No good WAR for the EA

[Kosh127]

If you are talking about a fighting ship of the line the EA has no good war ships. If you want to pick apart what i say they have the best carrior in the game and yes its a WAR ship. However it is not a ship of the line. The Omega WAR ship is nice but lacks the power of the other major races WAR ships. With the Arg book they thook the Warlock and upped it so there is nothing for th EA as a ship of the line. This is in my option sad. Any ideas why this has happened??? Thanks

 

[combatdroid113]

personally i think the marathon is a good ship

 

[Nomad]

I believe it's been done in the name of 'Balance'. Mongoose seems to think that the way to even out fleets with very powerful ships is to leave them with restricted choices at certain priority levels - witness the weak Minbari Torotha, or the lack of smaller units for the Shadows and Vorlons in Armageddon.

This is intended to pose challenges to those fleets in campaigns, where every so often, a bad dice roll may force those players into a Patrol or Skirmish level scenario where they will struggle.

With Crusade - era EA this has been taken a stage further, with no viable War PL choice, as well as Skirmish and Patrol level ships which are limited to say the least.

Perhaps the thinking is that any insult can be piled onto EarthForce as some people will persist in playing them out of species loyalty?

 

[locarno24]

I've really no idea, and it strikes me as a relatively foolish move;

otherwise you get a nice progression of line ships;

Hyperion-Omega-Warlock-Shadow Omega
or
Chronos-Marathon-Warlock-Nemesis

The Warlock (the advanced ship series prototype) really should have stayed at a war level - it's not like the EA lacked an armageddon choice at either priority level..and, as noted by several people, having the Warlock, and the theoretically upgraded warlock being the same priority is faintly ridiculous.

 

[Epaminondas]

The sad thing is the new warlock only has a slight average damage advantage over the old warlock between 1-5 damage a turn depending on the target.

In a straight up fight, the old warlock has a fighting chance on poping the new warlock one on one.

There is no way a new warlock could take on two war from any other race.

They took an excellent ship, which had about twice the firepower of an omega, and half the fighters and gimped it badly.

 

[Locutus9956]

personally i think the marathon is a good ship

The Marathon IS a good ship. But its a good BATTLE level ship .

Frankly this ones already been discussed at quite some length on these forums. Simply put the Warlock should have kept its SFoS or Tournament list stats and stayed at War level (both were good statlines as they were, the tourney one I think was more correct but the SFoS one was good too ). Im leaning towards houseruling it back to its tourney list version personally as otherwise EA has a BIG problem at War level. Posseidons just die and Command Omegas are ludicrously weak compared to most other War ships (I use them only when splitting Armageddon points personally, they may be weak but for the points split I can effectively choose between one and a Marathon or standard Omega and they aint THAT bad )

 

[CodeofArms]

I agree Earth needs a premier front line fighter at a war level; the old Warlock sufficed enough in that you rarely took it but when you did it was useful enough to warrant the choice. I find poseidons just sit there on the battle field looking beautiful giving me initiative.

Suggestions;

Modify to Hull 5 and +2 flights of furies, topped off with +2 AD on all weapon systems on the Poseidon; it can at least hold its own vs. most escorts.

Bring down the Warlock to Battle level.

Make Shadow Omegas a viable choice - Perhaps a variant Psi-Corp/Shadow-Tech Fleet list?


Upstat the command Omega; this is one were trying for a play test soon enough;

Command Omega (War)

Speed: 7 Damage: 58/10 Craft: 4 Starfuries
Hull: 6 Turn: 1/45 Crew: 68/14 Special: Command 2, Interceptors 4, JP

Weapon:
Heavy Laser Cannon 30" B 8AD BM, DD, SAP
Heavy Laser Cannon 30" B(a) 6AD BM, DD, SAP
Heavy Pulse Cannon 12" F 12AD Twin-Link, AP
Heavy Pulse Cannon 12" A 8AD Twin-Link, AP
Medium Pulse Cannon 12" P 8AD Twin-Link
Medium Pulse Cannon 12" S 8AD Twin-Link
Particle Beams 6" T 6AD Anti-Fighter

My group agrees its alot more 'Pride of The EA Fleet' with this configuration...suppose time will tell.

 

[Chernobyl]

I dunno, the recent batrep with the poseidon vs. poseidon brawl has me thinking twice on the subject...!

Chern

 

[Calistan]

Actually, I think that the Posiedon would do better if you try to implement the redundancy rule, but since the ship is so large, maybe the Poseidon would have extra redundancy slots. So instead of 3, it would have 5 or 6.

 

[Shadow Queen]

personally i think the marathon is a good ship

Who wants a ship named after a race and a former chocolate bar

 

[JoeSmokem]

personally i think the marathon is a good ship

Who wants a ship named after a race and a former chocolate bar

[Homer] mmmmmm... chocolate [/Homer]

 

[E Nicely]

I believe it's been done in the name of 'Balance'. Mongoose seems to think that the way to even out fleets with very powerful ships is to leave them with restricted choices at certain priority levels - witness the weak Minbari Torotha, or the lack of smaller units for the Shadows and Vorlons in Armageddon.

Exactly. The Raiders aren't good at higher PLs, the ISA is going to be outnumbered at low PLs for example. The EA is good at low-mid level for 3rd Age and Early years, good at mid-high (good number of choices at Battle). Every fleet has it's strengths and weaknesses.

 

[Iain McGhee]

I'd take a pair of Omegas over a War-level Warlock anytime. I like the Armageddon version although I haven't had many opportunities to use it yet since it takes a HUGE bite out of my fleet allocation points.

 

[WickedE]

Way I see it, the Crusade era gives you the option of using a Line of battleships rather than a single command ship. All I'm saying? A Line of Marathons, Omega's, and Apollo's? Scare the crap out of me! Between the Marathons dancing around my fleet while the Omega's hang back and snipe with Apollo's launching mortar every turn? Ow. Just, Ow.

 

[Slightly Norse John]

The ability to do so, yes. The points, no. What you actually get is an unsupported battle line, without the escorts to cover, herd, pick off smaller enemies, stage diversion runs, snap up weakened enemy ships of the line, all those things that an escort shell of Artemis and Olympus used to be capable of.
All the stress gets dumped straight on to the larger ships. Case in point; the Chronos. High hull, low damage and crew, good all round weapons. It's a heavy destroyer, tactically speaking- with a screen of lighter escorts to pave the way for it, it can move where it chooses, avoid the heavy weapons that would blow straight through it's armour, accept fire from secondaries that it's interceptors and heavy hull can take tolerably well, and kill enemy escorts and maim larger warships with it's all round gun fit.
As part of the SFoS fleet structure, with a little luck, it could punch well above it's weight. Now, it has to do the job of those light escorts, and it's simply too much ship for it. It's not efficient in the role, it draws more fire and dies a lot faster than usually used to be the case.
Similar problem with the Marathon. As an individual fighting ship, it's good verging on superb. As a fleet element, I have difficulty making it reach it's full potential because it needs a support squadron, with decent numbers of medium weapons to brush off enemy light hunter types and finish off the ships it damages- and that support squadron doesn't exist any more.
I think the phrase we're looking for is 'a$$ hanging out in the breeze.' The Tourney Warlock was one of the minority of War- level ships that could deal effectively with a large number of small enemy ships, along with the Mankhat and Octurion, and probably was the best of the three at dealing with enemy ships it's own size as well. It's the closest...well, joint closest (nearly denied the glory of the Targrath there) I think the lists hold to a genuine go anywhere, do anything universal warship. That could be why Mongoose chose not to retain it at War- too easy an answer to the selection question.

 

[CodeofArms]

Every fleet has it's strengths and weaknesses.

I think to just flag off the new earth fleet lists as being strong and weak in different aspects is just an all-purpose means of killing a topic that has clearly sparked alot of intense debate. As a new EA player i find myself struggling to get full grips on the way the fleet now works. Especially with the Era system. In sky full of stars It was okay to take crusade ships and match them up with vessles who'd seen action in the Dilgar wars; people saw earth with only +1 initiative that was supplemented by command level vessles.

These days you get accused of Gimping the game by taking a crusade fleet and then using Artemis escorts to protect the swanky new vessles. "Oh your power gaming using the higher initiative but old ships" is an argument i've heard around nearly every table the gaming hall I go to; even though before Armageddon people were happy to let a Marathon and Olympus run side by side. In turn i've tried to assist the very disgruntled EA group by putting suggestions forward in the slowly growing 'better command omega' debate thats popping up in these threads; even then at best the Command Omega either sits way high at the war priority level or too low. In the worst case scenario it becomes a perversion of the battle level ship.

The Tourney Warlock was one of the minority of War- level ships that could deal effectively with a large number of small enemy ships...and probably was the best of the three at dealing with enemy ships it's own size as well. It's the closest...well, joint closest (nearly denied the glory of the Targrath there) I think the lists hold to a genuine go anywhere, do anything universal warship...

I agree with this completely. No one I encountered complained about the war priority Warlock; it was fearsome but nothing you could not handle. The majority of the time it was just a fire magnet to maneuver your battle-level hitters into optimal firing positions, it was a useful addition to the fleet and a welcome change from the Poseidon (which imho is earths most BORING ship next to the explorer). These days its made out to be some form of game-winner at Armageddon priority but from my experience super-ships don't win games; in fact most of the time you can expect vessels of a priority or two levels lower to be the deciding force in winning a game.

To throw in my Two Creds I personally find the new earth lists a pain and labour that have really divided alot of players. What I find though is other races are often taken aback by the changes earth goes through; at a cursory glance it seems the lists just get more powerful; i'll admit in some aspects they do; but the weaknesses and problems of changed gameplay that dividing the lists has caused are just too great to be compensated or dismissed through the beefier stats and weapons. Devoted earth players are an authority on earth workings just like minbari, centauri, narn etc players are authorities on their own fleet workings; with so many of them in an uproar its clear their are problems that are need to be addressed - something that can be done so with cooperation of all the players on these forums input.

 

[WickedE]

I have experimented with anew War Level Crusade EA ship. See if this meets the general satisfaction:


Marathon-class Command Cruiser (Marathon Variant)
Priority: War

Description: While the Drakh plague kept Earthside R&D quarantined, extrasolar colonies started to see an increased demand in their ship production and an increase in funding for research that had previously been devoted to the scientists back home. With the semi-success of the Marathon-class Cruiser, many of these cruisers ended up docking at solar colonies on a regular basis to try and fix many problems that ended up surfacing due to their rushed launch. Most mechanics were stymied at the mess of circuitry powering the Marathon, but still attempted to rectify the quirks in the system with limited success. By the dawn of 2268, most of the Marathon cruisers were still plagued with AI and system difficulties, but over three dozen were reported as working "perfectly" (albeit after months and months of rewiring). EarthGov?, pleased with this, decided to take a few of reportedly reliable Marathons and attempt to do with it what they had done with the Omega and the dissapearing Hyperion; rework the hull into a command vessel. Despite many captains arguing that they'd just gotten the damn things to work right, they were ordered to space-docks where engineers began their work.
Sacrificing its trademark lightning speed for a command suite and more weapons fire, many captains have to admit a liking for the massive weaponry and ability as a fleet command ship, but only when the damn thing works right. As the Marathon suffered from its rushed launch, so too is the Marathon Command Cruiser plagued by system shorts and ambivalent AI quirks. Most would have preferred them as they were, smaller guns and faster speed, than "flying an agile brick that breaks down every other hour."

Hull: 6 Dam:43/12 Crew: 47/12 Troops: 6
Speed: 8 Turns: 2/45 In-Service: 2268+
Craft: 2 Starfury Flights
Special: Interceptors 4, Advanced Jump Point, Flight Computer, Command +1

Weapons:
Medium Neutron Cannon B 25" 6AD S-AP, Beam, Triple Damage

Medium Neutron Cannon B(A) 25" 2AD S-AP, Beam, Triple Damage

Particle Beams T 5" 6AD Anti-Fighter?

Laser/Pulse Array* F/A/P/S 15" 10F/6A/8P/8S Twin-Linked?

See Laser/Pulse Array Rules

 

[Tzarevitch]

Honestly, it doesn't bother me that EA now lacks a dreadnought-type ship at War level, but they choices they are left with are terrible.

The Omega command (and the G'Quonth and G'Tal) should be Battle + Skirmish choice not War. There is no credible way to add enough to an Omega command to make it a War level ship.

The Poseidon needs some more speed and some actual armament. Increase its speed to 6 and give it 5D foreward missile racks and 3D aft similar to the Apollo's racks. Between that and its fighters it may become a credible war level choice.

The part that the designers seem to have missed is that yes the carrier theoretically can throw a lot of attack dice from its fighters, in practice those come in 2-4D packages each with a single hp. This means its firepower ablates off very fast. Also, they have a max range of 4. Right now, the ship itself is just a flying barge, it doesn't have enough offense to reliably fight against a Battle level ship much less a war level and it is too slow to escape from either.

Tzarevitch

 

[Frohike]

Hopefully this will be changed at some point in the future, in the mean time I plan on ordering a Nike or two and using the SFOS warlock rules to represent it, my opponents seem ok with this.