Sagittarius Missile Cruisers Nerf?

[Dies Irae]

I'm relatively new to the who "A Call To Arms" phenomenon, since I started playing during November last year, when I picked up the Revised Box, Armageddon and an Early Years box set.

Anyhow, I was playing in the store league when one of the players comes up and shoves a printout in my face, claiming my fleet is illegal.

Apparently, I had been playing with unupdated Sagittarius Missile Cruisers. I was slightly upset about this, and went back to do my homework, and found out he was right. Now, at this point, I'm really quite suprised.

I'm actually curious why the Sagittarius Missile Cruiser was beaten down in stats so horribly. I'm not entirely sure what the exact "standard" game is, but at my local store, the game is played at 3 Battle.

My tactics have so far revolved around Novas closing the distance while Hyperions move to boresight. The Sagittarius missile cruisers have always just sat at a distance and pumped shots into ships, partly as fire support, partly as initiative sink.

It may be my relative newness, but I personally fail to see how my three Sagittarius Cruisers constitute a major breach of game balance. With the new stats, I find them horribly outclassed by Olympus Corvettes which pack more firepower and survivability, even at Hull 4. Whereas they served as bombardment cruisers previously, slowly zig zagging forward to use the forward and side armament, I now find that I have one entire turn of ineffectual firepower. Even worse, with Hull 4 and their relatively short lifespan even before the nerf, I find my Sagittarius Cruisers getting completely eliminated from the equation before even contributing to the battle by Dilgar Disruptor Torpedoes, Minbari Neutron Lasers, Centauri Battle Lasers and Vree Anti-Matter Torpedoes, upon which my slower ships are then outmaneuvered and destroyed without getting opportunities to dish out much return fire.

Whereas, perviously, my Sagittarius squadron forced an opponent to decide whether or not to spend a turn or two trading fire to silence the guns or fire at the closing warships and take potshots from range, now I find them almost completely ineffectual, disappearing under a hail of directed fire which utterly mashes their weak hull.

I'm curious if other players have had the same experience. Also, if any of the more senior players has any suggestions on how to fill in the gap the latest Sagittarius downgrade has created in my tactics, I would like to hear it.

Anyway, for the record, my 3 Point Battle fleet consists of:
Hyperion Heavy Cruiser
Hyperion Heavy Cruiser
Nova Dreadnought
Nova Dreadnought
Sagittarius Missile Cruiser
Sagittarius Missile Cruiser
Sagittarius Missile Cruiser
Oracle Scout Cruiser

 

[Burger]

3 Sag's in a 3 point Battle game would not be too unbalanced. But 10 Sag's in a 5 point Raid (standard tournament fleet) is absolutely horrendous. That is why it was changed. The Sag was (and IMO, still is) vastly overpowered for its level.

What other Skirmish ship has 30", 6AD, SuperAP/Precise weapons? The Sag has this on both its P and S arcs! Add to that Flash missiles and it becomes even worse... 30", 6AD, AP/Double Damage/Precise..... OUCH. OK so they are slow-loading but who cares, so halve the attack dice to compensate for this and tell me another ship with as much firepower. The reduction in hull to 4 makes it a bit more killable, but still its offensive ability is much too high for its level.

 

[Alexb83]

I've never yet played against Sags in a game - mind you, I've never yet played against EA in a game. What can you do?

However, I gather that the complaints against the Saggitarius are age old and numerous, and they led to the recent official revision of the ship.

First, it's a Skirmish ship - it was hull 5, making it pretty durn tough as a skirmish ship, and with a damage track that some raid level ships wouldn't sniff at, at 25. Then there was the armament and range - 6 AD of precise slow loading at 30 inches range. Some races can't fire that far until War PL, one in particular can't until Armageddon.
Couple the range and no. of dice with the fact that you can have a fleet of 10 for 5 raid points (the standard game size), and you have 60AD of SAP missiles, or 30 per turn... no other fleet in the game can deal with that sort of damage output.
To be honest, the change hasn't done much to make them all that less atrocious - a few could still gut many higher PL ships before they could even reach range to fire back.

 

[H]

essentially, it Had, and indeed still has horrendous firepower for it's level. It might not have been so bad at 20" range, but 30" range sap precise weapons on a hull 5, decent damage ship really put it at the top end of Skirmish ships, indeed, it outclassed many raid ships. the "Nerf" was to make it more breakable for anyone who can actually get through it's barage long enough to shoot back, in a low priority game, few, if any ships could ever out range it. one compariosn could be between the Saggi and the narn Bombardment ship, the Dag Kar.
the dag Kar was ahigher priority, with a lower hull value, much less effective weapons, and a reasonably similar damage track. but you could have 2 saggis against 1 dag kar. round one would pit 12 SAP precise missiles against a hull 4 ship, agains 2 SAP precise torpedos in return on a hull 5(i don't remember if the sagi has interceptors) Yes the dag Kar also has e-mines, but they would take a heck of a long time to wear down a sagi, let alone 2.
The sagi is still a fine ship offering way more firepower than most ships in the skirmish class and it has the versatility to take missile varients as well. (yes so does the dag kar, but 10" range on a shipbuster means no firing of ship busters)

 

[Locutus9956]

the problem with the Sag was that as it stood it was devastating in raid and skirmish games. Its not so apparent in higher level scenarios where the firepower you can bring to bear on them is rather impressive generally....

Suffice it to say that if you think the Armageddon Sag isnt overpowered try playing some more with them....

Incidentally the new one will 9/10 times in my expereince STILL slaughter an Olympus, sure the Olympus has more actual firepower per se and its tougher but you have to consider what a huge range advantage the sag has and the fact that it has that firepower on the broadside means it can run away or at least avoid closing while concentrating firepower genrally.

Oh and one more thing you may not have fully realised yet if your fairly new to the game, crits in ACTA are just about the most devastating factor most of the time. Simply put crits win games, precise is in my eyes the single most potent weapon trait in the game bar none. Yes even worse than beam or triple damage.

Oh and to say that because its not better than the Olympus is not problem by the way, it may not look it at first glance but the Olympus is for its level, easily one of the best ships in the game!

 

[Chernobyl]

Dies Irae, the great thing is that you weren't playing with it in a broken manner, you were playing it in a mixed fleet. So its power wasn't as visible to you.
If you use nothing but Saggitarius, (use counters, or proxy other ships if you want) the ship becomes quite powerful because of the volume of missiles it can throw. Since it has missiles on every arc, essentially you can get a full barrage every turn, if you get the ship to face a different way on the next turn. Give it a try and I'm sure you'll see why the ship was toned down.

Chernobyl

 

[prelude_to_war]

Indeed, the Tournament Sag led to the GenCon Indy debacle in which one person quit the tournament and it was a foregone conclusion that the all-Sag list and Shadow 2xHunters+Scout would win it all.

In fact they came in 1st and 2nd respectively. In retrospect I should've left early too since my time at GenCon could've been better spent elsewhere.

 

[Reaverman]

3 Sag's in a 3 point Battle game would not be too unbalanced. But 10 Sag's in a 5 point Raid (standard tournament fleet) is absolutely horrendous. That is why it was changed. The Sag was (and IMO, still is) vastly overpowered for its level.

What other Skirmish ship has 30", 6AD, SuperAP/Precise weapons? The Sag has this on both its P and S arcs! Add to that Flash missiles and it becomes even worse... 30", 6AD, AP/Double Damage/Precise..... OUCH. OK so they are slow-loading but who cares, so halve the attack dice to compensate for this and tell me another ship with as much firepower. The reduction in hull to 4 makes it a bit more killable, but still its offensive ability is much too high for its level.

Agreed, no other race has anything so powerful at that PL. I kind of think it should have the range lowered to 20-25". Maybe lower the attack dice, but currently its still a powerful ship.

 

[Target]

The 6 AD might need to go down or take the missle from to F & A arc's and replace the fwd with pulse cannons.