Random acts of Canon

[Apachex]

Reading the thread on the upgraded Shadows, it occurs there are several rules based on things seen once on the show that are contridicted many times. The "it was in episode X" canon argument always confuses me, as it seems to be used in an eratic way:

Some examples:

1. Jump Point Bombs -Seen once in "In the Beginning" Not used ever otherwise.....

2. Shadow F arc weapons? Huh? As another poster pointed out, they were never outmanuevered. The thing can roll and pitch at will, meaning it should be able to fire any direction rapidly.

3. Boresite Beams on the Omega. In several episodes we are shown Omegas firing their beams 'off-axis' (Both above/below the ship as well as left to right.)

4. Narn Energy mines: Shown once, mildly disrupted a Shadow ship. Meanwhile they use those beams Like they are going out of style.

5. Centauri Beams: The Centauri never fire a Beam in the show, yet it is their primary weapon?

Others?

 

[crucible_orc]

the Jump point bombs were used in the same episode as the Narn Energy mines as well. they prevented War Leader G'Sten form getting what few ships he had left out. Also, we never really see a narn fleet or ship engage at anything but close range ever again in the series. I would not want to be using energy mines ant anyhting under medium range either. However, that episode clearly showed that all G'Quans had at least one energy mine launcher.

other then that, I cannot fault any of your other ideas. infact i agree with the rest.

However, I'm often thought of as a wacko because i think that the idea of an omega being larger then a Star Destroyer is ludacris

Steve

 

[emperorpenguin]

2. Shadow F arc weapons? Huh? As another poster pointed out, they were never outmanuevered. The thing can roll and pitch at will, meaning it should be able to fire any direction rapidly.?

But their SM ability allows them to turn to face much easier than most. Having T weapons just means they need not worry about facing, skim past enemies (esp Vorlons) and blaze away with no penalty


As for others let's see

Attempting to open a jump point with a damaged engine can go very wrong (And Now For A Word) but not factored into the game

Minbari weapon names are juxtaposed (should be Neutron Cannons and Fusion Lasrers according to "Legacies")

 

[emperorpenguin]

the Jump point bombs were used in the same episode as the Narn Energy mines as well. they prevented War Leader G'Sten form getting what few ships he had left out. Also, we never really see a narn fleet or ship engage at anything but close range ever again in the series. I would not want to be using energy mines ant anyhting under medium range either. However, that episode clearly showed that all G'Quans had at least one energy mine launcher.Steve

Actually that's different, what Apache is referring to is the practice of opening a jump point on top of an enemy ship, whereas your reference is the shadow jump point disruptor

And only 2 of those G'Quan's fire energy mines..... :wink:

 

[Apachex]

the Jump point bombs were used in the same episode as the Narn Energy mines as well. they prevented War Leader G'Sten form getting what few ships he had left out.

That was the 'Jump point disrupter' I'm talking about opening a jump point on top of your opponent.

In the show the precision necessary for a White Star to jump in to an atmosphere required an advise team to establish coordinates. And they have several miles of leeway to work with. Hitting a ship requires precision to within a few hundred meters.....

 

[Apachex]

But their SM ability allows them to turn to face much easier than most. Having T weapons just means they need not worry about facing, skim past enemies (esp Vorlons) and blaze away with no penalty

Yeah, but that is pretty much what we saw them do in the original series. The only way the ships got beat was by a telepath preventing them from maneuvering.

 

[emperorpenguin]

But their SM ability allows them to turn to face much easier than most. Having T weapons just means they need not worry about facing, skim past enemies (esp Vorlons) and blaze away with no penalty

Yeah, but that is pretty much what we saw them do in the original series. The only way the ships got beat was by a telepath preventing them from maneuvering.

But you always see Shadow ships turning to fire and always from the same side

 

[Greg Smith]

The Centauri lasers comes from the information provided to Agents of Gaming by the makers of the show - apparently the diagrams of the Primus had lasers labelled on them.

Given the finite amount of information shown on screen, AoG had to extrapolate from that. Hence all G'Quans have energy mines. And consequently much of that information has transfered over to ACTA (especially since many people consider B5 Wars to be canon).

 

[Jhary]

But one other question is Canon Playable?

So lets see this Shadow where unbeatable a clear No. Until every ship has an Telepath on board and then its again not playable because you blast the shadows.

Centaurie this narn that in B5wars was this so. Just think we are playing ACTA and no Bloody B5war. There is a reason why they lost the lizenz and i don´t want to see that Acta is going down because some stupid Munchkin B5war gamers who Cry around and push everything to an Copy of B5War.

 

[Pauly_D]

AHHHHH!!!! another thread that ends up with the usual playability vs reality debate

 

[Apachex]

AHHHHH!!!! another thread that ends up with the usual playability vs reality debate

Then just walk away. Pretend you didn't see the message thread.

That said, I am not looking to bring back the B5 wars stats, I am refering to the bizarre way canon is used and then discarded to justify aspects of the game. The Jump Point Bomb is just one of the more bizarre ones. A rule based on one event in a Movie outside the main show. We see a JPB used once in the entire show, yet we have a rule that makes it look like an almost mandatory weapon for AJP equiped ships.....

 

[Greg Smith]

There were a lot of things only seen once in the show - e-mines, jump point 'bombs', jump point disruptors, shadow fighter launchers, shadow omegas. Some things were only mentioned a couple of times - including Minbari stealth. We only ever see one Minbari warship, two centauri, two Narn.

Space battles were a small part of the show. Therefore game companies have to take that little information and turn it into a workable game.

We only ever see the G'Quans fire in maybe four episodes. If one of those episodes show one fire an e-mine, anyone analysing the show is going to say 'Ah, G'quans have emines.' Then it gets written into B5 Wars and JMS declares B5W as canon. Ergo it becomes canon.

While Shadows never get outmaneuvered, we never see them fire anything other than forward and down. Now whether that equates to SM or the T arc is open for debate.

As for the Omega's boresight arc, I don't know where that comes from.

Jump point bomb tactics - it is a TV thing. A plot device used once and then forgotten. It should probably be harder in the game than it is (and will almost certainly change in the second edition).

 

[Commador Q]

my understanding of the jump point bomb issue is that it requires a ship in normal space to act as a "spotter" and some very complex calculations. now chances are unless you intended to use that tactic from the beginning you wouldn't have prepared the calculations or had a spotter ship in place.

However in ACTA you can't keep your enteire force in hyperspace, so you'll always have one or more ships that can be spotters, and because it's a game it can be assumed that if you choose to use a JPB that your ships had the nesesary hyperspace table and computers out and running at the time.

 

[Hash]

I'd like to comment that jump point bombs were not in the same episode as the Narn e-mines, at least to my knowledge, the Shadow Ships used their Jump Point Disruptors on the Narn jump points...Also G'Sten specifically gave the order to "fire two e-mines" which apparently had negligible effect. (EDIT - just saw EP covered that already - my bad! )

The problem I have with taking things from "canon" or rather one scene in the series in which something happens that suits the plot of that episode suddenly becomes a rule in ACTA that completely changes the feel of the game. JPBs are the perfect example...they happen once, it is emphasised how difficult it is to achieve to the point of being almost impossible...and yet every single tourney will have jump point bombs because in ACTA it is simply a "free" attack.

The Shadow Ship with only F firing arcs? Ok so in the series you only see them firing from the front...yeah in the series there is like only one episode where they hit something and don't destroy it in a single hit...do you want to reflect that also? The point is, while SM does represent how the Shadows moved in the series, the F arc makes the Shadow Ship NOT play like the Shadows in the series in most even battles, this is because maneuvering is about getting into a good position to fire and not having the opponent fire back and because Shadows:

a. Lack initiative sinks
b. The enemy likely outnumbers him vastly

What happens is the opponent moves one small ship way out of range, the Shadow player moves in quickly and runs out of ships to move and so is boresighted, CAF'ed, and surrounded by lots of other stuff that can often get completely out of the F arc (or simply out of range)....All I'm saying is I've played many, many games with Shadows and they simply don't reflect the series very well at all anyway...how often do the Shadows find themselves:

a) Out of range?
b) Unable to fire because their opponent has moved one ship out of range waiting for the Shadows to "finish" movement so they can attack out of arc?

Don't get me wrong - I can still play with them and enjoy it, but my play style has had to change a lot and personally I really wish the Shadows and simply reverted to their stats in the old tournament pdf but that's just me...I guess the point is this - I have absolutely no problem with ACTA reflecting the feel of the B5 series for all races...but I personally think you're kidding yourself if you think it does a good job of that and big changes because of one scene in one episode is absolutely not the way to do that.

Realise the above sounds like whining a bit...but I'm not really upset about any of that so sorry if it came across as moping, just my personal thoughts on changes because of fluff...

 

[thePirv]

AHHHHH!!!! another thread that ends up with the usual playability vs reality debate

Both are impossible to achieve simultaneously. Only one or the other should be even aimed for. Otherwise the two very conflicting viewpoints come into direct competition in practically every game played.

 

[Alexb83]

We do see the Vorlons outmanouver the Shadows, in the one on one engagement in S4 (fighters dancing around a Shadow Ship, I grant you)? Then again in the same episode we see a Vorlon destroyer blow a Shadow Ship to pieces in one shot whilst moving at a massive turn of speed... meh, try doing that in the current rules.

Rules =/ Canon in certain cases, simply because if they did, certain fleets would always lose, and certain others would always win when facing each other.

 

[Sulfurdown]

If I remember the episode you're talking about

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIZGDBkUfNU)

It seems that when a laser hit lands on the Shadow Vessels they stall out. But otherwise they are as maneuverable as Fighters (whitestars are almost as maneuverable as fighters as well)

 

[Alexb83]

I don't think I would call them as manouverable as fighters - it's quite clear that the swarm of Vorlon fighters overwhelms the Shadow ship, and destroys it, without it being able to lock onto or shoot at them (you can see it rotating wildly trying to get them).

The shadows and vorlons both have highly manouverable ships, and fast ones (fast enough to pursue a Whitestar comfortably in the case of the Shadows at least)... but they're still big, lumbering capital ships with limited arcs, shown by the fact that they both need to turn the spiky end towards their targets to fire (watch the opening to Season 3 credits to see the instance where the G'quan is destroyed near Z'ha'dum and the shadow ship has to turn to fire - or the video of Keffer getting killed, where the shadow ship turns very languidly before beaming his fury) and the engagements where the Army of Light starts to take on the Shadows (more instances of the beam hits paralysing the Shadow ships).

As for the Vorlons - it's shown in one episode (Sheridan goes 'out for a walk') that they can stop on a dime and turn easily thanks to their advanced grav drives - also it's shown that their ships are very fast... that's shown somewhat atm (Vorlon ships have better turns than most of their contemporaries at every PL - if you consider 1/90 to be better than 2/45)... but they are for some reason painfully slow in the rules.

To make them more manouverable, it might be good to let them automatically pass their CQ checks (it's not as if they have many SAs to use, anyways)... afterall their ships are biological constructs that shouldn't have morale issues.

 

[Hash]

You do realise the entire reason why the Shadow Ship turns to fire in almost every episode is featured is not because they wanted to illustrate it had limited fire arcs bue because it looks COOL when the big bad turns around suddenly and blasts you in the face right?

Likewise the Vorlon fighters swarming was also meant to look cool!

I think sometimes we should be cautious about implementing rules based ona single scene or episode without considering

a) How does it play or change how the fleet as a whole plays?
b) Does it truly reflect the "feel" and "spirit" of the show as a whole rather than reflect on particular scene?
c) Is it actually any fun?!

In my opinion the rules should reflect the feel of the show but we have to bear in my mind that the capabilities of any of the ships suited the plot for that episode...yes game designers have to extrapolate from the show to make a ruleset work but point c should be paramount in that decision making process.

 

[Triggy]

I'm 100% agreed on your arguaments Hash. In general and on the specific instance of Shadows. As a demonstration, in the MK tourney recently, with my ISA, I had four White Stars vs a Hunter and so long as I kept my first White Star either out of sight, or in a position where if the Hunter lines it up to shoot at then it would take the other three on CAF! This meant the Hunter basically never shot again in the rest of the battle, not because it didn't want to but because it really couldn't. Turreted weaponry for Shadows would be a good thing, maintaining their feel and altering their ability not very much.