Third Age EA changes; yays and nays

[katadder]

Which is kinda funnny, new beam rule would have made utilizing the Laser mode a lot more beneficial in 2e. Gah, Nova screwed again!

which is one of the reasons it had to go. can you imagine a nova having a 7 dice beam in each side arc? bit over the top.

 

[Iain McGhee]

They'd have likely had to kick it up to Battle or drop a fair amount of AD to keep it at Raid if they kept the Laser/Pulse Arrays with the new Beam rules. And I doubt if anyone would have liked that solution. Given that one of my plasma-armed Novas blew the (insert expletive here !) out of a Tinashi this morning I'm happy with them as they are . The 2e version of Close Blast Doors works really well with them, as long as you don't prefer to charge them into the middle of a fleet and blast away at everything around it.

 

[angelus2000]

I'd love to have the Plasma armed version in the 3rd Age list, AP/DD beats TL any day of the week. Amongst the rumor mill prior to 2e release, I had seen that the Nova was going to AP DD weapons, that it was the early years version only got left out.

Unfortunately Ian, ramming the Nova straight into the enemy fleet is EXACTLY whats its for, one glance at the weapons fit is enough to see that. Dancing around the edge of the battle using CAB is a severe underutilizing of its firepower and rather hard with lumbering and Speed 6, Hyperions and Skirmish ships work far better for that sort of thing.

As for LPA's, even with the new beam mechanice, I've noticed the average number of hits with Beams tend to be 120-140 percent hits-to-AD. Even needing 4+, 7 AD of beams would only bust 14 hits once in a great while, and LPA's were never DD to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I'm just as glad to see LPA's gone as the next person, if only for simplicities sake.


As I stated before with the first post, the 3rd Age EA Nova is an effective downgrade from 1e; 2 AD more on the P/S arcs does not justify or rebalance Lumbering. I certainly don't recall anyon bemoaning the Novas being "too good" in 1e. Its one real advantage was lots of fighters to beef up the fighter swarm, and thats gone now with the Avenger move. The only area where it scores slightly above most other Raid ships is Damage/Crew track, in every other area I can see its either middle of the road in terms of damage potential and survivability, and far below average in terms of speed and manueveryability.

 

[katadder]

As I stated before with the first post, the 3rd Age EA Nova is an effective downgrade from 1e; 2 AD more on the P/S arcs does not justify or rebalance Lumbering. I certainly don't recall anyon bemoaning the Novas being "too good" in 1e. Its one real advantage was lots of fighters to beef up the fighter swarm, and thats gone now with the Avenger move. The only area where it scores slightly above most other Raid ships is Damage/Crew track, in every other area I can see its either middle of the road in terms of damage potential and survivability, and far below average in terms of speed and manueveryability.

try being an abbai player. our bimith lost some AD and became lumbering too with only range 8 weapons. at least nova users get range 12 and 4 fighter flights.

 

[angelus2000]

Ouch :shock: . My sympathies to you then. Yet another good gunboat nerfed. That actually more retarded than the Nova, and hurts a lot more cause the Abbai list is more limited than the EA one. Whats up with the Nerf bat against gunboats, I dont recall anyone saying the Bimith was broken either.

I'm noticing a trend here. Although the Battle and up ships that became Lumbering seemed to gain AD or a weapons trait, it seems the opposite happened to the Raid level ships. Any other Raid ships that got "rewarded" with lumbering adn then took a hit to weapons?

 

[Silvereye]

Personally, I think Lumbering fits with the Nova. Its nearly as big as an Omega afterall. Gunboats are pretty much nobrainers to use. And I'm sure the playtesters looked at the AD before any changes were made, along with trying Mini-Beam for LPA's before dropping the alternate fire mode.

I would have thought that the Abbai would have had a little more Interceptor than they ended up with though. But I guess I'll havre to play them to see.

 

[Voronesh]

Just to chime in on the LPAs. I prefer the way they work now. In 1e its was pretty much down to calculating against hull type and number of interceptor dice. And in most cases the TL was better than the beam choice.

From a fluff POV it makes sense that the Nova is lumbering, but it does seem to get (practically) nothing in return.

The Bimith OTOH i do not understand. Yes they can do hideous! amounts of damage, if they get 3 arcs to bear on the enemy. But when someone is stupid (or unlucky) to let that happen is supposed to be punished by these ships.

 

[tneva82]

Which is kinda funnny, new beam rule would have made utilizing the Laser mode a lot more beneficial in 2e. Gah, Nova screwed again!

which is one of the reasons it had to go. can you imagine a nova having a 7 dice beam in each side arc? bit over the top.

Why not reduce beam dices though? It's not like it would have to be on/off decision...

Pulse/laser arrays back is house rule we adopted the second we heard about the change. We haven't decided on AD's of lasers yet but that is just matter of thinking it over.

 

[Triggy]

The Bimith only lost a small number of AD but gained the combination of Shields and Interceptors and Escort making it ridiculously tough for a Raid PL ship. It's the sort of ship you hope you never have to actually get round to destroying and it still has more firepower than the Nova Dreadnought!

 

[katadder]

the bimith lost more than a couple of AD. the lumbering really screws it with range 8 (considering it used to have 2 turns) and the shields do not make it any tougher than the 1e version. in fact it has the same overall damage with shields/damage combined but less interceptors which means it now gets raped by rail guns, missiles, pak'mara, vree and centauri.
I used 6 the other day and they are actually very very fragile and once the enemy passes them they will never get back into the battle.

a nova dreadnought will easily beat one as it has more interceptors and longer range plus fighters of its own.

the bimith is now quite possibly one of the worst ships in the game which as the only abbai raid level ship is quite bad really. the only other ship that got hit with the nerf stick nearly as bad is the lakara.

 

[Iain McGhee]

Unfortunately Ian, ramming the Nova straight into the enemy fleet is EXACTLY whats its for, one glance at the weapons fit is enough to see that. Dancing around the edge of the battle using CAB is a severe underutilizing of its firepower and rather hard with lumbering and Speed 6, Hyperions and Skirmish ships work far better for that sort of thing.

Depends on whether you want anything left of it by the end of the game or not ! And you really have to be careful of taking engine crits now unless you want a horde of angry Narn or whoever on board, so charging into the middle of an enemy fleet isn't such a good idea.

Your tactic would work fine in one-offs, but in a campaign I'd much rather prefer to keep the ship mostly intact. Although against a fleet with lots of faster, more manoeuvreable ships I'd likely just use it as you describe.

 

[Ripple]

Our group got the playtest pack and our one collective agreement was that the abbai got totally screwed.

Shield were a direct exchange for damage/crew points assuming you got at least one turn of regen, interceptors were completely lost on a number of ships (the first interceptor die is huge!) and the coming of lumbering on ships that need range eight to fight was just brutal.

I respect you Triggy but on the abbai you are just flat wrong. The bimith is one of the weakest ship in raid, and a joy if I see someone field one against me.

Where this crosses the Nova debate is that ships with lots of dice were not the horrors folks seem to think. Single damage dice were just not nearly as impressive as the DD beam dice fielded by many ships. Having to get close, and twelve isn't bad as far as having to close goes, just means that lumbering is really damageing.

Eh...had this argument before...

Ripple

 

[angelus2000]

Where this crosses the Nova debate is that ships with lots of dice were not the horrors folks seem to think. Single damage dice were just not nearly as impressive as the DD beam dice fielded by many ships. Having to get close, and twelve isn't bad as far as having to close goes, just means that lumbering is really damageing.

Which is exactly the point I wa trying to make with the Nova arguement. 14 AD TL is going to do 8-10 damage against a hull 5 ship on average Against Hull 6, your looking at 4-6 on average. Big whoop, a crap beam roll from anything with beams or an average roll from a AP DD weapon will do better than that.

 

[tneva82]

Which is exactly the point I wa trying to make with the Nova arguement. 14 AD TL is going to do 8-10 damage against a hull 5 ship on average Against Hull 6, your looking at 4-6 on average. Big whoop, a crap beam roll from anything with beams or an average roll from a AP DD weapon will do better than that.

Well. Damage output sounds pretty much even with plasma nova(with AP DD weaponry) but pulse nova will cause more crits for added benefit...

Yes 14 AD of AP DD goodiness is better. But generally better traits=less AD. Which also means less criticals.

AP and TL are pretty much dead even anyway as far as efficiency goes.

 

[Ripple]

Guess my response would be crits are like the lottery... damage is a paycheck.

Lots of crits can be meaningless against a number of ships, one good crit with a DD weapon can blow it up. I've won lots of games depending on single damage dice and hoping for the big cash in on the crit tables...but I've lost more due to someone else getting lucky once with a multiplier weapon.

Ripple

 

[Rynar]

The Nova has been a bit "goofed" alright, I used two in a 10 Battle fight vs Narn the where E-mined in the very first turn and barely survived, when i finally had targets in my second turn the took out one weapon in a random arc with crits. Gues what, the broadside arcs who had fireing solutions where off line while the other arcs had noting to shoot... Yust my luck (I on the other hand took out the narn player rears weapons while shooting at him from the front for some reason!!! dices...)

Well, the Nova ha stayed thesame, but it's more vunrable to Beams, it has no anti-fighter weapons, it's fighter complement is surpased by the Avenger and you usually already have enough fighters to go around. + its dammage soaking abillity seems somehow lessend to me...
I don't think it's broken but it yust doesn't seem as good as it was in the previous ed.

The Omega is still one of the best EA Battle choises and should be the mainstay of most EA fleets, the slow-loading trait is a bit strange for a weapons with only 4 AD but it yust like in the series where the pusle blasts are ocasionally replaced by beams from thesame guns, so if you want it right the puse guns should also be slow-loading :wink: and you would be unable to fire them at thesame time
Anny way 4 AD mini beam with 15" range is a bonus but curious nontheless...

Till now I have played three games and lost all,

5 pts raid vs ISA with early EA -> My oponent was roling an avarage of 7 hits with the white star beams and shredded my fleet ltough i inercepted almost everyting i could intercept.

5 pts raid vs Minbari with early EA -> Especially here i felt the lack of hull points like Narn have, interceptors where useless and his beam rolls where awsome I learned that the Ashinta is especially hard, At raid it has 6 TL Mini beams to each arc, stealth 5+ and an impressive 38 hull points!!! while their othe raid choises have only 24 hull points ( +14!!! ) To tell about the battle, I killed his Two Torotha's in the first turn before they fired a single shot, crippled a Teshlan and severly wounded another Teshlan. My fleet los it's two Olympus and took a little dammage to other ships. In the second turn i finshed of his Teschlans while he killed a HRC. A that point he had one Ashinta with no dammage and one with about 10 points of dammage, I still had 2 HRC's, 2 Artemis, an Oracle and two Sagi's with here and there light to moderate dammage. Whe both thought the game was over and he stood no chance... WRONG!!! he finished off my entire fleet save for a crippled Oracle and an intact HRC while only having a crippled Ashinta (the other was still healthy) and no i did not fluff to manny stealth checks, I yust couldn't do sufficient dammage to these to Mimbari bricks... and he won 42 to 33 vp's.

The last one was 5 battle Third Age Ea with 5 battle ISA vs 10 Battle Narn
We quited in the third turn due to no more time to play and morale loos on our side, the first turn of E-mine dammage was simply stunning... AP Tripple dammage is not something to be joked with, even if they can't crit. Narn have grown to be especially good at killing the opponents his initiative sinks. whil retaining lots of his own, we didnd't have suficiant long range weapons to reply and found ourselves out manouvered and out gunned ever time around. But in all fairness, our Fleet composition could have been alot better + we made a few important tactial desicions vs a very experienced Narn player.

Greetz, Rynar 8)