. Facing shadow vessel SHOULD be nightmare unless you have whole bucketload of ships with you.

Well, its just a bit of a p1sser for those who have bought the fleet set - when is anyone gonna need 4 Shadow Ships now? How many games of 4/5 point Armageddon are gonna be played? I agree on some level about what you're saying that the Shadow Ships should be very powerful, but increasing the stats like that was a bit much IMO - the turreted weapon on the SFOS shadow ship was good enough to rip apart a Sharlin anyway, even before raising it to Armageddon level.

Just seemed a bit much.

 

[Hash]

Totally agree - its a much weaker tourney fleet now...unfortunately and all my lovely Shadow Ships (I have 9) are just going to sit there gathering dust...

Plus campaigns make it really difficult to use them (THEY COST 80 RR per ship!) - It was horribly inefficient to buy one in the current campaign I'm playing but I couldn't resist...

Personally I think the old tourney stats were spot on for the Shadows (with the obvious exception of reducing the hull on the Hunter) but hey ho - that's the way it goes

 

[Epaminondas]

They should cost buckets in a campaign; you can't crit them, they can phase out at will, and they have self repair.

Only an idiot would keep a shadow ship in a fight it could lose, and lose the ship.

Free repairs.

Every other ship with out self repair needs to pay alot to get back to fighting trim; shadows pay once. Higher upfront costs, but no maintaince costs.

 

[Burger]

They should cost buckets in a campaign; you can't crit them, they can phase out at will, and they have self repair.

They don't phase out at will. They have to Initiate Jump Point in one turn, and are removed from the table the next turn.

Only an idiot would keep a shadow ship in a fight it could lose, and lose the ship.

You've never seen a Shadow Ship on the reveiving end of a Lightning Cannon, then?

 

[animus]

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

Absolutely. There are a few obvious ships we keep coming back to, such as the Troligan and the Vorchan. I'd also like to see the Shadowcrab given "ages" and different stats, PL's.

I haven't digested all the new Armageddon stats yet, but the Liati debate seems founded.

As for the WS Fighter, I think it's the kind of thing that just has to go with the Carrier. I don't think Fighters should ever be taken as a choice in an of themselves unless it's a very small game. The stories of 30 flights of starfuries mugging ships in the old days would be fixed by such a logical limitation -"where did those ships come from?" The support ship for all those fighters has to be figured in, even if it's off the board.

Maybe a statline on a ship:Auxilliary craft X: maximum X+Y, thus if you want more fighters, you can buy "Y" of them in addition. You get X with the base ship and can get more if you want to. Hurm... I may have something here....

 

[Davesaint]

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.

If you move the WS Gunship to Battle, then you make the WS-2 Obsolete. No one will ever take a WS-2 over a WS Gunship if the cost was the same.

BTW, the real radical design changes were not made at the turn of the 19th century by the French, they were made the the Americans. Many Brittish Captians cursed the American Frigates as their rounds bounced off the very strong hulls of the American vessels.

Dave

 

[Triggy]

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

Absolutely. There are a few obvious ships we keep coming back to, such as the Troligan and the Vorchan. I'd also like to see the Shadowcrab given "ages" and different stats, PL's.

I haven't digested all the new Armageddon stats yet, but the Liati debate seems founded.

As for the WS Fighter, I think it's the kind of thing that just has to go with the Carrier. I don't think Fighters should ever be taken as a choice in an of themselves unless it's a very small game. The stories of 30 flights of starfuries mugging ships in the old days would be fixed by such a logical limitation -"where did those ships come from?" The support ship for all those fighters has to be figured in, even if it's off the board.

Maybe a statline on a ship:Auxilliary craft X: maximum X+Y, thus if you want more fighters, you can buy "Y" of them in addition. You get X with the base ship and can get more if you want to. Hurm... I may have something here....

The easy way to cap fighters is to make it so that they can't win battles on their own but they can be very useful supporting a fleet. The current rules aren't bad but the "points" for individual flights are off in a number of cases. Get them right and you may see hordes of fighters but so long as this isn't overpowering then what's the problem?

 

[B5freak]

Tenacious B wrote:

Some of that stuff I like, but a lot I don't - in particular, you're need to nerf the poo out of the Dilgar, yet make the Shadow Ship quite nasty indeed.

I also think a lot of the stuff has been over-complicated for no reason, such as interceptors, which I feel work quite well as they are, and the addition of shields - bit too much of a Star Trek influence maybe?

The Dilgar are still a work in progress. Going by the timeframe of the series, all the Dilgar ships are 30 years out of date. That makes it darned hard to resolve their power level compared to "modern" fleet lists. Since we don't have anyone here who plays Dilgar on any consistent basis, I decided to take my time and work through some ideas.

In game play, the interceptors actually work quite well. Because the dice reset after each ship/squadron fires, there's less bookkeeping. (how many dice do I have left? what's my target #?)

I admit I'm not overly attached to the shield mechanic. It was based on a suggestion from a friend and filled the gap. Something was needed however to bring us back to the canon of Vorlons and Abbai actually having shields. Granted, I haven't gone so far as to give the White Stars or the Brakiri shields (which would also be canon), but I figured I'd hit the big players first and see how the mechanic worked out.

 

[Target]

I may not like alot of the ships but in all honesty that seems ridiculously harsh! The ship fixes in the case of misprints are in the errata section where they should be, what did you expect in this case?

There are 3 full lists for the EA but we all knew this before we bought the book! There are also full lists for the Shadows and Vorlons too. And the Ancients dont foget!

There are a whole bunch of new scenarios and redone versions of some old ones.

Theres a few pages of rules updates and a bunch of new ships for most races (though Im less keen on most of them thats not a major deal).

As for the price and it being hardback the book is £15, its not a huge amount and the book has easily got 3 times the content of the Drakh or Dilgar books (which cost £5 each and are softback). It might have been better to do the new lists as seperate books and make the Armageddon rules updates a smaller book but I would probably have bought them all anyway and I personally PREFER having it all in one hardback. (also if you start going down the route of fleet books you end up almost invariably with GW style 'codex creep'.

Lastly though comparing it to an issue of White Dwarf is just silly. White Dwarf is quite frankly a load of arse and has been for some time. It seems to go up in price about 50p every year and is now more or less 90% advertising (and I shouldnt need to point out that Mongoose give us S&P for FREE)

My problem with the errata was things like the Varnic weren't misprints or they would said a long time ago and fixed or would of been put in S&P.
The EA lists didn't need to be repeated, one with all the ships would sufficed & then Fleet choices table.
Agree totally about the having the rules in 1 book, that would of been worth the money.
The difference to me in money terms is about $30 between the books depending on exchange rate and it still had typo's.
The White Dwarf is far superior in quality to the A book & it's done monthly. The quality of stuff inside is up to the reader and whether they like GW games or not.
The redone Vorlon & Shadow section is fine i guess but takes them out of tourneys or 5pt raid games which is what people mostly play anything starts to take to long.
The Photo spread in the middle i think is complete waste. If a GW painter painted like that they probably would be fired.

 

[TenaciousB]

The Dilgar are still a work in progress. Going by the timeframe of the series, all the Dilgar ships are 30 years out of date. That makes it darned hard to resolve their power level compared to "modern" fleet lists. Since we don't have anyone here who plays Dilgar on any consistent basis, I decided to take my time and work through some ideas.

In game play, the interceptors actually work quite well. Because the dice reset after each ship/squadron fires, there's less bookkeeping. (how many dice do I have left? what's my target #?)

I admit I'm not overly attached to the shield mechanic. It was based on a suggestion from a friend and filled the gap. Something was needed however to bring us back to the canon of Vorlons and Abbai actually having shields. Granted, I haven't gone so far as to give the White Stars or the Brakiri shields (which would also be canon), but I figured I'd hit the big players first and see how the mechanic worked out.

Fair enough, dude - I'll be keeping an eye on your work - as I say, I liked quite a lot of it, so maybe my gaming group will try out some of your ideas. :wink: