Phaser-G Kill Zone discussion

[SneakyPete]

Playing with the new escorts I have found that the new Phaser-G weapons Killzone trait to be somewhat overmodelled. A small 110 point CLE unit can provide great escort defense or zoom in with APE to point blank range (and no APE energy drain to worry about) and unleash 8 Killzone Phaser G shots plus 2 Phaser 1 (also Killzone) gives it the hitting power of a Battle Cruiser or Dreadnought's phaser banks. Then they follow that up with 4(!) drones.

This becomes especially troubling to Plasma races as they are especially vulnerable now when reloading because the Phaser G armed escort knows they have no worry to save them for defense that turn. You might say that the Plasma race should then alternate their ships Plasma shots so there is always be a threat, but Plasma always works best with the 1-2 barrage, the first ships burns up the defenses and the second ships plasma lays down the hammer on the now defenseless ship. Except now it is even harder to get that burn through with escort defenses and once you do shoot, the next turn the escort ships (God forbid there is more than one) will make you pay.

While I like the new escort ships, I really question whether they deserve to have a Killzone. If you take a normal Phaser 3 and convert it to Phaser G you would think it would lose some of its power as it is shooting 4 times as many shots.

Removing the Killzone attribute would leave the great escort trait intact, but eliminate the abuse of them as assault ships. I think an argument could be made for them to lose Accurate +1 and Precise as well since they are a defensive weapon and cost so little in points.

Just Imagine playing against Orion LR's outfitted with all phasers including a Phaser-G in the front position for 95 points each swarming enemy ships with 9 kill zone phasers each turn and being able to get a free Phaser only energy drain SA every turn. I have never lost agame playing as an Orion before this rule, but now they are truly scary.

 

[storeylf]

Precisely the point I made in a thread recently, gatlings with killzone are offensive weapons first and foremost. Getting rid of the killzone will make them the weapons they should have been. Hyran escorts in particular with 5 gatlings (plus 1s and 2s) are seriously offensive ships, APE and unleash an average 32 damage each turn. The ability to stop drones/plasma, defend others, and deliver greater than DN firepower will make them amongst the most potent ships around. Gatlings are problematic in FedCom, I don't understand the desire to make thme the same in ACTA.

From S Cole on a request to bring in Fed escorts to FedCom:

We all know that you guys want to mis-used the Fed DD/FFE as attack ships because of their gatlings, which the SFB rules do not allow.

I believe he referring to some rule about what ships you could field, escorts only be useable with carriers.

Phaser 3s have the damage they do in SFB/FedCom to kill drones in those systems, but the same damage is used against ships, that makes them pretty nasty en-mass, and gatling give you that mass. ACTA has different anti drone mechanics, they only need to hit (or do 1 pt of damage), there is no need to give them killzone as they don't need it for their primary role as defensive phasers.

 

[scoutdad]

I proposed removing the Kill Zone triat from them during playtesting, but was over-ruled.
The current line of thinking is that the Phaser-G needs to mirror the phaser-3 stats, but in this respect, I agree with the OP.

I can see keeping the accirate and precise traits as these are functions of the targetting system itself, not hte phaser emitter.
But i always pictured the Ph-G as being a series of sort, rapid pulses rather than a single, long-duration beam. Imagine these pulses sraying an arc of pulses in the path of an oncoming drone/plasma...
Much like the US Navys 20mm Phalanx system. Lots of fire, but much of it never really connects with anything.

Of course, these rules are still playtest nad its up to us to convinve the PTB that revisions are necessary before the final rule is printed in ACTASF2.

My two Quatloos worth. YMMV.

 

[McKinstry]

I agree that giving Phaser-G's a kill zone is a mistake and at least in our group, they will be house ruled with the kill zone removed.

 

[archon96]

Im in the agree category with no KZ for PH G. If it still there ill just go all kamikaze build a fleet of escorts and get base to base with my target and unload.

 

[billclo]

Note that in the OP's example of escorts zooming around on APE, that's legal, but they then cannot fire their 4 drones if they used the phasers-only option.

Even in SFB, gatling-armed escorts could be deadly in close if they got within 2" of you. This does not appear to have changed.

I would suggest some rules in place to encourage (but not require) escorts to stay within X radius of their assigned target to escort. Any escort heading off on their own and abandoning their charge ought to incur some sort of penalty.

This would of course require rules that mandate that escorts have an assigned target to escort at the start of the game, which can be changed each turn, instead of flitting around the fleet formation winging it. It's not good for fleet cohesiveness, and would probably be Empire-wide fleet doctrine anyways.

For consideration:

1) Each escort that abandons it's "assigned charge" loses X points towards victory conditions, and has to make a crew check (CCQ 9?) to abandon it's charge. If it fails, it stays with it's assigned charge. This might reflect heated discussion among the command staff (XO vs Captain?) about violating established fleet doctrine.

2) Force any escorts abandoning their charges to fire LAST in the Attack phase. This could reflect crew dismay of violating doctrine/seeing command staff disagreement. Or that the crew needs to re-configure their fire control for offensive use from being slotted into the defensive fire network?

I have not yet played with escorts, so my comments are to be viewed in that context.

 

[Totenkopf]

I like Bill's idea, but rather than punish the player for moving their escorts away from a ship they're protecting, why not encourage? Say each escort has the ability to nominate a specific target per turn, and gets a bonus whenever they use their weapons to defend said ship? Should keeps things simpler.

 

[Da Boss]

In many ways its a pity that Point Defence Systems are not just that..............

Again if you want ships to stay together there are already squadron rules

 

[billclo]

Again if you want ships to stay together there are already squadron rules

Which don't apply in games under 2000 pts, right? And even under squadron rules, that escort is not prohibited from starting the game in a squadron and assigned to defend a particular ship, and then Turn 1, it leaves the squadron and flits around the battle doing whatever it wants.

I am coming from a background of SFB and F&E where escorts are assigned to defend certain ships, and don't abandon their charges. Others here may be used to the more loosely-goosy do your own thing in fleet battles, and that's a valid approach as well. I just want to find out which direction Matt wants to go with escorts; a more formal defend your charge or fly around doing whatever you want.

THEN we can debate escort rules more productively.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Let’s do some berserker comparisons then,

Escorts doing close range attacks. IE running in to base contact and unloading.

The Fed DWE has 20 shields and 16/6 hull. It costs 135 points. Assuming it can centre line a target with Phasers alone it has a potential of 12 hits doing a max of 24 damage. It has 4AD or either drones or ADDs for defence or to add some extra hurt.

The Klingon D5E has 20 shields (Klingon double) plus 18/6 hull costing 160 points. It has Drone 2 and ADD 2. Centre lined it has 10 Phasers in arc for a potential 20 damage.

The Tholian DE has shields 20 and hull 14/5 with a potential of centre lining 10 Phasers for a max of 20 damage.

The Kzinti have a 160 point MEC with 24 shields and 22/8 hull. It has ADD2 for defence and can centreline 9 Phasers for a max of 18 damage. The Kzinti EFF is a waste of time.

The Gorn BDE has 20 shields, 16/6 hull. Two Plasma Ds which can ADD or torpedo and a Plasma G. It can centreline a whole 5 Phasers for a max of 10 damage. The CLE has 18 shields, 24/8 hull, more offensive plasmas and 6 Phasers centre lined.

The Romulan BHE has 24 shields, 8/3 hull (dead to penetrating hits long before shields down. Centre line of 4 Phasers for a max of 8 damage and two Plasma Ds so a possible 2 ADD. The Sparrowhawk is much tougher with 30/10 hull. A centre line of 8 Phasers, four Ds for ADD use and one Plasma S torpedo.

Plasma or Drone attacks need to be shot down which takes firepower from the victim. Phasers will be generally hitting 3 shots in 4 allowing for 2+/3+ to hit.

The Phaser G armed Fed has an average damage of 18 from Phasers plus a possible 4AD from Drones.
The Klingon can do average 14 Phaser damage plus 2 AD from possible drones.
The Tholian has average damage of 14 from Phasers.
The Kzinti cruiser has 14 Phaser damage and a possible 4AD of Drones.
The Gorn BDE has a massive 8 Phaser damage and 5AD of plasmas. The CLE is 10 Phaser damage plus 10AD of Plasma.
The Romulan BHE has a whole 6 Phaser damage and 2AD of Plasma. The Sparrowhawk has 12 Phaser damage and 8AD of Plasma.

Without seeking weapons the Fed Phaser G far ahead in terms of damage done. Add in the Drones and you are looking at 32 damage every turn. The Best from a Plasma ship is the CLE doing 45 on one turn and a whole 10 the next.
The Klingon’s have less firepower but a much higher front shield making it very hard to stop them.

The Fed escort is Drone Proof on its own and capable of out damaging a heavy cruiser at close range. A CA centre lined for 6 Phasers, 4 Photons and a Drone doing a likely 8 Phaser damage, 8 Photon damage and 3.5 from a Drone. An NCA with 10 centre lined Phasers, 4 Photons and 2 Drones is putting out 29 on its photon turn and 21 on its reload turn.

In fact it takes a Kirov Battle cruiser with 12 centre lined Phasers, 4 Photons and 4 Drones to match the escorts firepower. 40 damage on the Photon turn and 32 on the reload turn.

Now the firepower of the Phaser G is close range, but then every other race adds banks of Phaser-3s to increase firepower so it doesn’t lose anything there. Even without Drones its firepower is every turn, the Plasma races can do damage but must reload. A Pair of Phaser G escorts can shred a Battle Cruiser in a single turn and since both can boost shields it is unlikely the BC can do more than blow down a shield and maybe do some internals.

Is that balanced. Against the non Phaser G races, nope. Just wait till the Hydrans arrive. Why bother using Hellbores if you have fast, cheap ship killing Phaser G destroyers.

Side note. ADDs must be allowed under the escort trait to defend ships within range. Otherwise non Phaser G escorts are far less worthwhile and unbalanced in a negative way. A Fed centre lined on the ship it is protecting has up to twice the Phasers of larger and more expensive Plasma escorts

 

[Captain Jonah]

Update based on the posts made while I was typing this.

I don't want to see the whole SFB escorts must be super glued to a carrier and can never be used without a carrier plus certain ships can only be used with certain carriers. The fleets should be players choice unless a tournament has special rules.

In terms of the Kill zone. A Phaser G is currently four times the firepower of a Phaser 1 at short range. None of the other games have it anywhere near being so powerful. Yes this is ACTA and not SFB or FC but still a Phaser G should not bring more firepower in a single mount than three Phaser 1s. In a game of “I move you move” it is all but impossible to prevent an escort or two getting into kill zone of a target, you just use other ships as Init sinks then jump on a victim that has moved.

Question here is, do you remove the Kill zone giving you 4 shots at 3+ doing 1 damage or keep the kill zone but remove the Accurate +1 giving you 4 shots at 4+ doing 2 each. Removing the kill zone gives a more consistent damage and makes sense for a defensive weapon. As escorts they are still lethal against Drones, they are just a bit less lethal against passing battle cruisers.

 

[Da Boss]

Sorry Bill - I meant if you want to think about rules for ships moving together the present Squadron rules would be a good starting point?

re Phaser3's vs Phaser Gs - I don't know who is defining the parameters of the weapon - it might be a ADB thing that it has to be the same weapon as Phaser 3 that fires more often (is that what it actually is or is it something else?) or i t may eb a MGo thing to simply stuff.

Dropping precise and kill zone but leaving accurate would certainly define its usefulness nicely with no rules changes needed. However isn't it a proper weapon for Hydrans?

 

[billclo]

Sorry Bill - I meant if you want to think about rules for ships moving together the present Squadron rules would be a good starting point?

re Phaser3's vs Phaser Gs - I don't know who is defining the parameters of the weapon - it might be a ADB thing that it has to be the same weapon as Phaser 3 that fires more often (is that what it actually is or is it something else?) or i t may eb a MGo thing to simply stuff.

Dropping precise and kill zone but leaving accurate would certainly define its usefulness nicely with no rules changes needed. However isn't it a proper weapon for Hydrans?

I did misunderstand you. I could see mandating putting escorts in a "squadron" with their charge, and moving them as one big unit.

In SFB, the Phaser-G is handled like 4 separate Phaser-3 shots, that can be fired at the same time, or spaced out during the turn. At close range it can do up to 16 points of damage (same as a overloaded Photon Torpedo). So 4 x killzone 2 shots = 8 points of damage, which is consistent.

I have no problem with the way the actual Phaser-G weapon is modeled; the issue seems to be the way the ship is used. I think some sort of doctrine-based solution is the way to go, encouraging players to use the ships the way they were meant to be used, but not REQUIRING them to so, rather than neutering the weapon itself because players MIGHT misuse it.

Forcing escorts used in offensive mode to fire at the end of the Attack Phase after all ships not using "Berserker Mode" might help in that it allows ships defending against the escort in Berserker mode to hit it hard before it can fire. Which is more "realistic" in that the escort has to close to point blank range before it can fire all those Phaser-3 or Phaser-G weapons. Plus if we use the assumption that the crew has to reconfigure it's fire control to offensive mode, it makes more sense.

 

[Da Boss]

The problem with having them fire last is then they can't fire to defend other ships when they are fired on or do you mean that all non defensive fire can only be used at the end of the turn?

Again the problem with that is that they might be dead by the time it come to fire the multiude of drones they all seem to come with or whatever else they have.

not easy I am afriad

 

[billclo]

The problem with having them fire last is then they can't fire to defend other shops when they are fired on or do you mean that all non defensive fire can only be used at the end of the turn? Again the problem is they might be dead by the time it come to fire the drone or whatever else they have.

not easy I am afriad

I did not think of that, but it seems to me that acting an "escort" and defending a ship ought to be allowed when desired, but offensive fire vs a ship ought to have a delay while you reconfigure your fire-control.

When you consider an escort that can blow your doors off at 2" range, are you really going to let him get that close before you fire upon him? Heck no, you're going to fire at the maximum effective range (probably 4-5 hexes in SFB) and try to put him out of the fight before he can get that close. Making the escort fire at you last models that in a crude way.

 

[Da Boss]

Might be better to just drop killzone and precise and make them pure escorts with limited offensive value?

You'll need to drop the points a bit maybe but it would be a simple fix - however they won't then be the same as in SFB / FC - which is likely to be an issue - even if the same problems (like drones) have already arisen there....

The other thing to think about if they are firing last - what happens when you have mutiples of them or even a pure Escort fleet which is legal?

And are the Hydrans supposed to use them as ship killing weapons??

 

[billclo]

I thought of something that might help. Since it is pretty likely that Matt is not going to want to put any restrictions on escorts, how about this:

Give some or all of the phasers on Escorts the "Weak Trait". The Weak Trait specifies that the weapons do no damage to ships with active shields, and have a -1 to hit. This would be consistent with the idea that the phasers on the escorts are designed to hit seeking weapons more than having anti-ship capability. Assign them an Accurate + 2 to offset the penalty associated with "Weak" accuracy-wise. Tentatively I would say assign the "Weak" trait to Phaser-3 or Phaser-G weapons and test it out.

So a Phaser-G with the Weak Trait can still shoot 4 times as a phaser-3 against seeking weapons with no penalty, but won't do any damage vs enemy ships that have shields up. If you insist upon going Berserker against another ship, you still can, but the timing will be trickier.

The problem of "Weak" weapons not being effective vs ships with active shields could be mitigated by firing other ships at the escort's target first to bring the shields down. However, this also allows the enemy to fire possibly several ships at the escort first before the escort can fire against the target's shields go down. So you aren't prohibited from using Berserker mode, but it means that several ships can probably fire at you while you close to point-blank range, hoping to hit a shieldless target.

 

[storeylf]

And are the Hydrans supposed to use them as ship killing weapons??

I think the issue there is that after 25years or so of SFB, and several years of FedCom, you have a system where Gatlings are used as ship killing weapons by any who can get hold of them - Hydran, LDR, Orion and Fed - because the system makes them so damn good. What they are supposed to be used for is another question.

Hydrans, as the original Gatling user had them instead of defensive phsers (Ph3s). They still had a decent mix of ph1s and ph2s, and heavy weapons - Fusions, and later Hellbores, not to mention fusion carrying fighters. It appears that really the gatlings were the Hydrans drone defense in place of Ph3s/ADD/ESG as they do a lot of fighting against klingons.

The Feds supposedly use them on escorts, don't get much more supposedly defensive than that.

Orions take them, not because of what they are supposed to do, but because of what they can do.

LDR, now you have a problem, the uber munchkin empire, they pack more Phgs than anyone else. On ships that have ESGs as well. The LDR arrived well after the gatling was introduced as I remember. The early Origins tourneys had 75% of players choosing LDR according to one ADB report.

I really don't think the Gatling was intended to be an offensive weapon. Even if it should be it has to been bourne in mind offensive use does not equal killzone. Photons and disrupter, plasmas etc have no killzone. A gatling with no killzone is still twice as powerful as a ph3 in its killzone range (and more potent than Ph1s), and 4 times more potent outside. A gatling without killzone still packs a good offensive punch. A Gatling with killzone is just straight out broken IMO.

 

[Talonz]

Phaser Gs *are* offensive weapons when you are a Hydran player. You cannot ignore that.

If escorts are the problem, address that while leaving the phaser G rules intact. Require them to only appear in carrier groups. Done.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Phaser Gs *are* offensive weapons when you are a Hydran player. You cannot ignore that.

If escorts are the problem, address that while leaving the phaser G rules intact. Require them to only appear in carrier groups. Done.

Speaking as one of the Plasma races who have sod all defence against massive drone salvos. NO :wink:

Phaser Gs are offensive alright. :shock:

Hydran close range ships have Fusion beams which are the nasty short range heavy weapon. These should be what you fear NOT the Phasers. As it stands a pair of Phaser Gs on a ship give it massive short range firepower which distorts the ship use. :roll:

This is ACTA not SFB or FC. If the intent of the Phaser G is a Defensive weapon then it needs toning down. Defensive ships in pairs should not be able to take down battle cruisers in one turn. A Fed escort should defend its fleet against seeking weapons by shooting them NOT by flying out and killing the ships firing the seekers.

The Fusion as the Hydran’s primary close range heavy weapon should cover the close range damage. The Phaser G should be cut free from its SFB/FC history and be left as a defensive weapon.