Ship Suggestions/Changes - ISA

[Everyman]

While I realize that not everyone will agree, I am going to start a thread for each race with which I have familiarity (so no Abbai or Drakh from me) with various suggestions that I have to better balance the ships. Feel free to comment, add your own suggestions, ask me to explain a suggestion or disagree in the thread.

Not much IMO to change with the ISA but here are my ISA suggested changes:

Liandrin: Increase Speed to 12

Nolo’Tar: Increase Speed to 10

 

[EDFDarkAngel1]

The ever famous "White Star should be boresight"

Dark Angel

 

[Garthim]

Agree with both your suggestions. It would be nice if they were both faster so they could keep up with the rest of the fleet better.

 

[Garthim]

The ever famous "White Star should be boresight"

If you boresight the white stars, you might as well be playing Drazi.

 

[l33tpenguin]

The ever famous "White Star should be boresight"

If you boresight the white stars, you might as well be playing Drazi.

Because changing a single ship to bore sight makes the whole ISA fleet, with adaptive armor, better turns, and higher speeds compairative to the drazis higher damage scores, nearly total bore sight weapons and higher AD

Actually, it creates a nice medium from the under powered 1 AD beam and the over powered 2AD on an already impressive platform.

THAT said, ISA and Drazi are similar already, They are both swarm fleets, drazi at scirmish and ISA at raid. However, ISA benefits from their primary swarm ship being forward arc rather than bore.

 

[Taran]

It's a lot harder to swarm with Raid lvl ships than with Patrol/skirmish/raid.
And ISA gets a LOT fewer beams, which means a LOT fewer chances to get runaway hits. Getting fewer ships also means that while it may be harder to take out a single ship, taking one out means a bigger impact for initiative and firepower...

 

[Burger]

Increase Shial hull to 4, to match the Nial, or make it 3 per wing. Currently Shial is just an underpowered Nial for the same price.

Losing a hull point (much more susceptible to AF fire) and an AD is too heavy a price for 1 speed and 1 higher stealth (which is useless in 99% of circumstances anyway).

 

[Locutus9956]

I'm strongly in favour of boresgihted WS beams but increasing the pulsar output to compensate rather than increasing the beam dice.

 

[Triggy]

Actually, it creates a nice medium from the under powered 1 AD beam and the over powered 2AD on an already impressive platform.

This is the point I think. Something needs to be done but there are a number of different options available.

 

[David Anla Shok']

Giving the WS boresight would be tolerable, add in another dice for the beam (give and take, after all). It would also immunize them a bit from the infamous "lose fire in one random arc" crit.

 

[l33tpenguin]

Giving the WS boresight would be tolerable, add in another dice for the beam (give and take, after all). It would also immunize them a bit from the infamous "lose fire in one random arc" crit.

I would think that reducing their vulnerability to that crit would be a give enough They were already given 2 AD. And a lot feel that that give is too much. boresight is the take to go with that extra AD

 

[David Anla Shok']

Giving the WS boresight would be tolerable, add in another dice for the beam (give and take, after all). It would also immunize them a bit from the infamous "lose fire in one random arc" crit.

I would think that reducing their vulnerability to that crit would be a give enough They were already given 2 AD. And a lot feel that that give is too much. boresight is the take to go with that extra AD

Sez you. Since the White Star is partially based on Minbari technology, and since 3 is sacred to the Minbari..........

 

[Ripple]

To me that is the issue...

The whitestar under the last edition was cutting edge good. The change to second ed made it better, relative to other ships/fleets, too much so in a significant section of the posters.

Any 'give and take' approach simply continues the status quo of the ship having 'too much'.

As to the 'might as well play drazi answer'... I'm honestly not sure you've played either race at all from your statement. The ISA is hardly made up of just the whitestar, and even if you reduce the arc on the primary weapon, you still have a fantastic secondary to draw on. Hardly drazi.

Play the whole race instead of just whitestars (and that includes using allies) and you play nothing like the drazi.

Ripple

 

[l33tpenguin]

Giving the WS boresight would be tolerable, add in another dice for the beam (give and take, after all). It would also immunize them a bit from the infamous "lose fire in one random arc" crit.

I would think that reducing their vulnerability to that crit would be a give enough They were already given 2 AD. And a lot feel that that give is too much. boresight is the take to go with that extra AD

Sez you. Since the White Star is partially based on Minbari technology, and since 3 is sacred to the Minbari..........

Under that logic, we should change all values of all ISA and minbari ships to 3. That would satisfy me just fine except the furies and t-bolts. those are from Earth.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

This is the point I think. Something needs to be done but there are a number of different options available.

Noble Playtester, did anyone consider a laser/pulse array style weapon for the White Star? It's implied in the early appearances of the ship that it can either fire those nose cannons or the beam, not both. Remember when the first White Star is attacking the Shadow Ship essentially for the first time and it runs in, firing the pulsars and no beams? When we see them later, the beam seems to replace the nose pulsars in some scenes...

 

[silashand]

Noble Playtester, did anyone consider a laser/pulse array style weapon for the White Star? It's implied in the early appearances of the ship that it can either fire those nose cannons or the beam, not both. Remember when the first White Star is attacking the Shadow Ship essentially for the first time and it runs in, firing the pulsars and no beams? When we see them later, the beam seems to replace the nose pulsars in some scenes...

Either that or variants with an either/or configuration.

Cheers, Gary

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Didn't the White Star fire both weapons simultaneously during the "Ah Hell" episode?

 

[lastbesthope]

Didn't the White Star fire both weapons simultaneously during the "Ah Hell" episode?

If not simultaneously, at least in quick succession.

My weigh in ont he F/B arc for the WS beam weapon.

Matt's told us all often enough that the beam was made F arc to reflect the superior manoeuvrability of the WS.

Looking at the on screen footage he has a point, when has a WS not been able to bring it's weapons to bear due to facing. If you make the Beam Boresight, you're going to need an SA or SM or something else that allows it to always have a chance of bringing it to bear.

LBH

 

[Foxmeister]

Looking at the on screen footage he has a point, when has a WS not been able to bring it's weapons to bear due to facing. If you make the Beam Boresight, you're going to need an SA or SM or something else that allows it to always have a chance of bringing it to bear.

Shame the G'Quan wasn't afforded the courtesy with regard to screen footage!

You could argue that 2x90 already does allow the WS to get a boresight most of the time - however, I do see a case for perhaps a Vree-style SM if the WS went to a boresighted beam. However, in general I think it's boresight that needs to change.

Regards,

Dave

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Personally I think boresight itself as a mechanic is fine - the main problem is the initiative system allowing less manouverable ship move after more manouverable ships more often than not. A secondary problem is that ships are being given a purely boresight weapon despite on screen evidence that they can fire at an angle.
Sure, fixing these problems would upset the balance of the ships, but the ships are only (very) vaguely balanced at the moment anyway. We may as well fix the mechanics and then fix the balance.

Back onto the subject of ISA - if you fix the initiative system, then there'll be no problem with White Stars having a boresight weapon - there'd only have problems boresighting the most manouverable of ships out there, and then against most of those ships they'll still have a chance of winning initiative due to the randomness of the dice roll element.