POLL Fixing the Swarm problem, FAP or crit system changes?

[mrambassador1]

In another poll half the people said the most important fix is to fix the swarm issue by introducing crit saves or some other kind of change to the crit system. So how many said yes because they like the crit save (or other change to crit system) and how many said yes because they want swarms fixed but this was the only option listed.

So, who wants to change the crit system, and who wants to just change the FAP values to stop swarm fleets.

 

[mrambassador1]

Ha! at this time 100% of people agree with me. Is it petty to close the voting now. It works for Mugabe.

 

[l33tpenguin]

Its actually kind of the same issue.

One of the most debilitating problems that face large ships are crits. When you have enough damage points to weather through a half dozen crits you are going to end up dead in the water when you still have over half your damage track left. A critted out ship with 500 damage points is just as good to me as a ship with 0 damage left.

On the other hand you have swarms that can weather crits just fine because they have built in redundancy in their numbers. Their ships are destroyed (i.e. sucked up their full amount of damage) rather than critted out.

Also, If you compare the full amount of damage points from a war point worth of skirmish against a single war ship, the skirmish ships will have more. So, not only is there more damage total to be delt, you can't stop half way through because the ship is adrift with no firearcs and no damage control.

 

[Hindsight]

This forum needs more polls.

 

[Ripple]

Can't actually vote, as both need some form of change.

As long as you have permanent crits, and they include no SA's and no Damage Control, the crit system won't work for larger ships that are supposed to weather storms.

The FAP system needs some adjustment, the current proposed change if fairly good, as it encourages getting closer to the the level of the fight. But, it leaves two holes, one is the constant step one down build... an issue at a Battle and above, and the other is fleets that don't have good ships at enough levels. Drazi and Raider are the traditional issues here, with Shadows and Vorlons getting honorable mentions.

Ripple

 

[mrambassador1]

I don't think it will harm the Drazi unfairly reducing the number of ships they can bring. Isn't the issue now that most feel the swarm fleets are too powerful. Reducing the number of ships they bring won't make them too weak, it will make them equal. Even for bottom heavy fleets they can still take the small ships to big battles, its just that soon they will only be able to take 25 instead of 40 sunhawks to a 5 pt Battle game. That's 5 sunhwaks per Omega instead of 8. If 8 is too strong for a single omega, 5 should do just fine. After a few months of playing we may find it needs more tweaking bringing it to 6 or 4 sunhawks per omega, but 5 is in the right ballpark and a good improvement for now.

 

[Foxmeister]

This forum needs more polls.

I disagree - perhaps we need a poll to see what the general consensus is?

Regards,

Dave

 

[Hindsight]

I'd vote in it.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Change the crit table. It's too harsh. Lower the damage and crew loss for all critical hits and remove some of the really crippling critical effects. It's just no fun when your war-level ship takes a no front guns critical in the first turn to a long-range, single damage precise weapon and spends the whole game trying to use piddling side weapons to kill patrol-level units.

Either that or introduce the "armour" concept that went around the forum a while ago. A number of the ship's hit points are "armour" points and until they're all gone no critical hits can be scored. It was pretty well-liked as I recall.

 

[Target]

Here's way i thought a new critical chart could look. It's more about degrading than losing entire traits/weapons etc
Hopin it would give bigger ships more of chance.
Thoughts ?

(1) Outer Hull
1 Ship moves before all others
2 -1 Speed*
3 3/4 Max Speed
4 -1 Antifighter/Carrier/Command*#
5 -2 Speed*
6 No SA

(2) Engines
1 -1 Speed*
2 1/2 Max Speed
3 CQ7 test needed to Turn
4 Lose a random turn (1-3) Port (4-6) Starboard
5 Behaves as Lumbering +1 +1
6 Adrift +2 +1

(3) Weapons
1 -1AD* per weapon system
2 CQ6 test to fire each weapon system
3 CQ7 test to fire each weapon system
4 -2AD* per weapon system +1 +1
5 -1 to hit +2 +2
6 -d6 AD* per weapon system +3 +3

(4) Inner Hull
1 -1 Troops - +1
2 1/4 Max speed +1 +1
3 Jump engine damaged @ +1 +2
4 CQ8 test to fire each weapon system +2 +2
5 -1 to DC rolls* +1 +1
6 Anti Fighter out +3 +3

(5) Crew Areas
1 -1 Troops +1 +1
2 -2 Troops +1 +2
3 -1CQ +2 +2
4 Ship moves before all others +1 +3
5 No DC this turn +2 +3
6 Ship behaves as skeleton crewed 2d6 4d6

(6) Severe Hits
1 No SA +1 +1
2 -1 to Defensive traits *#% +3 +1
3 -3 AD* +2 +2
4 -2 CQ +2 +3
5 Lose 1 Random Trait +4 +3
6 Ship behaves as crippled 4d6 2d6

Notes
Severe Hits can be repaired
* These are culmulative
# if multiple Traits present randomize
@ Treat JP created by this ship as it's been hit with a Shadow JP disruptor
% Defensive traits are Stealth, Interceptors, GEG, Dodge & Shield Recharge

 

[mrambassador1]

I still don't see why changing the crit system will fix the swarm problem any better than just changing the number of ships you get when you "buy down".
lets use a 1 battle point game as an example.
1 Omega Destroyer vs 8 Drazi Sunhawks

Right now I think we are all agreed that the sunhawks will win. I'd pick the sunhawks myself. but what about this for a fix (the P&P fix)

1 Omega Destroyer vs 5 Drazi Sunhawks
I think this is pretty even. what would you pick, sunhawks or omega (addressed to all readers)

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Changing the FAP breakdowns devalues lower level ships unfairly. A Sunhawk is worth what it's worth, it has an absolute ability to deal X amount of damage per turn according to its weapons. The same is true of an Omega destroyer, and indeed, every ship in the game.

If you change the way the FAPs break down so you get less Sunhawks per point you've devalued some ships and not others.

The actual issue of swarms is that 2 small ships have a better chance of critting 1 larger ship into uselessness than 1 large ship has of doing the same to them. One Omega can shred a Sunhawk a turn quite easily but killing one Sunhawk doesn't help it much when the other seven shoot back and cause criticals that make the ship worthless. They thus win the game.

We know from real-world naval history that large ships need escorts and screens to survive, but that's because smaller ships had torpedoes that could threaten them. A massed destroyer or even MTB attack could sink a battleship, and that should still be true in ACtA within the limits of game balance and points values. A point should buy you a point's worth of ships whether that point is split into a dozen escort vessels or a massive battleship. The absolute value should be the same and changing the FAP splits to penalise small ships makes that untrue.

 

[H]

which comes back again to the crit mechanism as the issue, Swarms ARE so effective because of it, remove crits and a swarm suddenly (baring cheese ships and uber beam rolls) finds itself struggling to dish out the damage quickly enough, even with crits, it took two sharlins 6 turns to destroy a ka'Bin'Tak in one game i played, with the KBT on speed zero from turn 2 (-4 speed crit it just could not repair!!) by the end the KBT had suffered 30ish crits, thats ridiculous! maybe there should be some kind of redundancy for larger ships, oh my, I've never heard that mentioned before. . . ;-)

 

[mrambassador1]

If you change the way the FAPs break down so you get less Sunhawks per point you've devalued some ships and not others.

Aren't we trying to devalue some ships and not others. I thought that was the whole problem with swarms, small ships are better than big ships. Aren't we trying to find a way of making small ships weaker without weakening the big ships (my way, reducing number of ships in buy downs). Or alternatively, making big ships stronger without improving the small ships (your way, making it harder to crit big ships than small ships).

One Omega can shred a Sunhawk a turn quite easily but killing one Sunhawk doesn't help it much when the other seven shoot back and cause criticals that make the ship worthless

killing a sunhawk a turn would help if there were only 4 others to shoot back (or 3 or 5 as the case may be in the future)

 

[mrambassador1]

which comes back again to the crit mechanism as the issue, Swarms ARE so effective because of it, remove crits and a swarm suddenly (baring cheese ships and uber beam rolls) finds itself struggling to dish out the damage quickly enough, even with crits, it took two sharlins 6 turns to destroy a ka'Bin'Tak in one game i played, with the KBT on speed zero from turn 2 (-4 speed crit it just could not repair!!) by the end the KBT had suffered 30ish crits, thats ridiculous! maybe there should be some kind of redundancy for larger ships, oh my, I've never heard that mentioned before. . . ;-)

What about a Ka'Bin'Tak vs 1 Sharlin and a Tinashi. would that be even? if not, how about a Ka'Bin'Tak vs 1 Sharlin and a Torotha, surely balance would be somewhere there or in between.

 

[wkehrman]

I chose "fix" the crit system, but I will reiterate that the fix already exists in Matt Sprange's WWII naval game Victory at Sea. For each 6 (five for precise weapons) roll one die. On a 4+ the crit occurs. Theoretically, it should reduce the number of crits by half.

 

[Foxmeister]

I chose "fix" the crit system, but I will reiterate that the fix already exists in Matt Sprange's WWII naval game Victory at Sea. For each 6 (five for precise weapons) roll one die. On a 4+ the crit occurs. Theoretically, it should reduce the number of crits by half.

I think that's too simplistic for ACTA given the way things have been balanced. Certain weapons are single damage, but precise, and the idea behind these is that it is the critical effects that cause the "real damage" (i.e. I'm not talking TD P beams here). Simply making all criticals less likely across the board really devalues those weapon systems.

Regards,

Dave

 

[mollari_uk]

Any change to the crit chart or crit chance makes all precise weapons worse and so every ship with precise weapons would need to be rebalanced.

Take a 6AD TD BEAM. It should average 6 hits and 2 crits. If average crit damage is around 2 then thats 12 extra damage so 30 in total. That's a huge amount of damage to take away or reduce.

 

[CZuschlag]

MoD is also similarly impacted (or even more so.)

 

[Ripple]

Mr Ambassador -

The undue hit to the Drazi is that once they reach parity with the enemy in ship numbers they begin to fail to get attacks, once they fall below parity they are pretty much done. It has to do with the bore vs initiative system.

(Oh and the Sunhawk is a terrible ship... never take it... guardhawk if you need a sink... boarding versions of one kind or another after that. Drazi need skirmish to get good designs. Sad because Sunhawks are supposedly larger ships in the history of the designs and should be better.)

Second issue is that Drazi, and some other races, have no good larger ships to buy. So when you give them less value for buying down, ie encouraging the use of larger ships, they find that their larger ships aren't worth their points, by design if the fluff is to be believed.

That said...

We ARE trying to devalue smaller ships to some extent, in that right now they have too much damage/crew, AD and crit resilience. We can go through and try to correct all those stats... or just get less for our money.

The issue is that the balance point is very different for different races. A narn fleet buying down to long range precise weapons will still crit out a bigger ship (fighters deplete the interceptors) larger ship, but the Drazi equivalent won't.

In most cases it's not the swarm itself that becomes the issue, it's the moderate swarm with a hitter or two taking advantage of the resilient sinks.

So the issue needs to be addressed from multiple angles... reduce larger ships vulnerability, reduce sink reliance, and reduce numbers of smaller ships due to the sheer bulk advantage they gain. (though Triggy will tell you that is balanced by proportional loss of AD as individual ships go down.)

Ripple