Stems or bases?

[akenatum]

Alright the question is should mongoose make standardised bases for this game, or should all mesurements/contacts (ie breaching pods suicide flights others) be mesured to the stem?


I think they should make it stem for 2 reassons.... 1 Pretty much every model on a flight base will have a stem... 2 people wont need to go out and get new bases for thier fleets.

 

[richardcarr]

The big problem with using stems is that you can block access to it with just 2 fighter stands.

Stem contact also limits 4 pods/ fighters a turn. This makes ships with even half decent anti-fighter safe from them unless they roll really badly. Once you factor in Intensify Defensive Fire and Escorts, suicide fighters and breaching pods have effectively no hope against a good proportion of the ships out there.

 

[Omnipotent]

U measure from the steam. Fighters/pods may be placed on steams, this basically means u can get all the fighters you want attacking a ship, we always play that if you can get i.e. 8 flights attack within 2` then you just get them as close as you can, in space you can be on top etc. so I don´t see a problem with steam contact. Although I never encountered pods in my battles I would use em the same way. It is just the most logical/fair/easiest way.

It is of course a different think if there are alot of ships around and you can´t physically get the flights/pods at Appr. 2`(a few millimetes here and there) from the ship you want to attack then it is not possible(u can still put em on the base.

I think it is ok to assume that if you can get lets say 6 flights close enough but no more then you could say that is the max amount of fighters around a ship before it starts to get "to crowded" for the fighters to move etc.

 

[wkehrman]

I've no problem measuring to the stem at all. Standardizing the bases might cause stability issues for some of us. I'm very much about putting the Mongoose bases on larger round metal bases from Miniatures Accessories. This serves two purposes, it increases the stability, and it allows me to set the mini in a box lined with magnetic sheets.

 

[locarno24]

You're never going to get standard base sizes - there are too many 'generations' of miniatures and counters out there.

Lacking this, you can't say 'base' without penalising someone who's already got a collection of models.

'Stem' doesn't work either because (as noted) you're stuck with too few fighter bases able to get in close - even if you allow them onto the ship's base.

How about a compromise that the ship's 'base' - regardless of its physical size - is considered to be 1", or 2" from the nominated (if more than one) stem?

 

[eldiablito]

I like the stem thing. As it stands now, you don't HAVE to touch the stem unless you are trying to go on a suicide mission. All (unless there is one or two that needs fixing) have 2" guns, so that is easily going to fit around a stem (even if there is a few fighters in escort around said stem).

Also, if we do go by stem, then it will reduce much of the complaints about the Gaim, which is not a bad thing IMO.

 

[silashand]

As we have been discovering in our test games, enforcing stem contact reduces the effectiveness of the Gaim suicide fighters to almost nil since they only get one attack each. Even a mediocre anti-fighter defense will stop half or more and realistically, it means the suicide attacks aren't even worth it most times. This is exactly the opposite extreme from what people are complaining about with regard to the Gaim fighters. I know it's a different discussion, but I'm beginning to think the most appropriate solution to both them and breaching pods is to establish a set number that can get into contact in one go. Either that or a standard radius from the stem where they count as being in contact. Due to the non-standard bases out there, unless Mongoose decides to change that it means using bases as a reference is inherently flawed.

Just a thought...

Cheers, Gary

 

[nekomata fuyu]

How about saying that breaching pods and the like can only launch their attacks from within 1"?

 

[akenatum]

Actually if all "contact" was errataed to just be 1-2 inches from the stem that could work....

 

[David Anla Shok']

Perhaps simply stating a limit to the number of attack craft that can swarm over one ship or removing the "no stack" restriction from attack craft in this situation so that any stand that could reach the stem won't be excluded from participating in the assault.

 

[Romu]

Yeah i think it would work best, the base/stem thing isn't gonna work for everyone.

Just give a limit to the number of pods or suicide attacks that can be made on a ship per turn or something. Like 4 or 6 or whatever (can't really say, never played against gaim)

Or what could work (might be too complicated) but give a limit according to the size of the ship.

Like Limit is 3 for a patrol, 4 for a skirmish, 5 for a raid, 6 for a battle, ... you get the idea.

The smaller the vessel the harder it is to ram into it with your fighter, find a suitable spot to land your assault craft to board the ship.

 

[David Anla Shok']

Yeah i think it would work best, the base/stem thing isn't gonna work for everyone.

Just give a limit to the number of pods or suicide attacks that can be made on a ship per turn or something. Like 4 or 6 or whatever (can't really say, never played against gaim)

Or what could work (might be too complicated) but give a limit according to the size of the ship.

Like Limit is 3 for a patrol, 4 for a skirmish, 5 for a raid, 6 for a battle, ... you get the idea.

The smaller the vessel the harder it is to ram into it with your fighter, find a suitable spot to land your assault craft to board the ship.

You really couldn't do that by priority level. While it sounds good, in practice you can have very sizeable ships that are low PL because of timeline or commonality.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

One problem with the idea of just setting a limit on how many flights can "contact" a ship and using that instead of actual contact is that it rules out some defence tactics against such fighters/breaching pods.
At the moment, you can surround a ship with friendly fighters to limit how many enemies can get into base contact. You can also pack your capital ships together to get the same effect and to overlap some of the base contact area with another ship's AF. If you remove the need for fighters to actually be on the board within a certain distance of the ship, and instead just say that up to X fighters can make the attack if they're close enough to contact the stem, it messes up both of these defences.

 

[Poi]

I've voted stems.

You get around the fighter/pod problem by specifying how many can get in contact. Perhaops this should be part of the ship stats? For example, many more fighters should be able to get at an Octurion than can get at a itty bitty scout.

 

[locarno24]

The problem is that that involves adding more ship traits, which is yet another thing to balance.

Allowing fighters to stack is awkward for anyone who's got models rather than cards, and really awkward for people who've gone to the trouble of mounting them on proper flying bases.

I still think calling 'base contact' coming within 1" of the stem seems most efficient.

 

[Poi]

Specifying a range can be cheesed though.

I could mount all my fighters on individual pennies, and get a bucket full into 1" range.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

How about if we specified a minimum base size for fighters? It's nowhere near as bad as with having to deal with the ships as (a) you only have a single base size to worry about, (b) you can specify the size to be the smallest offical size released, and (c) if someone has mounted teir fighters on a smaller base of their own, it'll be easy enough to base that base on a larger base.

 

[David Anla Shok']

I suspect that a bit of S.W.A.G. would be involved here. Any sort of fighter tactics would require room to manuever, employ weapons, etc. One would have to "allow" a certain number of squadrons to make an assault per turn, perhaps "allowing" a larger number for assaults on larger ships.
You could possibly a greater number to be used but also "allow" for anti-fighter weaponry to be more efficient because of the target rich enviornment.
We could go any number of directions here.

 

[Methos5000]

I always liked the idea of adding a Base Contact line to all the basic ship data.

Basically it would list a number next to it and that is how many fighters/breaching pods can get into base contact of the ship regardless of how big or small the base is.

The base fighters (those without long range firepower) could have the range altered to "BC" instead of 2" and long range fighters would keep the longer range guns and their 2" guns would also be "BC" range.

The hard part being that the relative scale of ships is in question as there have been very few offical sizes ever listed for B5 Ships.

Balancing it out would probably prove rather difficult as well as what would be a good number of fighter bases to allow per ship.

A Base of 6 fighters is a good starting point but it seems odd that the same 6 bases of fighters swarming a Victory or Explorer could also swarm a much smaller ship like a Haven or a Bluestar for example.

Maybe something like 3 fighters against smaller targets and up to 9 against larger targets with 6 against medium sized targets.

Just a thought anyway.

 

[David Anla Shok']

I always liked the idea of adding a Base Contact line to all the basic ship data.

Basically it would list a number next to it and that is how many fighters/breaching pods can get into base contact of the ship regardless of how big or small the base is.

The base fighters (those without long range firepower) could have the range altered to "BC" instead of 2" and long range fighters would keep the longer range guns and their 2" guns would also be "BC" range.

The hard part being that the relative scale of ships is in question as there have been very few offical sizes ever listed for B5 Ships.

Balancing it out would probably prove rather difficult as well as what would be a good number of fighter bases to allow per ship.

A Base of 6 fighters is a good starting point but it seems odd that the same 6 bases of fighters swarming a Victory or Explorer could also swarm a much smaller ship like a Haven or a Bluestar for example.

Maybe something like 3 fighters against smaller targets and up to 9 against larger targets with 6 against medium sized targets.

Just a thought anyway.

Interesting thought. But 9 fighter bases? Ack.