Some thoughts on the Gaim...

[Methos5000]

Agreed on the hull, though. It's rather bizarre that they get tougher as they near death.

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.

So if we use this comparision should we remove dodge from the crewed missiles since they don't care if they get hit?

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.

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.

Whitestars pay for Dodge and AA by having the lowest (by a good margin) Damage and Crew of any Raid level ship. What are Gaim giving up by having a turreted emines that ignore most defenses? A vulnerability to beam weapons? Pretty much every fleet has that vulnerability.

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.

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.

Slow ships? So should the Brakiri be upgraded then? How about the Abbai? They are just as slow as the Gaim and they have no where near effective range of the Gaim and will get demolished by their fighters and boarding parties. And the Brakiri and Abbai are actually penalized by thier lumbering ships, the Lumbering Gaim ships only have Turreted Emines, so where is the disadvantage there?

If the Gaim are fine as they are then the Abbai and Brakiri need some major upgrades to have a chance against them.

How can you say that slow ships are a disadvantage when your ships are extremely hard to board and have no weak arc, when other fleets that are slow have some glaring weaknesses (short range or lack of arcs)?

This isn't even counting the virtual auto-win the Gaim have against the Drazi and ISA.

By default if a race can auto-win against any race it should be considered broken, this one can easily defeat two. How are they not broken?

 

[armbarred]

silashand,
As far as not every fleet embracing the engagement theory goes, you are absolutely right. But the Gaim embrace it above all else. That is an insect mentality if there ever was one. All of the warriors, pilots, drones, workers, whatever you want to call them are expendable.

1) emake emines a fixed arc, drop AP, and give them slow-loading
2) make Queen a trait
3) limit the numbers of Queens on a ship
4) lose Flight Computer
5) make AAF into AF
6) make crewed missiles like breaching pods, they just lose dogfights but still get to explode at the attacking flight(s)

I love the models. I love the concept behind the fleet. I just think they need some work to make them a fun fleet to play against.

 

[wkehrman]

It might be a good idea to remember that the books do not identify playtesters by their forum IDs. Claims that two or three playtesters were not happy is interesting information to which all of us are hardly privy. I would be surprised to learn that the playtesters are allowed to openly discuss the playtest process, and the ensuing arguments, with others. ktadder has at least identified himself as a v.2 playtester. Were you involved in both the rules and the fleets or just the fleets? This is important as, for our local group, the e-mine rule is what's broken, not the fleets using them.

I've seen this logic used from time to time as a bludgeon against outsiders. "I know a playtester who said something so now everything I say has to be taken for gospel." Or worse yet, "I'm a playtester, that's why!"

It might have been wiser to do the Gaim and the Psi Corps as an S&P article. Then, of course, we'd all be grousing about how they're not all in one book!

 

[armbarred]

Mongoose playtesting is fairly open, there are some restrictions but on the whole there are very little restrictions, especially after the fact.

 

[wkehrman]

Mongoose playtesting is fairly open, there are some restrictions but on the whole there are very little restrictions, especially after the fact.

So playtesters are fairly free to post gripes to the forum after the product is released?

 

[LaranosTZ]

Yup.

 

[silashand]

silashand,
As far as not every fleet embracing the engagement theory goes, you are absolutely right. But the Gaim embrace it above all else. That is an insect mentality if there ever was one. All of the warriors, pilots, drones, workers, whatever you want to call them are expendable.

I disagree. The Gaim may be insectoid, but they are *intelligent* insects. A distinct difference between those instinctually driven masses we know from real life. There is absolutely no reason to believe the Gaim would be so foolhardy as to embrace engagement so utterly as to ignore defense as you would suggest. If they did they would have been exterminated long before they reached the level they are at now.

As for removing dodge due to the kamikaze nature of the crewed missiles, I think downgrading it more would be more appropriate. After all, they still have to actually *try* to reach the ship they plan to ram. If we assume that no one wants to actually play as written and enforce contact with the stem at least for the crewed missiles, then dropping it to a 4+ or 5+ would seem more appropriate. Granted, it does drop to 3+, but I don't think that's enough personally.

FWIW, I personally don't think the Gaim are perfect. I do agree they should probably be changed, but not in the way people are suggesting. One thing I happen to like is when a race is portrayed accurately in the background and their rules reflect that nature. I don't think the Gaim have reached that point, perhaps because their background hasn't been fleshed out as much as some others due to the TV show, movies, etc. I think the essentials are there such as swarms of fighters, suicide troops, specially bred assaulters, and weaponry designed to complement that focus. However, I think the configuration of the ships needs a little work. For instance, I don't have a problem with 40" range emines if they were restricted to the Battle level (and someday higher) Queens. This represents the importance of protecting *those* entities as they are the elders of the race. Such advanced tech as necessary would be limited though and younger Queens should not have access to it. Thus dropping all Raid level Queens to 30" and Skirmish to 20" would seem appropriate.

If we keep the AD rating for each as it is now, perhaps the actual fusion bombs they employ should be a smaller radius, maybe 2" instead of the normal 3" to represent the difficulty of mounting a gatling style launch mechanism (i.e. how they achieve the turreting they do). Also, if we downgrade the emine firepower, then since their fleets are universally pretty slow they should IMO receive at least some other short range weaponry to act as point defense in case the enemy manages to bypass the fighter screen.

Finally, one of the things I see as a disconnect is the presence of Breaching Pods on anything but the assault ships. The goal is for the Queens to be protected, no? So why would they bother trying to engage the enemy in a boarding action when they should be trying as hard as they can to stay *away* from the enemy. The Assault ships seem fine as they are IMO and represent their purpose fairly accurately.

Anyway, just suggestions. I don't want to see the Gaim changed because someone's pet fleet got panned. I would, however, like them to better represent their background which coincidentally I believe would serve to balance them more effectively in the long run. JMO though...

Cheers, Gary

 

[Ripple]

A few issues with you analysis of the fleet.

One, is the idea that you have a fleet that essentially would try to avoid contact with the enemy. In a world where you cannot be intercepted prior to reach a valuable objective, most fleets would have to be designed to engage the enemy and stop it's forward movement. Otherwise fleets would chase you away while smallish numbers of ships bombard your home worlds.

Two is that I saw the breaching pods as the 'secondary' weapon the queens deployed. If you pushed through the fighters the assault drones were there to get at your crew, allowing the queens to bypass some types of tech, and capture others for their own use.

The e-mine has always been the confusing one for me, as it endangers their own primary weapons. Would have thought the lasers were a much better answer for them, and easier to balance.

Ripple

 

[Greg Smith]

I am a playtester. I do not usually jump to immediate conclusions, that this ship or this race is broken or useless. I do think something needs doing.

After the first tourney in which they were played, I wasn't sure whether there were just a couple of ships that were broken and the Gaim's opponents were struggling against a new race. However, this weekend, having seen how well the balanced Gaim fleet was doing and how sick the unbalanced Gaim fleet was, I do think something needs doing.

1. The emines are quite weak in terms of AD, but their striking range and the turret arc makes it easy for the Gaim fleet to concentrate their entire fleet's firepower on on single ship. And they negate defences that several races rely on. Suggestions: halve the AD, drop AP, drop T arc or halve range.

2. The Klikkitas are the essence of the Gaim fleet. As missiles they are a powerful anti-ship weapon, but they are expended. I wouldn't change them too much, except to reduce the numbers a few ships carry. Possibly stop klikkitaks from dogfighting or make them explode if stopped by an enemy fighter.

3. Breaching pods. They are a very powerful weapon for the Gaim. I might limit the numbers or simply remove them from Gaim ships altogether and allow them as a free swap for Klikkitas.

4. Traits: I have always said that the Gaim didn't need Flight Computers because of their crew numbers. Having them to negate the effect of lossing a queen seems a little cheesy. Lose the fleet carrier trait.

5. Queens. Queen ships should be tough, they give out double VP and have drastic effects on the fleet when they are lost. They should be survivable, but they shouldn't neccesarily be powerful combat ships or carriers as well. For fluff purposes I would limit the number of queen ships.

----
On the whole I like the way the fleet works, I like the way the ships look. The playtest games I did made them seem tough but okay - while they often killed all of the enemy, they lost due to loss of queens.



3.

 

[Burger]

Agreed all with Greg. Especially the flight computers. Losing Queen does virtually nothing because of the flight computers... whats the point of the "Protect the Queen" special rule?

And as LDTD suggested, crewed missiles should only last one turn. They are flying on oveloaded reactor cores after all. They should explode at the end of the turn, whether they manage to ram or not. This just seems so obvious.

 

[Ripple]

I think that is actually one of the major issues that Greg just mentioned.

If a fleet is losing on vps but wiping out the enemy, you have an issue, as vps aren't used in all games, and in a many games the vps can be manipulated to off set this. Given how easy they capture things, I'm not even sure that it is a valid off set, as they after get double vps for ship they take out.

In campaign games or linked tourneys, you have created a real issue, as even losing a round can mean nothing if you have wiped out the enemy fleet.

Finally, the feel of saying 'I won!' when you have in fact lost everything, is crap. I won a round of recon run against the local ISA player back in the 3+ dodge days, because I refused to bring my final ships in from hyperspace. Neither of us felt I had won at all, but by the rules it was a victory. It's actually our 'go to' story for the weakness of the scenario system with new players who want to know what we think of the downsides of the game.

Just saying... it should have set off a lot of alarm bells...

Ripple

 

[Tzarevitch]

you know at least 3, Greg if i recall also tinks they need change
2 fleets I dont think we really looked at enough or had enough time on were the Gaim and Psi-Corps, which is possibly showing now.

Don't forget the Abbai.

Tzarevitch

 

[Triggy]

The third playtester mentioned chipping in here - I'm similar to Greg in that I didn't notice a huge amount wrong with the Gaim at the point of release but we really didn't have enough time to test them out as thoroughly as we liked.

The first tournament played in 2nd ed had the two Gaim fleets finishing 1st and 3rd (with my EA finishing 2nd and katadder's Gaim finishing 1st IIRC) and although we didn't leap to conclusions, alarm bells were starting to ring and we definitely needed to monitor what happened in the future.

Now, with Gaim fleets routinely winning any tournament they enter and often neither player enjoying the game I think we've reached the conclusion that something needs to happen. Ideas are being bounced about and Greg's are similar to mine.

Finally, playtesters are allowed a say but generally we don't discuss personal issues or criticise anything Mongoose has done for us as a favour (after all, we have been asked to help them develop the game, not the other way around). We can criticise the fleets all we want but not Mongoose - not that we would as they've been excellent on the whole

 

[katadder]

nah i only came 3rd had a raid queen ship where as the other gaim player had the skirmish ones for same firepower on each
well at least I had models for my Gaim ships which he didnt

 

[Davesaint]

I would love to hear what Matt's opinions were regarding last weekends event, and the Gaim specifically.



Dave

 

[richardcarr]

The basic problem with the fleet seems to be the War Carrier and the Skirmish Queen. Reduce the range of their emines, ? 30 for the carrier and 20 for the skirmish queen and the other choices within the fleet start to look a lot more attractive.

The emines are only AP, so the 12 AD from the Battle queen will on average cause 5 damage a turn to a hull 5 ship, not exactly a lot of damage inflicted by a Battle level ship. They are by far most effective at clearing enemy fighters and sniping low hull/ damage ships. If the enemy leaves more than 1 ship within 6" it's a bonus but you can't count on that.

Although the suicide fighters ignore interceptors they can be shot down as they approach, intercepted by other fighters and finally by anti fighter. With only 1 AD each and at most able to get 8 stands/ counters in contact with a base they are not as fearsome as they first appear.

 

[Greg Smith]

The basic problem with the fleet seems to be the War Carrier and the Skirmish Queen. Reduce the range of their emines, ? 30 for the carrier and 20 for the skirmish queen and the other choices within the fleet start to look a lot more attractive.

Agreed. Those two ships are the biggest problem. A few less fighters on the carrier, a few less pods on the assault ship and it all starts to look a lot better.

The emines are only AP, so the 12 AD from the Battle queen will on average cause 5 damage a turn to a hull 5 ship, not exactly a lot of damage inflicted by a Battle level ship.

While the emines are not fearsome on their own, the problem arises when the whole fleet drops their mines on a single ship. 5 raid queens can drop their entire firepower on a single ship, enough to cripple a Tigara, or destroy a Leshath or Whitestar. No other fleet has the power to hit a single ship with all of its firepower at range and ignore most defences.

 

[Ripple]

Greg hit the firepower issue on the head... range and turret means you eliminate one ship a turn. Or given you are likely crawling along a board edge and your enemy is trying to close, likely you'll catch two.

I tend to agree that the fighter swarm itself is not that big an issue, from a fun stand point watching someone shift a hundred counters doesn't appeal to me. Adds a lot of time to each turn that actually is not adding to entertainment, no drama like a stop at the crit table can produce. If they would clarify the 'base' issue so we know how many fighters can touch it would help.

But, then you have the breeching pods. By the time these come into play there should be NO fighters left. Giving them a free run at enemy ships... often with no time to fire regular guns. For a number of races there simply no defense.

So you have three fairly rare weapon types, two of which have no active counter by the time they are an issue. That's to much...

Ripple

 

[richardcarr]

Despite my best efforts I didn't manage to capture 1 ship during the campaign, in games with a time limit breaching pods are more of a psychological weapon than a real threat.

Klikkitaks won't take out ships on their own, they are useful for causing criticals and weakening ships ready for assault ships and emines to finish off.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Given enough time your Kilikkitaks can deal with things like Vorchans or White Stars quite easily. You don't need to do that much damage to kill them and you've got ample flights to do the job with. Combined with e-mine barrages to take some hits away your Kilikkitaks can easily stop these ships.