Should the Vorlons and Shadows have more ships in 2nd Ed

[Da Boss]

maybe they continued the cephlapod (?) theme and could shift and change colours depending on mood?

2nd Ed should be the perfect opportnunity to make the First Ones proper fleets (with full exp tables)in the same way as they are doing with ISA (3 or 4 new ships mentioned / already out), some of the League etc.

 

[super squirel]

I want both fleets to be fully playable as normal fleets and a few more ships wouldn't go amiss.

I don't really like the idea of allies, lets face it, if it's that important, they will do it themselves. I think the Centauri etc would only get used for the small things / political tom foolery.

 

[Valen is my name]

Well Id be happy to have more ships to choose from but Id prefer not to go lower than raid in PL. Simply put even the smallest weakest ship they could build should be so technologically advanced and powerful that I cant see them coming in lower than raid and still feeling like Vorlons or Shadows.

agreed, thats why i came up with the idea of the vorlons using the minbari to do it for them, and the ancients wouldn't bother themselves at such a low level, they wold let their pawns and allies do it

and i suppose centauri would be the best for the shadows, or maybe the drazi until the drakh turn up? i think drazi would be better because the centauri were very busy with the narns, but the drazi were easier to influence and more willing to do it.

 

[tneva82]

agreed, thats why i came up with the idea of the vorlons using the minbari to do it for them, and the ancients wouldn't bother themselves at such a low level, they wold let their pawns and allies do it

Well Minbari's aren't exactly "hot" on <raid either :lol:

Torotha of dubious use and fighters and umm....Anything else?

 

[Valen is my name]

well fighters would be the main ones, but it would be better with minbari at low pl than vorlon

 

[Darzoni]

There are only two or three Vorlon ships I wish to see.

- Vorlon Scout
- Vorlon Planetkiller
- Vorlon Juggernaut (Maybe)

 

[Reaverman]

agreed, thats why i came up with the idea of the vorlons using the minbari to do it for them, and the ancients wouldn't bother themselves at such a low level, they wold let their pawns and allies do it

Well Minbari's aren't exactly "hot" on <raid either :lol:

Torotha of dubious use and fighters and umm....Anything else?

Lol, yeah but they have an option and 5 at raid, as opposed to one for the Vorlons :?

 

[Da Boss]

There are only two or three Vorlon ships I wish to see.

- Vorlon Scout
- Vorlon Planetkiller
- Vorlon Juggernaut (Maybe)

thats good - you want to see more - so do I! Don't want a carrier?

 

[Darzoni]

There are only two or three Vorlon ships I wish to see.

- Vorlon Scout
- Vorlon Planetkiller
- Vorlon Juggernaut (Maybe)

thats good - you want to see more - so do I! Don't want a carrier?

Maybe. Most carriers aren't worth their points, however. If there was a Vorlon carrier with a Lightning Cannon, perhaps.

[EDIT]: With regard to the carrier- it really depends on if the Vorlon Fighters get changed or not. Vorlon Fighters are hardly worth their salt because of their poor dogfighting ability. Any fighter from the big Four races slaughters them.

 

[Commador Q]

a couple points here:
1. regarding the drack, it was my understanding that the drack fought in the earlier shadow war (that was why they knew minbari, when they were fist encountered), just everyone had forgotten about them.
2. regarding vorlon fighters, i don't have much expierence with them but my opinionj is that they are actually a prety decent fighter. Their AF weapon helps make up for their lack of a good dogfight score, and with the beam trait they are decent for clearing out smaller hips taht aren't worth the attention of the larger ships.

as for more ships as a whole, I'd say there are 2 basic schools of thought on this:
1. as anchents the vorlons and shadows have been around long enough to know what works and what doesn't and they'd only use the best designes they'd come up with in their munti-thousand year existances. Thus they should have only a handfull of designes, each with the abilikty to fill multiple roles in a fleet.
2. because they've been around so long they hould have collected a good many varietys of ships, each speciallised to fill a single role to the best of it's ability.

personally i think the second philosophy best fits the vorlons as the force of order, whereas the shadows, believeing in growth through conflict would tend to have fewer more versitile designes.

so, yes on more vorlon ships, no on more shadow ships (except posibly variation within the same spider-crab designe).

 

[Ripple]

Shadows might have many designs...they have them regularly compete to see which is better...

From a strictly game point of view we should have more designs filling more levels. It would allow the races to play in a wider variety of circumstances. Tourney designs right now can be constrained as some fairly popular races cannot play at certain levels at all. You may not always be the best at a level, but you should still be able to play.

On the Ancients being too strong to have a skirmish/patrol level ship, why not as was stated above, 'non-combat' designs that would only show up when forced into combat. Explorers, frieghters and 'mother-ship' type carriers that stay in the safety of hyperspace under ideal conditions. All these could end up in combat if opposed by the shadows or another race which could take the fight to them. Wouldn't be first choices but the Hermes transport shouldn't be one either...its a transport not a war ship, what's it doing in all these deep space fights?

Ripple

 

[Da Boss]

all that Ripple said - Agreed!

 

[Commador Q]

every race has a patrole or skermish level unit (many races only have fighters at those levels, but those are at least theoretically still usable units) so there should never be a PL/race combination with no options at all. Even the Vorlons and shadows can field 2 fighter wings in a 2 point patrole game.
Of coarse there is the "fighters aren't ships" croud who point to the clause in most scenarios which states that a game ends when one player doesn't have any more ships, but i believe that rule was meant more to apply to support units that came free with a mother ship (and therefore didn't grant victory points) than indapendent wings. The logic being, once every viable source of VP is gone for one player the game ends rather than giving the other player a chance to gain more VP without risking giving more to his oponent. Of coarse i understand this whole set up was changed in Armagedon, and i suspect will probably be canged again in 2nd ed (or at least clarified signifigantly)

Atmitedly there is a sizable difference between being able to field a fleet and being able to field a competitive fleet, but that has more to do with overall cross race balancing than anything else, and as i understand it is being addressed in a larger context than simply "what ships can we add to make race X competitive at PL Y"

 

[tneva82]

Even the Vorlons and shadows can field 2 fighter wings in a 2 point patrole game.

And lose most of the scenarios automaticly...

but i believe that rule was meant more to apply to support units that came free with a mother ship

Too bad that's not what rules say nor has it been contradicted(and it has been asked on rulemaster forum).

 

[Triggy]

Yeah but I see his point. That rule is a quirk of wording anyway, in the future such situations hopefully won't exist and the winnner will simply be the winner.

Let's not forget the myriad of occasions in the show where fighters were all that you saw!

 

[Spike1382]

Yeah but I see his point. That rule is a quirk of wording anyway, in the future such situations hopefully won't exist and the winnner will simply be the winner.

Let's not forget the myriad of occasions in the show where fighters were all that you saw!

And the Narn fighters in The Comming of Shadows seemed happy to fight it out with the Centauri warships. There are lots of fighters that can travel at least one jump, if not more, so the idea of once side only having fighters and the other having some small warships isn't too far fetched. In a lot of cases it should be expected IMHO. Sometimes it is even the attacking side who uses just fighters. Epiphanies, for instance. B5 fighters against Psi Corps fighters and ships.

 

[Valen is my name]

but fighters against main ships would only be fair if the fighters had a damage level, or one kill took out one fighter instead of one flight

 

[daishi]

If my understanding of Vorlon & Shadow ships is correct these ships are alive even if that act automatically like basic organisms. So if this is correct are these ships actually built or are they grown ? if they are grown surely you could have lower PL ships.
If you take the example of the Zerg from Starcraft where they morph (evolve) into more complex organisms then surely you could explain these 2 races ships increasing in power or evolving into more specialist roles eg. light cruiser becomes a heavy cruiser ?

 

[Da Boss]

every race has a patrole or skermish level unit (many races only have fighters at those levels, but those are at least theoretically still usable units) so there should never be a PL/race combination with no options at all. Even the Vorlons and shadows can field 2 fighter wings in a 2 point patrole game.]

Yes theretically usable, anyone looking forward to taking a fighter only fleet at Patrol or Skirmish as Shadows or Vorlons against, well, pretty much anybody................ esp EA, Narn or Centauri.[/quote]

Of coarse there is the "fighters aren't ships" croud who point to the clause in most scenarios which states that a game ends when one player doesn't have any more ships, but i believe that rule was meant more to apply to support units that came free with a mother ship (and therefore didn't grant victory points) than indapendent wings. The logic being, once every viable source of VP is gone for one player the game ends rather than giving the other player a chance to gain more VP without risking giving more to his oponent. Of coarse i understand this whole set up was changed in Armagedon, and i suspect will probably be canged again in 2nd ed (or at least clarified signifigantly)

maybe, maybe not

Atmitedly there is a sizable difference between being able to field a fleet and being able to field a competitive fleet, but that has more to do with overall cross race balancing than anything else, and as i understand it is being addressed in a larger context than simply "what ships can we add to make race X competitive at PL Y"

or can we have more than 4 ships (vorlons) 2 ships now (2 versions of Shadow ship) of some of the most iconic and cool looking races in the show to give people more fun playing, painting them.........to give their opponents more fun in playing something new............I honestly can't see what is wronfg with having just a couple of extra ships even if some of the them are at higher levels where the First Ones are supposed to be pre-emient? Choice is good

 

[nitflegal]

I wouldn't have a problem with new ships for their respective allies, especially the Shadows. However, them having more varieties of ships makes little sense to me. The ancients are way past the point of needing a combined arms or balanced fleet for conquest or defense. They have a small range of ships to give them appropriate sized vessels to perform missions and that's really all that they need. Their respective cruisers are more than enough to whomp any other races when the need arises. From a Vorlon or Shadow point of view, what are the unfullfilled needs for ships that would require new designs.

Matt