Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
Christ, Burger, are you actually agreeing with me? I nearly fell out of my chair! :shock:
Some thoughts on the Gaim...
- Thread starter Jim?
- Start date
Both me and 1 of the other regulars in my group saw the Gaim ships and were hooked.
We’ve only played a couple of games with them though as while they can be fun enough to play with none of our player group liked playing against them and to be honest neither of us wanted to play against them either.
We had quite a lot of problems with them
Flight Computers. Enough said really.
Non Queen ships having anti fighter or interceptors, considering how disposable drones were didn’t seem to fit.
The sheer number of breeching pods especially on the massively powerful raid assault ship. Not least of which because of the extra VPs for capturing ships.
Emines being AP or failing that not being slow loading and forward arced. Personally I favour just removing AP from them.
Their fighters being plus 1 dog fight is really annoying and not entirely fitting with the idea of disposable drones.
The fact that an enemy might win on VPs but is unlikely to actually be able to kill the gaim fleet before they are wiped out makes them demoralising opponents.
We figured as you get double VP’s for queen ships taking lots of queen ships balances out as you lose lots of vps for it
That said currently regardless of balance issues they don’t seem to fit the background and far more importantly they make for unfun games
We’ve only played a couple of games with them though as while they can be fun enough to play with none of our player group liked playing against them and to be honest neither of us wanted to play against them either.
We had quite a lot of problems with them
Flight Computers. Enough said really.
Non Queen ships having anti fighter or interceptors, considering how disposable drones were didn’t seem to fit.
The sheer number of breeching pods especially on the massively powerful raid assault ship. Not least of which because of the extra VPs for capturing ships.
Emines being AP or failing that not being slow loading and forward arced. Personally I favour just removing AP from them.
Their fighters being plus 1 dog fight is really annoying and not entirely fitting with the idea of disposable drones.
The fact that an enemy might win on VPs but is unlikely to actually be able to kill the gaim fleet before they are wiped out makes them demoralising opponents.
We figured as you get double VP’s for queen ships taking lots of queen ships balances out as you lose lots of vps for it
That said currently regardless of balance issues they don’t seem to fit the background and far more importantly they make for unfun games
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
Gah! You'll give me a cardiac incident... :shock:
Shadow Queen
Mongoose
do they have to be on the base or on the stem for hitting the ship?
Shadow Queen
Mongoose
rich put them around my omegas base ....... still think i should of had a nuke ....... :twisted: :twisted:
Shadow Queen
Mongoose
full moon could of been the weekend mate, just delayed efects....
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
Burger said:Wow must be a full moon or something
Also its strange that the crewed missile is harder to shoot down with anti-fighter than the standard fighter. The hull on the missile should drop back down to 3.
Maybe there's a whole load of blue moons all lined up out there beaming bozo rays into everybody's skull...
Agreed on the hull, though. It's rather bizarre that they get tougher as they near death.
Tzarevitch
Mongoose
Johnny D said:
As I said before, it feels like the Gaim benefited from new-toy syndrome. Since they were the newest race, the designers gave them pretty much every advantage (and I mean every).
1. Turrets mean facing doesn't matter.
2. 40" range means speed doesn't matter.
3. E-Mines mean stealth, dodge and enemy fighters don't matter.
4. Advanced Anti-Fighter is redundant as fighters will never reach them due to the e-mines but they too mean fighters don't matter.
5. Huge batteries of interceptors mean non-beam weapons don't matter.
6. Flight comupters mean that crew quality doesn't really matter (as much).
7. AP on the e-mines mean that high hull doesn't really matter (as much)
Hell why not give them dodge, GEG, stealth, huge hangars, shields and a Romulan cloaking device too. They are about the only things that the Gaim are missing. The Gaim are one of the newest races to spaceflight, how is it they end up having more technological goodies than even the Minbari?
My proposed changes:
1.Consolidate the e-mines into a single battery
2. Shorten the max range of the e-mines to 30" except possibly on the queen battleship.
3. Fix e-mines in a forward arc.
4. Remove flight computers for all except possibly the queen battleship. (The Gaim aren't that advanced. Why do they have this when the Centauri don't, EA doesn't and the Narn don't.)
5. Put limits on the numbers of queenships in the battle (perhaps no more than 1 fleet allocation point of queenships but the Gaim player may always have a minimum of 1 queenship regardless of cost.)
6. Gaim fighters loose their dodge (or are assumed to break up against the enemy hull) if they convert to suicide mode. I recall something about japanese kamikazis being easier than other fighters to hit in WWII because they couldn't dodge much and still hit their target reliably.
7. Remove the advanced anti-fighter. I don't think the Gaim need AF at all due to their hordes of fighters and e-mines really, but there is no reason why it should be "advanced" if they do keep it. Heck, give the Gaim some reason to not convert fighters to suicide fighters.
If nothing else, #5 and #6 of my proposed changes would work wonders and require only a minor errata rather than full re-writes. The culprit in the overpowered Gaim fleet is primarily the queenships. If you can only deploy a limited number at once a lot of the problem is mitigated. Plus this actually forces the Gaim to protect a limited asset.
Tzarevitch
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
The e-mines still negate basically every defence except raw hit points and make fighter screens basically irrelevent. It might take them a little longer to annihilate all your fighters, but if they e-mines they can still do it.
Make the suicide fighters the Gaim's primary striking arm with guns and the gatling lasers to back them up. This would mean the Gaim ships actually have to close to engagement range if you can keep the fighters off you.
Make the suicide fighters the Gaim's primary striking arm with guns and the gatling lasers to back them up. This would mean the Gaim ships actually have to close to engagement range if you can keep the fighters off you.
Lord David the Denied said:
Ever watch old WWII videos of the Japanese kamikazes? I think the reason they get tougher is simply that the pilots don't care so much if they get hit as long as they can somehow make it to the target. Considering that a major factor in negating a fighter is killing/disabling the pilot, I think it kinda makes sense given what we actually know about real-life examples. JMO though.
Lord David the Denied said:
So? There are combinations of abilities out there such as with the White Stars that negate almost every *offense* an opponent can throw at them. Why not the reverse? Turnabout is fair play IYAM.
I disagree completely. Not every fleet should embrace the engagement philosophy, especially not one with ships as slow as those of the Gaim. Again, as I mentioned before it seems the emines are what generate the hate because of what they can do so people want to eliminate them rather than try new tactics themselves. I may not have played *this* game all that long, but I've played these kind of games for a very long time and this is the same old argument that keeps coming up when a new fleet/army/whatever appears that happens to require different strategies to face. From what I have seen, limiting how many crewed missiles and/or breaching pods can get into contact with an enemy at any one time seems to greatly reduce their effectiveness. Then the emines don't seem so bad because guess what? You're not having your ships ravaged as quickly thus giving you time to actually engage the Gaim ships and deal with them.
As for the Queen limits, I was on about them only because an all-Queen fleet doesn't fit the background at all. They tell us the Queens are relatively rare, yet we can build fleet with nothing but their ships. They tell us the race as a whole values them highly and protects them at all costs, yet we can field a fleet of them with no other ships as protection. IMO it doesn't make sense. It's like sending a carrier into battle without its battlegroup. As above, JMO though.
Cheers, Gary
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
Ah, that old chestnut. Someone says the Gaim are broken, but they must just be too clueless to figure out how to beat them... :roll:
Foxmeister
Mongoose
To be fair, there's Gaim and then there's GAIM (if you know what I mean!).
Regards,
Dave
Regards,
Dave
Lord David the Denied said:
Out of curiosity how long have folks been playing Gaim? If they're new enough and few enough games have been played, maybe we (collectively since I got stomped by silashand) are not CLUELESS (which smacks of hyperbole) but perhaps we are INEXPERIENCED.
Again I suggest some discussion of what we've tried and what else could be wrong before we all run off screaming "broken, broken". I've played but one game against the Gaim and I'm willing to allow that my strategy didn't work. Why? At the heart of my strategy were four Myrmidons (lots of shots to thin out the fighters...or not) and they lasted two turns. I also had a Delphi and a Marathon. Guess which of my ships were gone by turn three and guess which of my ships had hardly any damage....
Of course the question that remains is will my plans for the Gaim work against other fleets?
Similar threads
