After having seen the Gaim win the last Mongoose Tourney and defeat all comers at the campaign weekend (along with being a non-fun fleet to play against, according to all players that I talked to) I have a few thoughts about them that I'd like to put down in writing before they fade away.
Looking at the fleet, they have some obvious advantages against most opponents... a huge number of crewed missile fighters, horribly powerful assault troops, enough emines to wipe out any fighter screen, ships that are generally on the top end of their damage rating for their priority with either high hull values or buckets of interceptors and so many breaching pods that if you do finally manage to close, your ship *will* end up being boarded and captured unless you flee off the table.
To counteract this, they seem to have been balanced to have no short range secondaries and are mostly quite slow. However, these disadvantages are compensated for more than adequately by their extremely long range, turreted emines (meaning speed is not an issue for them) and swarms of breaching pods meaning that secondary weapons from other fleets can't be deployed against them without losing the ship in question.
The only fleets that I can see beating them are my friend TGT's tweaked Minbari fleet (Ashintas + a Veshatan) that has so much AAF fire, twin linked fusion cannon and a long range neutron laser on tough hulls (battle and war level damage at raid and battle level priority respectively) so that they can weather the emine storm for a long time before dying, shadows and vorlons (who have to blat a queen or two then jump out to avoid death and win a marginal victory on VPs). Drakh may possibly have a slim chance, but the number of precise missiles and breaching pods will most probably win through in the end. A Narn G'Vrahn in a 5pt raid may do enough to kill a queen or two before jumping out, but against most other fleets it will suffer ( a single big ship with minimal support isn't a good selection in a small game, especiallly when all of it's worthwhile firepower is in it's front arc)
Everyone else has to stay at range, meaning that all short ranged fleets or those that only have interceptable long range weapons cannot possibly win. At all. No one else's escorts are tough enough to take the emine hits (even a Halik will die in 1-2 turns from massed emine bombardment), and even if they do live for a turn or two, they only have normal anti-fighter that's insufficient to take out breaching pods quickly (that are speed 8.) so will be boarded and captured very quickly.
Here's a quick rundown on how I see the fleets I play fighting the Gaim:-
EA Early Era:
Massed Saggs may be OK, chucking out loads of missiles against a queen to hopefully knock down her interceptors, then bugging out off the table before they get boarded. Nothing else in the list will work (escort Artemis is too fragile, and will die early if the Gaim player has any idea of what he's up to) the Orestes will die to assault ships, breaching pods or massed fighter wings. It's also lumbering, boresighted and with a low innate initiative vs. the Gaim's +3 bonus, so after the Gaim kill all of it's support ships after 1-2 turns, it won't be firing at anything anyway.
Hyperions are too short range, and will be boarded, so I can't take them. Same with Artemis, Olympus, and everything else in the fleet that relies on interceptors to survive, and all of the Gaim weapons ignore them. Nova's have no AF at all, and 1 Troop. Breaching Pod fodder.
3rd Age EA
No Saggs, so you have to rely on Olympus' for missiles (too short on dice to blow through interceptors) and the only long range ships are the Omega and Warlock (which needs init sinks to boresight, so won't be firing it's laser after the third turn, at which point the assault ships will be close enough to board it). No escort in the fleet. Warlock too big to take at 5 Raid.
Crusade EA
Would be alright if they had an escort, as you could sit at range with Apollos and wittle slowly away at the Gaim, and hope to kill something eventually. Unfortunately, you don't have an escort so you're just going to get boarded. Next!
Narn
Yay for Emines! Unfortunately, you can't fire them every turn (except the pulsar mines) and you can't cover many arcs with them. If the G'Karith had 4 banks of 2 emines instead of 1 of 8, it might be useful, as it could quickly clear fighters. As it stands, Narn fleets are woeful against any sort of serious fighter fleet now that fighters launch in the end phase, as you can't catch more than a couple in one emine burst anyway if your opponent knows what he's up to.
G'Quans don't have enough laser dice to be much use against the Gaim. Also, like the rest of the fleet it's got no antifighter worth having. Dag'Kars only have hull 4, so will die quickly to emine barrages. The Gaim emines also outrange them.
The Bin'Tak may be OK for a turn or two, it's secondaries should actually get a shot off before it's boarded by the speed 8 breaching pods, as it's antifighter is rubbish. Front firepower is good, but only range 25 and speed 6, so you won't be shooting at the Gaim from turn 1 with it's lasers, which means you probably won't kill a queen with it before it gets eaten by Assault drones.
The skirmish ships will *all* die to emine fire really quickly, and are too short range to effect the gaim, anyway.
The T'Loth will probably be OK for a turn or two, and it may even take a couple of turns to get enough breaching pods on it to eat the troops. Unfortunately, it's firepower is not up to hurting the Gaim at all.
Brakiri
Massed Kalivas are the only thing that'll work... maybe 2 in 5 Raid with a Halik (that'll be dead after turn 2, or 3 at the latest if it closes blast doors for the first 2 turns). You'll be relying on punching through interceptors and getting crits to cause any serious damage, though. The Corumai may be alright... fire it in turn 1 then get it off the board, it's a boring way to play and you rely on beam luck to do serious damage, though. Everything else is too short ranged and slow to effect the Gaim at all.
Centauri
Liati's are brilliant, but die to massed emine fire too quickly to be worth using against the Gaim. 5 Sulusts would be OK if you get lucky with beam hits, they're quick enough and long ranged enough to do some damage, but it's hardly a balanced fleet. Same with 4 Elutarians and 2 Corvans (if there's terrain for the Corvans to hide behind, otherwise they'll just die on turn 1.) Both fleets here will be having to bug out after a couple of turns, though else they'll die to breaching pods again. Nothing else in the fleet is long ranged enough to engage the Gaim without being boarded.
What I think could be done to modify the Gaim so that they're more fun to play against:
Halve the number of fighters on their ships, and either give them 2 AD of Double Damage/Precise or 1 AD of Triple Damage/Precise to compensate. Half the carrier rating on all of their ships.
Halve the number of breaching pods (or even quarter them), and make them hull 6, speed 6, dodge 6. With all the precise ramming fighters blowing engines up left, right and center, the gaim should be able to board ships well enough without having any breaching pods at all. As it stands you simply can't afford to close with them. Ever. This makes playing against them lack any tactical flexibility, and absolutely no fun.
Both of the above changes should also mean that Gaim players have enough money to buy real fighters and breaching pods for ther ships instead of using counters all the time.
Get rid of their interceptors completely... after all, they have enough fighters to act as guards, which should make the Gaim commander at least have to decide what he does with them. After all, they have no secondary weapons, so where are all these point defense weapons coming from?
Drop all of emines to range 30. Or 20.
Change the weapons on the gunship... it needs more and better guns. Theres no reason at all to take one over the skirimsh queen at present, she's better against everything. Possibly get rid of the emine on it, and give it turreted mini gattling lasers (4AD of minibeam at range 10 or something)
Drop the damage of the assault ship to about 30, or the hull to 5. Replace its P/S/A heavy gattling lasers with light gattling lasers (6 AD of minibeam in each arc at range 10). At the moment, its such a strong ship the only reason it's not completely obviously over the top is that the carrier is also at raid level.
Give the Raid queen another bank of emines, she's rubbish compared to 2 skirmish queens.
Doing this would also introduce the usefulness of a bigger, higher priority carrier to the Gaim, which would mean another sexy model :wink:
Possibly a battle level, gattling laser based ship, too... that'd be cool!
And while I'm asking for the moon on a stick... a War level queen too, please
Looking at the fleet, they have some obvious advantages against most opponents... a huge number of crewed missile fighters, horribly powerful assault troops, enough emines to wipe out any fighter screen, ships that are generally on the top end of their damage rating for their priority with either high hull values or buckets of interceptors and so many breaching pods that if you do finally manage to close, your ship *will* end up being boarded and captured unless you flee off the table.
To counteract this, they seem to have been balanced to have no short range secondaries and are mostly quite slow. However, these disadvantages are compensated for more than adequately by their extremely long range, turreted emines (meaning speed is not an issue for them) and swarms of breaching pods meaning that secondary weapons from other fleets can't be deployed against them without losing the ship in question.
The only fleets that I can see beating them are my friend TGT's tweaked Minbari fleet (Ashintas + a Veshatan) that has so much AAF fire, twin linked fusion cannon and a long range neutron laser on tough hulls (battle and war level damage at raid and battle level priority respectively) so that they can weather the emine storm for a long time before dying, shadows and vorlons (who have to blat a queen or two then jump out to avoid death and win a marginal victory on VPs). Drakh may possibly have a slim chance, but the number of precise missiles and breaching pods will most probably win through in the end. A Narn G'Vrahn in a 5pt raid may do enough to kill a queen or two before jumping out, but against most other fleets it will suffer ( a single big ship with minimal support isn't a good selection in a small game, especiallly when all of it's worthwhile firepower is in it's front arc)
Everyone else has to stay at range, meaning that all short ranged fleets or those that only have interceptable long range weapons cannot possibly win. At all. No one else's escorts are tough enough to take the emine hits (even a Halik will die in 1-2 turns from massed emine bombardment), and even if they do live for a turn or two, they only have normal anti-fighter that's insufficient to take out breaching pods quickly (that are speed 8.) so will be boarded and captured very quickly.
Here's a quick rundown on how I see the fleets I play fighting the Gaim:-
EA Early Era:
Massed Saggs may be OK, chucking out loads of missiles against a queen to hopefully knock down her interceptors, then bugging out off the table before they get boarded. Nothing else in the list will work (escort Artemis is too fragile, and will die early if the Gaim player has any idea of what he's up to) the Orestes will die to assault ships, breaching pods or massed fighter wings. It's also lumbering, boresighted and with a low innate initiative vs. the Gaim's +3 bonus, so after the Gaim kill all of it's support ships after 1-2 turns, it won't be firing at anything anyway.
Hyperions are too short range, and will be boarded, so I can't take them. Same with Artemis, Olympus, and everything else in the fleet that relies on interceptors to survive, and all of the Gaim weapons ignore them. Nova's have no AF at all, and 1 Troop. Breaching Pod fodder.
3rd Age EA
No Saggs, so you have to rely on Olympus' for missiles (too short on dice to blow through interceptors) and the only long range ships are the Omega and Warlock (which needs init sinks to boresight, so won't be firing it's laser after the third turn, at which point the assault ships will be close enough to board it). No escort in the fleet. Warlock too big to take at 5 Raid.
Crusade EA
Would be alright if they had an escort, as you could sit at range with Apollos and wittle slowly away at the Gaim, and hope to kill something eventually. Unfortunately, you don't have an escort so you're just going to get boarded. Next!
Narn
Yay for Emines! Unfortunately, you can't fire them every turn (except the pulsar mines) and you can't cover many arcs with them. If the G'Karith had 4 banks of 2 emines instead of 1 of 8, it might be useful, as it could quickly clear fighters. As it stands, Narn fleets are woeful against any sort of serious fighter fleet now that fighters launch in the end phase, as you can't catch more than a couple in one emine burst anyway if your opponent knows what he's up to.
G'Quans don't have enough laser dice to be much use against the Gaim. Also, like the rest of the fleet it's got no antifighter worth having. Dag'Kars only have hull 4, so will die quickly to emine barrages. The Gaim emines also outrange them.
The Bin'Tak may be OK for a turn or two, it's secondaries should actually get a shot off before it's boarded by the speed 8 breaching pods, as it's antifighter is rubbish. Front firepower is good, but only range 25 and speed 6, so you won't be shooting at the Gaim from turn 1 with it's lasers, which means you probably won't kill a queen with it before it gets eaten by Assault drones.
The skirmish ships will *all* die to emine fire really quickly, and are too short range to effect the gaim, anyway.
The T'Loth will probably be OK for a turn or two, and it may even take a couple of turns to get enough breaching pods on it to eat the troops. Unfortunately, it's firepower is not up to hurting the Gaim at all.
Brakiri
Massed Kalivas are the only thing that'll work... maybe 2 in 5 Raid with a Halik (that'll be dead after turn 2, or 3 at the latest if it closes blast doors for the first 2 turns). You'll be relying on punching through interceptors and getting crits to cause any serious damage, though. The Corumai may be alright... fire it in turn 1 then get it off the board, it's a boring way to play and you rely on beam luck to do serious damage, though. Everything else is too short ranged and slow to effect the Gaim at all.
Centauri
Liati's are brilliant, but die to massed emine fire too quickly to be worth using against the Gaim. 5 Sulusts would be OK if you get lucky with beam hits, they're quick enough and long ranged enough to do some damage, but it's hardly a balanced fleet. Same with 4 Elutarians and 2 Corvans (if there's terrain for the Corvans to hide behind, otherwise they'll just die on turn 1.) Both fleets here will be having to bug out after a couple of turns, though else they'll die to breaching pods again. Nothing else in the fleet is long ranged enough to engage the Gaim without being boarded.
What I think could be done to modify the Gaim so that they're more fun to play against:
Halve the number of fighters on their ships, and either give them 2 AD of Double Damage/Precise or 1 AD of Triple Damage/Precise to compensate. Half the carrier rating on all of their ships.
Halve the number of breaching pods (or even quarter them), and make them hull 6, speed 6, dodge 6. With all the precise ramming fighters blowing engines up left, right and center, the gaim should be able to board ships well enough without having any breaching pods at all. As it stands you simply can't afford to close with them. Ever. This makes playing against them lack any tactical flexibility, and absolutely no fun.
Both of the above changes should also mean that Gaim players have enough money to buy real fighters and breaching pods for ther ships instead of using counters all the time.
Get rid of their interceptors completely... after all, they have enough fighters to act as guards, which should make the Gaim commander at least have to decide what he does with them. After all, they have no secondary weapons, so where are all these point defense weapons coming from?
Drop all of emines to range 30. Or 20.
Change the weapons on the gunship... it needs more and better guns. Theres no reason at all to take one over the skirimsh queen at present, she's better against everything. Possibly get rid of the emine on it, and give it turreted mini gattling lasers (4AD of minibeam at range 10 or something)
Drop the damage of the assault ship to about 30, or the hull to 5. Replace its P/S/A heavy gattling lasers with light gattling lasers (6 AD of minibeam in each arc at range 10). At the moment, its such a strong ship the only reason it's not completely obviously over the top is that the carrier is also at raid level.
Give the Raid queen another bank of emines, she's rubbish compared to 2 skirmish queens.
Doing this would also introduce the usefulness of a bigger, higher priority carrier to the Gaim, which would mean another sexy model :wink:
Possibly a battle level, gattling laser based ship, too... that'd be cool!
And while I'm asking for the moon on a stick... a War level queen too, please
