Thoughts on 2e... Game favors fleets of smaller ships. Why?

[zulu01]

Now having played with 2e for a while, I have to wonder what the developers were thinking. The system now even more rewards fleets of lots of smaller priority ships.

It used the be that big ships frequently had lots of SAP big beams. But beams are now less effective against smaller ships, and MORE effective against bigger ones. Why?

Consider this math from a friend of mine:
“Change in beam rules reduced firepower of large ships with super-AP beams vs. armor 4 ships by 48%, 55% when you consider beams can no longer lock on the first round.

These changes disproportionately impacted fleets weighted with beam weapons and large capital ships with heavy beams as their main weaponry”.

In almost every fleet, the system rewards you to "trade down". You get more hull, more total weapons and more initiative sinks when you trade a G'Quann for four Ka'Tan destroyers. Or a Primus for four Demos.

The new, most scary weapon in the game isn’t the beam anymore - its the precise, long range torpedo which can be locked on and fired en-mass.

Pity, because that doesn’t match the show at all.

I like the bigger ships - They make the table look cool, and speed up play since there is less to be moving around on the table.

Other than maximizing sales by encouraging players to buy more, smaller ships, I don't get the reason for Mongoose encouraging players to trade down the priority levels

 

[Burger]

Re. Beams: yes the beam rules do make SAP beams, on average, weaker. Against hull 6, they get better of course. But against hull 4 and 5, they got weaker. I have done the maths before but I can't recall all the figures. The conclusion was that SAP beams should have 20% increased AD to remain te same firepower, AP beams should stay the same, and non-AP beams should be reduced by 30%.

Re. swarms, or "little versus large"... yes, this has always been the case, the problem is the criticals. One large ship will always be knocked out by critical hits by a swarm of smaller ships. The smaller ships can accept things like 4-6 and 6-6 crits - even if it blows the ship up, there are 10 others to take its pace. A 6-6 on a big ship can mean game over.

2e went some way to reducing this, by making "All hands on deck" easier and more effective, and weakening 4-5 and 4-6 crits. But overall the critical table got more deadly, and the new FAP splitting system was the nail in the coffin of large ships. Which is a shame, because large ships are the more iconic ones, and more fun to play with.

In fairness, they did realize the problems with the game, and try to solve them. One problem was that hull 4 ships were considered useless, and SAP beams too powerful. An SAP beam could slice a hull 4 ship up too easily (eg. Ka'Tan vs Olympus - same PL). Hence the new beam rules: now hull 4 ships are much more survivable in general. However, this has lead to the problem that you note - big ships can't kill small ships as easily as they should! As a further example, TGT's Veshatan completely failed to kill my Guardhawk (thats Battle firing on Patrol!) in 2 turns of firing... dice rolls were not particularly bad, but not great. I was heavily mauled, but under 1e, and by common sense, I would've been cut in half.

 

[animus]

I'd like to hear some ideas on using big ships. The best I can think of, and the one used by many other games is to set limits and requirements on scenarios and games requiring big ships and limiting certain others. I know there's been debate and denials about this, but let's face it, the game's already moving in that direction with Unique ships and the Gaim's requirement for Queens. Just extend it somehow to make them mandatory or move to points or give the big ships the bulk trait to protect them longer.

 

[Burger]

Dropping back to Armageddon's FAP splits, and playing at 1pt Armageddon, in my favourite (and oft-repeated) fix. The fact is that at 5pt Raid, 10 Skirmiish ships will almost always beat 1 War plus a few supports, no matter what the fleets or player ability or tactics. Whereas at 1pt Armageddon, 12 Skirmish vs 1 War, 1 Battle and 2 Raid will be a much more interesting fight.

 

[jimmor]

I like the deadly critics. HMS Hood went down after second Bismark's salvo... but it was Bismark's salvo and not some patrol-boat's. I think the problem is in small ships getting critics on big one to easily. And while one of 16 small ships getting crippled with a critic is no a problem then the same critic on a big ship can cost you a game. Perheaps Attack Table needs some consideration? Making bigger ships more immune to critics?

 

[Tolwyn]

At least going back to the ARMA point splits would be a good idea.
The new systems does not make much sense for me.

Why take a Hyperion with 4 AD Beam if I could have 8 with the Thetys laser variant :?

 

[MustEatBrains]

At least going back to the ARMA point splits would be a good idea.
The new systems does not make much sense for me.

Why take a Hyperion with 4 AD Beam if I could have 8 with the Thetys laser variant :?

Doesn´t the Tethy have slow-loading? that would basically even it out again... but the 1 ARMA point idea is a good thing, it does offer much better balance than the standard 5 Raid!

 

[Stonehorse]

One idea I think might solve the Crit issue is to replace the crit table with this:

For every Critical hit caused roll a D6 and apply any Double Damage/Triple Damage/Quad Damage to the result, this is the extra damage the enemy ship takes, the results of which also apply to crew.

It makes it easier to track damage and dosen't leave anyone with a sour taste in their mouth when an opponent reduces a capital ships fire power with fighters, or ships of a very low level.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

At 5 raid, a war unit is not desirable. At 5 battle it's more cost effective. It's no good saying "big ships are no use," they are, what you should be saying is "ships too big for the size of game are no use."

There's no rules fix for swarm fleets. If we move to a points system á la Battlefleet Gothic, small ships will still cost a lot less than big ships, so you'll still be able to swarm the table with them.

What needs to be done is to penalise players who use cheesy fleets, and the only way to do that is to ostracise them from the hobby. Cheese is a problem for every game, but there's no solution to it in-game. It has to be handled out-of-game.

 

[Burger]

There's no rules fix for swarm fleets.

Except 1pt Armageddon
It doesn't fix them, but it allows opponents to have a more reasonably sized fleet to face them with.
Ostracizing them from the hobby is not a good fix, especially tournaments which anyone can turn up to, and you can't refuse to play them!

 

[inq101]

50-75% of crits should be extra damage, the rest should be system failure. This is suppost to be B5 where sensible people have designed the ships with backup systems, not Star Trek where the only system you can rely on is artificial gravity.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

That isn't a fix, it's a different size of game. At 5 raid you get 10 skirmish units. At 1 armageddon you get 12. Explain to me again how this fixes the swarm issue?

 

[Burger]

At 5 raid you get 10 skirmish units. At 1 armageddon you get 12. Explain to me again how this fixes the swarm issue?

Because at 1pt Armageddon your opponent get 2 War or 1 War and 2 Battle or a War, Battle and 2 Raid points to face your 12 Skirmish ships. Much better odds and a much more fun and balanced game.

True it is not a fix if you're playing campaigns. But are you really going to field 10 skirmish ships in a campaign? The RR loss would be horrendous. For one-offs or tournaments, it is a massive improvement over 5 Raid. Give it a try.

 

[MustEatBrains]

At 5 raid, a war unit is not desirable. At 5 battle it's more cost effective. It's no good saying "big ships are no use," they are, what you should be saying is "ships too big for the size of game are no use."

Good point! Regardless of whether a points system or PLs are used, you always have to think about your fleet selection, and high priority ships are just not built for patroling every outback planet.

Sure. a big ship shpuld have a chance to beat even swarms pf smaller ships at the same costs, but army/fleet composition is a vital part of every wargame, and even with equal points/PLs, not every combination makes sense against every opposition.

Using one big ship at a low level for some reason (like me trying to use a Sharlin as often as possible just because the ship is cool) can (often) fairly be considered a themed army, and those tend to either win big or loose badly, in any game system I know (which are quite a few).

So, even if CTA favours small fleets, you have to place an emphasis
somewhere, right? And if you want to hav ebattles like the ones in the series, playyer bigger scenarios and higher levels - battles in the series tended to be about something important most of the time anyway, so big scenarios are more than justified.

So yes, while the game does favour fleets consisting of lower ships, I see that as a feature, not a bug (and remember, at Armageddon level, even an Omega has a "low priority"...)

 

[Burger]

So yes, while the game does favour fleets consisting of lower ships, I see that as a feature, not a bug (and remember, at Armageddon level, even an Omega has a "low priority"...)

But surely the point of the PL system, is that it should favour taking ships at the PL of the scenario? Currently, it favours taking swarms of ships of 1 or even 2 PLs below it. This kind of game is not fun to play at all, time-consuming, lots of papework and the result is predictable. You argue that taking ships above the PL is bad because it is not what is intended... but why shoudl taking ships equally far below the PL be good?

 

[Lone Gunman]

In VaS, every crit has to be confirmed by rolling the die again on 4+. Only successfull results are crits. Also, the table is rolled with 2d6 not one, althought there are crits like "ship totally destroyed" , what is a shame, it brings more "balanced" results, mainly in the 6, 7 or 8 line. I know it's not a sollution but perhaps a start for mongoose to work with?

 

[MongooseMatt]

There could be a very long and torturous answer to this, but I'll try to keep it brief.

If you are finding that your big ships are consistently getting blatted by hordes of Patrol and Skirmish vessels, play something other than 5 point Raid! That is not the official 'average' battle of the game, merely a sensible place to start thinking about tournaments (the campaign weekend in January, for example, uses 5 point Battle fleets).

The issue comes from the multiplication effect of same or similar units. As a brief example, Unit A is worth X, but two Unit As are worth a little bit more than 2X because of the way they can build upon one another's strengths in the game and reinforce them. Three of them are worth a little bit more than 3X. However, this is not a linear scale and, at some point, it levels out - remember this bit. Incidentally, this is not something unique to CTA, and you can see it in action with many other games (think 40k and Leman Russ tanks. . .)

Now, unless you have the nightmare of sliding points values (ugh!), there are few ways around this - _if_ you keep the scale of the battle the same. The important thing about CTA is that you can slide that scale to reflect the kind of game you want.

Going back to our Unit A, if we assume it is a Skirmish level ship, you will see that in a limited game (5 point Raid, say), it can take maximum advantage of similar units reinforcing one another.

However, if you slide the scale upwards, which you will do if you want to use plenty of the big iconic ships from the series, you will find it is the Battle and War level ships that start getting the boost from reinforcing one another's strengths but, at the same time, the effect on lower level ships is starting to flatten out. As you go up and up the scale (through more FAPs and higher PLs) the larger ships start to overhaul the smaller ones, to the point where they become far less desirable to base a fleet around, as you would at lower PLs, and instead get used to support the big ships, which have become the mainstay.

Try it out - play larger games. Try a few 15 or 20 point Battle or War level games. They may surprise you!

Now, _why_ you get this effect is a whole new kettle of fish, but the short of it is - if you want to mess around with the big ships, play big battles. If you prefer small battles, expect to see more of the lower level ships.

 

[MongooseMatt]

althought there are crits like "ship totally destroyed" , what is a shame,

It is also more realistic for WWII (and, I think, for CTA, but I got overuled on that one ).

 

[Lord David the Denied]

In general, I think ACtA favours critical hits too much. Compare it to BFG, a game on a similar scale. Even the biggest ships have only 12 hit points, and you can expect to take a few hits every turn. It's quite possible to wear a ship away with a few turns of concentrated fire from two or three ships the same size, without scoring any critical hits at all. Escort ships can mass decent firepower, but they're blown apart very easily by large ships.

In ACtA, if you want to kill a war level ship you need criticals to do enough damage to destroy it. Even triple damage weapons are unlikely to produce enough damage from solid hits to destroy the thing in an average game.

If everything had its damage and crew scores reduced, across the board, and the critical table was significantly changed to remove a lot of the ship-killer criticals, I think you'd see a lot more use for bigger ships in general. They'd be the ones with the big guns that could kill ships quickly, while little patrol boats would be just fodder to them. That's what people want, isn't it?

 

[Burger]

Try it out - play larger games. Try a few 15 or 20 point Battle or War level games. They may surprise you!

Now, _why_ you get this effect is a whole new kettle of fish, but the short of it is - if you want to mess around with the big ships, play big battles. If you prefer small battles, expect to see more of the lower level ships.

I'd wager that at 15 battle, 60 Ka'Tans would beat 8 Sharlins, or at 15 War, 60 White Stars will beat 8 Nemesis. The problem is not that it favours small ships... the problem is that it favours taking ships 1 or (with the 2e FAP splits) 2 levels below the scenario level. Whatever that level is. Play at 10 Armageddon, and 40 Omegas will beat 10 Adiras.

I don't think it's a case of the X's that you mention supporting each other's strengths. It's just a case of redundancy and crits. Lots of small ships are far more redundant than one big one: get a nasty crit against one, and you have more ships to take its place. But take a nasty crit on your big ship, and you've lost. Lose 1 weapon arc on a small sihip, who cares, you have 9 more to shoot. Lose it on a big ship and you've lost a signifigant portion of your entire fleet's firepower.

As LDD says, crits are usually the deciding factor in ACTA. A swarm has built-in crit redundancy. A few bigger ships do not. Hence a swarm will always do better.