The Vorlon Ships

[Rynar]

Hi all,

I am new to this forum and to be honest, quite new in this game.
I already am a profound player of Battlefleet gothic, warhammer, warhammer 40k, and others... The B5 game is still verry new to me.
When I started playing i chose to buy me the Vorlons, An ancient alien race with good intentions (until they started blowing up planets that is...) spoke to me as the kind I wanted to play.
But now I have played some games, It comes to me that they are quite difficult to play with, Altough they have rock-hard weapons they are limited in both range and quantity. Their hulls may only take half dammage and self-repair, but are quite easely to damage with AP weapons. + They take quite alot of wounds from twin-linked weapons and stuff. The fact that they are not so agile makes it even harder for me to get the enemy in my sights!!!

I'm a Vorlon with a headace from these problems, has annyone some ideas? Or does annyone have alot of experience in playing with the Vorlons?

Greetz, Rynar 8)

 

[Sky Captain]

I love the B5:ACTA system overall, and have been playing it weekly for the last year or so since it came out.

The Minbari make me cringe, but I am not sure they are "broke". They did help the Vorlons fight the Shadows 1,000 years before the TV show afterall. That and while it is tough, I have beaten them before.

The Vorlons on the other hand, might be. I understand they are hindered in some areas to make them a reasonable opponant in a Tournament. That was a awesome idea, and people like me who normally do not care for Tournaments are more willing to play when "uber races" cannot steam roll the event.

On the otherhand, I do not feel the Vorlons can reasonablly stand up against the Shadows in a match. Much less many of the other races. I have currently banned them from local Tournaments for their players own good in lieu of making up modifications for them. We only have 1 Vorlon player, so he can use any of my other 15 Tournament fleets. I would suggest against "Ancients" in Tournaments anyhow as they are on a totally different scale, and only came out once every 1,000 years to fight - usually using others like the Drakh or Minbari to do their bidding.

 

[MustEatBrains]

I must agree - from what I´ve seen so far, there is still quite a lot amiss with the Vorlons.

But I think that there would be only a few little tweaks neccessary to correct that - mainly increasing the ranges of theri weapons a bit (as it is, as soon as an enemy is close enough to be fired at, he will be in a prime position to outmaneuvre the Vorlons - and why is the Lightning Cannon of the Victory so much better than the Vorlon "original",even that on the Heavy Cruiser?), and possibly raising the Hull of the heavy Cruiser (and maybe also the light cruiser) to "6" - this will still make them easy enough to damage with the "Big Guns" (namely everything with AP or Super AP), but give them a little more resistance to everything else.

If there is one fleet they should definitlely be the equal of, it´s the Shadows - just remeber Season 3, when the Vorlons attacked the Shadows for the first time: they wiped the floor with them - while that would mainly be because of the advantage of surprising the Shadows, the Vorlons in ACTA still are not quite where they should be, I think...

 

[Silvereye]

Whilst certainly difficult to play, it is probably the damage system used against the living ships that causes the most of the problems. Tweak it back to something sensible where the younger races big guns do not savage the ships so much then they might have more of a chance.

Another one might be to upgrade the ships abilities and weapons, but add in damage thresholds, where once reached they begin to suffer as the wounds sustained impair the ship.

 

[Twin-Linked Aldades]

A big problem Rynar has in our campaign is the ISA, my White Stars can easily zip behind him (one or two incoming salvo's on the lower level games, which off course with the modifiers I try never to exceed Raid level) and fighter wings getting in his back and sides.

Against the 'harder hitters' like the EA and Centauri he can get more shots off, but the amount of return fire is equally lethal, though the Vorlons can deal more damage then as well (if they hit, they usually hit decently).

But I find that overall, they are to 'unmanouvrable' to deal effectively with fast ships to react once the T has been crossed. Just my 2 cents

 

[prelude_to_war]

In the show they did seem more agile than their stats indicate.

Also, the special damage table they use seems a bit much. Enter DD or TD and game over. Is the lack of crew vulnerability supposed to offset this?

 

[Tolwyn]

I agree too, that both first ones are too weak, not only the Vorlons.

The special rule which allows an opponent to use a D6 multiplied by DD an TD for damage instead for 1 point per AD modified by DD TD is very bad.
IMO it should be put aside. The old Vorlons eand Shadows from the first "Call to Arms" edition were very better then the new ones.

 

[Pigeon Smythe]

you must be kidding tolwyn

is would take forever to kill a volorn heavy cruiser if you halved damage and still had to do 100 damage with it on self repair 2D6, they would be unkillable unless you fired everything in your fleet at one heavy cruiser for 2 turns you might scratch it while you got your but kicked.

the damage system works fine

the problem is that shadows stealth should be improved by one each and vorlorns armour should be one higher each

also the volorns should all get their turns improved by 45 (either one extra turn of 45 or one extra of 90 depending on what they already have)

these changes and the volorns would be dangerous and the shadows are already quite good +1 stealth would make them like they should be

 

[Pauly_D]

i know that atm the Vorlon rules are a little weak, but mongoose are doing something about it, when the Tournament rules come out the Vorlons will kick ass like they should do

 

[Tolwyn]

I hope so.

In all my games with my Vorlons I lost.

These D6 with multipliers can be very nasty. When your opponent has a lucky day he can cause considerable damage with few ships.
Even massed fighters can cause massive damage to a Vorlon cruiser and there is no Carrier at all to bring fighters into battle for them.
IMO the Adaptive Armors just slows the inevitable a bit.

I'm a bit disappointed by the first ones,
I had higher expectations when I saw the show.

 

[Pauly_D]

Well with the new tournament rules i have only seen the Vorlons lose once (to the Shadows)

 

[Tolwyn]

Nice to hear

 

[Right Hand of God]

are these tournament rules for tournaments only though or are they a general fix to the problems Vorlons and to a lesser extent shadows now have?

In a recent game 2 of my heavy cruisers had had 93 and 97 points of damage inflicted on them by 4 omegas at the end of the first round of shooting!

 

[Balance]

are these tournament rules for tournaments only though or are they a general fix to the problems Vorlons and to a lesser extent shadows now have?

I think they're intended for tournaments only, but we will see...

 

[lastbesthope]

IIRC, they are intended for use in tourneys to shift the fleet balance in the direction of use in one off games, rathwer than the campaign bias that seems to be in the fleet lists as they currently stand.

LBH

 

[prelude_to_war]

When are these being released?

 

[lastbesthope]

When are these being released?

The best info I h ave is the tail end of March, but this may have changed since I heard it.

LBH

 

[Rynar]

Hey, Thx so far for the replies and am i'm glad not to find myself some whiner with who everyone disagrees.
If Mongoose is indeed tweaking the Vorlons for tournaments, they will probably tweak them for the normal games too, hopefully some of their disigners follow up on these forums and will see that the Elder Races need a bit of a boost in order to have better chances ina fight.

Upgrading the hulls of the cruisers to 6 would do very much indeed, the only super AP weapons would make major treaths to the hulls. More healthpoints or better hull regeneration is a bit too much.
Icreasing the range of each weapons with an inch or 3 would do verry well (transport from 12" to 15" and destroyer from 18" to 20" increase par example) I would also sugest a secondeary weapons that is anti figther, weak, min beam and with a short range and an AD of 1 or 3.
Maybe tey could also fabricate a "diffrent grown" ship g.e. a heavy cruiser with 4 flights of fighters and a lesser arnament.
Finally the extra turn of 45° would make a heluva difrence in fighting fast vessels.

In hope of some good adjustments I greet the,
Rynar

 

[lastbesthope]

Hey, Thx so far for the replies and am i'm glad not to find myself some whiner with who everyone disagrees.
If Mongoose is indeed tweaking the Vorlons for tournaments, they will probably tweak them for the normal games too, hopefully some of their disigners follow up on these forums and will see that the Elder Races need a bit of a boost in order to have better chances ina fight.

Depends what you mean by normal...

I think the current thinking of Mongoose is that the SFOS fleets are balanced but mainly for Campaign play, so for one off games or tournaments, the tournament fleet lists, which will be adjusted, can be used.

LBH

 

[Dwar]

We have actually played two games, one with shadows, one with vorlons that halved their damage points and then they took ordinary damage. Did not overpower them at all, and made the vorlons a lot more resistant (although they still lost). Even with the 2d6 damage back and taking half damage 75 hits is not a lot, espicially since they are as mobile as a brick and only have hull strenght 5. The average 4 dice SAP DD beam weapon still does serious damage. What it means is that concentrating on Vorlons one at a time becomes a good strat. Shadows become a bit tougher, but take full damage and can't regen. Would recommend doing this for anyone who wants better games with these two races.