PL Slant between Races

[Sulfurdown]

I don't know if this has been touched on yet, but I was flipping through the Arma book and stopped on the pages for the Fireraptor and the G'Vrahn (which face each other). Now I don't play Drazi or Narn so maybe some of the players who do can speak up and let me know if I'm missing something.

First question is - "What...?" :? They seem to share a baseline of stats
Speed, Turns, Hull, Troops = All even
Craft = Arguably Even

That's all good but then the G'Vrahn has 129% the Damage and 120% Crew (Plus lower Skel/Crew score) over the 'raptor and it has enhanced special traits. The weapon payload is ... I'll say "In Favor of the G'Vrahn" in both the weapons' ranges and coverage and in fact they come out to around the same AD in the forward arc (G'V having a halo to protect itself). The only grace the 'raptor has is that it's weapons seem to be a little better at causing damage but you'd have to be right on top of a target before two thirds of the weapon power can reach.

What happened? Why so one-sided? Or am I just missing something?

 

[H]

hmm, can't say i had noticed, i'll go look. Well I dunno, sure the G'Vrahn has more bits, but an average 11 dice of beam a round plus 10 twin linked, and 10 double damage guns is a pretty hefty package. The G'Vrahn secondaries are not twin linked, nor are they double damage. it has less main beam dice (but double damage, meh) I dunno, I don't see it as a huge issue really.

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

From my reading of the fluff on the Drazi ship, I think it's supposed to be 'a bit naff', demonstrating that the Drazi arn't really any good at building really big ships, but that's just teh impression I got.

 

[Rynar]

Big Drazi ships need many Drazi crew.
But wen Green fights purple, many Drazi die and to few Drazi will be left for Big Ship.

 

[Ripple]

I don't have the book in front of me but was very disappointed that the ship didn't have anti-fighter to the sides or rear. I understand on the smaller ships this being the case, that whole 'fighter jock' thing they had going. But this is a war level ship, its too big and slow to avoid fighter. At a certain point you have to acknowledge that dogfighting isn't the only way to fight.

<I know these guys get portrayed as the clown princes of B5 but keep in mind that they have the biggest empire after the Narn. They have to have some military ability to hold their own for this long against the Narn and the Centauri, and the current fleet just doesn't look like it would hold up. The Scout with a 4 AD bore sighted beam is useless in its role as a scout as it can't defend itself from even single flight of enemy fighters being guaranteed to destroy it in time. Not to mention due to boresightedness it loses out on its scout ability most turns of a game due to the need to come about to wield its beam. Hull 4 ships with no other defenses that need to charge the enemy are useless, at least with only 14ish damage.>

Ripple

 

[Sulfurdown]

Is priority level supposed to indicate a ship's size? I've seen a couple comments about the 'size' of ships but I've always assumed the priority level was supposed to reflect combat capability and possibly how expensive a ship is to make and maintain.

 

[Commador Q]

i think priority level is supposed to reflect overall perfomance. hwever not all ships from a given PL are equal in a one on one. personally i don't see that as a problem as how the ship performs as part of a balanced fleet is more important.

 

[Ripple]

I hear that often, a balanced fleet, but we rarely see mixed ships being the stronger ones...often its a large number of one or two hulls that has been the winners.

That and if a ship underperforms for it's pl folks tend to just skip that pl and go higher or lower finding ships that are strong for their pl. The real exception here is for specialists (scout/fleet carrier) which most fleets don't have much choice on. The new Arm breakdowns have helped with this going down (often best to take as many pls as possible out of each point...but still common enough unless trying to get two pls apart. ie you want a raid and bunch of patrol...why not stop and get a skirmish.

Ripple

 

[Triggy]

I hear that often, a balanced fleet, but we rarely see mixed ships being the stronger ones...often its a large number of one or two hulls that has been the winners.

That and if a ship underperforms for it's pl folks tend to just skip that pl and go higher or lower finding ships that are strong for their pl. The real exception here is for specialists (scout/fleet carrier) which most fleets don't have much choice on. The new Arm breakdowns have helped with this going down (often best to take as many pls as possible out of each point...but still common enough unless trying to get two pls apart. ie you want a raid and bunch of patrol...why not stop and get a skirmish.

Ripple

This is more a fault of some ships being better than others rather than mixed fleets not being ideal. If all ship types were balanced then a mixed fleet (e.g. a few boresights, a few scouts, a carrier, support firepower and main front-line combat ships) would generally do better as they can all support each other in their best ways (i.e. you don't need a fleet of scouts as a few will normally do, you don't need a fleet of carriers, etc.). With some ships being better than others though, they tend to get taken disproportionately often.

 

[marsa10]

The problem with the Fire Raptor is it has been designed to show how badly the Drazi used the influx of new technology, hence:

No command
No AJP
Low Crew/Damage thresholds (the actual scores are pretty decent)
No kitchen sink

However I do have a problem with the fact it is 'slow' at (speed 8 ) which is as slow for the Drazi (whose designed 'racial strength' is supposed to be speed) as opposed to the G'Vrahn where speed 8 makes it a 'fast' ship for the Narn ('racial strength' hit points).

I was really hoping for a comparison league ship but all of the league races seem to have been given the 'Not made good use of new stuff' disadvantage.

Bit of a annoyance as the Earth, ISA and Centauri ships are really pretty harsh to take on with any league race (Not so bad with league as a whole but that is considered a bit unfair in my group).
Minbari and Narn do pretty well due to their original ship lists but Armageddon made it hard for me to win with Drazi, Vree or Brakiri.

 

[Destroid]

I was really hoping for a comparison league ship but all of the league races seem to have been given the 'Not made good use of new stuff' disadvantage.

The only counterexample to that would be the Z'Takk - it's got respectable Damage for its PL, Command +2 and can dish out a whole lotta damage, esp if the enemy don't have Interceptors.

IMHO, the Brickoki doesn't sound tooo bad on paper [apart from being the fully sick subwoofer in spaaaaacce] but lacks range on its secondaries. Has anyone ever fielded one?

 

[H]

I would have to disagree with the Brivoki not being a good use, sure it looks aweful, but that is one monster of a ship, the first ship to get caffed, is probably dead, unless it's something like a bintak, and even then it is probably critted out of the game. 16 dice of beam every other round, triple damage on one, precise on the other? sure it's secondaries don't have range, but fly a brivoki (very slowly) into an enemy formation and watch that formation fall apart, lots of damage, lots of interceptors, this is one of the better armageddon ships in my opinion. (and it is of course just opinion). I would rate it very highly, not quite as good as the Adira or KBT, but better than ea arm ships.

 

[marsa10]

OK I have now seen a Z'Takk used properly and it is pretty scary. Likewise the Brivoki is not a bad ship (I leave the question of it is a good ship open)

I think my problem with the league armageddon (expansion not priority) ships don't play like they are advanced ships.

 

[thehod]

any thoughts on the victory?


I personally see it as a sick sick ship especially with vorlon, Minbari, and EA tech makes for a tough ship.

 

[Burger]

Victory is cool but along with all Armageddon level ships, it suffers from the "eggs in one basket" syndrome. A couple of "lucky" crits against it and you're done for. A swarm of small ships will take it out nearly every time.

Redundancy 4tw

 

[H]

Victory is cool but along with all Armageddon level ships, it suffers from the "eggs in one basket" syndrome. A couple of "lucky" crits against it and you're done for. A swarm of small ships will take it out nearly every time.

Redundancy 4tw

Yup, Any big ship can suffer from one weapons offline crit, and you just then have a very RR intensive piece of scenery!
I can't see many things outright killing a Victory, but i don't see it finishing many games working!

 

[Burger]

Indeed, I'd rather take a 6-5 or 6-6 crit on my Victory than a 4-6 or even a 1-6 :lol: