Some thoughts on the Gaim...

[richardcarr]

Regarding the Photon bombs bypassing most defenses.

How about:

Call them Photon Projectiles.
Each turn a ship can choose to fire them either Focused or Burst.
If Focused they have the trait: AP
If Burst they have the trait: EMine
A ship must fire all its photon projectile weapons in one mode, so it can't fire 1 in emine mode to get the -1 to stealth and the rest as AP.
This way the emines are less likely to hit. And if fired as AP are suspectible to stealth, dodge and interceptors.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I'd rather see something like the pak'ma'ra plasma web rule. That'd give the Gaim e-mines with an obviously League tech base, but cut their range. Being able to blatt anything they want at practically any range is the major complaint with them.

 

[Ripple]

The strict time limits in tourneys do really hose a number of races. Abbai also have a hard time as they often cannot get any real headway for several turns of fire, and that's after several turns of closing.

I don't know that the game is balanced under time limits rather than turn limits.

ripple

 

[richardcarr]

To solve problem of being able to fire all the emines all round I spread the weapons around different arcs, e.g.

Sataaka Gunship
Photon Bomb 20 F 2 AP, Emine, Slow-loading
Gatling Laser 10 F 3 Beam
As it is an attacking ship emine becomes forward firing, added 1 AD to beam to try to make a real choice between it and the skirmish queen. It might even need 4 AD beam dice.

Shaakak Queen Light Cruiser
Photon Bomb 30 F 4 AP, Emine
Photon Bomb 30 T 4 AP, Emine

Shrutaa Queen Battleship
Photon Bomb 40 F 4 AP, Emine
Photon Bomb 40 F 4 AP, Emine
Photon Bomb 40 T 4 AP, Emine

Shuuka Queen Light Cruiser
Photon Bomb 20 F 2 AP, Emine
Photon Bomb 20 P 2 AP, Emine
Photon Bomb 20 S 2 AP, Emine
Photon Bomb 20 T 2 AP, Emine
Range reduced to 20 and the 4 weapons spread other 4 arcs.

Stak Scout
Photon Bomb 16 T 1 AP, Emine, Slow-loading
Left as it is, the ship is very weak and the weapon is slow-loading.

Stuteeka war cruiser
Photon Bomb 30 F 2 AP, Emine
Photon Bomb 30 P 2 AP, Emine
Photon Bomb 30 S 2 AP, Emine
Range reduced to 30 and weapons spread over 3 arcs. This stops the vessel being the long range bombardment vessel it is at the moment.

Generally I left 1 turret emine on each queen and spread the other weapons around the F, P & S arcs (I kept the battle level queen with 2 F arc weapons so that it can apply all its firepower in the forward arc, it is meant to be a battle ship after all and this means it can apply a reasonable amount of firepower onto 1 target.)

What does everyone think?

 

[Shadow Queen]

dont forget the aft arc you need something there for defence Mr. Carr

 

[LaranosTZ]

There are some that still have turreted, and not all ships have an effective aft arc. Look at the Pak's for example. So having ships with no back arc is not as huge a disadvantage...it just means they have to reserve some of their huge number of fighters to protecting their backsides.

 

[Greg Smith]

That is actually a pretty good solution, diluting the firepower quite a bit.

 

[richardcarr]

I went for a solution which kept the overall feel of the fleet but stopped the ability to put down all their firepower at a point on the table of their choice.

A few rules need clarifying:

Make Klikkitaks un-recoverable by a fleet carrier.

Flight computer and Protect the queen. The way I read this is that the -4 crew quality is a penalty, so all flight computer does is give a minimum CQ of 4 which with the penalty becomes effectively 0.

The fleet needs a choice at battle level, ideally an assault ship type rather than an emine lobbing carrier type.

I'm guessing that it'll get a war level queen at some point.

A dedicated assault fighter would be nice, a few more AD than the Klikkita without the suicide run but astmospheric so that it can support ground assaults. It should be swappable for Klikkitas on a 1 for 1 basis, or, if need be replace existing flights on ships as a patrol choice much like the Delta-V 2 and the Rutarian can be.

 

[Methos5000]

Flight computer and Protect the queen. The way I read this is that the -4 crew quality is a penalty, so all flight computer does is give a minimum CQ of 4 which with the penalty becomes effectively 0.

The flight computer actually gives the ship a CQ of 4 regardless of how far below 4 the actual CQ is. For example if you rolled a random CQ for a Gaim ship and ended up with a 3, the effective CQ of the ship is 4 due to the flight computer. If the Queens die your actual CQ would drop to -1 (if thats even possible) but the Flight computer would still give you a CQ of 4. The penalty for losing the Queens affects the ships actual CQ not the flight computer. Now if the -4 penalty would have been to CQ checks then it would impact it as you would subtract 4 from every CQ check you would need to make. But as its worded the Flight computer negate half of the Protect the Queens disadvantage.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Klikkitaks are already unrecoverable by ships with the Fleet Carrier trait. It's on p112 - last sentence in the fighters section.

 

[Tzarevitch]

Regarding the Photon bombs bypassing most defenses.

How about:

Call them Photon Projectiles.
Each turn a ship can choose to fire them either Focused or Burst.
If Focused they have the trait: AP
If Burst they have the trait: EMine
A ship must fire all its photon projectile weapons in one mode, so it can't fire 1 in emine mode to get the -1 to stealth and the rest as AP.
This way the emines are less likely to hit. And if fired as AP are suspectible to stealth, dodge and interceptors.

The problem is that goes right back to 1e where the player had to declare e-mine loads. I thought the whole point of the rules changes to e-mines was to remove this problem.

If nothing else Really what needs to be done is cut the mine range to 30", consolidate them into single batteries, and put them in discrete arcs. The queen battleship alone may have an argument for 40" mines.

Frankly I am still a bit annoyed that the designers saddled key Narn ships with 1-shot emines (G'Quan and Bin'Tak in particular) but then gave every-turn e-mines to the Gaim AND turrets to boot. You'd think the Gaim being insectoids would use the swarm and board model of fighting not cower and depth-charge.

Tzarevitch