Proposal: The White Star - The Knife Fight Variant

[Methos5000]

Instead of automatically criticizing the 12" range test it first see what happens, lets get some battle reports from different perspectives and judge from there. If 12" ends up being too much for most people it can always be lowered.

Tell you what, instead of automatically criticizing the 8" range test it first see what happens, lets get some battle reports from different perspectives and judge from there. If 8" ends up being too low for most people it can always be increased.

See, works both ways!
Dave

Except that with 8" guns you remove all tactics when fighting against WS, why should you care about maneuvering and covering your ships when the enemy ships will be in range regardless.

With 12" guns the WS opponent still has to think tactically too. Abbai can move in and drop mines behind their ships restricting movement for WS for example (do they turn around inside the Abbai field of fire and risk having to dodge or do they take the emine hits and be guaranteed damage).

As others have mentioned its not like the Narn and Abbai have not gotten any boosts Abbai emines and Narn CBD will make things tougher for the ISA.

 

[CZuschlag]

Not all firepower is equal in all arcs. The White Stars will be looking for ways to stay out of F arcs, sinking out rear boresights, finding the ship on the edge of the fleet formation and piling on it instead of taking on the whole fleet, taking turns off to use their self-repair judiciously, deciding when to engage and when not to ....

... the only problem I have with short-ranged "Wolfpack" Whitestar is that they will tend to load up against a single opponent on a fleet edge. That, combining with their short range and the wish to stay all in one arc of the enemy, will put them often in close proximity to one another, thus making them very vulnerable to E-mines. I'm not sure I have a solution to this one yet. Still thinkin'.

 

[l33tpenguin]

8" is too short. I mean, we don't want to nerf bat the poor thing into utter uselessness. It should still be a viable ship. The WS shouldn't be vulnerable to every ship on the board. But it shouldn't be able to totally avoid fire as well.

 

[CZuschlag]

Don't get me wrong -- the 8" version would get a goodly number of Crew and HP back, and wouldn't eat the firepower restriction we have in place.

And, even in close range, the Whitestar would now be encouraged to offensively leverage Skin Dancing repeatedly --- very Whitestarish, and we haven't even examined the tactics of this trick. No ISA player has had to! Now, it becomes a major part of the ISA repetoire.

 

[kitsune106]

MIght want ot change skin dancing a bti then. Don;t want to lose all your white stars that shoudl not be ramming into the hull now due to bad rolls, no?

 

[Methos5000]

Don't get me wrong -- the 8" version would get a goodly number of Crew and HP back, and wouldn't eat the firepower restriction we have in place.

And, even in close range, the Whitestar would now be encouraged to offensively leverage Skin Dancing repeatedly --- very Whitestarish, and we haven't even examined the tactics of this trick. No ISA player has had to! Now, it becomes a major part of the ISA repetoire.

I would love to be able to use skin dancing if it didn't mean a 50% chance of auto death....funny that most people use Skin dancing as an easier way to ram with a beat up WS but I don't use it for that same reason....I want to be able to use it as it appeared in the show and I don't recall too many WS plowing into enemy ships (The shadow scout hitting the WS but that wasn't really skin dancing and that was a plot powered device if ever there was one)

But I suppose there are already other posts discussing changes to that...

 

[wpngjstr]

Yah; I don't use skin dancing because it's too bloody dangerous! At 5 pt raid that's potentially 20% of my fleet lost on a 50/50 roll- the enemy doesn't even have to do anything.

If the penalty were a little more reasonable, then it might be worth while, but right now it's suicide

My suggested change would be; keeping the CQ as is, a failed CQ causes the WS to be placed in base to base contact with the target, maintaining it's last heading, anywhere the target player wants (yes, that includes in bore sight) as the WS pilot misjudges the flight path. If the CQ check rolls a 1, then the WS plows into the enemy ship

This is likely to deny any firing by the WS, and likely to allow a good salvo from the defending player at point blank range; plenty of penalty, but probably not AUTO death, it also doesn't hurt the target so much.

 

[CZuschlag]

Yah; I don't use skin dancing because it's too bloody dangerous! At 5 pt raid that's potentially 20% of my fleet lost on a 50/50 roll- the enemy doesn't even have to do anything.

If the penalty were a little more reasonable, then it might be worth while, but right now it's suicide

My suggested change would be; keeping the CQ as is, a failed CQ causes the WS to be placed in base to base contact with the target, maintaining it's last heading, anywhere the target player wants (yes, that includes in bore sight) as the WS pilot misjudges the flight path. If the CQ check rolls a 1, then the WS plows into the enemy ship

This is likely to deny any firing by the WS, and likely to allow a good salvo from the defending player at point blank range; plenty of penalty, but probably not AUTO death, it also doesn't hurt the target so much.

This is cool! I instantly love this. I can't prove why, but this is very good. There was another Skindance fail rule out there too --- but this is good, also!

 

[Hindsight]

Yea, if we had more Damage, we could at least take advantage of the Skin Dance collision, if I remember right... its based on damage, how much we do to the enemy... so we're only doing what... 10? Not worth the loss, unless it is as good as dead anyway.

 

[Jetbaker]

I still say 8 inches is a good range for all weapons. I will admit I am a Shadow player but I still think it will work. I am not sure but I will venture a guess that a 8inch ranch Whitestar still has more survivability than the Shadow raid which IS 8 inches. My point is if other races that are almost as fast and more maneuverable can do it so can the Whitestars.

 

[l33tpenguin]

Yea, if we had more Damage, we could at least take advantage of the Skin Dance collision, if I remember right... its based on damage, how much we do to the enemy... so we're only doing what... 10? Not worth the loss, unless it is as good as dead anyway.

Sadly, it is so easy to ram with skin dance, most players with WSs that have lost their weapons on crits just skindance into an enemy. How the rangers became a suicide squad is a good question...

My suggested change would be; keeping the CQ as is, a failed CQ causes the WS to be placed in base to base contact with the target, maintaining it's last heading, anywhere the target player wants (yes, that includes in bore sight) as the WS pilot misjudges the flight path. If the CQ check rolls a 1, then the WS plows into the enemy ship

I would rather see a failed CQ result in the WS glancing off the hull, being placed into base contact with the target in a random arc, with no movement for the next round. I'm not really keen on letting the opponent choose the arc since it will almost result in a dead white star 80-90% of the time. A white star getting placed in the bore sight of an Omega? ouch. A roll of 1 being a crash sounds right to me, though.

 

[Foxmeister]

As others have mentioned its not like the Narn and Abbai have not gotten any boosts Abbai emines and Narn CBD will make things tougher for the ISA.

Against WS, the Narns won't be CBD'ing very often because they will need to Come About, or TTT more often than not. As for the Abbai "e-mines", the WS will almost certainly be able to avoid them.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Methos5000]

As others have mentioned its not like the Narn and Abbai have not gotten any boosts Abbai emines and Narn CBD will make things tougher for the ISA.

Against WS, the Narns won't be CBD'ing very often because they will need to Come About, or TTT more often than not. As for the Abbai "e-mines", the WS will almost certainly be able to avoid them.

Regards,

Dave

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on this point. I think a good strategy and starting placement will allow both of these races to be able to deal with the proposed 12" Whitestar while you want the to be sure that every single AD in the game can shoot at them. Maybe we should shorten the Vorchans and Demos Ion cannons to 8" also, as they can flank an enemy pretty easy and just sit there too.

*disclaimer* this is not a statement that those ships should be shortened just making a point that not every ship in the game can be shot at by 8" guns I fail to see why the Whitestar MUST be hit by every gun in the game.

 

[skavendan]

*disclaimer* this is not a statement that those ships should be shortened just making a point that not every ship in the game can be shot at by 8" guns I fail to see why the Whitestar MUST be hit by every gun in the game.

If it's in the aft which isn't hard to get into. 8" aft isn't that dangerous. Of course that is assuming there is no aft beam.

But I think this is well past the debate and needs play testing now.

 

[Foxmeister]

*disclaimer* this is not a statement that those ships should be shortened just making a point that not every ship in the game can be shot at by 8" guns I fail to see why the Whitestar MUST be hit by every gun in the game.

You might just as well leave them at 16" range, since the same tactics that need to be employed to engage a WS at 16" work equally well at 12" range, so there is little (if any) difference in the relative ability of the ship for most races. However, if the WS beam remained at 12", but the pulsars were reduced to 8" it might be a workable compromise.

The point is that a 12" range on the WS makes no difference whatsoever to certain races, so if it is an attempt to reduce its relative combat abilities it fails because it is not working across the board. The AD "nerf" does, but that fails in my opinion because I seldom see players using their WS to get into pulsar range anyway, except when facing races with 8" secondaries!

Also, calling it a "knife fighter" when it can operate well outside knife fighting range just doesn't make sense......

However, you are right, we are not going to agree. And that doesn't really matter because ultimately none of us "regular joes" are involved in the final decision making process anyway!

Regards,

Dave

 

[Methos5000]

Just to clear up some confusion I have noticed you keep saying 16" the current Range of the Whitestar Beam is 18". Its getting a 6" reduction under the proposed Whitestar.

 

[Foxmeister]

Sorry - I know it's 18" - just a mind crash!


Dave

 

[katadder]

8" is too short though as it means every fleet can just sit there on all stop and not even bother moving as the WSs come to them. I am in favour of 10-12" so at least the opponent has to do something.

 

[Rawwar]

They'd have to move if they wanted to draw a bead because if White Stars had to get within 8" you could bet they'd be making the most of their movement.

All Stop might work right up to the point where they move out of your arc. Wanna risk it?

 

[Foxmeister]

8" is too short though as it means every fleet can just sit there on all stop and not even bother moving as the WSs come to them. I am in favour of 10-12" so at least the opponent has to do something.

I'd be happier if the beam was 12" and the pulsars 8", otherwise as far as I'm concerned there's no nerf against many opponents.

Regards,

Dave