Oracle Priority Level.

What should the Oracle's priority level be?

  • Raid (it should stay the same)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Skirmish (Drop it down a notch)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Battle (Its a great ship of the line)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Don't Care (I don't use scouts)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Oracle gives you cookies...Right?

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0
  • Poll closed .
Tal Hawkins said:
Scimitar said:
I thought the EA's gimmick was to strap interceptors onto anything larger than an escape pod?

Unforunately that gimmick is destroyed by the easy mode Minbari who use nothing but beam weapons. (Yes I know there are a few small exceptions)

Yep, very true. How about if you lose AF from mini-Beam traits? The Minbari would then have serious problems with EA fighter swarms, but still have ship-ship dominance.
As I recall from the series, the only Minbari ship vs fighters action was at the line when they "trapped" Sinclairs wingman. there were 3-4 shots per fighter which would be trouble even with dodge back in the mix.
 
For these, and other reasons a change was demanded of how fighters work. They were too strong and had to be stopped! Mongoose dutifully listened to our feedback and begin tweaking the rules. With SFoS, they suceeeded in making fighters no longer the single most powerful thing in the game. Wing sizes were reduced, stats were lessened, fighters were forced to fire after all capital ships, precise was removed and insta-death criticals were no longer possible.

Your first sentence sums it up best - a change was needed in how they work - but I think the stats and wing sizes were fine (excepting the 6-fighter wings if the ISA) They accomplished this by mandating that fighter combat takes place last, after all ships have fired. a bit hard, but OK. In my opinion, the rest of the stat and number reducing was massive overkill. Unfortunatly the only alternatives that would have moderated the combat order involved too much book-keeping to be practical.

Chernobyl
 
Gotta agree with you there. All of the measures put in place did enough to blunt fighters. The stat changes just took it a bit too far.
 
Didn't mind the reduction in hull scores and i thought it made sense because thats what the dodge is for. The loss of firepower was a bit much. We never had a problem with fighters they way were, we just didn't have fighter swarms but we did fire them last.
I actually hoping for less of range in dogfight scores and thought the amount of flights per patrol point should be more even over the races.
 
yeah figthers need to be adjusted upwards a bit

and i dont really think interceptors are comperabel to the advateges e mines and stealth gives

finaly i allways saw the EA like most oter peeps her like bricks somthing that means they shud be har with a lot off hit points

so a fragile EA hull well it kinda breaks with the backround
 
Obsidian wrote:
Well.... In this case, the EA is the victim of an overall game balancing item that was mostly proposed and pushed by us, the players.
EDIT
For these, and other reasons a change was demanded of how fighters work. They were too strong and had to be stopped! Mongoose dutifully listened to our feedback and begin tweaking the rules. With SFoS, they suceeeded in making fighters no longer the single most powerful thing in the game. Wing sizes were reduced, stats were lessened, fighters were forced to fire after all capital ships, precise was removed and insta-death criticals were no longer possible.

Trouble is, all this tweaking effectively gutted the strong point of the EA.

My gut reaction is yeah, that's exactly what happened. Unfortunately, it doesn't really jive with Matt's assertion that:
We committed a lot of time to playtesting SFoS and, by and large, I believe we have the balance right.

Either it's true that EA has been nerfed and is no longer truely balanced or that all of the impacts to EA were understood and intentional. If the latter is the case, and I'm perfectly willing to accept that it is, then the problem is that:
What we have _not_ done is ensure that every ship is suitable for every player at every skill level - and that is something we are giving a great deal of thought to.
In which case, those of us who see EA as weak just don't know how to play the fleet and need to wait for someone to show us how it's supposed to be done.

Now, to provide my own, "hi, I'm b5freak and I'm a crappy strategist", I played Dark Elves in a game by that other big game company for years, and for years I just couldn't do much with them. Then a friend of mine picked them up to see what he could do with them and within 6 months had taken first place at a Games Day. Now, same said friend was subsequently brought onboard to write a whole series of articles on tactics for that company's monthly magazine, so this may have been an exceptional case, but the point remains I'm not flawless and I know it. I just want *someone* to show me what I and everyone in my local group is missing so we can get on with our lives.
 
My own gaming group has some pretty good players. We have been playing ACTA since not long after it came out and have played various wargames for more years than we care to remember. General consensus amongst us is that the EA fleet is the weakest of the 4 "standard" fleets - EA, Narn, Centauri and Minbari. Shadows and Vorlons we tend to see as rather specialist items, between us we only own a few of these. The various league races combined make a pretty fair fleet, individually they seem variable.

EA seems the most commonly played fleet and because of this it's apparent weakness has a magnified importance in the game. Many of the threads about overstrong Minbari relate to them trashing EA with monotonous regularity. Amongst our group we are sure Centauri, Narn and ISA could give Minbari a reasonable game but feel EA would get it's backside kicked almost everytime.

I think many people here have it right. EA get fighters and Intereptors as their thing yet in the SFOS environment these are not as useful as they once where. Fighters are now much less of a threat to capital ships and easier to kill before they get a shot off. Beams are now seen in greater numbers reducing the relative use of interceptors. Narn are probably the second weakest of the 4 standard races and again their special, emines, are really an anti fighter weapon, reduced in power against ships in SFOS.

I was never one of the players calling for dramatic changes to fighters - no one in my group ever had the nerve to field a fighter swarm as they we avoid deliberatly "gamey" tactics. We simply houseruled only 1 point of independent fighters per game. Fighters are now somethng of an irrelevance in most of our games, all they seem to do is slow down game play and get killed without significantly influencing events. Not a great deal of impact for what is supposed to be a major races principle "edge".
 
Lagavulin,

That perfectly sums up my group's assessment as well, though you've undeniable summed it up with more eloquence than we've managed so far.
 
My gut reaction is yeah, that's exactly what happened. Unfortunately, it doesn't really jive with Matt's assertion

I agree. My statements do not jive with Matt's. If you look at all the evidence in front of us though it is hard to dispute my point. There may be some hidden thing that all of us are missing and Matt step in to say "Have you ever noticed X about the EA?" and suddenly we will see what it is that makes the EA a good fleet other than fighters and interceptors.

no one in my group ever had the nerve to field a fighter swarm as they we avoid deliberatly "gamey" tactics. We simply houseruled only 1 point of independent fighters per game.

Therein lies the problem and by extension, the solution. You recognized it as a ridiculous and ludicrous tactic yet you realized the power it held and house ruled against it. Not everyone was able to do that. There are people out there who will argue rather vocally that they were completely within the rules for doing this. And they're right. Sure they knew it was cheap and totally unrealistic, but the fact of the matter was that these fleets won and that was all that mattered.

In the end, if I had it all to do over again I would have suggessted that fighters as whole not be taken down quite as far as they were. I had the draft, I played with the fleets and thought fighters had been beaten back too much, but I didn't stand up at yell about it. In retrosepct. I really should have.
 
I was not involved in playtesting SFOS. Back when fighter swarms were a major controversy I posted to threads and suggested our house rule as a way to even things out. Unfortunately mongoose opted for the rather draconian slashing of fighters instead. Weaker hulls, non-precise weapons and no sudden death criticals, shooting last - I don't know which one was the step too far but somewhere along the line the balance slipped. EA being the most fighter dependent are feeling the results more than anyone else.

Getting back to the orignal topic my group have house ruled the Oracle a skirmish ship. It is not wildly out of place as one (compare it to a Sho Kar) and even if it is a little generous EA need the boost vs Minbari.
 
I would agree that the oracle should be dropped a level, perhaps make the beam weapon a little less potent, say 2AD and the particle beams 3 AD and hay it would be fine
 
Obsidian wrote:
I agree. My statements do not jive with Matt's. If you look at all the evidence in front of us though it is hard to dispute my point. There may be some hidden thing that all of us are missing and Matt step in to say "Have you ever noticed X about the EA?" and suddenly we will see what it is that makes the EA a good fleet other than fighters and interceptors.

I think we're in violent agreement. Either EA is broken or it aint. If it aint, would someone *please* tell us what we're doing wrong so we can quit debating and get back to playing. If it is, would someone at Mongoose please own up to it so we can, again, quit debating and get back to playing.
 
I think we're in violent agreement. Either EA is broken or it aint.

I don't think so. In my opinion, the EA are a bit broken. Why are they broken? Because what I believe to be their major gimmick was nerfed horribley in SFoS. It would be akin to keeping the Minbari damage and crews the same as they were in ACtA and then lowering the Stealth scores and changing stealth so that it was a roll per weapon system, not per ship while also reversing the 10" rule so that you gained a +1 when inside that range but suffered no penalty outside it.

As we've both pointed out, maybe someone will come along and say "No, no no... The EA's gimmick isn't fighters, its X" and we'll all say "Ohhhhhh. Now I see how they work." Until then though it'll remain a point of debate.
 
Basically i think EA need an extra 10% hits and crew on their ships.
That would bring the Omega up 44 hits like a primus.
Maybe some of the smaller ships won't need this.
I would have the beam weapons on Omega and Hyperion same front and aft.
I think mongoose overestimated the usefulness of interceptors.
They don't matter if you have already been crippled by beam weapons at range.
Maybe interceptors shouldn't automatically go when crippled as stealth doesn't and it's far more complex system.
 
Obsidian said:
My gut reaction is yeah, that's exactly what happened. Unfortunately, it doesn't really jive with Matt's assertion

I agree. My statements do not jive with Matt's. If you look at all the evidence in front of us though it is hard to dispute my point. There may be some hidden thing that all of us are missing and Matt step in to say "Have you ever noticed X about the EA?" and suddenly we will see what it is that makes the EA a good fleet other than fighters and interceptors.

I'd say new advantages are there to be found all the time.

I myself have found 2 very powerful uses for the squadron rules recently, one of which I had previously discounted out of hand as I had not fully realised it's existence. Building upon this realisation, I have literally as I type thought of a way to use Squadron rules ot help beat (Edited)

I sin't telling that easy :twisted:

LBH
 
I do not think fighters have been nerfed quite as badly as people are making out. Sure I never had a Big Wing Monkey in my gaming group (For which I am quite thankful) but I did find ACTA fighters a little too potent for what they were.

I am broadly in favour of the changes brought in with SFOS in context of the rules changes in SFOS.

They dropped AD on the fighter weapons (except for the Frazi and Nial). Not too bad, a fighter wing often packed more firepower than an arc of a starship (6 flights of Thunderbolts). The Frazi's still have the AD to maintain their reputation of good in an Anti-Ship' roll.

They dropped hull. Its not like you could strap much armour onto a fighter, I always thought that this was better represented as a dodge save, though a small part of the Hull score had to be made up by the difficulty to fire at a fighter. I think this is about right as it stands.

Dodge, did not change.

Wing Size, not really an issue unless you are re-stocking vessels in a campaign (I'll build a new Morshin thanks...), a couple of fighters here or there will not make much of a difference in a game these days. It should probably have been left at it was.

Firing last, a good thing. Lets face it a warship is bound to detect fighters on an attack run and send details to the relevent gunnery crews. But lets face it would they rather remove the Nova dreadnought cruising past with its broadsides rady to fire or the pair of T-bolts priming missiles? A fighter has to get well within a warships 'circle of control' to be effective, and the ship has much, much longer range guns that can be used if necessary.

Precise. I am glad they dropped this from fighters in SFOS. Why? Because it doubles the chance of scoring a Critical hit. Under ACTA I think it raised the odds to 1 in 4, in SFOS it is 1 in 3 with no chance of bulkhead hits. Leaving precise in would be seriously bad news.

What I think is wrong with fighters, and a suggestion to improve them, is their lack of ability to hit something as big as warship. I think Precise was mis-used in this sense of accurate shooting. It might be far better represented with the likes of the AP and Super AP traits. Now some of you will be thinking WTF that will make things too scary. But in a fighters case, there will be none of the Beam, or Double Damage traits lurking around too (unless you are the First Ones). It might make a better representation of a fighter pilot to accutately fire his weapons to cause damage to his target. It will not cause excessive damage, and is likely to score no more damageing hits than any other kind of shot. You are just more likely to hit that huge warship filling your cockpit window.

So we have four types of weapons that could reflect this, Weak, 'Normal' (no trait), AP and Super AP. What might be worth trying is bumping the trait of all fighter weapons (including missiles) higher up the scale and keeping the SFOS AD.
Weak weapons become 'normal'. (e.g. Sentri, Delta-V)
'Normal' weapons become AP (e.g. Star-fury, Frazi)
AP weapons become Super AP (e.g. Nial, Falkosi)
Super AP weapons remain Super AP (I have not noticed any fighters with Super AP weapons)

What do people think?

I have had some thoughts on EA ships too, but I will pst them another day.
 
Silvereye said:
Wing Size, not really an issue unless you are re-stocking vessels in a campaign (I'll build a new Morshin thanks...), a couple of fighters here or there will not make much of a difference in a game these days. It should probably have been left at it was.

Buying a Mordhin to replace fighters would rely on being able to deploy the fighters either seperately from the mothership, or on another mothership entirely, something we have not had an official ruling on.

Silvereye said:
Precise. I am glad they dropped this from fighters in SFOS. Why? Because it doubles the chance of scoring a Critical hit. Under ACTA I think it raised the odds to 1 in 4, in SFOS it is 1 in 3 with no chance of bulkhead hits. Leaving precise in would be seriously bad news.

Precise Weapons had a 5 in 12 chance of a crit, and a 1 in 36 chance of a bulkhead pre SFOS.
SFOS changes it to 1 in 3 (or 4 in 12) but no chance of a bulkhead. You gain at one end, but lose at the other.

LBH
 
Silvereye,

I was having a chat along similar lines to your "hit something as big as a ship" arguement this evening. I was actually thinking twin-linked might make sense for them.
 
I think mongoose overestimated the usefulness of interceptors.
They don't matter if you have already been crippled by beam weapons at range

so true

why not drope the presise trait and keep the figthers as they was ?

and make an offical rule that only one point of extra figthers

i think that be a good rule both fluffe wise and game wise

dont really see a huge amount off figthers going off to do battel alone
 
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